So i thought up an (i think) interesting barbarian char. and i ran across the deathless initate feat tree and some of it seams to contridict the diehard feat; is the tree good to get for an invulnerable rager?
If what my friend told me... yes and no. It is apparently a very complex build to get just right... what I mean is it works for higher levels but suffers at lower levels.
Well i'll be switching at lvl 12 soo...
Switching characters? Are you gonna stay Lvl 12?
Well maybe not, but if i want to, i can. And if i want to, i want a good build.
Its not PFS, but homebrewish...
OK so you are staying at level 12... Hmm I will shoot her an email and see how she did it... I think hers is all the way to Lvl 15. It will probably be a few hours for her to get me the feats and such.
Are you using point buy or Rolled stats?
My dm has a unique rolling system, 4d6 x 6 (drop the lowest) + 1d12, 1d10, and a 1d8 for one stat each die. The two stat blocks ive rolled so far = about 40-45 point buy.
40 point buy?
man that's insane... you're basically playing god...
My dm has a unique rolling system, 4d6 x 6 (drop the lowest) + 1d12, 1d10, and a 1d8 for one stat each die. The two stat blocks ive rolled so far = about 40-45 point buy.
............. Um.....
Dude, play anything, seriously with a 45 PB play a freakin commoner.
Hell, your stats are almost enough to make a monk work ;)
I know i can play anything, i wanna play a invunelable rager barbarian, i got this char. idea in my head and i wanna see if it works, so is the diehard feat tree ok or not? If it is, i'll use it if not i'll look for something eles, but at lvl 12 i'll only get 6 feats (1/2 orc, i want 1/2 dragon, 1/2 dragon fits the concept better, but dm says no...) 6 feats is not a lot to spend and the DH feat tree takes 6 feats...
Skip the "Deathless" feats. As a half-orc, you're much better off with Ferocious Tenacity and Stalwart/Improved Stalwart. Improved Stalwart can give you an additional +10 to DR eventually.
Yeah... the Deathless feats aren't good on a Barbarian. Apparently her build was a Fighter based build... How it worked I have no idea...
D'arandriel has a good concept if the feats are what I think they are.
The +10 DR would stack with my 6 DR, but omly if i take a full defence action, how often does a barbarian go on defence? Hmmm when he is almost dead... Hmmm something to think about.
Believe it or not a lot of barbarians will go on the defensive after raging.
Being fatigued is not fun.
I would dip one level into unarmed fighter or martial artist monk and pick up crane style. Fight defensively in combat with only a -2 penalty due to crane style and pick up +8DR (if you pick up Dodge, depending on how your GM interprets Stalwart/Improved Stalwart, you could get a +10DR).
Fight Defensively: +2AC/+4DR
w/Acrobatics (3): +1AC/+2DR
Crane Style: +1 AC/+2DR
Dodge: +1AC/+2DR
Total: +10DR, -2 to hit penalty
This is a better route to go than taking Combat Expertise. Don't forget to take Reckless Abandon to offset to the hit penalty.
Reckless Abandon is a rage power only used when rageing. I would likely only use stalwart out of combat.
You mean outside of raging... you can still attack on the defensive... I just got an Evil idea for my module's boss... }:]
Why would you only use stalwart and improved stalwart outside of rage? With an incredibly high dr and ferocious tenacity, you will be virtually unkillable. Your only penalty is a -2 to hit. This is basically an inconvenience. A half orc's favored class bonus is an extra rage round per level, which works well with ferocious tenacity.
Wouldnt it be
(w/Acrobatics (3): +3AC/+6DR)???
Wouldnt it be
(w/Acrobatics (3): +3AC/+6DR)???
He was separating the bonuses out into groupings. Say you didn't take the Acrobatics you can just ignore that line for the total.
Alright, here is a few ideas that you might want to think about.
the first idea is to take a 1 level dip in unbreakable fighter. this gives you endurance and diehard as bonus feats and sets you up for everything else you want quite nicely. useful feats would include:
raging vitality
stalwart
tenacious survivor
improved stalwart
combat expertise
graverisen (achievement feat)
power attack
deathless initiate
deathless master
because you seem to be stoping at level 12, you gain greater rage at level 11 and the one level dip will allow you to get 2 extra feats that you needed for the cost of 1 rage power, 2 rounds of rage, 1 ref/will save, 1 favoured class bonus and 1 point of DR (if you went invulnerable rager). Its quite the trade off, so you will have to choose what you prefer.
other things to consider are the rage powers, especially (greater) guarded life and possibly improved damage reduction. With this you convert lethal damage to non lethal damage when you would be dropped to 0 hps or lower at a rate of 2 per level. Level 12, you convert 24 points of damage every time you get dangerously low and your dr effectively triples against non-lethal damage! Heres a senario; you are level 12 with most of these feats and have 30 hps left then take a hit for 40 points of damage. First 24 points gets converted to nonlethal and your dr of 12 (6 for levels, 5 for stalwart, 1 for improved dr rage power) jumps to 18 resulting in 6 points of nonlethal. next you take 16 points of lethal damage that gets blocked by your 12 resulting in 4 points of lethal damage. you just took 10 points and are at 20 hps, still above 0. The next hit deals 25 points of damage and you drop 24 of that to non lethal, taking 6 points of nonlethal and 0 lethal damage again. you become incredibly hard to kill at low hps. This gets more effective if you are willing to take improved stalwart and more increased damage reduction powers.
The second idea is if you are allowed to go ork, and you chose to go as a fighter. the favoured class bonus of the ork is an extra 2 con worth of hps when you go into the negatives. Feral racial trait gives you +1 to hit and damgage rolls while in the negatives and deathless initiate gives you +2 to hit and damage rolls while in the negatives. Take finding haleen as one of your traits and with a con of 18 and 12 levels of fighter (not to hard to get) you would have an average hp of 126 hps and could go as deep as -42 before dieing! All the while you are in the negatives, you gain bonuses to hit and damage, and if you start fighting defensively while low, stalwart should make you hard to kill and able to find that happy medium of almost-but-not-quite-dead state :D If you do manage to get graverisen (its an achievement feat and quite rare that it seems to be allowed) you get 1 get out of dead free card to stay there and can be alot easier to obtain thanks to tenacious survivor. Just make sure to tell your party healer to heal you if you "look dead" regardless of how long you have been like that. Good archetypes for this concept would be as follows:
Unbreakable -sets you up nicely to take advantage of this build, but otherwise is quite lacklustre
Armour master -armoured defence stacks with adamitne armour, stalwart stacks with armoured defence. You have a convincing argument that you could have them all and have 16 dr, or, the gm might say none of them stack, so ask your dm. at 19th level this jumps up to 25, but you probably are not going that high.
two handed fighter -With this much natural defence and the ability to go so low without dieing, it also becomes quite worth it to go with a full offence build like this, as you can attack for so much longer.
Weapon master -same as above, less damage, but strong abilities.
because you stated that you are playing with higher than average (ok way above average) starting stats, these effects can get more pronounced. If you are willing to put your best stat in con and second best in str, you can have phenomenal ability to go far into the negatives and have a huge hp pool. being 'more dead, but not yet dead' than the wizard has total hps is always a laugh!
One last thing to consider is eldritch heritage. There is a good guide on the incredible potential that is this feat chain here. You might want to look at ork for high str bonuses and sky high to hit and damage bonuses or Pit touched infernal adding inherent bonuses to con.