Sorry I was inactive, i did not get notifications, but the reason for saying it has disynergy is that at level 14 using a polearm, or playing a bugbear means unless you have a special feat you have disadvantage on every attack, another thing is that it is an odd mix between hulk and thor. Part of me thinks that the people who made this were thinking that they needed to solve the range problem for barbarians so they thought that they could add range with size or make them throw things but could not decide which so did both. Also for flavor this would make a lot more sense as a draconic theme.
Sorry I was inactive, i did not get notifications, but the reason for saying it has disynergy is that at level 14 using a polearm, or playing a bugbear means unless you have a special feat you have disadvantage on every attack, another thing is that it is an odd mix between hulk and thor. Part of me thinks that the people who made this were thinking that they needed to solve the range problem for barbarians so they thought that they could add range with size or make them throw things but could not decide which so did both. Also for flavor this would make a lot more sense as a draconic theme.
I'm not sure I follow you when you talk about attacking at disadvantage. Why would attacks using a reach weapon have disadvantage?
Sorry I was inactive, i did not get notifications, but the reason for saying it has disynergy is that at level 14 using a polearm, or playing a bugbear means unless you have a special feat you have disadvantage on every attack, another thing is that it is an odd mix between hulk and thor. Part of me thinks that the people who made this were thinking that they needed to solve the range problem for barbarians so they thought that they could add range with size or make them throw things but could not decide which so did both. Also for flavor this would make a lot more sense as a draconic theme.
I'm not sure I follow you when you talk about attacking at disadvantage. Why would attacks using a reach weapon have disadvantage?
They're talking about the issue that the expanded reach overlaps the short range of your thrown weapon. So if you want to attack someone who's outside of your melee reach you're automatically stuck taking disadvantage on the roll.
I hadn't considered that issue until they pointed it out. Good thing to bring up whenever they get the survey up.
They're talking about the issue that the expanded reach overlaps the short range of your thrown weapon. So if you want to attack someone who's outside of your melee reach you're automatically stuck taking disadvantage on the roll.
I hadn't considered that issue until they pointed it out. Good thing to bring up whenever they get the survey up.
Ah, thank you. I was thinking about melee attacks and how the Prone gives disadvantage on all attacks from further than 5 feet away.
Imo comparing it to the Rune Knight, it seems a bit underpowered. Getting big for the sake of getting big is kinda lame. I do think being able to hurl your weapons and have them come back is a fun feature but the rest of it seems rather lackluster
Imo comparing it to the Rune Knight, it seems a bit underpowered. Getting big for the sake of getting big is kinda lame. I do think being able to hurl your weapons and have them come back is a fun feature but the rest of it seems rather lackluster
I wouldn't say it's just for the sake of it; the bigger a barbarian is the more of a road-block they can become, the more enemies they can potentially stop with the Sentinel feat, or the more that can be piling on them instead of the rest of the party etc., and it's increased further by increasing your reach (since you already get Strength check/save bonuses for Raging) which means your area of attack is even bigger (a Medium creature with 5 foot reach can attack in a 15 foot square, a Large creature with a 10 foot reach controls a 30 foot square).
Depending on your group you might need to push your DM to factor these things in a bit more; i.e- you want bigger battlefields where there are choke points you can control at a larger size, and also maybe discuss how they do enemy target selection (enemies should go for a big obvious target rather than using metagaming to do what's optimal, and don't do randomised targets because it's a horrible way to do things except when several are equally valid).
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.
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I think this subclass is a front runner best grappler (with Rune Knight), with growing large and throwing enemies as great complements to that play style that normally require deep multi-classes or trade-offs.
I put together a ‘Bear’ Grappler PC to play around with that concept: Path of the Giant Leonin (though as a grappler, Tabaxi may be a better Race option...)
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D&D, Youth Work and the Priesthood sadly do not typically interact... I do what I can!
Short range throw is only 5ft or 10ft further than your attack (depending on weapon choice) or 0ft/5ft when you get the 10ft additional reach later.
So the throwable weapon is functionally useless unless you pair it with Sharpshooter which could work if only Barbarians got access to Fighting Style: Archery or again Reckless attack worked with ranged attacks. Disadvantage on those attacks are not worth the squeeze.
