Critical hits outside of frenzies restore a level of exhaustion. If you want to bait people into going into Frenzies to begin with, give them an extra attack for their attack action at level 10 that they can only do in a Frenzy.
Boom, they are now have a proper switch between "murder everything including myself" and "whoah I need to cool down".
I think the problem is twofold: Bear Totem is too good, and Frenzy causing exhaustion is too bad. If it was one or the other, more people would consider a different option. However, the delta between the two positions is just so stark that it's off-putting. I played a Battlerager and people just assumed I had resistance to all damage(except psychic), since Bear totem was basically the default option.
Essentially this. The distance between these two is too extreme. As has been mentioned earlier, the Totem is a better Ranger than a Ranger is and the Bear Totem is almost a default setting. Now IMHO a LOT of this would be mitigated if Exhaustion were reduced one level with Lesser Restoration instead of Greater. I also think that the Exhaustion condition, in and of itself, is too harsh. I would alter the Exhaustion chart to add a new first level that would be -5 to Skill checks, instead of Disadvantage.
I think the problem is twofold: Bear Totem is too good, and Frenzy causing exhaustion is too bad. If it was one or the other, more people would consider a different option. However, the delta between the two positions is just so stark that it's off-putting. I played a Battlerager and people just assumed I had resistance to all damage(except psychic), since Bear totem was basically the default option.
Essentially this. The distance between these two is too extreme. As has been mentioned earlier, the Totem is a better Ranger than a Ranger is and the Bear Totem is almost a default setting. Now IMHO a LOT of this would be mitigated if Exhaustion were reduced one level with Lesser Restoration instead of Greater. I also think that the Exhaustion condition, in and of itself, is too harsh. I would alter the Exhaustion chart to add a new first level that would be -5 to Skill checks, instead of Disadvantage.
There are better number-crunchers than me on here, but I think disadvantage is essentially identical to a -5.
I think the problem is twofold: Bear Totem is too good, and Frenzy causing exhaustion is too bad. If it was one or the other, more people would consider a different option. However, the delta between the two positions is just so stark that it's off-putting. I played a Battlerager and people just assumed I had resistance to all damage(except psychic), since Bear totem was basically the default option.
Essentially this. The distance between these two is too extreme. As has been mentioned earlier, the Totem is a better Ranger than a Ranger is and the Bear Totem is almost a default setting. Now IMHO a LOT of this would be mitigated if Exhaustion were reduced one level with Lesser Restoration instead of Greater. I also think that the Exhaustion condition, in and of itself, is too harsh. I would alter the Exhaustion chart to add a new first level that would be -5 to Skill checks, instead of Disadvantage.
There are better number-crunchers than me on here, but I think disadvantage is essentially identical to a -5.
A quick DuckDuckGo search gave me two splendid top answers:
FIrst One gives the chances of rolling >= a number in raw chance (not in %) and puts it into a graph. Second One goes over average values and chances in % and makes the point that (dis)advantage comes down to ± 4-5 modifier to your roll.
Yet thinking of it as a fixed modifier is not correct, that's why I inserted the first link with the graph, as it show clearly that scoring a 17+ on a disadvantage is less likely than rolling a natural 20!! 4% < 5%.
This is the most important part, from my standpoint: you need to take into account the 'spread' of the results. With disadvantage you end up 51% of the time with a 6 or lower, which (from the second article) means failure on a standard test, without any bonuses of course.
On Topic: I have only theory-crafted this, so I can't relate to real game-play. Yet it does feel like this 3th level path feature feels like a once per day use, in contrast to all other primal paths, which are always active during rages. Yet Frenzy uses Reckless attack to a maximum from the second turn of your rage, which is effectively doubling your damage at a cost and especially risk when you drop out of rage too soon.
So to me this feature feels like a boss (or end of day) fight only use. Especially because it makes the Barbarian almost useless on any skills he doesn't have proficiency in.
Taking all into account I would advocate for a Con Save to avoid exhaustion (DC 10 and stepping the DC up by 5 for each successful save and DC resets after a long rest). Or I would change the way your recover from exhaustion: 1 level per short rest and 3 levels per long rest.
