Barbarian Primal Path: Slayer

[Lord Ruthe]

An idea for an alternative non-magic barbarian subclass. Looking for feedback on flavour and particularly balancing.

PATH OF THE SLAYER
Some barbarians are so because of a lack of civility, while others abandon civilisation for barbarism. Such is the case with slayers. Whether to prove themselves, avenge a loved one or atone for a crime or a failure, slayers vow to go forth from their homes and risk their lives to hunt their enemies. Some slayers can complete their oaths, and eventually return home, but many vow to fight and slay their foes until they meet a foe who slays them first.
SLAYER'S Oath
At 3rd level, when you adopt this path, you choose a vow and gain its feature. Each vow includes a condition. When that condition is not met, none of the path of the slayer class features apply to you.
Oath of Atonement. You have sworn to meet your death fighting a worthy foe, and to sell your life dearly. When you are raging you gain temporary hit points each turn equal to the number of rages you can do between long rests, up to a maximum of 6, but only benefit from path features when your are not wearing armour or wielding a shield.
Oath of Revenge You have sworn to destroy the enemies that wronged you or your people. Choose a type of favoured enemy: aberrations,
beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. Alternatively, you can select a faction or races of humanoid as favoured enemies. You roll an additional weapon damage die when you score a hit against a favoured enemy, but only benefit from path features when acting against your favoured enemy.
Oath of Potential. You have sworn to slay many enemies to prove your worth. For each enemy other than the first within 5 feet of you, you gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls, but you only benefit from path features if you attacked an enemy since the start of your last turn.
SLAYER'S TOOLS
At 3rd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your speciality. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.
Archery. You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.
Dueling.When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
Great Weapon Fighting. When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.
Two-Weapon Fighting. When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.
SLAYER'S WOAD
At 6th level you gain a moral benefit from a conviction of your choice in your oath.
Conviction to Face. You have vowed fight and slay, you have no time for fear. You have advantage on saves against being frightened, and you can’t be frightened while raging. If you are frightened when you enter your rage, the effect ends.
Conviction to Hunt. In order to slay your enemy, you have to find him. You have advantage on Wisdom checks to track or find your favoured enemies, on Intelligence checks to discover or recall information about them.
Conviction to Challenge. You can take them all! You challenge an opponent to focus on you alone. As a bonus action, you can choose a single enemy you who can see and hear you. Any attacks that enemy makes against anyone other than you allow you to make an opportunity attack against it. Once you have issued such a challenge you cannot do so again until you complete a short rest.
SLAYER'S RAMPAGE
At 14th level you can rampage. You can take an addition action and bonus action on your turn, but it provokes an attack of opportunity. You can do this up to four times before you finish a short or long rest, but only once on a turn.

[PoeticDwarf]

An idea for an alternative non-magic barbarian subclass. Looking for feedback on flavour and particularly balancing.

PATH OF THE SLAYER
Some barbarians are so because of a lack of civility, while others abandon civilisation for barbarism. Such is the case with slayers. Whether to prove themselves, avenge a loved one or atone for a crime or a failure, slayers vow to go forth from their homes and risk their lives to hunt their enemies. Some slayers can complete their oaths, and eventually return home, but many vow to fight and slay their foes until they meet a foe who slays them first.
SLAYER'S Oath
At 3rd level, when you adopt this path, you choose a vow and gain its feature. Each vow includes a condition. When that condition is not met, none of the path of the slayer class features apply to you.
Oath of Atonement. You have sworn to meet your death fighting a worthy foe, and to sell your life dearly. When you are raging you gain temporary hit points each turn equal to the number of rages you can do between long rests, up to a maximum of 6, but only benefit from path features when your are not wearing armour or wielding a shield.
Oath of Revenge You have sworn to destroy the enemies that wronged you or your people. Choose a type of favoured enemy: aberrations,
beasts, celestials, constructs, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, giants, monstrosities, oozes, plants, or undead. Alternatively, you can select a faction or races of humanoid as favoured enemies. You roll an additional weapon damage die when you score a hit against a favoured enemy, but only benefit from path features when acting against your favoured enemy.
Oath of Potential. You have sworn to slay many enemies to prove your worth. For each enemy other than the first within 5 feet of you, you gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls, but you only benefit from path features if you attacked since the start of your last turn.
SLAYER'S TOOLS
At 3rd level, you adopt a particular style of fighting as your speciality. Choose one of the following options. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.
Archery. You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.
Dueling.When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
Great Weapon Fighting. When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.
Two-Weapon Fighting. When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.
SLAYER'S WOAD
At 6th level you gain a moral benefit from a conviction of your choice in your oath.
Conviction to Face. You have vowed fight and slay, you have no time for fear. You have advantage on saves against being frightened, and you can’t be frightened while raging. If you are frightened when you enter your rage, the effect ends.
Conviction to Hunt. In order to slay your enemy, you have to find him. You have advantage on Wisdom checks to track or find your favoured enemies, on Intelligence checks to discover or recall information about them.
Conviction to Challenge. You can take them all! You challenge an opponent to focus on you alone. As a bonus action, you can choose a single enemy you who can see and hear you. Any attacks that enemy makes against anyone other than you allow you to make an opportunity attack against it. Once you have issued such a challenge you cannot do so again until you complete a short rest.
SLAYER'S RAMPAGE
At 14th level you can rampage. You can take an addition action and bonus action on your turn, but it provokes an attack of opportunity. You can do this up to four times before you finish a short or long rest, but only once on a turn.

