Kit Revisions (Fighters)

[Demivrgvs]

True Fighter

Okay, I've saddenly accepted the Offensive/Defensive Stance. Yeah. Took me a bit of time.

I still have one issue with all the Fighter's abilities.

You actually get them when your ThaC0 is still pretty awkward. I'm glad I do have 19 Thac0, why not turning it into 20 just to have that +1 to damage.

This is true. They aren't of much use prior to level 5 at least.

Well, Disarm/Trip are gained at level 4, thus they should be more or less fine imo.

 

I'm more sympathetic when it comes to OS, but even before reaching its full "viability", OS can be activated to quickly finish entangled and disabled targets, or to increase the chances of killing with a single hit a weak creature. Not to mention the True Fighter can use OS with ranged weapons too, making it quite deadly within BG1 imo.

 

While I admit OS might be sub-optimal until levels 3-5 (except for a very offensive kit like the Berserker), Defensive Stance should really perform as intended since level 1. You should not expect a TF using it to not suffer any drawback in terms of offensive potential, else you would have this stance active 100% of times. Give your TF a large shield, go on a Defensive Stance, and you get a tank with such an incredibly low AC that almost only criticals can hit him.

 

I'd actually propose the idea of moving both Stances and Disarm/Trip into a bit later levels. If you'd still need some kind of level 1 bonus, Fighter could get additional 2 proficiency points over other classes (so... 6 instead of 4).

Ideally this would be a really good idea (they would still be forced to spend those two points to get more proficiencies or an additional specialization because they still cannot get Mastery) but I cannot separate True Fighter from its kits on this matter, thus this is really not an option.

 

Or just moving free proficiency in all weapons to level 1. Then Fighter can become specialized in 4 weapons instead of 2. That'd on the other hand require some patching on mod NPCs.

As I told you:

1) if gained at level 1, the +1 to all proficiencies would be applied over player's selected specializations, thus granting Mastery at level 1

2) BGEE (and I fear the latest ToBex too, but Arda was still investigating) has actually broken the opcode I was using to grant Weapon Training at level 5.

Thus:

1) This is really not an option imo because we would allow TF to reach GM at level 6 instead of 9

2) unless it gets fixed, I have to re-think this, such as making it a +1 to all proficiencies (thus moving it after level 9), rather than the current free proficiency on all weapons without affecting specialized or mastered weapons

[kreso]

True Fighter

OS can be activated to quickly finish entangled and disabled targets, or to increase the chances of killing with a single hit a weak creature. Not to mention the True Fighter can use OS with ranged weapons too, making it quite deadly within BG1 imo.

This. What OS allows you to do is use any weapon regardless of it's damage dice to deal damage. Short bows, darts, short swords all turn into leathal weapons. In BG1, this is best used at range due do dexterity bonus, and allows for killing creatures in a single hit as Demi mentioned.

One character which benefits immensly from OS is fighter/thief multiclass. OS-stealth-backstab is lethal throughout the game.

At late game, OS+Critical Strike is also a very nice feat, especially for dual-wielders since it negates off-hand THAC0 penalty.

 

 

@Demi, I'm curious - how far are you willing to expand berserker survability in Frenzy? Damage resistance, regen, extra HP, what is acceptable for you?

I've tried berserker w/o berserk opcode, and it's s**t .

Even that no-potions trick is easilly bypassed by using inventory screen to drink up.

So, been reading this thread from 1st page now, and noticed this:

 

Rage's ability is great as mages can't usually disable a fighter. Almost nothing will work and in BG1, it is overpowered (I think so).

So, to be honest, a berserker loosing control under rage is just a good balance to me.

I have never used cursed berserking sword in BG1 even if it was a +3 weapon because despite its name, it didn't give mind immunity at all.

 

Loosing control is something player won't like, but keeping control is overpowered.

I don't care about vanilla description. In every books with berserkers, they do loose control, but still, they are fearsome fighters.

 

I think barbarian rage of berserker rage should be like in most books : character should loose control of itself and could potentially attack any friend around (or not?)

Because it makes no sense to enter rage and fight freely and even run away if heavily hurt.

 

Normally, berserker are suicidal, they fight until they kill their enemies and don't care if they die or heavily hurt. This is why they are immune to mind control.

Rage shouldn't be controlled at all.

 

it should be like Brage's cursed sword in BG1 !

