Hyper-optimized is not the standard and rage cyclying on its own does not create a hyperoptimized character. It is not really all that great, and most people that dont like it have an issue with the flavor not the mechanics from what has been said so far.
All I'm saying is do Fighters/Rogues/Monks need a "Whoops, my dad is also a god" feat to be able to put up the kind of options that any caster can. Let a Fighter/Rogue/Monk do something amazing without needing something in their history to validate it, like the Barbarian. His dad could be a farmer and his mom could be a stuffed panda, and you've still got a kid who can cleave magic.
Does it say something about me that I'd play that sort of half-stuffed-animal character?
But the problem with the Christmas Tree effect is that the magic items available to people can just be too much fun. Take the Tengu Drinking Jug. It's basically a limited use per day Purify Water, not even including food, and yet why WOULDN'T you drop a grand for making free plum wine out of mud? Or just having a magic thermos for the heck of it? And we're talking about a tangentially useful item. How could you hold yourself back from stuff that's mechanically useful?!
It is true that rage cycling and rage powers make barbarians OP, at least when compared with other mundane martials. But in the grand scheme of things, those characters could use a bump. Rising tides raises all boats and all that such.
As far as Dev intent goes, while I have never gamed with them personally, I get the impression they don't play in the hyper-optimized games that seem to be the standard here on the Internet. I think they leave options like this in the game so people can choose what style of game they prefer.
This is a good point. I feel that there are -certain games- that ended up the way they are because they reflect too much the idiosyncratic playstyles of people who sit around playing the same game, with the same group of people and the same "culture", all the time.
As far as Dev intent goes, while I have never gamed with them personally, I get the impression they don't play in the hyper-optimized games that seem to be the standard here on the Internet. I think they leave options like this in the game so people can choose what style of game they prefer.I'm not sure that that many people DO play those games outside of spreadsheet analysis.
I have played and GMed plenty of games and have used them to explain precisely what the problem is. People just seem find the idea that Caster *gasp* uses their spells to buff themselves as completely out there. But ya high level buffed casters are fighting other casters. No one cares about Mr. Move-Single Attack, since chances are good he'll get taken out of the fight with an early spell or at worst have a chance to hit (though unlikely with your buffs thats not even a given). While he's moving and making one attack, the enemy caster are tossing out two encounter ending spells a turn. Even if they aren't Save or Dies, getting hit with a debuff spell of any kind is going to quickly lead to to death.
I makes me honestly wonder if people have actually played at level 12+ when they think this is "spreadsheet analysis".
Well let's look at the Spell Sundering and Strength Surge combo.
Say for instance those changed to each cost one round of rage every time they were used. You'd spend 3 rounds of rage using both. One round for starting rage or continuing it, one round for using Strength Surge, and then one round for using Spell Sundering.
That's 3 times more expensive than the one round of rage you need to spend using them now.
Yet, the barbarian still gets plenty of rage due to how many extra rounds you get per level. I don't mind martials being able to dispel effects, but having them do it better than casters kind of strikes me as strange.
Also, with barbarians like this, why would anyone want to play any other mundane martial class? Though I'd rather give nice things to rogues, fighters, and monks than necessarily take away barbarian toys.
The reason you'd play fighter or rogue is because you want to play a character concept that doesn't have magic. A heroic mundane character that use pure talent to achieve goals. Of course talent only take you so far, cue Barbarian, Ranger, or Paladin. There are actually people that enjoy playing fighters and rogues as they are just becuase those classes are what they are.
I personally prefer the a martial character with supernatural abilities.
