Haravikk might have a point about "unreasonably structured" campaign, at least where encounters per session come in.
Wizards suggested guide for encounters are 4 smaller fights or 2 bigger fights per hour. If your sessions aren't that intense, then your campaign is "unreasonably structured" to be too lenient on a potential berserker player. If your session lasts at least 4 hours, that is some mix of 16 smaller fights or 8 bigger fights between long rests. That is the scale of how much the Berserker doesn't get to use their subclass ability, or suffers debilitation.
You have not made a single valid point that I haven’t addressed. And you have not addressed any of my points. You just keep repeating yourself and insulting me.
Haravikk might have a point about "unreasonably structured" campaign, at least where encounters per session come in.
Wizards suggested guide for encounters are 4 smaller fights or 2 bigger fights per hour. If your sessions aren't that intense, then your campaign is "unreasonably structured" to be too lenient on a potential berserker player. If your session lasts at least 4 hours, that is some mix of 16 smaller fights or 8 bigger fights between long rests. That is the scale of how much the Berserker doesn't get to use their subclass ability, or suffers debilitation.
A guideline on number of fights per hour of play has nothing to do with the frequency of long-rests and/or downtime.
The recommendation on the adventuring day in the DMG says around six to eight medium or hard encounters in a single day with two short rests and implying one long rest (otherwise your party never sleeps). You don't need to use Frenzied Rage in all six or eight encounters; indeed, before 6th level you can only Rage three times in total anyway so no Barbarian is raging in every encounter at that level, meanwhile at higher levels the Berserker gains further bonuses and abilities. So if you only use Frenzied Rage for half your Rages, you're only doing it once or twice in a full day. Once means a single long rest eliminates the penalty entirely, two means you have to put up with the ability check penalty for the next day, but that's not a big deal, and only if you've no other way to clear or mitigate it.
And as said multiple times already, the times to save it for are the big end boss fights (if you think there's going to be one), as that's when a Frenzied Rage is absolutely best used, though you can use it against mobs if you want of course, if it's going to be a particularly tough mob. But the fact is that a baseline Barbarian is already really good; using only regular Rage for some battles is not a penalty, it's still very good.
Also it's pretty generous to assume four fights in an hour unless they're low difficulty and you do literally nothing else, in which case you don't need to use Frenzied Rage. Again, Frenzied Rage is best used against single big enemies, that's the best time to use it; you can use it against mobs if you want, but unless they're particularly difficult ones you're better off saving it (and still perfectly well equipped to fight them without it).
Lastly, a lot of your arguments are based on continuous non-stop fighting and the assumption that long term damage is automatically better than short term damage; maybe all you do in your campaigns is one unending combat slog of fight after fight after fight, but there is a lot more to D&D than just the combat. If your campaign never has time in between then it's going to be incredibly dull; I love combat, I sometimes will have a session that's mostly combat, but if that's all it was session after session, I'd get bored of that.
You have not made a single valid point that I haven’t addressed. And you have not addressed any of my points. You just keep repeating yourself and insulting me.
I keep having to repeat my points because you keep ignoring them in order to repeat things I've already addressed. Seriously, read back through my posts, you might learn something about what I actually said, rather than what you've decided I meant.
But for the sake of anyone else that genuinely wants to cover the issue properly I'll try to summarise:
Frenzied Rage is a really good short term ability; the bonus is arguably the best offensive ability of any Barbarian sub-class for pulling out in a tough fight. If it had a different limiting mechanism it'd either be OP (too many free uses) or it'd be weaker than it is now (can't use it more times when you want to).
Exhaustion is a far more minor penalty than you keep making out:
1st level is minor for a combat focused class, and it's reasonable to expect that you can clear it during normal play. By this point you've made up to 9 bonus attacks without any attack penalties.
2nd level is situationally annoying, but not debilitating, and there are loads of easy and low level ways to mitigate it. By this point you've made up to 18 bonus attacks without any attack penalties. You should be able to clear this and put up with going back to 1st level for a day.
3rd level is the first properly punishing effect. Reckless Attack can counter the attack penalty of it if you're still fighting by this point, but you really shouldn't be, as it would mean you've used Frenzied Rage too soon, rather than choosing the best moment. Even so, by this point you've made up to 27 bonus attacks without any attack penalties.
4th level is the first one that's really debilitating, although for a huge hit point sink of a Barbarian after many chained battles (as people seem to keep assuming) it's not as bad as it first appears. If you're fighting for so long that this even becomes a problem you might not have full HP anyway, or many (if any) hit-point dice to recover HP with. You don't really want to get to this stage, but if you do you've made up to 27 bonus attacks without any attack penalties, and 9 with disadvantage (or regular with Reckless).
If you're playing properly you only usually want to do one or two in a single adventuring day, you only do three or four if things are going really badly, or you are damn sure you're getting out to recover soon.
Ultimately it's entirely up to the Berserker how much Exhaustion they gain, and how much they are willing to put up with, it depends on the situation; if you're facing really tough fights then you may be willing to take some longer term penalties for a bunch of short term damage. If you think you're nowhere near the end, or not going to be able to take enough time to recover, then you can use Frenzied Rage more sparingly, again, it's up to the player. If they know the fight(s) will lead to the end of a dungeon/quest/whatever they can take the penalty knowing they'll have a chance to sleep it off later. As a party there are other options as I've said; if a caster has Greater Restoration left before a long rest then you can clear multiple points of Exhaustion at once. There are plenty of options for getting more out of it.
For the sub-class as a whole, Mindless Rage is an excellent bonus, Intimidating Presence is a great way to make mobs easier (even if you only get a few of them), and Retaliation is just awesome (potentially 4 attacks per turn during Frenzied Rage, slap a Haste on top for five, why not? All while having a tonne of HP and taking half damage and never being charmed by or afraid of anything).
You have not made a single valid point that I haven’t addressed. And you have not addressed any of my points. You just keep repeating yourself and insulting me.
I keep having to repeat my points because you keep ignoring them in order to repeat things I've already addressed. Seriously, read back through my posts, you might learn something about what I actually said, rather than what you've decided I meant.
But for the sake of anyone else that genuinely wants to cover the issue properly I'll try to summarise:
Okay.
Let us take this from the top.
I have read your posts and I disagree with you. Here’s why specifically:
Frenzied Rage is a really good short term ability; the bonus is arguably the best offensive ability of any Barbarian sub-class for pulling out in a tough fight. If it had a different limiting mechanism it'd either be OP (too many free uses) or it'd be weaker than it is now (can't use it more times when you want to).
Okay. I will grant you that it a powerful ability. But consider this, that same Berserker could take steps to dual wield and they would be able to attack as a bonus action just like every single other character in the game without any penalty for frenzying. So, it’s only powerful because they don’t need a feat or a dip to do it.
So is it really that powerful...? Especially when one considers that any Champion Fighter with Dual Wielder can basically do the same thing, just with a (slightly) smaller pair of swords. I don’t think so.
Add to that the fact that you cannot even use it on the same turn in which you activate it, even when you’re already Raging in the first place. Coupled with the fact that it only works while Raging. Once the fight is over, that’s usually it. So if you wait until halfway through the fight, that means Frenzy will only actually add 2-3 attacks on average since a regular fight is usually only 3-4 rounds, and a boss fight is usually only twice that.
1st level is minor for a combat focused class, and it's reasonable to expect that you can clear it during normal play. By this point you've made up to 9 bonus attacks without any attack penalties.
The average combat in 5e lasts 3-4 rounds at most. So you say “up to 9” but in reality it’s less than half that number the vast majority of the time. Even most boss fights are over in fewer than 9 rounds.
2nd level is situationally annoying, but not debilitating, and there are loads of easy and low level ways to mitigate it. By this point you've made up to 18 bonus attacks without any attack penalties. You should be able to clear this and put up with going back to 1st level for a day.
This is my major point of contention. The biggest issue I see Barbarians running into most often is that they keep running out of things to kill and end up spending half the fight running around. That goes for all Barbarians, not just the Berserker. So out of that 2-4 rounds of Frenzy, one of them is often lost Dashing unless they have magical assistance in addition to their class-given extra 10 ft. That means Frenzy is actively running contra to one of your other class features.
3rd level is the first properly punishing effect. Reckless Attack can counter the attack penalty of it if you're still fighting by this point, but you really shouldn't be, as it would mean you've used Frenzied Rage too soon, rather than choosing the best moment. Even so, by this point you've made up to 27 bonus attacks without any attack penalties.
Again, by this point you’ve likely made closer to 6-12 extra attacks realistically speaking. And while yes, the Advantage granted by Reckless Attacks does counter this Disadvantage, the inverse is also true. So yet again, Frenzy is actively canceling yet another core class ability.
I won’t even go on because after 3 levels you’re so boned it doesn’t even really matter anymore.
For the sub-class as a whole, Mindless Rage is an excellent bonus, Intimidating Presence is a great way to make mobs easier (even if you only get a few of them), and Retaliation is just awesome (potentially 4 attacks per turn during Frenzied Rage, slap a Haste on top for five, why not? All while having a tonne of HP and taking half damage and never being charmed by or afraid of anything).
Yes, Mindless is great... unless you already have resistance to Charmed (like elves) or Frightened. But even then it is really good.
Intimidating Presence is also good... unless you could have just killed those two or three anyway by simply attacking with that Action and the subsequent BA attack.... It’s really only useful if you can get more than 3 minions, or it at least works on a sub-boss or something. So now Frenzy is also potentially impacting the comparative effectiveness of your other subclass features.
Yes, Retaliation is stronk. Anything that helps you up your probability of using your Reaction is excellent. But the vast majority of campaigns end by 12th level... so most players never ever get to Retaliation.
Everything from Haste through tonne (I made sure to go back and undo the autocorrect so it would be spell it the same way for you instead it ton) of HP also applies to every other Barbarian too, so that’s a nonissue.
So, all of that combines into why I think Frenzy is such a crappy feature.
Only, instead of saying “crappy” I said “poo” to be a little less crass. Only you took that as an excuse to personally attack me, and my DMing. And specifically state that my players:
Second of all, travelling and downtime are a thing in any good campaign; the evil lich's castle isn't usually within walking distance of a city, in the time period of D&D it can take days just to get to a nearby town. Adventurers shouldn't be taking on a new quest the moment they end the last one, things take time in a properly paced campaign, and it doesn't slow anything down because you don't have to roleplay every minute spent resting.
