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Especially with the remaster name Vicious Swing and Furious Focus sound very barbarian like.
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.
For the record, the lack of theming is supposed to be the primary benefit of Fury Instinct. That's also why it has the weakest bonus.
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I'm not sure that makes sense. But it is what it is.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.For the record, the lack of theming is supposed to be the primary benefit of Fury Instinct. That's also why it has the weakest bonus.
I think it's a straight up bad design decision, if true. Theming should be a *draw* not a burden.
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I think it's a straight up bad design decision, if true. Theming should be a *draw* not a burden.I'm not sure that makes sense. But it is what it is.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.For the record, the lack of theming is supposed to be the primary benefit of Fury Instinct. That's also why it has the weakest bonus.
Fury has no anathema AND an additional level 1 Barbarian feat.
I think it's a straight up bad design decision, if true. Theming should be a *draw* not a burden.I'm not sure that makes sense. But it is what it is.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.For the record, the lack of theming is supposed to be the primary benefit of Fury Instinct. That's also why it has the weakest bonus.
I don't think you said what you meant, because the theming is a draw. Having the theme makes you stronger. It is the vanilla barbarian (fury) that is weaker. (Well, assuming you think getting a feat instead of extra damage and resistance to all weapon physical damage is weaker.)
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I don't think there really is an argument. Fury is terrible. This is not somehow a good thing.
It seems like "change the animal anathema to not rule out ranged weapons" (or just weapons in general). Something like "use a tool to do something you were entirely capable of doing without it"
Fury is easy to compare with the animal instinct since those are the only instincts (I think?) that don't increase your initial rage damage.
Animal has some of the best unarmed attacks, while Fury has a 1 extra 1st-level class feat.
Fury doesn't need a massive buff, but it certainly needs something to not be plainly worse than all other instincts. I don't know if more rage damage would be fitting (though most people play barbarians to do damage, so it wouldn't hurt) but I can't think of anything else they could give it. I guess a 4/8/12 rage damage progression would be fine. It would be equal to draconic for a while, though draconic would still have its extra damage be elemental which can be a huge boost, it would be equal to elemental too, though elemental has, well, elemental damage too as well as concealed against ranged attacks. Spirit would likely be spirit damage in the remaster which effectively is irresistable damage (as far as we know) so even if its a little lower I guess its fine, and supersitition is fine-ish with the +2 to all saves? Eh, it really wouldn't hurt to bump it to giant instinct-levels of damage since it applies only against creatures with spells.
This is going to sound weird but +1 to hit while raging for fury barbs. Make them a little better at criting but its through fury instead of training.
Everyone' is going to say that's stepping on the fighters toes, but its not technically changing anything about their proficiency progression and its such a generic benefit that it fits generic fury.
In fact a +1 to hit and +2 to damage -1 Ac while raging is kinda reaching back to the 1e barbarian.
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This is going to sound weird but +1 to hit while raging for fury barbs. Make them a little better at criting but its through fury instead of training.
Everyone' is going to say that's stepping on the fighters toes, but its not technically changing anything about their proficiency progression and its such a generic benefit that it fits generic fury.
In fact a +1 to hit and +2 to damage -1 Ac while raging is kinda reaching back to the 1e barbarian.
Last time I checked the math, a +1 to attack is roughly 15-20% increase in average damage. That would be way too strong on top of Rage Damage.
Fury needs better exclusive feats and maybe better damage resistance. Or more TempHP from Rage because "your Fury won't let you give in", or something like that.
Or maybe give it a level 10-ish feat that let's you choose a lower level feat from another instinct without being bound by its anathema. That could be fun.
Make the +1 hit the fury barbarian's level 6 feat tied to the instinct.
Some delay and its competing with reactive strike
I mean its boring but so is picking the instinct without an anathema as a barbarian
Last time I checked the math, a +1 to attack is roughly 15-20% increase in average damage. That would be way too strong on top of Rage Damage.
Doing some quick calcs using the damage tool, Fury with a d12 and a permanent untyped +1 to hit does roughly the same (slightly less at most levels) damage as a Fighter while still always having worse AC.
And still never does better than a Giant barbarian (and is usually behind Dragon too).
You know the flavor I was really thinking is an increase to crit for a fury barb.
