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Not really any major benefits unless you plan to be fighting medium creatures all the time. Large and larger creatures cmd increases dramatically as you level and doing any kind of maneuvers against them is pretty hard to say the least.
But well if you want to play a reach polearm barbarian, there is frankly nothing too wrong with it and you will be able to control the battlefield as well.
You only get 10 feats, so choose carefully:
-Power attack of course is going to be one of your feats.
-Combat Reflexes to take advantage of the reach and AoO.
-combat expertise because you need it to get maneuver feats.
-Improved and Greater Trip, yeah don't bother with improved disarm etc...waste of time, but trip on the other hand is a decent option.
-Improved Initiative always good.
Horsechopper should be your weapon of choice for reach and tripping.
For a reach build, I would recommend the Superstitious archetype so you can actually survive spells and eventually even get blindsight so you can always take advantage of your reach against invisible opponents.
Beside that have fun.
re: Battlefield Control, That will largely hinge on Trip (although there are other options),
and largely thru the Attack of Opportunity mechanic... Which normal weapons can also use, but reach weapons tend to use much more often.
Basically, anybody who you have reach advantage against will provoke an AoO when they try to move more than 5' and attak you,
and you also can avoid doing the same thing because you don't need to move as close to attack your opponents.
Things like spiked gauntlets can let you attack adjacent squares, but you will need to "re grip" the reach weapon from "wielding" (in 2 hands) to "merely holding" (in 1 hand) and back, during which time you are not threatening both areas simultaneously. This is a free action which you can do within a full attack, but you would not get to take AoOs off your turn from both threat areas... Although generally speaking you don't often need both threat areas but merely the CHOICE of which threat area you would like to threaten for AoOs off your turn (which doesn't need to be the same weapon you used or plan to use for your attacks on your turn).
I am not 100% certain of the status of Armor Spikes, but I believe they don't have a limb limitation for this purpose (although they do for 2WF?). Anyhow, Spiked Gauntlets or Armor Spikes (or both) are so cheap and easily available to a character with all Martial Weapon Proficiency, that having them should be a "no brainer" if you want to focus on Reach Weapons, just as a back up.
For that matter, you should also carry a Bow and Arrow, also as a back up, even if you invest no Feats into being great at using it: it can still be better in many situations like vs. Fliers when you can't fly, across other uncrossable hazards, or when you want to keep a fight mobile (like riding horseback outside of reach of a brutal toe-to-toe melee full attack monster like a Hydra, "pinging" it round after round with a bow from horseback can be a great strategy in open plains).
There is also options like Natural Weapons (Bite - granted by Barbarian Rage Power "Animal Fury" - or Gore doesn't interfere with 2H weapon wielding at all, Claws work similar to Spiked Gauntlets above).
Another good thing about Reach Weapons (or Reach period) is that if the target doesn't threaten you back, a potential AoO for trying to use CMBs that you don't have the Improved Feat for becomes an empty threat as they can't actually make it. Those Feats are still useful, especially for auxilliary functionality they enable (or Greater Maneuver Feats they qualify you for), but the Reach Weapon does already get you one significant advantage of them.
As a Barbarian, the Rage Power Strength Surge is a nice one to eventually pick up, since it lets you add "+Barbarian Level" to CMB or CMD of any Maneuver (limited to once per Rage, although one can find ways to re-enter Rage without overly harsh penalties). That makes it less necessary to worry about boosting a specific type of Maneuver's CMB bonus, although every little bonus can be useful. The "Unexpected Strike" Rage Power is also good for AoOs (allowing them vs. 5' and on threat ENTRY not just EXIT as is normal), and "Knockback" is a GREAT Battlefield control (especially vs. Trip Immune or high Trip CMD creatures e.g. flyers or those with many legs).
you could always get yourself something like the cestus, spiked gauntlet, or brass knuckles. They do low damage(1d4), but they're cheap and they allow you to wield another weapon in the same hand that they're on. So with one of those 3 options you can threaten AoO's at both 5 and 10 feet, and you can attack adjacent targets since it's a free action to remove a hand from a weapon and put it back.
Can you make free actions outside of your turn?
Not really any major benefits unless you plan to be fighting medium creatures all the time. Large and larger creatures cmd increases dramatically as you level and doing any kind of maneuvers against them is pretty hard to say the least.