I’m not talking about on their way back from the lich’s castle. I’m talking about while they’re actually inside the lich’s castle and have already had several Deadly+ combats while assaulting the castle. What, are they gonna set up camp in the middle of the castle while the BBE knows they’re there and that they’re there to kill it?!? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they have to press on for that 4th (or 5th) Deadly+ encounter for the day. Anything more than a Short Rest would be either almost certain suicide, or guaranteed to let the lich escape.
The entire point of that kind of slog is to make sure that the party is so low on resources that the final battle with the lich as a stand-alone BBE is EPIC. They have to be bloodied and depleted and scraping the bottoms of barrels they forgot they had so that after wading through a castle full of the undead, when they finally defeat that lich itself.... They will never forget it.
Only the Berserker has a really tough choice to make. They could either use their class feature and feel cool and end up a wet noodle by the time they get to the lich, or they don’t use their class feature at all and feel boring for most of the dungeon until they get to the lich. 🤨 Poo I say. Poo.
And even after the lich’s castle, if I add the reality of a three day journey back to town, then that also includes the Random Encounter roll every two in-game hours. Oh yeah, so “restful.”
So now that I have quite literally gone through your post line-by-line and even referenced other previous posts of yours:
I dare you to tell me I haven’t responded to your specific points.
I double dare you to tell me again to go re-reread your other posts like I haven’t already.
And I double dog dare you to tell me I’m a bad DM and that my players should go find someone better.
The recommendation on the adventuring day in the DMG says around six to eight medium or hard encounters in a single day with two short rests and implying one long rest (otherwise your party never sleeps).
Basically what I said, but cool.
You don't need to use Frenzied Rage in all six or eight encounters; indeed, before 6th level you can only Rage three times in total anyway so no Barbarian is raging in every encounter at that level,
Now how can you just repeat what I said, but then go and make up an argument I never made? I know you read my comment. Who is arguing you should get to frenzy all the time?
When we factor in that the number of rages is limited, the gap in total damage over a session that barbarians are doing closes a bit. But none of the other barbarians are given exhaustion for their trouble. It just re-emphasizes that frenzy already makes a trade off by being limited and reassigning when they do their damage, there is no mechanical logic behind it having an additional cost to play around like exhaustion.
You keep going back to the strawman argument that I am arguing for frenzy to just always be on with every rage without any limit.
Lastly, a lot of your arguments are based on continuous non-stop fighting and the assumption that long term damage is automatically better than short term damage; maybe all you do in your campaigns is one unending combat slog of fight after fight after fight, but there is a lot more to D&D than just the combat. If your campaign never has time in between then it's going to be incredibly dull; I love combat, I sometimes will have a session that's mostly combat, but if that's all it was session after session, I'd get bored of that.
No, my argument is based on Wizard's expectations for how a session generally goes. The standard you just restated as if I was wrong at the beginning of your comment.
My own game sessions have less combat, because we are mostly new players and a relatively new gm, and only 3 hours or so to play. We usually only have one big combat with maybe 2 smaller combats.
I could totally game the sh*t out berserker frenzy because of that and have fun, even if I'd have to put up with exhaustion making non-combat ability checks after the big fight all go south. But that is still the point; that isn't the gameplay that Wizards had in mind when designing the berserker. It would also be meta gaming for me to do that, and I would worry that it would sour things for the other players who think their characters are subpar or that they aren't using their right to accomplish what they want to do.
Once social distancing is over and I can blow a saturday on longer, more action packed sessions at the game store with a more experienced dm in adventure league or whatever again, I would probably never choose the berserker.
But here is a fun idea: just ratchet frenzy up to 11. Get rid of lingering exhaustion and make it possible to make an extra attack in exchange for hp instead. Let the ability stack exponentially: you can make an extra attack for 5 hp, then 2 for 25, 3 for 125 (the math can be played around with to make it reasonable). If its a supposed to be a thematically powerful short term ability that is risky, then let my berserker burnout in a blaze of glory like some level breaking anime character, rather than being really tired all the time like I've had to work two shifts at my retail job. Thats not bad ass.
Then there would be a clearly satisfying theme since the berserker could go out like an exploding war god if the mechanic is pushed too far, unlike the possibility of dying at 0speed, swinging my great axe at disadvantage, pitifully succumbing after a long slow series of exhaustion levels.
You have not made a single valid point that I haven’t addressed. And you have not addressed any of my points. You just keep repeating yourself and insulting me.
I keep having to repeat my points because you keep ignoring them in order to repeat things I've already addressed. Seriously, read back through my posts, you might learn something about what I actually said, rather than what you've decided I meant.
But for the sake of anyone else that genuinely wants to cover the issue properly I'll try to summarise:
Okay.
Let us take this from the top.
I have read your posts and I disagree with you. Here’s why specifically:
Frenzied Rage is a really good short term ability; the bonus is arguably the best offensive ability of any Barbarian sub-class for pulling out in a tough fight. If it had a different limiting mechanism it'd either be OP (too many free uses) or it'd be weaker than it is now (can't use it more times when you want to).
Okay. I will grant you that it a powerful ability. But consider this, that same Berserker could take steps to dual wield and they would be able to attack as a bonus action just like every single other character in the game without any penalty for frenzying. So, it’s only powerful because they don’t need a feat or a dip to do it.
So is it really that powerful...? Especially when one considers that any Champion Fighter with Dual Wielder can basically do the same thing, just with a (slightly) smaller pair of swords. I don’t think so.
Add to that the fact that you cannot even use it on the same turn in which you activate it, even when you’re already Raging in the first place. Coupled with the fact that it only works while Raging. Once the fight is over, that’s usually it. So if you wait until halfway through the fight, that means Frenzy will only actually add 2-3 attacks on average since a regular fight is usually only 3-4 rounds, and a boss fight is usually only twice that.
1st level is minor for a combat focused class, and it's reasonable to expect that you can clear it during normal play. By this point you've made up to 9 bonus attacks without any attack penalties.
The average combat in 5e lasts 3-4 rounds at most. So you say “up to 9” but in reality it’s less than half that number the vast majority of the time. Even most boss fights are over in fewer than 9 rounds.
2nd level is situationally annoying, but not debilitating, and there are loads of easy and low level ways to mitigate it. By this point you've made up to 18 bonus attacks without any attack penalties. You should be able to clear this and put up with going back to 1st level for a day.
This is my major point of contention. The biggest issue I see Barbarians running into most often is that they keep running out of things to kill and end up spending half the fight running around. That goes for all Barbarians, not just the Berserker. So out of that 2-4 rounds of Frenzy, one of them is often lost Dashing unless they have magical assistance in addition to their class-given extra 10 ft. That means Frenzy is actively running contra to one of your other class features.
3rd level is the first properly punishing effect. Reckless Attack can counter the attack penalty of it if you're still fighting by this point, but you really shouldn't be, as it would mean you've used Frenzied Rage too soon, rather than choosing the best moment. Even so, by this point you've made up to 27 bonus attacks without any attack penalties.
Again, by this point you’ve likely made closer to 6-12 extra attacks realistically speaking. And while yes, the Advantage granted by Reckless Attacks does counter this Disadvantage, the inverse is also true. So yet again, Frenzy is actively canceling yet another core class ability.
I won’t even go on because after 3 levels you’re so boned it doesn’t even really matter anymore.
For the sub-class as a whole, Mindless Rage is an excellent bonus, Intimidating Presence is a great way to make mobs easier (even if you only get a few of them), and Retaliation is just awesome (potentially 4 attacks per turn during Frenzied Rage, slap a Haste on top for five, why not? All while having a tonne of HP and taking half damage and never being charmed by or afraid of anything).
Yes, Mindless is great... unless you already have resistance to Charmed (like elves) or Frightened. But even then it is really good.
Intimidating Presence is also good... unless you could have just killed those two or three anyway by simply attacking with that Action and the subsequent BA attack.... It’s really only useful if you can get more than 3 minions, or it at least works on a sub-boss or something. So now Frenzy is also potentially impacting the comparative effectiveness of your other subclass features.
Yes, Retaliation is stronk. Anything that helps you up your probability of using your Reaction is excellent. But the vast majority of campaigns end by 12th level... so most players never ever get to Retaliation.
Everything from Haste through tonne (I made sure to go back and undo the autocorrect so it would be spell it the same way for you instead it ton) of HP also applies to every other Barbarian too, so that’s a nonissue.
So, all of that combines into why I think Frenzy is such a crappy feature.
Only, instead of saying “crappy” I said “poo” to be a little less crass. Only you took that as an excuse to personally attack me, and my DMing. And specifically state that my players:
Second of all, travelling and downtime are a thing in any good campaign; the evil lich's castle isn't usually within walking distance of a city, in the time period of D&D it can take days just to get to a nearby town. Adventurers shouldn't be taking on a new quest the moment they end the last one, things take time in a properly paced campaign, and it doesn't slow anything down because you don't have to roleplay every minute spent resting.
I’m not talking about on their way back from the lich’s castle. I’m talking about while they’re actually inside the lich’s castle and have already had several Deadly+ combats while assaulting the castle. What, are they gonna set up camp in the middle of the castle while the BBE knows they’re there and that they’re there to kill it?!? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they have to press on for that 4th (or 5th) Deadly+ encounter for the day. Anything more than a Short Rest would be either almost certain suicide, or guaranteed to let the lich escape.
The entire point of that kind of slog is to make sure that the party is so low on resources that the final battle with the lich as a stand-alone BBE is EPIC. They have to be bloodied and depleted and scraping the bottoms of barrels they forgot they had so that after wading through a castle full of the undead, when they finally defeat that lich itself.... They will never forget it.
Only the Berserker has a really tough choice to make. They could either use their class feature and feel cool and end up a wet noodle by the time they get to the lich, or they don’t use their class feature at all and feel boring for most of the dungeon until they get to the lich. 🤨 Poo I say. Poo.
And even after the lich’s castle, if I add the reality of a three day journey back to town, then that also includes the Random Encounter roll every two in-game hours. Oh yeah, so “restful.”
So now that I have quite literally gone through your post line-by-line and even referenced other previous posts of yours:
I dare you to tell me I haven’t responded to your specific points.
I double dare you to tell me again to go re-reread your other posts like I haven’t already.
And I double dog dare you to tell me I’m a bad DM and that my players should go find someone better.
