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Barbarians are quite good even if certain individual pieces aren't fantastic. They consistently do top tier damage in multiple ways. I'd encourage you to care less about a theoretical understanding of the game and look at things in practice.
I'm playing a suboptimal (changeling claws) spirit barbarian in Agents of Edgewatch and it rules.
re: English as a secondary language...
You recognized in your opening that you may come off as rude. In your post/title, you do a lot of ascribing motivation to the designers of the game. That is often an example of rude behavior. Do that less.
Fury Instinct has always been a bit lacking IMO. It is generic, so you can add your own flavor to it. But it is mechanically weaker than the other options.
As for Anathema, Superstition Instinct has an anathema; Elemental Instinct technically still has an anathema since it hasn't been fully updated to Remaster rules; and Animal Instinct doesn't technically have an anathema, it just has a prohibition on using weapons at all.
I think that there's less interest in giving attention to the Barbarian as a whole is because specific subclasses are quite strong. Giant, Dragon, and Animal barbarians are some of the hardest hitting characters in the game and Spirit barbarians are fantastic in an undead-focused campaign.
So anything you could give to a Fury barbarian would have the additional effect of "potentially making the already very strong barbarians even better" which genuinely wouldn't make Fury all that comparatively appealing.
It might be better to just delete the Fury instinct from the game (or pretend that it's gone) since other classes don't really have the option of "no subclass". Your rogue always has a racket, your ranger always has an edge, etc. I think the Barbarian has a problem in that "people are going to want to make Conan" so you need a generic option but honestly? Conan (from the books at least) is more of a Rogue despite his job title.
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I don't see how this points to the designers disliking barbarian. Most, if not all classes have dead or redundant feats. The points about the individual feats are pretty sound, and regarding Fury, I can promise you you're not the first to be annoyed by its comparative weakness. Ever since first printing, it's been singled out as being behind the other options.
Also, barbs don't get automatic athletics progression because it isn't inherent to the class. I'm 90% the only classes that get scaling, such as swashbuckler, do so because in order to play the class properly, you need to be making a given check reliably. Not having that scaling is a massive tax on skill progression, and forces the class to give up one legendary skill choice to stay competitive. Can this limit melee characters who are still soft-forced into picking athletics? Yes. Is this something barbarian alone has to deal with? No.
Also, yes, rage is the barbarian's unique feature. As with most of the core classes, it's not got many moving parts. That's not inherently good or bad, and not evidence of hatred of barbarian. Fighter has no unique mechanics, but if anyone suggested that fighter is somehow hated, I'd ask them if they're talking about PF2e and not another system.
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I think that there's less interest in giving attention to the Barbarian as a whole is because specific subclasses are quite strong.
Funny because the barbarian got buffed across the board in the Remaster, even fury instinct though its still subpar.
The only real problem I have with the barbarian is fury instinct. I hate that vanilla flavor was equated with "its boring, don't bother much with that one", which is weird coming from Paizo because the vanilla flavor of rogue (thief) is probably the strongest one. On average, the rage damage boost is something like 3.75 / 7.25 / 14.25, which seems to more or less coincide with that of fury instinct. However, all instincts have some effects tied to the instinct too (a really good unarmed attack for animal instinct, elemental damage for dragon instinct, elemental damage and concealment against ranged attacks for elemental instinct, spirit damage for spirit instinct, a bonus to saves against spells with superstition instinct, etc) so even while fury technically has an extra 1st-level feat, most of the 1st-level barbarian feats except for Sudden Charge are honestly bad. I would, at least, increase the damage boost to 4/8/14, as well as make their related feats better because they are also quite lackluster.
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There's nothing saying a Giant Barbarian needs to take the feats that actually make you large. You can just have a bigger than normal axe.
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I think the subclass thing is more reflective of a general issue that Paizo's QC seems to diminish on the intra-class level. Oracle Curses, Sorcerer Bloodlines, Rogue Rackets, Witch Patrons, and so on likewise suffer from having weirdly terrible options alongside obviously excellent ones without any real hint as to why the balance is so haphazard.
... Though in this particular case I think the issue is a little overblown? Premaster Fury was in an extremely sorry state, but post-remaster.
