Idea: Altered Totem path barbarian with a cursed spirit

[Johnny Krillers]

So I'm taking my first plunge into actual DMing next week after spending 16 months trying to get a group together, I have a few vets but a few people who are total newbies. After our first meet up was kinda quiet, the four of us that made it decided to come up with at least character concepts in between sessions, one of the newbies wanted to be a nature based class cursed with lycanthropy who was essentially kicked out of his "wolf mercenary tribe" to get the curse under control or get rid of it entirely. He and I talked a bit and I gave him some ideas that I had off the top of my head that would be a little more to the spirit of his idea in my opinion as 5e Lycanthropy isn't as negative as it is in most of the classic werewolf stories and movies (in my opinion) and he really liked the idea of a totem barbarian given a wolf spirit guide named Faelnar that was then corrupted by a demon and ancient enemy of his family.

So that's the set up for the idea, what I was thinking in terms of actually running it was to have said evil wolf spirit actually talk to him in the back of his mind like a sentient item and screw with his rage, first by trying to take over whenever the character tried to exit his battle rage state, I kicked around the idea of having a contested roll, but I'm not sure what mental stats to give a sentient wolf spirit (if you have a good thought I'll probably still need those stats) so I'm thinking of changing it to a DC 10 CON roll that increases by 1 per enemy he kills while in rage mode, along with increasing the base DC if he levels up in the totem path without any attempts to gain a co-existence style control over the spirit or trying to un-corrupt it, I could use some extra triggers (aside from peripheral violence and raw hunks of meat) that would cause a random CON save against an involuntary rage (involuntary rage was his idea, not mine). When the wolf takes over I was planning on using all of the same physical stats, but using the bonuses gained from the path of the berserker, swapping out his weapons for a claw attack and adding in a extra bite attack per attack action.

Sooo, anyone out there with more experience have criticism on the idea, or suggestions to fix my planned implementation?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

It's a bad idea. The implementation, anyway. The idea of a cursed PC is a goldmine as far as RP is concerned.

A curse like this is going to be a major part of the character for a long time, so while it can have downsides, making it debilitating is the wrong way to go about it. You are actually punishing him for playing a Barbarian as it stands now.

Instead, give this curse an up-side. Something to tempt the character. Something that gives him power, but at a cost.



The Wolf
This curse confers the following benefits:

Your Rage cannot be ended early except by being rendered unconscious or killed.
Whenever you kill a creature while raging, you gain temporary hitpoints equal to your Barbarian level.
While Raging, your weapon crits on a 19 or 20.
This curse also carries the following detriments:

While Raging, you must attempt to kill. If no enemies are within sight, you must attack another living creature with the intent to kill so long as the Rage persists, prioritizing friends and family.
You cannot stand the taste of cooked meat, and must make a Constitution save (DC15) to keep such a meal down.
During a Full Moon, you become a Monster. You become a werewolf whose CR is equal to your character level. While transformed, your character is under the DM's control, and will kill and devour anyone and everyone around it, prioritizing family and friends.




After that, whip up a bond or flaw relating to the curse. Preferrably something akin to "I resist my curse every day and night, but I fear it is not enough". Also consider adding a second character for the player for when his Barbarian goes feral. Something like a relative who is tasked with putting him down should he go native and accept his cursed nature.

[PotatoGolem]

Your suggestion is much, much more of a punishment than the OP. If he ever rages he'll try to kill the party? That seems like you're just punishing him for trying to have an interesting character

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Your suggestion is much, much more of a punishment than the OP. If he ever rages he'll try to kill the party? That seems like you're just punishing him for trying to have an interesting character

Not at all. It requires careful management and planning, but at least he can use his class features, unlike the OP. In addition, less dice rolling due to no contested rolls.

[Johnny Krillers]

I was kind of hoping that more people would post so that I could pool some ideas. I like some of what you've given me, like I'm definitely going to take the raw meat idea, maybe add in a compulsion to eat what the party kills and I also like the temp hit points, the whole "prioritize friends and family" probably won't matter until the party bonds as he's traveling away from all friends and family, but it gives the banishment a less nasty feeling reason.

Being unable to end his rage period really feels harsh so I think that will be a situational thing that may or may not happen depending on how he works with the spirit and maybe dependent on his own physical/mental state, unless you just mean that it doesn't end if he can't deal damage that round I think that works and makes sense flavor wise. I don't think I'll use the werewolf change (at least for a while) because I don't want him to not kill the party in their sleep out of contrivance (I hate when that happens), also it's a werewolf and I'm a new DM, but I don't think dropping it in power where a few lvl1s or 2s can handle it would leave it as still a werewolf, if I could even scale it well, he may still go full wolf, but I think that'll be later down the line and again depend on his relationship with his spirit. on your other note, I believe that CRIT on a 19 or 20 is something that the barbarian gets anyway so I don't think I'll be using that, to both not take away progression from later down the line and because it in combination with the temp HP, feels like it would be ridiculous at the lower levels.