On a sidenote on Intimidating presence: I would allow STR or CON (preferably CON) as modifier on the DC instead of CHAR, it's your physique that needs to be impressive. Further I would a bonus action allow to extend it's effect. I just picture a Barbarian to cleave a foe in half and continue to stare down an opponent in the Hakka style.
Frenzy Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can go into a frenzy when you rage. If you do so, for the duration of your rage you gain an additional action on each of your turns. That action can be used only to take the Attack (one melee weapon attack only) action. When your rage ends, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or suffer one level of exhaustion. Each time you use this feature after the first, the DC increases by 5. When you finish a short or long rest, the DC resets to 10.
Improvements:
Extra attack can be used right away rather than the following turn. Most of the barbarian paths have benefits that kick in right away, not the following turn.
Bonus action is freed up. Why shouldn't there be a frenzied, dual wielding barbarian? Why shouldn't a frenzied barbarian be able to make the most of the Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master feats?
Penalty is brought inline with the other barbarian 'push-the-limit' ability, Relentless Rage.
Gives another incentive for the character to increase CON.
The "Intimidating Presence" ability can actually be quite powerful outside of combat! Though it does come into play relatively late, and you can't dump CHA too hard. But the ability to perma-frightened something in social situations can be used very effectively in you're creative with it.
Apologies if someones pointed this out but your days of berserkers dying of tiredness may be a thing of the past. If they stay as broke as they are warforged will breathe life into the subclass, the metal monstrosities are currently point blank immune to exhaustion oh, and have a built in ac bonus soo yeah go you glorious metal engines of destruction bring the wrath of the.... savage.. metal... tribes? to the weak fleshy city folk!
Apologies if someones pointed this out but your days of berserkers dying of tiredness may be a thing of the past. If they stay as broke as they are warforged will breathe life into the subclass, the metal monstrosities are currently point blank immune to exhaustion oh, and have a built in ac bonus soo yeah go you glorious metal engines of destruction bring the wrath of the.... savage.. metal... tribes? to the weak fleshy city folk!
Nah, the Warforged are only immune to exhaustion caused by lack of rest. Anything else which causes exhaustion still affects them normally. It does mean that frenzy exhaustion can't compound on top of sleep deprivation exhaustion, but that isn't really a big bonus.
Unsure if this was brought up, but the levels of exhaustion are as follows:
1 - Disadvantage on Ability Checks
2- Speed halved
3 - Disadvantage on Attack rolls and saving throws
4 - HP max halved
5 - Speed reduced to 0
6- Death
Realistically, Frenzy doesn't really negatively affect your party if everyone else is high on abilities, or somewhat balanced. Also Speed halved isn't terrible if you are just tanking.
For me, I see these consequences as an additional challenge. No one said D&D is all about being overpowered/easy!
Realistically, Frenzy doesn't really negatively affect your party if everyone else is high on abilities, or somewhat balanced. Also Speed halved isn't terrible if you are just tanking.
For me, I see these consequences as an additional challenge. No one said D&D is all about being overpowered/easy!
IMHO it's not about whether something is 'easy' it's about balance. You can look at any two classes and say that one is OP compared to the other is whatever circumstance you like. However, I think the sub-classes within a class need to be INTERNALLY balanced. A Bear Totem Barb takes far less damage than any other kind in most situations for ZERO cost. A Berzerker gets an additional Attack at the cost of a level of Exhaustion. Many players apparently don't see this as a balanced trade-off, obviously.
Most players like being good at whatever their character is good at. Sure, nobody can be good at everything (unless you're a Bard...) but the idea that the class that only gets a handful of Skills anyway is suddenly at Disadvantage on them seems to be too harsh of a penalty.
Considering that a Beserker gets advantage on a handful of skills, I think it makes sense for that to be the first thing to cut. To each their own though.
Considering that a Beserker gets advantage on a handful of skills, I think it makes sense for that to be the first thing to cut. To each their own though.
