Barbarian Math Healer build

[Stationarity]

Last night i had a lot of fun playing a pretty wierd Barbarian/Life oracle build.

The build is based on 4 core feats and works from around level 4. The build is:

Class feat l1: Moment of clarity (Not super important)
Class feat l2: Oracle dedication, life (Core)
Class feat l4: First revelation (Lifelink, Core)
Class feat l6: Basic oracle spellcasting (Core)
Class feat l8: Renewed vigor (Core)

The rest of the build is up for grabs.

Why life oracle you may ask?

"Lifelink (focus 1): When you first Cast the Spell, the targets recovers 1d4 Hit Points. The first time each round that the targets takes damage, reduce the damage it takes by 3 (to a minimum of 0 damage). You lose 3 Hit Points each time, or the total damage dealt, if less than 3; this damage ignores any immunities or resistances you have and can't otherwise be mitigated in any way.
- Heightened (3rd) You can target 2 creatures other than you. Increase the initial healing to 3d4 and the maximum damage reduced and Hit Points lost to 5.
- Heightened (6th) You can target 3 creatures other than you. Increase the initial healing to 6d4 and the maximum damage reduced and Hit Points lost to 10.
- Heightened (9th) You can target 4 creatures other than you. Increase the initial healing to 9d4 and the maximum damage reduced and Hit Points lost to 15."

"Shield other (Level 2 spell, duration 1 minutes, targets: 1 creature): The target takes half damage from all effects that deal Hit Point damage, and you take the remainder of the damage. When you take damage through this link, you don't apply any resistances, weaknesses, or other abilities you have to that damage; you simply take that amount of damage. The spell ends if the target is ever more than 30 feet away from you. If either you or the target is reduced to 0 Hit Points, any damage from this spell is resolved and then the spell ends."

Cast those two spells at the beginning of combat, and you are now a damage spunge - ensuring that burst strategies that doesn't focus the barbarian won't work well. Use your two actions each turn on whatever (maybie raging thrower?), and then use renewed vigor to take the brunt off of the damage you take. You deal pretty good damage, and now you use your first 3 actions, and your mostly useless 3rd action to keep your group alive. Ofc. keep battle medicine handy for a tight situation - and keep a calculator ready for when stuff gets crazy with shield other and lifelink.

Aside from that you become increadibly engaged in what happens - because nearly anything will affect you and your hopefully massive hitpoint pool.

Draw back - the second time each day, and every consequtive time, you cast lifelink you become flatfooted. So now you have bad AC, but well - if you are already flatfooted, you cant be flanked. To deal with this, raging thrower, or reach weapons works well.

My group was pretty surprised when combat started. I don't think they expected the dwarf barbarian with a meteor hammer to start throwing spells around, as soon as combat started.

I have only gotten to play it for one session atm, but it seems to work well - though i cant say for sure. However what i can say for sure is, that it is a super engaging and fun build.

[SuperBidi]

Stationarity wrote:

So now you have bad AC, but well - if you are already flatfooted, you cant be flanked.

Just a note about that: Barbarians can't be flanked by lower level opponents.

Very honestly, what you are describing is... a Life Oracle. It's one of the toughest caster with 10 hp per level and unlike a Barbarian you don't really have to come into the fray. If you want more hit points you can even take Barbarian Dedication to Rage, so the other way around.

Anyway, if you have fun with your build, then go for it. It's definitely an uncommon one but the Barbarian feats are not so good so you can grab a Dedication without affecting the efficiency of your character.

[HumbleGamer]

I agree that seems a life oracle... or at least, an underwhelming version of it.

What concerns me the most is this part

Quote:

Cast those two spells at the beginning of combat, and you are now a damage spunge - ensuring that burst strategies that doesn't focus the barbarian won't work well.

The target of your Shield other will be unable to move more than 30 feet on their first round

Quote:

The spell ends if the target is ever more than 30 feet away from you. If either you or the target is reduced to 0 Hit Points, any damage from this spell is resolved and then the spell ends.

and since they are going to be melee ones, or I don't see the reason to explicitly cast on them shield other, they'd lose their first round too.

But I second Sueprbidi about going for it if you are having fun and feel satisfied with it!

[PossibleCabbage]

I feel like the appeal of this over the Life Oracle is that "Renewed Vigor" gives you access to free quasi-healing that the Life Oracle doesn't get, as the life mystery curse makes it harder to heal yourself than others.

I think the real problem is the scarcity of spell slots you can use to cast Shield Other with. Obviously you pick it as your signature spell, but if you want to be able to cast it 4 times per day you're looking at Breadth+Expert on top of the feats in the OP.

You could probably make something similar work with a Wit Swashbuckler with Vivacious Bravado who stands there and spams Bon Mot and throws bladed diabolos with finishers.