Archery isn't good for barbarian, like a paladin also doesn't have it. There are dex based barbarians but wizard of the coast wants barbarians to be strength and melee, like paladins. Don't add archery so.

[Lord Ruthe]

It was between leaving archery or defence. I left archery because of throwing weapons. I doubt it would be a popular choice of style, but that didn't seem like enough reason to exclude it.

[Flashy]

It was between leaving archery or defence. I left archery because of throwing weapons. I doubt it would be a popular choice of style, but that didn't seem like enough reason to exclude it.

Awkwardly the archery fighting style doesn't apply to thrown weapons by RAW, with the exception of darts. Javelins, handaxes, daggers, etc are all classed as melee weapons with the thrown property, while the archery fighting style specifically calls out attack rolls made with "ranged weapons".

It's not a big deal and by all means you can run the game however you like, but if you want the path to be something that could be generalized to anyone's campaign it's worth considering. Maybe add a line somewhere about treating any weapon with the thrown property as a ranged weapon.

[DiBastet]

Hm... I think that flat bonuses to attack are a big no this edition since they break the design decision of bounded accuracy (damage is ok).

Also the third level abilities are the oaths. They are the subclass "thing" and already give interesting abilities. The fighting styles just feel tucked in, and call me old fashioned but I think that the barbarian doesn't get it already for fluff reasons. I could see a "Tranquil Fury (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranquilFury)" weapon master inverted barbarian as having it as a class feature, but not other barbarians.

So in short I think you should remove that and rebuild the class around the oaths that are much more flavorful as the class thing.

[Lord Ruthe]

Awkwardly the archery fighting style doesn't apply to thrown weapons by RAW, with the exception of darts. Javelins, handaxes, daggers, etc are all classed as melee weapons with the thrown property, while the archery fighting style specifically calls out attack rolls made with "ranged weapons".

Is there an errata clarifying this. I would interpret 'ranged weapon' as 'a weapon being used to make a ranged attack' rather than 'the weapons listed under ranged in the equipment list.' By your interpretation the archery bonus would apply when using a bow as an improvised melee weapon.


Hm... I think that flat bonuses to attack are a big no this edition since they break the design decision of bounded accuracy (damage is ok).[quote]

The flat bonus to attack given by archery is lifted verbatim from the phb from other classes with weapon styles.

[quote]Also the third level abilities are the oaths. They are the subclass "thing" and already give interesting abilities. The fighting styles just feel tucked in, and call me old fashioned but I think that the barbarian doesn't get it already for fluff reasons. I could see a "Tranquil Fury" weapon master inverted barbarian as having it as a class feature, but not other barbarians.

So in short I think you should remove that and rebuild the class around the oaths that are much more flavorful as the class thing.

