Trying to decide how to make guts from berserker in dnd without making it a naked Barbarian swinging a sword enraged.
Thinking that fighter/(don't know subclass) and artificers armorer infiltrator for lighting launcher as his hand cannon and the living armor theme. GWM feat is a most but from there I got no idea as such I would like to request help. obviously, rage which is a big part of Guts falls through here, or if u guys have a better idea for the barbarian I'm all ears.
Given that guts has experience as a commander in a mercenary group, battle master is a good choice. Two levels of barbarian could certainly help to access rage and reckless attack, to both fill out flavor and boost mechanically.
The issue with Rage is that with heavy armor I lose the boost I would receive. That would force me to go medium or naked for the unarmored defense to be able to benefit out of rage if not that would mean two lvls into barbarian for only Reckless attack which I like a lot but too expensive for only one feature.
But we are not optimizing we are making Guts so that would be:
Fighter/BattleMaster 11 for the V2 extra attack
Barbarian 2 - Rage, Reckless attack, Danger sense (without Rage he is not Guts and danger sense can feel like the brand)
Artificer/Armorer 3 - Infiltrator Lightning Launcher (moving armor and prosthetic hand cannon, he also use small bombs, homunculus as Puck?)(utility spells are always welcome nothing int dependant and infusions are nice)
That would leave us with 4 lvls to spare with these we can get a few more lvls in barbarian for an archetype and ASI or go up to 15 in Fighter for the archetype feature and extra ASI.
Weapon: Greatsword
Medium armor: Half Plate 17 AC
V Human with Feat GWM (also cuz Guts hate monsters and he is a Human)
Ability score seems dependent on Rolls but can be made with Buy Point or standard array, investment of ASI since we need at least 13 Int for Artificer and get STR high as possible. Belt of Giant would be sweet.
5 ASI if reaching lvl 20 we kinda peak at lvl 16 with 3 ASI all else is a bonus
Not gonna lie this looks like a versatile character with flavor and room for a modification that can probably add more flavor or optimization or both.
Well, here's something I'd like to propose: bear totem barbarian. Flavorwise, it has nothing to do with berserk, but RAW it would grant the effect of resisting damage while raging, even while wearing heavy armor. You may rage while wearing heavy armor, but you would not gain the listed benefits of rage, such as reduced damage from BPS sources, and an extra damage. However, bear totem makes no such distinction. It simply states so long as you're raging, you resist all damage sans psychic.
You could have 11 fighter, 6 barbarian, 3 artificer. You could go artificer 4 instead, but you'd lose out on an extra rage a day. How much that means to you is up to you.
Before anyone steps in to cry about "RAI," save it! I don't care about what some aging nerd's tweet says either.
How about 3 points of Blood Hunter for order of the Lycan, with it we add the Doglike presence that plagues Guts and the bloodlust when he rage and a small chance to attack allies plus Hunters bane work like the Brand of sacrifice. One thing is for certain is that bonus action is cluttered at this point lol
Hunter's Bane
Beginning at 1st level, you have survived the Hunter’s Bane, a dangerous, long-guarded ritual that alters your life’s blood, forever binding you to the darkness and honing your senses against it. You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track fey, fiends, or undead, as well as on Intelligence ability checks to recall information about them.
The Hunter’s Bane also empowers your body to control and shape hemocraft magic, using your own blood and life essence to fuel your abilities. Some of your features require your target to make a saving throw to resist the feature’s effects. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows:
Hemocraft save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier.
Hybrid Transformation
Upon choosing this archetype at 3rd level, you begin to learn to control the lycanthropic curse that now lives in your blood. As a bonus action, you can transform into your hybrid form for up to 1 hour. You can speak, use equipment, and wear armor in this form. You can revert to your normal form earlier as a bonus action. You automatically revert to your normal form if you fall unconscious, drop to 0 hit points, or die. This feature replaces the rules for Lycanthropy within the Monster’s Manual.
Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.
Hybrid Transformation Features
While you are transformed, you gain the following features:
Feral Might. You gain a +1 to melee damage rolls. This bonus increases by 1 at 11th and 18th level. You also have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
Resilient Hide. You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks not made with silver weapons. While you are not wearing heavy armor, you gain a +1 bonus to your AC.
Predatory Strikes. You can apply your Crimson Rite feature to your unarmed strikes as a single weapon. You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes. When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.