Hmmm... Not always needing to suck up one of those Large or larger creatures' AoOs in order to approach and attack them seems a pretty nice benefit. Not to mention being able to Full Attack more often of the time than with a smaller Reach weapon, and all the damage you get from regular non-CMB AoOs that Reach weapons get but normal weapons don't... This attack or attack(s) with Combat Reflexes) is at Full BAB, so can quickly become a disproportionately large portion of DPR.
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Also remember that Trip, Sunder, Disarm are the major maneuvers usable with ANY attack, including AoOs and Full Attack Iteratives. Grapple, Bullrush, and so on normally have their own specific action requirements, e.g. a Standard Action or Charge. Barbarians do get Knockback which allows Bullrush on top of any attack, which does have nice functionality for "battlefield control" with AoOs and such.
Pro-tip: Combat Reflexes is the automatic association with Reach Weapons and AoOs. It can certainly be really nice. I would recommend playing with it sometimes to learn what it does (hint: you no longer ar dependent on moving 5' or less in order to make all your attacks, you now can makes lots AT FULL BAB, and can position yourself optimally to draw out as many of those AoOs as you can).
But if you're finding it hard to fit in all the Feats you want/need, I find that it's not actually all that necessary. The number of fights where it's actually possible to use Combat Reflexes is often a minority. Certainly when you consider that having Combat Reflexes or not makes the difference of winning or losing that fight. And funny thing is, merely wielding a Reach Weapon seems to make people THINK YOU HAVE COMBAT REFLEXES, adapting their own actions to avoid AoOs that you can't actually deliver since you don't have that Feat, but in the mean time you are forcing them to take less optimal actions.
Anyhow, if you ARE interested in more AoO capability, the Barbarian class does has a Rage Power that increases your AoOs by one. Now, if you have a DEX of 14+ (or plan to boost it to such at some point) then Combat Reflexes will give you better benefit for 1 Feat, an equivalent cost. But that requires 13 DEX, while the Rage Power has no DEX pre-req, meaning you can "dump" DEX below 10 if you wish. Similar to my above point but perhaps stronger, the number of fights where having more than 2 AoOs/round is critically important to the fight is even less than the number of fights where having more than 1 AoO/round is critically important, so this can be attractive for some Barbarian builds.
More broadly... The Barbarian unlike the Fighter is not particularly tied into any one weapon. So you are much more free to swap things around and try out different weapons... A Greatsword one day, a Guisarme Polearm the next. However you choose to fight, the enemies (combined) can always use the full gamut of options, so learning how they all work with their pros and cons means you can understand the game as a whole better. Of course, your GM may also be along with you on this ride, learning the combat system better... ;-)
you could always get yourself something like the cestus, spiked gauntlet, or brass knuckles. They do low damage(1d4), but they're cheap and they allow you to wield another weapon in the same hand that they're on. So with one of those 3 options you can threaten AoO's at both 5 and 10 feet, and you can attack adjacent targets since it's a free action to remove a hand from a weapon and put it back.Can you make free actions outside of your turn?
No, outside of Talking (specifically mentioned in the rules), and drawing arrows (not mentioned in rules, but specifically allowed by Paizo fiat in their FAQ, without any particular rules justification cited). Which means that the weapon you are considered wielding "off your turn" (during enemy actions) must be decided DURING your turn (by the end of it), determined by which weapon you are actually wielding at the end of your own turn. (Barring situations like when you Ready an Action to Draw a Weapon off your turn... which then becomes your Turn, so it isn't really even breaking the rule)
In terms of AoOs which enemies might provoke DURING your turn (such as readied actions of theirs which provoke, or which you are entitled to due to special abilities like Greater Trip), those are still "interrupts" and so you would not be able to take a Free Action to switch weapons between when the AoO has been provoked and when you make the attack roll for it. Otherwise, you could potentially be switching grip as a free action multiple times, e.g. switching between makes iterative Full Attacks with a 2H polearm and a Claw. (although the game rules specifically say that how often you can make Free Actions is up to GM judgement, so assuming one an repeat it infinitely is not justifiable by RAW)
Actions are described as happening during your turn, unless an exception is given...
as it is for Talking, but not for Free Actions in general.
The unique and explicit Talking exception wouldn't make sense to exist if that were the case for Free Actions in general.
When a character's turn comes up in the initiative sequence, that character performs his entire round's worth of actions. (For exceptions, see Attacks of Opportunity and Special Initiative Actions.)
In a normal round, you can perform a standard action and a move action, or you can perform a full-round action. You can also perform one swift action and one or more free actions. You can always take a move action in place of a standard action.
Free Action: Free actions consume a very small amount of time and effort. You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally. However, there are reasonable limits on what you can really do for free, as decided by the GM.