Telling a berserker barbarian that she can't take a long rest to recover from exhaustion is no different than telling a caster that he can't long rest to recover spell slots. The number of spell slots differs from the number of frenzy rages, but some of that is also relative in terms of power. It's also no different than telling a warlock, fighter or other short rest recharge class that they can't short rest. Their effectiveness will not be the same. If the berserker needs to go into a frenzy to clear a deadly encounter, how is that different than a caster needing to cast a spell to clear it that an unavailable long rest won't replenish? How is casting greater restoration plus another high level spell any different than casting another 5th level spell and the same high level spell?
Is berserker a forgiving subclass to play? Certainly not. Does that make it a bad subclass to play? Yes, for those people who do not want that playstyle. Does it fit with everyone's concept of what the subclass should be? No.
How is the berserker any different than a Paladin smiting? They can both nova like crazy, but it comes at the expense of other things. The Paladin can't cast many other spells.
As for feeling like poo trudging through the liches castle not being able to frenzy every single fight (which I think is likely a tad exaggerated, but I understand the intent behind it), how much more special will it be for the barb knowing that he sacrificed some potency in the middle to help simplify the end?
One thing that someone brought up earlier was that they felt that the berserker wouldn't be great weapon fighting. If they were talking about the feat, then I could see that possibly, but even Great Weapon Master would work ok with the Berserker framework and shore up some of the loss from not frenzying. However, getting the bonus action attack while being able to wield something like a great axe would free up the option to take something that would otherwise seem suboptimal like Savage Attacker or something like Mobile to further boost the mobility of the barbarian. If the reference was instead in regards to weapon type, I'm not sure that I follow. Dual wielding to get a suboptimal bonus action to go along with suboptimal damage wouldn't make sense and sword and board during a frenzy rage would be unlikely from an optics and damage standpoint.
Berserker is certainly more party and player dependent and has a higher YMMV by DM factor than the other barbarian subclasses, but that's more a matter of personal preference and expectations than it is a problem with the class. It's certainly not a subclass that I'd suggest for beginners (which is ironic considering it's place in the SRD).
If a Paladin burns all their spell slots smiting foes, they don't take penalties to ability checks, attack rolls, or get left unable to use the Dash action. Also, they recover everything after a single long rest. A berserker that frenzies repeatedly can wind up with debilitating penalties that they have to spend the better part of a week to recover from. Assuming they can manage to go without needing to Frenzy that long. No other class has a self-debuff effect like that.
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"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.
A long rest also doesn't have to be sleeping; 24 hours travelling by carriage can constitute three long rests is the length of three long rests, an easy fix, but no, your campaign seems to be about punishing the players for resting or taking downtime.
When you have extreme exhaustion, it takes days to recover, not just a collection of hours in rest. If you think, "Yeah, but adventurers are Heroes!" sure. So maybe they recover way faster than normal people? How about they cut recovery time in half? or maybe even a quarter?
Marathon runners often take 26 DAYS to recover from their exhaustion. Even cut to a quarter of that, it's still more than 4 days. Which sounds about right for super exhaustion barbarian.
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If a Paladin burns all their spell slots smiting foes, they don't take penalties to ability checks, attack rolls, or get left unable to use the Dash action. Also, they recover everything after a single long rest. A berserker that frenzies repeatedly can wind up with debilitating penalties that they have to spend the better part of a week to recover from. Assuming they can manage to go without needing to Frenzy that long. No other class has a self-debuff effect like that.
Right. So unique is bad.
The Berserker has to frenzy into debilitating stupor and die because BARB DUMB, BARB SMASH.
The Paladin gets all of their spell slots on a long rest, the berserker recovers one level of exhaustion on a long rest. That's at least one additional use of frenzy to get back to the level that they were at. If either blows their charges early in the day, they won't get any more to use.
If the Paladin uses all of their slots or reserves all of their slots on Divine Smites, then they can't cast spells and their useful goes down.
The problem I'm seeing with the negativity against berserker is more a matter of taste than a problem with the design. Could Berserker have been designed better? Sure. Is it inherently bad? That's a matter of opinion. There are at least two voices saying that it isn't. Are there better barbarians for accomplishing other things? Sure. It's a good thing that Berserker isn't the only barbarian subclass because many people wouldn't want to play it.
Edit: I'm not saying that people can't like the subclass. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea and that's fine. That means that it will suck for some people. However, other's find the subclass to be unique and fun. It doesn't suck for them. And that's fine, too.
Okay. I will grant you that it a powerful ability. But consider this, that same Berserker could take steps to dual wield and they would be able to attack as a bonus action just like every single other character in the game without any penalty for frenzying. So, it’s only powerful because they don’t need a feat or a dip to do it.
So is it really that powerful...? Especially when one considers that any Champion Fighter with Dual Wielder can basically do the same thing, just with a (slightly) smaller pair of swords. I don’t think so.
A Champion Fighter isn't a Barbarian; a Champion Fighter doesn't take half damage or get to have Advantage whenever they want. If you're comparing a Barbarian sub-class ability to a specific Figther build then you're not thinking of what an ability adds to being a Barbarian with a Barbarian's other abilities.
a regular fight is usually only 3-4 rounds, and a boss fight is usually only twice that.
Regular fights aren't what Frenzied Rage is best for, as you've consistently ignored. And if a boss fight "only" lasts six rounds that's still 5-6 more attacks than any other Barbarian sub-class, all while playing a super durable tank. But just because a big boss fight might "only" last 6 rounds, doesn't mean it won't last longer.
You keep saying that but I disagree. I’ll go point by point to explain why:
The average combat in 5e lasts 3-4 rounds at most. So you say “up to 9” but in reality it’s less than half that number the vast majority of the time. Even most boss fights are over in fewer than 9 rounds.
This is my major point of contention. The biggest issue I see Barbarians running into most often is that they keep running out of things to kill and end up spending half the fight running around. That goes for all Barbarians, not just the Berserker. So out of that 2-4 rounds of Frenzy, one of them is often lost Dashing unless they have magical assistance in addition to their class-given extra 10 ft. That means Frenzy is actively running contra to one of your other class features.
Again, by this point you’ve likely made closer to 6-12 extra attacks realistically speaking. And while yes, the Advantage granted by Reckless Attacks does counter this Disadvantage, the inverse is also true. So yet again, Frenzy is actively canceling yet another core class ability.
Your entire argument here seems to be that if you were playing as a Berserker you'd play like a complete idiot and accumulate as much Exhaustion as possible as fast as possible by using Frenzied Rage at all the wrong times?
Clearly I can't argue with you on that basis, because you're arguing against yourself instead of me.
Intimidating Presence is also good... unless you could have just killed those two or three anyway by simply attacking with that Action and the subsequent BA attack...
Again, Frenzied Rage is best used when you need it most (this is true of a huge number of class features), yet your argument here is that Intimidating Presence is bad because it lets you do exactly that? This is in part how Frenzied Rage scales into higher levels (by giving you other ways to get a similar bonus, by not having to use it in situations that you don't really want to, or by letting you get even more out of the class for the same exhaustion penalty).
Yes, Retaliation is stronk. Anything that helps you up your probability of using your Reaction is excellent. But the vast majority of campaigns end by 12th level... so most players never ever get to Retaliation.
By that same logic you have less opportunities to take Great Weapon Master, Fighters barely get their third attack and so-on, yet all of these things have been used as arguments against the Berserker. Either every sub-class gets a fair consideration of its abilities, or none of them do, you can't just heap requirements on the Berserker that the other "better" classes aren't subjected to.
Even under those conditions, at 3rd and 4th levels Frenzied Rage is a very powerful ability (it's increasing your attacks and damage output by 100%), it drops a little at 5th because you the extra second attack all the time, but you're still jumping by 50% when you need to, and at 6th you get immunity to Charmed and Frightened, two of the most debilitating effects in the game (much more so than a couple of points of exhaustion, and which usually are Wisdom saves that a Barbarian probably isn't going to much good at), and meaning you're even more likely to be able to deliver the full force of that bonus of Frenzied Rage when you want to. Brutal Critical at 9th is a feature that all Barbarians get, but meshes well with Frenzied Rage as you're throwing out more full strength attacks (more chances to crit, better weapon die to crit with). And Intimidating Presence at 10th is great.
Compare to other Barbarian sub-classes and it isn't lagging behind over that range. Some of the other sub-classes start out with pretty good 3rd level abilities, my favourite is probably Bear Totem for tanking, in fact I'd say that's one of the best Barbarian abilities, but it's a defensive ability on an already very durable class, and more tanking may not be what you want (or fit your character's theme). Zealot is the most direct competition for Berserker but it functions very differently, it gets a smaller boost to damage output over many rounds, but less compared to the Berserker over a single (Frenzied) Rage, and while it's 6th and 10th level abilities are good, they're also limited (once per rage and once per long rest).
you took that as an excuse to personally attack me, and my DMing.
You're the one that raised your campaign as an argument why the Berserker is universally terrible; and yet the reasons you give on that basis all seem to be that you don't want your Berserker player to have a good time. If you're going to raise your DM'ing as an argument then I will absolutely criticise it.
So yes, I call that bad DMing; the first priority of a DM should always be for all players to have fun, and that often means adapting to the party. Other classes have things that should be considered as well; Wizards for example need time and resources to learn new spells, so if you've got a Wizard in your party you need to give them opportunities to do that otherwise they're going to struggle to keep up. If you want to run a campaign that will specifically penalise certain classes or sub-classes, then inform your players.
You also seem to be assuming that it's the job of a party to be selfish sociopaths; while I'll grant that 99% of groups act that way towards NPCs, in my experience at least they're usually happy to do what's best for the group overall. If the Berserker needed to use Frenzied Rage a bunch of times to keep the party alive, then the party shouldn't begrudge them the need to rest afterwards.
I’m not talking about on their way back from the lich’s castle. I’m talking about while they’re actually inside the lich’s castle and have already had several Deadly+ combats while assaulting the castle. What, are they gonna set up camp in the middle of the castle while the BBE knows they’re there and that they’re there to kill it?!? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they have to press on for that 4th (or 5th) Deadly+ encounter for the day. Anything more than a Short Rest would be either almost certain suicide, or guaranteed to let the lich escape.
So save those Frenzied Rages for the last few fights, or use Greater Restoration to take off the worst of the Exhaustion. We've been through this now multiple times, or at least I have, as it never seems to sink in.
The entire point of that kind of slog is to make sure that the party is so low on resources that the final battle with the lich as a stand-alone BBE is EPIC. They have to be bloodied and depleted and scraping the bottoms of barrels they forgot they had so that after wading through a castle full of the undead, when they finally defeat that lich itself.... They will never forget it.
