So I'm trying to put together a build which uses at least 2 levels of the Deepwater Rager Barbarian. At level 2 it gains the following ability:
Spiraling Charge (Ex): At 2nd level, a deepwater rager is not required to move in a straight line when she charges, provided that no space she moves into while charging is farther away from her target than the space that she is leaving. The deepwater rager must be able to see her target at the beginning of her charge and cannot use this ability while mounted.
And combine that with the following Rage Power from Villain Codex:
Two-Fanged Pounce (Ex): If the barbarian is wielding
a pair of daggers, kukris, or punching daggers, she can
attack once with each of the two weapons when she charges.
If she does, she loses the bonus on attack rolls for charging
and takes an additional –2 penalty to her AC, and she applies
precision damage or effects that occur on a hit only once,
even if she hits with both attacks.
So this combo works from level 2 onwards and can be further enhanced with Rhino Hide and Erratic Charge. However it also means I will usully be taking a -6 penalty to AC and putting a pretty big target on my forehead after ripping into enemies (if I fail to kill em in one round). So the question is, how do I craft a semi survivable build?
A few options I was considering:
- Unchained Barbarian for the temporry HPs?
- Mundo CON and Toughness?
- Swashbuckler for Parry and Riposte?
- Stacking debuffs on my charge attack (but no idea how...)
I really want to make this work so lemme hear your thoughts!
I would advise using CON and Toughness, because HP seems to be the barbarian's thing.
If it's allowed, the Unchained Barbarian's temp HP would be quite helpful, but the GM may rule that you can't multiclass into it because they are both forms of the same class.
Have you decided a race? You could try Catfolk for the Nimble Striker feat.
It might be tough, but you could try throwing in a bull rush somehow. Maybe take Bull Rush Strike with Improved Critical or the keen property?
Maybe take a level in fighter for heavy armor?
Perhaps you could use Rhino Charge with the condition 'As soon as he finishes his turn", so you can take a move action to start your turn and ready another charge?
Maybe Combat Expertise, if you don't mind taking a further penalty on attack rolls.
What level are you playing at? If your goal is just to have dagger-pouncing ability and not necessarily barbarian, maybe take 17 levels in Monk of the Four Winds to get Tiger apsect, gaining the pounce ability (full attack on a charge) and move at 10x your land speed. 5 levels in Oracle with the Unchained curse will let you multiclass this with your 2 levels of Barbarian... if you're playing at level 24...
This is for PFS and I'm looking to start the char at level 4.
Deepwater Rager is compatible with Unchained Barbarian and I'll prolly be going with that, as Unchained Rage works better with TWF. The thought of a Tumor Familiar has also crossed my mind...
Since I really need Rhino Hide to make this happen and Rhino Hide isn't the best armor from a defense perspective all I can do is to neglect my AC. With 15 DEX I'm looking at base AC of 12 or so when raging and charging.
Butterfly Sting also crossed my mind as I could pair a Kukri and the new katar from adventurer's Armory 2. But the cost appears too high...
As to Race I was thinking Human or Half Orc as the most viable choices. Something like:
STR 17 DEX 15 CON 14 INT 10 WIS 14 CHA 7
Traits:
Charger(+10 Feat Movement when charging)
Death Touched (+2 versus mind affecting)
Barb 1 TWF Toughness
Barb 2 Two-Fanged Pounce
Barb 3 Deific Obedience: Pharasma
Barb 4 Erratic Charge
so an option would be to multi-class out and gain access to spell buffs. WP can get some swift action AC buffs out. bloodrager can also whip out swift action shield spells lv 5+ with an archetype that uses your bloodrage rounds so you're not really wasting them and opens up the tumor familiar. Finding access to mirror image. Relying on superstition and getting the blur cloak. Getting a psudo dragon familiar to use scroll and wands on you. Go DR line and have mega DR at lv like 9. Use defensive stance and beast totem to patch up AC.
I'm not super worried about the 1 Minute of fatigue. If your average fight goes 3 rounds that's only twice as long as with regular rage. But I'm not super sold on Unchained Barbarian, just seems like it works better for what I want to do...