Your rage damage bonus is better than animal's, the same as spirit's and mostly tied with elemental (1 less damage before 7 and 1 more damage after), and you're only one damage behind Dragon for most of the game (it's admittedly a little weird for the final bump to be smaller).
And in return you get a bonus feat. That's not super amazing, maybe even a little disappointing, but... idk 'dragon barbs do one extra damage for most of the game' is not really something I'd say really rises to the level of being cursed or unplayable.
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Ran a fury barbarian well before the remaster. Had a lot of fun. Had the highest body count in the party including, notably, a wall. It's a solidly designed class that covers two distinct pillars of combat with solid DPR and a good capacity to HP tank. The devs are clearly still interested in it as it regularly picks up new feats and even that rarest of additions, a new subclass.
Post remaster, the barbarian looks even better. Rage is just a straight buff now and a powerful one at that. People poo-poo the fury instinct but I think it works well as the 'no frills' barbarian option by not restricting RP choices and giving additional customization options at first level. The remaster also increased the damage so it hits even harder.
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The entire premise of this thread is silly. Barbarian did well in the remaster and gets a lot of support outside that. It's a popular class that delivers what it says it will. It even has a beloved, frequently seen iconic. The idea that the designers "don't like it" is utterly ridiculous and absolutely wrong if you look at the facts.
Fury itself is often considered a weak instinct, but I've seen it played and it works. It also got a bit of remaster love.
As for the feats... yeah there's some underwhelming feats. Every class has those. It was a running joke before the remaster that Cleric was the best class to archetype on because it had so few good feats.
Furious Vengeance isn't one of them, though. This is a class that will get crit. Being able to hit back without MAP is a great way to down enemies faster. It's not Opportune Backstab (not much is), but it's not terrible.
When look at new classes, such as guard, commander, necromancer, runesmith, I can see the vibe of the class, I understand designer's idea. Cool combos, reliable feats etc. New classes have a lot of personalisation as the remastered one. But when I look at barbarian, I just see straightforward gameplay, with penalty "to-think", no automatic Athletics progression, wierd feats and instincts, weak personalization, no uniqe mechanics (except Rage?).
The designers idea here is clear: run into melee and hit things really hard. The class does that really well. Why would that need automatic athletics progression? I don't need athletics at all to whack things with a gigantic sword for huge damage numbers. The only classes that get that typically need it for their core mechanic to function, making it a skill tax that must be paid to play the class at all (Swashbuckler, Thaumaturge), or its a flavor thing (Necromancer getting Undead Lore because they should know that but have no particular use for Religion). Barbarian is not in that situation and you're just fine if you never advance Athletics past trained.
It has "no unique mechanics" except for its unique mechanic? If we're talking about no unique mechanics, I should introduce you to Fighter.
Have you considered maybe the class just isn't meant for you? That is why we have lots of classes after all: not all of them will appear to everyone. You say "straightforward gameplay" like thats a downside, when it's actually an upside: lots of people don't want a super complicated class to play and Barbarian gives them something straightforward and effectcive.
This is especially valuable in PFS, because at a con I really do not have 30 minutes to explain to a new player how to play some hugely complicated class in a pregen. I can explain how to play Amiri in under 5 minutes.
(Also you mentioned Guardian, whose mechanics actively worked against each other in the playtest and which was actually pretty poor at the thing it says it wants to do. The entire thing was propped up by one overpowered feat. If that's an example of something you think works better than Barbarian, then I don't even know what to say because playtest Guardian was in a bad way.)
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I got all yours opinions about Fury insctinct.
I did not say, that barbarians are weak. Character with huge flat damage can not be weak in this system.
You said the designers don't like Barbarian. That is totally false.
I sum all my thoughts to one question: "What is the point of creation uncompetative feats and subclasses?"
What makes you think they deliberately set out to do that? The very premise of the thread is wrong if you're asking questions like that.
What actually happens is usually some combination of the following:
1. They think the option is better than you do.
2. They don't think every option has to be perfectly balanced with every other option so long as it plays fine.
3. They ran out of time to work on it any farther and moved onto something else because of the publishing schedule.
When you create obvious weaker option, it is more logical to take stronger one. And I do not say about flavor decisions, which in special cases are great. Such as magical sheath for Magus, as example.