And that is exactly the kind of moment that the Berserker should be either holding their Frenzied Rages back for, or pushing themselves into or even past that third level of Exhaustion to survive. Spellcasters run low on spell slots or cast fewer spells to conserve them, Berserkers accumulate Exhaustion by using Frenzied Rage, or save it to avoid doing so, but apparently different is bad.
or they don’t use their class feature at all and feel boring for most of the dungeon until they get to the lich.
So now your key argument is that a regular Barbarian rage is boring? Really?
Barbarians have arguably the best 1st and 2nd level martial abilities of any class. But apparently Berserkers having an anti-boss button they can use earlier if they want is just objectively bad, even though it seems to involve mostly subjective criticisms of it being "poo".
And even after the lich’s castle, if I add the reality of a three day journey back to town, then that also includes the Random Encounter roll every two in-game hours. Oh yeah, so “restful.”
More bad DM'ing; you are not forced to roll on the encounter table every five seconds, that's your choice as a DM, you're purposefully denying the Berserker chances to rest. Hell, why not roll the encounter table while the party's staying at an inn in case an assassin murders them in their sleep? Or while they're inside Leomund's Tiny Hut in case an extra-planar entity phases in to do the same? Why let any of the players rest ever? Why is it only your Berserker that you want to have a bad time?
And I absolutely will continue to accuse of you not reading my points as you're still ignoring major parts of them so that your arguments can remain about how Berserker is bad if you play it badly and/or run a campaign seemingly designed to punish player character choices.
But I'm getting seriously tired of this, I've said everything anyone should ever need to know about why Berserker is perfectly fine as a sub-class, and why arguing that any sub-class is "bad" is idiotic in general.
Okay. I will grant you that it a powerful ability. But consider this, that same Berserker could take steps to dual wield and they would be able to attack as a bonus action just like every single other character in the game without any penalty for frenzying. So, it’s only powerful because they don’t need a feat or a dip to do it.
So is it really that powerful...? Especially when one considers that any Champion Fighter with Dual Wielder can basically do the same thing, just with a (slightly) smaller pair of swords. I don’t think so.
A Champion Fighter isn't a Barbarian; a Champion Fighter doesn't take half damage or get to have Advantage whenever they want. If you're comparing a Barbarian sub-class ability to a specific Figther build then you're not thinking of what an ability adds to being a Barbarian with a Barbarian's other abilities.
a regular fight is usually only 3-4 rounds, and a boss fight is usually only twice that.
Regular fights aren't what Frenzied Rage is best for, as you've consistently ignored. And if a boss fight "only" lasts six rounds that's still 5-6 more attacks than any other Barbarian sub-class, all while playing a super durable tank. But just because a big boss fight might "only" last 6 rounds, doesn't mean it won't last longer.
You keep saying that but I disagree. I’ll go point by point to explain why:
The average combat in 5e lasts 3-4 rounds at most. So you say “up to 9” but in reality it’s less than half that number the vast majority of the time. Even most boss fights are over in fewer than 9 rounds.
This is my major point of contention. The biggest issue I see Barbarians running into most often is that they keep running out of things to kill and end up spending half the fight running around. That goes for all Barbarians, not just the Berserker. So out of that 2-4 rounds of Frenzy, one of them is often lost Dashing unless they have magical assistance in addition to their class-given extra 10 ft. That means Frenzy is actively running contra to one of your other class features.
Again, by this point you’ve likely made closer to 6-12 extra attacks realistically speaking. And while yes, the Advantage granted by Reckless Attacks does counter this Disadvantage, the inverse is also true. So yet again, Frenzy is actively canceling yet another core class ability.
Your entire argument here seems to be that if you were playing as a Berserker you'd play like a complete idiot and accumulate as much Exhaustion as possible as fast as possible by using Frenzied Rage at all the wrong times?
Clearly I can't argue with you on that basis, because you're arguing against yourself instead of me.
Intimidating Presence is also good... unless you could have just killed those two or three anyway by simply attacking with that Action and the subsequent BA attack...
Again, Frenzied Rage is best used when you need it most (this is true of a huge number of class features), yet your argument here is that Intimidating Presence is bad because it lets you do exactly that? This is in part how Frenzied Rage scales into higher levels (by using it either fewer times for less penalty, or saving it for later).
Yes, Retaliation is stronk. Anything that helps you up your probability of using your Reaction is excellent. But the vast majority of campaigns end by 12th level... so most players never ever get to Retaliation.
By that same logic you have less opportunities to take Great Weapon Master, Fighters barely get their third attack and so-on, yet all of these things have been used as arguments against the Berserker. Either every sub-class gets a fair consideration of all of its abilities, or none of them do, you can't just heap requirements on the Berserker that the other "better" classes aren't subjected to.
you took that as an excuse to personally attack me, and my DMing.
You're the one that raised your campaign as an argument why the Berserker is universally terrible; and yet the reasons you give on that basis all seem to be that you don't want your Berserker player to have a good time. If you're going to raise your DM'ing as an argument then I will absolute criticise it if I see a need to do so.
So yes, I call that bad DMing; the first priority of a DM should always be for all players to have fun, and that often means adapting to the party. Other classes have things that should be considered as well; Wizards for example need time and resources to learn new spells, so if you've got a Wizard in your party you need to give them opportunities to do that otherwise they're going to struggle to keep up.
You also seem to be assuming that it's the job of a party to be selfish sociopaths; granted 99% of groups act that way towards NPCs, but usually they're happy to do what's best for the group overall. If the Berserker needed to use Frenzied Rage a bunch of times to keep the party alive, then the party shouldn't begrudge them the need to rest afterwards.
I’m not talking about on their way back from the lich’s castle. I’m talking about while they’re actually inside the lich’s castle and have already had several Deadly+ combats while assaulting the castle. What, are they gonna set up camp in the middle of the castle while the BBE knows they’re there and that they’re there to kill it?!? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they have to press on for that 4th (or 5th) Deadly+ encounter for the day. Anything more than a Short Rest would be either almost certain suicide, or guaranteed to let the lich escape.
So save those Frenzied Rages for the last few fights, or use Greater Restoration to take off the worst of the Exhaustion. We've been through this now multiple times, or at least I have, as it never seems to sink in.
The entire point of that kind of slog is to make sure that the party is so low on resources that the final battle with the lich as a stand-alone BBE is EPIC. They have to be bloodied and depleted and scraping the bottoms of barrels they forgot they had so that after wading through a castle full of the undead, when they finally defeat that lich itself.... They will never forget it.
And that is the exactly the kind of moment that the Berserker should be either holding their Frenzied Rages back for, or pushing themselves into or even past that third level of Exhaustion to survive. Spellcasters run low of spell slots or cast fewer spells to conserve them, Berserkers accumulate Exhaustion, or Frenzied Rage to avoid doing so, but apparently different is bad.
or they don’t use their class feature at all and feel boring for most of the dungeon until they get to the lich.
So now your key argument is that a regular Barbarian rage is boring? Really? Barbarians have arguably the best 1st and 2nd level martial abilities of any class. But apparently Berserkers having an anti-boss button they can use earlier if they want is just objectively bad, even though it seems to involve mostly subjective criticisms of it being "poo".
And even after the lich’s castle, if I add the reality of a three day journey back to town, then that also includes the Random Encounter roll every two in-game hours. Oh yeah, so “restful.”
More bad DM'ing; you are not forced to roll on the encounter table every five seconds, that's your choice as a DM, you're purposefully denying the Berserker chances to rest. Hell, why not roll the encounter table while they're staying at an inn in case an assassin murders the party in their sleep? Or while they're inside Leomund's Tiny Hut in case an extra-planar entity phases in to do the same? Why let any of the players rest? Why is it only your Berserker that you want to have a bad time?
And I absolutely will continue to accuse of you not reading my points as you're still ignoring major parts of them so that your arguments can remain about how Berserker is bad if you play it badly and/or run a campaign seemingly designed to punish player character choices.
But I'm getting seriously tired of this, I've said everything anyone should ever need to know about why Berserker is perfectly fine as a sub-class, and why arguing that any sub-class is "bad" is idiotic in general.
Every other barbarian’s ability automatically turns on when they rage, automatically gets better as they level, and never leave them too pooped to pop. Every other Barbarian subclass is objectively better than the Berserker, a point you continue to ignore.
Every other barbarian’s ability automatically turns on when they rage, automatically gets better as they level, and never leave them too pooped to pop. Every other Barbarian subclass is objectively better than the Berserker, a point you continue to ignore.
I haven't ignored that at all, in fact I've specifically addressed it several times, one of the many things you've ignored, but let's take a look at some of them again, shall we?
Path of the Ancestral Guardian: This 3rd level rage ability is interesting, but it's not super powerful at 3rd level, it's really just incentivising enemies you hit to only attack you, handy for fighting alongside a weaker ally, can combine with Reckless Attack in an interesting way, though it's a tough one IMO to say how strong it is. If the enemy was going to attack you anyway then you don't actually gain anything, so it's at its best when an enemy is attacking an ally who's in danger and you can make them stop (or be worse at it).
Path of the Battlerager: Basically a free bonus action dagger attack. You can use it all the time, sure, but it's a lot weaker than the Berserker's bonus attack from Frenzied Rage (unless your Berserker is wielding a dagger for some reason). You're also limited to the Spiked Armor if you're only allowing RAW, limiting you to AC 14-16 as a base which is a weirdly annoying trade off, as you can get the same AC through Unarmored Defence, which only gets better over time.
Path of the Storm Herald: These get three options, but you can only shift when you level up (if you could choose more often it'd be great):
Desert: Deals a tiny amount of fire damage each turn in a 10 foot radius; this is great for fighting mobs where the damage can add up, but less great for fighting big baddies where it's far less than you get from bonus attacks. Both are good for different things, though fire is also a commonly resisted damage type.
Storm: This one's a bit better for single targets as it does more damage, but it's not actually that much more damage in practice compared to Desert, especially if you make an allowance of enemies saving to take half.
Tundra: Free temporary hit points every round is nice, even if it's only a tiny amount, as it's effectively a damage reduction, but also in a fairly small area. Ideal if you're not the only one in the melee scrum, but less good if you're more loosely arranged.
Path of the Totem Warrior: This is a tricky one to look at as it's potentially, what, 125 sub-classes in one depending on choices? That might be too high, it's a lot of combinations anyway. For 3rd level you've got the first five options:
Bear: Easily my favourite as being resistant to every damage type except psychic is just great, it's the best defensive ability of any Barbarian sub-class if you want to go all-in on tanking, and my favourite also for a multi-class if you're going 3+ levels deep, because who doesn't want resistance to (nearly) all damage?