[Stationarity]

HumbleGamer wrote:

I agree that seems a life oracle... or at least, an underwhelming version of it.

What concerns me the most is this part

Quote:

Cast those two spells at the beginning of combat, and you are now a damage spunge - ensuring that burst strategies that doesn't focus the barbarian won't work well.

The target of your Shield other will be unable to move more than 30 feet on their first round

Quote:

The spell ends if the target is ever more than 30 feet away from you. If either you or the target is reduced to 0 Hit Points, any damage from this spell is resolved and then the spell ends.

and since they are going to be melee ones, or I don't see the reason to explicitly cast on them shield other, they'd lose their first round too.

But I second Sueprbidi about going for it if you are having fun and feel satisfied with it!

"I agree that seems a life oracle... or at least, an underwhelming version of it." - well what did you expect from a dedication? It is not going to be better at oracling than the oracle...

The barbarians feats are not central to the way the barbarian works, so it is still a barbarian - not a life oracle... It would however be bad to make life oracle with barbarian dedication, as rage removes your ability to cast spells - which is central to how the oracle works. When you can't cast spells easily, you are left to use martial attacks, but those have less damage and less to hit than the barbarian. So barbarian dedication on a life oracle will be bad - and atleast won't have the same use. My point is, barbarian can use the oracle dedication fairly well, and it will quite frequently have a relevant use. If you take barbarian dedication as an oracle you are just going to be an oracle with a mostly useless dedication.

The build does remove the gains from deny advantage - that is true. The point was to make a martial class that has the ability to support - and to reasonably fill out the 3rd action.

Aside from that - i have untill now seen very few encounters in the game that makes shield others 30 feet seem like a problem. Maybie most of the campaigns i have been in, has consisted of mostly dungeon crawls and fights inside buildings - where it is very likely that your first turn places you within 30 feet of your enemies :) Regardless, you are still going to be a barbarian with the essentials of a barbarian.

But yes this is quite a fun build, and does feel like playing a life oracle and a barbarian at the same time. Enjoyable - to me atleast. I think the game system is pretty brilliant at allowing you to be creative with character builds, as you are not forced to take standard must have math boosters.

[aobst128]

Going with base life oracle and taking barbarian resilience is probably the best bet if you just want to max your hp and make the best use out of your revelation spells. Bad if you want to hit things though. Middle ground would be battle oracle that can eventually poach other initial revelation spells.

[Stationarity]

aobst128 wrote:

Going with base life oracle and taking barbarian resilience is probably the best bet if you just want to max your hp and make the best use out of your revelation spells. Bad if you want to hit things though. Middle ground would be battle oracle that can eventually poach other initial revelation spells.

The battle oracle with revelation from life oracle could work. You end up with something similar in style, that has less martial capabilities, but better abilities as a caster.

Your to hit will fall off when the barbarian hits expert, and the damage bonus from the curse is still behind. Your hitpoints will also be lower if you plan on using shield other, but that could be solved with some type of dedication.

[aobst128]

Stationarity wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

Going with base life oracle and taking barbarian resilience is probably the best bet if you just want to max your hp and make the best use out of your revelation spells. Bad if you want to hit things though. Middle ground would be battle oracle that can eventually poach other initial revelation spells.

The battle oracle with revelation from life oracle could work. You end up with something similar in style, that has less martial capabilities, but better abilities as a caster.

Your to hit will fall off when the barbarian hits expert, and the damage bonus from the curse is still behind. Your hitpoints will also be lower if you plan on using shield other, but that could be solved with some type of dedication.

Now that I think about it, if you're falling to the backline, battle oracle and their fast healing is even better at using shield other than life.

[Sanityfaerie]

The thing the Life Oracle doesn't get? Throwing axes full of rage. Like, sure it's not as good a life oracle as a life oracle is. Okay. Fine. It's a heck of a gish, though. The combo into renewed vigor is especially inspired.

I'd probably take it Spirit Instinct, both for the thematics and for eventual access to Spirit's Interference.

the only real downside I see is that by firing off your focus spell on turn 1, you lose out on the healing that it carries with it.

...and of course it takes a little while to come online. Still, it doesnt' require any odd statline choices, so it's not *too* terrible to just play a standard barbarian hurler for those levels.

[Sanityfaerie]

Apologies for the double post, but I ran out my edit window as I was writing this.

I'd offer a small refinement to the above. You don't actually need Basic Oracle Spellcasting. You'll have cantrips from your dedication, which means that you can get Shield Other from wands. 160 gp isn't cheap at first, but eventually you can buy a stack of them pretty trivially.

I'd also suggest swapping out Moment of Clarity for Raging Thrower. If you're not going to use it, might as well take a feat that you *will* use.