The reason I want the negatives and what I don't like about the vanilla 5e werewolf is that it looks like it gives too much good and not enough negative, when I think that a curse should be very negative, it's a curse, any positive should be an unintended side effect, but a negative bad enough that it constantly threatens to kill the whole party, isn't fun for the party more so than the cursed one, and why would anyone want to align for an undetermined long period of time with a guy who will turn into a very tough monster in your sleep and try to kill you, if you didn't know him before hand? I don't think most early adventurers would unless they're an LG paladin, whom could also argue for putting him down to end the suffering. Thank you overall though, I appreciate the input and what I can work with.


Edit: after I re-read the post above this one, how did my original idea stop him from using class features? The contested roll was because he literally has an internal antagonist trying to take control whenever he rates, it's easy to focus, but when you lose anything to focus on, it doesn't just go away it gets to take over... Against a class characterized by strong wills and the ability to ignore damage through being really angry. As you put it wouldn't it be more of a detriment? Unless I read wrong, he flat out cannot leave rage without being knocked out?
Edit#2: I hadn't read the werewolf entry in a while and checked up in order to reply from work, away from my book, so I though its CR was closer to 5-7, you can ignore that bit of my argument.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Alrighty.


Learn to edit. No one likes reading blocks of text.
Don't worry about few people posting. It all depends on who's on, when, and what they want to read and respond to. I've started more than a few dead threads. Happens to everyone.
5e werewolves are CR 1 or 2, so a low level party can handle one, and eventually several.
My original point about not being able to use a class feature was because of requiring a contested roll to even use it. My proposed solution basically just said that he has to go the full minute of Rage. You could instead make it a Wisdom save to exit (DC = 8 + number of kills + number of rounds raging).
If you give him an NPC companion (and potential replacement PC), then that NPC can help chain him up during the full moon away from the rest of the party (the whole two sessions before that becomes a non-issue due to leveling).
5e isn't like other D&D systems. There's no hard and fast mechanic for curses, and besides that...
THIS IS A GAME. You should NOT be out to punish your player. Put a drawback in, certainly, but then either give him a mechanical boost through the curse or allow him to overcome it. A curse like this will either define the character, in which case it needs to not interfere too much with his actual roleplay or rollplay, or it represents a hurdle to get over, in which case it won't last long (or he won't).

[Johnny Krillers]

Alrighty.


Learn to edit. No one likes reading blocks of text.
Don't worry about few people posting. It all depends on who's on, when, and what they want to read and respond to. I've started more than a few dead threads. Happens to everyone.
5e werewolves are CR 1 or 2, so a low level party can handle one, and eventually several.
My original point about not being able to use a class feature was because of requiring a contested roll to even use it. My proposed solution basically just said that he has to go the full minute of Rage. You could instead make it a Wisdom save to exit (DC = 8 + number of kills + number of rounds raging).
If you give him an NPC companion (and potential replacement PC), then that NPC can help chain him up during the full moon away from the rest of the party (the whole two sessions before that becomes a non-issue due to leveling).
5e isn't like other D&D systems. There's no hard and fast mechanic for curses, and besides that...
THIS IS A GAME. You should NOT be out to punish your player. Put a drawback in, certainly, but then either give him a mechanical boost through the curse or allow him to overcome it. A curse like this will either define the character, in which case it needs to not interfere too much with his actual roleplay or rollplay, or it represents a hurdle to get over, in which case it won't last long (or he won't).


In order:

I made the post at work, on my phone, so sorry for the crappy quality, I blame the start and stop nature of a corner store job and a text box half the size of my phone :smalltongue:, so I fixed it when I got home.
It didn't bug me overmuch, I just got a lot more on my last class tweak thread and I was able to cherry pick what I wanted to play around with, so I was hoping to be able to do the same here, oh well, you've been a big help already on your own.
I came up with the idea away from my monster manual and didn't bother to look it up after the idea came to me, I thought I had, but clearly I thought I didn't need to... for some reason?. Looking back on it, if it's only a CR 1 or 2 then yeah, he'll go wolf with berserker class levels, thanks, I still don't want it to be entirely moon based, but I'll probably add a bonus to the DC when it's full moon.
What I originally meant was he had to make the save in order to end his rage early, but still being able to start it normally, sorry if I didn't word it clear enough in my OP. Do you think WIS would work better than CON? I was thinking that since CON is what they use for concentration checks this edition (and that it's a barbarian making the save) it might work better. Also, another goof on my part, I always forget that rage only lasts a minute....
The player wanted to go it alone or with a wolf animal companion, but thought that wood elves could control animals, I gave him the first series of ideas that came to my head after he gave me the set up and he really liked the idea of barbarian with a spirit even though I repeated the idea of ranger with wolf.
I know, and I think that aside from the "gifts" and vistani curses (which are more like just debuffs) in Curse of Strahd, not having an example of a true curse in D&D is less feature and more bug, but eh, leaves room for fun personal tweaking I suppose.
I'm trying to balance it, but again as a new DM I don't have that gut feeling for balance yet, so I know for certain (and told the player as much) this will be a work in progress, I just thought I could get a jumpstart here. As far as what I was going for: I was hoping to make it an ongoing story arc component for his character, but I don't know how well it'll work


