Seriously, I keep thinking about it, but I cant see any situation where the Bite is the best pick outside of... you somehow fight creatures that cant possibly hit you and can just heal up over a minute... Which will never come up in a real game.
Even at 1 HP, its shouldnt be your to go pick...
Lets assume you are a fresh Level 3 Barbarian, and your Party fights a CR3 Creature. Lets not even get Fancy, we just say an Owlbear, every Party fights an Owlbear around Level 3.
The Owlbears Beak deals 10 average Damage and the claws deal 14 average damage, so 5 and 7 damage to a Barbarian.
You have the choice between attaching one additinal time, getting a 1d8 AC as a Reaction or healing for 2 HP ONCE per turn.
See what we would get: Claws: Attacking more means the enemy dies faster. lets assume your extra attack misses every time but one, that means the enemy still dies one turn earlier than when you didnt have it. That means you avoided 12 damage. Tail: You can add 1d8 to your AC. Again, lets be pessimistic and say you only used it on one Claw successfully, avoiding one hit. Thats 7 damage avoided. Bite: If we assume you hit in every turn, just healing as much damage as you avoided taking would mean the combat has to last 6 turns for Claws and 4 rounds for Tail.
So even if we assume the other two had barely an impact, making a scenario where you only got 1 successfull use during the combat, the healing still takes forever to catch up.
And it really gets worse, At Level 5 the healing gets to 3 per round, but at that point, the average damage of Monsters is about 20 to 30 each round... Just avoiding one hit with Tail or downing the enemy 1 round earlier already sets up numbers the healing will never reach...
I suppose it's useful if you're fighting easy enemies in between hard ones, healing is the only benefit of the three that can help you in future fights. It came up once or twice when the class was in playtest but since they added the half hp requirement it's been pretty much useless.
Healing is really hard to balance in 5e, especially when it can occur repeatedly over time without spending resources each time.
That said... yeah, this is probably the least impactful of the Beast options. I think it would have most value for a Barbarian with very high native AC, who would probably not get much use out of the Tail. Keep in mind that your Bite deals a solid 1d8 damage and still leaves both of your hands free... although so does the tail. But the tail also consumes your Reaction each time you use it, while the Heal from the Bite attack is a free effect tacked onto a normal attack.
The Bite sounds like it has potential to be combined with feats that provide additional reactions, such as Sentinel. Other than that, the Bite is mostly just flavor... it's a lot easier to imagine turning into a wolf-like creature and biting enemies, instead of turning into... I guess a scorpion? Since the tail does piercing damage.
Actually the more AC you have the more you want more AC. So bite isn't even in its niche on a more defensive beast barb. It's just bad. It's there to make you sad.
Yeah the tail is really nice with high AC, few attacks get through and the ones that do can usually be blocked. The bite heal can be better in situations where you're landing hits much more often than enemies but only over a large number of turns. The half health pretty much kills even this. As it is just treat it as the bad option that's only there to make the other two look better.
Healing is really hard to balance in 5e, especially when it can occur repeatedly over time without spending resources each time.
That said... yeah, this is probably the least impactful of the Beast options. I think it would have most value for a Barbarian with very high native AC, who would probably not get much use out of the Tail. Keep in mind that your Bite deals a solid 1d8 damage and still leaves both of your hands free... although so does the tail. But the tail also consumes your Reaction each time you use it, while the Heal from the Bite attack is a free effect tacked onto a normal attack.
The Bite sounds like it has potential to be combined with feats that provide additional reactions, such as Sentinel. Other than that, the Bite is mostly just flavor... it's a lot easier to imagine turning into a wolf-like creature and biting enemies, instead of turning into... I guess a scorpion? Since the tail does piercing damage.
Sentinel wouldn’t work well with bite, as it specifies the healing only happens once on each of YOUR turns.
i could see it being slightly useful in encounters with creatures that use saving throws to damage the characters. saving throws usually bypass the armor, shield, and tail AC.
the effective healing of the bite is somewhat increased by the barbarians rage feature. Rage cuts the bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage in half, which makes that hp last longer by cutting the damage in half.