What if fury barbarians actually lowered the number from 10 over AC to 9 over ac to crit while raging and got a level 6 feat to improve that to 8 over AC to crit while raging. That is less powerful than getting +1s to hit but still achieves the concept of fury barbarian is about the crits.
+1 to hit is roughly 10-15% increase, so yes, Fury should be closer to the others with a +1 to hit. Still, I question this choice as a bonus to damage would be more in line with what rage gives.
Also, I don't know why people are overfocusing on AC as the temp hit points compensate the AC loss entirely.
I sometimes feel that the game assumption that every +1 to attack and AC is important is distorted to be turned into every +1 to attack and AC is so important that you can entirely disregard damage and hit points. The result being a lot of subpar choices, like raising Dexterity before Constitution on 6hp casters despite the clear superiority of Constitution when it comes to survivability.
Make Fury works like 3.5 Frenzied Berserker! :P
I can agree with somewhat modified versions of the OP's requests:
I’m a little surprised at how many seem to be surprised at how Fury Totem (later Instinct) came to be written the way it was. They were pretty open about it during the design process. It is even alluded to in both the playtest document and final version of the class that Fury is the one you pick if you don’t want to bother with anathema.
I didn’t follow all the iterations of the playtest too closely, but I do note that originally all totems/instincts had the same rage damage, so they weren’t as far apart in that first draft. Which suggests I was wrong about the weakest damage being tied to the lack of a theme. Maybe due to disparate damage types? Seems like a relatively easy thing to boost, in any case, probably as Teridax suggests.
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The Fury Instinct was obviously sold as the "no hassle" instinct, but was never billed as coming at the cost of mechanically sucking. I strongly believe the intent was that it would fall in line mechanically with the others, but they overvalued the level 1 feat.
For many of my barbarian concepts, the level 1 feat selection is take it or leave it.
Fury could work as the feat instinct if it gave you additional feats at later levels.
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Come to think of it, if the Barbarian were to get a once-over, I'd say there are a few more areas that could use some sprucing up:
Rage
Instincts
Just to spitball some ideas:
Animal barb was always one of the logical class/subclass options to pair with beast master but needing moment of clarity for the wolfman to command his pack mate felt like a very steep price in play. I'm hoping some lifting of action restrictions for rage make character concepts like this and the bloodrager a bit easier to swing.....also maybe give animal rage a once over. Right now it just gives imprecise scents and possibly a movement speed/type change. It might just be better served as additional statistics on the animal instincts animal table instead of scouring the animal form spell to suss out the actual benefits youre getting from the feat
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I’m a little surprised at how many seem to be surprised at how Fury Totem (later Instinct) came to be written the way it was. They were pretty open about it during the design process. It is even alluded to in both the playtest document and final version of the class that Fury is the one you pick if you don’t want to bother with anathema.
No one is surprised that Fury is "themeless" because that's pretty self evident.
But there's no reason that requires it to be garbage.
Really no instinct should be stuck with basic rage damage. That should be what you get if you dedicate in and are waiting to gain levels to invest a second feat to gain the instinct benefit
The Fury Instinct was obviously sold as the "no hassle" instinct, but was never billed as coming at the cost of mechanically sucking. I strongly believe the intent was that it would fall in line mechanically with the others, but they overvalued the level 1 feat.
For many of my barbarian concepts, the level 1 feat selection is take it or leave it.
Fury could work as the feat instinct if it gave you additional feats at later levels.
It is the porridge of instincts.
This is going to sound weird but +1 to hit while raging for fury barbs. Make them a little better at criting but its through fury instead of training.
Everyone' is going to say that's stepping on the fighters toes, but its not technically changing anything about their proficiency progression and its such a generic benefit that it fits generic fury.
In fact a +1 to hit and +2 to damage -1 Ac while raging is kinda reaching back to the 1e barbarian.
I'm really liking this direction, though I'm not sure if Paizo would want to give attack bonuses to a martial since (I think?) the only one that has that is the fighter. Also, if you can still poach that bonus with Barbarian Dedication and Instinct Ability then some classes would benefit much more from it than barbarians themselves.
I honestly wouldn't bother if the rage damage bonus was standarized all over the place and all barbararians had a 4/8/12 or 4/8/16 progression with giant instinct's benefit being having an extra +2 to rage damage. The main draw of the barbarian is being a hulking brute that deals tons of damage and I often feel the instincts that have less damage are often overlooked because, well, everyone wants to do damage and specially if you are a barbarian. A standarized damage progression + some neat effect would not only help the fury instinct (which effect would be that extra feat) but also make all instincts more in line with each other.
