Enter: the Drow Barbarian
One of the common complaints about D&D 4th edition is that it’s too hard to differentiate one character from another; that the game’s design leads to cookie-cutter clerics and factory floor fighters. To put this to the test, I’ve decided to closely examine my current character to see if oddball choices, player vision and unique flavor can be a part of 4E.
Sevash is a 9th level drow barbarian. I figured now would be a good time to review his career and judge whether or not it’s been a success (in terms of matching the original vision I had for the character) because his retirement is imminent. Did Sevash turn out like I planned, and did I make the optimal strategic decisions to make him effective in combat? Let’s see…
The choice to create a drow barbarian initially stemmed from a desire to make something atypical, even if it wasn’t a statistically ideal choice. On closer inspection, however, I was intrigued by the possibilities of an agile, fast barbarian. It turns out to be a really interesting choice, since high dexterity increases the armor class of characters who only wear light armor, and the Thaneborn Barbarian option favors high charisma. Guess which two abilities drow get racial bonuses in?
Now, how does a drow become a barbarian? This could be a difficult question if your campaign uses the typical evil, Underdark dwelling, Lolth-worshipping drow. You can always fall back on the old, “the one special drow that escaped and isn’t evil” cliche, but luckily I was able to avoid this. In our campaign world, drow are basically North Africans. They might be Persian, Arabian or Egyptian, but they aren’t inherently evil (or good). I decided that Sevash came from a tribe of desert nomads similar to the Bedouin. In this respect, his “barbarianness” is more like a set of cultural traditions than some kind of unbridled savagery. In fact, outside of combat, Sevash is quite urbane, if somewhat callous. No tattered animal hide armor for him — he meticulously maintains his finely crafted leather armor (and his hair, much to the amusement of his companions).
Wanderlust (even beyond that of his nomadic kin) lead Sevash to travel and learn. To pay his way, he relied on his sword skill and crossed into Europe working as a bounty hunter. In combat, I wanted to create a warrior who moved fluidly and quickly through enemy ranks, quickly striking prime targets before darting deftly away to strike someone else. He was not to be a mindless hack and slasher, but he wasn’t really a team player, either. The emphasis would be on mobility, allowing him to reach almost any target and deal a single brutal strike.
Did it work? This turned out to be one of my favorite D&D characters of all time (who very nearly died last night, by the way) precisely because he turned out just as I’d planned. Powers with built-in mobility work extremely well — the at-will Pressing Strike, which let’s you shift two squares prior to the attack, is a drow barbarian’s bread and butter. Vault the Fallen is another clutch power, granting you attacks against two targets with a shift in between equal to your charisma bonus. A drow can cover a lot of ground with it. Combat Sprint is a useful utility power for those times when you need to cross a large room or catch a fleeing enemy. My one mistake was probably taking Blood Strike instead of Daring Charge. The charge is a great mobile attack, while Blood Strike left me often waiting and waiting for someone to become bloodied before I could use it.
When it comes to rages, Swift Panther Rage seems like an obvious choice, letting you shift two squares and boosting your overall speed. In reality, once I’d gained Rage of the Silver Phoenix, I never ever used Swift Panther (I’d burn it with a Rage Strike instead). Rage of the Silver Phoenix is amazing, granting you regeneration 3 and the ability to bounce back to your feet immediately upon hitting zero hit points. If your barbarian’s party is following the original 4E series of adventures, you’ll want to grab Black Dragon Rage at 9th level. It deals acid damage, and you’ll be heading into the Trollhaunt Warrens soon. It’s also the only 9th level rage not gimped by a low constitution.
Feats can be tough, as there doesn’t seem to be much that helps this type of build. Improved Roar of Triumph and Sickening finish were taken for basic utility: they both trigger when the barbarian kills something, and that tends to happen quite a bit. Improved Initiative was a major boon, allowing Sevash to leap into the heart of a battle as quickly as possible, disrupting the enemy (or sometimes just slaughtering them) before they even have a chance to act. Defensive Mobility (+2 AC vs. opportunity attacks) is key, as you’ll often find yourself moving past lesser targets to take out a leader or a spellcaster. I don’t think Sevash has ever actually been struck by an opportunity attack. Finally, I recently took Durable to gain the extra healing surges. A drow barbarian is not a tank, but he will often be right in the middle of battle, drawing enemy attacks and taking big hits. You need your surges both for allies’ healing powers and to use the Phoenix Rage’s “back from the dead” ability. Some magic items draw down surges, too, so it pays to have as many as possible.
So we can see that up to level 9, Sevash has become exactly the kind of drow barbarian I’d imagined. If he were to move into the Paragon Tier, I’d likely go with the Fearbringer Thane path. You probably already know how I feel about Paragon Paths in general. It just happens that Sevash has one available that fits, but I still don’t really like characters being railroaded into these specializations in order to gain access to the new abilities they provide. But the overall point here is that, by making careful feat and power selections and giving some thought to character background and style, I was able to create what feels like a pretty unique character. You could create half a dozen different types of barbarians — you could even make several different types of drow Thaneborn barbarians, with different powers emphasizing different aspects and abilities. 4E is a versatile system.
November 20th, 2009 3:26 PM
Thanks, Ed. Loved to read the hows and whys of Sevash. Very cool.
November 20th, 2009 3:32 PM
Drow Barbarian go! I love playing crazy stuff like that. I need to play more games.
November 20th, 2009 4:07 PM
I worry that writing about my character or campaign is too self-indulgent sometimes.
