Barbarian Subclass: Path of the Brawler (Unarmed/combo focused)

[Crucius]

Hey people,

This is my first homebrew subclass so be gentle :)

The core idea of this subclass was to make an unarmed melee fighter that has to 'combo' to reach full potential. I wanted to implement a cool gameplay loop that is more than "hit the meat bag until it is dead". After a lot of thinking I felt that the Barbarian would be the best class for this, as I felt there was a niche that was not yet tapped here. While the berserker (don't get me started) and the zealot do nicely as Skirmisher-type barbarians, I wanted to make something that really leans into that specific role. Also the number of attacks of the Fighter and Monk made it tough to balance anything that relied on a number of attacks.

While I can see that it treads on the ground of the battlemaster and the monk, I'm confident that this package still feels distinct enough that any overlap isn't minded as much.

Throughout this post I will be giving comments on what my design choices were while making this subclass. Please note that the names given for some features are not final. They are there to convey the purpose of the feature.

Path of the Brawler
Hailing from an urban jungle rather than a natural one, these barbarians can range from brutal thugs to bespoke bodyguards or bouncers. Their rage is a heightened combat focus where pain is muffled, and violence is ensured. Molded by fighting pits and close quarters brawling, those who walk this path are experts in unarmed combat.

Level 3
Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can use advanced techniques of pugilism. Your unarmed strikes use a fury die for damage and have the finesse property. Your fury die is a d4. While raging, every time after you deal damage with a melee attack on each of your turns you increase the fury die by one size, up to a d12. If you have both hands free, your fists count as separate weapons for the purposes of two-weapon fighting.

As long as your fury die is larger than a d4, you can access a suite of combat abilities. You can use only one ability per attack.

When a creature you can see hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to roll a fury die. You reduce the damage you take by an amount equal to the roll plus your constitution modifier. Your fury die size then reduces by one size.

Designer notes: This might seem like much, especially at higher die sizes, remember that damage resistance comes after damage reduction, meaning it is not AS good as it seems. Furthermore, compared to the battlemaster maneuver or the Interception fighting style, this feature is on par with those. If it's too strong the +con mod could be removed.

Once per turn when you hit with a melee attack with your fists, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice an additional time and add it as extra damage of the weapon’s damage type. Your fury die size then reduces by two sizes.

Designer notes: Here you get the benefit of the die size as it currently is. Only after the ability has been resolved does it decrease in size. Furthermore, because this ability resolves before Unbridled Strength increases the die size, the die size has to be reduced by 2 for it to be a net reduction in die size. This ability is here to increase damage when you crit, as barbarians tend to do. It feels nice to actively increase the damage potential of an attack, regardless of crit or not.

You can strike with the intent of debilitating your foes. When you hit a creature with a melee attack using your fists you can roll a fury die. The creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + half your fury die roll, or be blinded until the start of your next turn. Your fury die size then decreases by two sizes.

Designer notes: Here I wanted a crowd control ability befitting a skirmisher, AND something that uses the die size, without adding damage. I decided on this weird method of determining save DC, effectively forcing the player to have a high combo count before attempting this. I chose the Blinded condition because it's quite debilitating without it encroaching on the Stunned power level, which is reserved for monks. Bonus points for allowing a skirmisher playstyle because blinded enemies cannot take opportunity attacks, allowing the player to weave between enemies.


Your fury die resets to a d4 when your rage ends.

Designer notes: The d4 gives this subclass a slow start, but can reach impressive damage output, befitting a barbarian. The ability is worded in such a way that you deal damage before the die size increases. The finesse property is here so people can build dex-barbarians and it opens up some interesting rogue multiclass options. The two-weapon fighting clause is to make the subclass more interesting at level 3, allowing you to reach maximum fury die size in 3 turns, without stepping too hard on the berseker's bonus action attack by removing the strength damage bonus.


At 3rd level, your experience with city folk has taught you how to use your presence to influence people. When you make an Intimidation or Performance check you can use your Strength attribute instead of Charisma for the roll.

Additionally, you gain proficiency with the Insight skill if you don’t already have it. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses this proficiency.

