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Switch to Forum Live View Barbarian in Heavy Armor..... is it worth it?
2 years ago  ::  Aug 29, 2011 - 6:36PM #21
Dragvandil13
Date Joined: Jul 27, 2009
Posts: 395
Who knows.... maybe Heros of the Fey wild will DO something about this discrepency. Barbarians have 4 stats to deal with as a rageblood. Str, Dex, Con, and Will. That is a LOT to try and balance. Hide Armor made it and nicer 3....

But aparently thats "broken". *I have a feeling it was Mike Mearls complaining about this.... but that could just be me being bitter about how much exists for martial and how its taken 2 years for new barb material to come out.* 
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2 years ago  ::  Sep 06, 2011 - 7:33AM #22
Mithrus
Date Joined: Jan 29, 2005
Posts: 3,226
One nice advantage of chainmail is the later levels of masterwork can bump Will, which won't be all that great for most barbars.

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2 years ago  ::  Sep 06, 2011 - 10:35AM #23
Dragvandil13
Date Joined: Jul 27, 2009
Posts: 395
After extensively doing the math, I actually like barbs with Dex better.

It would ne nice having my riders actually mean something.... but I like the dex scores being useful. Stealth, acrobatics, etc. 
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2 years ago  ::  Sep 07, 2011 - 8:50AM #24
MtlKnight
Date Joined: Apr 29, 2009
Posts: 595
I wonder what the best AC a hybrid Barb could get with BCL, dumping dex and grabbing plate and plate spec. Barbarian in plate with a free +2 (shield bonus) wielding an executioner axe = awesome.

A little slow, but awesome. Even if you stick to Dex secondary and use fullblades for the mastery, ignoring Scale and sticking to Hide, that could work pretty well to maintain your speed 6.
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2 years ago  ::  Sep 08, 2011 - 1:14AM #25
Vamroc
Date Joined: Feb 6, 2006
Posts: 790

Aug 29, 2011 -- 6:36PM, Dragvandil13 wrote:

Who knows.... maybe Heros of the Fey wild will DO something about this discrepency. Barbarians have 4 stats to deal with as a rageblood. Str, Dex, Con, and Will. That is a LOT to try and balance. Hide Armor made it and nicer 3....

But aparently thats "broken". *I have a feeling it was Mike Mearls complaining about this.... but that could just be me being bitter about how much exists for martial and how its taken 2 years for new barb material to come out.* 




Strength, Dex, & Con are the only three stats a Rageblood Barbarian needs to function Wis almost never comes up HIDE ARMOR IS YOUR FRIEND. Personally I'm a BIG fan of the Gnoll Rageblood Barbarian because it's so easy to build into a "charge monkey" the one I had was doing +15-20 damage on a charge at 8th  level.          

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2 years ago  ::  Sep 08, 2011 - 12:49PM #26
darkwing_bmf
Date Joined: Feb 25, 2004
Posts: 370
STR/CON

AC is overrated. Hitpoints and temp hitpoints are where the barbarian does defense. If you set it up right, you can get 20 temp hitpoints every time you kill something. Plus, if you're a minotaur you get a free attack every time you get close to dieing. How cool is that. Just make sure the cleric can get you up afterwards.
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2 years ago  ::  Sep 11, 2011 - 8:23PM #27
Dragvandil13
Date Joined: Jul 27, 2009
Posts: 395
How can i set up that 20temp Hp?
 
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2 years ago  ::  Sep 12, 2011 - 11:32AM #28
ThaneRhogar
Date Joined: Feb 9, 2011
Posts: 382
I ran a Thaneborn barbarian using heavy armor for awhile, and I was happy with the amount of Cha I could pump, even if it cost a few feats and ran my reflex into the ground.  But cha-based riders for barbarians seem to frequently do more than con-based ones (usually applying attack bonuses/penalties or defense penalties, sometimes extra damage), and high cha was both part of my character concept and important in my party, since I had to be the face.  If I were making a similar character again, I'd probably take the suggestion one poster made at the bottom of page 1 of starting 18/14/16 post-racial and then pumping Str/Dex straight up.  Having the Dex for HBO at paragon doesn't hurt, either--Pressing Strike makes an incredible OA that can frequently disrupt whatever the enemy was trying to do, since even if you miss you get a shift 2 that can easily drop you into the space they wanted to move through.
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2 years ago  ::  Sep 13, 2011 - 2:07PM #29
Dragvandil13
Date Joined: Jul 27, 2009
Posts: 395
I really like the Barb in Heavy for the Thaneborn. It makes an interesting concept. But for my Rageblood I am really digging the Hide Armor. Yeah it kinda sucks how I dont have a real rider for things or get much benefit for my rider... but I manage ok. Also Improved RBV is completely worth it at lower levels. As I get higher it becomes less and less useful so I'll retrain it most likely once my AC gets beefed.

At level 14 I'll have 10 Base+3 HA, +2 barbarian Agillity  +4Dex +1/2 level(+7) +Enchantment(+3) 29AC is pretty solid and by then i should be hefty enough to not be using the then 12 temp I'd be gleaming from IRBV I may keep it, just to add some extra protection though, also if I can't find something else that i want. 
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2 years ago  ::  Sep 15, 2011 - 12:28PM #30
ThaneRhogar
Date Joined: Feb 9, 2011
Posts: 382
Darkwing, I'm having trouble seeing how HP can compensate for low defenses past early paragon.  In my experience, whenever he really started doing his thing, especially setting up an encounter nova, my barbarian would immediately draw fire from pretty much every enemy on the map, since he was set up to kill several of them at once.  I've never played a Rageblood, but I did get frequent Resistive Formulas from our Artificer, and even with some effort put into AC, it was unbelievably easy to take more damage than a big pile of HP could reasonable absorb in about two rounds... although tbf, my DM started attacking my Reflex regularly by paragon, so AC investment had somewhat diminishing returns.

Unless we're talking lower level than I'm imagining, I would expect a Barbarian doing good DPR and getting hit a high percentage of the time (or pretty much all the time, which is where relying on hide with no dex scaling will get you before too long) to take way more than 20 damage per round, to say nothing of inconvenient status effects he'll incur (again, fewer of those to AC, but the ones that do, like daze, immobilize, and ongoing damage, can be a pain).  In practice, how many attacks are you talking about taking per round, for how many hits and much damage?  I'm curious how any reasonably damaging melee striker with near-autohit AC manages to stay up, and I assume I'm either missing out on some math, or your combat experience is very different from mine.
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