Halfling Barbarian (32 point Build) - Challenge

[Tangleweed]

* Slighlty peeved as this is the second time I wright this (first didn't work) *

The concept:

Imagine a small halfling with a huge great axe who can sneak, climb up somewhere hide and then at the opportune moment fly into an uncontrollable rage smashing and killing everything with a manic grin on its face (and no brain) - this sounds fun to me and I want one but not sure how, this is where you come in:

basically looking for optimum damage with some sneaking and not too squishy could be a potential prankster so bluffing may be an idea...

current idea for original stats would be

str 16
con 16
dex 16
wis 8
int 8
cha 8

Wearing light/ hide armour and having good reflex and dodge for ac

skills may be hide, jump, sneak, tumble, balance, etc

rather not use tomes at all!

Looking for feats that compliment this acompaniement preferable no useless ones so focussing on dex based ac and as much damage as physically possible. could multiclass a bit rogue or fighter if any feats would help..

Any ideas look forward to hearing them :P - want to see best you can come up with lol

[Gnorbert]

Well.. immediately I think of a rogue 2/ barb 18 for evasion.

However, with an 8 Int you will get 28 skill points at first level of rogue (7 maxed skills), 3 skill points per barb level, and 7 skill points on the second rogue level assuming you don't eat a +2 int tome. Hide and move silently are cross class for the barb so they will be tough to keep up. At first level you might max hide, move silently, balance, tumble, Jump, UMD, Spot. This ignores all trap skills and frankly... just forget about traps.

So in order to accomplish what you want I'd think that the character would need to be more Rogue than Barbarian. Perhaps instead a sort of 2 rogue/6 ranger/ 12 barbarian kind of build. Ranger levels bring you more skill points for sneakiness and tempest enhancements which would only really benefit you in TWF though you would get the first two feats for free in the TWF chain. You'd get some rudimentary spell ability to buff yourself before you rage.

Could be fun.

[AylinIsAwesome]

Frankly, I don't think it's a good idea.

Barbarians are all about Strength, so it'll be hard to overcome the racial -2.

Perhaps a Bardbarian build would be better suited to this? You'd have more skill points and a lot of songs to improved group DPS.

[Freeman]

Yeah, Strength is really an issue, since a 56 will be gimped, but a 58 is amazing

Seriously, the strength won't be an issue. You'll have the same attack bonus, and the Halfling enhancements can actually give you more damage than you lose from Strength through sneak attacks. While you'll likely have aggro most of the time at lower levels, at higher levels, there will be plenty of times in raids where someone else will have aggro, bumping up your damage. I would actually look at going with TWF on a Halfling, since you can get the Dex up so cheaply. Of course, nothing's cooler than a Halfling swinging a great axe Once lesser Reincarnation is available, I'm planning on switching my Halfling barb to TWF. He's been a blast to play, but I want to swap out the two fighter levels I took back when the cap was 16.

[Samadhi]

As Gnobert said, 18/2 Barb/Rogue seems like the best way to do this. Since you mentioned greataxes (as opposed to TWF) then I don't see as much benefit from the high dex vs. high int for more skill points - but both are viable options; neither will break the build.

I highly disagree that the -2 str from halfy is going to break your barbarian as a later poster implied. When you start breaking 50 str, the -1 to damage is going to be such a small percentage of your overall damage that you will be fine. You can also put some AP into SA enhancements for extra damage vs. autocrit mobs or MT/intimitank situations; although AP is tight on a barbarian as well.

I would not bother with bluff or "dex based AC" whatever that is meant to imply; either way both are going to turn a pretty typical barbarian into an odd and only somewhat viable option. Feats I would go PA, THF, Toughness, Cleave (prereq for frenzied), Imp Crit Slash, ITHF, GTHF

[Docta_PoPo]

Sam haven't you learned your lesson about helping people with their builds? You have no idea what your talking about your obviously have never played a halfling barb... Just like you dont know anything about bards... All your doing at this point is leading people your narrow minded path.

But onto some real advice. 18/2 rogue would give you the best bet for what your wanting to do, sneak potential umd and a mere 1 point into open lock would make it possible to open most doors in game. Also it would give you attack speed boosts. Thought by your fantasy you would like being able to sneak then rage then hit one more button to attack at a much higher rate and shread a group of alerted mobs.


P.S. Anyone who thought the first part of my post was legit should assasinate yourself.

[AylinIsAwesome]

Yeah, Strength is really an issue, since a 56 will be gimped, but a 58 is amazing

I highly disagree that the -2 str from halfy is going to break your barbarian as a later poster implied. When you start breaking 50 str, the -1 to damage is going to be such a small percentage of your overall damage that you will be fine. You can also put some AP into SA enhancements for extra damage vs. autocrit mobs or MT/intimitank situations; although AP is tight on a barbarian as well.

