[APG] Savage Barbarian underpowered?

[Lady-J]

which is why +con to ac the same way a monk get their ac bonus would be great wouldn't be to out of hand at low levels and would scale decently into the late game

[Blind Monkey]

Grumbaki wrote:

Blind Monkey wrote:

If we were to be rewriting a stupid designed bad archetype, I'd say forget the stat conversions and wonky levels and simply make it like the invulnerable archetype.

"When not wearing armor increase your natural armor bonus by half your barbarian level. (Minimum 1, shields allowed. Increase means it stacks with racial natural armor.)"

Now it's not randomly deleting racial bonuses, it's not a dip for stats class, and it doesn't have a 'scary' spike of AC at level 1 but steadily builds up. You could keep the crappy dodge/fear save bonus at level 3 and it still probably isn't half as good as invulnerable, but maybe you could actually build something around it?

My issue with that is that you won't be playing an unarmored barbarian for a long time. Dex 14 with a chain shirt is AC16.

Dex 14 unarmored doesn't reach AC16 until Lvl 8...
That is your Lvl 8 barbarian having the same AC as a Lvl 1 barbarian.

Sure, at Lvl 20 it's like having a +4 mithril breastplate...but I tend to want my archetypes coming online within the first 3-4 levels.

Well the dodge bonus part does mean you get to = studded leather when naked at level 4. That would be the equivalent of having 16 con with stat conversion. At level 10 you have = a breastplate +1 or 24 con.

And don't forget the "saving grace" of the archetype is that you can always have someone cast Mage Armor on you and get a straight +4 AC bonus.

[Chess Pwn]

at lv4 they only have 1 dodge bonus. 1 does not equal 3 that studied leather gives. Studded leather barb would have 15 AC, savage barb has 13.

at lv10 you finally get +4 AC from class, the same as a chain shirt at lv1.
Plus the chain shirt will very likely have beast totem for 3 natural armor, the same type of bonus that 2 of the savage barb bonus is.

savage barb's natural AC caps at +5 while any barb with beast totem gets +6 natural AC, having +5 at lv 16 instead of 19.

so really the only bonus this archetype is giving is the +3 dodge AC for a naked build.