Hello, and welcome to the second guide that I’ve made for the Pathfinder RPG. I’ve decided to try my hand at a guide to the Barbarian, as I strongly feel it’s the best mundane class in Pathfinder. It has the best hit dice, incredible mobility, and the ability to lay down more damage against a wider range of foes than ANYONE else could ever hope to accomplish. Barbarians are brutal, beautiful, and a truly the kings of melee above all others. And this guide is meant to help everyone out there to play the best damn war machine that they can manage. There’s also a discussion page on Paizo.com, so please feel free to give your input. If you’ve found my guides helpful and would like to support them, feel freed to donate if you want to help support me.

I know that a lot of you probably assume that the Barbarian is a very straightforward class, and in a lot of ways, it is. But it also has a lot of options to explore that are unique to it, mostly because of its Rage Powers. These awesome specialty set of powers set it apart from the Fighter’s feats (ANYONE can take a good feat, and none of the Fighter’s exclusive feats are really worth taking anyways), and Rage itself gives you a nice power boost when you need it. Even without raging, you’re still a very formidable warrior with a pretty nice skill list and a rather decent amount of skill points (You’re everything the Fighter wants to be) which gives you something to do outside of combat.

This guide is intended to help you play the class at the power level of your game, and as such, the ratings system is meant to imply that some options are obviously more powerful than others, and you should take your group into account while planning your character. Play at the level your group is comfortable at.

Abilities

Strength This is your attack stat 90% of the time, this needs to be as HIGH as you can get it. Your role in combat is brutal, savage, and without mercy. And this is how you break faces.

Constitution You WILL take hits, it’s your job. There’s no way to stop it, and this will help you soak them up. While it fuels your rage, it’s not going to massively important after the first few levels, so this isn’t as important as making sure you can hit your opponents reliably.

Dexterity This is mostly for fueling your Combat Reflexes, but even aside from that, the AC and Reflex boost are important to you, so try to keep agile, as pouncers need good initiative.

Intelligence Just try to keep this out of the negatives, because 4 skill points a level is what makes you better than the Fighter…well that, and being a better fighter than him.

Wisdom Another thing to keep positive, Will saves are brutal, and you need to make sure you’re not losing out to some finger wiggler who wants to make you a meat puppet.

Charisma Only useful for intimidators and Eldritch Heritage. You’re not here to make friends.

Favored Class Bonus

There’s barely any reason to take this in your skills, as you don’t really need a lot of them. HP is what’s in demand for a Barbarian, so make sure to keep stock of it. This is only true if you don’t have access to the Human/Tengu favored class bonus to boost your Superstition bonus. Boosting your saves into the stratosphere is far more important than more HP, since keeping yourself from failing saves will keep you in the fight longer.

Roles

A Barbarian's role is basically how he plans on laying down damage in a huge way, and probably the biggest determining factor of that is what they do to do it. While there's a lot of variation in just HOW they will do this, it mostly boils down to a few main styles of attack. The following roles are your main form of attack, but are by no means the only ones possible. Experiment to see if you can find your own particular style of brutality..

Note that while you can wield a shield if you pick up a feat, AC will rarely ever be your best defense. Out of any character, a good offense is your best defense is your motto. Shields and bashing aren’t really your thing, as you don’t have the feats to funnel into it.

Devastator Two Handed

Pros The classic two hander, this is whom you think of when you think of Barbarians. This is the character that comes in and destroys with a 1 1/2 strength bonus return and the best Power Attack trade rate possible. Either hefting a huge hunk of steel or a polearm, this terrifying figure swaths his way across the battlefield in a red haze. The biggest decision you have to make here is if you’re going to go for a reach weapon or not, as while reach can help you be a strong controller of the battle field, for the most part it will keep you from using one of the Barbarian’s best tricks against anything medium or smaller, Come and Get Me.

Cons A hyper offensive focus is almost always good, but this build tends to skimp on its AC to the point of making it a non factor. Be prepared to be patched up after just about every encounter, as you'll be taking some pretty serious lumps. And be sure to carry a backup weapon of some kind, as losing your main sucks when you’re only specializing in one.

Savage Natural Weapons

Pros Some Barbarians like to get their hands dirty, and making a natural attack based warrior is very possible. With the beast totem, you already have claws, meaning you really only need a bite attack before you're starting the game with 3 natural attacks at once. Probably the most front loaded of the Barbarians, this style rains down pain in large supply with a large amount of attacks, meaning that every bonus and penalty to your attacks will be that much more important. I believe this build benefits the most from pounce, as you’ll always be at 3+ attacks, instead of needing to work up to it like other builds, and they’re all at your highest BAB.

Cons Natural attacks are infamously difficult to enhance, meaning you'll be paying a bit more to hulk out. Also you'll need to invest resources in getting those natural attack, and Rage claws aren't always going to be around, so a secondary weapon is always a must. DR will also be an issue for you for longer than other characters due to the cost of AOMF as well.

Blender Two Weapon Fighting

Pros There’s quite a few advantages to going TWF over natural attacking. One is weapons with way better crit ranges, as well as variable materials so DR is less of an issue. Your Rage is basically offsetting the penalties for dual wielding in the first place, so you can enjoy your full BAB the way God intended, by using it to go berserk through whatever thought it was a good idea to make you angry. With this, pounce is still a very effective tool, and by the end of the game, you’ll be getting in more attacks than anyone else.

Cons Not only is this style expensive, it’s quite feat intensive too, meaning you’ll have less to play with for other things. This is also probably the style that starts the slowest, so you’ll need to make sure your game is either starting off higher (Lv 6+) or going to last before investing in TWF. The hit in accuracy also hurts your bottom line, so keep that to hit bonus high.

Raining Death Archery

Pros Less a style and more a requirement, I feel a lot of people don’t realize that Barbarians can ever USE bows. There’s sadly going to be moments where you can’t charge the dragon with 4 feet of steel. For these times, you’ll need a bow. Considering you’re proficient with them, there’s no reason why not to pick up a long bow and go crazy with it. It will take some interesting choices to really make this style come on line though. Also with Rage you make a decent switch hitter, so switching off from a bow to a greatsword really doesn’t hinder you.

Cons Say goodbye to ALL of your feats, as you HAVE to dedicate to this style or else you’re going to be much worse than another class doing the same thing, which is something you want to avoid. This will also hold you back from using some of your better tricks (Spell Sunder), but you can still pull off CAGM with Snap Shot.

Sub Roles

Invincible

Pros Not only do you have a huge hit die, but you also get DR against EVERYTHING. But with a bit of work, we can change that rather small and negligible amount to a very powerful level of protection with both Stalwart and Improved Stalwart. With that D12 hit die, it’s going to take an army to bring you down. It’s the best sub role to abuse CAGM as well.

Cons This path does generally forsake a bit of offense to become a tank, so you’ll have to hold back a bit on your kill switch. It’s also a slightly feat intensive path if you follow it through, so make sure you’re prepared.

Suggested Archetype Invulnerable Rager

Beastmaster

Pros You’d be shocked at how easy it is for you to get a battle ready pet for combat, and having a second character there to work with you is a great way to increase your damage output. Having the chance to either get a loyal steed to RAGELANCEPOUNCE with, or an in battle flanking buddy is really hard to turn down, especially when a 2x wild thing combo can pulp most enemies you’ll face

Cons Most of the archetypes that let you do this take away a decent amount of your class features, which really changes how you play the character. Add to that the cost of the rage powers you can use to increase your animal companion’s power, and you become less of a Barbarian and more of an angry Ranger.

Suggested Archetype Mounted Fury (Mount), Mad Dog (Other)

Mage Killer

Pros While nothing is a perfect anti magic weapon, Barbarians are as close as you’re going to get for a mundane character. These hardy warriors seem to hate magic with a passion that I wish to one day feel, and everything about them radiates that rage of book learning finger wiggling. Not only can you hit mages harder, but you make it harder to be affected by anything they do, no matter what it is.

Cons Literally the only con of this style of play is the investment into it. There is no reason why not to pick up all the magic murder tools you can, since as I’ve stated, eventually EVERYTHING will be magic somehow. Please, consider Mage Killer one of your rights as a Barbarian, just like being stronger than everyone that you’ll ever meet, as well as infinitely more attractive too. And more articulate. And more well liked. And just awesome.

Suggested Archetype Superstitious

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3. Races, Class Abilities, and Skills

These are the most basic decisions you’ll be making about your character, as well as a large part of your roleplaying experience. There’s a large variety of different creatures you can play, and not all of them are worth having heft a massive sledgehammer and charge into combat with little to no regard for their life. But there’s always a choice that’ll make your ideal blood rager a reality, no matter how you want to bring that innate fury to life.

Races

Always a good place to start, not every race is able to wreck up the world with the same style as the others, and some are a lot better about it than most. Hopefully you’ll pick the one that works best for you, as you want to make sure you’re the best mad murder monster you can be.

Core

Dwarves Bonuses to two nice stats as well as a penalty to a dump stat make these little ruffians great Barbarians. Solid racial abilities are added to the package, and they even have a favored class bonus that lets you Rage even longer. Let loose and have a brew with these wreckers!

Elves A penalty to Con? Big warning right there. Nothing these tree lovers do make them suited to heft an axe with the tribe, most of their racial traits don’t really help, although at least the bonus to intelligence helps you qualify for Combat Expertise.

Gnome Being small and weak hurts, but the Con bonus shows me they have a warrior’s spirit. They also have an arcane SLA to help power Arcane Strike, but that’s about all they’ve got going for them. Still I’d rather shave a brew with them than some darn dirty elf…

Half-Elf Got a bit tougher when ya got some human in ya, did ya boy? A bonus anywhere as well as a skill focus you could trade out for either a free Iron Will or Exotic Weapon Proficiency is pretty handy, making these guys quite adept at wielding the steel.

Half-Orc Still got the +2 wherever you want it, and seeing in the dark is handy as well. Probably gonna wanna be a Shaman’s Apprentice too, just for Endurance, possibly with a Sacred Tattoo as well. Taking the human Favored Class bonus just finishes off the package. Throw in all the specific to race feats and abilities these guys get, and they’re perfect.

Human You’da thought these guys made violence the way they carry on. The same +2 to anything, and a bonus feat with some skills to make sure you can see right. But the favored class bonus to buff Superstition makes you hard to lock down with any of that book magic they fear so much. Really, just barely not Purple for everything they give.

Halfling Better keep these little guys away from the weapons, they might get hurt. You’re getting a penalty to strength, small size, and nothing worth talking about to show for it. Just teach ‘em how to use a dagger and hope they get the message.

Featured

Aasamir Angel or Archon blooded only, these goodly folk have some pretty useful racial traits, although not a lot that helps you be a better barbarian. Still, a lot of useful things don’t stop being useful, and eventually you could get wings, so try it out.

Catfolk No advantages here aside from being soft and cuddly, the racial adjustments aren’t giving you anything you need. And the best thing you could want, claws, are probably a moot point. Keep Felix out of the fray.

Dhampir Nosferatu only, losing Con still hurts a lot. Doom as an SLA is okay and making someone shaken is rarely a bad thing, but the rest of the package doesn’t validate your attempt to play Blade.

Drow Elves seem to suck at being Barbarians above and below ground. The racial adjustments are just terrible, and the racial traits aren’t doing anything you care about. Just avoid pointy ears, seriously.

Elemental Races that aren’t Oread No one cares about your elemental resistances.

Fetchling Another fast agile race…just what we don’t want. While Shadow Blending is good if you can reliably set up darkness, the rest of the package is just seriously lacking in face smashing potential. Don’t be a gothic Barbarian, those are so last year.

Goblin Small, weak, and fast do not make for a good Barbarian. Small size is the nail in the coffin, so unless you’re doing some weird theme character, make sure you kill goblins, not play as them.

Hobgoblin So this is what it looks like when a Goblin hits the gym, huh? Nice racial adjustments for most of what you’re doing, and if you want to be scary, you can trade Sneaky for Fearsome to become terrifying.

Kobolds Hahahahaha!! Oh wait, you were serious? Let me laugh harder. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Orc See that +4 to Strength? That’s what lets you know you’re going to be a good Barbarian. Just like Dwarves, they can add to their rage rounds as well, and have decent enough racial traits to make them a solid wrecking ball. Adding in all their race specific feats and you’ve got one hell of a Barbarian for any situation.

Oread Now here’s a solid choice for your Barbarian with great racial adjustments. The base racial traits are all rather weak though, so feel free to swap out some until you’re satisfied

Ratfolk If you wanted to be a rat, you should have played a ninja. I’m sure you could find 4 mutated turtles to form a party with if you tried hard enough.

Tengu The stat adjustments are pretty painful since it’s hitting one of your priority stats, but getting the chance of having 3 natural attacks at first level barely pulls this out of the muck. Well that, and it has the same favored class bonus as Humans, as that’s one hell of a boost.

Tiefling Devil and Oni rule the roost here, either playing to a different strength of this class. Picking up a tail will rarely ever be a bad thing, and the elemental resistances of the class are golden. Most options here are completely solid, especially picking up a decent bite attack and some extra natural armor (and Tiefling variant option #16.)

Uncommon and Other Races

Duergar Basically super Dwarves (but a bit less likable), the spell like abilities you’re picking up are of great importance to you, better dark vision is amazing, I’d probably pick this over a dwarf every time if I could. Watch out though, as you could be sporting a 3 Charisma.

Gnoll If you’re looking for a Lizardfolk without the natural attacks or the swimming, but you like darkvision, here you go. Still great stat adjustments for Barbarians, just a little creepier.

