Oh man, I'd forgotten Come and Get Me. Such a fun Feat, although you have to be pretty reckless to use it.
Once you add Vengeful Strike, it becomes very playable. But definitely super reckless.
its kinda the closes thing to pulling aggro too since its really presenting an easy target, not all enemies will know theres a price to it.
Here's what I want and I will honestly be pissed if it isn't changed:
Let Barbarians use Demoralize without Raging Intimidation.
That's it. The fact that this persisted and is barely talked about is because the class is really good overall (one of my favorites).
The new Rage Intimidation could be simply free Intimidating Glare and/or Intimidating Prowess and/or Scare to Death.
Once you add Vengeful Strike, it becomes very playable. But definitely super reckless.
Vengeful Strike is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about... But at level 14 it feels too late. It enables the class to play like it should have since the beginning, honestly. And Come and Get Me by itself feels questionable.
Here's what I want and I will honestly be pissed if it isn't changed:
Let Barbarians use Demoralize without Raging Intimidation.
That's it. The fact that this persisted and is barely talked about is because the class is really good overall (one of my favorites).
The new Rage Intimidation could be simply free Intimidating Glare and/or Intimidating Prowess and/or Scare to Death.
Agreed, actually, this is an annoying feat tax. I'd say the concentrate limitation in general can take a hike. It fits thematically but has too many specific interactions that don't make sense.
Once you add Vengeful Strike, it becomes very playable. But definitely super reckless.Vengeful Strike is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about... But at level 14 it feels too late. It enables the class to play like it should have since the beginning, honestly. And Come and Get Me by itself feels questionable.
Thematically Come and Get Me is nice. But the benefit of it is easier and safer to get elsewhere.
When should you use it? If you don’t have another way of getting flat footed modifiers against your enemies and have a moderate amount of resistance to their attacks. Or if you are flat footed anyway.
With Vengeful Strike it is OK...
If there was a way for a Barbarian to get another reaction I'd be happier with it.
Once you add Vengeful Strike, it becomes very playable. But definitely super reckless.Vengeful Strike is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about... But at level 14 it feels too late. It enables the class to play like it should have since the beginning, honestly. And Come and Get Me by itself feels questionable.Thematically Come and Get Me is nice. But the benefit of it is easier and safer to get elsewhere.
When should you use it? If you don’t have another way of getting flat footed modifiers against your enemies and have a moderate amount of resistance to their attacks. Or if you are flat footed anyway.
With Vengeful Strike it is OK...
If there was a way for a Barbarian to get another reaction I'd be happier with it.
Yeah, Come and Get Me has a use case but it also undermines Uncanny Dodge, among other things. Vengeful Strike makes it much more enticing, but it feels like it could be a cornerstone of the class. I'd like it if instead of buying Attack of Opportunity at level 1, barbarians just got Vengeful Strike as a feature. Maybe call it Retaliatory Strike because that sounds nice with Reactive Strike and Retributive Strike. (Maybe that is too confusing.)
Anything reasonable and thematic like this should be encouraged. I want to see more alternatives to AoO / Reactive Strike, just to get more variety in the game
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Conceptually, it should be one of the simplest play experiences
I don't really see why. Like we already have the fighter.
Come and Get Me is not worth the cost. I tried it out to get Vengeful Strike or whatever that reaction attack is named, not worth it. There are better feats to take.
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Conceptually, it should be one of the simplest play experiencesI don't really see why. Like we already have the fighter.
Yes, but that's part of the problem. Thematically fighters are meant to be paragons of skill but in practice require the least skills to play. Meanwhile, thematically barbarians are shutting their brain off but require the player to think harder than fighters. It's just a weird juxtaposition.
It sounds like it can set up a good greataxe swipe but I guess you have to live to your next turn if more than one enemy comes to get you.