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I am currently in a game of Carrion Crown where our level 8 party has been taking on (and beating) CR 14 encounters and creatures, if that's any indication of the so-called "internet min-maxing" culture or what have you. The strange part is that we're all using classes that are suboptimal by default, though I will say that the rogue is having by far the hardest time. Even optimized, rogues are terrible. Anyway, we hit level 9 recently, so I'm expecting the DM to pump the encounters up to CR 15-16 to maintain challenge. This is the effect of heavy optimizing going on outside of a game that forces raw, namely PFS. Our rogue is less experienced at optimization (and it's a rogue; that's already an issue), and is therefore continually winding up flat on his face in blood in almost every encounter. People need to look at what group they'll be playing with before they start doing these things, rage cycling being the example in this thread. Are you playing with a non-optimized group that probably doesn't even know how? Then don't rage cycle till later in the game. Yeah, rage cycling doesn't provide that much of an edge, but it will raise questions from the non-optimizing crowd that are best left till later, when it's less likely to make them cry about abuse. I'd give the same advice to a sorcerer or wizard with the ability to end all combat in a single casting from level 1 all the way to 20 (see: Every wizard or sorcerer that has ever existed) as to avoid trampling on another's fun. Conversely, I would strongly advise that non-optimizers not play with optimizers unless they can avoid becoming angry when things go poorly for them. Majority rules, and the GM's job is to entertain/challenge the entire party.
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While we're near the topic: Is the consensus that one of the balancing factors for Rage cycling is that you either leave Rage off part of the time or use 2 rounds per round? Because turning Rage off at any point during a round and then back on counts as 2 rounds of use.
Does that logic also apply if you're not turning it back on? If you don't turn it off before the end of your turn, you get charged for the next round as well?
That's largely relevant in the early game when you can't Rage Cycle, but don't actually have a lot of rounds to work with.If I Rage, hit the bad guy and leave the Rage going since I didn't kill him, then someone else finished him off and ends combat before my next turn, does that count as 2 rounds of rage, since I can't turn it off until the start of my next action in the next round.
I'd always assumed that as long as I stopped raging at the start of my turn before taking any actions, that round didn't count. That makes Rage Cycling easier, but not treating it that way is painful at low levels.
You have to pay for a round of rage every time you start it and a round of rage at the start of your turn if you are raging.
If you cycle rage at the beginning of your turn (that is you have rage on at the beginning of your turn, then drop rage, then start rage again), that costs 2 rounds of rage.
So yes, this is a balancing factor of rage cycling. It is more expensive to rage cycle and have rage always on. It is more cost effective to have rage on only during your turn, but this is at the expense of the loss of HP and the inability to use rage powers outside of your turn.
EDIT: Sorry, I'm now seeing your actual question. The way we implicitly play it is if you end combat, you are no longer in rounds, so you can just drop rage without having to charge an extra round. This seems fair to me.
As far as Dev intent goes, while I have never gamed with them personally, I get the impression they don't play in the hyper-optimized games that seem to be the standard here on the Internet. I think they leave options like this in the game so people can choose what style of game they prefer.I'm not sure that that many people DO play those games outside of spreadsheet analysis.I have played and GMed plenty of games and have used them to explain precisely what the problem is. People just seem find the idea that Caster *gasp* uses their spells to buff themselves as completely out there. But ya high level buffed casters are fighting other casters. No one cares about Mr. Move-Single Attack, since chances are good he'll get taken out of the fight with an early spell or at worst have a chance to hit (though unlikely with your buffs thats not even a given). While he's moving and making one attack, the enemy caster are tossing out two encounter ending spells a turn. Even if they aren't Save or Dies, getting hit with a debuff spell of any kind is going to quickly lead to to death.
I makes me honestly wonder if people have actually played at level 12+ when they think this is "spreadsheet analysis".
I've played many games past level 12 and GMed many more as well. I find Casters don't dominated martial classes though. THey just dominate fighter and rogues. No one yet has played a Cavalier or gunslinger though so I can't say what those classes are like. I've seen ranger, paladins and barbarian be very effective at high level.
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I've seen casters in parties with basically every class combination at this point. Of all the martials, only gunslingers even have a chance of (still not really) keeping pace with blaster casters, but blasting is a suboptimal use of their talents to begin with (also the most fun >_>). Magic users with even a modicum of know-how behind their style of play pretty much attain complete dominance. My barbarian could probably crank out around 200 damage per round at level 13 if I get good rolls. Unfortunately, my level 5 caster can already break 50. Calculations show that its damage is just going to increase exponentially as it levels; far more quickly than any martial. Not to mention the fact that I haven't really sacrificed anything for this, meaning it is still going to be useful for battlefield control as well.