 

I also think rage shouldn't be an innate. It should trigger every time a berserker starts swinging.

Because you are a berserker and you see a mage casting spells on you, you are not even in close range, you activate rage to be mind protected...

And you could eventually sit down and wait for your party to kill him.

 

Is it really a rage?

 

What do you say, one more attempt, for roleplaying sake? I can easilly tweak him on-the-fly as I go, but I'd need to know the limitations of expanding frenzy survability, i.e. what is acceptable before we wonder into the realm of supernatural abilities?. He does work already in BG1, there's little need to change anything there (one thing I'd do is implement Charm/Fear/cofusion immunities into Rage, otherwise I use Rage and hit my own party members so frenzy can trigger before he gets hit by those, which is silly).

I can flashplay through only BG2 in relatively short time.

If he has issues with multiple enemies or mages so be it, I'll eat through that somehow (hell, I'll create a custom sorcerer for mobs and a WS for mages)

?

[Roar]

Pretty much playtested a Barbarian Main Character in BGEE 1 from start to finish.

 

Some thoughts:

 

Barbarian AC sucks – I am happy. I am a huge brute with lots of HP and damage. I am a melee striker and I cleave monsters down before me. Working as intended. =)

 

CLEAVE – Working as intended. Will be awesome if textbox reflects this.

 

BARBARIAN RAGE –The performance of a raging barbarian is noticeable. Working as intended.

 

FERAL SENSES – working as intended

 

Offensive stance – never really used it. To me a ‘+2 to damage’ is rarely better than a ‘+2’ to hit.

 

Some suggestions

 

- limit barbarian to hide armour, studded leather and leather. Then introduce a new class feature ‘Barbarian Agility’

 

BARBARIAN AGILITY – bonus 2 to AC at level 1. The idea comes that we almost always see semi naked barbarians and almost never a barbarian in heavy armour. Armour is restrictive and the presence of a barbarian in battle is a sight to behold. Rippling muscles belies strength, combat prowess and commands presence,

This feature is also similar in idea to the concept of ‘barbarian war paint’ introduced in Dragonlance: ‘Dragons of Summer Flame’ where barbarians paint their body and have superstition beliefs that their weopon blows bounce of their skin.

 

- During a Barbarian Rage, the barbarian is also immune to morale failure and panic effects. The rationale is that a rage and panic is two opposite ends of emotions.

[Demivrgvs]

Barbarian

Pretty much playtested a Barbarian Main Character in BGEE 1 from start to finish.

Cool.

 

Barbarian AC sucks – I am happy. I am a huge brute with lots of HP and damage. I am a melee striker and I cleave monsters down before me. Working as intended. =)

I would not say Barbarian's AC "sucks" but rather that it's sub-optimal while not enraged, and quite good but not superlative while enraged. It obviously cannot compete with a heavy armored True Fighter or Paladins (especially if the latters have a large shield), but while enraged he actually has quite good AC while retaining a high offensive potential and much better mobility over those more "tankish" warriors.

 

CLEAVE – Working as intended. Will be awesome if textbox reflects this.

 

BARBARIAN RAGE –The performance of a raging barbarian is noticeable. Working as intended.

 

FERAL SENSES – working as intended

Great.

 

Offensive stance – never really used it. To me a ‘+2 to damage’ is rarely better than a ‘+2’ to hit.

We have discussed this on a couple of posts before.

 

Some suggestions

 

- limit barbarian to hide armour, studded leather and leather. Then introduce a new class feature ‘Barbarian Agility’ (bonus 2 to AC at level 1)

 

- During a Barbarian Rage, the barbarian is also immune to morale failure and panic effects. The rationale is that a rage and panic is two opposite ends of emotions.

- while I see where this comes from (D&D Next even grants this class an AC bonus while not wearing any armor), I think it's an unnecessary change in our case. As long as you are using IR's Revised Armors you can already roleplay a Barbarian with light armor without feeling "nerfed" by picking this build (medium armor offers more protection but lower mobility and DEX), while this change would force all players who like using medium armors to play the lightly armored variant.

 

- I do thought about this (if you look at the notes on the first post you can see Fearless Rage was there in old versions) but I'm really undecided. On one side it obviously makes sense, otoh it seems like 50% of warriors are getting immunity to fear making it feel too common and widespread imo.

 

 

Berserker

@Demi, I'm curious - how far are you willing to expand berserker survability in Frenzy? Damage resistance, regen, extra HP, what is acceptable for you?