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I'd like to be greedy and hope for a *fully overhauled* rage. As-is, it's just an action tax to get damage numbers up, and frankly that's boring and no longer unique amongst the classes. Thaumaturge, Ranger, Inventor, Psychic, Swashbuckler, Summoner, and Magus *all* have rage. It's not called rage for them, but we all know it's rage.
So make rage different!
There are loads of examples in media of rage as a super-mode rather than an always-on thing, and I think the remastered barbarian should lean closer to that instead of a compulsory turn-this-on-or-you're-just-a-worse-fighter thing.
Devil Trigger (and Sin DT too, while I'm at it) from Devil May Cry, God Rage from God of War, Dragon Install from Guilty Gear, the Duviri Courtiers' emotional meltdowns from Warframe, that thing shounen anime protagonists do where they get their asses beat and become god. These are what I'd like rage to be more like.
I want a second phase, not an obligation.
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I'm wondering if they will decide to pivot the Barbarian from being a Class that is narratively fueled exclusively by anger to one that is slightly flavored and tweaked to key off of ANY strong emotion and/or passionate drive so as to distance it from the history of the class as well as the OGL.
Barbarians fueled by ANY type of manic state, joy, anger, [redacted], amusement, disappointment, jealousy, disgust, or even fear could spell a whole bunch of interesting new options. Imagine a fear-based Barb that keys directly into the fight or flight responses to act like a cornered rat or one that laughs uncontrollably while advancing. I'm not sure it that's a direction everyone would want or even something the writers even considered but it could be mighty interesting, plus, it would give the Barb another interesting choice to make right out of the gate that provides interesting RP and mechanical interactions.
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Barbarian isn't slated as one of the rework classes so I wouldn't get your hopes up for anything beyond a slight tune up and QoL changes
I agree but being honest we probably will get a blog post talking about PC2 in next months to know sneak peak in PC2 classes changes.
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The restriction on concentrate actions sort of makes sense as a legacy restriction against spellcasting, perhaps also Recalling Knowledge, but ends up meaning the Barb can't Demoralize without a feat, which is a bit silly. It also means a Barb can't do something like Hunt Prey, which would otherwise be thematically appropriate.It also locks the Barbarian out of 90% of active/reactive magic item use. Both envision and command are concentrate-tagged, and a surprising number of runes weapons, and wearable items have one of them. 108 of the 154 talismans are Envision, and 19 are Command. Magic items are already bad enough that there's not much incentive to use them (low DCs, awkward handedness, bad action economy), so its not like a barbarian is really expected to give up their class feature to use them, but it still feels bad to look at all the toys you can't even begin to fit into your combat routine. Preventing spellcasting barbarians is one thing, but it seems wrong for them to be cut off from a good chunk of one of 2e's axes of character progression.
The restriction on Concentrate is only when Raging.
Entering Rage is not necessarily the best use of a Barbarian's first action. Or even of later actions.
I sometimes spent entire fights with my PFS Animal Barbarian not Raging.
Even the Barbarian has to use sensible tactics in PF2
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Idk, a monk entering a stance and using fob, a ranger hunting their prey, a fighter existing, a rogue flanking an opponent, a magus spell striking....if any of these other actions meant not being able to use a large swathe of game mechanics those players would be rightly miffed. Barbarians are just very restricted in combat once they use their class mechanic. Hopefully that sacred cow is brought around back and shot for PC2. If that meant rage damage has to be a couple points lower I wouldn't even care
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Idk, a monk entering a stance and using fob, a ranger hunting their prey, a fighter existing, a rogue flanking an opponent, a magus spell striking....if any of these other actions meant not being able to use a large swathe of game mechanics those players would be rightly miffed. Barbarians are just very restricted in combat once they use their class mechanic. Hopefully that sacred cow is brought around back and shot for PC2. If that meant rage damage has to be a couple points lower I wouldn't even care
Most Monk stances forbid you from attacking with other attacks.
But a stance is not required to use FoB.
And Hunting Prey is one action each time you choose a new prey. Which is often more than once per combat.