There’s also the fact that damage is rounded down when halved, so if the barbarian were to take 5 slashing damage then it would be halved to 2.5 and then also rounded down to 2.
The bite can also be used if the barbarian invests in a way to use their reaction for something other than the tail option. Perhaps a beast barbarian that heals a little bit while making use of polearm masters reaction attacks takes less damage than a beast variant reacting defensively since a threat can potentially be taken out before it attacks.
Oh I didn't mention sentinel for additional healing... I was just comparing the fact that the tail uses your reaction, but like was pointed out, the fangs free up your reaction for other things.
o It ONLY works while you have less than half your hit points. It stops working once you reach half.
o You would have to choose it at the start of combat, unless you want to burn another rage use to "re-rage" in that form.
o It heals a dismal amount of hit points, as others have pointed out. The tail will almost certainly reduce more damage than your bit will heal. Dealing more damage with the claws will kill the enemies quicker, causing you to take less damage.
I've been thinking of homebrewing the bite to allow a free bonus action grapple as the extra effect instead of the healing; it's just not enough healing to be worth it, and you're almost always going to be better off using claws to take an enemy down faster or the tail to avoid being hit, as in both cases you take less damage in the first place.
I have a Path of the Beast character I'd like to play, but while the Bite would make most sense for him, it's just not a good option as-is.
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I just through of what I think is the best home brew fix for this feature.
o When you rage you choose between the claws and the tail. All is the same for both options.
o In addition-- if you have less than half of your hit points while you are raging, you grow fangs (but also retain your chosen tail or claw form). You can choose to replace any of your attacks with a bite attack. Once per turn when your bite attack hits, you regain hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.
This essentially makes you a bit more durable when things are dicey and you're bloodied. But it doesn't break the game.
I was thinking that if my barbarian had two attacks, he could use one with his two handed and another with bite to heal in the case the battle was hard. But I would say the tail seems to be best use.
A couple of things that make the Beast Barb's bite attack suck slightly less:
Remember you have resistance when raging; whatever hit points you get from this attack will be effectively doubled if you have resistance to your enemies' attacks. So even though this appears to heal 2 to 6 HP, it may effectively be 4 to 12. Still not much, but then there's this...
Dhampir also regain HP from their bite; if these effects stack, (and I'm not sure they do) then this ability gets a lot better.
Lizardfolk (MotM version) gain temp HP from their bite, which definitely does stack with the Beast Barb's bite! You get the same number of HP and temp HP from the attack, although it costs an attack plus a bonus action. This is also a major improvement for the Beast Barb, and I'm playing one now. Does it measure up to the Claw or Tail options? I don't know yet but I'm gonna find out.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
A couple of things that make the Beast Barb's bite attack suck slightly less:
Remember you have resistance when raging; whatever hit points you get from this attack will be effectively doubled if you have resistance to your enemies' attacks. So even though this appears to heal 2 to 6 HP, it may effectively be 4 to 12. Still not much, but then there's this...
Dhampir also regain HP from their bite; if these effects stack, (and I'm not sure they do) then this ability gets a lot better.
Lizardfolk (MotM version) gain temp HP from their bite, which definitely does stack with the Beast Barb's bite! You get the same number of HP and temp HP from the attack, although it costs an attack plus a bonus action. This is also a major improvement for the Beast Barb, and I'm playing one now. Does it measure up to the Claw or Tail options? I don't know yet but I'm gonna find out.
The problem isn't just that you regain very few hit points. You have to fall below 50% of your hit points before it starts working, and it stops working once you're back to half way. And if you never drop below half your hit points it's literally useless. So let's say you're at 40% and no means to heal before you engage in another combat, only then does it make sense to even consider it. And would still argue that the extra offense from your claws or defense from your tail will make you more survivable than the bite.
A couple of things that make the Beast Barb's bite attack suck slightly less:
Remember you have resistance when raging; whatever hit points you get from this attack will be effectively doubled if you have resistance to your enemies' attacks. So even though this appears to heal 2 to 6 HP, it may effectively be 4 to 12. Still not much, but then there's this...
Dhampir also regain HP from their bite; if these effects stack, (and I'm not sure they do) then this ability gets a lot better.