I've tried berserker w/o berserk opcode, and it's s**t .

It cannot be that bad considering vanilla's Berserker was a fan favorite, but it's obvious that in terms of appeal/flavor a Berserker who doesn't go berserker cannot be so cool as a Frenzied Berserker going all out crazy.

 

What do you say, one more attempt, for roleplaying sake? I can easilly tweak him on-the-fly as I go, but I'd need to know the limitations of expanding frenzy survability, i.e. what is acceptable before we wonder into the realm of supernatural abilities?

I thought we already tried pretty much everything, and that the real problem was that even a truly unstoppable monster would still not work well within BG2 as long as he is not "controllable". I truly love the whole frenzy/berserking thing, it's just that I've kinda lost any hope because of a couple of glaring issues you reported yourself in terms of performances (e.g. Berserker killing himself against a Fireshield).

 

Anyway, if we want to give one more chance to the Frenzied Berserker, the only thing I can suggest is to try moving Deathless Frenzy to level 10 (minimum level required to get it within PnP). That is really the only last buff I can imagine, and probably the biggest one we could give him anyway considering it makes any sort of damage resistance or regeneration almost redundant (that's why I was reluctant to make it available mid-game). Other than that I think we have really tried everything we could.

[kreso]

Ok. Is this acceptable - I'll make the modifications to his CLAB table and a few spells myself to test it out, I need "green light" however:

- instead of Diehard regeneration, he gets Deathless Frenzy there (levels 11, 14, 17) making himself truly a Diehard

- trigger set at 25% remaining health, launches frenzy and sets MinHP for an amount of time which grows with levels (I was thinking somewhere from 15-21-27). I'd prefer to use trigger at 10% but that's very unreliable.

- when used up, has a 2 turns cooldown

- I'd still want to keep regeneration (call it Fast Healing) somewhere, but I'm not sure where - ??

[yarpen]

I'd rather change the philosophy of Berserker a bit. It comes from my edition of Berserker/Barbarian merged.

Let's say Enrage grants +X bonus to Saves vs. Spells instead of full mind-affecting spells immunity. +2 at level 1, +4 at level 7, +6 at level 15.

When Enraged, Berserker has 5% chance to get into Frenzy (clearly negative state of going Berserk for 1-4 rounds). Saving Throw vs. Spells negates the effect.

[Kalindor]

Did you not want to try the Deathless Frenzy as an activated ability as we talked about before?

[Demivrgvs]

Berserker

Ok. Is this acceptable - I'll make the modifications to his CLAB table and a few spells myself to test it out, I need "green light" however:

- instead of Diehard regeneration, he gets Deathless Frenzy there (levels 11, 14, 17) making himself truly a Diehard

- trigger set at 25% remaining health, launches frenzy and sets MinHP for an amount of time which grows with levels (I was thinking somewhere from 15-21-27). I'd prefer to use trigger at 10% but that's very unreliable.

- when used up, has a 2 turns cooldown

- I'd still want to keep regeneration (call it Fast Healing) somewhere, but I'm not sure where - ??

Why don't you make it more simple and just add Deathless Frenzy at level 10? Diehard can remain as it is imo, it's still useful for when Deathless Frenzy is not active. One thing I'm thinking to do is to change how Diehard restores hps, replacing regenerate opcode with a "current hp bonus" (+1, +2, +3 respectively).

 

If you also want to try having Frenzy auto-trigger when <25-50%hp go ahead, but making Frenzy trigger too often may actually lower the class performance.

 

Overall, I'm fine trying it out but I'm almost convinced Kalindor's x/day Frenzy is going to be the only way to make the class truly viable.

 

I'd rather change the philosophy of Berserker a bit. It comes from my edition of Berserker/Barbarian merged.

Let's say Enrage grants +X bonus to Saves vs. Spells instead of full mind-affecting spells immunity. +2 at level 1, +4 at level 7, +6 at level 15.

When Enraged, Berserker has 5% chance to get into Frenzy (clearly negative state of going Berserk for 1-4 rounds). Saving Throw vs. Spells negates the effect.

We already tried this, and it didn't worked well.

[kreso]

Berserker

Why don't you make it more simple and just add Deathless Frenzy at level 10?

The way it is, using Rage will make him unkillable for 39 seconds at level 10. 39 seconds is a long time, it's practically the duration of 90% battles.