I have a mixed bag group at the table, the majority of them have never played, but the rest have played for decades, they're just new to 5e. This player is part of the former group and after our first session, just turned into a four person board game night I figured we could have character creation next when more of the people who said they wanted to join actually joined and told this player that he could talk to me online to figure out what he wanted to do before he rolled out stats and that's how we got to where we did.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

In order:
I made the post at work, on my phone, so sorry for the crappy quality, I blame the start and stop nature of a corner store job and a text box half the size of my phone :smalltongue:, so I fixed it when I got home.

Phoneposting is the bane of my existence, so no worries. Sorry if I sounded mad, but I have a degree in writing and grammar so I take it too personally sometimes. :smallbiggrin:


What I originally meant was he had to make the save in order to end his rage early, but still being able to start it normally, sorry if I didn't word it clear enough in my OP. Do you think WIS would work better than CON? I was thinking that since CON is what they use for concentration checks this edition (and that it's a barbarian making the save) it might work better. Also, another goof on my part, I always forget that rage only lasts a minute....

That certainly clears up a lot. So yeah, sorry for my own lack of reading comprehension. I said Wisdom check, but thinking about it I might have been thinking about Charisma, since possession checks are based on that normally. While I would still recommend that, using Constitution wouldn't be bad.


The player wanted to go it alone or with a wolf animal companion, but thought that wood elves could control animals, I gave him the first series of ideas that came to my head after he gave me the set up and he really liked the idea of barbarian with a spirit even though I repeated the idea of ranger with wolf.
I know, and I think that aside from the "gifts" and vistani curses (which are more like just debuffs) in Curse of Strahd, not having an example of a true curse in D&D is less feature and more bug, but eh, leaves room for fun personal tweaking I suppose.
I'm trying to balance it, but again as a new DM I don't have that gut feeling for balance yet, so I know for certain (and told the player as much) this will be a work in progress, I just thought I could get a jumpstart here. As far as what I was going for: I was hoping to make it an ongoing story arc component for his character, but I don't know how well it'll work

I've been DMing 5e since it came out, so I have a good sense of balance now. But just starting out is rough. I think the key thing here is that the curse needs to be low-key enough that while it might have some bad aspects, it ultimately isn't going to dog* him every second of the day and night. He still needs to be able to play, and curses that seriously limit and gimp his character will only frustrate him. I'd keep it in the background, for the most part. Maybe look up some horror tropes in the meantime? Like, old women and animals seem to know what he is and will always react poorly to his presence. Or his shadow takes on a "wolf-like" appearance in poor lighting. Or he hears things. Terrible things. Work on mechanics only when you need them, like when he actually transforms or something.

Again, curses are a hard balancing act. Too much kills the character, too little doesn't really feel like a curse. You might just need to playtest and see where it all falls out.

[Morphic tide]

I think this would work well as a setup for a variation of Totem Barbarian with a lycanthropy theme, with higher level archetype abilities being focused on improving control, rather than power. Like, you automatically go into a were-creature form based on your Cursed Totem/Cursed Blood when you hit 0 HP, but don't have actual control over the form in this state until the second or third archetype ability comes in.

Basically, it would be a heavily frontloaded in power archetype, but you want to avoid the use of that power as much as you can at the start, using more of the effects freely as you level up. The power would increase with your character level, rather than Barbarian level, to give a disincentive to multiclass with the beastly stat bonuses. Perhaps having the lycanthrope form be 1/3 character level CR, keeping abilities you have with some form of restriction. Also, the form would be a table of attribute score changes(mental score penalties, ho!), added abilities and bonus feats, rather than specific stat lines. Because 7 different creatures is a bit much for a subset of a subset of an archetype. Why yes, it would have sub-subclass options like Totem Barb. Why not? Lets you use the mechanics quickly, and opens up interesting options for RP and mechanics.