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Hello All-
This may be an odd question. I have been gaming in one medium or another for over 30yrs. I now have a 10yr old son who really wants to get involved. I painstakingly went through each race and class with him and he picked a Half-Orc Barbarian. From what I understand that is a good class for a beginners.
My problem is I have never played a Barbarian before. I'm completely unfamiliar with their tactics and powers. I've been doing some research but I don't want to lead him down the wrong road. The folks I PFS with are all really cool and I'm sure one of them has been down the Barbarian road before. They'll be happy to help I'm sure.
Can one of you good folks give me some direction in how to build him? Like ability distribution, feats, power selections and good traits? I want his first experience with gaming to be positive. He's got a great imagination and I know he'll grow to love it.
I really appreciate everyone who took the time to read this and thank you in advance for any and all direction.
There are two ways to do this:
Powergaming. Dump all but Str and Dex and Con raise Str to max give him PA and you will probably one shot everything even without Rage.
Skills: Perception, Survival
Not PA. Raise Str but keep other stats at least at 10. You usually start with Str 18 or 17 instead of 20 but it is worth it.
Skills: Perception, Survival, Climb
Give him a backstory. My wive plays a dogtrainer, so she has handle animal, survival, knowledge nature.
She is human and has booth luck feats. As she is a pathfinder she has berserker of the society and armor training.
I play a scavenger, have high perception, survival, kn local, appraise, craft, climb, I have PA and D O.
I think give him a chance to come with a few ideas for his backstory, and build the character around it.
barbarian's are pretty ease. Lots of str, then con. Use a two-handed weapon, grab power attack and reckless abandon and you'll hit easy and do tons of damage. Go invulnerable rager, so much better than normal barbarian.
Str > Con > Dex > Wis > Int/Cha
Take power attack.
Use a greatsword.
???
Profit!
If you go for a two-handed weapon, remember to grab Furious Focus along with Power Attack. It lets you get rid of the attack penalty on your first Power Attack each round.
My current PFS character is a half-orc barbarian with high str and con, low int and wis. I beefed up his intimidate with intimidating prowess and took intimidating glare and terrifying howl as rage powers. Currently he is level 8 so the other feats I took are power attack, smash and improved sunder. He has such a low int (7 from memory) that I play him barely able to string a sentence together, completely illiterate, and smashing doors down instead of turning the door handle. His current weapon of choice is an adamantine battle axe. He is very fun to play even outside of combat because of a good back story and he is so different to other characters I usually play which tend to have high int/cha combinations.
Toothy, furious two handed weapon, power attack, improved initiative, reckless abandon, invulnerable rager archetype. I like roused anger at low levels even though nobody usually mentions it. Ferocity and ferocious action are cool if you have enough feats. Teeth and claws will do more damage at low levels, but building around using a two hander is smarter for longer games, because then you'll be all set to use Come and Get Me, which is stupidly awesome. When you get come and get me, you'll also need combat reflexes. Reckless rage and recovered rage are cool too, but they aren't the first things you should take. Horde charge is cool as well if you have other orcs with you.
This is also just my personal preference, but I like to put ranks in climb so I can kill all the pansy archers sitting in trees/towers.
Oh, and if you don't have ferocious action, you need raging vitality so you don't die when you get knocked out.
Well... The better question to ask is, how does your son want to play? Does he want to be big and strong with a two handed weapon fighting down foes?
Does he want to be a protector of the party? If so go with a sword and shield, and the bodyguard/in harms way feats.
Does he want to be a wild animal and grow fangs and claws and rend through his foes?
Does he want to sneak through the wilderness and spring traps on his foes? If so does he want to go melee or ranged?
There are a lot of options, the question is what does he want to do with the character. Once you know that it is a little easier to know how to build out the barb.
