Furious Finish + Roused Anger (Barbarian)

[cheesedoodler]

So a question came to mind when I found what I think might be a particularly cheesey combination while building my latest Barbarian:

Furious Finish (feat): While raging, when you use the Vital Strike feat, you can choose not to roll your damage dice and instead deal damage equal to the maximum roll possible on those damage dice. If you do, your rage immediately ends, and you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be).

Roused Anger (rage power) The barbarian may enter a rage even if fatigued. While raging after using this ability, the barbarian is immune to the fatigued condition. Once this rage ends, the barbarian is exhausted for 10 minutes per round spent raging.

So we enter combat. My Barb Rages and hits a guy with furious finish, which ends his rage and fatigues him. On my next turn, I use Roused Anger to enter rage *again*, and use furious finish. Now, using furious finish would end my second rage. With RA, ending my second rage should exhaust me, but the wording of FF reads that I am now fatigued (even if I would normally be something else, in this case exhausted).

Can I use this combination to chain rage and furious finish every turn until I run out of rage rounds? From the wording of these powers, I seem to think so.

[Methabroax]

Short answer, no. You rage and use Furious Finish. Your now fatigued. You use Roused Anger to enter a second rage and use Furious Finish again. You now end rage 2 and become BOTH fatigued and exhausted. Furious Finish makes you fatigued again (not a big deal since Roused Anger lets you Rage-cycle). Roused Anger says when you end rage 2 you become exhausted. Nothing in Furious Finish prevents this from happening.

[PrinceDogWaterIII]

Roused Anger (Rage Power):

The barbarian may enter a rage even if fatigued. While raging after using this ability, the barbarian is immune to the fatigued condition. Once this rage ends, the barbarian is exhausted for 10 minutes per round spent raging.

Rage (EX):

A barbarian cannot enter a new rage while fatigued or exhausted but can otherwise enter rage multiple times during a single encounter or combat.

You're exhausted and you cannot enter a rage until you've removed the exhausted condition. Rage cycling is fun, but you don't just ignore the part of Roused Anger where you're exhausted for ten minutes per round of rage.

[cheesedoodler]

Methabroax wrote:

Short answer, no. You rage and use Furious Finish. Your now fatigued. You use Roused Anger to enter a second rage and use Furious Finish again. You now end rage 2 and become BOTH fatigued and exhausted. Furious Finish makes you fatigued again (not a big deal since Roused Anger lets you Rage-cycle). Roused Anger says when you end rage 2 you become exhausted. Nothing in Furious Finish prevents this from happening.

Oh, oh oh. I didn't know you could be BOTH fatigued AND exhausted. I thought that exhausted was, like, the next level of fatigued.

[Methabroax]

First of all I entirely agree with you that exhaustion is the next level of fatigue. Where we differ is in reading them as mutually exclusive. The way I read it you can be no condition, n.c.+fatigued, n.c.+fatigued+exhausted. You don't take penalties from both fatigued and exhausted, but you are both, and in many cases exhaustion comes from being fatigued multiple times. From the pathfinder SRD "Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued." Since the exhausted only lasts 10 minutes per raged round, I thought it was important to point out that he would revert to fatigued when the exhaustion ends. (which is how I read the rule)

In response to your post, I suppose a character could suffer an effect that would exhaust them that wouldn't otherwise make them fatigued, but I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.
Methabroax

[Driver 325 yards]

Technically, you are right.

For instance, let's say for sake of argument there was a rage power called improved roused anger. Let's say improved roused anger said that at the end of your second rage you are not fatigue and instead you become fatigue at the end of your third rage.

Well, in this instance, there is no doubt that everyone would say that at the end of your second rage you would nonetheless become fatigue from Furious Finish. They would argue that the langauge of Furious Finish overrides the language of Improved Roused Anger until the cows came home. I also think that they would be correct.

However, here, the only reason why they do not say you are correct is because you would end up with a lesser condition, not a worse condition.

So, if people were to answer your question honestly they would say, yes it is cheese and I would not allow it at my table. Nonetheless, you are correct via RAW.

Plus, this is a case where the RAI is clear against such a result even though the RAW allows for what you suggest.

[Mathius]

I think there is a way somewhere to become immune to exhaustion so that would let you cycle as many times as you want.

[Allycard]

cord of stuborn resolve sets this up well. you vital strike for max. forced fatuege belt doesn't activate. forced rage for another maxed vital strike bringing in exaustion belt drops to fatuge. cycle

[Allycard]

there is also an ion stone that trades exausted for nauseated

[Lady-J]

being undead or a construct would do it :)