Help with a Blood Flail concept

[Phoenix042]

So a player in one of my games is going to be playing a vuman berserker 5 / battlemaster 3 / monk 2 with GWM

Her whole shtick is that she is the instrument of her god, the God of Sacrifice, and he has just given her a badass new Flail.

I want to give the flail a power that sacrifices HP to feed into her melee power.

My initial instinct was to have it do a -5 HP for +2d6 damage trade once per short rest, but she already deals so much DAMAGE that I kind of don't want to just keep stacking more expendable damage powers onto her character. I'd rather have it work with a feature she already has in some way, or do something to empower melee attacks with special effects or something.


So what do you think of these options:

Version 1:
Requires attunement by a battlemaster

When you have no superiority dice remaining, you can execute a maneuver with this flail as if expending a die by sacrificing 5 HP. Once you have used this power, you must finish a short rest before you can use it again.


Version 2:
Requires attunement by a character with the GWM feat

When you use Great weapon master to attack with a -5 penalty for +10 damage, you can ignore the attack penalty by sacrificing 5 HP instead. Once you have used this power, you must finish a short rest before you can use it again.

Version 3:
Requires attunement by a barbarian of at least 2nd level

When you attack recklessly with this Flail, you can opt not to suffer the drawback of your reckless attack feature by sacrificing 10 HP. Once you have used this power, you must complete a short rest before you can use it again.



I'm trying to brainstorm, but so far it feels more like a brain "light-drizzle," or maybe a brain "damp-cloudy-day."


What do you think? Any other sacrifice-y ideas out there?

[Contrast]

If you want it to link to existing abilities my first thought was some sort of expending hit dice on a short rest to remove a level of exhaustion instead of hit points to mitigate berserker. How many hit dice per level is up to you.

[Kane0]

- trade hit die to ignore frenzy exhaustion (half prof?)
- on a miss that isnt a 1 still deal damage as if all die were 1s, and take some damage (1d6?)
- knock large or smaller creatures prone on crit
- Once per short rest as bonus action can extend flail to reach an additional 10' for up to 1 minute

[Phoenix042]

So I like the exhaustion reduction idea, but for her ARMOR, rather than her flail, actually.

The armor she's wearing is a type of fiendish spiked half-plate made for an ancient class of demon-berserkers. So I'm thinking it's going to reduce exhaustion by one level after a short rest, once per day, along with some other benefits that work well with berserkers (I was actually going to post about that in a separate thread later).

For the flail, I'm considering a sort of HP giveth-and-taketh theme; so on a crit or when you down a foe, the flail grants you temporary HP, but you can also spend HP (possibly some temporary, if you have any) to do... something...

Maybe make an AoE attack? This build has no AoE effects, and it would be pretty thematic...

Could combine it with the 10ft reach thing, maybe forcing all enemies within 10ft to make a dex save or take damage as if hit by the flail. Maybe allow the attack to be modified by a maneuver?

What do you think?