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If I Rage, hit the bad guy and leave the Rage going since I didn't kill him, then someone else finished him off and ends combat before my next turn, does that count as 2 rounds of rage, since I can't turn it off until the start of my next action in the next round.I'd always assumed that as long as I stopped raging at the start of my turn before taking any actions, that round didn't count. That makes Rage Cycling easier, but not treating it that way is painful at low levels.
RAW seems to say yes, it counts as a round of rage because you can't turn it off out of turn.
In fact I've never seen it played that way. We always assume you can decline to pay the additional round of rage and it turns off automaticly.
Rage cycling is conceptually an abuse of the system itself.
As a GM I would not permit it. I might rule that after some level, you can use the 1/rage abilities more often. That is more in-line with the system. Rage cycling is such a gamist concept. I can't really stand it.
I've seen casters in parties with basically every class combination at this point. Of all the martials, only gunslingers even have a chance of (still not really) keeping pace with blaster casters, but blasting is a suboptimal use of their talents to begin with (also the most fun >_>). Magic users with even a modicum of know-how behind their style of play pretty much attain complete dominance. My barbarian could probably crank out around 200 damage per round at level 13 if I get good rolls. Unfortunately, my level 5 caster can already break 50. Calculations show that its damage is just going to increase exponentially as it levels; far more quickly than any martial. Not to mention the fact that I haven't really sacrificed anything for this, meaning it is still going to be useful for battlefield control as well.
I wish I knew how to run builds like this. I love blaster casters, but I always end up trailing in damage.
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I still have trouble seeing how its a conceptual abuse of the system itself when you are given the ability to rage cycle at barb 17. It's literally built into the class.
It's given as part of natural progression. The question this thread is asking is whether it's OP to have it earlier than that through class combinations or through items.
Is it weird? Maybe. Still waiting for more arguments as to why people think it's OP. So far we've got Spell Sunder, Eater of Magic, and Strength Surge. Other than that people have just been stating its OP as if its a fact. =\ We have plenty of opinions leaning towards the opposite.
Still don't think it needs fixing from the design team, and in fact I would be sorely disappointed if they changed it. A house rule is totally sufficient to get rid of it if you don't like it.
I still have trouble seeing how its a conceptual abuse of the system itself when you are given the ability to rage cycle at barb 17. It's literally built into the class.
It's given as part of natural progression. The question this thread is asking is whether it's OP to have it earlier than that through class combinations or through items.
Is it weird? Maybe. Still waiting for more arguments as to why people think it's OP. So far we've got Spell Sunder, Eater of Magic, and Strength Surge. Other than that people have just been stating its OP as if its a fact. =\ We have plenty of opinions leaning towards the opposite.
Still don't think it needs fixing from the design team, and in fact I would be sorely disappointed if they changed it. A house rule is totally sufficient to get rid of it if you don't like it.
I said absolutely nothing about it being too powerful.
My problem with it is that it is too gamist.
I would rather permit infinite uses of 1/rage powers than permit rage cycling itself.
My problem with it is that we have this ability that is limited to once per rage for some arbitrary game balance reason. We then limit the use of rages by setting some penalty on ending a rage and restarting it. Still ok. The problem is when you remove the penalty, then we have some kind of on-off switch-like behavior that makes absolutely no sense.
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I'll never understand the mentality of "casters get super cosmic power, don't you dare question it" and "how dare martial's get something that I can't find a reason to make sense. They should only get abilities that fit within real world parameters"
Seriously, a barbarian gets so angry he grows wings (that go away when he's done raging). If that isn't immersion shattering like rage cycling I don't know what is.
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I still have trouble seeing how its a conceptual abuse of the system itself when you are given the ability to rage cycle at barb 17. It's literally built into the class.
