the problem is the new dm wont allow anything to help keep the barbarian under controll in terms of magic items. so planing on taking the vow of obidence feat to take care of that
in the long run i want my barbarian (where running 3.5) to be able to jump/run at an opponent. hit hard, and then move onto another target and still be able to do this before lvl 30 lolz.
in order to optimize his feat selection im having him be a human and i am taking shaky and vulnerable as flaws from the unearthed arcana so ill get 4 feats at lvl 1.
unfortunatly i dont know what lvl my dm will have us start as so im guessing 1 or 5 .
so far at lvl one he has sacred vow, power attack, instant rage, and extended rage.
if any one has any tips on this so far pleaze i need the help im not used to running melle based characters im more of a stealth fan XD
You can do all of this as early as level 6 with the prereqs to Frenzied Berserker:
Human
Barbarian 1: Destructive Rage, Intimidating Rage, Lion Totem substitution (Complete Champion)
Barbarian 2:
Fighter 1: Power Attack, Cleave
Fighter 2: Improved Bull Rush
Fighter 3:
Fighter 4: Shock Trooper, Leap Attack
[Frenzied Berserker from here on out]
The Lion Totem substitution costs you Fast Movement but gives you Pounce (make a full attack on a charge). Shock Trooper gives you Heedless Charge, so that full attack is made at full attack bonus and full Power Attack. Leap Attack makes that Power Attack positively devastating on its own. And from here on out, your Berserker levels will only serve to increase its lethality. That's really all you need. Just be sure to grab an Extra Rage somewhere; normally when I splash this sort of thing together I work it in somehow, but I didn't have room with all the FB requirements.
EDIT: I just noticed that flaws are available; if that's the case use this:
Human
Barbarian 1: Destructive Rage, Intimidating Rage, Power Attack, Extra Rage, Lion Totem substitution (Complete Champion)
Barbarian 2:
Fighter 1: Cleave, Extra Rage
Fighter 2: Improved Bull Rush
Fighter 3:
Fighter 4: Shock Trooper, Leap Attack
Why you picked only one of the required feats for frenzied berserker at level 1, I don't know. If you can't get a rebuild at all, I'd do this:
Human
Barbarian 1: Sacred Vow, Power Attack, Instantaneous Rage, Extended Rage
Barbarian 2:
Fighter 1: Cleave, Destructive Rage
Fighter 2: Improved Bull Rush
Fighter 3:
Fighter 4: Shock Trooper, Intimidating Rage
[Frenzied Berserker+], picking up Leap Attack at 9.
(If you're utterly married to the Vow of Obedience trick, AND cannot get a rebuild, replace Shock Trooper with it, picking up Shock Trooper at 9 and Leap Attack at 12.)
It's not a *bad* approach, but it's not quite as tight as the ones upstairs. You certainly don't need Vow of Obedience to keep your berserker on a leash, though. (My preference is a Grease spell. Berserkers can't use Dexterity-keyed skills while frenzying. Balance is one such skill. That, plus their poor Reflex save, means they're probably on their ass trying to bite trees off at the roots while the frenzy wears off.)
For real fun with your later feats, I'd capitalize on you needing Intimidating Rage. Pick up the Never Outnumbered skill trick (lets you demoralize all nearby targets once per encounter) and the Imperious Command feat (foes you demoralize Cower for 1 round and are shaken for 1 round after that). With Intimidating Rage, you can keep one guy in a state of permanent cowering, and cower all his allies for a round, as a free action.
im loking the edit and the only reason for the early vow was so the cleric can force me to nat 20 a will save to stop the frenzy and i dont have to burn them but i like the grease spell better and i like ur first entry as a build and was thinking of something similar but i really dont want the 20% penatly for having 3 classes with a human and them having a 6 lvl diffrence between 2 of them
You're mis-reading the XP penalty rules.
The penalty only applies if you have two or more BASE CLASSES that are more than one level apart, not counting your favored class. (Prestige classes don't matter). Humans have whatever class they have the most levels in as their favored. Thus, at no point will this approach suffer an XP penalty.
ive got the 3.5 books in front of me and it says classes not base classes so i would be taking that massive penalty (pg60)
From the official 3.5 FAQ.
In the previous version of the D&D game, having levels in a
prestige class never caused you to pay the experience
penalty for being a multiclass character without uneven
class levels. (The prestige class levels didn’t count when
checking to see if you had a penalty.) The section on
prestige classes in the new DMG no longer mentions that
you don’t suffer an experience penalty for having levels in a
prestige class. Is this a change or an error?
It’s an error. Having levels in a prestige class won’t give
you an experience penalty.
There you have it - given how your favored class is ignored and you only have one other base class, you never get an XP penalty.