Your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 slashing damage. The damage increases to 1d8 at 11th level.
Bloodlust. If you begin your turn with no more than half of your maximum hit points, you must succeed on a DC 8 Wisdom saving throw or move directly towards the nearest creature to you and use the Attack action against that creature. You can choose whether or not to use your Extra Attack feature for this frenzied attack. If there is more than one possible target, roll to randomly determine the target. You then regain control for the remainder of your turn.
If you are under an effect that prevents you from concentrating (like the barbarian’s Rage feature), you automatically fail this saving throw.
Well, here's something I'd like to propose: bear totem barbarian. Flavorwise, it has nothing to do with berserk, but RAW it would grant the effect of resisting damage while raging, even while wearing heavy armor. You may rage while wearing heavy armor, but you would not gain the listed benefits of rage, such as reduced damage from BPS sources, and an extra damage. However, bear totem makes no such distinction. It simply states so long as you're raging, you resist all damage sans psychic.
You could have 11 fighter, 6 barbarian, 3 artificer. You could go artificer 4 instead, but you'd lose out on an extra rage a day. How much that means to you is up to you.
Before anyone steps in to cry about "RAI," save it! I don't care about what some aging nerd's tweet says either.
I believe Rage was never meant to work with heavy armor and it is strongly implied by the rules. Also, lead game designer, Jeremey Crawfords tweets WERE official game rule interpretations until Jan 30, 2019. In fact, Sage Advice from Wizards of the Coast said this for years:
"Official rulings on how to interpret unclear rules are made in Sage Advice. The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone else at Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they are advice. One exception: the game’s rules manager, Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), can make official rulings and usually does so in Sage Advice and on Twitter."
Crawford's comments are that Rage was never intended to work with heavy armor. You can wear heavy armor, but you gain none of the benefits of rage while wearing it.
"A barbarian in heavy armor can benefit from a totem feature if the feature doesn't prohibit such armor or doesn't rely on Rage." - Jeremey Crawford
I believe this is well understood by the vast majority of the 5e community. Cgarciao (who is a friend that I dearly like) holds that the omission of a negation with the Bear totem feature means that heavy armor works. I suspect 99% of DMs disagree with this interpretation. Barbarian rage was intended for medium armor on down. To be able to get both a high AC AND rage benefits would be broken and we have the lead game designer telling us it was never intended to work with it.
I would suggest to have an artificer with 2 levels barbarian so you get rage, and reckless attack but also you have spellcasting and eldritch canon for ranged battle, or if you are at low hp you can retreat and plant a cannon to chip enemies hp and then just spam acid splash and flaming sphere
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
me fred.
Me also like seven hundred other characters that I don´t want to go through.
I am currently writing a collection of short stories called ¨tales from the pocket realm.¨
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Trying to decide how to make guts from berserker in dnd without making it a naked Barbarian swinging a sword enraged.
Thinking that fighter/(don't know subclass) and artificers armorer infiltrator for lighting launcher as his hand cannon and the living armor theme. GWM feat is a most but from there I got no idea as such I would like to request help. obviously, rage which is a big part of Guts falls through here, or if u guys have a better idea for the barbarian I'm all ears.
The campaign might reach LVL 20
Given that guts has experience as a commander in a mercenary group, battle master is a good choice. Two levels of barbarian could certainly help to access rage and reckless attack, to both fill out flavor and boost mechanically.
Certainly battle master sounds great.
The issue with Rage is that with heavy armor I lose the boost I would receive. That would force me to go medium or naked for the unarmored defense to be able to benefit out of rage if not that would mean two lvls into barbarian for only Reckless attack which I like a lot but too expensive for only one feature.
But we are not optimizing we are making Guts so that would be:
That would leave us with 4 lvls to spare with these we can get a few more lvls in barbarian for an archetype and ASI or go up to 15 in Fighter for the archetype feature and extra ASI.
Not gonna lie this looks like a versatile character with flavor and room for a modification that can probably add more flavor or optimization or both.
Well, here's something I'd like to propose: bear totem barbarian. Flavorwise, it has nothing to do with berserk, but RAW it would grant the effect of resisting damage while raging, even while wearing heavy armor. You may rage while wearing heavy armor, but you would not gain the listed benefits of rage, such as reduced damage from BPS sources, and an extra damage. However, bear totem makes no such distinction. It simply states so long as you're raging, you resist all damage sans psychic.
