The barbaric waitress(37barb/2blackguard/1paladin)

[stijnelijn]

yellow= updated

A real barbarian! A big bezerking raging destruction machine! High attack, high damage! A GIANT!

*Be a good fighter in the pre-legendary time, start to shine in the legendary levels.
*Doable by more then just a couple of uberraces. Its not really meant for newbies but i do advise it for people who played a little while and now want a strong melee lady which can kill and survive in a battle.
*Be a nearly pure class taking max advantage of its bonuses.
That's what i wanted with this build.

Problems with a barbarian: quite meaningless saves, a rather low amount of feats at their disposal.

So how to solve the saves problem?
Get good charisma and add both the paladin bonus saves and the blackguard bonus saves to your character.
Voila, that problem is solved. Never look at these 3 shame-full levels you had to take again. (at least these stinking levels did not cost you AB)

Now for the goodies:
*Shapestrong rage and mighty rage are highly powerful skills.
*Thundering rage can do a extra 60 sonic damage to your attacks.
*You get some good damage reduction as a barbarian, both the epic barb damage reduction and the str immunity.
*The free +1str/dex/con / 5 lvls in LL beats all other classes. (except maybe them red blobs)
*Using a doubleweapon with a shield gives you good criticals and gives extra attacks while keeping up defense. I would not use any other weapontype with a shapestrong barbarian.
*Barbarians have a nice amount of base hitpoints.
*Shapestrong rage makes you the shining star of any party! Even your weapon is bigger then that stupid little minotaur!
*Plainly a good attack bonus.


The feats:
*pre-epic are exchangeable, so are epic skills more or less, just don,t pick the barb bonus feats when you got the long list to pick from.
*cleave is needed to get the blackguard levels, so power attack aswell.
*21 con is needed for mighty rage. When you start off with 18 con you need to get 2 con and get the free 1 con at level 45. Which then means you can take mighty rage at lvl 48.

This is what i made:
Half-Elf dragonblooded
16 str (18)
8 dex (8)
16 con (18)
8 wis (6)
8 int (10)
16 cha (16)

skills to take: (in order of importance)
5 hide for blackguard
max discipline
max intimidate
max tumble
rest in spellcraft

levels: (37 barbarian/2 blackguard/1 paladin)
1 barbarian exotic weapon proficiency
2 barbarian
3 barbarian weapon focus doublesword
4 barbarian
5 barbarian
6 barbarian power attack
7 barbarian
8 barbarian
9 barbarian cleave
10 paladin
11 blackguard
12 blackguard improved critical doublesword
13 barbarian
14 barbarian
15 barbarian toughness
16 barbarian
17 barbarian
18 barbarian blind-fight
19 barbarian
20 barbarian
21 barbarian great str 1
22 barbarian
23 barbarian
24 barbarian great str 2
25 barbarian
26 barbarian
27 barbarian great str 3 / armor skin
28 barbarian
29 barbarian
30 barbarian great str 4
31 barbarian epic weapon focus doublesword
32 barbarian
33 barbarian great str 5
34 barbarian
35 barbarian thundering rage
36 barbarian great str 6
37 barbarian
38 barbarian
39 barbarian great str 7/epic prowess
40 barbarian
41 barbarian
42 barbarian great str 8
43 barbarian
44 barbarian
45 barbarian great con 1
46 barbarian
47 barbarian
48 barbarian mighty rage
49 barbarian
50 barbarian
51 barbarian great str 9
52 barbarian
53 barbarian
54 barbarian epic skill focus intimidate
55 barbarian
56 barbarian
57 barbarian terrifying rage
58 barbarian
59 barbarian
60 barbarian legendary weapon focus doublesword

statboosts
lvls 4,8,12,16,20,24,28,32,36,40,48,52,56,60 Strenght
lvl 44 con (for mighty rage requirements)

Ending stats as far as i remember em:
*With a decent gmw and a little barbsong you will notice your charscreen showing 100+ AB. Yay.
*110 or more AC is quite doable. You wear a % immune heavy armor off course. Immo plate works fine already.
*Your 62 buffed strenght will give you a nice damage bonus and i think 13% psh immunity.
*Personally i walk around with around 1400 hp.
*saves: around 80fort 66 reflex 64will.

Doubts about this big girl:
*No conceal, this can hurt. Items or buffs will help.
*No evasion stuff.
*You need some specialized UR items to make terrifying rage remotely decent, i highly doubted whether or not to take this feat at all. The DC on this feat can become quite high with that equipment tough.
*Thundering rage is in my opinion not working correct at the moment. It does not last long at all(2.5 min or so), and when mighty rage is active(you always want mighty rage active) the greater rage does not restart it. If this gets fixed it would be a great feat to take.
*This char is not tested for the hells areas. According to the pros the char has dangerously low ac and hitpoints and you will die a lot out there for sure. Its a damage/strength tank after all.

