I was thinking of adding these fixes to the Berserker barbarian and wanted to know people's thoughts on them.
- Berserker barbarians are immune to the effects of exhaustion while raging.
- Berserker barbarians can remove a number of levels of exhaustion equal to their proficiency bonus each long rest.
The goal is to make Frenzy less punishing so that it may be used more often with fewer consequences. Since the trend of subclasses seems to be tying resources to proficiency, I thought this would be in line with the current game design and not be too strong. It will be a moderate help in early levels and become better over time. I considered saying that the extra exhaustion removal only applied to exhaustion from Frenzy, but thought that might be unnecessarily complex and that ultimately it doesn't increase the power of this ability by too significant amount.
If I were to change one thing, I might try making exhaustion less punishing outside of combat as well, but I'm not sure how to do that and have it be well-balanced. Maybe make a later ability allow you to ignore 1-2 levels of exhaustion, at level 10 or 14 (or both; 1 level at 10, 2 at 14)? I'm not sure if it's necessary though. If you have suggestions, please let me know them.
Another possible change would be to make the first use of Frenzy free, or to tie that to proficiency as well (instead of losing more levels of exhaustion).
I don't want to remove anything from the published subclass if it's not necessary to do so.
Do people think this helps fix the berserker, or is it still too underpowered? Or is it op? I was also wondering if I should give one of these abilities at level 3 and one at level 6, or both of them at level 3. What do you think?
The suggestion given to me was to let the Barbarian spend their hit dice to remove levels of exhaustion. One die per level of exhaustion during a Long Rest.
I think letting Barbarians ignore Exhaustion while raging is perfectly reasonable, but anything more than that seems like overkill.
Letting them completely wipe out exhaustion each long rest basically removes it as a serious threat. Players simply don't need to go into a Frenzied Rage every. single. combat.
If it really feels like a problem for the player, I would instead recommend giving them something to make the exhaustion feel more justified. For example, let them add "Frenzy damage" to their attacks, or give them a free unarmed attack, so that they feel more like a raging berserker.
Alternatively, give them an attunable magic item that absorbs Exhaustion levels. Give them the option of mitigating the cost of Frenzies Rage, at the expense of some other boon. This would give them some day to day flexibility.
At higher levels, the party's cleric can use Greater Restoration to help refresh the barbarian at the end of a long day, assuming they saved the spell slot. (Encouraging interparty support is generally a good idea.)
Rather than exhaustion levels = PB, a scaling bonus with tier would be better. 1 additional (2) at 3, 2 additional (3) at 11, 3 additional (4) at 17. Or, ya know, whatever levels Barbarian class features normally appear at. Otherwise yeah, it’s a good approach towards mitigating the class’ glaring weakness without providing an OP new ability that can be easily weaponized.
I think letting Barbarians ignore Exhaustion while raging is perfectly reasonable, but anything more than that seems like overkill.
Letting them completely wipe out exhaustion each long rest basically removes it as a serious threat. Players simply don't need to go into a Frenzied Rage every. single. combat.
If it really feels like a problem for the player, I would instead recommend giving them something to make the exhaustion feel more justified. For example, let them add "Frenzy damage" to their attacks, or give them a free unarmed attack, so that they feel more like a raging berserker.
Alternatively, give them an attunable magic item that absorbs Exhaustion levels. Give them the option of mitigating the cost of Frenzies Rage, at the expense of some other boon. This would give them some day to day flexibility.
At higher levels, the party's cleric can use Greater Restoration to help refresh the barbarian at the end of a long day, assuming they saved the spell slot. (Encouraging interparty support is generally a good idea.)
Even if you don't need to use Frenzy every single combat, it is still fairly punishing if you want to do it at all more than once since exhaustion only reduces by one a day. Buffing Frenzy in the moment is interesting but I don't think fixes this fundamental problem. The truth is eventually you'll be having multiple difficult encounters a day, and you might want to use Frenzy twice or maybe even three times, depending on your DM. Of course it's also possible that you will gain exhaustion for some other reason, which hinders things more. So I don't think keeping exhaustion mechanics as is (outside of rage) is going to be very viable.