Which is fundamentally opposite of what a big hulking barbarian is trying to do to begin with.
I think they should remove that section and go the route that Rune Warrior took and provide different options to the Barbarian that compliment a up front a personal approach per the usual.
Also adding some non-combat features would go a long way to making it feel as if you're embodying Giants.
I personally love the class but after reading through it i have a question. The Giant Stature gives you an increase of 5 ft on your reach, does this apply to unarmed strikes?? could i take the martial adept feat to get the fighters unarmed fighting style then use my rage to increase my punching distance from 5 to 10 feet?? I feel like this is how this is meant to be applied but I have been unable to find anything online.
Being specifically designed not to work with two-weapon fighting is a bizarre choice and WOTC should feel bad about making it.
You just need to make your artificer buddy make you a Returning Weapon for your offhand.
Returning Weapon
Item: A simple or martial weapon with the thrown property
This magic weapon grants a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it, and it returns to the wielder’s hand immediately after it is used to make a ranged attack.
I'm starting a new campaign this weekend as a Bugbear Path of the Giant Barbarian to partner up with my 10-year-old's Fairy Gunslinger Artificer. She better make me a returning weapon!
This subclass is fully broken. It doesn't really start breaking the game until 10th level, and I agree with what a lot of other people are saying here that it's 3rd level and even 6th level abilities are pretty underwhelming on their own. But Mighty Impel breaks everything because it's exploitable.
The wording on Mighty Impel states that you can move one Medium or smaller creature to any unoccupied space you can see within 30 ft. The save DC is probably pretty high by 10th level (probably something like DC 17). Being unable to target Large creatures is a major setback, but if you're fighting people, you're a nightmare. Get a polearm for that 15 ft. reach and then just fling them straight up (your DM may reason that you're like 12 feet tall and thus they're actually 40 ft. up and take 4d6 falling damage, but after you do this once they'll probably stop allowing that and ban this subclass, which I honestly support without major limitations and rewrites). If they fail the save, they take 3d6 falling damage (it explicitly states that they fall) and FALL PRONE NEXT TO YOU. Then take your two actions to stab the crap out of them with advantage, without having to use Reckless Attack.
If they have any obvious damage vulnerabilities, you can exploit that because Elemental Cleaver not only gives you a 1d6 bonus of elemental damage to EVERY HIT, but you can change the damage type as a bonus action and Elemental Cleaver actually also changes the type of your weapon's normal damage to that elemental damage as well.
Assuming you've taken a Halberd or something for the reach, that's an AVERAGE of about 43 damage per round without spending any limited resources [(3.5 x3 falling 30 ft.) + (5.5 halberd + 3.5 Elemental Cleaver +5 Str +3 Rage Damage) x2 for both attacks], assuming they fail their save, your two attacks with advantage hit but don't crit, and they aren't vulnerable to your elemental damage.
If they are vulnerable to your elemental damage, that average damage jumps to about 62. To do this with a reach weapon, you need to be within 15 ft. of your target and they can't be larger than Medium sized. With fast movement, you can probably move around 40 feet without using an action to dash, but even if you need to, that bonus action to fling them straight up will not only help you to still deal a lot of damage, but will prevent them from effectively escaping you due to your enhanced reach and the fact that they fall prone right next to you (half of 30 to stand up is 15, you get an opportunity attack as they run away, they go 45 ft. with a dash, you move 40 ft. closer on your turn with your movement and fling them again cuz they're within your reach).
This subclass is broken.
At 14th level your damage jumps an extra 2d6 every round if both attacks hit, you can fling large creatures, and you can maybe argue to your DM that you're like 26 ft. tall so they're falling around 50 ft. and thus take 5d6 on your bonus action, though I wouldn't allow it and would probably spit on you if you asked lol.
Edit: I will say, the two major flaws in this strategy are the creature's size limitation and the fact that many enemies can just fly, making this useless. Also if you're inside, though this entire subclass already completely sucks in dungeons and buildings lol.
First of all, you can't fling a target into a space that's not on the ground unless the ability specifically says you can. That exploit never existed. Second of all, there's practically nothing in all of 5E that's actually got a vulnerability to elemental damage of any type. There's a spell, Elemental Bane, that causes a target to take an extra 2d6 damage the first time each turn they take that damage type if they fail a Con save, but that's pretty much it- cool combo but not actually broken given that you need someone else to cast it and maintain concentration.