Bereserker's vulnerability time is those 30 seconds of fatigue, and that's it. I've tried him out in ToB, and unless there's a mage somewhere with PW:Kill he can kill whatever he wishes unmolested. Mages can theoretically survive his frenzy, but nothing else can, enemies aren't smart enough to switch targets away from him.

I can easilly revert back my change and change DF to start at level 10, but it's certainlly OP with it's current implementation.

In addition, all 1x/day abilities share one flaw - it forces the player to rest constantly so he has it when he needs it.

 

change how Diehard restores hps, replacing regenerate opcode with a "current hp bonus" (+1, +2, +3 respectively).

Afaik that's how Staff of Curing regens up...I don't know what's the difference (isn't affected by Haste?).

 

If you also want to try having Frenzy auto-trigger when <25-50%hp go ahead, but making Frenzy trigger too often may actually lower the class performance.

What I've noticed, especially in BG1, that any time I use Rage in "big battles" he ends up surviving with just a slew of HP.

I really like that - you can't control him, yet he manages to win the battle while he's 2 hits away from dying.

In BG2, he lacks those few seconds to make it through the battle alive. I can make the cooldown longer if that's what worries you.

I'll test him out with 18/24/30 seconds and see how it goes.

 

Overall, I'm fine trying it out but I'm almost convinced Kalindor's x/day Frenzy is going to be the only way to make the class truly viable.

What would you do with Rage then? I've placed immunites to mind-affecting spells there, while kept movement immunities only to Frenzy (and he still has his contingency to break free).

As for viability...I have my worries with uncontrolability part as well, quite so.

But any source I've read about FB states the same:

....Real Frenzied Berserkers are loners, outcasts, fearless madmen driven by rage that they cannot control, murderous brutes who eat death and crap more death. What Paladins are for law and Blackguards are for evil, Berserkers are for rage.

.....that a Frenzied Berserker has (in PnP at least). They have such incredible power - but that power comes at a very, very steep cost. If they lose control for even a moment, they may destroy everything they love - or they may very well save the day. Do you stay close to your friends and try to protect them, or do you flee for fear that you yourself might slaughter them? Neither hero nor villain, they're more cursed by their gifts than anything. That is roleplaying.

.....Being a Frenzied Berserker, by definition, is being completely devoid of the fear of death: a perfect, selfless slaughter machine. The Berserker endangers both his life and the lives of those who dare travel with him - at least, that's how it should be.

 

I'd rather change the philosophy of Berserker a bit. It comes from my edition of Berserker/Barbarian merged.

Let's say Enrage grants +X bonus to Saves vs. Spells instead of full mind-affecting spells immunity. +2 at level 1, +4 at level 7, +6 at level 15.

If you introduce save vs spells, he'll be very vulnerable at low levels. If a player plays with Kit Revisions but not Spell Revisions, save vs spells actually protects from anything - Fireballs, Finger of Death, almost any spell forces a save vs spells...which is the opossite of keeping berserker vulnerable to evocations (he doesn't dodge fireball while frenzied for example).

Saves bonus favours the player over AI by a great margin.

[kreso]

I've tried both DF at 10th (as Demi suggested) and DF at 11th with trigger at 25% health.

DF at 10 is imbalanced, for both player and AI, there's little to do apart hide/run or use some spells like Otiluke's sphere, Web or similar stuff which can hold the berserker down.

Per my implementation - again, the triggers suffers the same flaw like the <50 trigger. Big damage such as ADHW or dragon attacks will completely bypass it unless berserker has huge amount of HP to begin with.

I've set the duration at 18 seconds for level 11, but that's way too long for a level 11 berserker, so I'm gonna cut it in half (9) or and see if it's any better/balanced. He could probably work without it for these levels anyway...but that's highly dependant on which quests one takes.

Anyhow, some further info - OS is great for berserkers. Rage+OS with Lirarcor crits up to 80 damage, which is indeed a sight to behold.

 

If we decide to keep berserk opcode, few facts:

- he will always suck against wizards, at least until Power Attack comes online. Even then, pfmw will make him suffer for duration of frenzy.

- healing him is very risky business. I'll give mine Death Knight's armor so he'll be immune to it alltogether. Otherwise, if by any chance his present target dies, whoever is healing him is very likely to be his next victim. Since my plan is to equip him with Silver Sword as well, healing is completely out of the question.

