Normally barbarians are known for picking the biggest, baddest weapon they can find. Makes sense as they are more or less glass cannons but with a lot of HP. However, I'm curious with PF2 since it is so much more tactically oriented if it might not be better to take a slight step down.
The thinking is that rather than grabbing one of the d12 weapons, perhaps a reach weapon like a guisarme might be better? The idea being that a) you get reach, allowing you to attack without being right next to the baddie, which might take up an action on their turn as well, and b) with trip you could start by knocking the creature down (hopefully) then following up with an attack when the critter is down (mitigating the MAP a bit).
The downside is you are giving up some damage potential by using the trip action first, but you also set up your teammates nicely too. Especially if you have a fighter nearby it can be handy I would think. Thoughts?
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It should be fine on paper. You're giving up some damage to get Reach and some utility of choice. Neither option is strictly better AFAIK, but Reach doesn't have quite as much use to a Barbarian in the beginning since they don't get AoO until level 6.
Polearms also has a better Critical Specialisation than Axes, but IMO not as good as Swords or Hammers.
It's all plenty viable though.
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might be better to wait until you have opportunity attack to get reach
Reach is phenomenal in this edition, even when you don't have AoO already. Against enemies that have reach you don't have to move into their AoO range (if they have one, and oh boy, do the enemies in our current adventure path have those) respectively have to spend steps to close in and even versus medium sized enemies you have the benefit that they have spend an action on their turn to come to you if they want to attack.
Well, you'd like to consider using trip as third action with assurance ( your MAP won't apply on the check ).
If you manage to give priority to athletics ( lvl 3, lvl 7, lvl 15 ) you'd be able to deal with many enemies during your fights.
Hmm, had overlooked the not applying penalties part of Assurance. So if I theoretically took assurance at third level, you'd be looking at a trip attempt of 17 (10 + 4 for expert + 3 for level)? Interesting, might have to think about that. Obviously that would be ideal if assurance will be enough to give me a high likelihood of a trip.
To the others who have posted, all excellent points as well. Plenty to consider. In part I'm trying to mitigate some of the learning curve the party is likely to have (almost all of us are new to PF2 -- though plenty of PF1 experience). Sort of wondering if some of the overall damage might not balance out in the end with a trip anyway (higher odds of the rest of the party landing strikes).
It should be fine on paper. You're giving up some damage to get Reach and some utility of choice. Neither option is strictly better AFAIK, but Reach doesn't have quite as much use to a Barbarian in the beginning since they don't get AoO until level 6.
Polearms also has a better Critical Specialisation than Axes, but IMO not as good as Swords or Hammers.
It's all plenty viable though.
Yeah I love the hammer Crit Spec. Doesn't come into play right away of course, but it does make the maul appealing. :)
Well, you could go with meteor hammer...Yeah I love the hammer Crit Spec. Doesn't come into play right away of course, but it does make the maul appealing. :)It should be fine on paper. You're giving up some damage to get Reach and some utility of choice. Neither option is strictly better AFAIK, but Reach doesn't have quite as much use to a Barbarian in the beginning since they don't get AoO until level 6.
Polearms also has a better Critical Specialisation than Axes, but IMO not as good as Swords or Hammers.
It's all plenty viable though.
Very tempting to be honest. Would lose an additional point of damage compared to a guisarme for instance, but get some extra traits and a nice crit spec.
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I'm running a Meteor Hammer on a Champion, can confirm it's a very good and fun weapon. I do often use my shifting rune for when I need more damage though.
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2E shift to flat damage bonus (Rage) vs 1E's STR bonus (x1.5 2H) does open up more options.
Agile or Sweep/Backswing could be extra attractive considering Barbarian's relative lack of accuracy VS fighter.
I also like 2nd hand for throwing weapon, or just for free hand (all maneuvers, or even specific free hand feats).
Multiclass Fighter is also nice there with Dual Handed Assault if you want to wield 1H/2H weapon i.e. Bastard Sword.
Sword & Board is another usage for 2H that I like, ameliorating "glass cannon" aspect if you can manage Raise Shield action.
(multiclassing Fighter is also good there, with Reactive Shield available at 2, and Quickblock at 16)
Probably especially relevant to Giant Barb, helping with their harsher "glasscannon" tradeoff, yet still using 100% of Giant bonus.
Sword & Board also has side bonus of allowing all damage types between shield bash and versatile main weapon...
Even if you can't use oversized Shield(?) for superior Giant bonus, still probably worth using when main weapon is Resisted.
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Agile: Do not use. It halves your Rage bonus.
Reach: Always good even w/o AoOs. It can help w/ action use and sometimes with environment. It's nice to approach medium enemies and make them spend an action to get to you.
High damage die: I'd say Reach is worth losing a die type, yet note that Barbarians have several feats which increase number of damage dice. If aiming for those, then go d12s.
As well as reach weapons, I personally like the bastard sword, especially if frequently climbing or using maneuvers.
Since a barb's greater damage is separate from their weapon, I think shield is a solid option.