Designer notes: I generally miss roleplay/skill features in barbarians so I added one. By changing a few charisma skills to strength this allows them to be better at those checks, get advantage on them in combat (for off-book roleplay moments) and it combos with the lvl 18 feature of the core barbarian class.

I'm not too sure about the Insight expertise and I feel it might be too much, but I really like the idea of the silent strong man or woman in the corner that can read people like a book because they've experienced the worst of them already, and provide the party with assistance in social encounters that way.


Level 6
Starting at 6th level your penchant for brawling reaches new peaks, causing your unarmed strikes to count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Additionally, when a hostile creature within 5 feet is reduced to 0 hit points while you are raging, you can use your reaction to roll a fury die to charge their body with explosive energy. When you do you can push the creature up to 20 feet away from you in a straight line. Each creature in a 10-foot radius sphere around the body must make a Dexterity saving throw equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + half your fury die roll, as the corpse detonates with a thunderous clap. On a failed save a creature takes thunder damage equal to your fury die roll, or half as much damage on a successful one. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your constitution modifier, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Designer notes: Obligatory magical punches. Nothing new there.

The second part however is something I REALLY wanted in this subclass. I know that level 6 features are usually a bit more toolbox/roleplay focused, but since level 3 already got something like that I thought I could get away with this here. Again the weird DC calculation to really promote the use of this feature at higher combo counts. The radius is tuned in accordance with the DMG to hit about 2 creatures. This way the damage output is on par with a regular opportunity attack, except that it's an AoE ability.


Level 10
Starting at 10th level, while raging, every time after you deal damage with a melee attack on each of your turns, and your previous attack this turn increased your fury die, you increase the fury die by two sizes instead of one.

Designer notes: This is around the level that the fighter gets their third attack, so I wanted to give something that would increase the speed with which the fury die increases. A bit boring, but I think it's a must at this point.


Level 14
At 14th level you learn the ability to focus your fury into an all-out punch. When you hit with an attack and your fury die is larger than a d4, you can choose for the hit to become a critical hit. When you do you roll your fury die and every lower die for the damage. Your fury die then resets to a d4.

Once you use this feature you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Designer notes: Before you get your panties in a bunch; this averages out to ~60 damage on max fury die size at this level. A rogue on a crit does more damage at this level, as does a smiting paladin. And they can do it more frequently and without as much setup as this subclass.

Now for the proper explanation: I was thinking hard about a good capstone for a skirmisher and when I looked at the monk I noticed that their capstones are mostly about ridiculous damage in one strike (Long Death Monks especially). I then wanted to merge subclass features with main class features and I thought it would be cool to make a parade of dice (all fury die sizes) and combine it with a class feature that is only sporadically used: Brutal Critical. By ensuring this hit is a crit this feature is under the player's control for once.

To be honest, while I think it is a fine ability, which displays the powers of the subclass and the main class beautifully, just dealing damage is also one of the most boring things you can do. An alternative feature could be a transformation (a final form so to speak) that benefits you for the rest of the combat, but I haven't thought of anything worthy of a capstone.


Please let me know what you think. I'm pretty confident about it, but I alone cannot think of all the ways this could go horribly wrong, so consulting the collective hive-mind seemed like a good idea.

[sandmote]

I like the idea and most of the execution. Maybe allow for the fury die to be applied to grapple checks as well, to help give some utility?

Name suggestion for Poor-Man's Smite: Shattering Blow. Further, "your fists count as separate weapons for the purposes of two-weapon fighting," doesn't grant the light property in 5e.

Two-Step Goodbye should probably apply specifically it damages the creature hit. Just to establish what happens when it affects a creature to become unstable when reduced to 0 hit points instead of dead when reduced to 0 hit points.

I'm not clear how Overkill interacts with Brutal Critical and a critical hit. I'm assuming the extra dice only apply to the initial fury die, for an average of 6.5*3+5.5+4.5+3.5+2.5+5+3=43.5 average damage on a hit using a d12 fury die at 14th level. In that case, it may be easier to write it as "when you score a critical hit, you can deal additional die of damage of each die size smaller than your current fury die," or something similar. Although I'd be interested in how you got to "~60 damage," for this.