Lizardfolk Okay, their stat adjustments are PERFECT. They come with a hefty +2 to natural armor, and they get a bite with two claws. There’s nothing you want to do that these beast don’t do as a Barbarian. Oh, and they can swim too.

Strix Flying is amazing, and the stat adjustments don’t hurt you at all. I’ll admit I’m only rating this so high because it can fly, but seriously, what more do you need? They go down quite a bit if you start at a level where flight isn’t hard to obtain, as flying is their main thing.

Skinwalkers Well damn, these are just...damn. Variable racials make this just...why would you even do that? Why? Special shout out go Witchwolf (Magic Fang 1/day, +2 to all saves, and good racials), Nightskulk (Distraction which is based on your constitution score but not great racials), and their god, the RAGEBRED (near perfect racials, a gore or two hooves, both of which can be obtained with a feat, giving you a possible bite/gore/clawx2/hoofx2 natural attack routine) Most of the stuff from this book makes me wonder if they wanted you to play Barbarians who AREN’T skinwalkers, as these creatures are just head and shoulders above most others to accomplish that goal

Class Abilities

Rage This is your keynote feature, and the main reason you’re a Barbarian.There’s no way to really get rid of this, but you can delay it or alter it a bit. But this is what makes sure you can use your rage powers, and it gives you a massive edge in combat over just about everyone else, since you can always use it. Make sure you manage it well, as during the early days of your career you risk running out, and being out of rage and fatigued in combat is a terrible situation to be in. Also make sure you watch your health, as slipping out of rage can be fatal

Fast Movement Most of you are going to be in medium armor, which is going to slow you down a bit, so the speed increase is pretty useful. This really means more before you get multiple attacks or after you get pounce, but if you can get something better from this, don’t worry about swapping it out, as eventually you’ll probably be flying at 60 ft from magic.

Rage Powers Probably the most modular of your abilities, these are what are defining your class features and really your path as a warrior of rage to begin with. Rage Powers are your most import ability by far. But be sure to choose wisely here, as you have many options to really tone your beast, and you want to pick the most dangerous ones to take into the fray.

Uncanny Dodge While you’re not going to have a huge dex most likely, this is keeping you from getting sneak attacked, and always ready to act. There are a lot of things you can exchange it for, but you’d also do well to keep this ability, since it’s helpful to always be ready.

Trap Sense Wow, this is really a boring ability. I can’t really ever see this being worthwhile more than a few times in a campaign, so you need to drop this as soon as possible. It’s easy trade fodder for archetypes.

Improved Uncanny Dodge This is considerably less useful, as it’s only keeping opponents from flanking you. While the +2 opponents would get against you is decent, rogues really aren’t enough of an issue to bother worrying about. It’s still a decent class feature, but it’s still a candidate for being swapped out.

Damage Reduction For the most part this is a nice boost to your survivability, if a bit slow to come online. While you can build around this, there is one archetype that really makes it worthwhile, that being Invulnerable Rager, which really amps up your DR. The rate it grows is pretty sad without this archetype, so without Stalwart it’s not worth building around.

Greater Rage The bonus here isn’t huge at all, but that’s not the point. Since you’re always going to be raging by this point, any boost to your Rage is openly appreciated. It’s a nice power boost though.

Indomitable Will Eh, this is a pretty weak ability for this level. Sure, anything boosting your will save is one hell of a boost, but the tight focus on only enchantment effects is pretty limiting. Feel free to trade this away for something more valuable if you can.

Tireless Rage This is amazing; this gives you FREE Rage cycling, which is easily the most important job that your abilities give you. Still, by the time you get this you probably already have another way to Rage Cycle.

Mighty Rage This is a pretty lame capstone compared to what everyone else got. Again, it’s helping your bottom line, but with what everyone else gets, this is a little disappointing for hitting level 20.

Skills

Class Skills

Acrobatics You’re a pretty physical class, and being able to maneuver around the battlefield can be pretty useful. You’re probably not the most dexterous warrior in the fight, but you should make sure you can manage yourself well enough for when it comes up.

Climb This goes out of style after about 5 levels, since climbing is a pretty mundane thing to be good at. Maybe throw a few ranks in here and pack a knotted rope, but the checks for this will never be difficult enough for you to really need to focus in this.

Craft You won’t have a great intelligence, and you can’t really abuse this, but there’s some decent things you can make with this, so don’t feel bad if you want to invest.

Handle Animal It’s entirely possible for you to have an animal companion, and being able to make sure they’re happy is a solid use of skill points. This is less useful if you’re not bringing your own animal to the fight though.

Intimidate Really the only social skill you’re able to use at first, you’re a pretty scary beast before taking anything into account. Frightening isn’t a great way to do things, but it does provide a debuff in combat which gives you something else to do.

Knowledge (nature) There should be someone else who can do this, it’s not really your forte.

Perception Probably the most rolled skill in the game, you’re lucky enough to have this as a class skill, so make good use of it and max the hell out of it.

Ride I’d consider this more important than Handle Animal myself, as it can save both you and your mounts life.

Survival This is not a skill that ages well, as eventually magic will take care of your survival needs. But if you’re in a low magic setting, you could invest into this a bit more.

Swim Another mundane skill that’s slowly subsumed by magic, this gets a slight bump over climb in that it’s more useful to have in a pinch, but both don’t have a huge life span.

Non Class Skills

Social Skills (Bluff, Diplomacy) You have skill points, but your charisma is probably in the garbage, so you can’t really work these as well as you’d want. Still, they’re strong skills.

Sense Motive This is a bit better than your social skills, as you’re not taking a penalty to it, and having a character who knows what’s going on around you could make you a silent arbiter of dangerous situations, always aware of when danger is around.

Sleight of Hand You can manage a decent dexterity score, and you have the potential to be pretty sneaky if you want, especially if you burn a trait on it.

Stealth Now this is a pretty fun skill, and again you have a decent dexterity. Plus the idea of a guy sneaking up to you before breaking your skull open is pretty amazing. Consider this for out of combat utility as well, as this is the main skill I’d consider burning a trait on.

Use Magic Device The hard hit to your Charisma is really a detriment to your ability to use this, but this is such a versatile skill that it’s hard to say no. It’s another skill that is worth burning a trait on.

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4. Rage Powers

Rage Powers are a unique set of powers exclusive to Barbarian, and help define your role in combat. A good rule of thumb is to avoid taking abilities that don’t give you new capabilities, but instead give you something new to do in battle. Your powers eventually border on the supernatural, turning you from a mere mortal into an avatar of death. Make sure you keep an eye on how often you can use your powers though, and learn the joys of Rage Cycling.

Barbarian Totems and You

One of the most important (and obvious) decisions you generally make is WHICH totem to use, if you plan on using any at all. Most of you are going to choose Beast Totem, as it eventually leads to pounce. And pounce is incredibly vital to most damage builds. But honestly as much as I talk up pounce, you don’t NEED it. Also for you more defensive players who love your DR, the Dragon Totem is a very nice way to buff it even more to quite competitive levels. Even without either though, you can still make a perfectly serviceable Barbarian though.

Honestly, going first is mainly useful for two things: pounce and going into rage to activate Come and Get Me. If you’re looking to play a less obvious totem (or none at all), your build really won’t be worthless without it. There are others that benefit from going first obviously (Superstitious comes to mind) but running a slower and more deliberate build is still viable.

The most important thing about Rage Powers is to use them to tailor your character to how you envision them, and while the Beast Totem line are objectively the most powerful ones you can take, you should feel free to explore the rage powers and see which ones work best for you.

Rage Powers

2nd Animal Fury The last piece of the puzzle for most natural attack routines, getting a bite attack on your rage can help you finish off strong. It’s mostly for races that didn’t get a bite attack, and makes a decent secondary attack for two handers as well.

2nd Animal Fury, Greater Only increasing damage on your bite is meh unless you’re doing Vital Strike, pass.

2nd Savage Jaw Cycleable and works well with Raging Grapple, this is actually a pretty solid rage power if you plan on grappling, especially as a free action. Might be worth considering for a grapple build.

4th Penetrating Bite I can’t think of a reason to focus on a bite attack this much, I really can’t.

6th Dragon Totem The beginning of this totem is slow, but the worst thing about it are the prereqs, which are really damning of the entire line. That aside, it does lead to a good totem..

8th Dragon Totem Resilience The real gem of this line up is the +2 DR per feat taken, which makes your DR VERY competitive with enemy damage. Adding this to Invulnerable Rager (especially if it’s ruled that your IR Energy Resistance stacks with your DT Energy Resistance) can make you almost immune to an element.

10th Dragon Totem Wings I’ll admit I’m being a little generous here, but being able to fly of your own power is pretty nice, making this an okay capstone to the Dragon Totem. The best reason to pick this up though is for the additional +2 DR though to finish off the line.

2nd Armor Ripper Not a power you’ll use a lot, basically just Improved Sunder for Raging.

2nd Auspicious Mark Once a rage and burns rage rounds to do? This doesn’t do enough to be this costly.

2nd Beast Totem, Lesser Besides being the start of the best totem in the game, picking up two claw attacks is pretty nice for a natural attacker. The damage isn’t great, but it’s a solid return and good first power.

6th Beast Totem You probably don’t have the best AC, and the scaling bonus this gives you is going to keep you from getting tagged with every attack that comes your way.

10th Beast Totem, Greater Not only are you getting pounce, but you’re getting an increase on your claw damage, and an increase on your crit multiplier. It’s hard to pick another totem when letting out your wild side makes you such an amazing Barbarian.

12th Boar’s Charge While you need to be a wereboar or fiend totem for this, a free crit is pretty beautiful. Pick it up after CAGM though, as it’s still the superior choice at this level.

6th Boasting Taunt The real selling point of this for me is that the target stays shaken. With Dazzling Display, this should scare everyone you’re fighting as well as make you a huge target. Probably the best way to make sure your opponent is scared is the Enforcer feat.

10th Body Bludgeon While the visual for this is seriously awesome, it takes far too much effort to make it an effective way to battle. This is more of an NPC ability, but it’s cool.

2nd Brawler; Brawler, Greater Both Rage Powers in this line are terrible, as situationally having feats you probably weren’t going to take is just an awful idea. Just take the feats.

2nd Breathtaker This is...really weird and specific and not good...weird...

2nd Celestial Totem, Lesser In battle healing generally isn’t a good idea, and it’s really not worth raging just to get some bonus healing.

8th Celestial Totem Being able to remove invisibility from everyone around you can be very powerful, but it’s not really a very common situation. But this does give you options against non good invisible foes, and options are good.

12th Celestial Totem, Greater This could have been decent, but the SR is far too restrictive to apply to anything you’d care about, so avoid taking this rather weak totem line.

2nd Chaos Totem, Lesser Lawful opponents aren’t that common, and the rest of the benefits really aren’t great either. It is a scaling effect, so it could be useful in some games.

6th Chaos Totem Weak fortification is okay, as crits can rock you pretty hard, but sadly this doesn’t scale which is one of the best things about most rage powers.

10th Chaos Totem, Greater Scaling DR against a type that is rarely used against you is pretty awesome, making this a solid end if you’re not abusing DR shenanigans elsewhere.

8th Clear Mind Failing a will save can end encounters, so taking any extra steps to avoid this is rarely a bad idea. This is a once per rage ability, which makes it able to be cycled too, and as a free action it won’t interrupt anything else you want to do in the round.

12th Come and Get Me You could easily build around just this ability as long as you have the attacks of opportunity to abuse it. Extra attacks are what you want, and this gives you the chance of possibly even foiling an attack against you before it’s even launched. Most builds are going to want this as their 12th level Rage Power, no questions asked.

12th Deathless Frenzy This is a cool power, and the fact that it lets you stay alive when you should be dead is the main reason to consider it (at level 13+)

10th Disemboweling Tusk Without Boar’s Charge this is terrible, but with it, it’s FAR BETTER. It has some synergy with other abilities too.

4th Elemental Rage, Lesser A swift action for a slight boost in damage isn’t terrible, and it can be cycled. It also lets you pick the type as you use it, which makes this more versatile.

8th Elemental Rage This basically gives you a free energy enhancement for all your weapons, and just like before, you can choose the type to suit your mood.

12th Elemental Rage, Greater Elemental Burst isn’t worth putting on your weapons normally, so don’t bother burning a Rage Power on it.

2nd Energy Resistance Energy resistance can be a pretty solid defense, and you can never be too resilient to damage. ½ your level is also a solid amount of elemental DR.

8th Energy Resistance, Greater A solid defense against a single attack, it’s cycleable in case you’re facing someone barraging you with the same energy attacks constantly.

12th Energy Absorption I want to like this one more, as it literally lets you EAT your damage type and recover off of it, but I can’t see this being helpful often enough to validate.

16th Energy Eruption A pretty weak end to this chain, while it is cool you’re not really the kind of character to bother dealing damage like this in the first place.

12th Fearless Rage Fear can mess you up, but you already have a pretty solid will save if you’ve been working it well enough, and being scared doesn’t stop you from raging, so don’t fear being scared too much.

2nd Ferocious Beast/Mount The difference between these two is that Ferocious Beast does the same thing that Ferocious Mount does, but gives you the option to separate from your AC, but doing so means you’ll be burning 2 extra rounds instead of one, which is a harsh penalty. The choice is up to you based on your play style, but a raging AC can be one hell of an asset.

8th Ferocious Beast/Mount, Greater A good amount of your better Rage Powers are going to be use activated, meaning that you won’t get a huge amount of use out of this. Some things will work for you though, like Superstitious and Eater of Magic, which are quite nice.