- he's very dependant on buffs. SRv4 will help him when druids gain regenerate wounds spells.

- use of summons is practically prohibited. Not only will he attack them, he will waste a lot of time doing so while keeping his overall bad defence properties

- evokers can kill him almost instantly when chaining 2 or 3 5th or higher level evocations such as Sunfire+3xFlame arrow sequencer

- having more than one melee character with him is sub-optimal, unless you micro extensivly.

- having 2 berserkers in party means one of them will usually end up dead, often both

- my guess is people will either love him or hate him completely. There's no room for middle ground.

- overall he's a pain to handle in combat. His new OS does balance out the difficulty in playing him, however.

- invisibility potions are your best friend when he goes after you

 

The problem with playtesting him is that I cannot put him in every possible scenario there is - i.e last time he frenzied upon a mage who didn't use pfmw but a sequencer of stoneskin/fireshield red/fireshield blue...game over.

Anyways, Demi, if you can chew up all the above "misfortunes" he can indeed work with MinHP being granted sooner (I'd dare to say level 15 would be ideal, somewhere at Underdark I guess).

If not, I'm fine with removing the opcode and having DF as an 1xday ToB ability.

Keep in mind, he will be very powerful with his damage if the player can select his target as he wishes. At level 19, he gains a damage boost which almost doubles his attack power...don't disregard the Mind Shield effect also.

At least he'll always be a poor dual-class material, which makes me happy.

 

 

For more jolly matters:

Wizard Slayer's Breaching Strike doesn't reflect back anymore, I don't know how that happened (maybe just the icon had wrong power set, I've set it to 0 as per other effects). His power rises drastically after level 10, I don't think any kit benefits from such a huge upgrade in power at this level.

Even in BG1, mine delivered more than 60% of kills (he was competing against a berserker in permanent OS), built him as a dual-wielding dagger warrior. Berserker did catch up in BG2 however.

40% miscast is nice, altough sometimes it seems rather weak...it's not a dependable skill. Moreover, it doesn't prevent sequencers, scrolls, wands, or spells which enemies in SCS cast as pre-buff.

He's highly dependant upon invisibility to deliver the first blow, I constantly try to use Stealth button but it's not there.

Sometimes he seems slightly too powerful, and I fear without IR weapon speed factor he actually might be. This way, one is almost "forced" to use him with light armor/weapons, at least when fighting wizards.

Still, having a fighter with 5* in daggers is very lethal.

WS(10)-thief seems a natural dual class imo. Not only can he benefit from stealth that way, he will inflict Miscast and backstab in a single hit . And have supreme survability against mages.

[kreso]

I've almost finished BG2 portion of the game.

My current minHP implementation is wonderful, when it works. Unfortunately, contingency at 25% max health triggers on approx 35% times before Berseker dies - it's that late to launch. When it does work, it's great - this thing covers those crucial 10 or so seconds for berserker to stay alive (I made it last 9/12/15 seconds for levels 11/14/17, and the cooldown is 120/90/60 seconds.)

But it's so very annoying when it doesn't work and he just dies.

Example:

 

 

This is somewhere about level 12. Both contingencies should be triggered by now, yet both fail - regeneration at 50% (there's no icon as you can see) and MinHP at 25% (I used the Invulnerability icon to show on portrait when it's active).

So much for Diehard ...he ofc dies on the next attack vs the mage he's targeting. Time in between when his first contingency should trigger and death - 5 seconds. That's almost a full round, where he takes no other damage apart fireshields feedback and dies.

When it works otoh, it's splendid.

Here he survives for 8 extra seconds, ending the battle in style. Both contingecies triggered.

 

Overall, no good. My berserker now has 2 abilities, and none of them can be counted on. ToB will probably be worse, since you get hit for much more damage, decreasing the chance to trigger them.

One thing I can try is to put MinHP on him permanently, keep the contingency at 25%, and have MinHP removed after a set duration of his contingencied spell, so he can die, but not before going insane from his contingency.

I'm not sure if this would work as I envison it, however.

Or, somehow implement minHP in frenzy. But the duration of frenzy is too high when he's raging.

I am however, much more pleased with his preformance overall than the previous time I played him. I had very little trouble keeping party members out of his way, and a WizardSlayer helped immensly. A thief to dispel illusions is also very handy.

He still dies often, even with minHP, but that's ok.