It's given as part of natural progression. The question this thread is asking is whether it's OP to have it earlier than that through class combinations or through items.
Is it weird? Maybe.
Built into the class in the sense that a 17th level ability retained from 3.5, where it not only didn't let you Rage Cycle (because there were no Rage Powers to use), but didn't even let you go back into Rage, since Rages were once per encounter, not only if you weren't fatigued. And you got a set number of rages, lasting a certain number of rounds each, rather than rage rounds.
I suppose it's possible that the original PF rules changed the nature of Rage to depend on fatigue and added 1/rage powers with the full intention of having Tireless Rage remove that limitation. I doubt it though. I assume they changed to fatigue and rounds because they didn't like the per encounter mechanic. And then added Rage Powers and didn't give a thought to the combination until someone pointed it out, probably here.The ability to do so is built into the class. It is however hidden. Probably because it wasn't designed. Or it was put in as a hidden cookie for someone to find and get bragging points on the forums or a temporary advantage until everyone knows about it. That would be really bad game design, IMO.
With the ability already pre-built in since core, you'd think they'd have know about it by now.
The devs aren't dumb, a quick search of barbarians on these forums turns up ways to rage cycle. If they really thought it was an abuse, they could easily have errata'd it, or clarify all the additional items/abilities since to not function with rage cycling.
I think it'd be nice if they spelled it out more clearly so that it was an obvious option, but I don't think it's some secret that they didn't know exists or mean to exist.
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Well, to be frank, I think it's beside the point. I can certainly see how "going berserk, hitting a bro, and then calming down" every turn seems weird. But from a build perspective, rage cycling is a good thing that opens up some very interesting character concepts.
I really don't think there's a reason the "immersion shattering" issue can't be fixed with a house rule to re flavor what rage cycling is. Mechanically, it is just starting and dropping rage as needed, but from a role play perspective, it could just be focusing rage more effectively at certain intervals of combat. Or perhaps it could be something the lines of having a more controlled rage that is only noticeable when the barbarian actually loses rage. If it's a problem, you can ignore that rage is being dropped for the purposes of story and RP immersion.
This is more or less why I'm not really concerned about this issue at all from a RP perspective, because for me it seems simple as RPing it a different way than how its represented mechanically. This seems much easier for a GM to implement than trying to add house rules to give more uses per rage.
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I still have trouble seeing how its a conceptual abuse of the system itself when you are given the ability to rage cycle at barb 17. It's literally built into the class.
It's given as part of natural progression. The question this thread is asking is whether it's OP to have it earlier than that through class combinations or through items.
Is it weird? Maybe. Still waiting for more arguments as to why people think it's OP. So far we've got Spell Sunder, Eater of Magic, and Strength Surge. Other than that people have just been stating its OP as if its a fact. =\ We have plenty of opinions leaning towards the opposite.
Still don't think it needs fixing from the design team, and in fact I would be sorely disappointed if they changed it. A house rule is totally sufficient to get rid of it if you don't like it.
I said absolutely nothing about it being too powerful.
My problem with it is that it is too gamist.
I would rather permit infinite uses of 1/rage powers than permit rage cycling itself.
My problem with it is that we have this ability that is limited to once per rage for some arbitrary game balance reason. We then limit the use of rages by setting some penalty on ending a rage and restarting it. Still ok. The problem is when you remove the penalty, then we have some kind of on-off switch-like behavior that makes absolutely no sense.
I'll agree here. I advocate the idea of what Rage Cycling gives, but not the mechanics behind it. It's klunky, and really requires an eye for refluffing not to make it silly. It's a gamist move and in that respect I don't like it. But in the respect of what it does, I'm A-Okay with it. I'm glad to see there's others who can appreciate the spirit of the concept while disliking how it is achieved.
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I assume they changed to fatigue and rounds because they didn't like the per encounter mechanic. And then added Rage Powers and didn't give a thought to the combination until someone pointed it out, probably here.
