Blood Rage 3.5 feat PEACH

[Barbarian MD]

Blood Rage
Some barbarians rage so deeply that they lose themselves to it. The sight of blood sends them into a frenzy, and the death of their foes gives them even greater power. Their weapons become eager to drink the blood of their enemies.

Prerequisites: One level in a class with the rage ability.

Benefits: While raging, you may elect to enter a blood rage. During the blood rage, each time you kill or incapacitate a foe, your rage is extended by 1 round. These bonuses stack, and end when the rage is over.

Normal: A normal fit of rage lasts for a number of rounds equal to 3 + the character's (newly improved) constitution modifier.

Special: With five levels in a class with the rage ability, you gain strength with each victory. During the blood rage, each time you kill or incapacitate a foe, you receive a +1 bonus to strength. These bonuses stack to a maximum of your bonus to strength from raging, and end when the rage is over.

With 10 levels in a class with the rage ability, during a blood rage, each time you kill or incapacitate a foe, you gain a +1 bonus to melee damage, to a maximum of 1/2 BAB. These bonuses stack, and end when the rage is over. This bonus improves to +2 when you reach level 20, to a maximum of BAB.

I have no idea how balanced this is, but I'd like it to be on the level of ToB. Please offer any changes or suggestions. Thanks!

EDIT: I've made a lot of adjustments to it, removing the penalties and increasing some of the numbers. How does that look?

[deuxhero]

Are you meant to get easier to hit, or are confusing the old "Lower AC=better" for the modern "Higher AC=better"?

[Barbarian MD]

I thought that, if people think it's unbalancongly powerful, a reduction in AC might be appropriate.

[deuxhero]

You are spending... 1/8 (9 if human) of your lifes training on something, you should not have penalties (not to mention that AC is that that useful in the first place).

[Tavar]

I don't know: the extend rage feat gives +5 rounds, no penalty, and exauhsted is a pretty bad condition. Really, I don't think it's worth it unless you play at level 20, in which case it's amazing(at that level there are ways around exauhstion).

[Barbarian MD]

Alright, I made a number of changes (the OP reflects these). I dropped the AC penalty and the exhaustion. I added an extra benefit (damage), and changed the levels at which you gain the additional benefits (based on levels, rather than rage upgrades).

Now how does it look?

[Temotei]

Now how does it look?

Cool, but with poor formatting. Refer to Fax Celestis' Guide to Homebrewing for formatting help with all sorts of stuff. Feats are included.


In addition to the above benefit, when you reach level 5, each time you kill or incapacitate a foe, you gain a +2 bonus to strength.

When your character level reaches 10, you gain a +5 bonus to damage every time you kill or incapacitate a foe.

You should specify that you only get these bonuses while in a blood rage.

EDIT: I can't seem to remember how to do the links with text.

[Barbarian MD]

Ah, didn't think about saying "only while in a rage".

I'll put the final version in a nicer format. Right now I'm mostly thinking out loud and asking for others to join in.

[lvl 1 sharnian]

Sounds like it would have good synergy with cleave line and power attack

Beware the sackful of bunnies trick

[Barbarian MD]

Sackful of bunnies?

[Mulletmanalive]

Sack Full of bunnies: Classic piece of RAW stupidity.

I'm not sure how the classic works but to my understanding, you take a sack of bunnies or other 1hp things and stand on top of it. Each time you do anything, you crush one, gaining a Cleave and any other benefits you may gain for killing something.

This is the version someone actually tried to pull in a gaming session. We hit him with damp paper towels until he left.

EDIT: On the actual feat, i'd say that you need to specify CLEARLY that the bonuses last only as long as the rage does. I'd also suggest moving the damage bonus to 5th level and making it +1 [maybe +2], while the strength moves to 10th and stays at +2.

I'm just going on the fact that this is a feat and the only thing i can think of that compares to it is the Corrupt Avenger [Paladin] ability to gain +2 strength and 1d8 temp HP each time they Coup de Grace something [an 11th level ability]

[Barbarian MD]

*face palm*

As to your edit: I'm basing it (loosely) off the martial stance Blood in the Water. Each time you score a critical hit, you gain +1 to attack and damage, and these bonuses stack. Martial characters with flurry score a critical hit approximately once every 2 rounds, minimum.