No general exception for Free Actions as a whole to the normal turn/action association.
Notice how AoO's are not even "Actions" in the games' usage of the term, and thus are not subject to this limitation (on turn),while Free Actions explicitly ARE Actions and subject to the general rules for Actions and Turns (barring explicit exception).
Drop Prone
Dropping to a prone position in your space is a free action.Speak
In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn't your turn. Speaking more than a few sentences is generally beyond the limit of a free action.
I'm not sure why one would read that and believe the developers intended BOTH Dropping Prone and Talking to be things that are equally able to be done off your turn (e.g. when you see an opposing NPC draw an arrow, and their commander yells "Shoot the Dwarf!", and you wish you could Drop Prone to get the AC bonus if they shoot it at you). Describing one as "a free action that you can perform even when it isn't your turn" makes sense only when free actions as a whole do NOT have that property.
That Free Actions as a whole take a "similar amount of time" has little bearing on whether they occur on your turn or not - The combat system isn't really about SIMULATING sequential combat (if discussing 'realism' of action times), it is SIMULATING simultaneous free-flowing combat, with sequential turns (and the actions limited to turns) being an artifact of the game system. Free Actions being limited to turns, like most actions, is an inherent feature of the game system. Changing grips to enable attacks is a significant mechanical effect, which like most significant mechanical effects is strictly limited to actions on turns, and the only exception is Talking (or Drawing an Arrow by FAQ), actions which don't do much on their own.
There is a Rage Power "Superstitious" whose downside is that you are forced to make Saves vs. friendly spells cast on you. If you can drop Rage (and enter it) off your turn, then that means you never really do have to make those Saves vs. Friendly Spells. But you CAN'T do that off your turn, because Beginning/Ending Rage is a Free Action without any explicit statemnt that you can do it off turn, thus it works like most Free Actions: only on your turn.
It's not really about degree of exertion.
Practically everything in the game is subjugated to the Turn mechanic, with varying degrees of exertion involved.
ONLY Talking and Drawing Arrows are excepted (the latter dubiously IMHO), which do nothing on their own.
Even Verbal only spells, or activating Command Word triggered items (with a single word or phrase) are subjugated to the Turn mechanic BECAUSE THEY DO SOMETHING, unlike merely speaking equivalent amount of words for no mechanical effect.
On an exertion basis, there should be no difference there, but there is. Exertion and simulation of sequentiality is not the metric used to structure the game, but game mechanics and balance are.
Switching grips is certainly doing something significant enough so that people would find generic tactical advanage in doing so.
If you want to think about the game system as simulating sequential actions all correlating to every game system action and event, things break down pretty fast. You can run 4x your move speed carrying a baton in 1 round, 6 seconds right? So, 4x30=`120' in 6 seconds. Great. Now if there is somebody else at that 120' mark waiting to take your baton they can also do the same thing, on their turn after yours completes. In the same 6 seconds. If they have somebody else at the end of their 120', the next person can do the same. In the same 6 seconds. So that baton is moving, when carried by people all moving at the same speed, either 120', 240', 360' depending on how many people are arrayed in a line. Enough people in a line, and you can move that baton faster than the speed of light. Bonkers. It's pretty easy to show the absurdity in the rules when held up to a standard they never really claim to meet. Better to just dispense with simulation and play the game by the rules as written, without intentionally trying to create unbelievable situations of course.
EDIT: The Improved Unarmed Strike Feat is another option for Reach Weapon users, as it provides an "always wielded" Kick, Headbutt, etc, in addition to normally wielded 2H weapons. Pretty good for Monks too, even if they plan on UAS Kicks to be their primary weapon, a Reach Weapon just provides more AoO oppportunities than they would have otherwise.... They can get proficiency via Feat, Trait, or Multiclass, but really they don't even need to be GOOD at using it for opponents to change tactics to avoid getting AoOs from it, just hold it and look mean :-)
The trip feat line is hands down the best Melee beatstick character control style. Its good even without reach.
You would need Combat expertise and both Trip feats to make its work as early as 3rd level (as a human). Combat reflexes is a given if you go this line, you´ll need all the AoO´s you can get with the trip feats (1 When the target goes down with Greater trip, Another if he gets back up, and a third of he wants to run away, or if you did all this with a reach weapon then he´s likely in need of burning a 5ft step to get into melee, where youll be ready to greet him with an "Unexpected strike").
All in all yeah, a well built CMB barbarian with reach is excellent.
Pros/Cons.
