Any way to maintain the spirit totem attack viable in mid to high levels?

[Alexandros Satorum]

Currently I am 6th level barbarian with the spirit totem (lesser and normmal) adn intimidating glare rage powers and cha 14.

So far the spirit totem have worked just fine. But I fear that with more levels the ST attack would be so low that it woudl basically never hit.

Anyone have plaeyd with thes rage power chain in the high levels? was the damage of the spirit totem relevant?

[Carson6412]

There is a fundamental problem with this attack. Monsters (and PC's) scale in two separate ways, AC and HP. Unless you are boosting your character's CHR, this power will have a hard time scaling with just the AC. By looking at the average monster AC for level 10, your attack should be hitting around 40% of the time. This is not too terrible, but it will get worse over time. Now the damning part of the Rage Power is the fact that it does not scale with HP. From the first level that it is available till level 20, it only does 1d4+CHR (average 4.5). At level 2, that is about 26% of a monster's HP. At level 10, that drops way down to about 3.5% of a monster's HP. At level 20, it drops to an irrelevant 1.2%.

With no way of increasing the damage (beyond a few points from a headband of charisma), this damage will quickly become meaningless unless your GM runs your game with minions (enemies with 1 HP).

Now, the normal spirit token rage power is alright, but it can be replaced (to a greater extent) by a minor Cloak of Displacement.

IMHO, the spirit totem powers are very cool and flavorful, but they do not add to combat effectiveness at higher levels.

[Zodiac_Sheep]

I feel your pain. I've got a planned Drunken Rager barbarian with high charisma and the Spirit Totem set (get it?) in the wings. His backstory is that, like most barbarians, he went around drinking and screwing every woman that would let him in every tavern he travelled to (hence the high charisma; he couldn't seduce them if he dumped it like most barbarians do!). Since having survived into middle age, he now adventures in part to try to keep his dozens of children in comfort even though he isn't around to act as a father figure... and he still goes around drinking and screwing every woman that would let him. I really like his character, though, so I'm not going to regret going with the Spirit Totem for flavor.

I'm also dipping into Unbreakable (for Endurance so I can pick up the Drunken Brawler feat), picked up the Fortified Drinker trait for him, and I'm going to dip into Chevalier for face skills + Smite Evil. He'll be a lot of fun to play when I finally get him into a game.

He also has Rough and Ready with Profession (brewer) so he can put that Heart of the Fields bonus somewhere thematically cool and maybe even useful (roleplaying + maybe the GM will let me brew my own stash) AND he can fight enemies with bottles of alcohol if need be. Again, this guy will be so much fun.