You could have 11 fighter, 6 barbarian, 3 artificer. You could go artificer 4 instead, but you'd lose out on an extra rage a day. How much that means to you is up to you.
Before anyone steps in to cry about "RAI," save it! I don't care about what some aging nerd's tweet says either.
How about 3 points of Blood Hunter for order of the Lycan, with it we add the Doglike presence that plagues Guts and the bloodlust when he rage and a small chance to attack allies plus Hunters bane work like the Brand of sacrifice. One thing is for certain is that bonus action is cluttered at this point lol
Hunter's Bane
Beginning at 1st level, you have survived the Hunter’s Bane, a dangerous, long-guarded ritual that alters your life’s blood, forever binding you to the darkness and honing your senses against it. You have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track fey, fiends, or undead, as well as on Intelligence ability checks to recall information about them.
The Hunter’s Bane also empowers your body to control and shape hemocraft magic, using your own blood and life essence to fuel your abilities. Some of your features require your target to make a saving throw to resist the feature’s effects. The saving throw DC is calculated as follows:
Hemocraft save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier.
Hybrid Transformation
Upon choosing this archetype at 3rd level, you begin to learn to control the lycanthropic curse that now lives in your blood. As a bonus action, you can transform into your hybrid form for up to 1 hour. You can speak, use equipment, and wear armor in this form. You can revert to your normal form earlier as a bonus action. You automatically revert to your normal form if you fall unconscious, drop to 0 hit points, or die. This feature replaces the rules for Lycanthropy within the Monster’s Manual.
Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.
Hybrid Transformation Features
While you are transformed, you gain the following features:
Feral Might. You gain a +1 to melee damage rolls. This bonus increases by 1 at 11th and 18th level. You also have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
Resilient Hide. You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks not made with silver weapons. While you are not wearing heavy armor, you gain a +1 bonus to your AC.
Predatory Strikes. You can apply your Crimson Rite feature to your unarmed strikes as a single weapon. You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attack and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes. When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.
Your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 slashing damage. The damage increases to 1d8 at 11th level.
Bloodlust. If you begin your turn with no more than half of your maximum hit points, you must succeed on a DC 8 Wisdom saving throw or move directly towards the nearest creature to you and use the Attack action against that creature. You can choose whether or not to use your Extra Attack feature for this frenzied attack. If there is more than one possible target, roll to randomly determine the target. You then regain control for the remainder of your turn.
If you are under an effect that prevents you from concentrating (like the barbarian’s Rage feature), you automatically fail this saving throw.
I believe Rage was never meant to work with heavy armor and it is strongly implied by the rules. Also, lead game designer, Jeremey Crawfords tweets WERE official game rule interpretations until Jan 30, 2019. In fact, Sage Advice from Wizards of the Coast said this for years:
"Official rulings on how to interpret unclear rules are made in Sage Advice. The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone else at Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they are advice. One exception: the game’s rules manager, Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), can make official rulings and usually does so in Sage Advice and on Twitter."
Crawford's comments are that Rage was never intended to work with heavy armor. You can wear heavy armor, but you gain none of the benefits of rage while wearing it.
Can you be wearing heavy armor and still benefit from the Barbarian totem benefits? (sageadvice.eu)
"A barbarian in heavy armor can benefit from a totem feature if the feature doesn't prohibit such armor or doesn't rely on Rage." - Jeremey Crawford
I believe this is well understood by the vast majority of the 5e community. Cgarciao (who is a friend that I dearly like) holds that the omission of a negation with the Bear totem feature means that heavy armor works. I suspect 99% of DMs disagree with this interpretation. Barbarian rage was intended for medium armor on down. To be able to get both a high AC AND rage benefits would be broken and we have the lead game designer telling us it was never intended to work with it.
Read into it what you will.
I would suggest to have an artificer with 2 levels barbarian so you get rage, and reckless attack but also you have spellcasting and eldritch canon for ranged battle, or if you are at low hp you can retreat and plant a cannon to chip enemies hp and then just spam acid splash and flaming sphere
me fred.
Me also like seven hundred other characters that I don´t want to go through.
I am currently writing a collection of short stories called ¨tales from the pocket realm.¨