I see what you are saying but I think it fits. Give me one chance to persuade you before i do away with it. While the untrained warrior who picks up any old weapon and goes to town based on anger is an archetype that barbarian covers, it isn't the archetype that Slayer is meant to convey. These are trained fighters, at least to the extent of paladins or rangers, the other classes with 4 weapon styles to choose from, driven to their limit by a vow. This vow is also important to the weapon style, as they must be fulfilling the tenant of the vow to gain the benefit of the weapon style. In other words I'd agree that weaponmaster is not a descriptor you'd give a barbarian, but having a preference for how you kill people hardly makes one a weaponmaster. That's why I didn't include the defensive styles, as they are somewhat at odds with the class.

[Amnoriath]

1. You may need to put a cap on Oath of Potential since it is possible to get 8 enemies around you. It may be a bit much for 3rd level, potentially.
2. You need a 10th level ability to finish it.
3. While Slayer's Rampage has a cost and a Barbarian's attack action probably isn't as good as a Fighter's you gave them 4 action surges+. A Fighter only ever gets 2. Additionally the cost could be avoided rather easily.
Otherwise though it is everything a 5e subclass should be flavorful, effective, and simple.

[Lord Ruthe]

1. You may need to put a cap on Oath of Potential since it is possible to get 8 enemies around you. It may be a bit much for 3rd level, potentially.
2. You need a 10th level ability to finish it.
3. While Slayer's Rampage has a cost and a Barbarian's attack action probably isn't as good as a Fighter's you gave them 4 action surges+. A Fighter only ever gets 2. Additionally the cost could be avoided rather easily.
Otherwise though it is everything a 5e subclass should be flavorful, effective, and simple.

Thanks.

You're right, I completely missed a feature level, that was clever of me. I'll get on that.

+7 is a huge bonus for third level, but in the highly unlikely event that you are so completely surrounded you'll be in enough trouble to need it, no?
The other balance for 4 sort of action surges is that the oath tenant needs to be met, but maybe it is a bit much. How can the cost be easily avoided?

[Blood of Gaea]

SLAYER'S RAMPAGE
At 14th level you can rampage. You can take an addition action and bonus action on your turn, but it provokes an attack of opportunity. You can do this up to four times before you finish a short or long rest, but only once on a turn.

This seems way to powerful to me, you basically took action surge from fighters, gave 4 uses of it, made it also give a bonus action, and the only downside is provoking an AoO? Unless your are surrounded by 3+ enemies that are really going to hit hard, turning 3 attacks into 6 is ridiculously strong. Not to mention it stacks with action surge...

Seems like it would lead into an obvious 2-3 Fighter dip for almost any build.


Atonement also seems to have the edge here as the strongest Oath, the other two are not always going to be useful.

[Lord Ruthe]

Okay, I'm getting that provoking to AAO is not as bit a drawback as I thought. What if rampage gave one action surge, or two with the AOO, would that be placed right?
I made it very powerful because the 14th level path features seem excellent, retaliation gives an extra attack potentially every turn, wolf totem gives flight etc. Also remembering that at the equivalent level fighters have 3 attacks per action, so get more from an action surge than a barbarian.

Atonement is the most reliable oath, but the drawback is more consistent and the power is meant to be weaker. Have I pitched this wrong?

[Amnoriath]

Okay, I'm getting that provoking to AAO is not as bit a drawback as I thought. What if rampage gave one action surge, or two with the AOO, would that be placed right?
I made it very powerful because the 14th level path features seem excellent, retaliation gives an extra attack potentially every turn, wolf totem gives flight etc. Also remembering that at the equivalent level fighters have 3 attacks per action, so get more from an action surge than a barbarian.

Atonement is the most reliable oath, but the drawback is more consistent and the power is meant to be weaker. Have I pitched this wrong?

1. Ultimately you aren't getting the issue, since your Oaths also determine when your entire subclass features are even working Atonement is the best simply because it is based on not having armor in which Barbarian's are incentivised not to have armor or even a shield because of their defensive abilities. The other two are always flickering the subclass in and out while Atonement always stays on pretty much.
2. An OA's isn't a price simply because you can choose to initiate an action throughout your movement. The Oath of Atonement again shines here because of this borked mechanic of taking away a subclass over such specific and trivial things. Additionally OA's are a reaction so once it is taken they can't use it unless they are a very special creature. Movement out of reach already provoke's one.

[Amnoriath]

Here is my 5e Barbarian fix which ought to have a few ideas for you to make a decent cost as well as get a 10th level ability. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?428294-Rage-Reborn-a-Barbarian-remix