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The problem is not really that the fighter or the barbarian do more or less damage than one another (the fighter can fight the same all day long, while the barbarian is almost assuredly going to be stronger when he has rage rounds). It's more that once the problem needing to be solved is completely not combat-related, the barbarian has a more significant pool of abilities to pull from (more skills, supernatural abilities and rage powers) besides KRONK SMASH.
Testing how well either character can do in beating the other up isn't really going to prove anything of value, especially when the combat will likely be heavily weighted in the barbarian's favor just from the format. :/
The fighter's problem is no and it does need help.
For your sake, I hope you didn't bet anything too important.
I'm telling you right now, the fighter is a horrible class, and the barbarian will most likely eat your soul unless you exploit or they build/play badly. You not using archetypes makes the fighter even worse while the barbarian doesn't really care to use them.
Class tiers (power) aren't determined by pvp, but overall versatility on what they can accomplish in the game, and the fighter becomes useless in a lot of situations. Fighters are terrible, and that's that sadly. Maybe one day they'll be fixed to be less awful, but they will most likely remain awful.
Off the top of my head, I would exploit the fact that you're fighting a medium sized player with class levels and grab yourself a polearm and enjoy yourself some tripping. Feats like Pin down will stop him from getting in on you, and Fury's fall will help your trip action succeed even more while having a good dex will hook you up even more for that AC boost.
Using a Long bow is also a great idea, because in pathfinder you can go pretty nuts with that, especially using clustered shots and not caring about the DR.
I could write pretty long post on tactics, feats and gear, but it'll be cheap. It'll come down to you using better tactics with what you have to beat your buddy.
PS. the feat selection you listed is awful (no offense) and you will not survive with that.
Honestly you should go with archery. If you insist on TWF then go TWF board and sword. Drop hammer the gap, Improved unarmed strike, and Improved grapple.
Barbarian can get in and sunder, disarm, grapple etc the guy, and it's all OGRE, so that is why using the bow might be a bad idea vs the barbarian, but bow is definitely one of the best options for a fighter. I say best bet is pole arm madness.
Buff initiative so you will most likely go first, and combat patrol. When they take their turn they'll provoke and you can run over and trip them followed by you getting an attack, then if they stand up with their other move action you just give them the beats. They'll be right in front of you for you to bestow your punishment on with a full attack, or you can 5 ft step back and use lunge to full attack too for safety. If they too have options for reach then you 5 ft step back and combat patrol again to return the cycle of hate once more until they are finally dead forever. Pin down definitely helps you stay safe!
EDIT: I'm forgetting that weapon mastery means you can't be disarmed
what will the battlefield be? if you can get some distance (would be hard with a barbar), you could rain down arrows at him and still have feats to switch into melee and do good damage.
you could also go down the Dirty trick path and try to cover him in penalties, specifically get Deadly Stroke(feat) and use dirty trick with quick dirty trick(feat), then start spamming blind or other appropriate debuffs on him and watch as he gets stun locked basically trying to remove the conditions with his STANDARD.
you could also try going down the tripping path where you can get an AOO off of trips and then when he is down if he decided to not get up and full attack you have an easier time blinding him etc.
basically I see deadly stroke and debuff being good since he can't heal himself, then one of his main advantages will slowly leak away. You won't out damage him(by % of health anyway), so you need to control him and mitigate his damage.
What if the Barbarian invests in Dragon Totem for flight and then goes archery?
What if the Barbarian invests in Dragon Totem for flight and then goes archery?
That's one of the things you hope they don't do, because you'll be screwed with a lot of options. Even if they come melee while flying you can't trip them according to the pathfinder rules.
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Instead of having the two characters going head to head from the start, I'd probably have the two run a gauntlet of monsters first.
Have both go up against a list of nice, high level beasties, one on one, and then, at the end of the gauntlet, they face each other. That'd give a better idea of which character is better.
A three round slaughterhouse benefits the sprinter. Fighters are distance runners.
Barbarian can get in and sunder, disarm, grapple etc the guy, and it's all OGRE, so that is why using the bow might be a bad idea vs the barbarian, but bow is definitely one of the best options for a fighter. I say best bet is pole arm madness.
Buff initiative so you will most likely go first, and combat patrol. When they take their turn they'll provoke and you can run over and trip them followed by you getting an attack, then if they stand up with their other move action you just give them the beats. They'll be right in front of you for you to bestow your punishment on with a full attack, or you can 5 ft step back and use lunge to full attack too for safety. If they too have options for reach then you 5 ft step back and combat patrol again to return the cycle of hate once more until they are finally dead forever. Pin down definitely helps you stay safe!
EDIT: I'm forgetting that weapon mastery means you can't be disarmed
Take the snapshot feat line and trip him on the way in. If you cant trip him then you could not have grappled him either so either way you should not be taking the improved grapple and unarmed strike feats.
Yeah he gets a +4 against ranged attacks while prone, but after two full attacks he should be dead. Of course you could roll badly, but if that happens he will likely win any, and to be honest he can sunder a melee weapon just as easily as he can sunder a bow at that level with all of the damage that he can put out.
edit: He might sunder your armor also. I had a level 13th barbarian sundering armor in a game.
Wraith, how are you tripping him on the way in with snapshot feat line? I would have suggested Archery archetype with trip Trickshot, but the OP wrote specifically no other archetypes. My suggestion method that I plainly mention without super details is to keep your distance with the polearm. The barbarian wouldn't be able to get into the vicinity to do any combat maneuvers at all under the tactics I suggested, especially if you used lunge to stay away from their reach weapon.
You can trip 10 ft with a reach weapon, and 15 ft using lunge, which isn't normal grapple range for a medium sized creature.
