Rules to continue raging?

[tlrieslt]

Hello fellow adventurers and masters of dungeons,

Recently I've sent my adventurers on an epic adventure, and they are having a blast. I'm just wondering about a certain rule, as one of them adventurers is a barbarian.

According to the rulebook:

Your rage lasts for 1 minute. It ends early if you are knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then. You can also end your rage on your turn as a bonus action.

Obviously the little dwarven barbarian has read this rule as well and last session the barbarian was raging at spiders and other vermin, having the time of his life. When he had slain everything close to him, he had to move to the last spiders, which took him more than 1 round in which he didn't take damage or could attack a hostile creature. So his rage would've ended...
The little fellow didn't want his rage to end though, so he put his thumb in his mouth and bit himself.....

So.... Yeah....
It sounds like a 'loophole' to me, that hitting or biting yourself would let your rage continue, so I wanted to ask for the pro's, and here I am.

Thanks in advance for at least reading !

TL:DR
Can a barbarian let his rage continue by hitting/biting himself?

[jas61292]

Hello fellow adventurers and masters of dungeons,

Recently I've sent my adventurers on an epic adventure, and they are having a blast. I'm just wondering about a certain rule, as one of them adventurers is a barbarian.

According to the rulebook:


Obviously the little dwarven barbarian has read this rule as well and last session the barbarian was raging at spiders and other vermin, having the time of his life. When he had slain everything close to him, he had to move to the last spiders, which took him more than 1 round in which he didn't take damage or could attack a hostile creature. So his rage would've ended...
The little fellow didn't want his rage to end though, so he put his thumb in his mouth and bit himself.....

So.... Yeah....
It sounds like a 'loophole' to me, that hitting or biting yourself would let your rage continue, so I wanted to ask for the pro's, and here I am.

Thanks in advance for at least reading !

TL:DR
Can a barbarian let his rage continue by hitting/biting himself?

Personally, I wouldn't allow it. The idea behind rage is about it continuing so long as you are in combat with hostiles. It already ruled out attacking allies as a means of continuing it, so I would think hurting yourself would be a similar category. That said, he can totally throw a weapon. It never says you need to make a melee attack. Just an attack.

[NiklasWB]

I have given my player the option to hit himself with an unarmed attack (hitting his chest, biting his tongue, clawing his face etc) in order to keep the rage up. This would deal 1 + STR + rage bonus in damage to oneself (in my player's case 1 + 3 + 2= 6 damage, halved because of the rage= 3 damage). I think this is alright, especially at lower levels where every hit point counts.

[Kryx]

From Crawford: "No."

http://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/03/03/can-a-barbarian-hit-himself-to-keep-his-rage-going/

[tlrieslt]

Allright, thank you all for your (quick) reactions :)
I'll tell the little dwarf to stop hitting himself!

[mephnick]

To be fair, it's a pretty dumb rule. I'd allow a cheap out for self inflicting damage or just forget that sentence completely. It's not like barbarian is so powerful that it needed this limiting factor.

[Saeviomage]

I would prefer my barbarians attack themselves rather than carry a longbow just to keep rage up.

[GlenSmash!]

I've made a few barbarians and I always pick up a longbow as soon as i can. There are just times when you can't get to your foe and they are out of handaxe and even javelin range. Plus, with 14 dex and Proficiency in longbows a barb can do a pretty decent job of sticking arrows in things. Not the best but decent. At least until they are in Smashing range. Then Smash, of course.

[Slipperychicken]

Just be awesome and have your barbarian set himself on fire whenever he rages.

[RickAllison]

Just be awesome and have your barbarian set himself on fire whenever he rages.

Works great with Battlerager 3! Light yourself and your enemies on fire.

[ZX6Rob]

It's a house rule, for sure, but I like to let barbarians continue their rage even if they're out of range of a hostile target as long as they use their actions that round to do everything in their power to close the distance. It seems like a fairly arbitrary restriction on an ability that only lasts a minute, anyway. So, if you murder everything around you, and there's a guy trying to pepper you with arrows from 150 feet away, as long as you do everything in your power to get to somewhere where you can directly attack him, sure, you're still in a blood frenzy.

[RickAllison]

It's a house rule, for sure, but I like to let barbarians continue their rage even if they're out of range of a hostile target as long as they use their actions that round to do everything in their power to close the distance. It seems like a fairly arbitrary restriction on an ability that only lasts a minute, anyway. So, if you murder everything around you, and there's a guy trying to pepper you with arrows from 150 feet away, as long as you do everything in your power to get to somewhere where you can directly attack him, sure, you're still in a blood frenzy.

If one wants to be a little punitive with such a tactic, how about a general thing for barbarians that they can continue their Rage by suffering damage equal to proficiency bonus (or other benchmark) as a reaction. Gives a cost that is minor enough that higher-leveled Barbs won't care, but high enough that the restriction still has an effect.

[WickerNipple]

The proper by the rules approach leads to every Barbarian carrying a longbow and firing it while running towards the target. Which doesn't particularly bother me, but I kinda like/prefer the mental image of the barb beating himself up to stay psyched up.

