Starfinder 2e - Barbarian Character Concept

Summary

Another look at a Pathfinder class, the Barbarian. I’m considering playing the Dragon Instinct with the Vesk ancestry. Basic analysis shows the Barbarian hits hard, but struggles against high AC targets. The fighter or operative likely outperform the barbarian for extreme AC targets due to their higher proficiency bonus.

Background

Last week my Starfinder 1e campaign came to a close. The party was able to defeat Gargauth, a devil with origins from our original Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I was even lucky enough to get the kill shot in (with a throw back to an earlier joke).

Next weekend we’ll be doing our session 0, creating our characters and building out their backstories. While I’m not 100% sure what class I will play, I am still interested in playing a Pathfinder 2e class in the Starfinder setting. Compatibility between the two sets of rules is something I’d like to experience.

The next class I was interested in reviewing was the Barbarian. The concept of a raging warrior who relies upon instinct while wielding technologically advanced gear is incredible. It also seems to be known as a high damaging class, which is interesting to me from the perspective of optimization. Without further ado, let’s start with a backstory for our space barbarian.

Constraints

The restrictions and goals I set for myself in a previous post generally still apply here. To recap:

• Be great at skills. I’m willing to flex on this since the Barbarian class is not designed to be a skill monkey.
• Be competent in combat. A barbarian should be quite good at combat, so expected damage is important for them to fulfill their role.

I don’t remember if I verbalized this in the post, but I also want to abide by the following requirement.

• Only Starfinder ancestries. Exceptions can be made, but it feels more thematic to pick one of the new ancestries instead of Dwarf or Orc.

Concept

Figure 1 - Space lizard barbarian

What Starfinder ancestry better fits the Barbarian class than the Vesk! A militaristic society who value strength and conflict. It would make sense that a part of their military force would include members who rely upon their instincts and primal emotions to give them strength. I also like the Dragon Instinct, partially from a mechanical perspective and also from a story perspective (dragons and lizard men seem quite related). Lets take some inspiration from comic book heroes (eg. Captain America) and come up with a backstory.

Krawmesh (nickname Kraw) was born on Vesk-7, an icy planet used as a launch pad for Vesk military operations. Selected from recent recruits, Kraw was selected to undergo an experimental procedure to enhance his physical capabilities. Using synthetic organs created from the remains of an ancient dragon discovered frozen within the planet’s ice. Candidate’s who survived the procedure were found to produce higher levels of adrenaline and cortisol, giving them increased strength while under stress. Unfortunately, the project was deemed too expensive for mass application and was shut down. Kraw was discharged from the military, left to wander the galaxy as a mercenary.

The backstory is a bit rough, but leaves a lot of room for development based on the story. Why was Kraw on Akiton when the story starts? What is his motivation for adventuring? Questions to be answered later.

Stats

Now let’s dive into the best subject in school, math! If you’re interested in how I came to these numbers, feel free to take a peek at this notebook.

Attack

Comparing the Barbarian to the Thaumaturge, having a character whose highest attributes applies to attack rolls means we’re more likely to hit.

Source: index.ipynb

Damage

My initial thought is to use the Doshko for the character. Early on it doesn’t do much more damage, but at higher levels with multiple damage die is where the difference starts to shine. At level 20, the d12 weapon does 51 damage on average, while the d4 weapon does 35 damage.

Expected damage

This is the main metric! The difference in damage between the extreme and easy AC tiers is quite large. At level 1, it’s literally half the damage (14.5 vs 7.25). I would guess that the fighter or operative would do better against extreme AC targets due to their higher proficiency bonus. Similarly, any bonus to attack rolls would likely increase the barbarian’s expected damage significantly.

Feel free to explore the data by selecting the weapon die, AC tier and level difference in the inputs below.

viewof selected_die = Inputs.select(["d4", "d6", "d8", "d10", "d12"], {label: "Weapon Die", value: "d12"})
viewof selected_tier = Inputs.select(["easy", "moderate", "hard", "extreme"], {label: "AC Tier", value: "moderate"})
viewof selected_level_diff = Inputs.select([-4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4], {label: "Level Difference", value: 0})

filtered_data = dps_data.filter(d =>
  d.die_name === selected_die &&
  d.monster_tier === selected_tier &&
  d.level_diff === selected_level_diff
)

Plot.plot({
  title: `Expected Damage per Strike (${selected_die}, ${selected_tier})`,
  x: {label: "Player Level"},
  y: {label: "Expected Damage", grid: true},
  color: {legend: true},
  marks: [
    Plot.line(filtered_data, {
      x: "player_level",
      y: "dps",
      marker: true
    }),
    Plot.tip(filtered_data, Plot.pointer({
      x: "player_level",
      y: "dps",
      title: d => `Level ${d.player_level}: ${d.dps.toFixed(2)} DPS`
    }))
  ]
})

Conclusion

Another fun class to analyze! In my next post, I hope to go back to the Thaumaturge class and create a more holistic expected damage model for the class to compare to the Barbarian.