If you had it right, then Barbarian 6 / Frenzied Berserker 8-10 would have an XP penalty for all races except Human, Half-Elf, and Half-Orc.
also im looking over shock trooper and i dont see where you keep both your full base attack and power attack....just a bit about a possible armor bonus
Shock Trooper's third tactical manevuer, Heedless Charge. You charge an opponent as normal, but if you take a Power Attack penalty of -5 or more, you can assign the penalty to your armor class instead of your attack bonus. Meaning the 6th level build above takes a -6-2(charging) penalty to AC, attacks at 6+2(charging)+Strength+Weapon, and deals weapon damage +12 (for a two-handed power attack) on any charge. If he jumps, Leap Attack kicks in, which adds even more effectiveness to power attack. Since he has Pounce, he's attacking more than once at the end of the charge. And so on.
Here's an example to demonstrate.
Here's the errata on Improved/Supreme Power Attack, and Leap Attack.
Improved Power Attack: Beginning at 5th level, a
frenzied berserker deals +50% the normal damage from
her use of the Power Attack feat. In other words, when
using the Power Attack feat, a frenzied berserker
wielding a two-handed weapon gains a +3 bonus on
damage rolls (instead of a +2 bonus) for each –1 penalty
she applies to her attack rolls.Supreme Power Attack: A 10th-level frenzied
berserker deals +100% the normal damage from her use
of the Power Attack feat. In other words, when using
the Power Attack feat, a frenzied berserker wielding a
two-handed weapon gains a +4 bonus on damage rolls
(instead of a +2 bonus) for each –1 penalty she applies
to her attack rolls.
Leap Attack:If you cover at least 10 feet of horizontal distance with
your jump, and you end your jump in a square from
which you threaten your target, you deal +100% the
normal bonus damage from your use of the Power
Attack feat.
So in the above example, taking the -6 penalty to AC gives you +12 normal damage from power attack. Supreme Power Attack and Leap Attack each add an extra +12 to that (although you won't have both of them just yet).
This means your typical 28 Point-Buy Level SIX berserker (the first build I mentioned above) will have 16 Strength, possibly a +2 Strength item, and a +1 Greatsword. His normal attacks are made at +11/+6 and deal 2d6+7 damage. With appropriate gear, let's say his AC is 20 (just for sake of a number).
If he does a charging leap attack, he will pounce and attack at +13/+8, dealing 2d6+31 (average 38) damage. His AC will fall to 12 (-6 from Shock Trooper, -2 from charging). This is without rage (rage adds +2 attack and +2 damage to this), and before you get your Frenzied Berserker levels. It only gets worse if you add those in, although remember, Frenzy strictly speaking isn't as useful as you'd think (you can get its most useful resource - the extra attack - from a haste spell, which can be cast by a wizard more often than you can frenzy).
(Note that average CR6 HP is only 69, and you're hacking off half of that per hit. Average AC of about 19 means that you'll still hit reasonably often - 70% on the first hit, 45% on the second - working out to an expected damage of 43.7 per round - you're knocking off nearly two thirds of their HP in one round this way! You can't follow it up with numbers quite that high, but you can still full attack normally... or charge 'em again if they flee (or if you use an anklet of translocation for a swift-action teleport). These should be more than powerful enough to take out the remaining third of their HP.)
By the time you get Supreme Power Attack, this only gets meaner. Especially since as soon as you can afford +2 weapons, you're going to want to make your weapon +1 Valorous. (Deals double damage on a charge - note the stacking. Supreme Leap Attack changes PA to -1:+6, and Valorous would double all of it, to a -1:+12. Your base attack bonus when you get Supreme is +15, which translates into +180 bonus damage from power attack alone. Average monster HP at those levels is just 224; you'll one-shot anything if you can average just 22 damage on your regular attacks (which, at level 15, isn't all that hard - a +1 Valorous Collision greatsword, 20 base strength with a +4 belt of strength averages 22.). And because of Pounce, you're making full attacks at the end of your charges....)
This is all fairly standard Ubercharger, by the way. That's the name to look for if you want more information on this.
Calm Emotions automatically knocks barb's out of rage (no save). I assume it does the same to frenzy. So if you had multiple people in the group with the ability to cast/UMD this, you'd be pretty safe. Chances are, the Frenzier will kill the last opponent, so you have a full round of people to cast it before he tears into you. Of course, if he's the only one left standing, you're all screwed.
www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/calmEmotions.h...
It's not no-save, it's Will Negates, and only lasts as long as you concentrate, up to one round per level.
Granted, that's probably long enough to outlast the barbarian if it's applied when you suggest, but it's only a 2nd level spell, and thus easy to save against (DC 12+ability mod, and Rage itself boosts Will saves if you're using it and Frenzy at the same time).
Ah, you're right. I read "This spell automatically suppresses" as saying that this part of the spell happened regardless of save (and the save was just for people wandering around peacefully). But no, save negates. My bad.
Btw, I'm very impressed by the amount you post Tempest! I'm glad you're so dedicated to the board. As far as I'm concerned this is still the best place to come for 3.5/PF optimization, even if the rate of posting has gone down in recent years. Other optimization threads just don't have the same caliber of contributors. Thanks, and keep it up.
