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endlessxaura
2017-12-01, 07:06 AM
Hey, so I was working on a Barbarian path that really focused on savagery and viciousness. Balancing it is proving rather difficult: the Bear totem Barbarian gets full on resistance and Frenzy gives an extra attack every turn. I think I may be missing the power scale here, but it seems that Barbarian level three is a pretty huge jump. So, I was making this one and I can't really see if it's more powerful or less powerful.


All barbarians have their roots in the wild. But, barbarians of the Path of Savagery embrace this wild spirit. When they rage, they become a wild animal: unfettered, untamed, and unstoppable. You do not have a spirit animal - you are the animal.

Wild Heart
Beginning at 6th 3rd level, you no longer need to use an action to enter rage you may also use a reaction to enter rage if you take damage. You also gain proficiency in survival.

Vicious Surge
Starting at 3rd level, violence invigorates you. Whenever you deal damage with a weapon attack while raging, you may take half the damage you deal. This damage cannot be reduced in any way. If you do so, you gain the damage you dealt as temporary hit points. These temporary hit points are applied after you take half of the damage and last until you stop raging.

Feral Brutality
Starting at 10th 6th level, you may add an extra weapon damage die to your attacks while you are using Reckless Attack. You may only do so once per rage.

Vicious Adrenaline
Starting at 3rd 10th level, your rage is boundless and dangerous to everything, including yourself. If you have raged the maximum number of times before a long rest, you may take damage equal to five times your level reduce yourself to 1 hit point to rage again.

Wild Soul
At 14th level, you ferocity allows you to fight to the bitter end. You do not fall unconscious when you are at 0 hit points while raging. You also do not suffer a death saving throw failure when you take damage from Vicious Adrenaline or Vicious Surge. However, you are still dying. You must still make death saving throws every turn and any damage taken from a source other than Vicious Adrenaline or Vicious Surge results in a death saving throw failure.


My thoughts currently are that it's fine up until Feral Brutality. That ability might be too powerful, but the idea is to create a dynamic of risk vs reward: how much damage do I want to take to dish out more damage? Thoughts?

Knitifine
2017-12-01, 07:40 AM
What system is this for?

endlessxaura
2017-12-01, 08:24 AM
I forgot to tag it - my bad. It's 5e.

Composer99
2017-12-01, 10:32 AM
Hey, so I was working on a Barbarian path that really focused on savagery and visciousness. Balancing it is proving rather difficult: the Bear totem Barbarian gets full on resistance and Frenzy gives an extra attack every turn. I think I may be missing the power scale here, but it seems that Barbarian level three is a pretty huge jump. So, I was making this one and I can't really see if it's more powerful or less powerful.


All barbarians have their roots in the wild. But, barbarians of the Path of Savagery embrace this wild spirit. When they rage, they become a wild animal: unfettered, untamed, and unstoppable. You do not have a spirit animal - you are the animal.

Viscious Adrenaline
Starting at 3rd level, your rage is boundless and dangerous to everything, including yourself. If you have raged the maximum number of times before a long rest, you may take damage equal to five times your level to rage again.

Viscious Surge
Starting at 3rd level, violence invigorates you. Whenever you deal damage with a weapon attack while raging, you may take half the damage you deal. This damage cannot be reduced in any way. If you do so, you gain the damage you dealt as temporary hit points. These temporary hit points is applied after you take half of the damage.

Wild Heart
Beginning at 6th level, you no longer need to use an action to enter rage. You may also use a reaction to enter rage if you take damage.

Feral Brutality
Starting at 10th level, you may add an extra weapon damage die to your attacks while you are using Reckless Attack.

Wild Soul
At 14th level, you ferocity allows you to fight to the bitter end. You do not fall unconscious when you are at 0 hit points while raging. You also do not suffer a death saving throw failure when you take damage from Viscious Adrenaline or Viscious Surge. However, you are still dying. You must still make death saving throws every turn and any damage taken from a source other than Viscious Adrenaline or Viscious Surge results in a death saving throw failure.


My thoughts currently are that it's fine up until Feral Brutality. That ability might be too powerful, but the idea is to create a dynamic of risk vs reward: how much damage do I want to take to dish out more damage? Thoughts?