Lots of people are not optimizers and don't care what "the stronger option" is. Long as what they're doing works and fits their theme, they're happy. You don't seem to understand that those people exist.
Please give me some answers. I just want to satisfy my mind with logical thoughts. This will help to get my calm back. I realy like barbarian. So I want better feats and useful interactions for him.
Fundamentally, the whole problem here is with your premise: you're ascribing motive where one doesn't exist.
Logically speaking: something has to be the worst option because the game will never be perfectly balanced. That something is Fury on Barbarian. Considering that it plays just fine, they did a pretty good job on the class with a couple outliers. But if it doesn't work for you, don't take Fury/those feats. There's lots of other stuff to choose from.
If you have suggestions for improvements, then sure, great. Post away. But don't start from a place of "fury isn't as good as giant so they hate this class."
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I don't think nobody is expecting fury to become the best instinct, but I would at least expect it to not be blatantly worse than the others.
Saying fury doens't have flaws as an upside is kind of weird when the downsides of each instinct are pretty much anecdotical. The "downside" of animal instinct is that you can't use weapons (which you likely weren't going to if you chose this instinct in the first place), of dragon, elemental, and spirit instinct is (I guess) the ocassional resistance or immunity to the type of damage your rage deals, of giant instinct to be clumsy 1, and of superstition instinct that you can't willingly accept the effects of a spell. The only two instincts with real downsides here are giant and superstition, but its compensated with the absurdly high damage boost and bonus against saves, while the others have the same downsides most martials already have.
I'm not asking for a huge revamp of the subclass necesarily. If Paizo increased its damage by 1 or 2 points or its subclass-specific feats became actually not hot garbage I would be okay with it. Scars of Steel is a bad joke that doesn't even stack with your raging resistances, and Furious vengeance isn't bad but it comes online way too late IMO.
Barbarians are good. There is no evidence that designers don't like them.
True.
Plenty of evidence they don't like the Fury Barbarian though. It has always been complained about. All the other barbarians have their niche.
I can't think of a reason to take Fury. It's pretty bad.
Nah, it isn't. Works pretty darn well.
I mean, even if Fury was the most powerful Barbarian Instinct from a pure numbers perspective, I would be personally disinclined from picking it just because of its overall lack of flavor, which is not really a problem you want to fix because the appeal of it is (as I understand it) that you don't have any thematic baggage.
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When class options lack inherent thematic flavor, that just invites you to create and apply your own. My Fury Barbarian ended up being something like a slasher movie monster. No fancy gimmicks, just a mountain of angry meat that forced my fellow PCs to grapple with the ethics of continuing to use him.
If you want to play the "vanilla" barbarian, giant instinct does the trick much better. The giant weapon can be easily reflavored, and even if you don't, big weapons are associated with barbarians and other types of burly martials anyways. The problem with fury is that its both uninteresting and mechanically lacking when compared to any other instinct. That's the main problem with fury instinct.
Giant Instinct? The one where you have to accept a pretty general debuff to use its primary gimmick? Nah. I'm not saying giant instinct is bad but I wasn't interested in the trade-offs for that character. He spent a lot of time lurking in urban environments, so a penalty to dex-based skills could be a problem considering dex was already a secondary stat. He still mulched most mooks with a swing or two and bosses folded in a handful of rounds. Fury instinct works.
Giant Instinct? The one where you have to accept a pretty general debuff to use its primary gimmick? Nah. I'm not saying giant instinct is bad but I wasn't interested in the trade-offs for that character. He spent a lot of time lurking in urban environments, so a penalty to dex-based skills could be a problem considering dex was already a secondary stat. He still mulched most mooks with a swing or two and bosses folded in a handful of rounds. Fury instinct works.
Sure, it works. It underperforms against the stronger instincts.
If works satisfies you, then you're fine.
I see no reason to take if you're looking to maximize the barbarian. You can build a stronger character with giant or dragon and go more defense with animal.