Eagle & Elk: Both about mobility, I'd prefer Eagle I think if I had to pick one, but they both feel a bit situational, maybe that's just me but I usually just get stuck in as a Barbarian until there's nothing left alive within reach, and Javelin if I need to keep Rage going.
Tiger: This one I'm not sure I'd ever take, but maybe I just don't do anywhere near enough leaping as a Barbarian to benefit from the boost? Feels maybe too situational.
Wolf: This one seems good (give allies advantage on enemies next to you), though it feels best for single enemies (probably bosses) where you're all wailing on it at once, as for groups I (as a party member) would usually just leave the Barbarian to clear their quota while focusing on the enemies that are beyond their immediate reach (casters, archers etc.). It's going to depend on your party whether you get more out of this vs. bosses than a Berserker's damage boost (which they can take advantage on themselves whenever they want).
Path of the Zealot: This gets a damage boost once per turn, which is nice, though as with Storm Herald's Sea aura it's less damage than a Berserker's Frenzied Rage, so again the trade off is damage over many rounds vs. more damage in fewer rounds (or more penalty for doing more damage in the same number of rounds).
These are all good abilities, and you can build very thematic Barbarians with all of them, but it doesn't change the fact that even if your Berserker only ever uses their Frenzied Rage once in a day, they'll still be doing more damage than any other Barbarian sub-class when they do. At 3rd level that's 1 out of 3 total Rages, and if that's the one with the big bad, then it's more than worth it.
This is the silly thing about comparing sub-classes and classes; they're all built to represent and do different things. The Berserker is the only one that was built for, and lets you fully play as, a high-risk Berserker who can frenzy their way through every fight and suffer the consequences, or can build up towards going into a frenzy against the biggest enemy to deal a big surge in damage when the party needs it most.
It succeeds beautifully in capturing the spirit and mechanics of playing as a Berserker
Ladies? Let’s all take a powder and simmer down just a bit.
Haravikk: Maybe don’t push Sposta’s well-known berserk button. Anyone who’s talked to him for more’n five posts knows picking at how he runs his games immediately infuriates him, and it shuts off reasonable discussion. He’s a passionate man, and his players keep coming back for more so clearly his games are doing fine. I can say that the pair of folks running the games I’m playing in now tend more towards the Constant Time Pressure trend as well – yes, travel is a thing and there are opportunities to rest, but the world doesn’t stand still and wait conveniently for you to bandage your boo-boos and be fully and completely ready to deal with its shit.
A lot of players like that sort of pressure. For a lot of groups, playing without that pressure feels bad and game-y – it’s that knowledge that the world will do its thing regardless of what you’re up to and if you dilly-dally you’re going to end up in the worst position that makes the game feel exciting. Angry GM codified it in a very elegant manner I am now going to butcher horribly as I paraphrase: “The players should be in a constant state of losing. If the party doesn’t actively work at winning, then they will eventually lose. The evil princess will sacrifice the innocent dragon to the ancient god of accounting; the lich will win his election bid and outlaw vigilante adventuring throughout the kingdom, the evil curse will transform the king into a fluffy bunny. Whatever. Every day the players don’t do something to Win, they slide closer to Losing.”
For groups with that sort of time pressure baked into their game – voluntarily and with the full consent of every player, including the DM – the Berserker needing to eat a week of downtime any time it leans heavily on what is supposed to be its most character-defining trait badly interferes with campaign pacing and will often impose more Losing than any single fight’s Winning can account for. Every other class in D&D resets to Green after a single night’s sleep. The Berserker does not, and while that makes it unique and potentially intriguing, it also means the character requires more buy-in and coddling from the party than any other character archetype save maybe wizards.
Nor is Greater Restoration, which requires the party to burn a 100gp diamond every single time it’s cast, the answer. Three Greater Restos is one Revivify the party doesn’t get to save a beloved character who gets caught by an unexpected crit at the edge of their endurance. A Greater Resto cast to nullify the Berserker’s self-induced lethargy is a GR not cast to clear a Petrification that will end a beloved ally’s adventuring career. The material component cost on Greater Restoration is not insignificant. I know that as a player, I would generally not be willing to use that spell to remove exhaustion from a Berserker without some absolutely fantastic reason why expending that difficult to locate component is required.
Sposta: Haravikk has apparently been putting up with shit arguments from aggravating people for most of this thread. You and I both know how that feels, because we’ve both talked to ***** before. No, that’s not forum censoring – that’s me leaving a rules-abiding blank space to avoid Name-n-Shame violations whilst allowing you to insert any of a dozen names we both know in that space of people who never seem to argue on anything but bad faith and idiocy. We both know Haravikk is normally a good guy. I happen to disagree with him on this one myself – the Berserker eating automatic exhaustion whenever it uses its class-defining, identity-codifying ability sucks, and it does bad things to campaign pacing if he ever does it more than once a day.
But you and I also disagree fiercely on matters such as species-specific ability modifiers or whether players are allowed to fake having conversations with the DM by calling for Charisma die rolls. We manage. Let’s simply assume Haravikk is having a rotten week and got snippy, the way we both know we have in the past ourselves, and restore the peace. Nobody wants to burn a bridge they don’t have to, ne?
On the Berseker (i.e. Actually On Topic): I don’t like the Exhaustion mechanic being tied to Frenzied Rage, but that’s because I feel Exhaustion should be more prevalent in D&D in general and probably even more punishing than it actually is. I believe monsters should be able to inflict Exhaustion, via either spells or abilities. I believe traps should be able to inflict it. I believe there should be certain poisons/drugs the DM can make use of that inflict the ability, and furthermore I believe that there should be much greater interconnection between the exhaustion rules and other pieces of the game. Exhaustion is a fantastic tool for game design in 5e that is criminally under-represented and underutilized, and that pisses me off.
Zee Bashew made an excellent video pointing much of this out, and Angry GM has spoken to it as well. Exhaustion should not be something people have to look up the rules for when it happens once or twice in a campaign – it should be an ever-present looming threat the players have to constantly work to avoid even as the Ticking Clock slides them ever closer to defeat. Exhaustion, especially beyond the first or second stage of it, should be heckin’ scary and something players strive to avoid.
The Berserker upends this entire idea and makes it impossible to toy around with Exhaustion as the much more interesting mechanic it deserves to be, because whenever a party has a Berserker in it the DM has to account for the fact that this stooge is liable to eat three stages of exhaustion in any given day even outside of what the DM might do with it herself, and if she’s not willing to kill this barbarian with Exhaustion and then put up with her players complaining about ‘bullshit PKs, man(!!!)’, she needs to eliminate all other sources of Exhaustion from her game. Which gives all the non-Berserkers in her game a free pass they do NOT deserve just so the Berserker can have his choice of whether to Frenzy or not.
As a DM I don’t like those chains on my own decision-making, and as a player I’m not fond of eating penalties I can do nothing to clear even over the course of several days. Yeah, that means I shouldn’t play a Berserker. And I don’t. That Frenzy attack is just not worth the cost, to either my own play or to the DM’s campaign prep work.
Ladies? Let’s all take a powder and simmer down just a bit.
Sposta: Haravikk has apparently been putting up with shit arguments from aggravating people for most of this thread. You and I both know how that feels, because we’ve both talked to ***** before. No, that’s not forum censoring – that’s me leaving a rules-abiding blank space to avoid Name-n-Shame violations whilst allowing you to insert any of a dozen names we both know in that space of people who never seem to argue on anything but bad faith and idiocy. We both know Haravikk is normally a good guy. I happen to disagree with him on this one myself – the Berserker eating automatic exhaustion whenever it uses its class-defining, identity-codifying ability sucks, and it does bad things to campaign pacing if he ever does it more than once a day.
But you and I also disagree fiercely on matters such as species-specific ability modifiers or whether players are allowed to fake having conversations with the DM by calling for Charisma die rolls. We manage. Let’s simply assume Haravikk is having a rotten week and got snippy, the way we both know we have in the past ourselves, and restore the peace. Nobody wants to burn a bridge they don’t have to, ne?
I can track all of that. And if Haravikk wants to go insult ***** that’s their right as far as I’m concerned.
If Haravikk wants to completely ignore any valid point I make and keep repeating themselves that’s fine too. I’ve dealt with worse, I’ve felt with ***** after all.
Yes, up until this 🐎💩 I have been favorably disposed to Haravikk, and genuinely looked forward to reading their posts and interacting with them day to day, that’s why I had subscribed to them.
You, and at least a dozen other people I could name regularly disagree with me on a great number of topics, often strongly. But I still consider you all friends because we never stop showing each other respect. In fact I was just commenting on that fact to one of those “dozen other users” the other day in a PM.
The level of personal disrespect that Haravikk showed me was disgusting. I never disrespected them, and always kept my comments about the game, the mechanic, the subclass, and my observations on how they interact in campaigns I either DM or play in. Haravikk getting so personally insulting for absolutely no valid reason was what rubbed me the wrong way. I could have dealt with that.
But when they said that my players “should go find a better DM” I saw red. Why not bring my mother into the conversation too while their at it at that point?!?
After that, I expressed my anger using... “colorful metaphors.*” Twice. That was two opportunities for them to walk that statement back. They chose not to. Not only that, they doubled down. Twice.
As far as I’m concerned, if Haravikk wants this bridge back, they can either start laying the foundations with a strong apology, or they can go pound sand.
*(God, I hope there’s a Trekkie in the house to get that reference.)
Nor is Greater Restoration, which requires the party to burn a 100gp diamond every single time it’s cast, the answer. Three Greater Restos is one Revivify the party doesn’t get to save a beloved character who gets caught by an unexpected crit at the edge of their endurance. A Greater Resto cast to nullify the Berserker’s self-induced lethargy is a GR not cast to clear a Petrification that will end a beloved ally’s adventuring career. The material component cost on Greater Restoration is not insignificant. I know that as a player, I would generally not be willing to use that spell to remove exhaustion from a Berserker without some absolutely fantastic reason why expending that difficult to locate component is required.
Even without the material cost, Greater Restoration is a 5th level spell. Having to keep it in reserve to cure the Berserker's Exhaustion means that you can't use it for anything else, like Flamestrike, Insect Plague, Mass Cure, or whatever other thing that the Cleric or Druid's player might want to use that slot for. It's rather selfish for the Berserker's player to assume that another player will just accommodate them like that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 can say that the pair of folks running the games I’m playing in now tend more towards the Constant Time Pressure trend as well – yes, travel is a thing and there are opportunities to rest, but the world doesn’t stand still and wait conveniently for you to bandage your boo-boos and be fully and completely ready to deal with its shit.
