One thing I noticed while reading through the book is that the barbarian animal totem offers options for different animals, but there really isn't any choice to be made. Why are there strictly superior and inferior options? All animals have a basic 1d10 unarmed attack, but not everyone has a second agile attack. Even then, the cat totem is clearly superior to the others, as its attack just does more damage. What's up with that? Am i missing something?
I am pretty sure that all the totems can be balanced and turned into an interesting choice. Barbarians only get their big animal totem ability at level 8 (quite high), so the animal of choice doesn't really matter before that. Imagine if the totem granted interesting abilities even at low level? As a couple of ideas off the top of my head: Bear could grant extra hp, bull could give a meaningful athletics bonus, cat - an acrobatics bonus, and wolf could grant some sort of pack tactics ability. Either way, I really like the idea of an animal barbarian, and I think this totem has a lot of potential.
So what do you think about the animal totem? I don't really see many people talking about it, so I'm wondering if i'm the only one who thinks that way.
Things actually get worse at later levels when you get Animal Rage. Some animals just have a higher base speed, like (again) the cat, and the slower ones like bull and bear don't get anything in exchange.