Yes, but that's part of the problem. Thematically fighters are meant to be paragons of skill but in practice require the least skills to play. Meanwhile, thematically barbarians are shutting their brain off but require the player to think harder than fighters. It's just a weird juxtaposition.Conceptually, it should be one of the simplest play experiencesI don't really see why. Like we already have the fighter.
I'm just not really sure I agree with either of those assertions. Foundationally it's not how either class is constructed.
I mean with come get me you would think a normal enemy sees the taunting and more importantly sees the opening to go after the barbarian that let his guard down. This means you can use that expected predictability of enemy actions to set up a lot of things.Its just really dangerous. Its less the mechanics of the move and more the way the GM probably should have most enemies react to the move that makes it ok.
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I'd also really appreciate the Superstition Anathema to be revised-- saying you can't be part of casting spells or rituals, would be a real restriction, but it would lubricate their ability to function in a normal party to a great degree.
I like the Barbarians+ version of the instinct where you pick two lists you hate and can work fine with the other two. It means that the class can at least work in premade campaigns where you know what your support caster is.
B+ also fixes the issue with the Fury Barb by making it the general "Barbarian even harder" instinct and making Giant Instinct a different thing.
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I mean with come get me you would think a normal enemy sees the taunting and more importantly sees the opening to go after the barbarian that let his guard down. This means you can use that expected predictability of enemy actions to set up a lot of things.Its just really dangerous. Its less the mechanics of the move and more the way the GM probably should have most enemies react to the move that makes it ok.
The way crits work, number of attacks, already having a -1 penalty to AC or -2 with giant instinct, flanking for everyone, and using Come and Get me just sets you up for getting brutally destroyed by almost anything you fight, especially bad in mook fights. Not worth it to get one reaction attack and a flat-footed bonus you would get any for tripping them or flanking.
It is very much not worth the trade off at all. You make the enemy come at you by doing a lot of damage. I'd much rather take Whirlwind Strike for mook fights or Improved Knockdown from the two-handed Archetype with Brutal Bully for getting their attention.
Come and Get Me a good way to waste healing magic and get yourself wasted for a reaction attack you can get by using trip.
The problem is that static damage bonus (outside of giant) doesn't seem to outdamage a fighter, especially when you factor in the action burnt on raging.That's wrong. The only Fighter you don't outdamage is the Greatsword Fighter. The second you start reducing the damage dice the Fighter takes a massive hit when the Barbarian doesn't move much.
It is slightly unexpected but the Barbarian shines with low damage dice weapons. For example, sword and board Barbarians deal massive damage while also being super tanky. And with the fix on Heavy Armor Proficiency, you can grab Bastion and Heavy Armor by level 3 as a human. An extremely solid build, much better than the Fighter equivalent at low level due to the important damage difference.
I agree with SuperBidi here. There's storm in a glass of water about the -1 AC of barbarians. If you get a heavy armor proficiency in some way you basically get the same AC of a rogue.
My only "complain" of this build is how the rage extra damage works in PF2. For some reason the designers made rage giving a fixed aditional damage instead of extra dmg dices (the same reason I don't understand why Power Attack uses extra dice instead of good old additional damage).
Come and Get Me is not worth the cost. I tried it out to get Vengeful Strike or whatever that reaction attack is named, not worth it. There are better feats to take.
Agreed. You can use it. It is situational at best. I just end up elsewhere.
My only "complain" of this build is how the rage extra damage works in PF2. For some reason the designers made rage giving a fixed aditional damage instead of extra dmg dices (the same reason I don't understand why Power Attack uses extra dice instead of good old additional damage).
Why?
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I'm just not really sure I agree with either of those assertions. Foundationally it's not how either class is constructed.Yes, but that's part of the problem. Thematically fighters are meant to be paragons of skill but in practice require the least skills to play. Meanwhile, thematically barbarians are shutting their brain off but require the player to think harder than fighters. It's just a weird juxtaposition.Conceptually, it should be one of the simplest play experiencesI don't really see why. Like we already have the fighter.