1) Trip is the maneuver to focus. It is generally the best way for melee dudes to control a battlefield, just be wary of huge foes, flying foes and foes with a lot of legs (or no legs).
2) Barbarians have extra methods to get AoO´s, which helps make up for the feat starvation problem barbarians suffer from, you can go without Combat reflexes a bit longer while you build the trip line.
3) Barbarians have extra speed which is good for setting up attack of opportunity zones (aside from just getting around in general), you might have to sacrifice this speed however if you want heavy armor (and you do want full plate if youre consistently getting into the middle of enemy groups to exert reach over them).
Oh and wear a spiked armor or spiked gauntlet. They dont tax you with any penalties so theyre basicly free. You can use those to fight enemies who get under your reach.
As for team synergy make sure someone on the team has enlarge person. Or buy a wand yourself and give it to someone who can use it on you, this double your reach (Your reach weapon wil strike foes between 15-20ft away, and your gauntlet will strike at 5-10ft away).
Do you have a RP concept for this guy? Im envisaging some kind of Wilds paragon guard or something? Whatver he is, have fun
This is great news! So if I´m holding a reach weapon, anybody moving out of a threatend square and into another (also threatened and now adjacent to me) will give me an AoO with my reach weapon. Then on my turn, I either use the gauntlet or take 5' step back and use the reach weapon again.
You're close, but missing some important details. I suggest just reading the rules for AoO's again in detail.
To note: whether they are moving into a threatened or non-threatened square doesn't matter for most AoOs, what matters is if the square they are leaving is threatened: The AoO happens as an "interrupt" just before they leave the original square (or just before they complete moving into the new square, using the original square as the target for the AoO's purposes). AoO's also don't apply to 5' steps (normally), so if you just moved 30' towards them and attacked them with your Reach Weapon, they are generally free to 5' step closer to you (and Full Attack you) without triggering an AoO.
You will discover a very different "dance" to combat using Reach Weapons than without them... sometimes advantageous to the Reach weapon, sometimes not. Also having a non-Reach weapon as your secondary/backup option is nice to have when this "dance" would leave you at disadvantage to an opponent, even if your non-Reach weapon will likely have less damage and magical Enchantments, being a secondary weapon.
Reach Weapons play very differently than non-Reach Weapons, and that will take getting used to. Just read the AoO rules in the Combat section and take it slowly. If you want, your GM can start out using NPCs with Reach Weapons while you still use Greatswords (or both Sword + Polarm, choosing each one for different battles), and you can learn how it plays out from both sides.
Barbarian's Unexpected Strike (8th level character pre-requisite) changes some fundamental rules about Movement-triggered AoOs to apply both to 5' steps and "Threatened Square Entry". Hopefully you have mastered the normal AoO system by then.
Also, why a bow? Are thrown weapons not worth it? I do more damage throwing. Is distance the main factor?
Distance/Range is certainly a factor. With thrown weapons, the enemy is usually within a move or charge distance to you anyways, not necessarily so for bows.
Crucially, you also can't throw more than 1 thrown weapon per round without a special feat (quickdraw) or special exotic proficiency (in shuriken, which works more like arrows than daggers in this case, since they count as ammo not thrown weapons). Even if the enemy is in move/charge distance, with a bow you can get 1 full attack, they get one melee attack, you 5' step and get 1 more full attack. Bows can eventually be gotten in high STR ratings (crossbows cannot though), and there is even an 'adaptive' magical quality which is nice for a Barbarian with fluctuating STR, although if you just want a bow as a secondary option you may be just as well of with a cheap non-optimal but functional bow.
I would still say to always carry a dagger anyways. Very cheap, nice to always have one more weapon, and later you can put some special magical quality on it, like ghost touch or spell storing... and use the same magical property BOTH for melee OR ranged (thrown).
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Super rough build here but I put this together in like 10 minutes
Human trip barbarian (Titan Mauler)
1F: Power Attack Bonus: Combat Reflexes
2 RP: Reckless Abandon
3F: Combat Expertise
4 RP: Strength Surge
5F: Improved Trip
6 RP: Knock Down
7: Felling Smash
8 RP: Ground Breaker
9F: Greater Trip
10 RP: Brawler
11F: Vicious Stop
12 RP: Unexpected Strike
13F: Fury's Fall
14 RP: Come and Get me
thats as far as I took it so far but you get what I'm doing
Eventually you'll be tripping everything around you and the Titan Mauler lets you get some bonus against bigger creature. You'll need an Int of at least 13 but figured the rest of your physical stats would be pretty good.