Constant time pressure and resting/travel are not incompatible; if you're resting on a wagon, camping each night/stopping at inns along a multi-day journey etc. then you're not doing nothing, you're still going somewhere, pursuing the villains etc.
If you're in a situation where for some reason you don't need to ever travel to keep progressing, e.g- you're in a multi-level dungeon that could itself take multiple days to traverse, and for whatever reason you need to get to the end of it as fast as possible, then the Berserker doesn't need to accumulate exhaustion, as they choose how much to take (if any) ‐ even a single Frenzied Rage per long rest is still excellent if you choose your moment well (as with any per long rest ability), and a single point of exhaustion is a negligible cost that is cleared trivially.
The reason exhaustion is such a perfect penalty to Frenzied Rage is that it fits so thematically with what the Berserker is and does, just take a look at the flavour text:
As you enter the berserker’s rage, you thrill in the chaos of battle, heedless of your own health or well-being.
If you spend too long in a semi-suicidal berserk rage you absolutely should suffer consequences for that, and exhaustion is an extremely appropriate and functionally interesting way to do that.
In terms of the mechanics, others have said here and elsewhere "it could just be once per long rest", but it already essentially is. What makes it so interesting mechanically is that you can choose to push past the once per long rest recommendation if you want to, or when you feel you need to.
It's not just a unique and interesting mechanic, it's arguably the perfect fit, and that can never make a sub-class bad. There's a topic under Homebrew right now that shows how tricky it is to come up with a good alternative, I've even suggested one already, but I don't prefer it to how it already works.
Also I've never suggested Greater Restoration should be standard operating practice; if you're in a dungeon with something that can petrify then absolutely save it for that, the Berserker can just conserve their Frenzied Rages, the point is that you have options on how to remove exhaustion faster if you need to. If you defeat a big bad with the capacity for a Greater Restoration leftover, the Berserker had to push hard to do it, and you're about to long rest, then are you really going to say "no, we need that 100g more than an extra party member in tomorrow's level of the dungeon"?
Haravikk might have a point about "unreasonably structured" campaign, at least where encounters per session come in.
Wizards suggested guide for encounters are 4 smaller fights or 2 bigger fights per hour. If your sessions aren't that intense, then your campaign is "unreasonably structured" to be too lenient on a potential berserker player. If your session lasts at least 4 hours, that is some mix of 16 smaller fights or 8 bigger fights between long rests. That is the scale of how much the Berserker doesn't get to use their subclass ability, or suffers debilitation.
You have not made a single valid point that I haven’t addressed. And you have not addressed any of my points. You just keep repeating yourself and insulting me.
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A guideline on number of fights per hour of play has nothing to do with the frequency of long-rests and/or downtime.
The recommendation on the adventuring day in the DMG says around six to eight medium or hard encounters in a single day with two short rests and implying one long rest (otherwise your party never sleeps). You don't need to use Frenzied Rage in all six or eight encounters; indeed, before 6th level you can only Rage three times in total anyway so no Barbarian is raging in every encounter at that level, meanwhile at higher levels the Berserker gains further bonuses and abilities. So if you only use Frenzied Rage for half your Rages, you're only doing it once or twice in a full day. Once means a single long rest eliminates the penalty entirely, two means you have to put up with the ability check penalty for the next day, but that's not a big deal, and only if you've no other way to clear or mitigate it.
And as said multiple times already, the times to save it for are the big end boss fights (if you think there's going to be one), as that's when a Frenzied Rage is absolutely best used, though you can use it against mobs if you want of course, if it's going to be a particularly tough mob. But the fact is that a baseline Barbarian is already really good; using only regular Rage for some battles is not a penalty, it's still very good.
Also it's pretty generous to assume four fights in an hour unless they're low difficulty and you do literally nothing else, in which case you don't need to use Frenzied Rage. Again, Frenzied Rage is best used against single big enemies, that's the best time to use it; you can use it against mobs if you want, but unless they're particularly difficult ones you're better off saving it (and still perfectly well equipped to fight them without it).
Lastly, a lot of your arguments are based on continuous non-stop fighting and the assumption that long term damage is automatically better than short term damage; maybe all you do in your campaigns is one unending combat slog of fight after fight after fight, but there is a lot more to D&D than just the combat. If your campaign never has time in between then it's going to be incredibly dull; I love combat, I sometimes will have a session that's mostly combat, but if that's all it was session after session, I'd get bored of that.
I keep having to repeat my points because you keep ignoring them in order to repeat things I've already addressed. Seriously, read back through my posts, you might learn something about what I actually said, rather than what you've decided I meant.
But for the sake of anyone else that genuinely wants to cover the issue properly I'll try to summarise:
For the sub-class as a whole, Mindless Rage is an excellent bonus, Intimidating Presence is a great way to make mobs easier (even if you only get a few of them), and Retaliation is just awesome (potentially 4 attacks per turn during Frenzied Rage, slap a Haste on top for five, why not? All while having a tonne of HP and taking half damage and never being charmed by or afraid of anything).
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Please don't reply to my posts unless you've read what they actually say.
Okay.
Let us take this from the top.
I have read your posts and I disagree with you. Here’s why specifically:
Okay. I will grant you that it a powerful ability. But consider this, that same Berserker could take steps to dual wield and they would be able to attack as a bonus action just like every single other character in the game without any penalty for frenzying. So, it’s only powerful because they don’t need a feat or a dip to do it.
So is it really that powerful...? Especially when one considers that any Champion Fighter with Dual Wielder can basically do the same thing, just with a (slightly) smaller pair of swords. I don’t think so.
Add to that the fact that you cannot even use it on the same turn in which you activate it, even when you’re already Raging in the first place. Coupled with the fact that it only works while Raging. Once the fight is over, that’s usually it. So if you wait until halfway through the fight, that means Frenzy will only actually add 2-3 attacks on average since a regular fight is usually only 3-4 rounds, and a boss fight is usually only twice that.
Totally not OP.
You keep saying that but I disagree. I’ll go point by point to explain why:
The average combat in 5e lasts 3-4 rounds at most. So you say “up to 9” but in reality it’s less than half that number the vast majority of the time. Even most boss fights are over in fewer than 9 rounds.
This is my major point of contention. The biggest issue I see Barbarians running into most often is that they keep running out of things to kill and end up spending half the fight running around. That goes for all Barbarians, not just the Berserker. So out of that 2-4 rounds of Frenzy, one of them is often lost Dashing unless they have magical assistance in addition to their class-given extra 10 ft. That means Frenzy is actively running contra to one of your other class features.
Again, by this point you’ve likely made closer to 6-12 extra attacks realistically speaking. And while yes, the Advantage granted by Reckless Attacks does counter this Disadvantage, the inverse is also true. So yet again, Frenzy is actively canceling yet another core class ability.
I won’t even go on because after 3 levels you’re so boned it doesn’t even really matter anymore.
Yes, Mindless is great... unless you already have resistance to Charmed (like elves) or Frightened. But even then it is really good.
Intimidating Presence is also good... unless you could have just killed those two or three anyway by simply attacking with that Action and the subsequent BA attack.... It’s really only useful if you can get more than 3 minions, or it at least works on a sub-boss or something. So now Frenzy is also potentially impacting the comparative effectiveness of your other subclass features.
Yes, Retaliation is stronk. Anything that helps you up your probability of using your Reaction is excellent. But the vast majority of campaigns end by 12th level... so most players never ever get to Retaliation.
Everything from Haste through tonne (I made sure to go back and undo the autocorrect so it would be spell it the same way for you instead it ton) of HP also applies to every other Barbarian too, so that’s a nonissue.
So, all of that combines into why I think Frenzy is such a crappy feature.
Only, instead of saying “crappy” I said “poo” to be a little less crass. Only you took that as an excuse to personally attack me, and my DMing. And specifically state that my players:
I never got personally insulting to you. So why did you feel it was appropriate?
Let me be clear, the “vitriol” you detected earlier was in no way directed at the Berserker subclass.
As to your claims about:
Let me use your own scenario as an example:
I’m goin back with this, just to prove I read what you wrote.
PS- I also noticed when you edited your posts after I responded to them too.
I’m not talking about on their way back from the lich’s castle. I’m talking about while they’re actually inside the lich’s castle and have already had several Deadly+ combats while assaulting the castle. What, are they gonna set up camp in the middle of the castle while the BBE knows they’re there and that they’re there to kill it?!? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course they have to press on for that 4th (or 5th) Deadly+ encounter for the day. Anything more than a Short Rest would be either almost certain suicide, or guaranteed to let the lich escape.
The entire point of that kind of slog is to make sure that the party is so low on resources that the final battle with the lich as a stand-alone BBE is EPIC. They have to be bloodied and depleted and scraping the bottoms of barrels they forgot they had so that after wading through a castle full of the undead, when they finally defeat that lich itself.... They will never forget it.
Only the Berserker has a really tough choice to make. They could either use their class feature and feel cool and end up a wet noodle by the time they get to the lich, or they don’t use their class feature at all and feel boring for most of the dungeon until they get to the lich. 🤨 Poo I say. Poo.
And even after the lich’s castle, if I add the reality of a three day journey back to town, then that also includes the Random Encounter roll every two in-game hours. Oh yeah, so “restful.”
So now that I have quite literally gone through your post line-by-line and even referenced other previous posts of yours:
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Basically what I said, but cool.
Now how can you just repeat what I said, but then go and make up an argument I never made? I know you read my comment. Who is arguing you should get to frenzy all the time?
When we factor in that the number of rages is limited, the gap in total damage over a session that barbarians are doing closes a bit. But none of the other barbarians are given exhaustion for their trouble. It just re-emphasizes that frenzy already makes a trade off by being limited and reassigning when they do their damage, there is no mechanical logic behind it having an additional cost to play around like exhaustion.
You keep going back to the strawman argument that I am arguing for frenzy to just always be on with every rage without any limit.
No, my argument is based on Wizard's expectations for how a session generally goes. The standard you just restated as if I was wrong at the beginning of your comment.
My own game sessions have less combat, because we are mostly new players and a relatively new gm, and only 3 hours or so to play. We usually only have one big combat with maybe 2 smaller combats.
I could totally game the sh*t out berserker frenzy because of that and have fun, even if I'd have to put up with exhaustion making non-combat ability checks after the big fight all go south. But that is still the point; that isn't the gameplay that Wizards had in mind when designing the berserker. It would also be meta gaming for me to do that, and I would worry that it would sour things for the other players who think their characters are subpar or that they aren't using their right to accomplish what they want to do.