I can turn that statement right back around on you. If you don't want to take Fury, then don't. It works as a solid, non-supernatural instinct that fills the niche of being 'the flexible one'. Flexibility is something that often gets under valued in white room theorycrafting. Yeah, it's not going to outperform the specialists at their things but that is not its purpose.
Hell, I'd even argue that its raging resistance is one of the best if you're dealing with humanoid enemies frequently.
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I can turn that statement right back around on you. If you don't want to take Fury, then don't. It works as a solid, non-supernatural instinct that fills the niche of being 'the flexible one'. Flexibility is something that often gets under valued in white room theorycrafting. Yeah, it's not going to outperform the specialists at their things but that is not its purpose.
Hell, I'd even argue that its raging resistance is one of the best if you're dealing with humanoid enemies frequently.
It's the generic, low damage weak option. It does less than the other quality instincts with worse feats.
Giant can build into a brutal Whirlwind attack machine with huge reach that activates AOOs just to close on them. That immense size often prevents grapples and swallow whole and other effects dependent on size.
Dragon has higher damage, a breath weapon once a rage, and can eventually turn into a dragon.
Animal can build into a defensive barbarian with a great unarmed attack.
Every barbarian can build for maneuvers. Fury is lower damage for nearly nothing.
Not sure what you're trying to sell, but the only thing I agree with it's fine, meaning playable. It's not a top performer or even close to it.
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I have to say that saying "I played a fury instinct barbarian and had fun" isn't really a valid argument here. I played a ton of un-optimized characters in D&D 3.5 / PF1e / PF2e and I had fun with them, but I won't deny they were vastly subpar to what they could have otherwise be. Think of a single thing you did with your fury instinct barbarian that you couldn't with literally any of the other instincts. That's the problem.
As I said earlier, this isn't even about fury instinct being boring flavor-wise. Thief rogue is the "vanilla" flavor of rogue and its arguably the strongest and has a unique effect that doesn't exist elsewhere in the system. Untamed druid is arguably the vanilla druid too and it makes you an off-brand martial while transformed. Fury instinct doesn't even have a single unique thing about it and, to make matters worse, its numbers-wise worse for literally no reason.
Yeah, fury has probably the best resistances, though waiting 9 levels to have the first good thing in your kit is IMO immediately a sign that there's something wrong with the subclass. Not like I think a 3 + Con resistance is that strong anyways (at least barbarians don't have the constant -1 penalty to AC like they used to).
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My point and argument is actually pretty straightforward. The difference between the 'optimal' and 'sub-optimal' options being discussed are, frankly, pretty thin in practice. Could Fury Barbarian probably use a few more distinct feats? Yeah, probably, but in terms of gameplay it is not going to be notably worse than the other 'optimal' options.
In PF2e, damage is slightly less mechanically important than, say AC or attack bonus. A difference of 1 point of damage at 1st level to 3 points of damage at 15th level has less impact than you would probably think. Is it nice? Yes... but that little of a difference requiring that much time to really pull ahead firmly puts it in the realm of 'maybe I don't want my character to be a dragon this time' being a good enough reason to not take it... and, exequiel, makes a class feature that comes online at 9th level just as relevant.
And you guys still have not acknowledged that Giant instinct requires taking a big debuff in order to benefit from its primary gimmick. Clumsy affects, most notably, AC and reflex saves. Things you will be subject to more often if you use the size increasing abilities. You will be getting hit more and you will be taking crits more... ironically something Fury has a feat to reduce the damage from.
I've only ever been arguing one of the core points brought up earlier in the thread that barbarians are bad and hated by the devs with Fury in particular being the primary indicator. You guys shifted the argument to internecine conflict over specific instincts and seemed to be trying to convince me that Fury was, in fact, unplayablely bad. I countered with, no, in fact, Fury Barbarian is perfectly competitive with other classes using my personal experience and its mechanical niche seems pretty obvious.