However, I read the idea in general as too strong. Contrast a rogue at 14th level, who deals 7d6+1d8+5 or 34 average in the same circumstances. Now, the rogue can apply crit damage to that, for 63 damage, but the rogue can't do that at will; they have to actually score a critical hit. Can't do this every turn, but it still steps well into the rogue's features. The barbarian class is already just below the rogue's damage per turn anyway, and the class has far more bulk to boot.

[Damon_Tor]

Looks great overall. I love the core fury dice mechanic. I love the urban barbarian flavor.

There are bits I find overcomplicated or fiddly, but that can be ironed out.


Hey people,

This is my first homebrew subclass so be gentle :)

The core idea of this subclass was to make an unarmed melee fighter that has to 'combo' to reach full potential. I wanted to implement a cool gameplay loop that is more than "hit the meat bag until it is dead". After a lot of thinking I felt that the Barbarian would be the best class for this, as I felt there was a niche that was not yet tapped here. While the berserker (don't get me started) and the zealot do nicely as Skirmisher-type barbarians, I wanted to make something that really leans into that specific role. Also the number of attacks of the Fighter and Monk made it tough to balance anything that relied on a number of attacks.

While I can see that it treads on the ground of the battlemaster and the monk, I'm confident that this package still feels distinct enough that any overlap isn't minded as much.

A member of one class who straddles the line line between that class and another isn't inherently problematic, and in fact that core concept is the basis of a ton of subclasses. You have to take care to make sure they don't wind up better than the class they're emulating or lose the core identity of their base class, but I don't think that's a problem here.


Path of the Brawler
Hailing from an urban jungle rather than a natural one, these barbarians can range from brutal thugs to bespoke bodyguards or bouncers. Their rage is a heightened combat focus where pain is muffled, and violence is ensured. Molded by fighting pits and close quarters brawling, those who walk this path are experts in unarmed combat.

A great starting point, like I said I love the flavor. I worry some that they have no unarmed ability outside of their rage. Upgrading their base unarmed damage die to a 1d4+str would be appropriate here I think, just the very basic "brawler" equivalent to get by.


Level 3
Unbridled Strength Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can use advanced techniques of pugilism. Your unarmed strikes use a fury die for damage and have the finesse property. Your fury die is a d4. While raging, every time after you deal damage with a melee attack on each of your turns you increase the fury die by one size, up to a d12. If you have both hands free, your fists count as separate weapons for the purposes of two-weapon fighting.

I notice the fury die increases with any melee attack you make while raging, not just an unarmed attack. That means you could take the first swing of the fight with a shortsword before going barefisted. With the Dual Wielder feat you could take the first two swings of a fight with any two melee weapons, so your damage would be 1d8->1d8->1d8->1d10->1d2 Not sure if that was intentional or not. I don't mind it, it's kind of neat if he starts a fight with escrima sticks or something then drops them and just goes in hard.

I'm going to suggest that your "increase your unarmed damage dice by 1 size" becomes one of the specific "maneuver" choices you can pick for your attack, mostly because this helps you avoid having to use fiddly language and extra math to result the dice decreasing by 1. So in other words, instead of a "passive" ability that says "whenever you deal damage with an attack your fury damage increased by one" one of your "maneuvers" is "Build Up- After you deal damage with this attack, increase your fury die by one size."


Block When a creature you can see hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to roll a fury die. You reduce the damage you take by an amount equal to the roll plus your constitution modifier. Your fury die size then reduces by one size.

Designer notes: This might seem like much, especially at higher die sizes, remember that damage resistance comes after damage reduction, meaning it is not AS good as it seems. Furthermore, compared to the battlemaster maneuver or the Interception fighting style, this feature is on par with those. If it's too strong the +con mod could be removed.
[/SPOILER]

I actually don't think it's strong enough (as you note, due to rage's resistance it's actually only protecting half the hitpoints of the Battlemaster equivalent) and I also think it's too similar to the Battlemaster's Parry. It also doesn't seem particularly barbaric.

Suggestion: Distinguish it from Parry by making it function only against melee attacks (intercepting arrows with your bare hands is a monk thing, let them keep that) but at the same time include some damage to the attacker (probably equal to damage prevented without an attack roll to keep things simple and fast). In this way the the battlemaster, the brawler and the monk would each have a similar ability but with a unique spin: the battlemaster's deflects ranged or melee but doesn't counterattack. The monk's blocks only ranged and the bralwer's blocks only melee, but both also get a counter-strike.