As stated above I think I'm penalizing my AC too much to make it any sort of reliable defense even against iteratives. At level 4 I'm assuming my baseline AC will be 12 so I just can't keep it competitive unless I use replacement efffects like snake style.
Damage Resistance via Stalwart is of course always a possibility. However as the Deepwater Rager is uncompatible with Invulnerable Rager I'd have a hard time getting it to insane levels. Then again I can use dueling daggers which would give me an additional Point of DR, that would be nice. Unchained Barbarian is better here as I can go crazy on extra DR with the appropriate Rage power. This path would require that I invest most of my feats though...
So spell buffs are definetly a consideration...Blur and miror image being he best. But ways to apply them as swift actions are hard to come by. Neither one is on the warpriest list so that's out . There are Rage powers that mimik Blur though...
Another possibility would be to use Swift Action self healing. However Paladin won't work for alignment reasons. Wie-Zi Practioner might come in handy...
Also I was thinking about Dipping Medium anyhow, which would open up the Juju Archetype which can grant me a Swift Action Blur effect from the Plains Domain. Then again that entails taking burn...
Alchemist might also open up some nice things. Specifically a protector Tumor familiar which really increases durability by a large margin...
Just stumbled over the Ferocious Tenacity feat from Orcs of Golarion. That seems like a good way to stay alive.
Not sure if it's PFS legal though as it was reprinted and heavily nerfed...
yeah I was thinking just the normal dr with the unchained feats and stalwart. it actually gets DR faster than invulnerable rager.
So straight Unchained Barb utilizing parrying daggers could look something like this:
Half Orc
STR 17 DEX 15 CON 14 INT 13 WIS 12 CHA 7
Traits:
Charger(+10 Feat Movement when charging)
Threatening Defender
Barb 1 TWF Endurance
Barb 2 Two-Fanged Pounce
Barb 3 Expertise
Barb 4 Fey Blood, lesser
Barb 5 Die Hard
Barb 6 Fey Blood
Barb 7 Stalwart
Barb 8 Improved Damage Reduction
Barb 9 Improved Damage Reduction
Barb 10 Improved Damage Reduction
Barb 11 Improved Stalwart
Looks like that takes too long to assemble a worthwhile DR Rating (At Level 8 were looking at DR 5 or 6). Also my to hit will be lagging badly behind when stacking TWF penalties on top of Expertise.
Are you really sold on the Deepwater Rager? Because a Dex build on an Urban Unchained Barbarian seems like it would synergise really well with 4 levels of Scout Unchained Rogue (Dex to damage at level 3 and free Weapon Finesse).
With the Scout, whenever you charge, your target counts as flat-footed. And with Debilitating Injury, that would offset the charging penalty (plus Urban Barbarian Rage doesn't suffer AC penalties in Rage).
And where normally the loss of movement speed on the Urban Barbarian hurts, you will be charging most of the time anyway.
As I stated above it's compatible with unchained barbarian so a DEX build with unchained Rogue would actually be viable. The main reason I never considered this is that I don't get Sneak Attack damage on both atacks. But debilitating injury is also a very nice Option. However Rhino hide caps out at +4 max Dex and is really essential for this build...
Since Unchained grants a static bonus to hit and damage it works equally well for STR and DEX.
As you can see from the build above there's no possibility to slot in Deific Obedience, as all feat slots are reserved. I could however dip unbreakable fighter and go human. That would open up 2 feat slots but further delay access to Improved Damage Reduction. I'm afraid Stalwart simply isn't for this build.
By RAW I think I can get away with using the Ferocious Tenacity feat from Orcs of Golarion. That version is way better. Likely a better use of a feat than toughness.
I'm also pretty sure that a Tumor Protector familiar is prolly one of the cheapest ways to icrease my hit points. However I'm unsure how to best aquire one.
I liked the above suggestion for Metmagic Rager but Shield really is the only good Buff at level 1. I'll have to think about Alchemist a bit more...