Ultimately, though, it's largely irrelevant because I was not arguing for your benefit. Exequiel, you're pretty clearly a power gamer to some extent and that's fine but I know I'm not going to convince you and I've seen DF in enough threads to know the man is utterly unchangable when he has decided something is the best way to play much to the frustrations of everyone around him. I don't really try to convince people of things when they are not available to be convinced these days. I was kind of arguing past you guys so there was at least a dissenting voice against the 'fury is unplayably bad' narrrative that was spinning up.
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My point and argument is actually pretty straightforward. The difference between the 'optimal' and 'sub-optimal' options being discussed are, frankly, pretty thin in practice.
Its like complaining that you only have the Bronze medal winner of the Olympics on your high school track team.
I think genuinely if you wanted to do something about the Fury instinct, you would want to add some new Fury Instinct feats since the downside of the instinct is ultimately "the coolest Barbarian feats are specific to instincts, and yours are pretty meh."
Like what do the other instincts get with their feats?
Giant
- Large while raging
- Huge while raging
- Reach with a non-reach weapon while raging
Dragon
- AoE breath weapon, once per ten minutes
- Fly speed while raging
- turn into a dragon, once per ten minutes
Animal
- Bonus AC while raging
- Add a trait to your attacks when raging (can change this each time)
- Action compression: stride and strike for one action, flourish trait.
- Apply stupefied after consecutive unarmed strikes (need to hit both)
- Reaction to reduce frightened condition
Spirit
- Reroll a perception or skill check, 1/day
- Reduce Enfeebled with 1 action
- Range attacks targeting you need to make a DC 5 flat check or miss, while ranging
- Str based 120 ft ranged attack, OK damage, 1 action.
Superstition
- 2 action strike to apply stupefied, must have seen target cast a spell
- Counteract a magical affect by hitting it.
- Counteract a magic item for 10 minutes by hitting it.
Fury
- Gain resistance equal to ConMod + Level/2 when crit by a physical attack, 1/day.
- Make a melee strike against anybody who critically hits you inside of melee range.
While other instincts have some feats that are mediocre, the each have a few that basically constitute "a big part of the appeal of picking the instinct in the first place. The Fury feats are basically "make the best of a bad situation" where the first one is very weak and the latter one doesn't come online until level 16. You could absolutely drop a few feats in a sourcebook (like Battlecry) that are like Fighter and Fury Barbarian feats.
"Vastly subpar" exequiel, really?
The difference between Dragon and Fury is one singular point of damage until greater specialization. It doesn't really need it, but that's also like... as minimal of a penalty as could possibly be imposed here.
The difference between Giant and Fury is more significant, 3 to 6... but you're also eating an AC and Reflex penalty there, and you generally can no longer wield weapons you loot (ymmv on how big of a deal the last one is). There should be some meaningful advantage there because it comes with a meaningful decrease in survivability.
Fury isn't the best instinct, but the reactions in this thread are really bizarre given how actually small in practice the gap between it and other instincts are. From reading the thread alone you'd assume Fury was virtually unplayable and has a note from a developer in it that just says "I hate you" written in it. The reality is that with the remaster changes Barbarians have fairly tight subclass balancing.
Fury is, and was always meant to be in PF2, the "basic/baseline" barbarian. The other instincts are ways to specialize from the general barbarian chassis. Vanilla is vanilla; don't expect it to be caramel fudge swirl or rocky road.
I just want to add, if the Fury instinct doesn't float your boat take a look at the Bloodrager class archetype/instinct in War of Immortals. You don't have to lean into the casting beyond the cantrips from the class archetype dedication (and possibly the Hematocritical feat at 10th); the persistent bleed damage from Blood Rage is pretty good by itself. And Bloodrager also doesn't have any anethema, just a requirement to attack with a melee Strike that does piercing or slashing damage for the Harvest Blood action.
And you guys still have not acknowledged that Giant instinct requires taking a big debuff in order to benefit from its primary gimmick.
I did.
The only two instincts with real downsides here are giant and superstition
You will be getting hit more and you will be taking crits more... ironically something Fury has a feat to reduce the damage from.
Now that barbarians don't have a -1 penalty to AC from rage, the penalty from clumsy isn't as bad as it used to be. Still bad, but greatly compensated by the damage. Btw, you feat you mention fury has only works once per day and doesn't stack with your raging resistances. Those resistances don't look that good now, huh.
