Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I know that Beast hasn't been converted to 5.5 as of yet, but since DDB allows you to mix the new base class with old subclasses, I'm wondering people's thoughts on allowing weapon masteries with the PotB natural weapon ability. Right now each option for the Form of the Beast does give an additional perk on top of damage - sapping health, extra attack, or reach and reaction. Using this subclass feature means missing out on the new weapon masteries which are a good chunk of the base class feature, so I'm curious if people think it would be too overpowered to allow a weapon mastery with these natural weapons on top of their current abilities, or if that balances out the tradeoff of using these instead of a typical weapon. And if so - which masteries do you feel fits with each type of natural weapons?
With weapon masteries being a thing now, these feel less like a cool special full subclass ability and more like a slightly bigger pool of additional attack buffs to choose from.
I know there's no RAW to apply here, I'm just interested in people's thoughts on how they might update this subclass with the new rules!
The weapons seem pretty potent already. I wouldn't allow masteries with them unless we actually tested it and they were weaker than expected.
[fixed grammer]
They definitely felt potent before 5.5, but now that anyone with weapon masteries gets extra abilities on attacks for free anyway, do you feel that it still holds up as something worthwhile to dedicate the centerpiece of the subclass to?
The Nick property gives you the same benefit as the Claw ability, with the only extra bonus being you can add your modifier with the claws. There's no direct parallel to the Bite, but getting to heal hp equal to your PB once a turn if you hit feels pretty on par with the rest of them. I'll say the Tail feels the strongest with getting to add 1d8 to your AC for one attack, but that's pretty much the one benefit that it feels like you're getting from this whole feature. And all of those are only when raging, and you need to choose one at the start. To me it feels like the way this feature translates to 5.5 is that it's giving you temporary access to one extra weapon mastery between a choice of 3. A novelty before every martial class could do that all the time anyway, but not very useful now.
The nick property does also give you another attack, but there are two caveats here:
I could definitely be wrong about this, but my understanding of it is that since they claws/bite/tail are considered 'natural weapons' and not unarmed strikes, you wouldn't be able to combo a shortsword/dagger/claw that way. You'd need the shortsword in one hand, dagger in the other, but also need a free hand for the claws - wording on the feature says "Each of your hands transforms into a claw, which you can use as a weapon if it’s empty."
However to your point, hitting level 5 with the extra attack does open up the possibility of mixing a weapon mastery with one attack and one of the FotB bonuses with the other.
You can draw or stow one weapon on your turn and do the same each time you attack as part of the attack action.
As someone who's played path of the beast I've some points to add.
Claws were basically the same as scimitars are now in 2024, the claw feature as written is stronger than nick when using haste or action surge and if left alone pairs well with nick. In the 2014 game claws were THE viable option.
Tail doesn't really fit the fantasy IMHO so the lowered damage die didn't matter much to me. Against 1 attack while the number could be as low as 1 hurt the tails viability unless you baffling choose to play a kiting barbarian.
Bite was broken in a bad way. it was either offline basically the whole fight or you had a huge hit point pool and let yourself stay low and then heal a pitiful amount of health for your level. If you removed the restrictions but changed it to temp HP instead of healing it would have been leagues better; better scaling too I think path of the world tree has a good example of balance here.
Now PotB is a barbarian with 3 weapon choices that each have something about on par with weapon mastery. All the other barbarians have +2 weapon masteries and can pick up magic weapons on top of subclass features that boost damage and/or survivability. The subclass needs a new level 3 feature or 3 seperate but strong features on each of the natural weapons.
Some suggestions
Claws could pick up graze+nick+light, gain a bleed ability, get a free push or shove or grapple 1/turn, or pick up berserkers new damage buff
Bite could pick up any single weapon mastery plus gain the world trees temp hp but for themselves (remember no extra resistances here), there's probably a bunch of other ideas to stick here too.
Tail needs to protect against all attacks since you only get 1 reaction (like the new ?protection? Fighting style buff), slow seems like a good weapon mastery here, maybe change the AC bonus to proficiency so you know if it's worth it before blowing a reaction
Perhaps keep the weaker variants (but fixed), but have all 3 always active trading lower power for greater flexibility. It'd need better scaling on the weapons since they're mutually exclusive from magic weapons.