Savage Barbarian: Archetype Rework

"All the gods, they cannot sever us. If I were dead and you were still fighting for life, I'd come back from the darkness. Back from the pit of Hell to fight at your side."



I never do this. I hate doing this. You know I can't stand armchair game balancing and lazy "experts" coming up with endless house rules.

But.

The Savage Barbarian archetype genuinely pisses me off. At low levels you're massively under the AC values of a non-archetyped Barbarian or even a regular party, but at higher levels you're six or more points over. It makes no sense, and the strange, scaling design of this archetype feels either slapped together lazily or worse, broken because of "conservative design" nonsense rules. I can very easily imagine an internal rule floating around of "No alternate stats to AC".

On one hand you'd say "Stat to AC" is abusable. You'd just take Monk and Barbarian together somehow and add two stats to AC. On the other hand, I can already do worse with the rules as written. I just need to build a former monk, or one with the Aasimar trait Enlightened Warrior to get around the Barbarian alignment restriction. One level of monk and nineteen levels of Barbarian later, and I'm adding Dex, Wisdom, and a whopping eight more points to my AC before we talk about armor bonuses. No, my version's actually going to be less abusable because I'm not fucking stupid.

Please keep in mind this is not a new Archetype and shouldn't be used concurrently with the original Savage Barbarian. It is also designed with Unchained Barbarian in mind, which doesn't raise his CON value when he rages. If you're using this with the old Barbarian, you want to include a note that his AC doesn't go up with the bonus from rage. Also note that Naked Courage would replace Trap Sense, as Danger Sense is an intended parallel to that ability.

That's probably enough Ado.

Savage Barbarian

Natural Toughness: At 1st level, the savage barbarian adds his CON bonus to his AC when unarmored and unencumbered. These bonuses apply to AC even against touch attacks or when the Barbarian is flat-footed. He loses this bonus when he is immobilized or helpless, when he wears any armor, or when he carries a medium or heavy load. This ability is not compatible with a monk's AC bonus or similar abilities.

The Savage Barbarian is not proficient with any armor. He remains proficient with shields.

This ability alters the Savage Barbarian's proficiencies and replaces Damage Reduction.


Naked Courage: At 3rd level, the Savage Barbarian gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC and a +1 morale bonus on saving throws against fear when wearing no armor. Shields are allowed. This bonus increases by +1 for every six levels after 3rd, to a maximum of +3 at level 19.

This ability replaces Danger Sense.


Rage Powers: The following rage powers complement the Savage Barbarian Archetype: Guarded Stance, Flesh Wound, Superstition, Internal Fortitude, and Reflexive Dodge.



So there we have it. Here's my standard list of justifications. First is that losing their damage reduction is pretty big, so it's okay that Naked Courage is a little better than you'd expect out of a "trap sense replacer" ability. Adding a stat to AC instead of a flat scaling value of natural armor means we "front load" some of the AC bonus, enough that the Barbarian doesn't feel like he's gimped vs. the guys in armor. The standard Savage Barbarian ruins character fantasy by having the Barbarian needing to wear armor until his abilities scale up enough to take it off.

CON to AC will potentially scale better than the original version. A Barbarian who starts with an 18 and a CON bonus race will end a game with a CON of 36 if he works toward it. That's a CON of 20, 5 points from leveling, 5 points from a stat book or wishes, and 6 from a CON item. That's a total of +13 to AC vs. the +5 they get from the original version.

But so can Monk, and nobody complains. It's not that Unchained Monk sucks or is low damage, either. It's not mitigated by their weapon problems. No, it works out because a maximum potential isn't the only thing that matters when you're trying to balance something. They're only going to have so many stat points, and so much money. Even in my stat-heavy game proposals, they're still making a lot of tight decisions on where to put things. They're probably going to make a choice between a STR and a CON race, something Monk doesn't even need to do: There are plenty of races that give DEX/WIS and even a few that give STR/WIS.

It'll probably work out just like Monk does is my point, seeing as how it's modeled on Monk. Someone who centers their build around CON and AC will be giving up expertise somewhere else. Potential watch-points is their ability to use a shield, which the monk can't do.