So I want to keep this fairly powerful, with the idea that it will help core barbarians keep up with ToB characters.

[Mulletmanalive]

I guess it works in context. I just worry that it completely invalidates anyone bringing minons to their battles.

Now those handy dandy flank providers are just enhancements to your enemies.

I always thought that they didn't do enough with Rage. Admittedly Iron Heroes Berzerker class is a clumsy thing to have in play but it really screams frothing nutter [it had all kinds of things including extra attacks, gaining Rage tokens when you got hit, the ability to twist your axe, the ability to howl like a nutter etc that were all fueled by the Rage ability.

[Mongoose87]

Sack Full of bunnies: Classic piece of RAW stupidity.

I'm not sure how the classic works but to my understanding, you take a sack of bunnies or other 1hp things and stand on top of it. Each time you do anything, you crush one, gaining a Cleave and any other benefits you may gain for killing something.

This is the version someone actually tried to pull in a gaming session. We hit him with damp paper towels until he left.

EDIT: On the actual feat, i'd say that you need to specify CLEARLY that the bonuses last only as long as the rage does. I'd also suggest moving the damage bonus to 5th level and making it +1 [maybe +2], while the strength moves to 10th and stays at +2.

I'm just going on the fact that this is a feat and the only thing i can think of that compares to it is the Corrupt Avenger [Paladin] ability to gain +2 strength and 1d8 temp HP each time they Coup de Grace something [an 11th level ability]

Reminds me of the bag of rats trick, which does not work RAW. You dump out your bag of 50 rats next to the BBEG and proceed to Whirlwind, using your cleave to get an attack on the BBEG for every one of your 50 rats you kill. Fortunately, Whirlwind's description disallows this.

[Douglas]

Reminds me of the bag of rats trick, which does not work RAW. You dump out your bag of 50 rats next to the BBEG and proceed to Whirlwind, using your cleave to get an attack on the BBEG for every one of your 50 rats you kill. Fortunately, Whirlwind's description disallows this.
That's why you use Great Cleave and War Mind (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/warMind.htm)'s Sweeping Strike ability instead. Dump out the bag of rats, attack a rat and use Sweeping Strike to hit the BBEG too, cleave to another rat and use Sweeping Strike to hit the BBEG too, cleave to another rat and...

It only stops when you get a natural 1 on the attack roll. Get a few reroll abilities in there and that can easily get to several dozen attacks before it stops - and then you start again with an iterative attack.

As for the feat in question, mentally running some numbers comes out to 1 kill with this feat at level 10 is about equal to 2 or 3 crits with Blood in the Water, assuming a two-handed weapon and Power Attack. To put a rage-focused strength+two-hander build with this feat on par with a crit-focused lots-of-attacks build with Blood in the Water, that seems about right. Then again, the BitW guy will be making more attacks with that bonus, so maybe it could stand to be boosted a little. On the other hand, the feat doesn't take up your stance.

[Stycotl]

this is way too powerful and unrestricted for any use in my game at the moment.

i am going to suggest some changes here:

extended rage benefits: +1 round/dropped foe; no limit

strength boost: +2 strength/dropped foe; maximum equal to strength bonus from rage and or frenzy, etc.

damage boost: +1 damage/dropped foe; maximum equal to 1/2 base attack bonus

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these are just suggestions, but they cover a few areas that i think need to be addressed. those that disagree with me, for whatever reasons, are more than welcome to point out what they see is wrong with my opinions. my opinions are not set in stone yet, so i will listen to reasonable advice.

reasoning for my limitations: yes, blood in the water is without limitations. it is also a 1st level stance that must be used in the place of higher level stances (though not necessarily more powerful stances).

i am pretty confident in my ability to adjudicate bitw's bonuses due to critical hits, which do not happen often, and can be mitigated in numerous manners.

dropping foes is, however, one of the points of a combat encounter, and if i try to mitigate that too much, the barbarian doesn't get to do his job.

further, the multiple benefits of this feat, as well as the fact that it is always active, unlike a stance, makes me think that the restrictions above are reasonable.

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as for what i think of the feat itself: it is cool. good idea, mhvaughan. i especially like that it has multiple effects (i hate feat trees, especially when the average character gets less than 10 feats throughout his/her life). i will probably use it for some of the foes you guys are fighting....