Its a rainy day, so I'll just leave this here.
When the standard is set by CoDzilla and other classes that often play rocket launcher tag for fun, a class that gets minor stat buffs a limited time per day and crap DR for a majority of its class features has a tendency to be left in the dust... where it sits despondently in a pool of its own tears, clutching its precious d12s to its breast and wishing for a simpler time; a time where the wizard could only cast magic missile and toughness didn't seem like such a mind-numbingly bad feat choice. You know: level one or two, when barbarians shine before they are out-paced by second level spells. So with that as the back drop, WotC poured time, sweat and blood into trying to FIX the damn class; they released barbarian PRCs, rage-related feats, and oh yes, alternate class features. If you didn't know, there are quite a few alternate class features for barbarians. One might say a ton, even. I count 38 looking around in my books, and this doesn't include the insane number I have know doubt float around in obscure campaign settings, dragon magazine, and 3rd party publications. And while some of them get talked about quite a bit on these boards (I'm looking at you, one level dip into lion totem whirling frenzy barbarian), the others... not so much. This is a thread about a couple of those variants.
Specifically, today we will be looking at Fangshields Barbarian from Champions of Valor and Streetfighter from
the wizards website. Now, just taking a quick glance at these variants, and you can tell they were a match made in heaven... if heaven had some weird fetish for fey creatures wearing loincloths leaping around at freeway speeds with swords the size of buildings. But things get interesting when one looks at just how good of a match they are. Lets take a look at the specifics:
Fangshields BarbarianTrap Sense is traded out for +10 enhancement bonus to movement when charging, which increases at the same rate as trap sense.
Uncanny dodge is lost for the ability to make one attack at the end of a charge that is an Awesome Blow, as per the feat.
The DR gained at 7th level is traded out for the ability to spend rages to heal. (This level of the variant isn't taken in this build)
Streetfighter BarbarianThe barbarian loses DR, and trades it out for the following:
7th level: Threat range of weapon increases by 1 when charging, stacks with keen.
10th level: The barbarian can make a 90 degree turn once per charge.
13th level: The barbarian can charge through the squares of allies and non-combatants
16th level: The barbarian moves at 4x speed when charging, instead of 2x.
19th level: This one is the key, so I'll just quote it directly, with bold for emphasis:
"At 19th level, the barbarian acquires a "cleaving charge." If he
drops an opponent on a charge attack, and he has at least 10 feet of movement remaining, he can immediately make a new charge attack against a second foe. If he
drops that foe and still has movement remaining, he can charge a third, and so on until he either fails to
drop a foe, or runs out of movement. All the other standard rules for a charge attack still apply, including the fact that he must have at least 10 feet of distance to make the charge."
The Combo