You guys shifted the argument to internecine conflict over specific instincts and seemed to be trying to convince me that Fury was, in fact, unplayablely bad. I countered with, no, in fact, Fury Barbarian is perfectly competitive with other classes using my personal experience and its mechanical niche seems pretty obvious.
Nobody here is arguing that fury instinct is unplayable, just that its plainly worse than the other instincts. In PF2e the difference between an optimized character and an unoptimized character is less than in the other system, hence why most of the people discussing about this kind of things here usually zoom to those thin lines so it could seem we are making it bigger than it truly is. I also feel ironic you are making a strawman about us supposedly talking about how "fury instinct is unplayable" when you haven't even acknowledged that most of our critique isn't about the number themselves but rather that the subclass is boring both in flavor and mechanically, which is made worse when you take into account that the subclass is numerically worse too.
Ultimately, though, it's largely irrelevant because I was not arguing for your benefit. Exequiel, you're pretty clearly a power gamer to some extent and that's fine but I know I'm not going to convince you and I've seen DF in enough threads to know the man is utterly unchangable when he has decided something is the best way to play much to the frustrations of everyone around him. I don't really try to convince people of things when they are not available to be convinced these days. I was kind of arguing past you guys so there was at least a dissenting voice against the 'fury is unplayably bad' narrrative that was spinning up.
Again, you are ignoring what I'm saying for the sake of your argument. I quite literally said I played a ton of unoptimized characters in my life and had fun with them, but that doesn't mean that those options become better than they truly are. I like to make characters that mechanically represent the idea I have of them in my mind, which is the whole reason why I'm arguing fury instinct is boring because since it underperforms and has really bad feats I could easily take giant instinct and the flavor of the character wouldn't even be altered. Giant instinct isn't that you are a half-giant or have giant-blood or whatever, its just that you take the power of giants when raging. Even if you argued your character has to be related with giants to use the instinct, I could still reflavor if if I wanted to. You said one of the pros of fury instinct is that because it lacks flavor that you can actually come up with whatever you want. Are you going to argue is worse if I do it with giant?
All the complaints you seem to have about what I said were answered here and in earlier comments, but as I said, I think you are ignoring what I'm saying to make a strawman to either ignore the bits you don't want to answer or exaggerate what I said for the sake of your argument.
"Vastly subpar" exequiel, really?
The difference between Dragon and Fury is one singular point of damage until greater specialization. It doesn't really need it, but that's also like... as minimal of a penalty as could possibly be imposed here.
The difference between Giant and Fury is more significant, 3 to 6... but you're also eating an AC and Reflex penalty there, and you generally can no longer wield weapons you loot (ymmv on how big of a deal the last one is). There should be some meaningful advantage there because it comes with a meaningful decrease in survivability.
Fury isn't the best instinct, but the reactions in this thread are really bizarre given how actually small in practice the gap between it and other instincts are. From reading the thread alone you'd assume Fury was virtually unplayable and has a note from a developer in it that just says "I hate you" written in it. The reality is that with the remaster changes Barbarians have fairly tight subclass balancing.
Well, its one point of damage, the fact that the damage you deal isn't energy damage which can help you trigger some weaknesses, and having access to elemental explosion which is a nice AoE feat which martials usually lack. The equivalent of fury instinct is, as I said, a broken feat that doesn't work with your instinct's benefits.
With giant instinct the "downside" of not being able to use loot weapons is, even in the worst case scenario, not that big of a deal. In practice most characters stick with one weapon for their whole career in PF2e. The exceptions are unique weapons though I feel unless the GM explicitly designs a campaign for a PC to eventually get one of them, in APs they are likely not going to match the weapon you are using. And even then, there's tons of times in APs when you fight foes of different sizes than you and they have their weapons as loot, so I think its kind of implied magic weapons can resize to fit your character or that the GM could easily make a ruling on the post. Exactly that last point is the thing that matters. A GM isn't going to screw a player if they want to change their weapon even if they technically could. The penalty of being a giant instinct barb is being clumsy 1, the huge weapon is mostly a flavor way to justify it in-universe to keep cohesion, not a balancing favor.