It is important to acknowledge that this was brought up a long time ago. There are a couple of links to such topics throughout this thread.
One from 2009
Another from 2011
Related but on the topic of Furious Finish and fatigue immunity.
Also, James Jacobs commented on rage cycling back in July here.
It's survived errata for a long time, and they released a prestige class for an obvious class combo that enables rage cycling. I think it's safe to say they've been aware of it for some time.
Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
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I think I misunderstood what you meant by "probably here." Sorry!
I guess I see it as obvious because upon reading what Tireless Rage did (more accurately, considering whether 17th level barbarian is a valuable level to take) the next question was "what are the implications of not being fatigued after rage?" The answer to that seemed pretty apparent, at least to me.
Though it makes sense that this would not be so apparent if one was used to 3.5's system where it was impossible to do.(I did not play 3.5).
Yes. I think we can frame the problem in a different light:
We have a power that is limited on a rage basis to once per rage.
We then have a limit on how quickly you can break rage (you get tired).
If we removed the tiredness effect, what we have is a really weird situation.
Ending the rage signifies rest, basically.
But, and this is the kicker, removing the fatigue effect ELIMINATES the need for a rest. Hence ending the rage ONLY ends the rage effect itself. It has no practical effect other than that and the fact that you regain your 1/rage powers... But the only reason why you regain those powers is because ending your rage allowed you to rest in the first place (something we no longer need).
The most sensible interpretation therefore to remain consistent is thus that IF you can somehow ignore the fatigue after raging, then you have unlimited uses of 1/rage powers.
Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
power gaming... hardly. Although to be fair, the way you finish your statement indicates you don't actually see it as OP.
clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design. kinda. A smoother transition of why this works I think would help alot people get their head around it.
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Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
power gaming... hardly. Although to be fair, the way you finish your statement indicates you don't actually see it as OP.
clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design. kinda. A smoother transition of why this works I think would help alot people get their head around it.
Players either have to state "I am turning off, then turning back on my rage" or have to tell their GM "Hey man, I am Rage Cycling every round"
That's bad design no matter how you explain why/how it works.
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The whole concept of being able to selectively turn your "rage" on and off is immersion-shattering. The real solution is for the GM to decide when the conditions are satisfied for a Barbarian to rage,
That is a solution for you. If a GM told me he had that houserule I would simply not play a barbarian, and that has to do with control over my character since I have never rage cycled anyway.
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Well, to be frank, I think it's beside the point. I can certainly see how "going berserk, hitting a bro, and then calming down" every turn seems weird.
People are too focused on the word "rage", and read it as angry or berserk. It never says the barbarian gets angry. It is not much different than the focus you see in an MMA fight when one fighters gets the chance to go "ground and pound" on an opponent. They are not upset. They just enter a hyperstate of "finish the opponent".
As soon as the ref ends the fight those guys are back to normal again. I see no reason why a barbarian can not enter and leave such a state voluntarily.
Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
How is it bad design other than them not saying you can rage cycle. A lot of things in the game are not directly spoken. Should everything be listed as "You can do ....."? If so a lot of combo won't be working anymore.
Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
power gaming... hardly. Although to be fair, the way you finish your statement indicates you don't actually see it as OP.
clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design. kinda. A smoother transition of why this works I think would help alot people get their head around it.
Players either have to state "I am turning off, then turning back on my rage" or have to tell their GM "Hey man, I am Rage Cycling every round"
That's bad design no matter how you explain why/how it works.
GM's should always be informed of what is going on. Are you REALLY saying that if you have to tell the GM if _____ is on or off that ability is not good?
GM's should always be informed of what is going on. Are you REALLY saying that if you have to tell the GM if _____ is on or off that ability is not good?Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
power gaming... hardly. Although to be fair, the way you finish your statement indicates you don't actually see it as OP.
clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design. kinda. A smoother transition of why this works I think would help alot people get their head around it.
Players either have to state "I am turning off, then turning back on my rage" or have to tell their GM "Hey man, I am Rage Cycling every round"
That's bad design no matter how you explain why/how it works.