Lizardfolk (MotM version) gain temp HP from their bite, which definitely does stack with the Beast Barb's bite! You get the same number of HP and temp HP from the attack, although it costs an attack plus a bonus action. This is also a major improvement for the Beast Barb, and I'm playing one now. Does it measure up to the Claw or Tail options? I don't know yet but I'm gonna find out.
The problem isn't just that you regain very few hit points. You have to fall below 50% of your hit points before it starts working, and it stops working once you're back to half way. And if you never drop below half your hit points it's literally useless. So let's say you're at 40% and no means to heal before you engage in another combat, only then does it make sense to even consider it. And would still argue that the extra offense from your claws or defense from your tail will make you more survivable than the bite.
I'd say it comes down to a couple of things:
Playing style: I've seen some Barbarian players spam their Reckless attacks more than they should. Those guys are always below 50% of their hit point total. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it's a common enough playing style that this feature isn't as useless as you think. (Personally I like to balance my offense and defense, and I STILL finish every fight near 1hp! LOL)
Available healing: if healing is scarce, this feature becomes somewhat more useful. We've all been in the occasional group where nobody wants to play the healer. So yeah, having the option of picking up a few extra HP at no cost beyond hitting with an attack once per turn might be worthwhile if I think I'll need them. (My current group actually has two healers so the claws and tail are looking better, of course.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
But here's the thing. Killing enemies faster makes you more survivable. Getting hit less makes you more survivable. I would argue that both the claws and the tail make you more survivable than the bite. So even if your play style is Kamikaze, you're better off not using the bite. Even if you don't have access to a lot of healing.
I mean even if you use a 'bag of rats' exploit, expending a rage very costly just for a healing.
For some reason, many here assume the fight is against one big bad monster. What if you're fighting hordes of low-CR creatures? The tail immediately becomes useless. The claws are still pretty good in this case, but in reality, you're better off soaking the damage while another party member with some AoE spells - let's hope you have one - takes them all out much faster.
At level 5 with PAM you can get 4 attacks using the claws, let's say you kill four enemies. Your level 1 Wizard with Burning Hands could theoretically take 6 of them with a single action. Hell, a Cleric with Word of Radiance can kill eight if all is perfect.
Thus, staying alive is just more useful, and these enemies aren't dealing a lot of damage, so that 2 or 3 HP are really useful, combined with Rage to effectively double that. The 50% is really sad, it's true, but if you're not very high levelled, reaching 50% doesn't really take that long. At level 5, with Con 16, you'll have ~55 HP. Half of that is just 27 (rounded) HP. You can lose that in a few rounds, or even before you even raged if the enemies win initiative.
At level 5 with PAM you can get 4 attacks using the claws, let's say you kill four enemies. Your level 1 Wizard with Burning Hands could theoretically take 6 of them with a single action. Hell, a Cleric with Word of Radiance can kill eight if all is perfect.
How are you getting 4 attacks? As soon as you attack with your Claws you are no longer eligible to used the PAM Bonus Action attack.
Now to get back on topic, the Bite attack is actually viable for a grappler build. Its not great but its viable as you can grapple a enemy with one hand, hold a shield with another and still Bite them. Or grapple two enemies even.
But that being said the Tail is probably better for a grappling build most of the time as the Tail's reaction ability will be more useful than the Bite's healing more often than not, but the Bite is still viable for a grappler build.
Sorry, you're right. I missed the word "only" in the feat's description, so I thought using just one out of your two attacks would saffice. This only makes my argument stronger, though, as we're now standing on 3 max. You can use GWM though, and there are several ways to make that work, especially in the mentioned case above. Still, it only gives us 4, which isn't a lot, as said before.
Grappler builds will work with all three options really, depending on what you want that other hand for. Another attack against a grappled opponent isn't bad either (nothing states you can't attack with the same claw twice).
The tail vs bite still goes down to what you fight against. One enemy with one attack is tail for sure. But one enemy with numerous attacks/many enemies/anything that imposes saves you'd be better off using the bite option.