Spelling nitpick: It's vicious, rather than viscious. (The latter makes me think of viscous, which is perhaps not the mental imagery one wants to associate with hulking, angry killing machines.)

On with the content.

Overall: You've managed to avoid falling into the trap of making this appear to be a variant of Path of the Berserker, which is what the name Path of Savagery first called to mind. So that's a good start. The features give this path its own distinct identity.

One thing I would say it's missing is some sort of noncombat feature related to becoming more animalistic (as per the initial description). Barbarians are already pretty starved for noncombat options, so it'd be good to give them something - keen senses, proficiency in Survival, at least something.

Vicious Adrenaline
This ability seems easy to abuse. 5 damage per level is a fair bit for a character who will average 8.5-9.5 hit points per level (6.5 average for the Hit Die plus Con modifiers), but even with just out-of-combat healing it could become easy to spam this feature. Crucially, what makes it abusable is the resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage you get while raging, which makes it more likely you'll be able to take the hits even after losing hit points to use this feature.

Incidentally, what is the damage type of the 5 damage per level?

Vicious Surge
Wouldn't it just be simpler to give you temporary hit points equal to half the damage you dealt, instead of taking half the damage and getting all the damage worth in temp hp? The feature as written also favours the temporary hit points given how rounding works. Also, what is the damage type? Finally, this seems like it could give you a hella lot of temporary hit points. At 4th level, say, if you have a greatsword, a Strength of 16, and the Great Weapon Master feat, you could be talking taking on average 11 damage in order to get 22 temporary hit points (7 average for weapon dice + 3 Str + 2 rage + 10 GWM). Definitely worth the trade-off, especially since temporary hit points last until you finish a long rest, and you can always get healing. It would be okay at higher levels since weapon damage doesn't scale that dramatically going forward. Maybe move this feature to a higher level?

Wild Heart
Pretty underpowered for a 6th level Primal Path feature. The Berserker, for instance, gets immunity to being charmed or frightened, while the Totem barbarian gets one of bear strength, eagle vision, or wolf hunting. (I don't have Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide or Xanathar's Guide so I haven't seen the new primal paths.) This path? You can enter a rage for free on your turn (instead of using a bonus action - rather than an action as you have written) or as a reaction outside your turn. It's not bad, but... meh. It'd be better as a 3rd-level feature.

Feral Brutality
Since you're not getting bonus action attacks in this primal path, this is probably fine, especially since you might be short on hit points most combats due to vicious adrenaline, so giving up advantage on attacks is a tough decision.

That being said, it's pretty beefed compared to other primal path 10th level features. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's worth considering the design intent behind those weaker features.

You could probably move this to 6th level, and make it a once-per-rage thing, increasing to twice per rage at 14th level or something like that.

Wild Soul
This will end up being a stopgap measure if Relentless Rage doesn't work. It's fine - indeed, I think it really captures the essence of the resolute ferocity that a barbarian expresses in rage.

So, yeah, if anything I'm more concerned about the primal path's 3rd-level features than extra weapon damage dice or 'don't fall down and die at 0 hp'. Vicious Surge would be all right if granted at a higher level, but as written Vicious Adrenaline is coming across as an unlimited rage button, which I don't expect is what you want.

endlessxaura
2017-12-01, 11:23 AM
My bad on the spelling - derped hard!

Vicious Adrenaline and Vicious Surge. My intent was to make this such that the Barbarian would choose to take damage for his features to make them a) tactical and b) evoke a feeling of ferocity. They're meant to be strong, but come at a serious risk of killing yourself. The point is that you fight like a wild animal, often pushing yourself past the breaking point. I think you're correct about Vicious Adrenaline being too strong (I'll move it to 10th and make it reduce you to 1), but I want to keep Vicious Surge as something that damages you. I added a clause that indicates the temporary hit points dissipate at the end of the rage to maybe balance it?

Wild Heart. Moving to 3rd. Probably add on something for flavor.

Feral Brutality. Ditto. I'll make it once per rage and move it to 6th.

Wild Soul. Thanks! This was really the meat of what I wanted to implement. Once you get this, Vicious Adrenaline, Vicious Surge, and Feral Brutality really find their home.

EDIT: On the topic of vicious surge balance, I kept in mind that Bear Totem gives you resistance to practically all damage. I think that the potential to gain 11 EHP is still worse than that by any practical measure.