I mean, I agree neither class is constructed that way on a mechanical level. That's the problem. I don't think those mechanics are a good reflection of the themes both classes evoke.
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Why?
My only "complain" of this build is how the rage extra damage works in PF2. For some reason the designers made rage giving a fixed aditional damage instead of extra dmg dices (the same reason I don't understand why Power Attack uses extra dice instead of good old additional damage).
Because the current static bonuses of rages benefits both two-handed and one-handed weapons equally. So no matter if you use a finesse d4 knife or a two-handed d12 sword your rage benefit them equally. This creates a strange benefit to use weapon and board, or even agile/finesse weapons once that your rage bonuses doesn't change at all. Breaking the classic concept of barbarian is about very strong furious characters using very big and heavy weapons that can benefit from all their furious strength.
So mechanically would make more sense if rage gives extra dice, that's based in weapons dice than a static bonus.The other interesting point if the rage was made in this way is that different instincts would have the same bonus, this would "force" the designers to differ them more horizontally than vertically so the instinct could be more a choice of different effects and options than a choice of what instincts are more powerful.
The inverse reason for Fighters Power Attacks. If Power Attack was a static dmg like older editions this would allow that Power Attack to work better with a wide range of weapons instead of being a feat that enforces you to use the highest damage dice weapon that you can get (usually d12) this makes more sense for a versatile class like fighters.
But that's just my rambling, there's no point in changing today. Maybe it would be an interesting idea in the distant future of PF3.
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Your rage bonus gets cut in half if you use an agile weapon. The classic concept of a Barbarian also includes a Viking with a battleaxe and shield, so that concept is not penalized.
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It is a little odd I guess that barbarians are less concerned with the die size of their weapons than some other classes, but flipping it the other way just makes certain builds much worse. It's not something that really needs 'fixing'
I mean with come get me you would think a normal enemy sees the taunting and more importantly sees the opening to go after the barbarian that let his guard down. This means you can use that expected predictability of enemy actions to set up a lot of things.Its just really dangerous. Its less the mechanics of the move and more the way the GM probably should have most enemies react to the move that makes it ok.The way crits work, number of attacks, already having a -1 penalty to AC or -2 with giant instinct, flanking for everyone, and using Come and Get me just sets you up for getting brutally destroyed by almost anything you fight, especially bad in mook fights. Not worth it to get one reaction attack and a flat-footed bonus you would get any for tripping them or flanking.
It is very much not worth the trade off at all. You make the enemy come at you by doing a lot of damage. I'd much rather take Whirlwind Strike for mook fights or Improved Knockdown from the two-handed Archetype with Brutal Bully for getting their attention.
Come and Get Me a good way to waste healing magic and get yourself wasted for a reaction attack you can get by using trip.
Beyond what the ability actually does you can use it to influence enemy positioning and let the team take advantage of that.
You could come get me next to your champ to make sure they get retributive strike with some damage mitigated along with your temp hp making the pain less harsh, come get me to get enemies to spend actions striding away from the fighter to get to you provoking fighter's reactive strike, come get me where the wizard has second detonation array happening just make sure turn order is barb then wizard with no enemies in between. You could even come get me to split up enemies and if a caster is between turn orders wall them off.These things are pretty situational but it can find good use. Cant argue with it being HP expensive though.
Your rage bonus gets cut in half if you use an agile weapon. The classic concept of a Barbarian also includes a Viking with a battleaxe and shield, so that concept is not penalized.
Yes I forget about agile yet still works for non-agile finesse weapons like rapier.
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It is a little odd I guess that barbarians are less concerned with the die size of their weapons than some other classes, but flipping it the other way just makes certain builds much worse. It's not something that really needs 'fixing'
I agree, it's not a problem. But the design choice is still strange, especially when compared to the fact that in the Fighters' Power Attack the choice was made for the increase in damage to be based on the weapon's damage die.