I'm saying an ability that you have to say " I am turning on my this ability, now I am doing my real action, now I am turning off my ability so I can reset my cooldowns" every single round is bad design, yes.
No other ability in the game is built to reward toggling it on and off like a maintenance buff on an MMO. You turn on the ability and it has a duration, or you spend uses of it, or something ANYTHING other than flipping the light-switch up and down. . .
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But you don't have to do it EVERY ROUND. In fact, doing so is pretty wasteful, giving up half the benefit of Rage (on or off-turn) and wasting any further 1/Rage Powers you could use in that same Rage. Actually doing this every round, every fight just seems ridiculously implausible in actual game play... Actually doing so would seem to be more about being fixated on some on-paper 'OMG optimized' narrowly defined function, as opposed to actually playing in the most useful way for an actual game. The negative reaction to this concept likewise seems to be reacting to that on-paper theory, rather than deal with actual in-game usage.
This mechanic has a built in PENALTY to using it, in that you are losing out on other benefits.
I'm baffled how people can continually discuss this while ignoring those downsides and limitations.
I don't see how this is much different from a magus switching back and forth from 1H/2H grip to benefit from 2H dmg on AoOs,
or a host of other mechanics: I know of ones that inflict bleed on yourself, yet acquiring Bleed Immunity counters that downside.
Or abilities that cause your AC to crater, yet you have an ability that lets you use a Skill Check in place of AC.
Yes, it takes a bit higher level of rules understanding to make those rules combos work, but that's the nature of this game, with or without these specific cases.
GM's should always be informed of what is going on. Are you REALLY saying that if you have to tell the GM if _____ is on or off that ability is not good?Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
power gaming... hardly. Although to be fair, the way you finish your statement indicates you don't actually see it as OP.
clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design. kinda. A smoother transition of why this works I think would help alot people get their head around it.
Players either have to state "I am turning off, then turning back on my rage" or have to tell their GM "Hey man, I am Rage Cycling every round"
That's bad design no matter how you explain why/how it works.
I'm saying an ability that you have to say " I am turning on my this ability, now I am doing my real action, now I am turning off my ability so I can reset my cooldowns" every single round is bad design, yes.
No other ability in the game is built to reward toggling it on and off like a maintenance buff on an MMO. You turn on the ability and it has a duration, or you spend uses of it, or something ANYTHING other than flipping the light-switch up and down. . .
Would you like it better if you could use rage power X amount of times per rage? Of course there would still be rage cycling.
OR
Would you like it better if the rage powers were always available as long as the barbarian was raging?<---I like this idea since most rage powers are not all that strong anyway.
GM's should always be informed of what is going on. Are you REALLY saying that if you have to tell the GM if _____ is on or off that ability is not good?Its a horrible mechanic no matter what. Its clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design.
It needs to go-- whether you change the powers that it affected to a different limit than 1/rage or not is arbitrary, its a horrendous power gaming loophole.
Or put in a rule that you can use an extra round of rage to use the power an extra time by expending a round of rage.
As it is now its just awful, and an affront to my eyes.
power gaming... hardly. Although to be fair, the way you finish your statement indicates you don't actually see it as OP.
clunky, inelegant, unintuitive, and just bad design. kinda. A smoother transition of why this works I think would help alot people get their head around it.
Players either have to state "I am turning off, then turning back on my rage" or have to tell their GM "Hey man, I am Rage Cycling every round"
That's bad design no matter how you explain why/how it works.
I'm saying an ability that you have to say " I am turning on my this ability, now I am doing my real action, now I am turning off my ability so I can reset my cooldowns" every single round is bad design, yes.
No other ability in the game is built to reward toggling it on and off like a maintenance buff on an MMO. You turn on the ability and it has a duration, or you spend uses of it, or something ANYTHING other than flipping the light-switch up and down. . .
Would you like it better if you could use rage power X amount of times per rage? Of course there would still be rage cycling.