Once social distancing is over and I can blow a saturday on longer, more action packed sessions at the game store with a more experienced dm in adventure league or whatever again, I would probably never choose the berserker.
But here is a fun idea: just ratchet frenzy up to 11. Get rid of lingering exhaustion and make it possible to make an extra attack in exchange for hp instead. Let the ability stack exponentially: you can make an extra attack for 5 hp, then 2 for 25, 3 for 125 (the math can be played around with to make it reasonable). If its a supposed to be a thematically powerful short term ability that is risky, then let my berserker burnout in a blaze of glory like some level breaking anime character, rather than being really tired all the time like I've had to work two shifts at my retail job. Thats not bad ass.
Then there would be a clearly satisfying theme since the berserker could go out like an exploding war god if the mechanic is pushed too far, unlike the possibility of dying at 0speed, swinging my great axe at disadvantage, pitifully succumbing after a long slow series of exhaustion levels.
Telling a berserker barbarian that she can't take a long rest to recover from exhaustion is no different than telling a caster that he can't long rest to recover spell slots. The number of spell slots differs from the number of frenzy rages, but some of that is also relative in terms of power. It's also no different than telling a warlock, fighter or other short rest recharge class that they can't short rest. Their effectiveness will not be the same. If the berserker needs to go into a frenzy to clear a deadly encounter, how is that different than a caster needing to cast a spell to clear it that an unavailable long rest won't replenish? How is casting greater restoration plus another high level spell any different than casting another 5th level spell and the same high level spell?
Is berserker a forgiving subclass to play? Certainly not. Does that make it a bad subclass to play? Yes, for those people who do not want that playstyle. Does it fit with everyone's concept of what the subclass should be? No.
How is the berserker any different than a Paladin smiting? They can both nova like crazy, but it comes at the expense of other things. The Paladin can't cast many other spells.
As for feeling like poo trudging through the liches castle not being able to frenzy every single fight (which I think is likely a tad exaggerated, but I understand the intent behind it), how much more special will it be for the barb knowing that he sacrificed some potency in the middle to help simplify the end?
One thing that someone brought up earlier was that they felt that the berserker wouldn't be great weapon fighting. If they were talking about the feat, then I could see that possibly, but even Great Weapon Master would work ok with the Berserker framework and shore up some of the loss from not frenzying. However, getting the bonus action attack while being able to wield something like a great axe would free up the option to take something that would otherwise seem suboptimal like Savage Attacker or something like Mobile to further boost the mobility of the barbarian. If the reference was instead in regards to weapon type, I'm not sure that I follow. Dual wielding to get a suboptimal bonus action to go along with suboptimal damage wouldn't make sense and sword and board during a frenzy rage would be unlikely from an optics and damage standpoint.
Berserker is certainly more party and player dependent and has a higher YMMV by DM factor than the other barbarian subclasses, but that's more a matter of personal preference and expectations than it is a problem with the class. It's certainly not a subclass that I'd suggest for beginners (which is ironic considering it's place in the SRD).
If a Paladin burns all their spell slots smiting foes, they don't take penalties to ability checks, attack rolls, or get left unable to use the Dash action. Also, they recover everything after a single long rest. A berserker that frenzies repeatedly can wind up with debilitating penalties that they have to spend the better part of a week to recover from. Assuming they can manage to go without needing to Frenzy that long. No other class has a self-debuff effect like that.
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.
When you have extreme exhaustion, it takes days to recover, not just a collection of hours in rest. If you think, "Yeah, but adventurers are Heroes!" sure. So maybe they recover way faster than normal people? How about they cut recovery time in half? or maybe even a quarter?
Marathon runners often take 26 DAYS to recover from their exhaustion. Even cut to a quarter of that, it's still more than 4 days. Which sounds about right for super exhaustion barbarian.
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Right. So unique is bad.
The Berserker has to frenzy into debilitating stupor and die because BARB DUMB, BARB SMASH.
The Paladin gets all of their spell slots on a long rest, the berserker recovers one level of exhaustion on a long rest. That's at least one additional use of frenzy to get back to the level that they were at. If either blows their charges early in the day, they won't get any more to use.
If the Paladin uses all of their slots or reserves all of their slots on Divine Smites, then they can't cast spells and their useful goes down.
The problem I'm seeing with the negativity against berserker is more a matter of taste than a problem with the design. Could Berserker have been designed better? Sure. Is it inherently bad? That's a matter of opinion. There are at least two voices saying that it isn't. Are there better barbarians for accomplishing other things? Sure. It's a good thing that Berserker isn't the only barbarian subclass because many people wouldn't want to play it.
Edit: I'm not saying that people can't like the subclass. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea and that's fine. That means that it will suck for some people. However, other's find the subclass to be unique and fun. It doesn't suck for them. And that's fine, too.
A Champion Fighter isn't a Barbarian; a Champion Fighter doesn't take half damage or get to have Advantage whenever they want. If you're comparing a Barbarian sub-class ability to a specific Figther build then you're not thinking of what an ability adds to being a Barbarian with a Barbarian's other abilities.
You mean like every 3rd level Barbarian Rage bonus? This is another non-argument.
Regular fights aren't what Frenzied Rage is best for, as you've consistently ignored. And if a boss fight "only" lasts six rounds that's still 5-6 more attacks than any other Barbarian sub-class, all while playing a super durable tank. But just because a big boss fight might "only" last 6 rounds, doesn't mean it won't last longer.
Your entire argument here seems to be that if you were playing as a Berserker you'd play like a complete idiot and accumulate as much Exhaustion as possible as fast as possible by using Frenzied Rage at all the wrong times?
Clearly I can't argue with you on that basis, because you're arguing against yourself instead of me.
Again, Frenzied Rage is best used when you need it most (this is true of a huge number of class features), yet your argument here is that Intimidating Presence is bad because it lets you do exactly that? This is in part how Frenzied Rage scales into higher levels (by giving you other ways to get a similar bonus, by not having to use it in situations that you don't really want to, or by letting you get even more out of the class for the same exhaustion penalty).
By that same logic you have less opportunities to take Great Weapon Master, Fighters barely get their third attack and so-on, yet all of these things have been used as arguments against the Berserker. Either every sub-class gets a fair consideration of its abilities, or none of them do, you can't just heap requirements on the Berserker that the other "better" classes aren't subjected to.
Even under those conditions, at 3rd and 4th levels Frenzied Rage is a very powerful ability (it's increasing your attacks and damage output by 100%), it drops a little at 5th because you the extra second attack all the time, but you're still jumping by 50% when you need to, and at 6th you get immunity to Charmed and Frightened, two of the most debilitating effects in the game (much more so than a couple of points of exhaustion, and which usually are Wisdom saves that a Barbarian probably isn't going to much good at), and meaning you're even more likely to be able to deliver the full force of that bonus of Frenzied Rage when you want to. Brutal Critical at 9th is a feature that all Barbarians get, but meshes well with Frenzied Rage as you're throwing out more full strength attacks (more chances to crit, better weapon die to crit with). And Intimidating Presence at 10th is great.
Compare to other Barbarian sub-classes and it isn't lagging behind over that range. Some of the other sub-classes start out with pretty good 3rd level abilities, my favourite is probably Bear Totem for tanking, in fact I'd say that's one of the best Barbarian abilities, but it's a defensive ability on an already very durable class, and more tanking may not be what you want (or fit your character's theme). Zealot is the most direct competition for Berserker but it functions very differently, it gets a smaller boost to damage output over many rounds, but less compared to the Berserker over a single (Frenzied) Rage, and while it's 6th and 10th level abilities are good, they're also limited (once per rage and once per long rest).
You're the one that raised your campaign as an argument why the Berserker is universally terrible; and yet the reasons you give on that basis all seem to be that you don't want your Berserker player to have a good time. If you're going to raise your DM'ing as an argument then I will absolutely criticise it.
So yes, I call that bad DMing; the first priority of a DM should always be for all players to have fun, and that often means adapting to the party. Other classes have things that should be considered as well; Wizards for example need time and resources to learn new spells, so if you've got a Wizard in your party you need to give them opportunities to do that otherwise they're going to struggle to keep up. If you want to run a campaign that will specifically penalise certain classes or sub-classes, then inform your players.
You also seem to be assuming that it's the job of a party to be selfish sociopaths; while I'll grant that 99% of groups act that way towards NPCs, in my experience at least they're usually happy to do what's best for the group overall. If the Berserker needed to use Frenzied Rage a bunch of times to keep the party alive, then the party shouldn't begrudge them the need to rest afterwards.
So save those Frenzied Rages for the last few fights, or use Greater Restoration to take off the worst of the Exhaustion. We've been through this now multiple times, or at least I have, as it never seems to sink in.
And that is exactly the kind of moment that the Berserker should be either holding their Frenzied Rages back for, or pushing themselves into or even past that third level of Exhaustion to survive. Spellcasters run low on spell slots or cast fewer spells to conserve them, Berserkers accumulate Exhaustion by using Frenzied Rage, or save it to avoid doing so, but apparently different is bad.
So now your key argument is that a regular Barbarian rage is boring? Really?
Barbarians have arguably the best 1st and 2nd level martial abilities of any class. But apparently Berserkers having an anti-boss button they can use earlier if they want is just objectively bad, even though it seems to involve mostly subjective criticisms of it being "poo".
More bad DM'ing; you are not forced to roll on the encounter table every five seconds, that's your choice as a DM, you're purposefully denying the Berserker chances to rest. Hell, why not roll the encounter table while the party's staying at an inn in case an assassin murders them in their sleep? Or while they're inside Leomund's Tiny Hut in case an extra-planar entity phases in to do the same? Why let any of the players rest ever? Why is it only your Berserker that you want to have a bad time?
And I absolutely will continue to accuse of you not reading my points as you're still ignoring major parts of them so that your arguments can remain about how Berserker is bad if you play it badly and/or run a campaign seemingly designed to punish player character choices.
But I'm getting seriously tired of this, I've said everything anyone should ever need to know about why Berserker is perfectly fine as a sub-class, and why arguing that any sub-class is "bad" is idiotic in general.
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Every other barbarian’s ability automatically turns on when they rage, automatically gets better as they level, and never leave them too pooped to pop. Every other Barbarian subclass is objectively better than the Berserker, a point you continue to ignore.