Seriously, I keep thinking about it, but I cant see any situation where the Bite is the best pick outside of... you somehow fight creatures that cant possibly hit you and can just heal up over a minute... Which will never come up in a real game.
Even at 1 HP, its shouldnt be your to go pick...
Lets assume you are a fresh Level 3 Barbarian, and your Party fights a CR3 Creature. Lets not even get Fancy, we just say an Owlbear, every Party fights an Owlbear around Level 3.
The Owlbears Beak deals 10 average Damage and the claws deal 14 average damage, so 5 and 7 damage to a Barbarian.
You have the choice between attaching one additinal time, getting a 1d8 AC as a Reaction or healing for 2 HP ONCE per turn.
See what we would get:
Claws: Attacking more means the enemy dies faster. lets assume your extra attack misses every time but one, that means the enemy still dies one turn earlier than when you didnt have it. That means you avoided 12 damage.
Tail: You can add 1d8 to your AC. Again, lets be pessimistic and say you only used it on one Claw successfully, avoiding one hit. Thats 7 damage avoided.
Bite: If we assume you hit in every turn, just healing as much damage as you avoided taking would mean the combat has to last 6 turns for Claws and 4 rounds for Tail.
So even if we assume the other two had barely an impact, making a scenario where you only got 1 successfull use during the combat, the healing still takes forever to catch up.
And it really gets worse, At Level 5 the healing gets to 3 per round, but at that point, the average damage of Monsters is about 20 to 30 each round... Just avoiding one hit with Tail or downing the enemy 1 round earlier already sets up numbers the healing will never reach...
So... why ever take bite?
I suppose it's useful if you're fighting easy enemies in between hard ones, healing is the only benefit of the three that can help you in future fights. It came up once or twice when the class was in playtest but since they added the half hp requirement it's been pretty much useless.
Healing is really hard to balance in 5e, especially when it can occur repeatedly over time without spending resources each time.
That said... yeah, this is probably the least impactful of the Beast options. I think it would have most value for a Barbarian with very high native AC, who would probably not get much use out of the Tail. Keep in mind that your Bite deals a solid 1d8 damage and still leaves both of your hands free... although so does the tail. But the tail also consumes your Reaction each time you use it, while the Heal from the Bite attack is a free effect tacked onto a normal attack.
The Bite sounds like it has potential to be combined with feats that provide additional reactions, such as Sentinel. Other than that, the Bite is mostly just flavor... it's a lot easier to imagine turning into a wolf-like creature and biting enemies, instead of turning into... I guess a scorpion? Since the tail does piercing damage.
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Actually the more AC you have the more you want more AC. So bite isn't even in its niche on a more defensive beast barb. It's just bad. It's there to make you sad.
Yeah the tail is really nice with high AC, few attacks get through and the ones that do can usually be blocked. The bite heal can be better in situations where you're landing hits much more often than enemies but only over a large number of turns. The half health pretty much kills even this. As it is just treat it as the bad option that's only there to make the other two look better.
Sentinel wouldn’t work well with bite, as it specifies the healing only happens once on each of YOUR turns.
i could see it being slightly useful in encounters with creatures that use saving throws to damage the characters. saving throws usually bypass the armor, shield, and tail AC.
the effective healing of the bite is somewhat increased by the barbarians rage feature. Rage cuts the bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage in half, which makes that hp last longer by cutting the damage in half.
There’s also the fact that damage is rounded down when halved, so if the barbarian were to take 5 slashing damage then it would be halved to 2.5 and then also rounded down to 2.
The bite can also be used if the barbarian invests in a way to use their reaction for something other than the tail option. Perhaps a beast barbarian that heals a little bit while making use of polearm masters reaction attacks takes less damage than a beast variant reacting defensively since a threat can potentially be taken out before it attacks.
Oh I didn't mention sentinel for additional healing... I was just comparing the fact that the tail uses your reaction, but like was pointed out, the fangs free up your reaction for other things.
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My apologies, I’ll continue to work on my reading comprehension :D
o It ONLY works while you have less than half your hit points. It stops working once you reach half.
o You would have to choose it at the start of combat, unless you want to burn another rage use to "re-rage" in that form.
o It heals a dismal amount of hit points, as others have pointed out. The tail will almost certainly reduce more damage than your bit will heal. Dealing more damage with the claws will kill the enemies quicker, causing you to take less damage.
