Prestige ClassesHEY! YOU!WAAAGH!!! Core[spoiler]
Dragon Disciple [DMG]: The infamously bad Dragon Disciple class is actually passable in core.
Prerequisites: The ability to cast arcane spells spontaneously, 8 ranks in Knowledge Arcana. Looks like you'll be needing a dip in either Bard or Sorcerer.
Class Features: 3/4th BAB, decent skills, but the real interesting bits are the ones that slowly turn you into a half dragon.
Natural Armor Increase: Your Natural Armor increases by +1 at first level, +2 at third, and +3 at seventh. Meh.
Ability Boost: Now we're talking. You get a +2 to strength at second level and then again at fourth. The sixth adds +2 to Con, and the eighth adds +2 to Int. As you can see, the first six levels offer something useful for every barbarian.
Claws and Bite: You get to savage someone after you attack them with your regular weapon. Either you only use your Bite attack due to carrying weapons in your hands, or your feet grow claws like your hands, in which case you can really dole out the harshness.
Bindsense: You get 30 feet of it at fifth level, which increases to 60 at tenth level.
Breath Weapon: 1/day, you get to deal a small amount of damage. Not very useful.
Wings: Flying is important at higher levels, though magic items do it better.
Dragon Apotheosis: The usefulness of this ability depends on many unanswered questions' Do you gain the LA of a half-dragon? Do you gain additional stat bonuses? Probably not, since the prestige class is a way of paying off the LA and gaining the bonuses through the course of leveling.
Verdict: In a core only game, a few levels may be handy, but no more than 6 are ever really needed.
Horizon Walker [DMG]: When your options are limited, walking the planes is the best way to expand your abilities. That is the calling of a Horizon Walker; master the environment, master yourself, master the multiverse!
PrerequisitesClass featuresVerdictonlyCompletes, Races & PHBII[spoiler]
Bear Warrior [CW]: So, you like Rage? Makes you feel good and gives you the high of power! Now, imagine if
othersbear! That way
everyone will know just how fucking awesome you are! This awesome deal bears a closer look:
Prerequisites: None! Wait, really? +7 BAB (level 8 entry then), Power Attack (yea, you DO have it), Rage or Frenzy (yes, you DO have it). That means you need absolutely nothing to enter. Nothing at all.
Class featuresmotherfucking bearVerdict
Fist of the ForestPrerequisitesClass featuresFast Movement: Yeah, you grow even faster!
Feral Trance: Get in touch with your primal self! Adds to Dex, unarmed damage and teaches you to bite (read: extra attack)! Can specifically be used while Raging!
AC bonusUnarmed Strike Damage: Three levels give you the damage a Monk needs 8 levels for! Use your fists for everyday tasks like television, or romance, or helicopter repair and maintenance! You even get to hit through DR/Magic, incorporeality and all that with your BARE HANDS!
ScentVerdict: Always! Only three levels and two feats for all kinds of awesome! I heard Fists of the Forests got along well with Bear Warriors. You may wish to try marrying the two.
Frenzied BerserkerPrerequisitesClass features: Barbarian BAB and saves. Only two points per level and crappy list. Sucks.
Diehard: Meh, but bonus feats are always handy.
Supreme CleaveImproved/Supreme Power AttackFrenzyDeathless FrenzyGreater FrenzyInspire FrenzyVerdictalways wins. And your house is the DM!
Rage Mage [CW]: Ever been
reallyPrerequisites: One feat in Combat Casting, 2nd-level Arcane Spells, +4 BAB, Rage, Nonlawful alignment. The combination of 2nd-level spells and +4 BAB is a tad difficult.
Class features: Medium BAB, nonexistent skills, good Fort-saves. Who the hell decided this thing has medium BAB? Anyways, onto the real business:
Spell Ragecharacter levelOvercome Spell Failure: So yea, you can wear a light armor again. Yay?
Spells per day: Now, this just sucks. This supposed fighter/mage class gets spells only
every other level. Which is about as effective as alternating between Fighter- and Wizard-levels (or to say, not very; they specifically printed Eldritch Knight to help with that).
Rage: Extra uses of Rage. Sure, why not.
Spell Fury: Having to wait until level
7Tireless Rage: When will your Rage
everWarrior CryWoohoo, what a capstone!Verdict: Sucks! Now, to be fair, it
isknowRacial Specials[spoiler]
Eye of Gruumsh [CW]: Orcs are the most populous Barbarians on the planet. That much is known. Therefore, it's no surprise that Orcish Barbarians have their own sects with their own abilities. This is
the organization for Orcish barbarians. But do they truly live up to their name of greatest Barbarians in the world? Let's find out!
