Barbarian sounds pretty awesome for suicidal builds I think. Invulnerable barbarian with superstitious can be pretty good for getting yourself out of bad situations. Lots of acrobatic related rage powers to choose from.
Consider dual wielding sawtooth sabers to saw your way through the mast and dual wield like a pro?
That said, fighter does dual wielding well with all his static bonuses making up for the loss, but barbarian can grab beast totem and pounce, which lets you get off full attacks much more often which is the point of twf. CAGM takes forever to come online it feel slike.
Ironically enough, Barbarians would serve that play style best. Fighters could try to, though it goes against their design flavor and they can't really fit that niche due to lacking Barbarian class features.
With that said, you should have 17 to Str, 16 to Con and Dex, 14 to Wis, 13 to Cha, and 12 to Int. If you were a Fighter, you could pull off specializing in Dirty Tricks, aka the best Combat Maneuver in the game, while still maintaining your sweet onslaught of attacks.
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Barbarian sounds pretty awesome for suicidal builds I think. Invulnerable barbarian with superstitious can be pretty good for getting yourself out of bad situations. Lots of acrobatic related rage powers to choose from.
Consider dual wielding sawtooth sabers to saw your way through the mast and dual wield like a pro?
That said, fighter does dual wielding well with all his static bonuses making up for the loss, but barbarian can grab beast totem and pounce, which lets you get off full attacks much more often which is the point of twf. CAGM takes forever to come online it feel slike.
Wow. That Beast Totem is horrific. A charge followed by a full attack. That's just absolutely nasty.
Why can't I get this as a Monk :(((
Pounce is pretty amazing. Beastial leaper is another thing monk's might appreciate. Add your barbarian level to acrobatics, and your able to move - standard action - move. Monk's are just weird I guess?
TWF needs to lay down full attacks. The TWF archetype actually gets all of its bonuses while full attacking, but doesn't give you better ways to get off full attacks. I prefer Weapon master for my TWF. Dual wielding saw tooth sabers is pretty awesome looking and effective I think.
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I suggest you use a fighter but dip into barbarian for a couple of levels, (like 2 or 3) but use the fighter for the feats. Take a look a the two handed fighter arc, its not two weapons, but that with the vital strike tree, and a impacting weapon, you don't lose BAB, you can counter the lack of rage with the extra rage feat, you still get to rage for a lot of rounds per day, and you get uncanny dodge, and fast movement with the fighter. This all sounds yummy to me. Besides I see Rigs using a big two handed weapon when he goes crazy. The two handed arc is built for breaking things... and people.
I personally have a 5 Barbarian/15 THF that really crushes things. I went the spring attack route with the static damage boosters (weapon focus/weapon specialization) and improved critical with the falchion. The other nice thing is that with 15 fighter levels he is/was able to swap out 3 combat feats.
Eventually he'll get Greater Power Attack while raging, which is just going to be awesome.
If you just want to go one class I'd suggest the Come and Get me Barbarian who is an invulnerable rager and has pounce, a lot of people combine the Invul Rager w/ Urban Barbarian as they seem to mesh pretty well.
The other thing you might want to think about if you are suicidal is looking at feats that add to your DR or be a race that has racial feats such as the half-orc to offset or shrug off damage.
So what type of crazy things would you like to do? Barbarian has a lot of choices. Beast totem gives pounce and AC bonuses, Beastial Leaper can let you dive around the battle field better, Superstition and all the powers that require give you super saves and the power to shrug off or even punch spells.
No, you add up your total BAB. You would have +10/+5 with Barbarian 5/Fighter 5. If you took a level in ranger it would then be +11/+6/+1.
Wow. That Beast Totem is horrific. A charge followed by a full attack. That's just absolutely nasty.
Why can't I get this as a Monk :(((
This could be the way to combine TWF and barbarian together. A single level of monk (maybe martial artist?) would allow flurry, and multiclassing into a full BAB class would mean no change to flurry.
The only reason people do not do this typically is the 'no armor' requirement, since most would need monk's addition to AC to cover that loss. Barbarians have the option, however, of gaining a point of DR every 2 levels and gaining natural armor from Invulnerable Barbarian and Beast Totem. So this problem is nothing really. Flurry is also defined as a "full attack action," so you could pounce with it at level 11 on this build.
So you could get the whole "wailing on them with a ton of attacks" aspect and easily combine it with the "suicidal and taking a ton of hits and not caring" aspect together.