Berzerkers don't get Advantage on ANY skills. They get Intimidating Presense, which is NOT a Skill and has nothing to do with the Intimidation Skill.
Considering that a Beserker gets advantage on a handful of skills, I think it makes sense for that to be the first thing to cut. To each their own though.
Berzerkers don't get Advantage on ANY skills. They get Intimidating Presense, which is NOT a Skill and has nothing to do with the Intimidation Skill.
Well when they rage they do gain Advantage on all STR checks, so Athletics would be a skill that is affected.
But yeah, I can hardly accuse the Barbarian class from being a skill-monkey.
So I'm actually puzzled by carparm initial response: what does "that" even refer to in that sentence? The proficiency of the Barbarian with skills?
Yet on topic I would argue that you can realistically have 1 lvl of fatigue, without being totally punished. Your character just sucks at anything that he/she undertakes but you can still at least try it and it can make for great role playing opportunities. Towards the end of the day you can have two levels of fatigue as your speed isn't most important as tank. What I feel is the main problem is the fatigue gained from Frenzy has such a long term impact for only the bonus during the encounter. Because you can only recover 1 level of fatigue per long rest, it seems like this remains a one use feature until someone in your party can cast Greater Restoration (5th level spell).
At lower levels this is fine because you can have one super rage per day, where you can double your attacks and get to spend the bonus action. But at lvl 5 you gain that extra attack anyway and so just making one extra attack per round is 'only' gaining +50% attacks and there is this feature: GWM which also can give you extra attacks as a bonus action, but doesn't restrict you to a whole sub-class. GWM with two attacks at ADV grants 19,5% chance of extra attack through crit alone and while you are at ADV you might as well power attack for +10 dmg, which only increases the chance of dropping an creature to 0 HP, which also grants an extra bonus attack.
Mindless Rage: this is a cool an flavorful, yet I have no idea how often frightened and charmed are applied on PC's. So lets look at the spells concerned (in PHB): it works against Antipathy/Sympathy (lvl 8), Calm Emotions (lvl 2), Charm Person (lvl 1), Compulsion (lvl 4), Crown of Madness (lvl 2), Dominate Person (lvl 5), Enthrall (lvl 2), Eyebite (lvl 6), Fear (Lvl 3), Geas (lvl 5), (Fear addition affect of) Hallow (lvl 5), Hypnotic Pattern (lvl 3), Mass Suggestion (lvl 6), Otto's Irresistible Dance (lvl 6), Phantasmal Killer (lvl 4), Sleep (lvl 1), Suggestion (lvl 2), (Fear) Symbol (lvl 7), Weird (lvl 9) and Wrathful Smite (lvl 1). So in total 20 spells of variant spell level. So this might come up quite some times.
I would have rather seen ADV on INT, WIS and CHA saves while raging. Because this doesn't help vs all other forms of CC out there like illusions or hold person. I would think that the Berserker mind is difficult to influence as it is only focused on his rage and his mind is effectively blank.
Intimidating Presence Typically the power on lvl 10 feature is quite weak, this is almost useless as it DC in CHA based, this should have been CON (or maybe STR but that would be too good). This also has a strange limitation to it's use: until one target makes his save, you can use this indefinitely. Yet if one target makes it's save, you can't use it for 24 hours. Why the number of hours in stead of a long rest? Needlessly complex.
Retaliation This is a marvelous capping stone ability, enabling you to use your reaction almost each turn. This ability is what makes the subclass worth it. Yet if you start playing low level, most features are underwhelming or situational until this feature. Apart from Frenzy: this give you a real nova option as a barbarian, yet a nova that you can't use willy-nilly because you have a nasty effect to weather.
There is a (multiple hoop jumping) solution to the rage / exhaustion problem but it requires 2 levels of moon druid and a judgement call. First, turn into an animal, second refer to the monster manual - p10-11 'The most common actions that a monster will take in combat are melee and ranged attacks. These can be spell attacks or weapon attacks, where the "weapon" might be a manufactured weapon or a natural weapon.' So an extra bear bite with frenzy is possible! but so is a bear claw.