Prerequisites: Two feats, Proficiency and Focus in Orc Double Axe. If your DM isn't a total doofus, he'll give Orcs automatic proficiency anyways, reducing it to one feat (which still sucks). Other than that, you got to be an Orc (duh) or a Half-Orc (don't...just don't). Then you have to get rid of one of your eyes. WTF, right? Apparently it's no problem though. Gotta be Gruumsh Cleric Alignment though; CN, CE, NE. Bad for adventuring, although CN might be doable. +6 BAB.
Class features: Barbarian BAB, saves, less skills. Usual fare, a small step down.
Blind-Fight: So yea, a crappy bonus feat. Congrats! One step closer to Pierce Magical Concealment for surprising those pesky mages though. Also, you can act as if you had both eyes. So much for that ritual, eh?
Command the Horde: You can command a bunch of weaker Orcs 30' from you. God help any opposing Orcish force encountering you!
Rage: So your Eye of Gruumsh-levels stack with Barbarian for extra Rages. Booooring.
Swing Blindly: Now,
this is something! More strength, more AC penalty, on
level 2! What it basically comes down to is that you hit harder and get hit more! Just the way you like it, especially since everyone automatically hits you anyways!
Ritual Scarring: You get some Natural Armor on 3, 6 & 9 to make up for the lost AC above. In reality, nothing happens.
Blinding Spittle: What a corny attack! You spit your
stomach acid up to 20' away at a creature's eyes. The best part? Your stomach acid is mighty potent! 10+Eye of Gruumsh-level+
Con! Smaller DCs have thrown men into despair. Also, it isn't listed to take an action; I suppose that defaults to a standard action, but man, would it be awesome to get it as a free action? Either way, while very limited in times/day, this is an actually useful ability! You start with 2 on level 4 and get it to max of 4 times on level 7.
Blindsight: You sense things 5' from you starting from level 5. On level 8, you sense things almost next to you (10'!). Never really big enough to help, but allows you to smack that sneaky thief who forgot to buy Lords of Madness for his idiocy (or should I say, his madness?).
Sight of Gruumsh: So basically, you get more power from...seeing when you die! That's right, Orcs wanna die! This gives you morale bonuses to saves and AC. Rather trivial as you're still tanking your AC with your Rage, but hey, whatever right? That said, this is
not worth taking all 10 levels for.
Verdict: Orcs...could do better. That said, increasing your Strength-bonus when Raging is
very good and while the prerequisites are completely pointless (seriously,
Orc Double Axe?! What do you expect Barbarians to do, play Darth Maul?), Blinding Spittle is another handy ability. All in all, starts off crappy but turns out actually semi-decent! Probably loses out to straight Barbarian, but not by all that much (and that's mostly because this class gets some pointless AC boosts while tanking its AC further when Raging), mostly on the pointless prerequisites (ask your DM to homebrew a two-handed exotic Orc War Axe with 2d8 damage or something and call it a day).
Battlerager [RoF]: These are also called the "Kuldjargh" or "Axe idiots", and for a reason. If you remember Thibbledorf Pwent from Salvatore's books...well, this is
nothing like him. Still, seeing that Dwarves do have a history for raging, let's see what their racial "angry class" does:
Prerequisites: Two feats, Cleave & Endurance. Not bad, Cleave is handy on its own and Endurance leads to Steadfast Determination. Skills though, you need 8 ranks in Intimidate (ok), 2 ranks in Knowledge: Religion (WTF?) and two ranks in
two Performs, including Perform: Singing (
WTF?!). Oh, and a non-lawful Dwarf and the ability to rage, but duh.
Class features: They get the already-familiar Barbarian BAB, saves, etc. and less skills.
Rage: They get an extra use of Rage on first and every two levels thereafter. This is actually good since it's much faster than standard Barbarian progression.
Gruff: -4 to all Charisma-based skills and Charisma-checks, except Intimidate to which you get +2 on level 1. If you're making a non-Intimidate Charisma check as a Dwarf Barbarian, something is wrong. This is ok, although due to their racial Charisma-penalty, Dwarves make for some of the worst Intimidator Barbarians in the first place.
Rock Gut: +2 to saves vs. poison. So...you still fail only on 1. Nothing new here.