Choice of weapons is another problem though, since your unarmed strike will not scale or count as special materials. The fun thing with flurry of blows is that you can use one weapon if you want, so it can be much cheaper than TWF. Thematically, grabbing a cestus or s single set of brass knuckles would be good since you could enjoy the image of the character raging out and punching and punching and punching with the same arm for about 7 hits. That has a certain...brutal feel that I like. I'd prefer the Cestus if only because it has the same stats as the dagger (1d4, 19-20/x2), which are fairly common for TWF (or just one point average damage worse than the common short sword) A temple sword might be good too though, since you can THF for bonuses to power attack (flurry always uses x1 str though). You could even get two temple swords just for style (a bit expensive though, but flurry would not give any extra penalties).
Good Info - Thanks guys. I'm still torn ... Invulnerable Rager is what almost exactly what I want flavor wise but I'm looking over the Rage Powers and still questioning how to get there. Increased DR doesn't open up until 8th, CAGM is 12th (as is a host of other good powers). I would like to be more effective sooner, since this it may be a long while before seeing 12th+ level.
Seems like I might gimp myself out of attacks if I dip fighter (or Barbarian) later in life. Example, at 10th level
(5) Fighter BAB +5
(5) Barb BAB +5Where I should be +10/+5 at 10th level, I would only be at a single +10 attack, right? I could make up for some of that with TWF feats for additional attacks, but I'm always going to be missing the primary hand second swing, all the way to 20th. If that is right, I could be better doing a reckless, pirate themed aasimar monk (NG)
To make it all worse, I'm taken a liking to Horizon Walker with all the water based terrain bonuses that would kick butt in this setting.
You are already 7th level so you'll be able to do quite a bit and hit 2x already (with your main weapon be it 2h sword or a 1h longsword) at +7/+2 being a full fighter, a full barbarian, or multi-classing into either/both of them. Both Fighter and Barbarian are FULL BAB classes, so your progression is the same with both with the number of attacks and +'s to BAB.
You can still do the horizon walker thing if you want since it's a PrC, the only requirements are Endurance and 6 Skill ranks of Knowledge Geography, so you'd have to be at least level 6 (whether it is 3 barbarian/ 3 fighter, or all of one or the other). In the end you could be 10 Horizon walker/5 fighter/ 5 barbarian if you want, it just depends on what you think would be the most fun way to play.
In our Skull n' Shackles campaign our two primary martials were a high DR Barbarian who used at times either a boarding pike, a greataxe or a bow depending on the circumstances and a dual-dagger wielding Rogue who either spent her time flanking, back-stabbing or maxing out her critical hit opportunities in combat. Both were very effective but were most effective when fighting together (along with other members of the ship's crew).
FWIW, the high DR Barbarian was unkillable despite the relative lack of armor and made for a tremendously effective character in that environment. I've got the build if you're interested, or ask Damocles Guile as he was the one who played the character.
You could also go the Natural attack route as well. That would really fit the pirate them pretty perfect.
Maybe be a Teifling or Tengu and take the alternate racial trait to get 2 claw attacks. Then you can take the fiend totem rage powers to gain a gore attack, and also take the bite rage power for extra goodness.
Jump over to the other ship and rip everyone/thing apart with your bare hands!
-Venom
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FWIW, the high DR Barbarian was unkillable despite the relative lack of armor and made for a tremendously effective character in that environment. I've got the build if you're interested, or ask Damocles Guile as he was the one who played the character.I would love to see the build. Examples help me tremendously.
This is the build. The Fighter levels come at 5th and 20th should you make it that high.
