General Feats for a Human Barbarian?


Advice


Just looking for everyone's thoughts on good general feats for a 3rd level human draconic barbarian.

As the primary frontliner in an AP game (don't want to name the AP to avoid potential spoilers/metagaming) I'm mulling over the options for the 3rd level feat. My current feat selection is:

Sudden Charge
Raging Intimidation (ancestry feat)
Fleet (from human heritage)
Battle Medicine (from Field Medic background)
Medic Dedication
Continual Recovery

My initial thoughts are as follows (no particular order):

Incredible Initiative -- self explanatory
Canny Acumen -- Boosting Ref would be nice, but I also have plenty of HP.
Ancestral Paragon -- Humans have some nice feats to choose from, though would likely choose the skills to help round out the party.
Toughness -- Self explanatory but at this point 3 HP don't matter a lot.
Ward Medic -- Could be good for dungeon delves
Untrained Improvisation -- Would not be much help at this point.
Assurance Athletics -- Though currently at +11 in Athletics so will usually get better than the Assurance amount.

I'm certainly open to other ideas as well. Obviously my Barb took a bit of a healing bent to help cover areas in our group (had no cleric for a bit) but we do now have a decent array of in combat healing. Still the only Continual recovery choice though. Using the human feat to gain more training could help with some Recall Knowledge checks, but it will be a while before he's particularly decent at them given that Wisdom was not high on the priority list initially. FWIW, I'll be expert in Athletics and Medicine, and will bump Intimidation to expert at 5. I could do Intimidation at 3 to set up for Intimidating Prowess but still not a great option yet given a 10 Cha. Figured it was better to at least be really good at Athletics (trips with the guisarme are nice), etc.

As always, thanks in advance for any insight!

Silver Crusade

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Its boring but hit points are your bread and butter so personally I'd probably take Toughness. At the very least, I'd need a strong and compelling case to take anything other than toughness.

It doesn't seem that you're finding any other feat compelling. Which means:

Toughness :-).

If you do continue down the healer route may I recommend:
Assurance Medicine, Godless Healing, Mortal Healing

All skill feats so not quite as bad as it looks. End result is pretty amazing. Possibly even amazing enough to spend "real" feats on :-).


pauljathome wrote:

Its boring but hit points are your bread and butter so personally I'd probably take Toughness. At the very least, I'd need a strong and compelling case to take anything other than toughness.

It doesn't seem that you're finding any other feat compelling. Which means:

Toughness :-).

If you do continue down the healer route may I recommend:
Assurance Medicine, Godless Healing, Mortal Healing

All skill feats so not quite as bad as it looks. End result is pretty amazing. Possibly even amazing enough to spend "real" feats on :-).

Yeah the "boring" part of it doesn't concern me too much. The only real question is how much will it help overall? I figure it likely will usually amount to less than one hit in total, that might change at upper levels when I have access to resistance and the like. The biggest contender really I think is Incredible Initiative. Going early is rarely a bad thing for a frontliner and could pair well later on with Opportunity Attack.

The healing line of feats is definitely intriguing. Our group did add a cleric and we have an alchemist that is good at healing too, so I'll probably wait on the rest at first to see how it plays out, but healing is never frowned upon by the group.


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Assurance (Athletics) is decent to counter MAP and get a trip in, which works best w/ melee allies when it's hard to flank or they have AoOs.
So likely not best from what you're saying.
Arguably it's also good as a Fortune effect to counter Misfortune effects if you really, really rely on Athletics (which doesn't sound like the case).

Toughness is an eventual must-have for most builds, w/ arguably Barbarians being the exception. I think when one has as many h.p. as a Barbarian that it's best to provide protection for those h.p. rather than simply more h.p. Make those h.p. worth more each.
A shield for AC is the simplest way, though Canny Acumen's a good investment too. More PF2 monsters have powers that require Reflex saves than previous editions. Remember +2 is akin to a +4 in previous editions, it's that significant. You may want to retrain out for a while until it gives Master, but IMO everybody should have it to patch their weakest save. Crit fails are too severe.