And, of course, we're still looking at the playtest version here and have no idea how the finished version might differ from it.
Second of all, there's practically nothing in all of 5E that's actually got a vulnerability to elemental damage of any type.
I did a quick search and there's something like 50 monsters vulnerable to the giant damage types listed on D&D Beyond, but you can trim that down to around 35 if you remove named monsters and duplicates (replaced in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse). Could probably drop that to a couple dozen if you remove 3rd-party sources where vulnerability seems relatively more common.
And really that seems to mostly leave elementals, i.e- fire creatures vulnerable to cold and vice versa. So a great feature to have if you're facing those types of elementals (or a mummy) but mostly the ability to choose an element, same as for spellcasters with multi-element spells or a choice of spells, is more about avoiding a resistance rather than exploiting a vulnerability.
So yeah, like you say that's a pretty tiny number given the literally thousands of monsters available; there's somewhere around 2,700 listed on D&D Beyond alone, though some will be variants, named NPCs, 3rd party sources etc., but if you go by the initial 50 with giant elemental vulnerability that's something like a 1.8% chance of encountering one if your DM picks monsters at random.
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.
Everyone talks about how martials need to be boosted. Then they boost a martial and people say its broken. Its just fine.
At 10th level you are sacrificing either a GWM or PAM attack if you are well optimized. 1d12+7 or 8 vs. 3d6 (or 5d6 with your very generous ruling). So that is a damage comparison of 13.5 vs 10.5 (or with the 5d6 17.5). You are probably more likely to hit at this level then miss. You can't do it round 1 since you are raging.
Its best use is taking advantage of encounter features like lava, ledges, etc.
Compared to other barbarians it does nothing to address the class's biggest weakness (mental stat saves), but does a nice way to add damage in tier 3. in particular martials need a boost in tier 3 as their caster friends start doing things that are absolutely stupid to compare from a power level. Having awesome features coming on line at 10th/14th is great. It is difficult to abuse via multiclassing. If you want to throw people it encourages builds other than GWM/PAM which tie up your bonus action.
I'm looking forward to trying it out. I think it might make the dream of playing an angry, raging barbarian fairy (or some other small creature), viable, at least once the character gets to 3rd level.
And then for the Level 10 feature, if you have a party member who casts an AOE damage spells, it seems like moving or throwing enemies back into the area of effect, (perhaps even several time) would be a lot of fun. I'm not sure how often, everything would align so that you would be able to do that, but at least in theory, lot of fun. I think also that in the next edition, moving other creatures around on the battle field, might be kind of big deal, so it seems like this might be one way to practice that strategic concept and plus moving enemies around on the battlefield, against their will, just seems it would be kind of satisfying.
Sorry I was inactive, i did not get notifications, but the reason for saying it has disynergy is that at level 14 using a polearm, or playing a bugbear means unless you have a special feat you have disadvantage on every attack, another thing is that it is an odd mix between hulk and thor. Part of me thinks that the people who made this were thinking that they needed to solve the range problem for barbarians so they thought that they could add range with size or make them throw things but could not decide which so did both. Also for flavor this would make a lot more sense as a draconic theme.
I am leader of the yep cult:https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/off-topic/adohands-kitchen/82135-yep-cult Pronouns are she/her
I'm not sure I follow you when you talk about attacking at disadvantage. Why would attacks using a reach weapon have disadvantage?
They're talking about the issue that the expanded reach overlaps the short range of your thrown weapon. So if you want to attack someone who's outside of your melee reach you're automatically stuck taking disadvantage on the roll.
I hadn't considered that issue until they pointed it out. Good thing to bring up whenever they get the survey up.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Ah, thank you. I was thinking about melee attacks and how the Prone gives disadvantage on all attacks from further than 5 feet away.