This creates the curious situation where, due to the high hit rate and natural proficiency with heavy armor, a warrior with a 2-handed weapon ends up having a higher DPR than that of a barbarian, especially if you include vertical boosts from archetypes like the own barbarian archetype and/or add Gravity Weapon via the Ranger archetype that end up taking advantage of the fighter's high critical rate.
While in the barbarian, if you do a more defensive Build, using a shield, purchasing the Shield Block feat and heavy armor via Sentinel, you end up benefiting greatly from the fact that you play with a character that receives 12 HP per level plus temporary HP while maintains a high dmg output with the benefit of additional damage from your rage "sacrificing" only 2 average damage per Strike rune.
It's not like it breaks the character or anything like that, because in previous versions it was like that too (a lot of people played barbarians with shields and heavy armor in 3.x/PF1 for the same reasons), it's just strange.
This topic just answers that Barbarians need a way to make it so they want to use lighter armor. Once again Sentinel is Over-powered when it comes to it at the end of the day, giving out heavy armor proficiency too a class which doesn't need to use Dex.
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This topic just answers that Barbarians need a way to make it so they want to use lighter armor. Once again Sentinel is Over-powered when it comes to it at the end of the day, giving out heavy armor proficiency too a class which doesn't need to use Dex.
It's not specific to Barbarians: There is no point in using a Medium Armor in this game. Either you raise Strength and Heavy Armor will certainly be better or you raise Dexterity and you should switch to lighter armors every time you increase your Dexterity. Past level 10, Medium Armor mostly exists on non optimized builds.
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There is no need to switch to lighter armors unless you're worried about bulk, you don't get any more AC out of doing so. I don't know how that misconception is still around.
Is there an assumption that you will either invest enough str for heavy or you will not invest in it at all?
Like the Barbarian who wants to be intimidating is going to want to invest in STR/CON/WIS/CHA. It's just a question about the cost of "putting one increases into Dex to max out your medium armor" or "putting class feats into Sentinel."
On a level 1 barbarian with +4 +1 + 3 +0 +1 +0
Medium armor sounds optimal
If at levels 5 and 10 you kept raising dex the light becomes optimal not for ac but for dex to reflex to not get capped by that medium armor.
But you could just not raise dex beyond+1 instead.
The Dex Cap of armor only affects how much of your Dex Modifier you apply to AC. It has no limiting effect on your Reflex Saves.
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There is no need to switch to lighter armors unless you're worried about bulk, you don't get any more AC out of doing so. I don't know how that misconception is still around.
Increasing both Dexterity and Strength is not really useful, so it's more optimized to increase only one of them. And if you do, then you switch to lighter armor to remove the armor check penalty when you increase Dexterity and dump Strength.
The Dex Cap of armor only affects how much of your Dex Modifier you apply to AC. It has no limiting effect on your Reflex Saves.
Oh your right. So then a dex build getting some str to add to damage can wear medium armors no prob.
A Str build which is almost all barbarians picking up a point or two in dex is also great in medium armor.There is no real downside.
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I have literally never seen anybody have any trouble with the Barbarian anathema. They're more RPing prompts than anything else.
Tell that to any animal barbarian that needs to make a ranged attack.
I have literally never seen anybody have any trouble with the Barbarian anathema. They're more RPing prompts than anything else.Tell that to any animal barbarian that needs to make a ranged attack.
They can get an innate spell like electric arc for their ranged attack.
One of my players made a storm hag lineage changeling animal barbarian.
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I have literally never seen anybody have any trouble with the Barbarian anathema. They're more RPing prompts than anything else.Tell that to any animal barbarian that needs to make a ranged attack.
Having to make a ranged attack after you start raging does hurt.
IME though (admittedly low level), once the encounter comes into melee range, you do not need ranged attacks anymore.