November 20th, 2009 4:08 PM
Also, is your bold & italicized “troll” a suggestion that my sorceress might want to retrain to acquire some sort of acid or fire At-Will next level?
November 20th, 2009 4:12 PM
Well, it ain’t the Puppyhaunt Warrens.
November 20th, 2009 4:34 PM
Is acid/fire good against trolls?
I need to read my monster manual.
November 20th, 2009 4:36 PM
Trolls regenerate unless you hit them with acid or fire.
November 21st, 2009 6:19 AM
Ah, good news.
November 21st, 2009 8:54 AM
On the flipside, my Lawful Evil Tiefling Warlock/Paladin DID go on an adventure to the Puppyhaunt Warrens, & racked up a ton of kills. Same thing with the Keep on the Kittenfell.
November 21st, 2009 9:36 PM
November 23rd, 2009 3:37 PM
One advantage to 4e is the game balance. People talk a lot about how they don’t have grossly overpowered characters like 3.x allowed. But they also make it hard to make underpowered characters. People who don’t make optimized characters are still within the same ballpark, and can sometimes carve out unique niches. The characters who have good scores in stats not usually favored for a class give them different abilities and unusual multiclassing abilities.
Paragon paths may be filler, but one advantage is that it’s easy to make one that fits your character better. Since there are only a few mechanical elements, you can easily compare them to other paragon paths for the same role. I usually give each ability a value of +2 to -2 compared to how much I want this ability compared to the same ability in the other path. Add them up to get a composite score. Do a few comparisons and that will give you the idea if it’s balanced. It’s much easier than comparing prestige classes in 3.x.
On the other hand my party had a TPK in the Puppyhaunt Warrens. Darned vulnerability to licking damage…
November 24th, 2009 11:55 AM
Good Analysis Ed. I was wracking my brain, and I’m pretty sure that Sevash hasn’t been hit by an opportunity attack either. and he is a chutney machine. Part of the reason he gets clobbered so badly is the fact that we now only have one defender in the party, one controller and 5 strikers. In that situation, the strikers have to take on the role of front liners.
November 24th, 2009 2:00 PM
One defender, one controller and five strikers? Interesting group. I’d be interested to hear more details about how they work together and what tactics everybody uses. Most of our groups have been more balanced, but I think an article about less traditional groups would be as interesting as one on less traditional characters.
November 24th, 2009 2:16 PM
It works pretty much like you’d expect. We fare quite well against solos and elites without lots of backup, because of the sheer concentration of firepower we can bring to bear. If we’re facing a group with a bunch of soldiers, they soak up damage and disperse our effectiveness, and the party wears down after a few turns.
If we don’t win fast, we’re usually in for a tough fight. You could compare it to a fast aggro deck in Magic: the Gathering. If your opponent can withstand your big early threats (and often they can’t), then you run out of resources.
November 24th, 2009 2:49 PM
The party had a leader|controller hybrid (my old clervoker), but he retired and was replaced by the fifth striker. Both the defender and the new striker (my sorcerer) have multi-classed into leader. Also, their departed ally left his companions a trio of custom made linked magical friendship bracelets that provide per encounter healing. Unfortunately for Sevash, the bracelets require a healing surge, something he often finds himself to be lacking.
November 24th, 2009 11:36 PM
Iadmit, it would be nice if there was a generic option to take -other- than a paragon path that had a similar power-up. Something like exemplar, which gave you more of your class’ normal powers.
I also find taking another class’s paragon path is the main reason I multiclass in 4e. I’ve had a lot of fun giving paladins warlord paragon paths, or warlocks wizard paragon paths. One feat isn’t much of a price to be able to do that, and if you look at every paragon path in the game as an option (though yes, you then have to make that decisions first so you know what to multiclass in to), it seems a lot less limiting.
November 25th, 2009 1:37 PM
One of the reasons I love 4e is that you don’t need to have a cleric to survive. One idea about the healing surge issue is to see if anybody wants to multiclass into artificer. It adds one healing surge per day into the group’s economy and lets you transfer healing surges from the less hurt members to the more hurt people. (actually, an all-artificer party would be interesting. They have good melee and ranged options, they can use their boosts to make each other fight better, and they have a good range of summons to increase the group’s effectiveness.) Of course artificer is a hard mindset to apply to a character not interested in that.
Ostephens, There are some really good choices for multiclass paragon paths. I’m planning on having my Orc Warden multiclass into Pit Fighter. Though it’s hard when they use different stats and implements. For the idea of something generic, have you looked at the racial paths? They are often good choices. The human path (I beleive it’s the adroit explorer, but I could be wrong) is a good base to make a generic path off of.
November 25th, 2009 3:28 PM
I am also a fan of the party without the cleric. It seems more gritty or real to me. However, missing a leader does really chop down on durability like Ed said.
regarding the cookie cutter complaint/argument, Ed I was thinking of the original composition of the party. We had 2 fighters who were completely different. A standard sword/shield fighter who morphed into a ninja tank and then the polearm specialist witht he lucerne hammer. both were ‘vanilla’ fighters but they had very different was of going about thier jobs in a fight. Too bad they got overconfident and both bit it in the fight with Kalarel (if I remebmer his name right).
November 25th, 2009 7:35 PM
Nothing beats putting a Curse & a Mark on a kitten…NOTHING.
Well, maybe putting a Shroud & a Curse…
November 26th, 2009 4:32 AM
I’ve never made it to paragon tier, but looking at options for my wizard, all I can say is why not pick battle mage? it’s the most generic wizard path and Last Call is enough to make me want to fire dailies at rats just so I can blow up the world.