Perhaps I should have said it as, "Barbarians are based on STR, so it doesn't make sense to me to choose a race with a -2 to the stat".

Will it break it? No. As Samadhi said, you can get Sneak Attack damage from being a Halfling. Though I'm not sure how much that would help you since you're likely to have aggro a lot, and fortification is an issue. Plus as he said, you're tight on APs.

Though the "marginal" loss of damage I look at the same way I look at Rapiers with racial enhancements vs. Khopeshes: Sure, the Rapier is only, on average, a single point of damage behind Khopeshes...but you still see a lot of toons using Khopeshes, especially if they want to maximize their DPS.

[Rusty_Can]

Perhaps I should have said it as, "Barbarians are based on STR, so it doesn't make sense to me to choose a race with a -2 to the stat".

*Off topic*

Bbbbbut .... what about my WF cleric?

Furthermore, be quiet! Don't let all those gimped WF sorcerers hear you ....

[geoffhanna]

This build is so much fun to play!

[AylinIsAwesome]

*Off topic*

Bbbbbut .... what about my WF cleric?

Furthermore, be quiet! Don't let all those gimped WF sorcerers hear you ....

Those examples ignore the other things Warforged bring to those classes. Especially true if you don't offensively cast on your Warforged Cleric, since WIS would only really just affect your SP pool then. Especially true if you're a battle cleric who uses Bladesworn Transformation. For the Sorcerers, Warforged bring the ability to self-heal at the cost of one point on their DC (note: not damage). Considering the huge number of spells Arcanes get that doesn't have a save...two of which is Energy Drain and Enervation, so they can fix the problem of the mobs saving. Additionally, having a +2 CON really helps out on the squishy class. Also that ignores the huge benefit almost every build gets from Warforged Immunities.

Halflings on the other hand bring Barbarians...sneak attack, +1 to AC (useless here) and +1 to saves. In order to get max Halfling Sneak Attack damage, you need to dump 20 APs into it. For a situational +8 to damage (where fortification and the mob deciding it would like to smack you instead would negate it). Alternatively, Dwarves could bring a static +3 damage opposed to the Halfling (+1 from having no STR penalty, +2 from Dwarf Axe Damage) and up to +3 to attack (again, no STR penalty and +2 from Dwarf Axe Attack) that will help a lot in epic. Warforged would bring their amazing immunities (Hold Person anyone?) and would have +4 static damage as opposed to the Halfling (no STR penalty, +3 from WF Power Attack, though at the cost of -3 to-hit). The Dwarf would spend 6 APs for the damage (and 6 more for the Axe Attack if they felt it was necessary) and the WF would spend 3 on WF PA.

Besides flavour reasons, there's no reason to build a Halfling Barbarian, and even then there's a lot of reasons to be a different race.

[Rusty_Can]

Those examples ignore *snip*

Oh sense of humour, where art thou? :P

Besides flavour reasons, there's no reason to build a Halfling Barbarian, and even then there's a lot of reasons to be a different race.

Bbbut, just for one moment, let's imagine a rabid halfling lass swinging madly her greataxe at Harretrikos's kneecaps!

Getting back on topic, I agree, halfling is not the best possible choice; nevertheless, it wouldn't cripple the character .....

[AylinIsAwesome]

Oh sense of humour, where art thou? :P

Wait...humour? What's that? o_O

[tihocan]

Just a question: can you sneak while raging? At higher level a barbarian is pretty much always raging (because DPS without rage sucks). If your build concept is to be sneaking around and jumping on your enemies, it's not going to work too well if sneak and rage are exclusive (I don't know if they are, it just seems weird to me to think about someone raging and at the same time being cautious and sneaky).

[Rusty_Can]

Just a question: can you sneak while raging?

Afaik, nop.

[Tangleweed]

It worries me how many replies have been made to this topic already, but yet soo happy

I am willing to sacrifice an element of my dream to two weapon fighting as I was inspired by the River Tam build, everyone knows there is nothing more dangerous or scary than a short female.. they know where to hit.

To thoes who think it is a stupid build, meh. I have 4 character slots, 1 of them is a warforged (32 point) ultimate tank, 1 will be a (32) warforged or dwarven barbarian and I may make a specialist (28) drow paladin (undead bane) - dual weilding sunblades :P

But this is my fun to play comical character which shows my humour (if the names I have used for the previous toons havn't proved that already):

Splatum
Thwunk
Epich Flail

So trying to focus more on a damage maxing (potentially dual weilding) 'mabye female*' halfling with 'some sneak' - if u have low hp/ ac that can be essential sometimes and nice raging ability, some of you have deffinetly given me some food for thought though. My computer will be fixed on monday so should be some epic halfling barb coming into Sarlona in the near future... but before I do any further ideas..

*its like racing stripes you know it wont actually make it faster or more dangerous but its still awesome :P