8th Ferocious Trample Trampling is a pretty decent offensive strategy, and a battle crazy steed can probably do some nice damage as well. A solid strategy for any beastmaster.

12 Ferocious Trample, Greater You’re going to need this eventually to keep trampling relevant, as your opponents are only going to be getting bigger, and you get a free overrun.

6th Spirit Steed While most people don’t see a lot of value in this, most non humanoids don’t hit as magic, which means the DR actually applies often, A good call to buff your pony.

2nd Fiend Totem, Lesser This is one of the few ways to get a gore attack, giving you natural attackers a 4th primary attack. Sadly it’s a non Beast totem, so it’s hard to pick.

6th Fiend Totem While auto damage is nice, and it works against more than just natural attacks, the amount of damage isn’t really that great and probably won’t tip the scales.

10th Fiend Totem, Greater Auto shaken against all non evil opponents is quite nice, as is some cheap damage against good targets, but nothing here is worth your totem slot.

8th Fierce Fortitude Why did we have to wait for 8th level to get this? I don’t like this, it’s not good.

10th Flesh Wound This is quite good, reducing the damage of an attack by half, and then making it non lethal (which means your DR applies to it twice.) While it’s annoying how the ability is worded (and that you take ACP to it), your fortitude save should be amazing, meaning that this is a cyclable means of completely shutting down an attack against you. It does require you to have a great fortitude save to really make it worth though.

6th Fueled by Vengeance For if you’re scared of running out of rage, this will keep you nice and angry, although your rage powers should be more focused towards bringing the pain.

2nd Good for What Ails You Finding ways to get back into the fight is what keeps you strong, and being able to possibly delay an effect that removes you from combat will never be bad as long as you’re okay with being a drunk (hint: you are.)

6th Groundbreaker While I really like the flavor of this one, it’s another ability that just doesn’t do anything worth doing. Either you’re going to have someone next to you in which case you should be attacking them, or you have no one near you, and you should pounce.

8th Groundbreaker, Greater Just more of the same, although has a bit more potential to trap someone. Still, I wouldn’t take it enough times to make it worthwhile myself.

2nd Guarded Life This feels like a band aid to the instant death that dropping out of Rage causes, but it’s useful to make sure you don’t instantly die if you fall unconscious.

6th Guarded Life, Greater Just more of the same, giving you even more of a buffer between you and death. This gets better if you have a ton of DR though.

2nd Guarded Stance This is just kind of weird how it’s worded, and that it’s only against melee. Personally I don’t like it, it doesn’t really scale well and you can do better to maintain your defenses than this.

4th Hive Totem Fearing damage from swarms is how you lose your membership into the “Cool Barbarians” club. The other bonuses aren’t making up for this lame a totem.

6th Hive Totem Resilience Now that you’re immune to swarms, you can take that beekeeper job that you’ve been after for so long. Don’t worry, we can get someone else to fight, you keep on harvesting that honey.

8th Hive Totem Toxicity While this does give your bite some nice bonuses and poison, it will never make up for how lame a totem you have, and isn’t worth the slog to get to this point.

2nd Hurling, Lesser If for some reason you’re allergic to bows, this is a decent power to keep yourself involved even at a range. If you’re not, just use a damn bow.

8th Hurling A little more reach, a little larger object, still worthless.

12th Hurling, Greater Just stop, the range and size on these aren’t making it worth your time.

4th Imperiling Disarm It’s cycleable and pretty neat, although you won’t have the best attack bonus with it, making it generally a long shot to hit with it against opponents with weapons, so it’s cool but not great.

8th Increased Damage Reduction I really want to like this more, but an increase of only one to your DR is not worth a rage power, nor is it worth taking multiple times.

8th Internal Fortitude This really isn’t the best power all by itself, as you should be saving against effects that nauseate you pretty easily, but remember the Rage Cycling section at the end of this chapter. That little combo brings this up to PURPLE for rage cycling

2nd Intimidating Glare While I like the duration a lot, needing to be next to them means that you’re not full attacking them, which is not what you want to do.

6th Battle Roar It’s bonus damage, but it’s also needing intimidating glare, so it’s not really worth it.

8th Terrifying Howl Panicked as a condition is a game changer, and while I’m not a huge fan of using standard actions NOT to kill people, as well as needing your targets to already be shaken, if you can get this to stick, you can nearly end an encounter.

2nd Knockback Rare is the time a bull rush with a little damage tacked onto it be worth a melee attack, but at least it’s not once per Rage.

2nd Knockdown Tripping on the other hand is almost always good, and doesn’t force you to need Combat Expertise, although sadly it is once per Rage. Still not a bad use of an action.

4th Linnorm Death Curse, Cairn This isn’t really an immediate battle function, so you won’t be doing much with it in fights, but it is fun and thematic. It’s just not great. As an aside for all of these, it isn’t great that they’re based on your charisma, but they could be abused with some weak healing to get you back on your feat to trigger them again and again. Make sure you have some way of staying alive after being knocked out of rage though, or you’ll probably die instead of just being knocked out.

4th Linnorm Death Curse, Crag Now this is capable of providing some in battle benefits, making an evoker in your party very happy if you take one for the team.

4th Linnorm Death Curse, Fjord Unless you’re in a sailing/pirate game, this probably won’t come up much.

4th Linnorm Death Curse, Ice Slightly worse than Crag due to how much more difficult it is to do solid ice damage, it’s just slightly worse, since giving something vulnerability to an element can turn a battle around.

4th Linnorm Death Curse, Taiga Same as Crag and Ice, pick between them based on your party.

4th Linnorm Death Curse, Tarn Probably the coolest long term one, it works well for hit and run tactics.

8th Linnorm Death Curse, Tor Easily the best, permanent staggering is brutal for melee brutes and even hurts mages. While I don’t like having to be dropped for these, this one is certainly cool and thematic.

2nd Liquid Courage I honestly can’t see consuming enough drinks during your Rage to make this good.

2nd Low Light Vision You can BUY better vision, you can’t buy Rage Powers.

12th Mighty Swing Being both once a rage as well as taking your swift/immediate action (I hate feeling the need to save your swift action “just in case”) makes this kind of bad, even if confirming crits is awesome. You should be doing it anyway, you’re crazy strong.

2nd Moment of Clarity Did...did you just take a power not to Rage while raging? Everything about you disappoints me, Worst Barbarian Ever. Because that’s your name now.

2nd Perfect Clarity Wow, glad I took Moment of Clarity for this GREAT POWER THAT I WILL USE ALL THE TIME!

2nd Night Vision Again, you can BUY darkvision.

2nd No Escape I actually really like this power, as it makes sure your opponent can’t escape. It’s basically a once a Rage super Step Up feat, but that’s all you’d need.

2nd Overbearing Advance Eh, this is only really good if your mount is getting it from Greater Ferocious Mount. You shouldn’t be overrunning anything.

6th Overbearing Onslaught The same goes for this power, although if you have a group of guys in a row, this could be pretty freaking funny.

2nd Powerful Blow Wow, this is like some weird lame Power Attack that requires an action and only works once per rage. It doesn’t even work on all the attacks you do that round.

8th Bleeding Blow Causing a depressingly small amount of bleed damage is what I’d expect from a Rogue Talent, not a Rage Power.

8th Crippling Blow This would actually be cool if it didn’t have a save, but it does. Being able to chip away at a monster’s ability to hit you back would be cool, but this requires Rage Cycling to even begin to be viable.

8th Primal Scent This doesn’t add enough to the package scent already gives you to be a powerful addition to finding someone, but it’s decent for invisible foes.

2nd Quick Reflexes Was Combat Reflexes too hard for you to take or something? It’s decent if you have crappy dexterity, but you have a much better way to get AOOs unless you have a low point buy, in which case this might be needed to boost your number of AOOs.

2nd/6th Raging/Bestial Climber Are you really climbing while angry so much that you have to take a Rage Power or two to make yourself better at it? Do you just hate walls?

2nd/6th Raging/Bestial Leaper The first part of this is too stupid to be taken seriously, and the second is giving you Spring Attack, which is still a lame feat.

2nd Raging Grappler If you’re going to grapple (not great), this is actually decent enough to help you land that pin, as well as always do damage and tie up your target, first ‘raging’ ability I don’t hate.

2nd/6th Raging/Bestial Swimmer If you’re angry and swimming often enough to consider this, you’re in too weird a campaign for me to help you any longer.

2nd Reckless Abandon Remember how you’re a feral monster? This is another way to help prove that. This basically removes your penalty from Power Attack or Deadly Aim, transferring it to your AC instead. AC is not your best defense, so don’t worry about it.

2nd Inspire Ferocity You will never have either a move action where this would make sense to do or a charisma modifier high enough to make anyone else care, ignore this.

4th Renewed Vigor The action and restrictions on use remove this from being a great power, as it would be decent if it were able to be cycled.

4th Renewed Vitality Another weak ability that isn’t worth the time, especially once a day.

6th Regenerative Vigor If you used Renewed Vigor at the beginning of your Rage (which seems like a dumb idea), this could be some pretty decent healing...once a day.

6th Renewed Life This is kinda useless unless you’re losing levels a lot, so vampires?

2nd Roaring Drunk There are better ways to raise your intimidate than substance abuse.

2nd Rolling Dodge Even worse than Guarded Stance, you’ll probably be targeted by ranged attacks less than melee ones, making this a weird way to boost your AC against them.

6th Reflexive Dodge The prereq is bad, this is bad, there is no reason to take this.

2nd Roused Anger Think of this as a poor man’s Rage Cycling. If you can’t get another way of cycling (or your GM considers other ways too cheap), this will let you pull out your once a rage powers twice, which is pretty solid even if you’re exhausted afterwards.

6th Savage Dirty Trick Okay wow, this is really nice. It’s a solid chance to land a dirty trick with a very good save for an even more debilitating effect that forces the opponent to waste even more actions to be back up to fighting shape, really a solid call for most barbs who want some debuffing options.

2nd Savage Intuition While helpful to start the battle in Rage, it’s not really worth a slot over more offensive powers. Strictly for those paranoid of not being angry all the time.

2nd Scent Scent while only in Rage really isn’t great, but a bonus sense is still nice.

2nd Smasher Once a rage isn’t great, nor is needing the object to be unattended. Just buy an adamantine weapon if you’re gonna break stuff.

2nd Gear Breaker This is weird and specific, Smasher wasn’t worth it and neither was this.

2nd Spirit Totem, Lesser This could have been okay, but dealing damage off of your charisma is always going to be a bad idea for you.

6th Spirit Totem A 20% miss chance is a decent buff, although it won’t work if they’re right next to you. Still, another layer of defense that isn’t based on AC is worth looking into.

10th Spirit Totem, Greater More residual damage and an increase on your lesser totem does not make this worth following to the end, or taking over Beast Totem.

2nd Staggering Drunk While this might be helpful with Come and Get Me, building a character around drinking probably isn’t the smartest idea.

2nd Strength Surge The real beauty of this is getting this on your combat maneuver check, which will let you keep going for combat maneuvers even into the later levels. Annoying that it takes an action, but this is an ability that you NEED cycling to keep relevant. Avoid taking this until laters levels though, as the bonus isn’t really worth it until about level 8 or so.

2nd Superstition The level of bonus this gives is not to be ignored, as it’s boosting your saves against the things that most likely are going to be taking you out of the fight. This is worth taking not only because it’s amazing, but because it leads to some amazing Rage Powers in the entire game. Add on the Human and Tengu Favored class as well to make yourself a save tank.

2nd Witch Hunter Not to be missed, this is a scaling damage bonus against almost the entire bestiary. After a certain point, EVERYTHING is a caster to some level or another, and this will seriously increase your damage against those most hated of foes.

6th Spell Sunder Before this, mundane characters had no defenses against spells. Now you do, and it’s able to be cycled. Probably best used with Strength Surge to make sure it works, you have to beat the check pretty hard to really dispel most things. But with the level of power you can put into it, there’s a good chance you’ll be destroying magic a lot

6th Ghost Rager While it’s situational in the fact that you probably won’t fight incorporeal enemies that often, in that situation this is amazing, and the increase to your touch AC may keep you alive long enough to smash whatever ghost are around in the face.

8th Sunder Enchantment Unless you know you have opponents who have magic items that NEED to be shut down, this can be held off on.

8th Disruptive This isn’t really worth taking as a Fighter feat, don’t take it as a Barbarian.

10th Eater of Magic I actually really like this ability, as it gives you a reroll against a magical effect that could have taken you out, as well as giving bonus temp HP to keep you in the fight for longer. Sadly cycling with this leaves you with temp HP for only one round though.

12th Spellbreaker Not any better as a Barbarian, you’ve got better ways to crush mages.

2nd Surprise Accuracy An accuracy bonus is almost always a good thing, although once a rage and costing a swift action hurt the value of this ability.

4th Deadly Accuracy It seems a little too circumstantial to hope that your one attack that you’re getting with Surprise Accuracy is also going to crit...

8th Sharpened Accuracy Decent if you’re swinging wildly, but not really dependable enough.

16th Lethal Accuracy While I like this in theory, you’re still banking on a crit hit on the one attack that you’re getting with Surprise Accuracy. While you’d easily hit it out of the park if this worked, I like my abilities to be a bit more dependable.

2nd Swift Foot You’re fast enough as you are, you aren’t going to need a five foot boost in speed often enough to validate this Rage Power to yourself.

4th Sprint Having a pretty weak pre req and a pretty weak effect make this lackluster.