And if you are running solo up front, maybe Die Hard though gauge that by the amount of in-combat support you have when it's dire.
And I love Untrained Improvisation! Sure it's not much at 3rd, but you can bank it. To me it's on the must-have (eventually) list, at least if there are a lot of non-combat situations. Even if you're not the primary person, it makes you a backup longshot for most everything. If your party has double coverage across the board, maybe not so key.

Do not trade a General Feat for a Skill Feat.

Looking ahead, I'd recommend Dragon's Rage Breath over AoOs.


Castilliano wrote:

Assurance (Athletics) is decent to counter MAP and get a trip in, which works best w/ melee allies when it's hard to flank or they have AoOs.

So likely not best from what you're saying.
Arguably it's also good as a Fortune effect to counter Misfortune effects if you really, really rely on Athletics (which doesn't sound like the case).

Toughness is an eventual must-have for most builds, w/ arguably Barbarians being the exception. I think when one has as many h.p. as a Barbarian that it's best to provide protection for those h.p. rather than simply more h.p. Make those h.p. worth more each.
A shield for AC is the simplest way, though Canny Acumen's a good investment too. More PF2 monsters have powers that require Reflex saves than previous editions. Remember +2 is akin to a +4 in previous editions, it's that significant. You may want to retrain out for a while until it gives Master, but IMO everybody should have it to patch their weakest save. Crit fails are too severe.

And if you are running solo up front, maybe Die Hard though gauge that by the amount of in-combat support you have when it's dire.
And I love Untrained Improvisation! Sure it's not much at 3rd, but you can bank it. To me it's on the must-have (eventually) list, at least if there are a lot of non-combat situations. Even if you're not the primary person, it makes you a backup longshot for most everything. If your party has double coverage across the board, maybe not so key.

Do not trade a General Feat for a Skill Feat.

Looking ahead, I'd recommend Dragon's Rage Breath over AoOs.

I've been getting some support up front from my allies, but I'm definitely the main melee guy. No AoO's in the group yet. I saw Die Hard but I think between the likelihood of help from my group (most of us have some investment in medicine now after a very rough start to the campaign) and the option of banking a Hero Point, I'm not too worried about that.

Untrained Improv isn't bad, but now that I look at it, I see I can snag Clever Improviser at 5th (admittedly an Ancestry Feat) but it does that much better. Acumen is growing on me though. Lots of good options at least and Assurance may well get there too.

I agree with Dragon's Breath, but I will likely try to get both. May depend on how things play out over the next few levels of course. But the RP aspect of Dragon's Breath is too good to completely pass up.


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Clever Improvisor is the better route.

Investment in Medicine isn't sufficient. That's non-combat.
Battle Medicine helps, no doubt, but I'm talking about a couple allies w/ Heal or Soothe for repeated aid which doesn't draw them into danger and heals much more. If you, being the solo front guy, cannot withdraw, it puts you in a bind when wounded. They need to cover for such contingencies (as do you, of course).


We do now have a cleric, (new to the party) so that helps there. The sorcerer also has stabilize (not as good as heal/soothe) but still a help. But yeah I do see your point. Toughness still feels as though it would be better though since it grants both hp and a bonus to the recovery check.

Both may still eventually be an option though considering how brutal, and easy to get, crits are. I've already been on the receiving end of several of those (including my first character that was insta-killed via massive damage -- admittedly no longer a concern).


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How about armor proficiency? Full plate will improve your AC by 1, which I think is much better defense wise than Toughness. Depending on your Dexterity, Bulwark will also add up to +3 to your Dex saves against damaging effects, which is also better then what you'd get from canny acumen.

Yes, you'll get Expert medium armor eventually, but that's a pretty long way off. You can retain he feat later. Or maybe even get Sentinel Dedication at some point. It could at armor specialization to your full plate for some slashing resistance, which adds nicely to your instinct's piercing resistence. And Mighty Bulwark is a very strong feat as well.

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