Close-Quarter Fighting: On level 2, you can avoid Grapples. The thing is, with your Str and abilities, nothing short of the Tarrasque will be grappling you
anyways. At least you get to pretend you're getting class features.
Fearless: On level 2, you become immune to fear-effects, +2 Insight to all saves vs. mind-affecting. Useful to a degree! Insight is an obscure bonus-type to saves too!
Improved Unarmed Strike:
Yawn. This is only a prerequisite. Level 3, btw. I suppose it helps enter some other classes, but it's
not worth hammering your head to a wall for 3 levels.
Great Cleave:
Yawn. Sometimes randomly useful. If only you were naturally Large, not some pesky Dwarf... Level 4 too.
Reckless Offensive: Yawn. I guess it's a free bonus. This is the same feat as the "
Reckless Offense"-feat in SRD, except with a bit higher prerequisites. Likewise, level 4.
Natural Armor: +2 hardly makes up for all the penalties you'll be taking. Whatever... And this is
all you get on level 5.
Verdict: Dwarves could do a
lot better. Basically, you get +2 Intimidate, immunity to Fear (available as a feat) and a bunch of worthless or random feats. In fact, this class is little more than a CW Samurai in disguise; you get a bunch of poor, pre-determined feats and that's about it. This is basically a test to see if giving a ton of sitiuational/weak/worthless feats in few levels somehow made said feats less worthless. Protip: It doesn't.
Stay away. Oh yeah, and it's 3.0.
Deepwarden [RoS]: Want to be a really hard guy? Like,
Stonecold? If so,
this is for you. Be the man...or dwarf of stone! Everything Battlerager should've been is right here. Toughness, simple kickass toughness and the
feel of a Dwarf. A look at dwarfdom:
Prerequisites: Endurance as the only feat - reasonable, especially with Steadfast Determination. Heal, Climb, Jump, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) & Survival 5 ranks. Heal and Knowledge cause trouble here; Barbarian has neither in class pushing entry to level 7 unless doing something about it - a 1-level dip in Ranger will do. 3 levels might be better for free Endurance though. BAB +5.
Class features: Barbarian BAB & Fort, good Will and 6+Int skills with a great list. Far superior to a Barbarian here.
Track: Free bonus, why not? Adds to your Survival-based abilities; combine with Trapkiller for real Survival-focus.
Trap Sense: Yawn.
Stone Warden:
This is the reason to take Deepwarden. You get Con to AC over Dex! It's been clarified in FAQ that this is capped by armor's maximum bonus (RAW disagrees). However, there's an incredibly simple way around that: be unarmored! Pick up levels in Fist of the Forests to get Con to AC again! Since this replaces Dex, the two should stack just fine. Heck, pick a Monk's Belt for Wis to AC to boot! Then just enter classes that raise your Con skyhigh and enjoy your Way Higher Than Yours AC. The fact that this is available on level 2 makes this class best as a two-level dip (along with the good Will-saves). That said, the rest isn't horrible either; read on!
Animal Messenger: Free spell-likes never hurt. Good for delivering messages and so on. Small benefit though, and only thing you get on level 3.
Uncanny Dodge: Well, since you traded the original for something more useful, here's your chance to pick it up again! Two levels for this is a bit much, but hey, you're getting a ton of skills, important good saves and all that so it's not all that bad.
Stubborn Mind: With your Will, this extra insurance against domination could actually be useful! That said, you shouldn't plan on getting dominated often enough to make this good. Level 5 is still reasonable.
Sending: Actually a decent spell for communication and all that. No combat use, obviously, but it has obvious utility. Again, only class feature for level 6.
Swift Tracker: Well, I suppose you might as well... Helps with your speed since Dwarves aren't naturally too fast trackers. Level 7 is
really high though, seeing how little the class gives at this point.
Improved Uncanny Dodge: You still stick it to Rogues, except worse since this only counts your Deepwarden class level. If you got it as a Barb though, this is all good. As a painful note, this is level
8...
Greater Animal Messenger: Meh, at this point the benefits really aren't matching up to the level at which you get them.
Verdict: This does it right. You get the huge defensive boost on level 2 and can afford some levels around that point. Two-level dip is
great and you can afford up to 7 levels for the skills. It gets really hairy as the gains keep getting worse by the level. Still, the two-level dip is an obvious choice for most Dwarf Barbarians, especially in combination with Fist of the Forests to make the ability actually useful, and more Rage-versions that increase Con. Then you have Con to HP, Fort, Will (Steadfast) and AC twice. And thanks to Rage, your attacks will be very ok too.[/spoiler]