The next part is the hoop of doom. If your a druid / polymorph creature and you are poisoned / blinded etc when the form disappears - what happens to the poison / blindness? Now apparently spells stick to the creature to most peoples mind - thats a whole 'nother issue but does the form carry the toxin / sleep deprivation - You summon the shape and wear its skin, at no other time can you set out to wear a skin that is tired / blind or buffed. Intriguing problem for the DM. Is the bear tired? or is the character, if the character is tired and enters bear form, is the bear tired? You might just find a way to use your rage depending on where your DM's sense of world science lies.
If you dont mind a detour moon druid 10 gives elemental form- each is flat out immune to exhaustion and have two attacks per round - a frenzied elemental sounds nice doesnt it?
We decided on the following fixes for the berserker at my table:
Frenzy does not cause exhaustion. Instead its a one use per long rest ability. It becomes twice per long rest at level 7, and finally 3 times every long rest at level 12.
Intimidating presence now uses your constitution instead of your charisma but instead of causing the target to be frightened it forces the target to use its reaction to move as far as its speed allows it from you. The creature doesn't move into obviously dangerous ground.
Do you think this is balanced or does it make the berserker op?
We decided on the following fixes for the berserker at my table:
Frenzy does not cause exhaustion. Instead its a one use per long rest ability. It becomes twice per long rest at level 7, and finally 3 times every long rest at level 12.
Intimidating presence now uses your constitution instead of your charisma but instead of causing the target to be frightened it forces the target to use its reaction to move as far as its speed allows it from you. The creature doesn't move into obviously dangerous ground.
Do you think this is balanced or does it make the berserker op?
The target gets a Save against Intim Pres, yes? If so, I'd call it good. Sort of like Turn Undead but for a single living target
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It seems like simply dropping the requirement that the extra attack use a bonus action would solve the issue. Or is that too OP?
Critical hits outside of frenzies restore a level of exhaustion. If you want to bait people into going into Frenzies to begin with, give them an extra attack for their attack action at level 10 that they can only do in a Frenzy.
Boom, they are now have a proper switch between "murder everything including myself" and "whoah I need to cool down".
Essentially this. The distance between these two is too extreme. As has been mentioned earlier, the Totem is a better Ranger than a Ranger is and the Bear Totem is almost a default setting. Now IMHO a LOT of this would be mitigated if Exhaustion were reduced one level with Lesser Restoration instead of Greater. I also think that the Exhaustion condition, in and of itself, is too harsh. I would alter the Exhaustion chart to add a new first level that would be -5 to Skill checks, instead of Disadvantage.
There are better number-crunchers than me on here, but I think disadvantage is essentially identical to a -5.
A quick DuckDuckGo search gave me two splendid top answers:
FIrst One gives the chances of rolling >= a number in raw chance (not in %) and puts it into a graph.
Second One goes over average values and chances in % and makes the point that (dis)advantage comes down to ± 4-5 modifier to your roll.
Yet thinking of it as a fixed modifier is not correct, that's why I inserted the first link with the graph, as it show clearly that scoring a 17+ on a disadvantage is less likely than rolling a natural 20!! 4% < 5%.
This is the most important part, from my standpoint: you need to take into account the 'spread' of the results. With disadvantage you end up 51% of the time with a 6 or lower, which (from the second article) means failure on a standard test, without any bonuses of course.
On Topic:
I have only theory-crafted this, so I can't relate to real game-play. Yet it does feel like this 3th level path feature feels like a once per day use, in contrast to all other primal paths, which are always active during rages. Yet Frenzy uses Reckless attack to a maximum from the second turn of your rage, which is effectively doubling your damage at a cost and especially risk when you drop out of rage too soon.
So to me this feature feels like a boss (or end of day) fight only use. Especially because it makes the Barbarian almost useless on any skills he doesn't have proficiency in.
Taking all into account I would advocate for a Con Save to avoid exhaustion (DC 10 and stepping the DC up by 5 for each successful save and DC resets after a long rest).
Or I would change the way your recover from exhaustion: 1 level per short rest and 3 levels per long rest.