[Ardanis]

Unfortunately, contingency at 25% max health triggers on approx 35% times before Berseker dies - it's that late to launch.

There should be a fix for that in ToBEx.

[yarpen]

Demi, I think you should make Offensive/Defensive stance scale a bit faster.

The first, not-so-epic upgrade from +1/-1 to +2/-2 comes at friggin midgame of SoA. One would expect that somewhere between ending of BG1 and start of SoA.

Level 7 would be perfect. Same goes for +4/-4, it could be usefull at the end of SoA already (level 15?).

[Demivrgvs]

Unfortunately, contingency at 25% max health triggers on approx 35% times before Berseker dies - it's that late to launch.

There should be a fix for that in ToBEx.

Not sure what Arda is talking about, but @kreso what you are experiencing is exactly why I dropped 25% hp trigger for Diehard (it previously increased regen even more) and why I'm suggesting to replace regen opcode itself (even the level 17 version with 3hp/round gives you 2 seconds delay before gaining the first hp) with a 'current hp' bonus.

 

On a side note, I've been slowed down but in the meanwhile I've built a new Berserker without the berserk opcode (sniff ), I'll try to package it and several new other things either tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

Demi, I think you should make Offensive/Defensive stance scale a bit faster.

The first, not-so-epic upgrade from +1/-1 to +2/-2 comes at friggin midgame of SoA. One would expect that somewhere between ending of BG1 and start of SoA.

Level 7 would be perfect. Same goes for +4/-4, it could be usefull at the end of SoA already (level 15?).

Actually there's no -1/+1 step, it's -2/+2 at level 1. Trading a single thac0 point for a single damage point is such a small difference that even at the lowest levels it would not have enough impact in terms of gameplay to be noticed imo.

I'm more sympathetic about having another upgrade at mid-levels, but the idea was to keep something for mid-high levels.

[kreso]

Not sure what Arda is talking about, but @kreso what you are experiencing is exactly why I dropped 25% hp trigger for Diehard (it previously increased regen even more) and why I'm suggesting to replace regen opcode itself (even the level 17 version with 3hp/round gives you 2 seconds delay before gaining the first hp) with a 'current hp' bonus.

 

On a side note, I've been slowed down but in the meanwhile I've built a new Berserker without the berserk opcode (sniff ), I'll try to package it and several new other things either tonight or tomorrow morning.

It's not those 2 seconds before regeneration starts working that's the problem here. It's the fact that any Contingency which triggers on a <HP basis has a flaw - it doesn't cast when it should. I can easilly change regeneration into HP increase (or PFMW. or whatever), it won't change anything for this <50 trigger. The screenshot above shows the issue - even if regeneration itself wasn't active, at least the regeneration icon should show on portrait - yet nothing happens - the spell (DVCL322A) doesn't get cast at all. Game engine apperantly checks for HP treshold once every so often, and what happens is that berserker dies before the contingencied spell gets cast. Hence my suggestion to tie regeneration to something else rather than this particular trigger.

On a sidenote, my implementation with minHP at 25% wouldn't be made good even with ToBEx (I think Ardanis is talking about the trigger check period which can be "speeded up") - there are damage sources bigger than 25% of 150HP, which is what my berserker will eventually have. (I play core and don't max HP).

So I dropped this alltogether, because those triggers are both only good when you're getting hit by very small damage ammounts in a relative long time.

What I'm trying now is your suggestion (MinHP in Frenzy) with decreased chances of triggering the frenzy on hit- 5% OS, 15% Rage and 10% while in Frenzy (so that it can continue), all chances stack with each other, so a raging berserker in OS has a 20% of enetering frenzy. If he has Rage/OS acitve and enters frenzy, he has 30% chance to continue frenziing.

I'll see if I can finish the game with this implementation and if it shows too powerful.

Even so, I don't know at which level he should gain such feat, ideally I'd drop Power Attack from level 15 and assign it here, since he can't use it if he's frenzying anyway. Not that it's a bad skill to have...

What I did notice that equiping him with elemental resistance items such as Boots of the North, Ring of Fire protection, Dragon Helm and similar goes a long way in keeping him alive. Alternative is rather easy - don't use Rage when high-level mages are around. But as for testing, I use Rage in 90% of battles.

Anyhow, I'm really curious to see what you have in mind for a controlable berserker....I'll still try to finish the game I'm running now since I have almost finished SoA.