Maybe biting his tongue works once, but I'd scale that up as the game goes on. Make him need more and more pain to stay in the rage game. You'll have yourself a little reaver cuttin all over himself soon enough. Good times!

(And don't let him soak the damage with rage resistance...)

[Ruslan]

TL:DR
Can a barbarian let his rage continue by hitting/biting himself?

It's extremely flavorful and fits the trope of the berserker working himself into a frenzy by shedding his own blood. I see no problem about it. Except, of course, it actually takes an action to attack - even when attacking yourself. Some DM fiat may be needed to be able to, I dunno, byte your own tongue as a non-action.


how about a general thing for barbarians that they can continue their Rage by suffering damage equal to proficiency bonus (or other benchmark) as a reactionThat's a workable idea too.


From Crawford: "No."

http://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/03/03/can-a-barbarian-hit-himself-to-keep-his-rage-going/

Except that this answer is completely against RAW. If he takes damage, rage goes on. Them are the rules. Dunno why Crawford has such difficulties to understand the rules he himself wrote.

[pwykersotz]

It's a house rule, for sure, but I like to let barbarians continue their rage even if they're out of range of a hostile target as long as they use their actions that round to do everything in their power to close the distance. It seems like a fairly arbitrary restriction on an ability that only lasts a minute, anyway. So, if you murder everything around you, and there's a guy trying to pepper you with arrows from 150 feet away, as long as you do everything in your power to get to somewhere where you can directly attack him, sure, you're still in a blood frenzy.

I was going to reply with this. Glad to see it already mentioned. I've had a couple Barbarians in parties and honestly, their players have never had much system mastery. I deemed the nuances of rage to be too fiddly to deal with (I might engage them again with a more savvy player), and just go with this recommendation. :smallsmile:

[Lombra]

It's too cool to not allow it: running barbarian with blood-injected eyes running to a sorcerer while punching his own face or beating his head on the flat of his greataxe is so barbariany that I would grant inspiration on top of not ending the rage.

[ZX6Rob]

If one wants to be a little punitive with such a tactic, how about a general thing for barbarians that they can continue their Rage by suffering damage equal to proficiency bonus (or other benchmark) as a reaction. Gives a cost that is minor enough that higher-leveled Barbs won't care, but high enough that the restriction still has an effect.

You definitely could do that, if you wanted to be punitive. And it's certainly in the spirit of the shield-biting berserker.

Personally, though, I really don't like feeling like I'm punishing players for using their class features. I've always disliked "spend health to get X" kind of mechanics. For instance, I also house rule the actual Berserker subclass to ditch the exhaustion penalty entirely. Instead, you just spend two uses of Rage to go into a Frenzy.

If someone wanted to play a classic, "I have to have blood flowing to feel the fire of rage in my belly!" kind of barbarian, I'd just tell them that that's their flavor text. You bite your lip or thumb, or slap yourself in the face, or punch yourself in your curiously well-defined abs, whatever you do, that's just your thing. There's no real mechanical effect, it's just a cool flavor thing. You're not causing real damage -- you aren't going to bite your thumb hard enough to kill yourself if you're at 1 hit point -- but you're keeping the pain alive and using it to fuel your power.

[RickAllison]

You definitely could do that, if you wanted to be punitive. And it's certainly in the spirit of the shield-biting berserker.

Personally, though, I really don't like feeling like I'm punishing players for using their class features. I've always disliked "spend health to get X" kind of mechanics. For instance, I also house rule the actual Berserker subclass to ditch the exhaustion penalty entirely. Instead, you just spend two uses of Rage to go into a Frenzy.

If someone wanted to play a classic, "I have to have blood flowing to feel the fire of rage in my belly!" kind of barbarian, I'd just tell them that that's their flavor text. You bite your lip or thumb, or slap yourself in the face, or punch yourself in your curiously well-defined abs, whatever you do, that's just your thing. There's no real mechanical effect, it's just a cool flavor thing. You're not causing real damage -- you aren't going to bite your thumb hard enough to kill yourself if you're at 1 hit point -- but you're keeping the pain alive and using it to fuel your power.

I like that ruling on Frenzy much better. As it is, it's kind of an unusable feature. Even Greater Restoration only heals one level of exhaustion. Unless the party has a reliable source of Potions of Vitality, it is a problem by RAW.

[jas61292]

I like that ruling on Frenzy much better. As it is, it's kind of an unusable feature. Even Greater Restoration only heals one level of exhaustion. Unless the party has a reliable source of Potions of Vitality, it is a problem by RAW.

Personally, I would hate that mechanic. As neat as it sounds, it is practically unusable at low levels unless you are having barely any encounters. I mean, in a 6 encounter day, raging twice is far, far more valuable than frenzying once. And, in my experience currently playing a berserker, exhaustion isn't really that bad. Of course, most people don't follow the games assumptions for encounters per long rest, in which case it might work. But losing the ability to rage at all for some encounters cause you frenzied in others is just not going to be worth it. But... all this is off topic.

What's on topic is that you should just play a berserker so you can dash and then still attack so you don't need to worry about not being in range to hit things :p

Or just throw a weapon.