On a sidenote on Intimidating presence: I would allow STR or CON (preferably CON) as modifier on the DC instead of CHAR, it's your physique that needs to be impressive.
Further I would a bonus action allow to extend it's effect. I just picture a Barbarian to cleave a foe in half and continue to stare down an opponent in the Hakka style.
Zealot and Bear totem are the go to Paths in my opinion.
She/Her College Student Player and Dungeon Master
I like to rewrite Frenzy the following way:
Improvements:
The berserker barbarian is really good in boss fights, but bad in other scenarios, so it might be good to use one in a one shot Ravenloft campaign, like the one in this article: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/359-strahd-must-die-tonight-how-to-play-ravenloft-in-a
I stole my pfp from this person: https://mobile.twitter.com/xelart1/status/1177312449575432193
The "Intimidating Presence" ability can actually be quite powerful outside of combat! Though it does come into play relatively late, and you can't dump CHA too hard. But the ability to perma-frightened something in social situations can be used very effectively in you're creative with it.
Apologies if someones pointed this out but your days of berserkers dying of tiredness may be a thing of the past. If they stay as broke as they are warforged will breathe life into the subclass, the metal monstrosities are currently point blank immune to exhaustion oh, and have a built in ac bonus soo yeah go you glorious metal engines of destruction bring the wrath of the.... savage.. metal... tribes? to the weak fleshy city folk!
Nah, the Warforged are only immune to exhaustion caused by lack of rest. Anything else which causes exhaustion still affects them normally. It does mean that frenzy exhaustion can't compound on top of sleep deprivation exhaustion, but that isn't really a big bonus.
Ooo thats good to know but bad for berserking, thanks for the update!
Unsure if this was brought up, but the levels of exhaustion are as follows:
1 - Disadvantage on Ability Checks
2- Speed halved
3 - Disadvantage on Attack rolls and saving throws
4 - HP max halved
5 - Speed reduced to 0
6- Death
Realistically, Frenzy doesn't really negatively affect your party if everyone else is high on abilities, or somewhat balanced. Also Speed halved isn't terrible if you are just tanking.
For me, I see these consequences as an additional challenge. No one said D&D is all about being overpowered/easy!
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IMHO it's not about whether something is 'easy' it's about balance. You can look at any two classes and say that one is OP compared to the other is whatever circumstance you like. However, I think the sub-classes within a class need to be INTERNALLY balanced. A Bear Totem Barb takes far less damage than any other kind in most situations for ZERO cost. A Berzerker gets an additional Attack at the cost of a level of Exhaustion. Many players apparently don't see this as a balanced trade-off, obviously.
Most players like being good at whatever their character is good at. Sure, nobody can be good at everything (unless you're a Bard...) but the idea that the class that only gets a handful of Skills anyway is suddenly at Disadvantage on them seems to be too harsh of a penalty.
Considering that a Beserker gets advantage on a handful of skills, I think it makes sense for that to be the first thing to cut. To each their own though.
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Berzerkers don't get Advantage on ANY skills. They get Intimidating Presense, which is NOT a Skill and has nothing to do with the Intimidation Skill.
Well when they rage they do gain Advantage on all STR checks, so Athletics would be a skill that is affected.
But yeah, I can hardly accuse the Barbarian class from being a skill-monkey.
So I'm actually puzzled by carparm initial response: what does "that" even refer to in that sentence? The proficiency of the Barbarian with skills?
Yet on topic I would argue that you can realistically have 1 lvl of fatigue, without being totally punished. Your character just sucks at anything that he/she undertakes but you can still at least try it and it can make for great role playing opportunities. Towards the end of the day you can have two levels of fatigue as your speed isn't most important as tank.
What I feel is the main problem is the fatigue gained from Frenzy has such a long term impact for only the bonus during the encounter. Because you can only recover 1 level of fatigue per long rest, it seems like this remains a one use feature until someone in your party can cast Greater Restoration (5th level spell).