Races to use:
*dragonblooded (ur race) is easiest for the above strat.
*prismatic is easier to get and could do great with this strat, little tinkering needed then. (21con essential).
*deep orc might be fun. Orcs like to be barbarian, little tinkering needed then. (21con essential).
*any race without str/con/cha penalties could do it with fine results. Even a plain human could. Tinkering needed (21con essential).

Additional tinkering options:
*Pick rogue levels instead of blackguard for tumble,evasion and UMD if you think you can miss the 10 bonus saves.
*Get a lot more con instead of str to gain additional hp. This and the rogue levels are suggested by the pros if you make chars on this server mainly to reach the hell areas. Not my personal cup of tea.
*2 paladin levels instead of 1 for the free fear immune feat.
*scrap terrifying rage and have 2 spare feats and a lot of skillpoints at your disposal.
*Use the bludgeoning dire mace instead of the sword, harder to keen tough.

Gear suggestions:
Basicly, focus on getting good ac. Get a amulet and shoes with as high as possible ac, get a shield. Get a plate mail with damage % immunities. And make sure you have a xx/- resist for each damage type. Off course get the standard mind/death/harm immunities available on many items. You will have a surprisingly easy time compared to most of the guys around you.

[atomicsomething]

a couple of things :

You dont have the two weapons feats, so no xtra attacks for you . [edit]unsure about this one, i didnt understand how shapestrong and two-handed weaps interact now[/edit]
Taking Legendary Reflexes is a waste of feat, you dont need 76 reflex.
A tank without blindfight is doomed.

For Damage Reduction :
Barb grants you innate damage reduction.
Items giving xx/- gives damage resist, so both stack.
You can have only one source of damage resist (the highest) and one source of Damage reduction (Feats granting damage reduction stacks together and counts as a single source).

[mescalino]

Looks like a solid build and probably the only way to prevent you from taking 8 feats to boost your saves. That charisma +12 from items will give 20 to your saves added another 20 from universal items is allready 40 together. Think you could even drop cha 2 points and add them to dex giving you 10AC at startup. But this build looks realy good for a barbarian build. I'm only unsure on how terrifying rage will work as a lot of critters have mind and/or fear immuun. (unless they changed the rage)

EDIT: reading previous post yes blind fight!! you will want that. Dumb i missed that

[stijnelijn]

I kinda agree on the reflex save feats, it got higher then expected. But who know what evil critters the future might bring.

I don't really have a problem without blind fight i must say.
doable to fit it in tough.

Blind fight for lightning reflex and legendary reflex switched to epic skill intimidate might have nice results.

will post revised strat if i get some more comments.

[bunnyman]

You could consider dropping 2 str and 2 cha and making your dex 15. Then drop lightning, legendary reflexes and terrifying rage for two-weapon fighting, ambidexterity, and improved two-weapon fighting. All in all you'd end up with 1 less damage, 3 more ab, 1 more attack, and still good enough saves.

Also, 36 barb and 2 pally might be better to do as you just lose 1 regen in rage and gain immunity to fear and a smite evil (for a hard to hit guy I guess... as it would only add 2 divine damage but 9-10 ab)

[stijnelijn]

The lady wears the weapon as a 1 handed. So no AB loss. If i had to take these two-weapon feats i don't want i would have taken something like a greatsword.

[bunnyman]

Double weapons act as 2 weapons, so I think they get ab loss without them. Also, large sized creatures can only hold 1 large weapon in a hand (1 large in one, 1 medium in the other is the largest combonation you could do) so you couldn't hold 2 greatswords.

[stijnelijn]

Guess i did not mention it in the strat:
Plan is to wear a doubleweapon 1 handed and in the other hand will be a highly needed shield. When i am so smart to unequip my shield my ab will actually drop.

[kaldair]

I'd be real tempted to work 2 Pally in for the fear immune. Not sure if I'd go 2BG/2Pally or 1BG/2Pally - what do you think?

Kaldair

[tyranlthixis]

A few things.

You're going for minimizing your constitution. The problem is you're AC is going to be below average and you're going to get hit (alot). Surviving requires lots of hit points. Skimping on Con and getting your rage feats at the last moment is elegant in a way, but its a sure fire way of getting yourself seriously killed.