OR
Would you like it better if the rage powers were always available as long as the barbarian was raging?<---I like this idea since most rage powers are not all that strong anyway.
I would like any system that wasn't set up as an exploit regardless of what that was better.
The whole concept of being able to selectively turn your "rage" on and off is immersion-shattering.
Perhaps the problem is not that the power is bad but that your immersion is too easily broken.
The real solution is for the GM to decide when the conditions are satisfied for a Barbarian to rage, at which point the Barbarian is given a Will save to resist the effects (which he may decline); once started, the rage lasts until the conditions inducing the rage have subsided or the barbarian completely exhausts his number of rounds.
That would be like telling the wizard that he can't cast until the gm allows it and once he starts casting he can't stop until he runs out of spells.
Edit: The first part might read as offensive, but I can assure you it is meant just matter of fact like. I do not see my immersion shattering when I picture it. Not more than done by other things in PF, that is.
And that starts by little things like humans being unable to ride on donkeys and ponies.
Let's not be too disingenuous: the fluff text makes it pretty clear that rate = angry. They use the words fury, passion, berserker, etc. Now, there's nothing wrong with changing the fluff to make something that isn't distasteful... but claiming it's not distasteful as written is something else. If the argument is that rage is like a professional fighter's focus, I take issue with that based on the description of what a barbarian is.
Now, if you want to start applying your own flavors to stuff, go for it... If any class needs it to make any sense, it's probably the barbarian. Make him into some kind of tribal witch doctor with magic or a trained combatant with intense focus or something... in the first case, uses/day of "rage" powers would be in order, as would a usual caster mechanic; for a focused combatant, unlimited uses/day and toning down of some of the goofier rage powers would probably make sense.
Just my two cents.
That is the barbarian flavor. Don't confuse it with a class ability
Rage text-->"A barbarian can call upon inner reserves of strength and ferocity, granting her additional combat prowess."
Neither of those requires anger.
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Let's not be too disingenuous: the fluff text makes it pretty clear that rate = angry. They use the words fury, passion, berserker, etc. Now, there's nothing wrong with changing the fluff to make something that isn't distasteful... but claiming it's not distasteful as written is something else. If the argument is that rage is like a professional fighter's focus, I take issue with that based on the description of what a barbarian is.
Now, if you want to start applying your own flavors to stuff, go for it... If any class needs it to make any sense, it's probably the barbarian. Make him into some kind of tribal witch doctor with magic or a trained combatant with intense focus or something... in the first case, uses/day of "rage" powers would be in order, as would a usual caster mechanic; for a focused combatant, unlimited uses/day and toning down of some of the goofier rage powers would probably make sense.
Just my two cents.
That is the barbarian flavor. Don't confuse it with a class ability
Rage text-->"A barbarian can call upon inner reserves of strength and ferocity, granting her additional combat prowess."
Neither of those requires anger.
The ability is called Rage. That doesn't suggest anger to you?
Anger is only one possibility.1. angry fury; violent anger.
2. a fit of violent anger.
3. fury or violence of wind, waves, fire, disease, etc.
4. violence of feeling, desire, or appetite: the rage of thirst.
5. a violent desire or passion.
Well, two actually.
So violent appetite then? Aegrisomnia explicitly stated you could change the flavor. Trying to suggest Rage doesn't imply anger is asinine.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Trying to suggest Rage doesn't imply anger is asinine.
They could have called it "Class Ability B". Having a fluffy name does not require every barbarian to be a mindless berserker.
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Anger is only one possibility.1. angry fury; violent anger.
2. a fit of violent anger.
3. fury or violence of wind, waves, fire, disease, etc.
4. violence of feeling, desire, or appetite: the rage of thirst.
5. a violent desire or passion.Well, two actually.
So violent appetite then? Aegrisomnia explicitly stated you could change the flavor. Trying to suggest Rage doesn't imply anger is asinine.
So thats's why so many barbarians in book cover art have romantic interests wrapped around their legs...