Imo comparing it to the Rune Knight, it seems a bit underpowered. Getting big for the sake of getting big is kinda lame. I do think being able to hurl your weapons and have them come back is a fun feature but the rest of it seems rather lackluster
I wouldn't say it's just for the sake of it; the bigger a barbarian is the more of a road-block they can become, the more enemies they can potentially stop with the Sentinel feat, or the more that can be piling on them instead of the rest of the party etc., and it's increased further by increasing your reach (since you already get Strength check/save bonuses for Raging) which means your area of attack is even bigger (a Medium creature with 5 foot reach can attack in a 15 foot square, a Large creature with a 10 foot reach controls a 30 foot square).
Depending on your group you might need to push your DM to factor these things in a bit more; i.e- you want bigger battlefields where there are choke points you can control at a larger size, and also maybe discuss how they do enemy target selection (enemies should go for a big obvious target rather than using metagaming to do what's optimal, and don't do randomised targets because it's a horrible way to do things except when several are equally valid).
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 think this subclass is a front runner best grappler (with Rune Knight), with growing large and throwing enemies as great complements to that play style that normally require deep multi-classes or trade-offs.
I put together a ‘Bear’ Grappler PC to play around with that concept: Path of the Giant Leonin (though as a grappler, Tabaxi may be a better Race option...)
The lack of synergy is;
Reckless attack doesn't work with ranged attacks
Short range throw is only 5ft or 10ft further than your attack (depending on weapon choice) or 0ft/5ft when you get the 10ft additional reach later.
So the throwable weapon is functionally useless unless you pair it with Sharpshooter which could work if only Barbarians got access to Fighting Style: Archery or again Reckless attack worked with ranged attacks. Disadvantage on those attacks are not worth the squeeze.
Which is fundamentally opposite of what a big hulking barbarian is trying to do to begin with.
I think they should remove that section and go the route that Rune Warrior took and provide different options to the Barbarian that compliment a up front a personal approach per the usual.
Also adding some non-combat features would go a long way to making it feel as if you're embodying Giants.
I personally love the class but after reading through it i have a question. The Giant Stature gives you an increase of 5 ft on your reach, does this apply to unarmed strikes?? could i take the martial adept feat to get the fighters unarmed fighting style then use my rage to increase my punching distance from 5 to 10 feet?? I feel like this is how this is meant to be applied but I have been unable to find anything online.
Unarmed strikes count as a melee attack, so they benefit from spells and special abilities that increase your reach.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Can someone post a link? It sounds flavorful but not perfect but I can't find it to read more.
link
Quote from quindraco >>
You just need to make your artificer buddy make you a Returning Weapon for your offhand.
I'm starting a new campaign this weekend as a Bugbear Path of the Giant Barbarian to partner up with my 10-year-old's Fairy Gunslinger Artificer. She better make me a returning weapon!
This subclass is fully broken. It doesn't really start breaking the game until 10th level, and I agree with what a lot of other people are saying here that it's 3rd level and even 6th level abilities are pretty underwhelming on their own. But Mighty Impel breaks everything because it's exploitable.
The wording on Mighty Impel states that you can move one Medium or smaller creature to any unoccupied space you can see within 30 ft. The save DC is probably pretty high by 10th level (probably something like DC 17). Being unable to target Large creatures is a major setback, but if you're fighting people, you're a nightmare. Get a polearm for that 15 ft. reach and then just fling them straight up (your DM may reason that you're like 12 feet tall and thus they're actually 40 ft. up and take 4d6 falling damage, but after you do this once they'll probably stop allowing that and ban this subclass, which I honestly support without major limitations and rewrites). If they fail the save, they take 3d6 falling damage (it explicitly states that they fall) and FALL PRONE NEXT TO YOU. Then take your two actions to stab the crap out of them with advantage, without having to use Reckless Attack.
If they have any obvious damage vulnerabilities, you can exploit that because Elemental Cleaver not only gives you a 1d6 bonus of elemental damage to EVERY HIT, but you can change the damage type as a bonus action and Elemental Cleaver actually also changes the type of your weapon's normal damage to that elemental damage as well.
Assuming you've taken a Halberd or something for the reach, that's an AVERAGE of about 43 damage per round without spending any limited resources [(3.5 x3 falling 30 ft.) + (5.5 halberd + 3.5 Elemental Cleaver +5 Str +3 Rage Damage) x2 for both attacks], assuming they fail their save, your two attacks with advantage hit but don't crit, and they aren't vulnerable to your elemental damage.