The idea of giving them a magic item that absorbs magical items is interesting, and is probably a decent fix and provides some interesting choice as you say. It's probably worth considering sometimes. The main problem I have with doing it instead of a change to the subclass as a whole is that it is DM dependent. Not all DMs are going to want to give this item, and even if I am the DM and I'm fine with it, I don't want to feel obligated to give a Berserker this same item, maybe slightly modified, every time. That reduces customizability for the player because now they are dependent on this same item. It's still a good idea, but I think it's situational and shouldn't supercede the necessity of improving the subclass.
As for Greater Restoration, that is obviously helpful, though I have similar issues for that that I have regarding the magic item, in that it requires someone else (in this case a player who can cast Greater Restoration) to routinely do something for another player to help them use a basic subclass feature. On top of that, it is a 5th level spell. While it is true that interparty support is a good thing, and helping allies become stronger, or occasionally trying to mitigate or iron out weaknesses, is a good thing, it shouldn't become an obligation for another party member to use a significant resource like a 5th level slot to help another party member use a basic subclass feature, which is arguably also their premiere subclass feature at that. The fact that it would basically be required in this case just shows the obvious design flaws of the Berserker, in my opinion.
Rather than exhaustion levels = PB, a scaling bonus with tier would be better. 1 additional (2) at 3, 2 additional (3) at 11, 3 additional (4) at 17. Or, ya know, whatever levels Barbarian class features normally appear at. Otherwise yeah, it’s a good approach towards mitigating the class’ glaring weakness without providing an OP new ability that can be easily weaponized.
This is something that I actually like quite a bit. As it scales with proficiency it will get better and better until getting to a point where you can take as many levels of exhaustion as you would to flat out die and be fine. This might in fact be too strong, at least at later levels. Tying it to tier still mitigates the exhaustion problem, but it keeps it within a more reasonable bound. A barbarian gets subclass features at levels 3, 6, 10, and 14, so if you were to skip 3 but allow them to reduce exhaustion by one more at each other threshold, that will allow them to be a bit better in each tier, and the final amount of exhaustion reduced (4) is quite strong but not so strong that it makes exhaustion entirely trivial.
Even if you don't need to use Frenzy every single combat, it is still fairly punishing if you want to do it at all more than once since exhaustion only reduces by one a day. Buffing Frenzy in the moment is interesting but I don't think fixes this fundamental problem. The truth is eventually you'll be having multiple difficult encounters a day, and you might want to use Frenzy twice or maybe even three times, depending on your DM. Of course it's also possible that you will gain exhaustion for some other reason, which hinders things more. So I don't think keeping exhaustion mechanics as is (outside of rage) is going to be very viable.
...
(1) The first 3 levels of exhaustions really aren't that punishing for a Barbarian.
1 - Disadvantage on Ability Checks.
Barbarians aren't the party face, skill monkey, nor librarian. When it matters, the Help action effectively neutralizes this penalty altogether.
2 - Speed Halved.
Outside of combat, speed is largely irrelevant, and riding a Horse negates it entirely. Within combat, they still have Fast Movement. (Frenzy specifically enables Dashing attacks.)
3 - Disadvantage on Attack Rolls and Saving Throws.
Barbarians gain Danger Sense at level 2, and Mindless Rage negates Charmed and Frightened conditions.
4 & 5 levels of exhaustion are pretty rough, but as long as the effects of exhaustion are ignored while raging, then none of it is likely to actually matter in play.
Given that, the only real problem is if the barbarian accumulates and maintains 4+ levels of exhaustion.
So, maybe the solution could focus on that threshold. Say, have Exhaustion from Frenzy be tracked separately and cap at 3 (in addition to ignoring exhaustion while raging). That would result in the Berserker being essentially unaffected during combat, and buffered from the serious consequences otherwise. With Death and Incapacitation off the table, Exhaustion is much less of a problem.
Maybe... at 6, you may recover exhaustion as if completing a long rest an additional once per day when you complete a short rest. Then at 10, when you recover exhaustion as part of a rest, you may recover one additional level of exhaustion.