As I said, since the extremes are shorter between high and low in PF2e, its easy for stuff to sound worse than it truly is. Fury instinct isn't unplayable, but there isn't a single reason I would want to take it over any of the other ones, even if I wanted to play a "vanilla" barbarian.
I have to say that saying "I played a fury instinct barbarian and had fun" isn't really a valid argument here. I played a ton of un-optimized characters in D&D 3.5 / PF1e / PF2e and I had fun with them, but I won't deny they were vastly subpar to what they could have otherwise be. Think of a single thing you did with your fury instinct barbarian that you couldn't with literally any of the other instincts. That's the problem.
The difference in power levels between optimal and suboptimal classes in 3.5/PF1 is so vastly different than PF2 that it's a completely meaningless thing to bring up.
3.5/PF1 has such massive chasms in power that an entire tier system was invented to rank these things and help GMs avoid situations where one player would so completely dominate the game that no one else would feel like it mattered if they showed up or not. Optimized characters in those systems can literally break the game.
None of that applies here at all. The gaps aren't really large enough to justify the amount of words being spent on it, let alone the way some people in this thread are talking as if Fury is awful when it's really closer to "meh".
The -1 penalty to AC for clumsy starts off bad at low levels, then becomes a non-factor as you become a wrecking machine at higher level. I remember running the giant barbarian and taking those hard hits at low level up until level 6 or 7. I almost gave up on the class. Once I got past that level 6 or 7, it was smooth sailing brutality. You wreck things with reach and your size really helps against combat maneuvers since most enemies don't have Titan Wrestler or whatever it's called. And no martial class uses Whirlwind Attack better than the Giant Barbarian. The combination of reach and size allow you to wreck a huge area. Big time fun.
Ok i dont know about what happens in your games but when I GM I roll crits against players all the time. The fury line of feats will trigger enough to warrant them.
Crits are not rare occasions.
The difference in power levels between optimal and suboptimal classes in 3.5/PF1 is so vastly different than PF2 that it's a completely meaningless thing to bring up.
That's exactly the point.
I played stuff that could be considered way worse than fury instinct, but I can't find myself to ever play fury instinct because it isn't even a fun subclass.
Ok i dont know about what happens in your games but when I GM I roll crits against players all the time. The fury line of feats will trigger enough to warrant them.
Crits are not rare occasions.
Sure, but the one Fury feat is once/day (I really dislike class feats with one/day limits) and the other is level 16. I get that the Fury class is the vanilla one where you're just supposed to take the normal barbarian feats, but every barbarian I've played was inspired by one or more instinct specific feat because I don't love the normal barbarian feats.
"Vastly subpar" exequiel, really?
The difference between Dragon and Fury is one singular point of damage until greater specialization. It doesn't really need it, but that's also like... as minimal of a penalty as could possibly be imposed here.
The difference between Giant and Fury is more significant, 3 to 6... but you're also eating an AC and Reflex penalty there, and you generally can no longer wield weapons you loot (ymmv on how big of a deal the last one is). There should be some meaningful advantage there because it comes with a meaningful decrease in survivability.
Fury isn't the best instinct, but the reactions in this thread are really bizarre given how actually small in practice the gap between it and other instincts are. From reading the thread alone you'd assume Fury was virtually unplayable and has a note from a developer in it that just says "I hate you" written in it. The reality is that with the remaster changes Barbarians have fairly tight subclass balancing.
Yes the difference is small. The problem is the difference exists. Every other instinct gets something cool, Fury gets almost nothing - a 1st level feat you could have gotten by just being human. Maybe a slighty better damage type in terms of dealing and resisting damage. It just doesn't look good compared to any other barbarian. It is the culmination of worst options and weakest chassis.
Ok i dont know about what happens in your games but when I GM I roll crits against players all the time. The fury line of feats will trigger enough to warrant them.
Crits are not rare occasions.
Barbarians do not get extra reactions. So the Fury reaction competes against Reactive Strike.
I build to activate Reactive Strike. I certainly don't want to get crit to activate an ability, so why would I build for that?