I've been thinking of homebrewing the bite to allow a free bonus action grapple as the extra effect instead of the healing; it's just not enough healing to be worth it, and you're almost always going to be better off using claws to take an enemy down faster or the tail to avoid being hit, as in both cases you take less damage in the first place.
I have a Path of the Beast character I'd like to play, but while the Bite would make most sense for him, it's just not a good option as-is.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I just through of what I think is the best home brew fix for this feature.
o When you rage you choose between the claws and the tail. All is the same for both options.
o In addition-- if you have less than half of your hit points while you are raging, you grow fangs (but also retain your chosen tail or claw form). You can choose to replace any of your attacks with a bite attack. Once per turn when your bite attack hits, you regain hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.
This essentially makes you a bit more durable when things are dicey and you're bloodied. But it doesn't break the game.
I was thinking that if my barbarian had two attacks, he could use one with his two handed and another with bite to heal in the case the battle was hard. But I would say the tail seems to be best use.
Molon Labe, Lord Low
A couple of things that make the Beast Barb's bite attack suck slightly less:
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
The problem isn't just that you regain very few hit points. You have to fall below 50% of your hit points before it starts working, and it stops working once you're back to half way. And if you never drop below half your hit points it's literally useless. So let's say you're at 40% and no means to heal before you engage in another combat, only then does it make sense to even consider it. And would still argue that the extra offense from your claws or defense from your tail will make you more survivable than the bite.
I'd say it comes down to a couple of things:
Behind every successful Warlock, there's an angry mob.
But here's the thing. Killing enemies faster makes you more survivable. Getting hit less makes you more survivable. I would argue that both the claws and the tail make you more survivable than the bite. So even if your play style is Kamikaze, you're better off not using the bite. Even if you don't have access to a lot of healing.
I mean even if you use a 'bag of rats' exploit, expending a rage very costly just for a healing.
For some reason, many here assume the fight is against one big bad monster. What if you're fighting hordes of low-CR creatures? The tail immediately becomes useless. The claws are still pretty good in this case, but in reality, you're better off soaking the damage while another party member with some AoE spells - let's hope you have one - takes them all out much faster.
At level 5 with PAM you can get 4 attacks using the claws, let's say you kill four enemies. Your level 1 Wizard with Burning Hands could theoretically take 6 of them with a single action. Hell, a Cleric with Word of Radiance can kill eight if all is perfect.
Thus, staying alive is just more useful, and these enemies aren't dealing a lot of damage, so that 2 or 3 HP are really useful, combined with Rage to effectively double that. The 50% is really sad, it's true, but if you're not very high levelled, reaching 50% doesn't really take that long. At level 5, with Con 16, you'll have ~55 HP. Half of that is just 27 (rounded) HP. You can lose that in a few rounds, or even before you even raged if the enemies win initiative.
Varielky
How are you getting 4 attacks? As soon as you attack with your Claws you are no longer eligible to used the PAM Bonus Action attack.
Now to get back on topic, the Bite attack is actually viable for a grappler build. Its not great but its viable as you can grapple a enemy with one hand, hold a shield with another and still Bite them. Or grapple two enemies even.
But that being said the Tail is probably better for a grappling build most of the time as the Tail's reaction ability will be more useful than the Bite's healing more often than not, but the Bite is still viable for a grappler build.
Sorry, you're right. I missed the word "only" in the feat's description, so I thought using just one out of your two attacks would saffice. This only makes my argument stronger, though, as we're now standing on 3 max. You can use GWM though, and there are several ways to make that work, especially in the mentioned case above. Still, it only gives us 4, which isn't a lot, as said before.
Grappler builds will work with all three options really, depending on what you want that other hand for. Another attack against a grappled opponent isn't bad either (nothing states you can't attack with the same claw twice).
The tail vs bite still goes down to what you fight against. One enemy with one attack is tail for sure. But one enemy with numerous attacks/many enemies/anything that imposes saves you'd be better off using the bite option.
Varielky