That gets you up to four levels a day in tiers 3 and 4, which is a decent number of frenzies, or two levels in tier 2, which is enough to permit you to occasionally use your feature each day without sabotaging the adventuring day. That, plus the ignoring exhaustion during a rage starting at 3, that’d be good I think.
I still don't really think it needs buffing. At most, I would give a single free use per long rest.
There are plenty of abilities which are fairly core to other classes/subclasses which have a limit on the number of uses per long rest, and many of them do not scale with levels. The difference with Frenzy is that the player can choose to do more than that, but at a high cost.
WotC could, instead, have just said that Frenzy can be used once per long rest. This would be more akin to the abilities of others, and I highly doubt that there would have been even close to the amount of complaining had they done so. However, allowing a Barbarian to effectively damage himself in order to do more damage to the enemy seems very thematic.
The only problematic part, for me, is that the cost is there from the very first use. Adding a free use per long rest seems a fair compromise to me. It's the equivalent of "once per long rest, but you can push yourself and cause yourself harm to do more if you choose".
I was thinking of adding these fixes to the Berserker barbarian and wanted to know people's thoughts on them.
- Berserker barbarians are immune to the effects of exhaustion while raging.
- Berserker barbarians can remove a number of levels of exhaustion equal to their proficiency bonus each long rest.
The goal is to make Frenzy less punishing so that it may be used more often with fewer consequences. Since the trend of subclasses seems to be tying resources to proficiency, I thought this would be in line with the current game design and not be too strong. It will be a moderate help in early levels and become better over time. I considered saying that the extra exhaustion removal only applied to exhaustion from Frenzy, but thought that might be unnecessarily complex and that ultimately it doesn't increase the power of this ability by too significant amount.
If I were to change one thing, I might try making exhaustion less punishing outside of combat as well, but I'm not sure how to do that and have it be well-balanced. Maybe make a later ability allow you to ignore 1-2 levels of exhaustion, at level 10 or 14 (or both; 1 level at 10, 2 at 14)? I'm not sure if it's necessary though. If you have suggestions, please let me know them.
Another possible change would be to make the first use of Frenzy free, or to tie that to proficiency as well (instead of losing more levels of exhaustion).
I don't want to remove anything from the published subclass if it's not necessary to do so.
Do people think this helps fix the berserker, or is it still too underpowered? Or is it op? I was also wondering if I should give one of these abilities at level 3 and one at level 6, or both of them at level 3. What do you think?
L10 Rangers got, in Tasha's, what Berserkers need to make Frenzy worth the cost of admission. Give Berserkers an inferior version of Tireless that doesn't grant temporary hit points. Your fixes are good, but they still make the Berserker more and more boring to play between rages, and still makes Berserkers not get more powerful with more rages per day in line with other Barbarians.
Do it all at L3, so Berserkers can just be the Warlocks of the Barbarian world, functioning off of short rests:
L3: You ignore the effects of exhaustion while raging, and regain pb exhaustion stages when you long rest. You regain 1 exhaustion stage when you short rest.
I think the ability to ignore exhaustion while raging is the only thing Berserker really needs.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
If people are of the mind that berserker needs fixing because exhaustion is simply too strong a downside for frenzy, then take a look at the stress system introduced in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. You can simply make the frenzy itself stressful, or you can add stress with every round, every attack, every time the berserker takes damage, etc. Whatever floats your boat. Stress manifests itself in the following way.
When a character makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, they must apply their current Stress Score as a penalty to the roll.
It is a cumulative downside and yet less punishing than exhaustion.
I was thinking of adding these fixes to the Berserker barbarian and wanted to know people's thoughts on them.
- Berserker barbarians are immune to the effects of exhaustion while raging.
- Berserker barbarians can remove a number of levels of exhaustion equal to their proficiency bonus each long rest.
The goal is to make Frenzy less punishing so that it may be used more often with fewer consequences. Since the trend of subclasses seems to be tying resources to proficiency, I thought this would be in line with the current game design and not be too strong. It will be a moderate help in early levels and become better over time. I considered saying that the extra exhaustion removal only applied to exhaustion from Frenzy, but thought that might be unnecessarily complex and that ultimately it doesn't increase the power of this ability by too significant amount.