8th Unexpected Strike The unexpectedness of this is a huge draw to me, as even once per Rage it’s a free hit when your opponent doesn’t see it coming. A cyclable free hit is pretty powerful, especially when your opponent can’t see it coming.

2nd Water Sense This doesn’t really help you fight a lot better in water, which seems to be its aim. Pick something more universal so you don’t have to deal with water garbage.

2nd World Serpent Totem Outsiders are the real preferred targets here, but this only gets better if you follow the totem to the end, which sucks when so many totems scale.

6th World Serpent Spirit All alignments are nice to have on your weapon, but not nice enough to devote a limited resource to.

6th World Serpent Unity There’s a lot of small bonuses here, the best of which is not being able to be knocked prone, but none of them are worth the investment into this totem.

Bloodrage Powers

2nd Abyssal Blood, Lesser Claws are nice, I like claws. Get used to seeing this, and these claws don’t stack with Beast Totem, so if you’re taking that, it’s a strike against these already.

6th Abyssal Blood Oh man, this would be so cool if it wasn’t once a day...but it is, and it’s just okay.

10th Abyssal Blood, Greater Wow, this is a really lame end to a 3 power chain.

2nd Celestial Blood, Lesser Okay, this is decent, but nothing groundbreaking, you’re kind of a paladin?

6th Celestial Blood Neither of these are super common, but it’s not totally worthless, this is going somewhere.

10th Celestial Blood, Greater A reroll a round is pretty solid, especially since it’s cycleable. You’ll almost certainly be using it for saving throws, so if you’re not going superstitious, it’s a solid backup defense.

2nd Draconic Blood, Lesser Yay, more claws.

6th Draconic Blood This isn’t terrible, it just doesn’t feel up to par with our other options.

10th Draconic Blood, Greater Oh wow, this is terrible...jeez, the bloodrage are kind of terrible.

2nd Elemental Blood, Lesser So basically a worse Elemental Rager...great.

6th Elemental Blood This is weirdly counter productive, since why would you want to cause damage of an element that you’re resisting? Most things that use an element resist them...this is dumb and bad.

10th Elemental Blood, Greater Nothing could save this, this isn’t worth a 3 rage power chain, leave now.

2nd Fey Blood, Lesser This isn’t terrible, but most crits of yours kill, so while it’s a decent save, it’s meh.

6th Fey Blood Again it’s decent since you like a clear charging lane, but it’s hard to fit into most builds.

10th Fey Blood, Greater I like this, it’s fun for chargers, but you’ll probably only get it off once per combat unless you’re on horseback, and mounted ragers have their own powers to take.

2nd Infernal Blood, Lesser A more restrictive elemental blood...strong start, satan.

6th Infernal Blood Same problem, but with a poison save bonus? Faust was wrong about you, man.

10th Infernal Blood, Greater Or you could just go superstitious and be good at all saves. Good wins again!

2nd Undead Blood, Lesser Okay, free shaken for what you’re already doing, this is actually a decent start to a bloodline, although the lack of fear stacking is a little lame.

6th Undead Blood So basically Ghost Rager, but with a (decent) prereq, it’s not bad.

10th Undead Blood, Greater A pretty weak end to this, but whatever, at least the first two were good.

Rage Cycling and You

Throughout the chapter I’ve talked about “Rage Cycling”, and you may wonder what that is. It’s the act of going into Rage and then leaving to refresh all of your 1/Rage Powers. Doing this will turn all your 1/rage powers into 1/round powers, which is a way better place to be in. And how do you do this you may ask? Well, there’s a few ways...

LV 8; Internal Fortitude Rage Power + Scarlet and Green Cabochon Ioun Stone

As stated in the guide how this would interact, this powerful combo also gives you rage cycling without dipping, instead making you pay with gold and a rage power to cycle. This is my preferred way to rage cycle since I don’t like having to dip myself, but it may delay your progression of Rage Powers unless you’re willing to burn a feat on Extra Rage Powers.

LV 9; 1st level Oracle Dip: Lame Curse

Now how this works is at level 9, you take a single level in Oracle with the Lame curse. At your 5th Oracle level, you’re immune to the fatigued condition. But the trick here is that every 2 non Oracle levels count as 1 Oracle level in relation to your curse benefits, so at this point you can’t be fatigued, and can Rage Cycle to your heart’s content.

LV 9; 3rd Level Horizon Walker Dip: Desert Terrain Dominance

Another way to permanently lose your ability to be fatigued, this is a pretty decent prestige class to go along with it, although you’re still delaying your Barbarian progress by 3+ levels, so I’d make sure you got everything you wanted out of the class first.

LV 17; Barbarian: Tireless Rage

The first and most basic way is the one the class gives, which lets you simply Rage Cycle normally. It’s basically a semi capstone, but it comes into play so late that it’s hard to build around. But if you’re looking for how the game thinks you should rage cycle, here it is.

Lv X; Item: Cord of Stubborn Resolve

While not a class way to do it, this item deals 1d6 nonlethal damage whenever you’d be fatigued. This item is specifically called out for rage cycling, just in case you were worried about it being non legit.

Return to Table of Content

5. Feats and Traits

Now we’re getting to the HEART of your build. Feats are how you really develop your combat style, and flesh out your character concept as well. Your feats should always be working towards your design goals, either as an iron tyrant of death, or as a wall of flesh of which cannot be broken. But don’t be afraid to explore your options, find out what works for you.

Traits on the other hand are also helpful for designing your character’s story, and are also incredibly useful for rounding out your character’s skill list, giving them the ability to be quite the atypical combatant. Traits are wonderful to really bring out your character’s flavor too.

CRB/APG/UM/UC/ACG/Misc

Feats

Core

Skill Feats (Acrobatic, Alertness, Athletic, etc) Feats that boost your skills will almost never be worth taking. If you want flavor abilities, leave those to your traits. You want your feats to do something that mechanically enhances your character, and your options are wide open for this. So unless you really need a skill boost (and you can buy masterwork tools), avoid these.

Agile Maneuvers You in all honesty probably won’t have a high enough dexterity to make this too worthwhile sadly, but buffing your CMB roles isn’t a bad thing to get into the habit.

Arcane Strike Okay, while you don’t have any innate Barbarian ability to get this, thanks to the new FAQ if you have an arcane SLA, you qualify for this. Considering it’s a swift action for a scaling bonus to all of your damage rolls, you almost certainly want this unless you’re burning through your swift actions for another reason. Plus hey, destroying a spellcaster with your own supply of magical energy is pretty damn hardcore.

Armor Proficiency, Heavy You’re only getting +3 AC at max here with a much more steep ACP, so you can do without picking up the heavier armor.

Blind Fight Seeing as you’re in melee, concealment really isn’t the biggest concern. This is the prereq for some stuff, but really nothing worth it unless you’re fighting in the shadows.

Combat Expertise I don’t like this feat in and of itself, but it does happen to be the prerequisite for several feats that I really do like, which makes this a necessary evil.

Improved/Greater Disarm, Feign, Bull Rush, Overrun, Grapple Really most combat maneuvers aren’t really your thing. Tripping and Dirty trick are the exception to this rule, but know that you can make SOME of these decent if you specialize a bit.

Improved/Greater Trip Now this is something worth doing, as grounding an opponent gives you a bonus to your attacks and them a penalty on theirs, as well as possibly provoking an attack of opportunity. This is good as a set up for something bigger, so make good use of it.

Combat Reflexes You’re going to need this if you’re doing a Come and Get Me build or else you’re just giving opponents free damage. With a reach weapon, you’re a decent bulwark of defense as well, making sure that no one gets past you after one AOO.

Stand Still I kind of like this, but tripping an opponent works just as well. It debuffs them as well as stopping their movement, so unless you’re facing lots of huge things, skip this.

Critical Focus This isn’t really that impressive on its own, but it does open the gates for some very nice crit feats. Make sure you have a decent crit range before you use it to get the most of an advantage out of it.

Sickening/Staggering/Blinding/Stunning Critical At levels 11, 13, 15, and 17 respectively, these are your best options. While Blinding is probably my favorite, but if you’re going to pick a critical feat to abuse, it should be one of these. It’s just a matter of how long you can wait.

Deadly Aim This is a good way to boost your ranged damage, especially with the massive strength you’ll be rocking during rage. Just try to keep your accuracy up some way.

Dodge This is just a terrible feat, but sadly it’s a prereq for a lot of things. But nothing in the core rulebook that requires this is worth it. Strictly a prereq feat.

Mobility/Spring Attack/Whirlwind Attack/Wind Stance/Lightning Stance God, these are horrible. Really horrible. If Whirlwind Attack didn’t have such awful pre reqs, it’d be decent. But sucking up all your feats to do this is just a waste.

Endurance This really isn’t a great feat in and of itself, but it’s leading into some very useful feats. It’s hard to validate taking normally since there’s some other ways to get it.

Diehard Now this is pretty nice, keeping you from dropping unconscious and still leading into other feats, but this one is actually useful in and of itself.

Exotic Weapon Proficiency There are some very nice weapons to pick from, but it’s up to you to decide if one of them is worth one of your feat slots.

Extra Rage This is really only useful at low levels since eventually you’ll have enough rage to last you the entire day. Probably better if your GM allows retraining.

Great Fortitude/Improved You should not need this, you should not be failing fortitude saves. You are a buff demon of war, you don’t get the sniffles.

Improved Critical This is actually a really nice ability, but the fact that you can buy it makes this less tempting. Just a matter if money or feats matter more to you.

Improved Initiative For you pouncers, this is a godsend. Starting combats helps you get into rage faster, and destroy your opponent faster.

Improved Unarmed Strike Yet another pre req feat, this should never be taken by itself. This is the kind of feat you get from dipping Monk, not from taking it yourself.

Deflect Arrows This only works for natural attackers, but getting a free deflection of a ranged attack isn’t terrible. Not sure if it’s worth the investment though, since most attacks are made in melee range.

Snatch Arrows A deeper investment into this isn’t giving you nearly as much of a return as you’d hope for sinking in another feat, so you can just stick with Deflect Arrows.

Intimidating Prowess This is basically required if you want to intimidate, as your strength score is going to be through the roof. Consider it if you want to be scary for a living.

Iron Will/Improved Now this is a save you don’t want to fail that could end games, so you should take this if you’re afraid of being dominated and controlled.

Leadership No rating for this, as if your GM lets you take it, you take it.

Lightning Reflexes/Improved Reflex may not be a good save for you, but reflex rarely ever kill you. These are just if you’re paranoid about your defenses.

Lunge Any additional range you can get is amazing, and the AC penalty is a drop in the bucket with the rest you’re taking.. It’s never bad to be able to smash faces at a range.

Mounted Combat If you’re going to have a mount, you are going to take this, no questions asked. It’s basically required for all the best mounted feats anyways.

Ride-By Attack If you often have a charging lane, this is a nice way to tear through someone.

Spirited Charge This is why you got a mount, this is why you master a steed. Triple damage with a lance is PERFECT. Obviously worthless without a steed of some kind though.

Trample This is pretty okay, but I’d rather take the Rage Power if I was going to trample

Nimble Moves Being able to 5 foot adjust at all times can be quite the advantage, although it is still pretty situational.

Acrobatic Steps Now this is just overkill. You don’t need this as well.

Point Blank Shot A decent buff to your attacks, this is the prereq for other ranged feats.

Precise Shot; Improved Cover is always going to ruin your day, so avoiding it before it becomes an issue can keep more arrows in your opponents, although Improved has a pretty harsh dexterity prerequisite. But you’re basically an archer by the point you’d take this.

Rapid Shot Another arrow in the air is another arrow in your opponent. The penalty isn’t that bad, and bonus attacks is the name of the game.

Manyshot There’s no downside to this feet at all, so if you’re going to go with archery, you’ll eventually end up here. by now you’re starting to look like a real archer.

Power Attack This is YOUR feat, this is the ability that you should be taking at first level, and abusing as hard as you can. This is where your damage comes from

Cleave This is a solid early level choice for two handers, as getting a bonus attack is very solid. But it doesn’t age well, so make sure you can retrain before taking it.

Greater Cleave Getting to use it more than once is rare, so you can leave this on the rack.

Improved Sunder, Greater Sundering isn’t a great strategy normally, so honestly you only really need to take the first version of it to keep you from provoking when you sunder spells.

Quick Draw Drawing a weapon isn’t going to take much effort, especially considering you can draw one while moving, so taking a feat to do it isn’t really worth it.

Step Up Keeping yourself up close with anyone who wants to flee gives you the advantage, as forcing them into contact often forces them into your warhammer.

Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved, Greater Not my favorite style of Barbarian, but it’s still quite viable if you’re willing to put the feats into it.

Two Weapon Rend Probably one of the best reasons to dual wield, rending an opponent is one hell of a brutal attack that you get for free.

Double Slice While it seems nice, the damage increase isn’t really worth the feat slot.

Vital Strike, Improved, Greater This is a trap, and you should stay away from it. Vital Strike is a consolation prize for having to move in a round, not a legitimate strategy for combat. This is not true if you go Mythic.

Weapon Focus Again, a lame feat that’s a prereq for better feats. People really give this too much credit, but if you have to take a crappy pre req, at least it’s adding to your accuracy. Still, feats should do more.

Dazzling Display An area of effect debuff is a decent way to start off a battle, although a full round action to do it has quite a bit of opportunity cost. Better with the new feats.

Shatter Defenses This is actually pretty nice, as getting bonuses on attacks is what you’re gunning for. But since you don’t get anything great from hitting flat footed, it’s not vital.

