Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to be building an Iconic Design for Drax the Destroyer, from Guardians of the Galaxy.

There’s a metaphor in this introduction somewhere, but I don’t understand it.

Background

Drax basically has two distinct backgrounds: his movie backstory and his comic backstory. Both start similar: Drax’s home is attacked by Thanos and in the process, his wife and daughter are killed. In the comic, Drax (under the name Arthur Douglas) is killed as well and a superpower places Arthur’s soul into a new body specifically designed to kill Thanos, and names this new person Drax the Destroyer. Personally, I like the movie background better.

Drax is a physical beast with considerable strength and focus. Unlike other berserker type heroes, Drax’s fury is definitely a cold one, and as a result he’s significantly more tactical than other heroes (and he also gets a few witty punchlines in here and there as well). In the movie, Drax is best known for his race’s inability to understand metaphors, so he takes everything every character says literally, which is played for laughs with Rocket and Star-Lord’s sarcastic personalities.

Build Concept

So in order to build Grax, I’m relying on a few key ideas.

• Savage Barbarian: Grax is best known for being shirtless in the movie, so I wanted to make sure that he could be shirtless in my build as well. Savage Barbarian trades a few class features for two different sources of scaling AC bonuses, with the class gaining a total of a +5 by 20th level, which is pretty nice.
• Urban Barbarian: Yes! These archetypes stack! While Drax is in the heat of the fray, he gets some attack roll and AC benefits, which are nice. My favorite thing about this archetype, however, is its modifications to rage. Although the bonuses to individual ability scores are lessened, you get to choose which physical scores they’re applied to, which allows an urban barbarian player to be somewhat tacticial in how he applies his rage.

But enough talk! Time for the build!

Early Levels (1–7)

• Classes: Barbarian (Savage Barbarian, Urban Barbarian) 7
• Feats: Power Attack (Human), Two-Weapon Fighting (1st), Dodge (3rd), Raging Vitality (5th), Raging Brutality (7th)
• Abilities: controlled rage, crowd control, improved uncanny dodge, naked courage +1, natural toughness +1, rage powers (auspicious mark, brawler, quick reflexes), uncanny dodge

Just so we’re clear, the auspicious mark rage power represents Drax’s tattoos. I don’t think they actually have anything supernatural about them in canon, but I thought it would be fun to have an actual mechanic for them.

In Drax’s opening levels, we try to lay some groundwork down for him. Drax prefers daggers, so I’ve given him Two-Weapon Fighting so he can use two of them at the same time. Power Attack for a character like Draxx is also fairly standard. Raging Vitality increases the Constitution Drax gains from raging by +2, which combines well with the urban barbarian archetype. It basically brings the urban barbarian’s total morale bonus up to equal a standard barbarian’s with the contingency that the urban barbarian must allocate a chunk of her rage to Constitution every time. The reason I picked Urban Barbarian for Drax was that I don’t really see him as the Hulk, “I’m a berserker and am not really thinking,” type. He’s usually more of the cold fury type, which urban barbarian does very well.

Since Drax never wears armor, I decided to give him the savage barbarian archetype. I’m all for any archetype that trades trap sense for a dodge bonus to AC and while trading damage reduction for a natural armor bonus isn’t the best deal in the world, it helps to make up for the lack of AC that you’ll be experiencing from not wearing armor. To further fortify this, I grabbed Dodge and the guarded stance rage power, which will account for another +3 bonus to AC in the early levels, a +4 in the mid levels, and a +5 in the high levels. Right now, Drax is sitting at an AC of 10 + Dex + 3, plus an additional +2 when he activates guarded stance. Not completely unhittable, but not bad considering that he wears no armor. Let’s continue onward to see what else we can do for the Destroyer.