If I were to change one thing, I might try making exhaustion less punishing outside of combat as well, but I'm not sure how to do that and have it be well-balanced. Maybe make a later ability allow you to ignore 1-2 levels of exhaustion, at level 10 or 14 (or both; 1 level at 10, 2 at 14)? I'm not sure if it's necessary though. If you have suggestions, please let me know them.
Another possible change would be to make the first use of Frenzy free, or to tie that to proficiency as well (instead of losing more levels of exhaustion).
I don't want to remove anything from the published subclass if it's not necessary to do so.
Do people think this helps fix the berserker, or is it still too underpowered? Or is it op? I was also wondering if I should give one of these abilities at level 3 and one at level 6, or both of them at level 3. What do you think?
The suggestion given to me was to let the Barbarian spend their hit dice to remove levels of exhaustion. One die per level of exhaustion during a Long Rest.
<Insert clever signature here>
I think letting Barbarians ignore Exhaustion while raging is perfectly reasonable, but anything more than that seems like overkill.
Letting them completely wipe out exhaustion each long rest basically removes it as a serious threat. Players simply don't need to go into a Frenzied Rage every. single. combat.
If it really feels like a problem for the player, I would instead recommend giving them something to make the exhaustion feel more justified. For example, let them add "Frenzy damage" to their attacks, or give them a free unarmed attack, so that they feel more like a raging berserker.
Alternatively, give them an attunable magic item that absorbs Exhaustion levels. Give them the option of mitigating the cost of Frenzies Rage, at the expense of some other boon. This would give them some day to day flexibility.
At higher levels, the party's cleric can use Greater Restoration to help refresh the barbarian at the end of a long day, assuming they saved the spell slot. (Encouraging interparty support is generally a good idea.)
Rather than exhaustion levels = PB, a scaling bonus with tier would be better. 1 additional (2) at 3, 2 additional (3) at 11, 3 additional (4) at 17. Or, ya know, whatever levels Barbarian class features normally appear at. Otherwise yeah, it’s a good approach towards mitigating the class’ glaring weakness without providing an OP new ability that can be easily weaponized.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Even if you don't need to use Frenzy every single combat, it is still fairly punishing if you want to do it at all more than once since exhaustion only reduces by one a day. Buffing Frenzy in the moment is interesting but I don't think fixes this fundamental problem. The truth is eventually you'll be having multiple difficult encounters a day, and you might want to use Frenzy twice or maybe even three times, depending on your DM. Of course it's also possible that you will gain exhaustion for some other reason, which hinders things more. So I don't think keeping exhaustion mechanics as is (outside of rage) is going to be very viable.
The idea of giving them a magic item that absorbs magical items is interesting, and is probably a decent fix and provides some interesting choice as you say. It's probably worth considering sometimes. The main problem I have with doing it instead of a change to the subclass as a whole is that it is DM dependent. Not all DMs are going to want to give this item, and even if I am the DM and I'm fine with it, I don't want to feel obligated to give a Berserker this same item, maybe slightly modified, every time. That reduces customizability for the player because now they are dependent on this same item. It's still a good idea, but I think it's situational and shouldn't supercede the necessity of improving the subclass.
As for Greater Restoration, that is obviously helpful, though I have similar issues for that that I have regarding the magic item, in that it requires someone else (in this case a player who can cast Greater Restoration) to routinely do something for another player to help them use a basic subclass feature. On top of that, it is a 5th level spell. While it is true that interparty support is a good thing, and helping allies become stronger, or occasionally trying to mitigate or iron out weaknesses, is a good thing, it shouldn't become an obligation for another party member to use a significant resource like a 5th level slot to help another party member use a basic subclass feature, which is arguably also their premiere subclass feature at that. The fact that it would basically be required in this case just shows the obvious design flaws of the Berserker, in my opinion.