You're missing UMD. Which means no black blades, no sanctuary, etc. You'd be wise to change the paladin to bard or rogue and diversify your skills a little. Evasion never hurt either.

You're also missing a tumble dump at level 40. This means you're down 2 AC at level 60. You're going to die alot with 116 base AC and worst of all its going to be a hard grind all the way to level 60.

In addition you don't need insane saves to do well. You fail on a 1 even if you're saves are all 90's. The highest DC I've recorded is around 58. The highest save penalty you're going to encounter pre demi is -5 in Nessus. Which means if you're only interested in failing on 1's in every possible situation (rare as those situations may be) you should be shooting for around 63 (at the most). DC 55 is what you'll typically rolling against, so generally a save of 60 is more than enough for any area of the game.

Tyran

[stijnelijn]

1 BG level gives more or less nothing, the saves bonus pops up at lvl 2 for them. Fear immune is quite easy to attain on items. I preferred a extra barb lvl. But each his won choice. 2 paladin levels is also perfectly fine. Costs 1 damage and 1 regen for fear immunity.

Not sure where she is gonna die a lot when leveling up to 60, the only time she had trouble fighting ever was against 5 living sands at once. You roll a 1 at some point indeed. Played all non-hell runs with relative ease, that i post the strat here is because i know from experience its working really fine, that there are only a few barbs around and that some people might like to try it. Commenting: `your gonna die a lot` is a little insulting to the strat then. But will scare em away nicely if that was the plan.

Much like a DD the barbarian doesn,t get much psychical damage. Strength instead of con is fewer hp for more damage immunity, damage and attack. If one wants more hp, no problem, the strength is entirely bonus, so can be swapped to con at will. I personally would not advise it tough. Its a damage tank, not a tin can. I cannot call 1400 hp at lvl 60 bad anyways.

Saves ain't a bad thing. 2 ac versus 10 to all saves. Rogue is a option, not necessary wise, and goes against the idea of the strat. The point is that you wanna have plenty of saves for nearly any current or future circumstance. Using items without saves? no problem! If i thought +10 saves was enough i would have taken 1 paladin lvl and 59 barb levels. I like pure chars.

Thanks for the comments tough, ill be revising the strat a bit so it includes blind fight. And i think i add epic skill focus intimidate for the terrifying raging fun factor. The fear DC can become quite high with the right equipment. Ill also add the classes suggestions like 2 paladin levels and the option to take rogue instead of blackguard. And I guess a few suggestions for gear are needed.

[FunkySwerve]

stijnelijn said:

Not sure where she is gonna die a lot when leveling up to 60, the only time she had trouble fighting ever was against 5 living sands at once. You roll a 1 at some point indeed. Played all non-hell runs with relative ease, that i post the strat here is because i know from experience its working really fine, that there are only a few barbs around and that some people might like to try it. Commenting: `your gonna die a lot` is a little insulting to the strat then. But will scare em away nicely if that was the plan.

You should weigh Ty's remarks more carefully. He isn't insulting your 'strat', he's giving you some pretty spot-on advice. Saying that a build plays well in all non-hells areas is not saying much. If you are making a non-hells character for some reason, like lootgathering, you should definitely alert people to that in the build, because many people come to the builds forum looking for hells-viable builds. Otherwise, you might want to listen to Ty, as there's simply no reason to boost your saves that high, and you really could benefit from a different splash, and should really probably add more con. He knows these things from trial and error, not speculation.

The Hells are as hard as it's likely to ever get, and while we may add a few high dc reflex saves here and there to put some oomph back into IE, anything more than that would make areas unplayable for the vast majority of builds. Rather than disabling cheese build options like sorc/pally and pally/bg, we designed the server to mitigate their effects, by making saves that high completely unnecessary. In any event, Ty is right to warn against this, and might save someone considerable wasted effort in doing so, if they come looking for a hells-ready character. Of course, with regard to just you, it's your build, and you have every right to learn the hard way if that's your preference.

Funky

[stijnelijn]

As i said i am gonna make some adaptations to the strat.

Strange tough when someone tells me that it will be hard going to level 60 while i had no problem at all reaching it without leeching it.

Reflex and will saves will be just above 60, i hope that can go without your disapproval. Too high saves are more of a luxury problem then a real problem i would say.

[Raj]

I really reccomend you to read this about necessary saves

highergroundpoa.proboards3.com/index.cgi?board=Tavern&action=display&n=1&thread=3623

[FunkySwerve]

No need to get snarky. Ty and I are just giving you some information to help tweak your build, information that you couldn't possibly have without having been to the hells. Seems you aren't interested, though, so I won't force any more on you.
Funky