Deadly Stroke I want to like this, as constitution bleed is pretty amazing. But the feat tree isn’t worth it, nor is a standard action to accomplish this.

Advanced Players Guide

Additional Traits As stated, traits are amazing, and having a few more to add class skills as well as pile on misc bonuses is hard to ignore. This is totally worth taking to help round you out, especially since you’re not a particularly feat starved class.

Bloody Assault This is some seriously weak bleed damage, and not worth any penalty. Maybe if bleed stacked, but it doesn’t. And that’s lame.

Bodyguard, In Harm’s Way Bodyguard in and of itself is pretty lame, but In Harm’s Way sort of makes up for it. The only thing that hurts it is needing to be adjacent to the target, but if you are, eating an attack that should be hitting a mage can turn the tide of battle.

Combat Patrol Being passive is for fighters, not for combat monsters.

Crippling Critical This doesn’t make the cut for a critical feat, not even close.

Dazing Assault God, I really want to like this more, as -5 isn’t going to kill your chance to hit, but it’s a fortitude save and not the best DC, so while dazing your opponent is really useful, the chance of actually having it stick against a CR appropriate opponent isn’t great.

Eldritch Claws If you’re fighting with natural weapons, you’re going to have an AOMF, so you’re already hitting as magic, making this redundant.

Extra Rage Power Rage powers are always a good thing to stock up on, and again since you’re not a terribly feat intensive class, you can afford to spend a feat buffing your rage.

Fight On The level of bonus temp HP you’re getting here is pitiful for a once a day ability.

Following Step, Step Up and Strike Following Step really doesn’t do anything special, since 10 feet will rarely help you anymore than 5 feet would have, but Step Up and Strike is giving you another attack, which is what you want, and it keeps you nice and close.

Furious Focus This is at best getting you a +5 at level 20, which for one attack is really just lame. A lot of people like this, but this is such a waste of a feat.

Dreadful Carnage Yeah, I’d rather just use Cornugon Smash rather than this waste.

Heroic Defiance Holding off an effect that could take you out of the fight makes this a great follow up to Diehard, and one of the better reasons to take it.

Heroic Recovery ...and then this...this is bad. Retrying a fort save isn’t worth a feat.

Improved, Greater Dirty Trick This is another decent reason to take Combat Expertise, as Dirty Tricks are pretty nice to land on people, and are very versatile in what they can do.

Keen Scent, Smell Fear Picking up scent is a pretty useful ability, giving you an early detection method for invisible attackers. But Smell Fear really isn’t worth it, so just stick with Keen Scent.

Racial Heritage Orcs and Half-Orcs get a lot of nice stuff, but if you’re burning a feat on this as a human, you probably should have just played a half-orc to begin with.

Raging Vitality A constitution bonus would be nice enough, but keeping you raging while unconscious solves the very real problem of dying if you’re knocked out.

Rending Claws This isn’t Two Weapon Rend, 1d6 extra damage isn’t worth a feat.

Steel Soul If you’re a Dwarf, you’re talking this, and becoming an even better save tank.

Tripping Strike Considering you can stack this with your other critical feats, this allows you to make your crits even more brutal, and free trip attempts are never a bad thing.

Ultimate Magic

Antagonize I’m a bit too much a fan of this, but it’s not a great use of an action, mainly useful for rounds that you’re not getting a full attack. Having the same utility as Vital Strike does not make for a great feat in my opinion.

Eldritch Heritage, Improved, Greater There are some amazing bloodlines to pick up (such as Abyssal), although the prereqs are pretty brutal. It’s up to you if it’s worth the investment. I’d say only go for it if you’re a half elf on a high point buy.

Ultimate Combat

Bolstered Resistance With the right archetype, this could save your life. And once you find your preferred way to avoid being immune to fatigue, it becomes even better.

Cleaving Finish, Improved Just in case you missed old Cleave, here it is again. Mostly good against mobs, it’s only useful if you’re face tons of smaller opponents and have reach.

Deadly Finish The only way I can see this being useful is against someone who’s regeneration that you can’t bypass, as if you can knock someone out, you can just kill them

Death or Glory This is just terrible...TERRIBLE. Avoid this at all cost.

Deathless Initiate, Master, Zealot Initiate is the best of these feats, as it lets you keep on full round attacking, even when you should be dead. Master sadly just keeps you from bleeding out, and that’s really not worth a feat. And Zealot is lacking, giving a pass.

Distance Thrower If you’re going to stick to thrown weapons, giving them range is solid.

Drag Down Are you really tripped often enough to make this worth doing? Really?

Fortified Armor Training I actually really like this, especially if you just throw on a buckler simply to absorb this. Hell, carry a few bucklers to absorb crits in between combats.

Furious Finish Considering that this FORCES fatigue even if you would normally be immune, it forces your rage to an end. And since it relies on Vital Strike, it’s not the best path.

Gory Finish If you’re going to try to be scary, this is nice to save on your actions.

Hammer the Gap Solely for TWFers, this will help make sure your off hand hits, which is of vital importance to you. THFers won’t be making enough attacks to get a lot of value from this. This works nice with 4+ natural attacks as well, which you could be pulling off as well.

Impaling Critical, Improved While a very cool visual, disarming yourself isn’t what good Barbarians do, so save your critical feat for something more useful.

Moonlight Stalker, Feign, Master It’s not really a great buff for your damage with the first feat, although being able to feign as a swift action is actually kind of nice. But the feat chain isn’t worth following to master unless you’re a Fetchling

Quick Dirty Trick The biggest problem with Dirty Trick was requiring a standard action, and this will keep you pulling tricks on opponents far more easily.

Raging Brutality While burning 3 rounds of Rage and using your swift action is a steep cost, the level of damage you can be adding with this is crazy good, validating the cost by the time you can take it. Still, be sure you watch your Rage rounds, saving this for when you really need it.

Raging Deathblow You should be dropping people anyways, so getting back Rage for it is pretty impressive, even if you won’t be dropping every opponent that you face.

Stalwart, Improved These feats are the best reason to take both Endurance/Diehard and Combat Expertise, and combined with Invulnerable Rager can turn you into a true tank. With IR and this, you can reach DR 20 by level 20, which is truly an impressive force.

Advanced Class Guide

Style Feats

Crane Style Post BOTH erratas, this is STILL worthless, and not worth the open hand needed for it.

Dragon Style The more offensive style of unarmed combat, this is a perfectly viable way to do it, although it’s only worth going to the second feat, as the third provides little benefit.

Snake Style The reactionary style of unarmed combat, this works just as well with natural attacks, although the middle feat really isn’t worth taking, so go MOMS for these feats.

Pummeling Style If your GM won’t let you take Beast Totem or another Totem seems more fun, or you just want to go unarmed, this is a great substitute for non crit fishers.

Other Feats

Cornugon Smash Again if you’re going to try to be scary, this is probably the best way to do it, as it’s a free action and you’re always going to be Power Attacking anyways.

Extra Features (Skinwalker) If you’re a Skinwalker, especially a Ragebred, you’re taking this. Most of the bonuses this gives are better than feats, especially for a select few.

Ferocious Action (Half Orc) A perfect compliment to Diehard to stay in the fight.

Ferocious Tenacity (Half Orc) While this could be good, there’s two big strikes against it: Costing Rage rounds and requiring an immediate action, both of which are valuable to you.

Horn of the Criosphinx Once you’re pouncing, doing even more damage is of high importance, and giving you even more value out of your charge attacks.

Grudge Fighter (Half Orc) A morale bonus when you’re hit goes great with a Courageous Weapon, making for a nice combination of bonuses.

Resilient Brute (Half Orc) For Invulnerable Ragers and others, this can be a life saver as well as helping make you even more able to take large amounts of punishment.

Traits

Rather than listing all the possible traits, especially the ones that give class skills which you’d enjoy having, I’m giving a link to a full trait guide, specifically to the section about which traits are the best for adding to your class skills. The traits listed here will specifically be for the Barbarian to perform at their utmost, rather than about expanding your skill list. Save bonus traits aren’t added as well unless they do more than just give you a save bonus.

Dragonamedrake‘s Tricks and Traits: A Guide to Pathfinder Traits

Combat Traits

Armor Expert Removing a bit of problem from heavier armors is a solid buff, and with Sargarvan Guard, you can get Mithril Hellknight Plate down to ACP 0 for more defense.

Axe to Grind Now here’s a nice buff for those of you who jump into the fray. Bonus damage is always good, especially when it’s this easy to get.

Berserker of the Society It’s a nice buff to your rage rounds if you think you might run out.

Bloodthirsty While sounding quite cool, there’s not here to validate a trait slot.

Careful Combatant While not very “Barbarian” of you, being able to move across the field without worrying about AOOs is more than enough for a trait.

Coherent Rage I want to like this more, but unless you’re feigning, you can’t do a lot with this.

Killer Another cool name for another crappy trait, avoid this if you can.

Reactionary Any +2 to initiative is considered here, as all of them are great and amazing.

Threatening Defender If you’re going the Stalwart route, this is a +1 to all attacks. If not, this is basically worthless, since actually using Combat Expertise is such a bad move.

Vengeful Another damage boost, this one is also pretty easy to activate, but does require you to take damage, so it’s a little worse than Axe to Grind.

Faith Traits

Fate’s Favored This is really only helpful for a Half-Orc to boost their racial luck bonus to saves.

Unnatural Presence Giving your intimidate a bit more utility is good if you’re scary.

Wendifa Apprentice This will give you a scaling (if not basically worthless) SLA to power Arcane Strike. Mostly for use if you’re not allowed Touched by Divinity.

Magic Traits

Unscathed Mostly for Tieflings and Aasimirs, getting a little extra protection is never a bad thing, especially if its from a few different elements.

Social Traits

Adopted This trait’s as good as the trait you take with it so it’s hard to rate this one on its own.

Rich Parents While starting with extra money is nice, money is fleeting while a trait is forever. I’d consider most traits worth more than 900 gold in my experience.

Equipment Traits

Heirloom Weapon While much maligned for its errata, this errata could actually help you. The bonus of a +1 to AOOs is nice, but the real bonus here is the +2 to CMB rolls to Sunder/Trip is actually pretty damn nice. While it’s not the marvel it used to be, combine it with Sword Scion to basically get the same effect. Be sure to have the Masterwork Transformation spell around or on a scroll to keep this weapon viable.

Campaign Traits (Note: These traits are generally intended for a specific campaign, and may not be suitable for everyday play. Consult with your GM before taking these traits)

Finding Haleen The BEST trait in the game, a +1 to HP and Skill Points per level is too powerful for a trait. This is a 3.5 trait, and not really suited to a current game, but if your GM lets you take it, then take it and thank your god for the chance to do it.

Opportunistic Gambler This gives you your Rage bonus for an extra 1d4 rounds, which while can make kind of a lesser Rage Cycle, doesn’t help a lot if you’re still vulnerable to fatigue.

Sword Scion I actually like this one, even if the Aldori Dueling Sword is kind of lame. While you’re dropping from a 2d6 greatsword to a 1d8 longsword/ADS, you are getting a +1 to attack rolls and CMB rolls, which is worth the damage drop to me. Plus magic longswords are more often loot, which helps out your bottom line.

Touched by Divinity Found here, any first level domain spell is already crazy good and it powers Arcane Strike as it’s a scaling SLA. It’s kind of hard to find a better trait than this.

Race Traits

Bred for War (Human) The CMB bonus is what you’re here for, and make you a bit more scary as an added bonus. Not a great trait, but it does help out sunder monkeys.

Boar Resilience (Werebear) Foregoing the sucky feat of Endurance is too good, but lower if it’s not considered to count for a prereq when selecting Stalwart.

Enlightened Warrior (Aasimar) Barbarian and Monk have a lot of synergy, so being able to multiclass between the two can prove quite useful.

Feline Instinct (Weretiger) While slightly situational, you have good enough instincts to keep you aware of what’s going on, and it’s the biggest bonus to initiative you can get.

Glory of Old (Dwarf) I love this, it continues to pump your awesome dwarven saves, and stacks with Steel Soul to make a Barbarian who’s hard to keep down.

Mindlessly Cruel (Half Orc) Found here, this is the best damage boosting trait you could ask for, as when you’re raging is the best time to be more punishing.

Precision Hearing (Werebat) Adding utility for one of your best skills is a solid use of a trait.

Shadow Stabber (Tiefling) While it’s not incredibly easy for you to be unseen, a +2 on all strikes while you are is a definitive buff to your damage, enough so to seek out invisibility.

Suicidal (Tiefling) I’m a big fan of this, as this lets you keep in front of your more vulnerable party members when it counts, which is pretty amazing for a trait, even if once a day.

Superior Clutch (Tiefling) If you check the d100 list of tiefling bonuses, #16 lets you hold oversized weapons without penalty, which gives you +1 damage on your already oversized greatsword. Static bonuses to damage are ALWAYS something you want.

Tiger’s Claws (Weretiger) I forget, what kind of action do you love using to attack again?

Tusked (Half-Orc/Orc) Great to finish off your set of natural attacks if you went Beast Totem, it’ll let anyone have a claw/claw/bite routine to be able to pull off a full natural attack suite.

Regional Traits

Chosen Child Almost as bad as Rich Parents, this at least gets you +900 gold instead of changing your starting gold, so if you’re going to sell a trait do it for this one.

River Rat A bonus to damage yet again, but only with daggers. But there’s a swimming bonus in here, and it’s kinda flavorful, so it’s not terrible.

Sargavan Guard Just as good as Armor Master (and called that on the SRD), take it if you have a combat trait you want more or to stack for more reduced ACP goodness.