Human 2nd level Unbreakable Fighter / 18th level Invulnerable Rager & Urban Barbarian
Heart of the Fields alternate racial trait, Human favored class option for Barbarians
Attributes: (20 point buy)
STR - 15 (+2 racial bonus, +1 at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 20th level)
DEX - 14
CON - 14
INT - 14
WIS - 12
CHA - 7
Traits:
Threatening Defender (reduce Combat Expertise penalties by 1)
Auspicious Tattoo (+1 Will saves)
Feats & Rage Powers by level:
1st - Combat Expertise
1st - Power Attack
2nd - Superstition
3rd - Combat Reflexes
4th - Lesser Beast Totem
5th - Stalwart
5th - Diehard
5th - Endurance
7th - Deadly Aim
7th - Reckless Abandon
9th - Extra RP: Extra DR
9th - Beast Totem
11th - Improved Stalwart
11th - Greater Beast Totem
13th - Dazing Assault
13th - Come and Get Me
15th - Extra RP: Extra DR
15th - Extra DR
17th - Extra RP: Flesh Wound
17th - Witch Hunter
19th - Extra RP: Eater of Magic
19th - Strength Surge
20th - Improved Initiative
Skills: (6 ranks/level)
Climb* - 1/even level
Swim* - 1/level
Knowledge: Nature* - 1/odd level
Survival* - 1/level
Stealth - 1/level
Perception* - 1/level
Profession: Sailor* - 1/level (+1/2 character level)
Diehard and Endurance are the pre-requisites for Stalwart and eventually Greater Stalwart which gives you a substantial boost of DR at the cost of attack accuracy. Reckless Abandon trades that accuracy for AC and Beast Totem trades that AC for nothing, meaning that collectively you get a big boost in DR for nothing.
Deadly Aim, Reckless Abandon and the ability to boost your Dex make you a credible ranged threat when times call for it.
He's got much better skills than your typical Fighter could hope to have - an important aspect of a character in the Skull n Shackles AP.
At 8th level he has DR 6/-, by 12th it's DR 14/- and by 16th it's DR 20/- which is pretty huge. He also has better than average AC for a Barbarian due to using Focused Rage instead of standard Rage and taking Beast Totem. Greater Beast Totem gives him pounce at 11th and at 13th he gets that nifty Dazing Assault/Come and Get Me trick. Just an all-around great martial character, and one that doesn't have to be played as a raging psychotic unless you want him to be - Focused Rage can just as easily be a combat trance, exceptional mental focus or just about anything else. I like that its versatility can even be used when it comes to things like boosting a Stealth check or attempting to save against poison or disease.
Hope this helps.
EDIT: in your case, I'd make the attributes as listed below...
Attributes:
STR - 17 (+2 racial bonus, +1 at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 20th level)
DEX - 16
CON - 16
INT - 14
WIS - 13
CHA - 12
Love it. Thank you.
You mentioned focused rage? Is that a "thing" or just the way the rage/feats are laid out to operate?
I think that Wiggz was referencing Controlled Rage from the Urban Barbarian archetype.
When an urban barbarian rages, instead of making a normal rage she may apply a +4 morale bonus to her Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution. This bonus increases to +6 when she gains greater rage and +8 when she gains mighty rage. She may apply the full bonus to one ability score or may split the bonus between several scores in increments of +2. When using a controlled rage, an urban barbarian gains no bonus on Will saves, takes no penalties to AC, and can still use Intelligence-, Dexterity-, and Charisma-based skills. This ability otherwise follows the normal rules for rage.
Notice that Controlled Rage doesn't suffer from the -2AC that a normal barbarian raging does.
There is no optimal non-archer non-caster that isn't a beast totem barbarian. Period. Pounce is that good. Paizo should either have never printed unrestricted pounce for barbarians or should have made it available to anyone as a feat.
Well that is hardly a fair statement. While that barbarian build is extremely powerful, there are plenty of other things for a melee character to do. I particularly like TWF brawler fighters since they can make extremely damaging and threatening lockdown specialists. They can root an opponent down and lower both its to hit and concentration just by standing there.
Admittedly, barbarians also can do CaGM, reckless abandon, dazing assault, and DR with invulnerable rager. That with pounce means that opponents can neither ignore or knock out the barbarian without a world of pain. That does make it very impressive.
There is no optimal non-archer non-caster that isn't a beast totem barbarian. Period. Pounce is that good. Paizo should either have never printed unrestricted pounce for barbarians or should have made it available to anyone as a feat.Well that is hardly a fair statement. While that barbarian build is extremely powerful, there are plenty of other things for a melee character to do. I particularly like TWF brawler fighters since they can make extremely damaging and threatening lockdown specialists. They can root an opponent down and lower both its to hit and concentration just by standing there.
Admittedly, barbarians also can do CaGM, reckless abandon, dazing assault, and DR with invulnerable rager. That with pounce means that opponents can neither ignore or knock out the barbarian without a world of pain. That does make it very impressive.
I've got a Goblin Brawler right now who dips MOMS for Snake and Crane and I absolutely love him. It's like actually playing the Tasmanian Devil.