Several of the other traits can be good depending on party composition & typical enemy. Like if you usually face hordes (and have no blaster), solo human bosses, Cthulhu's chums, etc. then you might want weapons which take advantage/avoid disadvantage.
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I've been theory crafting a Dragon Barb, who wants to emulate dragons early on, so been looking at a pick (his 'bite') and a slashing weapon (his 'claws'). Feels more thematic if the claw-analogues are agile, but as Catillano says, agile is bad for rage. It'll probably end up being a battle axe as his off-hand weapon, still feels very barbariany to me. And sweep on the axes is at least semi-agile so it kinda acts as a lower cost iterative attack. Its still hard to see when he would actually choose to forgo the pick in most settings. At which point the free-hand for grab/thrash type actions also feel like they could be thematic and used a bit more often.
Definitely feels there's a lot more room to play with weapon choices as a barb this time around which is nice.
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I've been theory crafting a Dragon Barb, who wants to emulate dragons early on, so been looking at a pick (his 'bite') and a slashing weapon (his 'claws'). Feels more thematic if the claw-analogues are agile, but as Catillano says, agile is bad for rage. It'll probably end up being a battle axe as his off-hand weapon, still feels very barbariany to me. And sweep on the axes is at least semi-agile so it kinda acts as a lower cost iterative attack. Its still hard to see when he would actually choose to forgo the pick in most settings. At which point the free-hand for grab/thrash type actions also feel like they could be thematic and used a bit more often.
Definitely feels there's a lot more room to play with weapon choices as a barb this time around which is nice.
Since the pick relies on its critical effect to catch up, I'd say you'd forego it against high ACs or with MAP.
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I feel like of all the classes, Barbarian cares least what weapon it uses. Your typical Barbarian at level 1 has 4 bonus damage from STR and somewhere between 2 and 4 more bonus damage from rage. So let's just say that's 7 bonus damage on each hit. That's a good hit no matter what, and any old fighter (crits aside) would be happy to deal that much damage WITH their weapon die.
So, right out of the gate, you're hitting hard, and your choice of weapon only sweetens the deal, it isn't the deal to begin with.
Personally I feel like a sword & board barbarian has just as much potential as your old standard 2h barbarian.
You can also put me in the camp of "if the choice is between a d12 weapon and a d10 weapon that also has a trait that I really like, I'm taking the d10 weapon every time."
It all just depends on what you want to be good at aside from smashing stuff (which you will be great at by default on account of "barbarian").
I feel like of all the classes, Barbarian cares least what weapon it uses. Your typical Barbarian at level 1 has 4 bonus damage from STR and somewhere between 2 and 4 more bonus damage from rage. So let's just say that's 7 bonus damage on each hit. That's a good hit no matter what, and any old fighter (crits aside) would be happy to deal that much damage WITH their weapon die.
So, right out of the gate, you're hitting hard, and your choice of weapon only sweetens the deal, it isn't the deal to begin with.
Personally I feel like a sword & board barbarian has just as much potential as your old standard 2h barbarian.
You can also put me in the camp of "if the choice is between a d12 weapon and a d10 weapon that also has a trait that I really like, I'm taking the d10 weapon every time."
It all just depends on what you want to be good at aside from smashing stuff (which you will be great at by default on account of "barbarian").
Excellent point. Just as an example, my level 1 Dragon Barbarian has a static damage of 8 + weapon die (obviously there's the potential issue of resistances). Compared to the fighter that would only have 4 static damage. I decided to start with a Guisarme, but might look for a meteor hammer down the road.
And thanks for the discussion, it really helped to see the pros and cons. Its easy to focus on just the obvious surface level stuff ("I barbarian. I smash!") but particularly in PF2 you have to look at the rest too since even a barbarian can go down really quick if you are not careful.
It's a little odd at first glance, but there is some logic to the stereotypically mauler Barbarians getting more from one-handed weapons and the ideally sword-and-board Fighters getting more from two-handed weapons.
Feats aside, the bonuses to one's defenses from shield use are fairly constant except at extreme ACs. Meaning that Fighters and Barbarians gain roughly the same proportion of defense from shield use. However, they don't trade off the same proportion of damage.
For Fighters, your weapon damage die represents a much larger percentage of your damage than it does for a Barbarian. Because of the vast amount of flat damage that Barbarians get, downgrading from a d12 to a d8 weapon represents a smaller percentage loss of damage than it does for a Fighter.
Feats do alter this a bit- a lot of Fighter feats can make shield use absurdly good, and Barbarians have feats which reward bigger hits, but those aren't the be all and end all, and Fighters have the ability to make more attacks against Barbarians having superior support for grappling further encourages Fighters to emphasise damage.
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Just an anecdotal note. But my Barbarian went three levels so far as a Giant instinct with a Large Glaive. It has been much fun. I did multi into fighter at level 2, and i can't wait for 4th when I pick AoO, before heading the rest of the way along my giant totem line. For increased reach on those AoO's. (Also whirlwind attack with that reach should be great fun at times.)