Religion Traits

Blade of Mercy Mostly for your bounty hunter types, being able to switch between lethal and nonlethal is a nice trick, and the bonus damage is pretty nice as well.

Defensive Strategist Sadly you already have this as a class feature. But if you’ve traded this away for something, it’s basically Uncanny Dodge in a trait.

Fortified Drinker If you’re going to drink, you damn sure better do it right. And to do that, you need to worship the god of getting a good buzz. Best with the Drunken rage powers.

Second Chance A reroll on any save once a day? This is beyond good, you NEED it. Kind of hard to find a better bang for your religious buck than saving your life.

Veteran of Battle This might just be a personal preference, but the +1 to initiative is nice if you didn’t take something else to boost it. But the quick draw in response to battle is what I really like about this trait, and to me it just screams Barbarian style.

Return to Table of Content

6. Archetypes, Prestige Classes, and Multiclassing

Not all barbarians rage alike. There’s plenty of different styles you can pick to really custom tailor your mindless rage to your own style of play. While some of them aren’t worth giving a second look, there’s also quite a few that’ll make you the wrecking ball that you were always designed to be. Like our friend Spades Slick up there, we got plenty of talent in all sorts of things, and just like him, we can destroy a rival gang at the drop/doff of a hat.

Barbarians are very multiclass friendly, as are most martials. Although I’d rather not delay my Rage Power progression for longer than a 2 level dip, they can skip out of being the masses of angry horror that they are and instead pursue other interest pretty easily. Not all of them are worth pursuing, but there’s quite a few side jobs that can make you more efficient at the old ultra violence.

There’s also quite a bit of freedom in prestige classes, since aside from Rage Power progression you have nothing to lose, so might as well get a fancy title that says to everyone “I’m the guy with the huge sword that the Black King calls on to bring the pain.”

Archetypes

There’s quite a few different roles that your Barbarian can fill with different archetypes, although most of them are based around breaking your opponents into tiny pieces. I’ll be rating these as a whole, as well as each different modification that the archetype includes. I’ll also be letting you know which (if any) archetypes these combine with, although I won’t be rating the combinations, as I’d like to give you the reader a chance to try those out for yourself.

Armored Hulk

Weapon and Armor Proficiency Heavy Armor is nothing to sneeze at, and it’s nice to be able to have adamantine armor as another layer of (redundant) defense.

Indomitable Stance I may not care for Fast Movement too much, and this is a handful of bonuses that are in and of themselves pretty useful.

Armored Swiftness Losing Uncanny Dodge to basically earn back your Fast Movement seems like a bad trade.

Resilience of Steel Neither of these is really a great thing, although crits generally are more dangerous than traps, so overall a gain, if a small one.

Improved Armored Swiftness Again, it’s a bit of a wash, but I’d say you’re just barely inching ahead on this one. It’s not bad, but overall a pretty boring archetype.

Combines with: None

Breaker

Destructive Bonuses to unattended objects? Really? You can just hammer at them all day, you don’t need a bonus to bust up stuff that can’t fight back.

Battle Scavenger Using broken stuff is terrible, why do it? Why base a combat style around it? There’s no reason, and this locks you out of a lot of better archetypes.

Combines with: Wild Rager

Brutal Pugilist

Savage Grapple For when you want to envy a monk, this is a worse Tetori monk substitute.

Pit Fighter As little as I like trap sense, it’s better than this, which actually advocates that you go unarmored. The bonuses are depressing and there’s better ways to buff CMB/D.

Improved Savage Grapple Nothing about this is worth giving up Improved Uncanny Dodge; if you want to grapple go Tetori instead of trying to shoehorn it into your Barbarian.

Combines with: Drunken Brute, Hurler, Urban Barbarian

Drunken Brute

Raging Drunk I’m not a fan of the drunken archetype of character, but for turns when you’re just trying to land one solid blow, you can afford to drink and save your rage rounds. Just a matter of keeping ready to drink liquor on hand which seems to be the biggest hinderance. Sure it works with potions, but that’ll get expensive fast. Still with potions of Enlarge Person, you could take it as a move action and still attack, which basically gives you the Accelerated Drinker trait.

Combines with: Brutal Pugilist, Elemental Kin, Invulnerable Rager, Savage Barbarian, Superstitious, Wild Rager

Elemental Kin

Elemental Fury I can’t imagine you’ll be taking elemental damage often enough to make this a great call, but you also won’t face traps that often, making this a straight upgrade.

Combines with: Drunken Brute, Hurler, Mounted Fury, Urban Barbarian, Wild Rager

Hurler

Skilled Thrower This is such a small increase that it’s hard to even mention without yawning.

Combines with: Brutal Pugilist, Elemental Kin, Invulnerable Rager, Savage Barbarian, Superstitious, Wild Rager

Invulnerable Rager

Invulnerability This is just amazing, making your DR scale to a point where it’s a viable defense. It’s hard to find something wrong with this, and while losing both Uncanny Dodge and Improved Uncanny Dodge is a little harsh, this is the way to make sure you can take the massive amounts of punishment that you’re going to incur.

Extreme Endurance Endure Elements is pretty nice, as is some decent energy resistance to fire or cold. Really, it’s icing on the cake with how good Invulnerability is.

Combines with: Drunken Brute, Hurler, Urban Barbarian

Mad Dog

War Beast This is such a hard call, as an animal companion is pretty freaking amazing, but losing about half your rage powers is harsh. For this path, I’d suggest going down a less feat intensive sub role, as a lot of your feats are probably going to be going to Extra Rage Power. But the fact that this can be any animal companion instead of from a rather gimped list and at your full Barbarian level is what makes this such a powerful ability to have.

Pack Tactics Bonuses to attack for you and your beast are pretty nice, and it’s worth trading away Uncanny Dodge for it (especially if you buy it back with a trait.

Rage Delaying Rage for this long makes you quite dependant on your choice of animal companion for damage, so it’s a fair trade off if not steep in cost.

Ferocious Fetch This is actually a pretty neat trick that gives you the chance to maneuver your enemy around with your animal companion.

Damage Reduction Sharing this with your beast is nice enough to delay it for 3 levels, as it’s basically doubling.

Throat Cutter A bonus attack for dragging is aces to me, and worth losing out on a save bonus to will since you have a ton of save bonuses already to stack.

Combines with: None

Mounted Fury

Fast Rider As you should be spending most of your time on your mount, I’m considering this a net gain, since it’s basically keeping your speed increase, but in a different way.

Bestial Mount A worse mount than the Mad Dog, it’s at -4 so you need Boon Companion as your level 5 feat, but you trade away so much less to get it. A horse is a pretty solid companion though, so it’s up to you and what style of Barbarian you want to play here. If you’re an orc or half-orc, consider picking up the Beast Rider feat at 7th for a far more hardcore mount.

Combines with: Elemental Kin, Savage Barbarian, Superstitious

Savage Barbarian

Naked Courage This will never be worth forgoing armor, and it’s not even like you can mix it with Monk to make the lack of armor work for you...just really not worth it.

Natural Toughness I may not love the natural DR progression, but this is going to get you broken in half by just about anything that wants to hit you. Unless you have an unhealthy fear of rust monsters and wooden armor, you can skip out on this archetype.

Combines with: Drunken Brute, Hurler, Mounted Fury, Urban Barbarian, Wild Rager

Scarred Rager

Terrifying Visage While flavorful, not really all that helpful. Guess it’s a good first step to an intimidator, but only humanoids limits its usefulness in most games.

Tolerance Being able to keep yourself from being taken out of the fight (or just gimped) is a solid investment, and worth the trade off here. The half duration for fatigue and such is golden too.

Scarification At least for me, bleed effects aren’t too common, but you’re coming close to being immune to them with this, which is better than Trap Sense by a wide margin.

Improved Tolerance Widening the range of things that you can shake off makes you that much more reliable of a melee combatant, and this keeps you from falling prey to quite a few pretty common battlefield ailments.

Combines with: None

Sea Reaver

Weapon and Armor Proficiency Right off the bat and we’re losing medium armor. This is not a strong start to an archetype I don’t have a lot of faith in to begin with.

Marine Terror A lot of boring bonuses do not make up for a loss in speed.

Eye of the Storm Preventing cover from weather is another fairly rare scenario to encounter, and what you’re losing is just so much better...

Savage Sailor Only useful in a nautical game, and even boring bonuses for that.

Sure Footed While I actually like this a little, it’s not worth what you’re giving up, especially on an archetype that’s already so weak. Even in a nautical game, this would be pretty lame.

Combines with: None

Superstitious

Sixth Sense The initiative bonus is the real big seller to me here, and ditching Trap Sense for it just makes this all the sweeter. It’s a no brainer, and one of the best trades you can get.

Keen Senses As I’ve said before, if you’re not building around Damage Reduction, it’s not that great an ability. Skipping out on it for some bonus senses is actually a pretty sweet deal, and ending the game with Blindsight is a better capstone than you’d normally get.

Combines with: Drunken Brute, Hurler, Mounted Fury, Urban Barbarian, Wild Rager

Titan Mauler

Big Game Hunter A small bonus to AC and attacks against bigger things is okay, but it’s nothing special. These are two things you don’t really need for what you’re giving up.

Jotungrip What two handed weapon did you really want to one hand? And at a penalty? The only strategy I could figure around this was 2x Meteor Hammers for Reach and Adjacent, but aside from that it’s basically a worthless ability. Maybe could be some use with #16 Tieflings to wield large 2 handed weapons in either hand, but that kind of goes against the text in the ability, so I’m not even sure THAT would work.

Massive Weapon The wording on this is just stupid; it keeps reducing the -2 you get until it’s gone, but it talks like it could go higher than that. So now it only scales to level 6 and removes a penalty you shouldn’t even have...I hate this.

Evade Reach A rather solid defensive ability, keeping things from being able to get at you is something you should be attempting, as anything massive probably has Combat Reflexes to take advantage of that 20+ ft reach it’s sporting.

Titanic Rage Being large is good, although it’s a large that doesn’t stack with anything else, will destroy your rage rounds if you’re cycling (which at this level you are), and exhaust you afterwards as well. What a great capstone for this archetype’s abilities.

Combines with: None

Totem Warrior

This...does nothing. Nothing at all. And I hate it for that. The devs ruled that it won’t let you stack totems, and it has nothing that makes it do anything. I’m only listing it so you know it does nothing, and don’t bother taking it. It’s not bad, it doesn’t hurt you, but it doesn’t help you. If anything, it hurts because it’s something else you have to list on your character sheet, and that’s more work for you for absolutely no reward. I really hate this due to sloppy editing since this didn’t need to be in the book, and could have been something.

Combines with: EVERYTHING FOREVER BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE IT DOESN’T DO ANYTHING!

True Primitive

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies Oh good, I can use bone weapons. Let me tell everyone about this. It’s so useful since bone is the best thing to make weapons and armor from.

Illiteracy Interesting note: In 3.5 D&D, all Barbarians started off with this. This doesn’t make it good, acceptable, and just means you are an idiot who misses out on important things. Because you’re dumb. And you can NEVER learn how to read ever.

Favored Terrain This is actually pretty nice for what you give up for it, It’s just not good enough.

Trophy Fetish This would be decent if you didn’t have to have such awful abilities saddled to it, but you do, and thus this is made worse by your incredibly terrible weapons and armor. Just wait until someone decides to sunder your stuff, because you deserve it.

Combines with: Wild Rager

Urban Barbarian

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies Again we lose medium armor, but we’re not tied to such a bad frame for it this time.

Skills The real gem here is getting diplomacy, which is just such a useful skill. The rest are okay as well, but this is the standout of your new list, and nothing you lose is too important.

Crowd Control This is such a lackluster ability, and really just isn’t worth losing your Fast Movement. It’s okay, but just not that useful unless you’re always in crowds.

Controlled Rage The versatility of this ability is what gives it such use. Pick a physical ability to buff and go to town. It’s more manageable than your normal rage, and gives you a lot of freedom to act how you want, as well as making a more socially acceptable Barbarian. It does however lower your net stat gains, so it’s up to you to decide if that’s worth it.

Combines with: Brutal Pugilist, Elemental Kin, Invulnerable Rager, Savage Barbarian, Superstitious

Wild Rager

Uncontrolled Rage Remember the Frenzied Berserker of 3.5? This is the closest thing to it. While the save shouldn’t be too hard (We all tanked our charisma), any chance to murder your party is bad forever.

Wild Fighting This is why you’re taking this archetype, it basically gives you Rapid Shot for melee attacks even without raging. It also comes with a hefty AC penalty too, and yet as you know putting down more damage is the most important thing you can do. But at what cost? The cost of killing everyone you love and care about.

Rage Conversion Most of the reason you’d want to avoid a mind affecting effect is so that you don’t kill your party. Making this second save gives you a chance of killing your party, but it’s almost more under your control. Better than being dominated, but not by much.

Combines with: Breaker, Drunken Brute, Elemental Kin, Hurler, Savage Barbarian, Superstitious, True Primitive

Prestige Classes

In Pathfinder, the prestige class is less a dip route and more an alternative way of building up your character. A lot of these don’t really stand out, so I’ll try to only talk about ones that are useful. I’ll be grading them on both prereqs and actual abilities. I’m also leaving out the more “complex” ones like Eldritch Knight, as those are basically their own build, and beyond the scope of this guide. But there are a few that I do like quite a bit that I will be reviewing. Sadly, not all Barbarian powers scale without Barbarian levels.