Why wouldn't I instead build this barbarian who can trip or use combat maneuvers to prevent the enemy from even striking me to start with?
A giant barbarian can knock someone down, keep hitting them with reach, forcing the enemy to stand up just to close the reach to hit activating AOO multiple ways, rinse and repeat, giving the enemy as few chances to crit you as possible rather than waiting for an ability to activate the requires the enemy to crit me?
Why would I do that?
Ok i dont know about what happens in your games but when I GM I roll crits against players all the time. The fury line of feats will trigger enough to warrant them.
Crits are not rare occasions.Barbarians do not get extra reactions. So the Fury reaction competes against Reactive Strike.
I build to activate Reactive Strike. I certainly don't want to get crit to activate an ability, so why would I build for that?
Why wouldn't I instead build this barbarian who can trip or use combat maneuvers to prevent the enemy from even striking me to start with?
A giant barbarian can knock someone down, keep hitting them with reach, forcing the enemy to stand up just to close the reach to hit activating AOO multiple ways, rinse and repeat, giving the enemy as few chances to crit you as possible rather than waiting for an ability to activate the requires the enemy to crit me?
Why would I do that?
When you run your games do your players control the fights so well with trips that foes dont get crits in anyway?
When you run your games do your players control the fights so well with trips that foes dont get crits in anyway?Ok i dont know about what happens in your games but when I GM I roll crits against players all the time. The fury line of feats will trigger enough to warrant them.
Crits are not rare occasions.Barbarians do not get extra reactions. So the Fury reaction competes against Reactive Strike.
I build to activate Reactive Strike. I certainly don't want to get crit to activate an ability, so why would I build for that?
Why wouldn't I instead build this barbarian who can trip or use combat maneuvers to prevent the enemy from even striking me to start with?
A giant barbarian can knock someone down, keep hitting them with reach, forcing the enemy to stand up just to close the reach to hit activating AOO multiple ways, rinse and repeat, giving the enemy as few chances to crit you as possible rather than waiting for an ability to activate the requires the enemy to crit me?
Why would I do that?
Mostly, yeah. That's what combat maneuvers are for to control the action cost of the opponent striking. And to set up Reactive Strike for activating.
With the slow spell and trip, you can really make a lot of fights trivial, especially as good as barbarian is at maneuvers and with reach.
Honestly, it can get quite boring to have a caster spam slow, trip a boss, then have it so the boss is either spending an action to stand up or striking -2 from the back. With a Giant barbarian it can get even worse because a giant barbarian can knock them down at range and keep them at bay so if slowed, they often can do nothing in a round but stand up and move to attack. It can get bad.
When you run your games do your players control the fights so well with trips that foes dont get crits in anyway?Ok i dont know about what happens in your games but when I GM I roll crits against players all the time. The fury line of feats will trigger enough to warrant them.
Crits are not rare occasions.Barbarians do not get extra reactions. So the Fury reaction competes against Reactive Strike.
I build to activate Reactive Strike. I certainly don't want to get crit to activate an ability, so why would I build for that?
Why wouldn't I instead build this barbarian who can trip or use combat maneuvers to prevent the enemy from even striking me to start with?
A giant barbarian can knock someone down, keep hitting them with reach, forcing the enemy to stand up just to close the reach to hit activating AOO multiple ways, rinse and repeat, giving the enemy as few chances to crit you as possible rather than waiting for an ability to activate the requires the enemy to crit me?
Why would I do that?
Mostly, yeah. That's what combat maneuvers are for to control the action cost of the opponent striking. And to set up Reactive Strike for activating.
With the slow spell and trip, you can really make a lot of fights trivial, especially as good as barbarian is at maneuvers and with reach.
Honestly, it can get quite boring to have a caster spam slow, trip a boss, then have it so the boss is either spending an action to stand up or striking -2 from the back. With a Giant barbarian it can get even worse because a giant barbarian can knock them down at range and keep them at bay so if slowed, they often can do nothing in a round but stand up and move to attack. It can get bad.
Your players might have a harder time with the trip part of that strategy on high reflex bosses. Most levels they would need what a 15 or higher on no MAP trips?
Slow is too reliable though in almost any circumstance.