Use a reach weapon with the trip feature incase you happen to fail against something (you don't want to get tripped in return).
You won't be doing as much damage as a straight damage Barbarian build but then that isn't what you said you wanted so.
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Just to tie into the conversation a bit for my build. That’s why you take ground breaker. It lets you make an area difficult terrain which eliminates five foot steps and will allow you to make AoO to enemies that move through your threat range. A barbarian really depends on rage cycling which becomes insane once you get tireless rager but can still be done before hand to a degree.
Look up the rest of what he can do and bacically you'll see that he gets really good at tripping and is designed to trip nearly every round.
Rough starting ability block would be
15 point buy
Str 17 (human bonus), Dex 14, Con 13, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 7
20 point buy
Str 17 (Human Bonus), Dex 15, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 8
25 point buy
Str 18 (human bonus), Dex 16, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 7
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Rough starting ability block would be15 point buy
Str 17 (human bonus), Dex 14, Con 13, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 720 point buy
Str 17 (Human Bonus), Dex 15, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 825 point buy
Str 18 (human bonus), Dex 16, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 11, Cha 7Thanks for the build.
One question. Why a higher INT than WIS? Do you think I should have better skills? Originaly I bought more WIS cause its useful for Perception and WILL.As for the type of armor, Ive chosen a Chain Shirt (+4 AC, -2 skill penalty, and no speed adjustment). Am I ready??
Also for combat expertise which is a pre req for all the trip feats. Your WILL is gonna be balls anyways. Perception is a class skill so while a +1 or +2 could help you are already getting the three bump for putting a rank in it so it is not as important to have the ability bump.
This build is solid trip. If you are worried about spell casters (which is understandable) you can trade out some of your rage powers and focus on tripping via your feats (although barbarians are feat starved and the rage powers only apply when you are raging [obviously]). That will put more importance on raging when an enemy caster has been identified which means saving your rage for such times.
A sample build for the tripper who is also spellcaster weary would be more like this.
1F: Power Attack Bonus: Combat Reflexes
2 RP: superstitious
3F: Combat Expertise
4 RP: Reckless Abandon
5F: Improved Trip
6 RP: Ground Breaker
7: Felling Smash
8 RP: Disruptive
9F: Greater Trip
10 RP: unexpected strike
11F: Vital strike
12 RP: Spellbreaker
13F: Fury's Fall
14 RP: Come and get me
With you taking the indomitable faith trait at character creation and then any other feat that improves saves against enchantments or compulsions that you are able.
Your WILL save is still never going to be awesome but with this build you can basically charge in and trip everyone between you and the caster while moving on to get the caster. Once up on the caster they are going to have a hard time casting defensively and are likely to draw AoO. Any opponent standing up after you tripped them is going to draw an AoO were you will be able to keep them down so you can keep heading towards the caster when it is your turn again.
Additional rage powers like witch hunter will let you drop them faster in higher levels so you can return your focus to other things. You're still gonna want to pick up strength surge and knock down at some point to keep with making trip a focus in all situations but eater of magic will be good to grab since you'll already have the pre req rage powers.
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You can choose as many archetypes as you want as long as they don't clash. So you can't take say invulnerable rager and titan mauler because they both have ability that replace uncanny dodge. Whichever you "took first" would effectively replace uncanny dodge making it impossible for you to apply the second archetype because it doesn't have the ability to replace...uhm does that make sense?
In other words if you were a titan mauler you can’t also select invulnerable rager because invulnerable rage need uncanny dodge to exist on the base class in order to replace it and one you make titan mauler your base class it no longer has uncanny dodge to replace.
That example is why I say "took first" because you have to take an archetype at first level and unless two brained and four armed have to apply one before the other. Unless otherwise given permission by your GM to retrospectively apply the archetype or you use the retraining rules
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/classArchetypes.html#_usi ng-archetypes
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As for armor for my human barbarian with +2 Dex and a range horsechopper I´ve chosen a chain shirt. I dont want to sacrifice my 40' speed for more AC because I´m hopping range and trip will lend some protecion. Am I right or should a just grab some medium +6 armor?
I would upgrade your armor. The best medium armor still lets you retain your +2 from your dex so it would effectively be improving your AC by 2. While it reduces your movement because you have fast movement you would still be moving faster than other characters in medium armor (except clerics with the travel domain but that is unrelated and simply stated as a disclaimer). You would go from 40 foot movement to 30 foot movement which is still quick and nice in medium armor......IMO it is a fair trade off.