Celestial Knight/Knight of Ozem

Unless you’re in an undead heavy game, most of this class will fall flat. Thankfully, even in a non undead game, they’re a pretty common enemy, so your skills won’t go completely to rust, but the focus is too narrow.

Chevalier

I really love this one; it’s a little 3 level jaunt, basically a dip, but it makes you a Paladin-lite. The flavor is wonderful, it makes you a better charger, nice skills, and an eventual Smite Evil. There’s not a lot to hate about this class, and it really does help you feel like a hero. It’d be purple if it stacked with Barbarian levels for Rage Powers though.

Golden Legionnaire

Playing more to the style of the leader/defender, this class is pretty solid if you want to play more of a reformed Barbarian, although it will lead to you getting whacked a bit more, so be sure to pump that DR. Overall a nice change, although a bit lacking in skills.

Horizon Walker

Being honest, I see this as a 3 level dip to start your Rage Cycle, but it can be decent to pick up some more varied abilities. Nice skills to boot, you could do worse and it really shines if you’re playing in a desert game, as that’s probably the first terrain you’re dominating.

Low Templar

Rating this is so hard, as it gets a lot of minor bonuses but aren’t that helpful, but it also gets a lot of cool stuff like sneak attack which on a full BAB is pretty nice. It also ends very strong with a planar cohort which can just get sick sexy. It’s a bit of a slog, but if you’re willing to stick it out to the end, this is a quality prestige class.

Mammoth Rider

The big draw here is a one level dip for a huge animal companion. I’m not sure if you can dip as a Mounted Fury Barbarian, and then just go back to your regular horse progression with a much better companion (like a big cat), as that would make this class straight PURPLE. Even without that, you’re going into this to pimp your mount, and damn if you won’t leave with an incredibly strong battle ready monster at the ready.

Pain Taster

For prereqs, we have...wait, you get a +1 untyped bonus to your Constitution?! The Fort save is not hard to make, and giving you a permanent buff to your second most important stat is insane. And we’re not even actually talking class features, just prereqs. First you get a slotless +2 enhancement bonus to any stat (I’d suggest wisdom, since you probably won’t buy stuff to buff it normally) for half market price, next we get sneak attack on a full BAB class with slashing weapons, and it’s always on for whips which get free piercing. Next we’re getting STACKABLE DR to add to our normal DR, Uncanny Dodge in case you traded it away (and if you’re coming to this class you should), and we end with a +4 enhancement bonus to any stat.

Rage Prophet

I want to like this more, I really do, but this class is so unfocused. The biggest boost here is that you’re getting Oracle Casting, which is pretty nice. But all your feats are probably going towards Extra Rage Power. Thankfully Rage Prophet levels stack with Barbarian levels, but picking a good point to leave Barbarian is the problem since you want all the best powers. I myself would bail after 6th and picking up Spell Sunder. The class features aren’t anything great, but again, you’re here for the casting, so if you want to completely change the way you’re playing for a more gishy style, this is the way to do it.

Multiclassing

Like most mundanes, you get a lot out of multiclassing. The problem is that unlike them, you have level based variables that matter. For this reason, I’d suggest not stepping out of your class for more than 3 levels at most unless you have a specific idea/prestige class in mind. Two is honestly the golden number here for me, as it’s where you hit the most return.

Alchemist Another two level dip at most to pick up mutagen and a discovery, I’d suggest going VIVISECTIONIST to give you some sneak attack to throw onto your blows. Mutagen is basically a longer lasting rage, and the two stack. For max danger value why don’t you mix RAGE CHEMIST/WILD RAGER for probably the most unstable character you can run.

Fighter This is basically your brother...your much less cool, depressing brother. You’re here to snap up some heavy armor, a feat, and maybe a tower shield, but you can do so much more. The gold here is the UNBREAKABLE archetype, which trades away your first level feat for both Endurance and Diehard. That’s a one level dip for 2 feats as well as everything else, and you know those are two feats that are the prereqs for a ton of other good stuff. Also consider WEAPON MASTER if you plan on going for a somewhat longer dip.

Monk With the consideration that you took the Enlightened Warrior trait, these two classes play very well together. Two levels here as a SOHEI/MASTER OF MANY STYLES is nabbing you two requirementless style feats (Snake Style), +1 to initiative, and always acting in the surprise round. Add to that the armorless bonus (which makes Savage Warrior actually a good choice), the huge save bonuses, and the boost to unarmed damage and you’re pretty solid.

Oracle As we talked about in Rage Cycling and You, the point of this is either to go lame or go for Rage Prophet to have a more gish friendly Barbarian. If you’re not doing any of those, stay away from this. Still, it’s a surprisingly Barbarian friendly class, so consider it.

Witch In and of itself, it’s worthless. But if you’re going SCARRED WITCH DOCTOR this is a great lead in to Eldritch Knight, which would make you one hell of a gish. Sadly you can’t rage and cast at the same time, but having your constitution do double duty is really worth the investment if that’s the way you want to take this character.

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7. Mundane Equipment

Gear is one of the most important parts of your design, and you need to have the absolute best tools for bashing in skulls before the exact same thing happens to you. From your childhood short sword to your end game Soul Ripper, this chapter is about tools of pain. Make sure to pick the one that best displays your unique hate for everything around you.

Weapons

This is most likely one of the most defining decision of your Barbarian’s career. The defining choice of which weapon you’ll take into combat can make or break you, and you and you want to go into battle with the best possible odds. With this mind, always make sure to carry a composite longbow. I said it in earlier sections, but people are often prone to forgetting the level of importance this holds. You won’t always be able to get in wreck face range, and when you’re not, you’ll NEED a way to do damage at a distance.

Also a dagger or two should always be on your person, as it’s hard to tell when you might need one for...really anything. They’re just such a universally useful item to have. And for close range, consider picking up a sling, as it’s a cheap way to add your massive strength to your damage. As for special materials, ADAMANTINE is probably the best, especially for those of you who like sundering.

For most of you, we’ll be dealing with 2 handed weapons, as there’s really no reason why not to have one, so it’s a decision between a few weapons. I’ll also be looking over exotic 2 handed weapons that MAY be worth blowing a feat (or the half-elf racial trait) on depending on how cool or stylish they may be as well as functional.

Martial two handed weapons

Bardiche This reach weapon comes with the best possible crit range at 19/20, which in and of itself makes it a strong call for your primary reach weapon if you’re not tripping.

Earth Breaker The preferred weapon for bludgeoning, it has the biggest amount of damage possible for the damage type, so for hammer bros look here.

Heavy Flail Tripping, disarming, and a sweet 19-20 crit range coupled with bludgeoning damage all come together to make this the best close range trip weapon.

Greataxe An old favorite and your d12 partner in crime, the allure of this weapon and its thematic symmetry aren’t strong enough to make it stand up to other mechanically superior weapons. It’s not a bad weapon in and of itself, just a somewhat less powerful one.

Greatsword Mechanically the most damaging weapon you can wield, the increased damaged die over the Falchion make it slightly better in the long run, as well as another iconic choice.

Horsechopper Here’s your weapon of choice for reach and tripping, as well as two different possible types of damage. It’s hard not to pick this if you’re going for battlefield control.

Lance If you’re mounted, it’s incredible and is the only weapon you should wield. If you’re not, stay away from this unless you NEED to pierce the heavens with your drill.

Nodachi On average you’ll be netting one more damage from this than from the Falchion, although from a slightly more randomized damage die.

Scythe I have a bit of a soft spot for this weapon, but it’s really quite a good weapon for close range tripping if only for that beautiful (but rare) 4x crit range.

Ranged Weapons

Composite Longbow First of all, you’re getting this adaptive. It’s the best ranged weapon you can get your hands on, and the amount of fun arrows you can use with it is beyond compare. You’re going to take this weapon, and love it like it deserves.

Exotic one handed weapons

Falcata While not a two handed weapon, this little treasure has managed to have something else no other weapon does, a 19-20 x3 crit range. That puts it in a very unique position, and is easily worth consideration for your exotic weapon of choice.

Scorpion Whip Basically just a normal whip that can penetrate natural armor, for a controller or AOO monster, this can be handy. Consider picking up the whip feat chain.

Exotic two handed weapons

Battle Ladder This will never be a good weapon unless you want to be the coolest Barbarian ever, and I’m sure you do. Why else would you be reading this guide?

Fauchard I really love this weapon, as it’s reach/trip, deals decent damage, and has an 18-20 crit range. One of the few weapons I’d consider for my EWP feat.

Flambard One of only two weapons in the game with Sunder, the weapon has a nice crit range and reach, and the sunder bonus is on everything, which should include spells.

Flying Blade This is a weird one to recommend, as all attacks with it come at a -2. But all AOOs negate that and give it a +2 to attack rolls instead, so it’s very control heavy.

Ripsaw Glaive Some weapons I include just because they’re cool, and this is one. Basically paying a move action for a +2 to damage isn’t great, but it’s certain really freaking cool.

Armor

Rather than specific armors, the best advice here is for you to pick up whichever fits your dexterity modifier. Most armors aren’t that different in the same way that weapons are, so probably a BREASTPLATE will be your best call, eventually going with an agile one if it affects that many of your skills. Also a CHAIN SHIRT is completely acceptable if you want to keep your speed bonus and care less about your AC.

Unlike with weapons, avoid ADAMANTINE since it doesn’t stack with your natural DR, which is a shame. Instead, consider MITHRIL if you have a decent dex score, or just want to have your breastplate count as light armor (as well as basically removing its ACP.)

Also while I told you not to use a shield, you might want to consider a buckler for later game. It only gives you a -1 to attack rolls and you can stick useful enhancements onto it. Plus it’ll boost your flatfooted AC, which isn’t terrible. It’s less a piece of defensive gear and more a place to stick some decent magical effects if you get the chance.

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8. Magical Equipment

As little as most of us battle maniacs want to admit it, those magic trinkets that the finger wavers make are basically our only chance at surviving in a world that by every right wants us dead. Be it a sword that’s made purely of force, armor forged from dragon’s rage, or a cape that not only makes us look amazing, but also makes it so we don’t submit to every enchanter this side of Skaia, magical items are a part of who we are.

The best magical items augment our strengths and take the power we already have and amplify it to a point of destructive perfection.

Magical Items will be listed in the following order: Weapons/Armor/Slotted/Unslotted

Weapons

Priced

1,000 GP Adaptive If you’re planning on using a bow while raging, this is what you need to do it, as it’s a cheap one size fits all composite bow to deal with your fluctuating strength score.

4,000 GP Glammered While this isn’t as good as it is with armor, it’s not a horrible purchase if you need to sneak your weapon into somewhere you shouldn’t.

14,000 GP Dueling This is nice, but really only worth it late game as a way to buff your initiative. Not really a main weapon sort of thing, throw it on a gauntlet and call it a day.

Numerical Bonuses (+1, +2, +3, +4, +5) Being able to punch through DR now makes these among the best bonuses you can add to your weapons, and for the most part should be quite highly prized on whatever weapon you’re wielding.

Bane Easily the most subjective of the list, this borders on amazing if you can predict the type of foes you’ll be fighting. If not...it’s terrible, but that’s a risk you’ll have to take.

Called If you’re a bit on the paranoid side, this isn’t terrible, but somewhat situational.

Courageous Boosting all your rage bonuses and tons of other easily obtained morale bonuses is worth your gold, but pick up Furious first, as the two of these have GREAT synergy.

Cruel This is a decent call for those of you out there with an intimidator build up your sleeve. Adding a debuff to a debuffed opponent is only going to make them easier prey.

Elemental (Corrosive, Flaming, Frost, Shock) Of these, Corrosive is the best as acid is least often resisted. These are straight bonuses that are pretty no thrills, and mostly best on an Amulet of Mighty Fist since they’ll be affecting 3+ attacks. Mostly a filler ability.

Furious This is quite literally a +2 while raging for the cost of a +1 bonus. You get this, you get this now and you never forget it. It’s require for ALL BARBARIANS.

Keen Your threat range can always be better, and if not for the Scabbard of Keen Edge, this would be higher. But seeing as you can buy it without using any +’s from your weapon, get your keen ability somewhere else.

Mimetic I actually kind of like this, as a lot of things use energy types they’re immune to themselves, which could give you some decent resistance against them.

Ominous For the dedicated intimidators, although the bonus probably won’t be that big, so unless you’re working to scare everything possible, pass on this.

Vicious This is a hard trade off, since even though you have a lot of HP losing it like this is going to drain you fast if you’re racking up the hits. It’s a good ability to have, but make sure you can handle the punishment that you’re dealing out.

Aligned (Anarchic, Axiomatic, Holy, Unholy) By the time you’re picking these up, you know what you’re fighting, and have a good feel for what the best one to put on your weapon is. Holy is normally the best, but your campaign may vary.

Designating, Lesser Perfect for switch hitters, it’s almost like a mini Bard Bonus per hit.

Disruption While this is an oldie, it has aged terribly. The save you’ll force against undead is far below useful at the point you can afford this, so find other ways to ghost bust.

Elemental Burst Unless you’re a crit machine (15-20), these will never pay off in any meaningful way, and there’s no reason to bother making them work for you.

Furyborn Another boost I only really like when you’re getting 4+ attacks a round, it’ll take 2 hits to make up for what you’re missing, and rarely will you get the 3rd+ strike that make up the difference for the cost you paid to get this. Maybe for a Ragebred though...

Impact This really only pays off when you’re using the largest weapon you can, and adds on about another 3 damage (2d6 to 3d6.) The only real way to make this work for you is to often be enlarged to up the damage again (or Tiefling #16 if your GM will let you take it), but for most of us, it’s not really worth it unless you bull rush a lot.