Not that straightforward to compare.
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If you choose not to be Raging in combat for a turn, you're foregoing everything that makes being a Barbarian enticing and fun for that turn. Whatever you're doing with that turn, is it going to make a difference by the time combat is over? Are you really the one who should be doing that? What if you're Fatigued, or fell down in combat with your AC penalty? Congratulations - you have no class abilities for the duration of this combat.
Well, technically, you have a massive hit point pool and it combines very well with late Rage as you will get even more hit points without suffering much from your AC penalty. So there's a point in not raging as soon as possible (on top of damage optimization as you deal more damage with 2 Strikes than with a single one with Rage on so it's better to Rage when you have 3 actions available to attack).
Then, you have a lot of feats that are not asking for Rage, including some staples like Sudden Charge and Reactive Strike. And that's even before thinking about grabbing Dedications.So, even if I agree that Rage is central to the Barbarian, first round Rage is nothing enforced by the class. You even have feats like Wounded Rage that encourages you to wait to take a hit before Raging.
I know a lot of players just Rage as soon as they can but why should the class be about them and not about those who try to read the situation better?
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There's also another point I'd like to raise: In this discussion, some players state that the Barbarian should be "easy to play", if not "easier than everything else". I question why?
I've faced my fare share of "stupid barbarians" and honestly it's not something I want to see encouraged. Having a player who consider that their character should rage and charge at round 1 whatever the situation because "it's my class", who behave badly in social situations because "it's my class" and who disregard anything that is not strength-oriented because "it's my class"... Well, it's painful.
The stupid barbarian is no good for the game. I'd far prefer Paizo to completely rebuild the class feel so this archetype leaves the game entirely.
As a side note, the choice of "Superstition" for an Instinct name goes in this same direction. Please Paizo, rename it "Anti-magic" or "Mage slayer", anything that carries the same kind of mechanics but without the implication that the Barbarian should be dim-witted. I think it's the only class feature in the game that is described negatively...
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There are plenty of other classes. I understand your frustration with players who deliberately avoid any thought of tactics. But the character has more to it that that. It's up to the people to use it. There is support for Intmidation at least.
Personally I'd be happy enough if they got rid of the term Barbarian as it taints too many cultures in a negative light. Berserker would be much better.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's this discussion about the term Barbarian, but I don't want to raise it again as it tends to be invasive. As a side note, Spirit Barbarians don't Rage they get possessed, so there's more than Rage to the Barbarian.
But I think the term Barbarian could stay but the class be reviewed in a more "advanced" light. For example, Superstition could be reviewed as Mage Slayer, there could be an Alchemical Instinct (Alchemical Rage is something in Pathfinder). If you have a good balance amongst Instincts the class could feel much more advanced.
And my frustration is not about players who avoid tactics but about classes that justify the lack of tactics. If a class is literaly portrayed as dim-witted (I hardly see how "superstitious" can be considered as anything but an insult) it definitely encourages players to play them stupidly.
Id argue that barbarian rage preventing large swathes of game mechanics reduces tactical decisions for the class (if you engage with the class core mechanic) more than making rage less restrictive. A barbarian with a less restrictive rage would make more varied decisions in a combat than one who has the current version bc whenever the current version rages their tactical decision points shrink to a fraction of what's available to others unless they sacrifice a third of their actions to moment of clarity
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Id argue that barbarian rage preventing large swathes of game mechanics reduces tactical decisions for the class (if you engage with the class core mechanic) more than making rage less restrictive. A barbarian with a less restrictive rage would make more varied decisions in a combat than one who has the current version bc whenever the current version rages their tactical decision points shrink to a fraction of what's available to others unless they sacrifice a third of their actions to moment of clarity
Which is a tactical decision.
And I am surprised by the large swathes argument. IME the only restriction I felt because of the No Concentrate rule was about not being able to cast spells.
And I am surprised by the large swathes argument. IME the only restriction I felt because of the No Concentrate rule was about not being able to cast spells.
Demoralize, as well as any item activation with a command or envision component, such as that on a Fearless Sash, are all actions affected by the limitation on concentration. There are ways around this restriction, such as Moment of Clarity and Raging Intimidation, and I agree that choosing when to rage is a tactical decision that isn't always optimal to do at the start of every combat, though the restrictions are pretty broad nonetheless.