Hello! I am working on a campaign setting for Northern Faerun. Specifically, the Moonsea, The Ride, and Anauroch. I imagine the barbarians in The Ride to be Berserkers. Here's my plan:

For player options:

Add an "arcane recovery" type feature for rage. Starting at 3rd level, you can recover 1 Rage after completing a short rest, once per day. It would then increase to 2 at maybe 10th or 11th level? But, no more than 2. 

Is this too much? Does it make the Berserker way more powerful? If so, can you give me a percentage? This change would apply only to the Berserker, and not any other subclass for the Barb. I'm not really concerned about how much better it might make the Berserker compared to other subclasses, since they are already not on equal footing. It's more of a question about how much stronger it might be compared to another high-damage melee character.

Thanks in advance!

Three rages a day is probably plenty when they risk exhausting themselves with every fight. And you can only recover one level of exhaustion with each long rest. If you're going to give them more, encouraging them to rage more often, then you want to add recovery options.

They only risk exhaustion if they frenzy.  I mean, gods forbid a character actually wants to use their archetype defining feature...

It's something of a misconception that the Berserker is weaker than other sub-classes; the point of Frenzied Rage is essentially that once per long rest you can do more damage than other Barbarians during one Rage for only a minor cost, or can push and do it multiple times at increasing, cumulative cost. It's a good ability, but easy to suffer if you use it too much.

With the way that Exhaustion works, namely, only being able to clear one level per long rest, the issue comes down to how many times your Berserker(s) are likely to need to use Frenzied Rage (rather than just regular Rages) versus how easily they can long rest multiple times, i.e- will they be in tough battles every single day, or will they have downtime or travel time in between?

In the typical D&D setting, travel isn't quick, crossing a mountain range could take days, as will travelling between most major towns, so it should be fair to assume a party will long-rest multiple times; it's up to the DM If they want to fill these days with other encounters, or just say "travelling takes you three days" so the Berserker can just mark off up to that many levels of Exhaustion. If the Berserker ends up in a lengthy dungeon, then the strategy becomes how many Frenzied Rages they can get away with; if you expect two days to be enough, then two Frenzied Rages on the first day followed by another two the next is generally fine, but it's all situational.

If your campaign isn't likely to give them opportunities to rest after difficult fights where they have to frenzy more often, then you might consider letting them ignore the first point of Exhaustion they gain per long rest, or let them clear two per long rest, probably starting at 5th level as this is when Frenzied Rage drops from a 100% attack bonus to a 50% bonus.

Quote from crzyhawk >>

or you can be a zealot and have your bonus damage always on.

Zerker sucks.

 The berserker doesn't suck.

It's the only other primal path capable of a 3rd full weapon attack, making use of a bonus action you probably aren't using anyway. And that attack does more damage than the zealot's Divine Fury. We're talking 1d6+1 at 3rd level and 1d6+10 at 20th. A berserker, with their Frenzy, can hit for 1d12+11 with just a perfectly mundane greataxe. And magic weapons raise that damage potential considerably.

It's the only primal path immune to being charmed or frightened; invaluable for a beatstick with low wisdom and no save proficiency. 

It has genuine crowd control with its Intimidating Presence.

And it's the only primal path with Retaliation, giving you an extra weapon attack that you're, in all likelihood, getting. Because you're on the front lines and the enemy will have advantage to hit you.

only when it's frenzied, which you can't do every round.  Zealot is always on, always awesome.

I find myself rarely charmed or frightened, so...I don't much care about that.  Intimidating presence is ok.  Retailiation is pretty nice.  it all comes down to the level 3 feature making the rest of the package simply not worth it as far as I am concerned.  I'd rather play nearly every other primal path instead, and wouldn't ever look back.

Frenzy is every round of the rage, so long as it lasts. How many fights do you plan to get into during one day?

My group is hit or miss.  We usually do 3-4 combats/day.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but 3-4 is about average.  The suggested amount is 6-8 "encounters" /day with not all encounters being combat.

The simple fact is, that a core class feature that punishes me for using it is actively annoying.  Off the top of my head I cannot think of a single archetype that comes with baked in, core features that actively punish you for using them more than once.  it annoys me greatly.

Quote from crzyhawk >>

or you can be a zealot and have your bonus damage always on.

Zerker sucks.

This is a thread about the OP wanting the right solution for the Berserkers in their campaign; if you're not going to be constructive, then why post at all?

Berserkers are functionally and thematically very different to Zealots; the latter is not a drop-in replacement. One does more damage over fewer Rages, the other does less damage over all Rages, they're not equivalent, as Berserkers are most at home going all out against boss creatures.

The "problem" with Frenzied Rage is how Exhaustion interacts with a campaign; more normal Rages is interesting but Barbarians aren't likely to run out all that often anyway, the key issue of whether a Berserker competes or not is whether they're accumulating Exhaustion too fast and struggling to get rid of it again, so it's about either reducing the amount they gain, or letting them clear it faster.

Quote from crzyhawk >>

My group is hit or miss.  We usually do 3-4 combats/day.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but 3-4 is about average.  The suggested amount is 6-8 "encounters" /day with not all encounters being combat.

The simple fact is, that a core class feature that punishes me for using it is actively annoying.  Off the top of my head I cannot think of a single archetype that comes with baked in, core features that actively punish you for using them more than once.  it annoys me greatly.

 That's a hefty amount of fighting, more than I certainly recommend. But be that as it may, I don't think it's fair to say the subclass punishes anyone for using one of its key features. It's an active ability, unlike almost every other primal path ability which is passive. It's something you trigger and break out for big fights, not all the time. And one or two levels of exhaustion aren't too big a deal. You don't suffer disadvantage on attack rolls until the 3rd level, and Reckless Attack can still help make up for that.

The worst-case scenario is a berserker who uses Frenzy too often is going to need several days to fully recover. It can slow the game down a bit, but it doesn't have to. Downtime and time skips are a thing.

And Haravikk is right. If you don't have anything constructive to say, then why comment at all?

I think it is constructive to say why I dislike class features.  I'd say I'm sorry that you don't like it but honestly, I couldn't possibly care less.

I consider it punishment that other classes do not have to deal with.  It's poor design and un-necessary.  I'm glad you like them, but the fact is most of the research that wotc's done indicates that players are dissatisfied with berserkers.  The archetype sucks.  Arcane recovery to recover rages isn't going to fix the problem that you can't use your class defining feature in most fights without being punished.  Running out of RAGES is something that is rarely an issue, even in the combat heavy campaign I play in.  So it fixes something that isn't really broken.

Maybe add a CON check to avoid taking exhaustion, like the Relentless Rage thing.  Raise the DC for each successive check, DC resets after a long rest.