Phase Locking Enemies who teleport away are cowards, and locking them into position is valuable when you’re facing those with natural teleportation like demons and such. Situational yes, but the later game foes all have this trick, so this is a solid way to shut them down.

Nullifying While knocking out someone’s spell resistance might be nice, if you’re landing blows they’re likely not going to be standing much longer.

Speed A classic, and if you don’t have a mage in your party that can provide haste it’s basically required. But that’s pretty unlikely. Still, an extra attack is always golden.

Brilliant Energy Cool, your own lightsaber! This is such a trap, as most things late game are stacked to rafters with natural armor, meaning this big old +4 is doing nothing. And it makes you worthless against constructs and undead, and you paid a lot to give them that immunity.

Dancing Four rounds of free swings is very nice, but this is also crazy expensive, so it’s a hard call. Still, it’s attacks you don’t have to make yourself, which add to your bottom line.

Designating, Greater An even better bonus for your bow, although nothing you can’t do without.

Vorpal Unless you live in a land of Jabberwocks, this is a hard no. This is over costed, not always applicable (undead and multiheaded things) and just overhyped to the max.

Armor

Priced

2,700 GP Glammered I really like this myself, as it’s cheap and very stealthy. Get that mithral hellknight plate to look like your sunday best.

3,500 GP Jousting/Shadow/Slick This is a decently cheap way to boost your skill checks, although Slick falls a bit short of the mark. Stay at this level, don’t go improved, this is the best point for pricing vs. bonus that you can get.

7,500 GP Hosteling This is actually really useful for keeping your animal companion with you whenever you need it, and a solid decision if you’re playing a beastmaster.

10,000 GP Delving As long as you can solve the air issue, another way to travel that’s pretty stealthy can be a big help to infiltration.

30,000 GP Determination While expensive, this is quite literally an extra life per day, and a decent reason to have a buckler to throw this on twice.

Numerical Bonuses (+1, +2, +3, +4, +5) These hold a lot less value than they did for weapons, but you don’t have a lot else to pick up, so they’re worth considering.

Fortification (Light) Crits always ruin your day, and while the chance is small, anything that makes you better able to tank hits is worth considering.

Spell Storing While not valuable in an of itself, if you’ve got someone who can cast spells into it, it’s another solid layer of defense (or for Rage Prophets.)

Spell Resistance 13 Listed simply to tell you to avoid it, SR is not good for PCs, and neither is overcosted SR like this. Same goes for any higher SR abilities.

Fortification (Moderate) More crit protection, and armor doesn’t have nearly as many vital abilities to place on it as weapons, so you should have room for it.

Invulnerability You have your own DR, you don’t need more and worse DR for this cost.

None

Fortification (Heavy) While still not perfect, you’re going to be crit a lot less in this.

Slotted Magical Equipment

Rings

1,000+ GP Protection +X Defense is okay, but AC isn’t your best way to avoid damage. Decent to pitch money on, but don’t break the bank on these.

3,000 GP Ferocious Action Staggering really knocks you for a loop, so being basically immune to it for pretty cheap can be one hell of a boost to your defenses. It would be higher, but you have a monstrous Fort save.

8,000 GP Forcefangs This basically makes you immune to targeted Force effects as well as giving you a weapon after absorbing them. Kind of hard to say no to that.

10, 000 GP Foe Focus The AC bonus isn’t what we’re looking at, but that +2 untyped bonus to saves makes you pretty good at living forever, and no limit on uses per day seals the deal.

40,000 GP Freedom of Movement Expensive but a classic, no reason not to have this one on one of your digits if you can afford it, and one less spell you need to prep for combat.

45,000 GP Delayed Doom I want to like this more, but you have so many other uses for your swift/immediate action that having one free to trigger this effect could be difficult.

50,000 GP Friend Shield You’re a tank, use this to eat damage for someone who can’t.

Belts

2,000 GP Bladed Belt It’s pretty dang cheap, and you can stealth in a weapon in places you normally couldn’t. If the following belt weren’t so much better, this would would be rated higher, but nifty utility doesn’t help it beat out raw power sadly.

4,000+ GP Belt of +X Physical Stat This is your belt, it will always be your belt, it is what you need. You can possibly switch it out or a Belt of +X Two/Three Physical Stats, but that’s your only real option unless you’re picking up the Belt of Rage Cycling.

10,000 GP Belt of Thunderous Charging At least it’s buffing your Str, your most important stat. As a Beast Totem Pouncer, you’ll be getting the bonus for this a lot, meaning it’s best to cary large weapons or a lot of natural weapons to get the best benefit from this.

15,000 GP Cord of Stubborn Resolve AKA Belt of Rage Cycling. A +2 to your Con barely makes this okay, but the real beauty of this is that it makes you able to rage cycle the second you put it on. For GMs who have issues with other ways of doing it, this is pretty obviously a RAW written way to get Rage Cycling, although it’s not my preferred one.

Body

67,000 GP Otherworldly Kimono Really nothing stands out except for this fine piece of workmanship. +4 to your saves to free up your shoulder slot in case cloaks are out of style this season and a free Maze effect are pretty intense, this is the only thing I see that I’d consider for this slot.

Chest

1,000 GP Quick Runner’s Shirt Or as it’s known, 1/Day Pounce. This item right here really alleviates the need for Pounce, which is beyond good. I’d pick up a few, change them after battles, 4 would probably be a safe amount as well as way too cheap to pass up.

10,000 GP Unfettered Shirt It’s a once a day Freedom of Movement spell, but it had a 10 minute duration. It’ll last most of your battling day if you’re smart about it, and want to preserve a ring slot for something else, but the ring is generally a better investment.

Eyes

2,500 GP Eyes of the Eagle Perception is the most rolled skill in the game, and you just paid to get a +5 at it for pennies. Unless you need your eye slot for something amazing, this stays awesome long into the later levels and will eventually become an after thought.

3,500 GP Lens of Detection Or for another 1,000 GP you can throw on a +5 to following tracks. The price difference is basically nothing by low-mid levels, so splurge a little if you like to track.

184,000 GP Goggles of Truesight These are CRAZY expensive, but also CRAZY awesome. True Sight will keep you from looking like an idiot late game when everything and their mother will be tossing illusions at you, but the cost...really knocks this down a peg.

Feet

1,000 GP Boots of the Cat A cheap investment, but not a bad one, as it’d let you fall VERY far very early. If you could put them on while falling, they’d be way better though. A bit hard to recommend for the long term.

2,000 GP Feather Step Slippers Difficult Terrain HATES you. Mitigating one of your biggest flaws could easily be worth your boot slot, even if you are the Barbarian who wears slippers.

7,500 GP Jaunt Boots Adding to your mobility is the purpose of boots, so being able to make more distance out of your 5 foot step is decent, if a little expensive.

10,000 GP Tremor Boots Tremorsense is pretty powerful, and you don’t have a lot of ways to upgrade your senses, so this can be pretty useful.

12,000 GP Boots of Speed The standard boots, extra attacks are power, so if you can’t get haste cast on you by others this is perfect.

49,000 GP Boots of Teleportation Again, mobility is key, although this is expensive as hell.

Hands

4,000 GP Gauntlets of Skilled Maneuver If you’re going to be trying to make CMB checks later in life, you’re going to need all the help you can get.

Head

5,000 GP Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier Negating a crit once a day is just every kind of amazing, it’ll be hard to find something better than this. Consider picking up a few.

8,500 Helm of the Mammoth Lord Picking up another natural attack is the main reason you’re here, although the other benefits aren’t bad either.

Headband

4,000 GP Headband of Mental Stat You’re only really shooting for Wisdom here, as buffing your save is important, as well as your perception, but more skills could be worth it too.

8,000 GP Headband of Havoc The best powers for this are probably Strength Surge and Superstition, although the instant rage isn’t the most helpful thing. Good for if you don’t want to go for a stat buff.

Neck

2,000 GP Amulet of Natural Armor Another standard item slot, I don’t care for this as much since AC isn’t your best defense, and for the same cost you could be getting a Ring of Deflection for a more useful AC boost.

4,000 GP Amulet of Mighty Fist If you’re going Natural Attacks, this IS your neck slot.

8,000 GP Torc of Lionheart Fury If you’re going for an intimidation build, this is a nice way to do it, as it gives you the ability to pick up extra rage rounds and a free Rage Power.

8,000 GP Hand of Glory Neck slot for another ring slot is kind of meh, not a great trade off.

9,000 GP Amulet of Hidden Strength More of a late game investment, but throw this on before a fight and shock an opponent with another swing that could turn the tides.

Shoulders

1,000 GP Cloak of Resistance This is your shoulder slot, love it.

Wrist

4,000 GP Bracers of Falcon’s Aim If you’re arching, this is how you’re doing it.

8,000 GP Duelist Vambraces Only for your TWFers, it’s a slight boost to accuracy that you’ll definitely appreciate. Still, it’s pretty pretty specific, so it’s not great.

25,000 GP Bracers of Sworn Vengeance The best buff here is to your damage, but it’s a bit expensive. Still, not a lot of great things for this slot as is, so consider it.

Unslotted

500 GP Dusty Rose Prism (Cracked) A cheap +1 to initiative is pretty nice.

500 GP Wayfinder A great place to keep your Ioun Stones instead of around your head, and some get little bonuses if they’re inside of one.

1,000 GP Bead of Newt Prevention While you’re not at a great risk of this with all your defenses, one bad roll can end the game, so picking up a few of them is important.

1,800 GP Efficient Quiver Another archer accessory, it’s a strong slotless item for cheap.

2,000 GP Handy Haversack The best personal level storage you can get. For larger transportation, get a back of holding.

4,000 GP Clear Spindle Keeping you from needing to eat is nice, but the real bonus here is throwing it into a Wayfinder for a constant Protection from Evil.

4,000 GP Pale Green Prism (Cracked) This is inexpensive for either benefit, so feel free to pick up two for both.

4,500 GP Knight’s Pennon, Battle Picking up Heroism for an hour a day for this cheap is a damn nice benefit.

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9.Sample Builds

Ah yes, Sample Builds. I hate these. Unlike the Alch guide, you’re only getting builds and suggestions, not fully fleshed out characters. Mostly because thats all you need to make this work. But the ideas below are pretty solid if you’re looking for a framework. It should be easy enough using a character using these as a base.

Devastator (Mage Killer, Beast Master) Name: Treize Telos

Race: Human FC Bonus: Superstitious Archetypes: Mounted Fury

Traits: Fate’s Favored, Mindlessly Cruel

1st Power Attack, Combat Reflexes

2nd Superstitious

3rd Mounted Combat

4th Witch Hunter

5th Extra Rage Power: Lesser Beast Totem

6th Spell Sunder

7th Extra Rage Power: Beast Totem

8th Strength Surge

9th Spirited Charge

10th Eater of Magic

11th Extra Rage Power: Greater Beast Totem

12th Come and Get Me

13th Step Up

14th Reckless Abandon

15th Improved Step Up

16th Flesh Wound

17th Step Up and Strike

18th Ghost Rager

19th Horn of the Criosphinx

20th Unexpected Strike

Savage (None) Name: Kaylean Victro

Race: Ragebred (Skinwalker) FC Bonus: HP Archetypes:Superstitious

Traits: Tiger’s Claws, Adopted: Toothy

1st Extra Features (Hooves)

2nd Lesser Beast Totem

3rd Power Attack

4th Reckless Abandon

5th Combat Reflexes

6th Beast Totem

7th Extra Rage Power: Superstitious

8th Unexpected STrike

9th Raging Vitality

10th Greater Beast Totem

11th Hammer the Gap

12th Come and Get Me

13th Dazing Assault

14th Boar’s Charge

15th Improved Initiative

16th Disemboweling Tusk

17th Arcane Strike

18th Witch Hunter

19th Extra Rage Power: Spell Sunder

20th Eater of Magic

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11. FAQ and Closing

Scar - Fullmetal Alchemist -.jpeg

F(requently) A(sked) Q(uestions)

Q: Hey, sweet guide!

A: Hey, sweet question

Q: I disagree with you about X, Y, and Z.

A: Of course you do, this is the internet. If you wish to talk with me about changing a rating or including something else, post in one of the above given threads, and I’ll be happy to listen to what you have to say.

Q: Why haven’t you added X yet?

A: I add things as they hit the PFSRD, so until they’re on there, they won’t be on the guide. I’m not opposed to using the Archives of Nethys, so let me know if there’s something on there that I’m missing as well.

Q: Do you hate the rogue or something? You trash it a lot in your guide.

A: I do not like the Pathfinder rogue, it’s a trash class, and there are many others that do what it does, but better. Consider checking them out instead, like Alchemist or Investigator.

Q: Do you plan on doing any other guides? Do you take request?

A: Well, you’re actually in luck on this one. I’m currently taking donations on Patreon, and if certain milestones are met, I’ll begin work on a slew of new guides for new and old classes alike.

Closing

This guide is one of my favorites, and the Barbarian still stands as my favorite melee class to play for so many of the things that it does well. I really hope you’ve enjoyed this guide, and I hope that you’ll check out my other ones as well.

Everybody starts somewhere: N. Jolly’s guide to building Pathfinder characters

Chasing the Philosopher's Stone: N. Jolly’s guide to the Pathfinder Alchemist

The Investigator’s Grand Turnabout: N. Jolly’s Guide-Addendum to the Pathfinder Investigator

Surpassing even The Boss: N. Jolly’s guide to the Pathfinder Gunslinger

Mastering the Elements: N. Jolly’s guide to the Pathfinder Kineticist

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