If they are vulnerable to your elemental damage, that average damage jumps to about 62. To do this with a reach weapon, you need to be within 15 ft. of your target and they can't be larger than Medium sized. With fast movement, you can probably move around 40 feet without using an action to dash, but even if you need to, that bonus action to fling them straight up will not only help you to still deal a lot of damage, but will prevent them from effectively escaping you due to your enhanced reach and the fact that they fall prone right next to you (half of 30 to stand up is 15, you get an opportunity attack as they run away, they go 45 ft. with a dash, you move 40 ft. closer on your turn with your movement and fling them again cuz they're within your reach).
This subclass is broken.
At 14th level your damage jumps an extra 2d6 every round if both attacks hit, you can fling large creatures, and you can maybe argue to your DM that you're like 26 ft. tall so they're falling around 50 ft. and thus take 5d6 on your bonus action, though I wouldn't allow it and would probably spit on you if you asked lol.
Edit: I will say, the two major flaws in this strategy are the creature's size limitation and the fact that many enemies can just fly, making this useless. Also if you're inside, though this entire subclass already completely sucks in dungeons and buildings lol.
First of all, you can't fling a target into a space that's not on the ground unless the ability specifically says you can. That exploit never existed. Second of all, there's practically nothing in all of 5E that's actually got a vulnerability to elemental damage of any type. There's a spell, Elemental Bane, that causes a target to take an extra 2d6 damage the first time each turn they take that damage type if they fail a Con save, but that's pretty much it- cool combo but not actually broken given that you need someone else to cast it and maintain concentration.
And, of course, we're still looking at the playtest version here and have no idea how the finished version might differ from it.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I did a quick search and there's something like 50 monsters vulnerable to the giant damage types listed on D&D Beyond, but you can trim that down to around 35 if you remove named monsters and duplicates (replaced in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse). Could probably drop that to a couple dozen if you remove 3rd-party sources where vulnerability seems relatively more common.
And really that seems to mostly leave elementals, i.e- fire creatures vulnerable to cold and vice versa. So a great feature to have if you're facing those types of elementals (or a mummy) but mostly the ability to choose an element, same as for spellcasters with multi-element spells or a choice of spells, is more about avoiding a resistance rather than exploiting a vulnerability.
So yeah, like you say that's a pretty tiny number given the literally thousands of monsters available; there's somewhere around 2,700 listed on D&D Beyond alone, though some will be variants, named NPCs, 3rd party sources etc., but if you go by the initial 50 with giant elemental vulnerability that's something like a 1.8% chance of encountering one if your DM picks monsters at random.
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.
Everyone talks about how martials need to be boosted. Then they boost a martial and people say its broken. Its just fine.
At 10th level you are sacrificing either a GWM or PAM attack if you are well optimized. 1d12+7 or 8 vs. 3d6 (or 5d6 with your very generous ruling). So that is a damage comparison of 13.5 vs 10.5 (or with the 5d6 17.5). You are probably more likely to hit at this level then miss. You can't do it round 1 since you are raging.
Its best use is taking advantage of encounter features like lava, ledges, etc.
Compared to other barbarians it does nothing to address the class's biggest weakness (mental stat saves), but does a nice way to add damage in tier 3. in particular martials need a boost in tier 3 as their caster friends start doing things that are absolutely stupid to compare from a power level. Having awesome features coming on line at 10th/14th is great. It is difficult to abuse via multiclassing. If you want to throw people it encourages builds other than GWM/PAM which tie up your bonus action.
I'm looking forward to trying it out. I think it might make the dream of playing an angry, raging barbarian fairy (or some other small creature), viable, at least once the character gets to 3rd level.
And then for the Level 10 feature, if you have a party member who casts an AOE damage spells, it seems like moving or throwing enemies back into the area of effect, (perhaps even several time) would be a lot of fun. I'm not sure how often, everything would align so that you would be able to do that, but at least in theory, lot of fun. I think also that in the next edition, moving other creatures around on the battle field, might be kind of big deal, so it seems like this might be one way to practice that strategic concept and plus moving enemies around on the battlefield, against their will, just seems it would be kind of satisfying.