My Animal Barbarian only enters Rage when it is the optimal tactical choice. If the enemy stays at range, he uses ranged weapons rather than Rage.
This topic just answers that Barbarians need a way to make it so they want to use lighter armor. Once again Sentinel is Over-powered when it comes to it at the end of the day, giving out heavy armor proficiency too a class which doesn't need to use Dex.It's not specific to Barbarians: There is no point in using a Medium Armor in this game. Either you raise Strength and Heavy Armor will certainly be better or you raise Dexterity and you should switch to lighter armors every time you increase your Dexterity. Past level 10, Medium Armor mostly exists on non optimized builds.
The extra ability scores are still a trade off. There are still movement penalties for heavy armour that have not been completely negated. There are still different armour specialization effects.
It is not that clear cut.
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The extra ability scores are still a trade off. There are still movement penalties for heavy armour that have not been completely negated. There are still different armour specialization effects.
It is not that clear cut.
Barbarian doesn't get armor spec and a 5ft move speed penalty in a system where you can trivially hit the 50s on a class with sudden charge isn't hurting for mobility.
And now with the improved general feat, that will cover you until level 19. Surely you can find an open feat slot between 2 and 18 for sentinel if your game goes to 20.
The extra ability scores are still a trade off. There are still movement penalties for heavy armour that have not been completely negated. There are still different armour specialization effects.
It is not that clear cut.
Barbarian doesn't get armor spec and a 5ft move speed penalty in a system where you can trivially hit the 50s on a class with sudden charge isn't hurting for mobility.
And now with the improved general feat, that will cover you until level 19. Surely you can find an open feat slot between 2 and 18 for sentinel if your game goes to 20.
Typically you are right. I'm not disagreeing with your value proposition. Except to say that there is a cost for Heavy over Medium. The better armour specialization ability may cause people to favour Medium over Light. There will be builds and situations that will still prefer Medium Armour.
There is no need to switch to lighter armors unless you're worried about bulk, you don't get any more AC out of doing so. I don't know how that misconception is still around.Increasing both Dexterity and Strength is not really useful, so it's more optimized to increase only one of them. And if you do, then you switch to lighter armor to remove the armor check penalty when you increase Dexterity and dump Strength.
Hard disagree. A Barbarian's choice for fourth boost is Int/Cha/Dex, which means that if you aren't making the extra investment for Intimidate then you may as well raise Dex. Sticking with your breastplate over full plate also saves you a feat (arguably two since you need Mighty Bulwark to really replace dex investment).
Investing in full plate is the right choice for many builds but to claim one choice is superior to the other is just false.
Hard disagree. A Barbarian's choice for fourth boost is Int/Cha/Dex, which means that if you aren't making the extra investment for Intimidate then you may as well raise Dex. Sticking with your breastplate over full plate also saves you a feat (arguably two since you need Mighty Bulwark to really replace dex investment).There is no need to switch to lighter armors unless you're worried about bulk, you don't get any more AC out of doing so. I don't know how that misconception is still around.Increasing both Dexterity and Strength is not really useful, so it's more optimized to increase only one of them. And if you do, then you switch to lighter armor to remove the armor check penalty when you increase Dexterity and dump Strength.
If you're investing in Dex anyway, you can also get the best of both (Max AC and good Reflex saves) by wearing heavy armor that does not have the Bulwark trait. I have a half-plate using Drifter gunslinger build lying around somewhere and it works out quite well.
My biggest problem with the current 2.0 version of Barbarian is that the "best" power wise option for the iconic two-handed melee weapon class is to be an unarmed head butting face licker.
Like... hmmm...
Just being 'Mr. Furious' ought to have the best baseline damage as what it gets for not having any other theme - yet it's the weakest one. And the guy who says "I have an anathema to using weapons" tops the chart.
If they can just rebalance the damage numbers, then I'd be fine.
It's also a bit of a problem that the fighter out damages the barbarian at the barbarian's very trick...