I suggest polearm lockdown, with pumping your initiative as much as you can so you can make sure you're prepared for the first round to start your combat patrol.
THIS is the weapon you would want to use, especially since all your crits would confirm.
Snapshot line and the Standstill feat could be a good combo to stop them from entering, but it's risky to go on that CMB to activate.
Wraith, how are you tripping him on the way in with snapshot feat line? I would have suggested Archery archetype with trip Trickshot, but the OP wrote specifically no other archetypes. My suggestion method that I plainly mention without super details is to keep your distance with the polearm. The barbarian wouldn't be able to get into the vicinity to do any combat maneuvers at all under the tactics I suggested, especially if you used lunge to stay away from their reach weapon.
You can trip 10 ft with a reach weapon, and 15 ft using lunge, which isn't normal grapple range for a medium sized creature.
I suggest polearm lockdown, with pumping your initiative as much as you can so you can make sure you're prepared for the first round to start your combat patrol.
THIS is the weapon you would want to use, especially since all your crits would confirm.
I had forgotten tripping was restricted to melee attacks. At the time I wrote it I was thinking it applied to any attack. Yeah he might be better off with a polearm or crit fishing and hope to lock him down with stunning or staggering critical.
Barbarian isn't even going to use Come and Get me when the fighter has a polearm, unless the Barbarian has one too, but the Fighter should use lunge to completely negate it anyways.
Both classes have Fort as a good save, so spending things on that should only be done if you can't find better things to spend your feats on.
Combat Patrol + Crit Pole Arm + Combat Reflexes + Pin Down + Lunge + Trip Feats are already pretty solid for a strategy, but the issue with fighter is that they can be completely foiled by things like wings. Pretty much, the barbarian would be under super lockdown, unable to go anywhere and get destroyed, unless the barbarian had counter options.
If the barbarian doesn't have a reach weapon, and can't fly, then the fighter is going to be in a dominate potion I'd say with what I suggested. With pin down, you could stay within 10 ft and get your full attacks off, because on the Barbs turn, they can't even get close to you without you stopping them in their tracks, or you tripping them to the ground.
If the Barbarian in question isn't going for Dragon Wings and Pounce isn't an option, there's always the mostly worthless except in this situation World Serpent line. World Serpent Totem Unity says you can't be knocked prone, so that's one possible defense. That plus the Step Up tree could be problematic, but that would depend on how things resolved: Could the immediate 5-step be timed so that the fighter is never actually threatening and thus able to Pin Down as he steps away?
Regardless we're getting into Schrodinger territory now...
this is why I say go Dirty trick route, either be blind or lose your standard, either way the enemy is losing a lot of attack potential.
if you can trip him, you probably could blind him for 1+1d4 rounds or lose a standard and apply this as part of a full attack action, so he becomes flat-footed making the next few attacks easier to hit...
this is only this good when fighting a single opponent who you simply can't let get any good hits in. which is why this i don't think is all that great normally compared to trip.
Am I the only person that thinks you should absolutely take eldritch heritage line of feats? That will decrease your other stats due to not being able to dump charisma, but you will be able to do smth pretty awesome like taking Draconic and getting fly speed, blasting, claws (in case you lose your main weapon). Imho for fighters these line of feats is a must as other classes usually lack feats and eldritch heritage asks for too many feats. Also/Or leadership - have a monstrous mount and invest your feats into riding.
Don't stick to stereotypical fighter.
Also consider other races except human. For example you could take drow - get deeper darkness as spell like ability and through eldritch heritage get to see/sense through it. Then grab spring attack and see how barb cannot even find the square where you are.
There are countless options.
Fighters get to take helluva of feats to gain interesting abilities and still have enough combat feats to be good in "usual" melee or ranged.
actually yeah, get flight, get ranged, hope the barbar doesn't get flight or ranged...
I'm actually pretty sure this is pretty cheap though, your using a sorc class skill to prove the fighter can beat a barbar?
I'm actually pretty sure this is pretty cheap though, your using a sorc class skill to prove the fighter can beat a barbar?
Imho fighters have a lot of feats to abuse cool race feats and eldritch heritage. Or, at least that's the only way how I see them playable - not being boring. And majority of fighters should do it.
But taking leadership and flying monstrous mount shouldn't interfere with stereotypical fighter concept.Anyway, Moospuh, good luck!
To be fair, Barbarians aren't exactly feat starved in most cases so you could end up facing your eldritch heritage/leadership mirror. Power Attack and done, after all.
what build did you choose?
you should have put more into disabling him... :P
Make a diplomancer. At level 20 you won't even have to add many special abilities to it to be impressive. Get UMD and a scroll of calm emotions.
No? :-)
A friend of mine likes to play fighters. However, he has been arguing that they are too weak, as even other martial classes like the barbarian are better than the fighter, especially at higher levels......I scouted for dangerous looking monster, baited him over to me, then used acrobatics to get the monster between him and me and started to pound him with returning thrown weapons, while the monster acted as a barrier...
...In the end I won quite fairly...
Using smarter tactics than another player does not prove that one class is mechanically better than another. Nothing you did was something a barbarian could not have done.
...I managed to chase while avoiding the attacks by the monster, grappled, then stuck to him till he died......My GM has rules that I could use my weapon training bonus to grapple checks...
Houserules kinda throw the whole point of class balance discussion.
I'm glad you guys had fun though.
the grapple system work pretty well.
My GM has rules that I could use my weapon training bonus to grapple checks, as long I as was wield the weapon at the time of the initiated grapple(kinda like you use the weapons to set up a good grapple?)
does anyone have the actual RAW for that though? I feel like that could be a pretty strong nerf to the fighter if you couldn't use the bonus.
grapple does not use your weapon, it sort of counts as it's own weapon. You can get Weapon focus (grapple).