At lower levels this is fine because you can have one super rage per day, where you can double your attacks and get to spend the bonus action. But at lvl 5 you gain that extra attack anyway and so just making one extra attack per round is 'only' gaining +50% attacks and there is this feature: GWM which also can give you extra attacks as a bonus action, but doesn't restrict you to a whole sub-class. GWM with two attacks at ADV grants 19,5% chance of extra attack through crit alone and while you are at ADV you might as well power attack for +10 dmg, which only increases the chance of dropping an creature to 0 HP, which also grants an extra bonus attack.
Mindless Rage: this is a cool an flavorful, yet I have no idea how often frightened and charmed are applied on PC's. So lets look at the spells concerned (in PHB): it works against Antipathy/Sympathy (lvl 8), Calm Emotions (lvl 2), Charm Person (lvl 1), Compulsion (lvl 4), Crown of Madness (lvl 2), Dominate Person (lvl 5), Enthrall (lvl 2), Eyebite (lvl 6), Fear (Lvl 3), Geas (lvl 5), (Fear addition affect of) Hallow (lvl 5), Hypnotic Pattern (lvl 3), Mass Suggestion (lvl 6), Otto's Irresistible Dance (lvl 6), Phantasmal Killer (lvl 4), Sleep (lvl 1), Suggestion (lvl 2), (Fear) Symbol (lvl 7), Weird (lvl 9) and Wrathful Smite (lvl 1).
So in total 20 spells of variant spell level. So this might come up quite some times.
I would have rather seen ADV on INT, WIS and CHA saves while raging. Because this doesn't help vs all other forms of CC out there like illusions or hold person.
I would think that the Berserker mind is difficult to influence as it is only focused on his rage and his mind is effectively blank.
Intimidating Presence
Typically the power on lvl 10 feature is quite weak, this is almost useless as it DC in CHA based, this should have been CON (or maybe STR but that would be too good). This also has a strange limitation to it's use: until one target makes his save, you can use this indefinitely. Yet if one target makes it's save, you can't use it for 24 hours. Why the number of hours in stead of a long rest? Needlessly complex.
Retaliation
This is a marvelous capping stone ability, enabling you to use your reaction almost each turn. This ability is what makes the subclass worth it. Yet if you start playing low level, most features are underwhelming or situational until this feature. Apart from Frenzy: this give you a real nova option as a barbarian, yet a nova that you can't use willy-nilly because you have a nasty effect to weather.
There is a (multiple hoop jumping) solution to the rage / exhaustion problem but it requires 2 levels of moon druid and a judgement call. First, turn into an animal, second refer to the monster manual - p10-11 'The most common actions that a monster will take in combat are melee and ranged attacks. These can be spell attacks or weapon attacks, where the "weapon" might be a manufactured weapon or a natural weapon.' So an extra bear bite with frenzy is possible! but so is a bear claw.
The next part is the hoop of doom. If your a druid / polymorph creature and you are poisoned / blinded etc when the form disappears - what happens to the poison / blindness? Now apparently spells stick to the creature to most peoples mind - thats a whole 'nother issue but does the form carry the toxin / sleep deprivation - You summon the shape and wear its skin, at no other time can you set out to wear a skin that is tired / blind or buffed. Intriguing problem for the DM. Is the bear tired? or is the character, if the character is tired and enters bear form, is the bear tired? You might just find a way to use your rage depending on where your DM's sense of world science lies.
If you dont mind a detour moon druid 10 gives elemental form- each is flat out immune to exhaustion and have two attacks per round - a frenzied elemental sounds nice doesnt it?
We decided on the following fixes for the berserker at my table:
Frenzy does not cause exhaustion. Instead its a one use per long rest ability. It becomes twice per long rest at level 7, and finally 3 times every long rest at level 12.
Intimidating presence now uses your constitution instead of your charisma but instead of causing the target to be frightened it forces the target to use its reaction to move as far as its speed allows it from you. The creature doesn't move into obviously dangerous ground.
Do you think this is balanced or does it make the berserker op?
The target gets a Save against Intim Pres, yes? If so, I'd call it good. Sort of like Turn Undead but for a single living target