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I haven't ignored that at all, in fact I've specifically addressed it several times, one of the many things you've ignored, but let's take a look at some of them again, shall we?
These are all good abilities, and you can build very thematic Barbarians with all of them, but it doesn't change the fact that even if your Berserker only ever uses their Frenzied Rage once in a day, they'll still be doing more damage than any other Barbarian sub-class when they do. At 3rd level that's 1 out of 3 total Rages, and if that's the one with the big bad, then it's more than worth it.
This is the silly thing about comparing sub-classes and classes; they're all built to represent and do different things. The Berserker is the only one that was built for, and lets you fully play as, a high-risk Berserker who can frenzy their way through every fight and suffer the consequences, or can build up towards going into a frenzy against the biggest enemy to deal a big surge in damage when the party needs it most.
It succeeds beautifully in capturing the spirit and mechanics of playing as a Berserker
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Please don't reply to my posts unless you've read what they actually say.
Berzerker is as badly written as Wild Magic.
There, I said it!
See now that argument falls flat; Wild Magic is brilliant!
If anything the only problem with Wild Magic is that it should trigger every time you try to do anything. 😝
Characters: Bullette, Chortle, Dracarys Noir, Edward Merryspell, Habard Ashery, Legion, Peregrine
My Homebrew: Feats | Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Races
Guides: Creating Sub-Races Using Trait Options
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Please don't reply to my posts unless you've read what they actually say.
I rest my case.
Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Ladies? Let’s all take a powder and simmer down just a bit.
Haravikk: Maybe don’t push Sposta’s well-known berserk button. Anyone who’s talked to him for more’n five posts knows picking at how he runs his games immediately infuriates him, and it shuts off reasonable discussion. He’s a passionate man, and his players keep coming back for more so clearly his games are doing fine. I can say that the pair of folks running the games I’m playing in now tend more towards the Constant Time Pressure trend as well – yes, travel is a thing and there are opportunities to rest, but the world doesn’t stand still and wait conveniently for you to bandage your boo-boos and be fully and completely ready to deal with its shit.
A lot of players like that sort of pressure. For a lot of groups, playing without that pressure feels bad and game-y – it’s that knowledge that the world will do its thing regardless of what you’re up to and if you dilly-dally you’re going to end up in the worst position that makes the game feel exciting. Angry GM codified it in a very elegant manner I am now going to butcher horribly as I paraphrase: “The players should be in a constant state of losing. If the party doesn’t actively work at winning, then they will eventually lose. The evil princess will sacrifice the innocent dragon to the ancient god of accounting; the lich will win his election bid and outlaw vigilante adventuring throughout the kingdom, the evil curse will transform the king into a fluffy bunny. Whatever. Every day the players don’t do something to Win, they slide closer to Losing.”
For groups with that sort of time pressure baked into their game – voluntarily and with the full consent of every player, including the DM – the Berserker needing to eat a week of downtime any time it leans heavily on what is supposed to be its most character-defining trait badly interferes with campaign pacing and will often impose more Losing than any single fight’s Winning can account for. Every other class in D&D resets to Green after a single night’s sleep. The Berserker does not, and while that makes it unique and potentially intriguing, it also means the character requires more buy-in and coddling from the party than any other character archetype save maybe wizards.
Nor is Greater Restoration, which requires the party to burn a 100gp diamond every single time it’s cast, the answer. Three Greater Restos is one Revivify the party doesn’t get to save a beloved character who gets caught by an unexpected crit at the edge of their endurance. A Greater Resto cast to nullify the Berserker’s self-induced lethargy is a GR not cast to clear a Petrification that will end a beloved ally’s adventuring career. The material component cost on Greater Restoration is not insignificant. I know that as a player, I would generally not be willing to use that spell to remove exhaustion from a Berserker without some absolutely fantastic reason why expending that difficult to locate component is required.
Sposta: Haravikk has apparently been putting up with shit arguments from aggravating people for most of this thread. You and I both know how that feels, because we’ve both talked to ***** before. No, that’s not forum censoring – that’s me leaving a rules-abiding blank space to avoid Name-n-Shame violations whilst allowing you to insert any of a dozen names we both know in that space of people who never seem to argue on anything but bad faith and idiocy. We both know Haravikk is normally a good guy. I happen to disagree with him on this one myself – the Berserker eating automatic exhaustion whenever it uses its class-defining, identity-codifying ability sucks, and it does bad things to campaign pacing if he ever does it more than once a day.
But you and I also disagree fiercely on matters such as species-specific ability modifiers or whether players are allowed to fake having conversations with the DM by calling for Charisma die rolls. We manage. Let’s simply assume Haravikk is having a rotten week and got snippy, the way we both know we have in the past ourselves, and restore the peace. Nobody wants to burn a bridge they don’t have to, ne?
On the Berseker (i.e. Actually On Topic): I don’t like the Exhaustion mechanic being tied to Frenzied Rage, but that’s because I feel Exhaustion should be more prevalent in D&D in general and probably even more punishing than it actually is. I believe monsters should be able to inflict Exhaustion, via either spells or abilities. I believe traps should be able to inflict it. I believe there should be certain poisons/drugs the DM can make use of that inflict the ability, and furthermore I believe that there should be much greater interconnection between the exhaustion rules and other pieces of the game. Exhaustion is a fantastic tool for game design in 5e that is criminally under-represented and underutilized, and that pisses me off.
Zee Bashew made an excellent video pointing much of this out, and Angry GM has spoken to it as well. Exhaustion should not be something people have to look up the rules for when it happens once or twice in a campaign – it should be an ever-present looming threat the players have to constantly work to avoid even as the Ticking Clock slides them ever closer to defeat. Exhaustion, especially beyond the first or second stage of it, should be heckin’ scary and something players strive to avoid.
The Berserker upends this entire idea and makes it impossible to toy around with Exhaustion as the much more interesting mechanic it deserves to be, because whenever a party has a Berserker in it the DM has to account for the fact that this stooge is liable to eat three stages of exhaustion in any given day even outside of what the DM might do with it herself, and if she’s not willing to kill this barbarian with Exhaustion and then put up with her players complaining about ‘bullshit PKs, man(!!!)’, she needs to eliminate all other sources of Exhaustion from her game. Which gives all the non-Berserkers in her game a free pass they do NOT deserve just so the Berserker can have his choice of whether to Frenzy or not.
As a DM I don’t like those chains on my own decision-making, and as a player I’m not fond of eating penalties I can do nothing to clear even over the course of several days. Yeah, that means I shouldn’t play a Berserker. And I don’t. That Frenzy attack is just not worth the cost, to either my own play or to the DM’s campaign prep work.
Does that scan?
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Thinking of starting ANOTHER thread asking why Epic Boons haven't been implemented? Read this first to learn why you shouldn't!
That was brilliant.
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I can track all of that. And if Haravikk wants to go insult ***** that’s their right as far as I’m concerned.
If Haravikk wants to completely ignore any valid point I make and keep repeating themselves that’s fine too. I’ve dealt with worse, I’ve felt with ***** after all.
Yes, up until this 🐎💩 I have been favorably disposed to Haravikk, and genuinely looked forward to reading their posts and interacting with them day to day, that’s why I had subscribed to them.
You, and at least a dozen other people I could name regularly disagree with me on a great number of topics, often strongly. But I still consider you all friends because we never stop showing each other respect. In fact I was just commenting on that fact to one of those “dozen other users” the other day in a PM.
The level of personal disrespect that Haravikk showed me was disgusting. I never disrespected them, and always kept my comments about the game, the mechanic, the subclass, and my observations on how they interact in campaigns I either DM or play in. Haravikk getting so personally insulting for absolutely no valid reason was what rubbed me the wrong way. I could have dealt with that.
But when they said that my players “should go find a better DM” I saw red. Why not bring my mother into the conversation too while their at it at that point?!?
After that, I expressed my anger using... “colorful metaphors.*” Twice. That was two opportunities for them to walk that statement back. They chose not to. Not only that, they doubled down. Twice.
As far as I’m concerned, if Haravikk wants this bridge back, they can either start laying the foundations with a strong apology, or they can go pound sand.
*(God, I hope there’s a Trekkie in the house to get that reference.)
PS- Everything else you said I agree with.
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Even without the material cost, Greater Restoration is a 5th level spell. Having to keep it in reserve to cure the Berserker's Exhaustion means that you can't use it for anything else, like Flamestrike, Insect Plague, Mass Cure, or whatever other thing that the Cleric or Druid's player might want to use that slot for. It's rather selfish for the Berserker's player to assume that another player will just accommodate them like that.
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.
Constant time pressure and resting/travel are not incompatible; if you're resting on a wagon, camping each night/stopping at inns along a multi-day journey etc. then you're not doing nothing, you're still going somewhere, pursuing the villains etc.
If you're in a situation where for some reason you don't need to ever travel to keep progressing, e.g- you're in a multi-level dungeon that could itself take multiple days to traverse, and for whatever reason you need to get to the end of it as fast as possible, then the Berserker doesn't need to accumulate exhaustion, as they choose how much to take (if any) ‐ even a single Frenzied Rage per long rest is still excellent if you choose your moment well (as with any per long rest ability), and a single point of exhaustion is a negligible cost that is cleared trivially.
The reason exhaustion is such a perfect penalty to Frenzied Rage is that it fits so thematically with what the Berserker is and does, just take a look at the flavour text:
If you spend too long in a semi-suicidal berserk rage you absolutely should suffer consequences for that, and exhaustion is an extremely appropriate and functionally interesting way to do that.
In terms of the mechanics, others have said here and elsewhere "it could just be once per long rest", but it already essentially is. What makes it so interesting mechanically is that you can choose to push past the once per long rest recommendation if you want to, or when you feel you need to.
It's not just a unique and interesting mechanic, it's arguably the perfect fit, and that can never make a sub-class bad. There's a topic under Homebrew right now that shows how tricky it is to come up with a good alternative, I've even suggested one already, but I don't prefer it to how it already works.
Also I've never suggested Greater Restoration should be standard operating practice; if you're in a dungeon with something that can petrify then absolutely save it for that, the Berserker can just conserve their Frenzied Rages, the point is that you have options on how to remove exhaustion faster if you need to. If you defeat a big bad with the capacity for a Greater Restoration leftover, the Berserker had to push hard to do it, and you're about to long rest, then are you really going to say "no, we need that 100g more than an extra party member in tomorrow's level of the dungeon"?
Characters: Bullette, Chortle, Dracarys Noir, Edward Merryspell, Habard Ashery, Legion, Peregrine
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