New barbarian ability: please critique

[vivsavage]

Please let me know what you think of this ability. It is designed to encourage barbarians to wear minimal armor. Also I hate the name, so anything you can come up with would be an improvement...

Naked Fury: a barbarian that does not wear armor greater than a leather coat gains +2 to his armor class and increases his movement by 5 per round.

[serleran]

Yes, the name is rather... yeah.

Maybe something like unnamed ability 1. Seriously, though, to be honest one thing that bothers me about SRD-based games in general (and many more "modern" games) is that every ability has some name... like Critical Whirlwind Axe Smash! or whatever. It's not needed, though it can be fun to say "oh, yeah, I umm... invoke my Dice of Mighty Rolling and Inflicting Damage ability to, umm, yeah deal like all this damage and stuff in a really cool way."
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Serl's Corner

[vivsavage]

serleran wrote:
Yes, the name is rather... yeah.

Maybe something like unnamed ability 1. Seriously, though, to be honest one thing that bothers me about SRD-based games in general (and many more "modern" games) is that every ability has some name... like Critical Whirlwind Axe Smash! or whatever. It's not needed, though it can be fun to say "oh, yeah, I umm... invoke my Dice of Mighty Rolling and Inflicting Damage ability to, umm, yeah deal like all this damage and stuff in a really cool way."

I agree completely. But C&C has kept this tradition, so I need something to call it.

At any rate, I'm more interested in what you think of the ability itself.

[gideon_thorne]

vivsavage wrote:
Please let me know what you think of this ability. It is designed to encourage barbarians to wear minimal armor. Also I hate the name, so anything you can come up with would be an improvement...

Naked Fury: a barbarian that does not wear armor greater than a leather coat gains +2 to his armor class and increases his movement by 5 per round.

Actually, you might consider this angle. Make it a psychological effect. Have the barbarian add his charisma attribute modifier as the AC and have it play off the Intimidate ability.
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Peter Bradley

[serleran]

The ability itself is fine; does change the mental concept I had of the barbie a little, to a more Mongol / Hun-like form of the barbarian, which is not a bad thing. I'd expect high Dex barbies to use it more often, and use the increased speed to move-attack at range, and stay out of getting damage inflicted back... which is great for a mobile archer. The +2 AC also helps a low-Dex barbarian, but they'd get a better advantage by wearing heavy armor anyway, so it's a wash unless a player just really wants that extra 5 foot step.

As for a name... I dunno: maybe something like Bushrunner.
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[Relaxo]

How about double the Dex bonus to AC when unarmored or as defined above? the +5 move is cool too, nice touch.

sort of like a Pict, naked berzerkers.

someone suggested something like this recently, the name had "sky" in it, I think.

[vivsavage]

Relaxo wrote:
sort of like a Pict, naked berzerkers.

That's what I was going for. Also, the image of Conan in a loincloth was there as well.

[capitalbill]

If you're shooting for a Pict-style barbarian and need a name, how's "Woad Skin"? Woad being what the Picts may or may not have used to dye their skins blue before swarming half-naked into battle.
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