Mid Levels (8 –14)

• Classes: Barbarian (Savage Barbarian, Urban Barbarian) 14
• Feats: Power Attack (Human), Two-Weapon Fighting (1st), Dodge (3rd), Raging Vitality (5th), Furious Focus (7th), Reckless Rage (9th), Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (11th), Raging Brutality (13th)
• Abilities: controlled rage, crowd control, greater rage, improved uncanny dodge, indomitable will, naked courage +2, natural toughness +3, rage powers (auspicious mark, brawler, guarded stance, quick reflexes, sharpened accuracy, surprise accuracy, unexpected strike), uncanny dodge

Nothing special in this stage of the game. Reckless Rage improves Power Attack while raging, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting gives Drax more swings with his daggers. And Raging Brutality … oh, Raging Brutality.

Raging Brutality is very nice in a Constitution-heavy build, especially one like this where Drax can theoretically pump his rage up by +8. (+6 from controlled rage, +2 more from Raging Vitality)

Basically, you’re going to want to use Raging Brutality to hit stuff hard whenever you’re fighting something that A) can hit you easily and B) can hit you hard. This is the fight against the dragon-type enemies; the ones with massive attack bonuses that are going to hit you even if you use total defense and allocate all of your rage to Dexterity. In those types of fights, you’re raging to SURVIVE, and Raging Brutality allows you to add a bit of an extra punch when you’re fighting to survive. Basically, you can expend 3 rounds of rage to add your Constitution to all damage rolls that you make with your melee weapons until the end of the turn. It isn’t the best strategy in the world and it isn’t something you want to do all the time. As mentioned, Raging Brutality is for the fights where you’re forced to focus on Constitution. Takes some of the bite off of not having a morale bonus to Strength.

Let’s look at the end of the game!

Endgame (15+)

• Classes: Barbarian (Savage Barbarian, Urban Barbarian) 14
• Feats: Power Attack (Human), Two-Weapon Fighting (1st), Dodge (3rd), Raging Vitality (5th), Furious Focus (7th), Reckless Rage (9th), Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (11th), Raging Brutality (13th), Greater Two-Weapon Fighting (15th), Stunning Assault (17th), Extra Rage (19th)
• Abilities: controlled rage, crowd control, greater rage, improved uncanny dodge, indomitable will, mighty rage, naked courage +3, natural toughness +5, rage powers (auspicious mark, brawler, guarded stance, quick reflexes, sharpened accuracy, surprise accuracy, unexpected strike), tireless rage, uncanny dodge

And here’s the end of the build: the part where Drax annoys everyone. Although I’m not a huge fan of Improved TWF and Greater TWF, one of the nice things about attacks is that you automatically hit on a 20. No matter how bad the penalty, there’s a 5% chance to hit. When you throw enough dice, stuff gets done. Combine probability with Stunning Assault and nasty things can, theoretically, happen. Lob around your seven attacks; even with a –5 penalty, they’ll always have a 5% chance to hit. And when they do, its Fortitude save or STUNNED, which is a horribly nasty penalty to inflict on someone, especially creatures that don’t want to drop everything that they’re holding.

Now, while Furious Focus doesn’t work with this strategy, you can use your once per rage use of sharpened accuracy if you’d like to improve your odds of one attack hitting, but I personally don’t recommend it. Stick to using Stunning Assault when you’re either A) pumping Strength or B) fishing for 20s.

And with that, I think this is the most “tactical” barbarian that I can build. What do you think? Is there anything that you’d change, or do you like the way Drax looks? What do you think about Raging Vitality? Leave your comments and thoughts below, and I’ll see you next Friday for another Iconic Design!

Alexander “Alex” Augunas has been playing roleplaying games since 2007, which isn’t nearly as long as 90% of his colleagues. Alexander is an active freelancer for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and is best known as the author of the Pact Magic Unbound series by Radiance House. Alex is the owner of Everyman Gaming, LLC and is often stylized as the Everyman Gamer in honor of Guidance’s original home. Alex’s favorite color is blue, his favorite Pathfinder Race/Class combination is kitsune flying blade, and he’s still in love with Guardians of the Galaxy after these past few months.