This is something that I actually like quite a bit. As it scales with proficiency it will get better and better until getting to a point where you can take as many levels of exhaustion as you would to flat out die and be fine. This might in fact be too strong, at least at later levels. Tying it to tier still mitigates the exhaustion problem, but it keeps it within a more reasonable bound. A barbarian gets subclass features at levels 3, 6, 10, and 14, so if you were to skip 3 but allow them to reduce exhaustion by one more at each other threshold, that will allow them to be a bit better in each tier, and the final amount of exhaustion reduced (4) is quite strong but not so strong that it makes exhaustion entirely trivial.
(1) The first 3 levels of exhaustions really aren't that punishing for a Barbarian.
1 - Disadvantage on Ability Checks.
Barbarians aren't the party face, skill monkey, nor librarian. When it matters, the Help action effectively neutralizes this penalty altogether.
2 - Speed Halved.
Outside of combat, speed is largely irrelevant, and riding a Horse negates it entirely. Within combat, they still have Fast Movement. (Frenzy specifically enables Dashing attacks.)
3 - Disadvantage on Attack Rolls and Saving Throws.
Barbarians gain Danger Sense at level 2, and Mindless Rage negates Charmed and Frightened conditions.
4 & 5 levels of exhaustion are pretty rough, but as long as the effects of exhaustion are ignored while raging, then none of it is likely to actually matter in play.
Given that, the only real problem is if the barbarian accumulates and maintains 4+ levels of exhaustion.
So, maybe the solution could focus on that threshold. Say, have Exhaustion from Frenzy be tracked separately and cap at 3 (in addition to ignoring exhaustion while raging). That would result in the Berserker being essentially unaffected during combat, and buffered from the serious consequences otherwise. With Death and Incapacitation off the table, Exhaustion is much less of a problem.
I liked.
Maybe... at 6, you may recover exhaustion as if completing a long rest an additional once per day when you complete a short rest. Then at 10, when you recover exhaustion as part of a rest, you may recover one additional level of exhaustion.
That gets you up to four levels a day in tiers 3 and 4, which is a decent number of frenzies, or two levels in tier 2, which is enough to permit you to occasionally use your feature each day without sabotaging the adventuring day. That, plus the ignoring exhaustion during a rage starting at 3, that’d be good I think.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I still don't really think it needs buffing. At most, I would give a single free use per long rest.
There are plenty of abilities which are fairly core to other classes/subclasses which have a limit on the number of uses per long rest, and many of them do not scale with levels. The difference with Frenzy is that the player can choose to do more than that, but at a high cost.
WotC could, instead, have just said that Frenzy can be used once per long rest. This would be more akin to the abilities of others, and I highly doubt that there would have been even close to the amount of complaining had they done so. However, allowing a Barbarian to effectively damage himself in order to do more damage to the enemy seems very thematic.
The only problematic part, for me, is that the cost is there from the very first use. Adding a free use per long rest seems a fair compromise to me. It's the equivalent of "once per long rest, but you can push yourself and cause yourself harm to do more if you choose".
L10 Rangers got, in Tasha's, what Berserkers need to make Frenzy worth the cost of admission. Give Berserkers an inferior version of Tireless that doesn't grant temporary hit points. Your fixes are good, but they still make the Berserker more and more boring to play between rages, and still makes Berserkers not get more powerful with more rages per day in line with other Barbarians.
Do it all at L3, so Berserkers can just be the Warlocks of the Barbarian world, functioning off of short rests:
L3: You ignore the effects of exhaustion while raging, and regain pb exhaustion stages when you long rest. You regain 1 exhaustion stage when you short rest.
I think the ability to ignore exhaustion while raging is the only thing Berserker really needs.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
If people are of the mind that berserker needs fixing because exhaustion is simply too strong a downside for frenzy, then take a look at the stress system introduced in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. You can simply make the frenzy itself stressful, or you can add stress with every round, every attack, every time the berserker takes damage, etc. Whatever floats your boat. Stress manifests itself in the following way.
It is a cumulative downside and yet less punishing than exhaustion.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Only if you want your character to get more and more boring to play as you gain more rages per day.