Flavor-wise, I would see this as a sort of Krav-Maga-eque strike to the outstretched arm of the attacking enemy.


Poor-Man's Smite Once per turn when you hit with a melee attack with your fists, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice an additional time and add it as extra damage of the weapon’s damage type. Your fury die size then reduces by two sizes.

Designer notes: Here you get the benefit of the die size as it currently is. Only after the ability has been resolved does it decrease in size. Furthermore, because this ability resolves before Unbridled Strength increases the die size, the die size has to be reduced by 2 for it to be a net reduction in die size. This ability is here to increase damage when you crit, as barbarians tend to do. It feels nice to actively increase the damage potential of an attack, regardless of crit or not.
[/SPOILER]

I don't care for the fiddly language about reducing the damage by 2 when what's actually happening is you are decreasing it by 1 instead of increasing it by 1. See my note up above for a solution to this: if the "build up" ability is explicitly a maneuver (and you can't use two maneuver's on a given attack) then all you need to do is include "decrease your fury by 1" in this maneuver. You don't have to worry about which "resolves" first.

Also, I don't think this needs to be limited to once per turn: if you've dutifully filled up your combo bar, I don't see why you can't blow it a little faster. Minor quibble, probably fine either way.


Dirty FightingYou can strike with the intent of debilitating your foes. When you hit a creature with a melee attack using your fists you can roll a fury die. The creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + half your fury die roll, or be blinded until the start of your next turn. Your fury die size then decreases by two sizes.

Designer notes: Here I wanted a crowd control ability befitting a skirmisher, AND something that uses the die size, without adding damage. I decided on this weird method of determining save DC, effectively forcing the player to have a high combo count before attempting this. I chose the Blinded condition because it's quite debilitating without it encroaching on the Stunned power level, which is reserved for monks. Bonus points for allowing a skirmisher playstyle because blinded enemies cannot take opportunity attacks, allowing the player to weave between enemies.
[/SPOILER]

Adding a die roll is itself kind of distasteful (two dice rolls where there only needs to be one: dice rolls and the accompanying math take table time) but then it's not even the result of the dice roll, it's half the result. And while I understand that blinded isn't necessarily as strong as stunned, it's still pretty strong. The battlemaster just gets prone, disarm, push and fear and this sort of thing is his whole jam, so I don't know that this sounds reasonable to me, especially at level 3 when the monk can't stun until level 5.

As an alternative suggestion: it seems like a missed opportunity to have an unarmed-focused barbarian that doesn't have any explicit grappling ability. Maybe retool this to be a no-action grapple when an attack hits, with the fury dice result as a bonus to the athletics check.


Your fury die resets to a d4 when your rage ends.

Designer notes: The d4 gives this subclass a slow start, but can reach impressive damage output, befitting a barbarian. The ability is worded in such a way that you deal damage before the die size increases. The finesse property is here so people can build dex-barbarians and it opens up some interesting rogue multiclass options. The two-weapon fighting clause is to make the subclass more interesting at level 3, allowing you to reach maximum fury die size in 3 turns, without stepping too hard on the berseker's bonus action attack by removing the strength damage bonus.
[/SPOILER]

No issues here, I think this works well in general.


People Person At 3rd level, your experience with city folk has taught you how to use your presence to influence people. When you make an Intimidation or Performance check you can use your Strength attribute instead of Charisma for the roll.

Additionally, you gain proficiency with the Insight skill if you don’t already have it. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses this proficiency.

Designer notes: I generally miss roleplay/skill features in barbarians so I added one. By changing a few charisma skills to strength this allows them to be better at those checks, get advantage on them in combat (for off-book roleplay moments) and it combos with the lvl 18 feature of the core barbarian class.

I'm not too sure about the Insight expertise and I feel it might be too much, but I really like the idea of the silent strong man or woman in the corner that can read people like a book because they've experienced the worst of them already, and provide the party with assistance in social encounters that way.

This is fine, but barbarians generally get their social/exploration feature at level 6.


Two-Step Goodbye Starting at 6th level your penchant for brawling reaches new peaks, causing your unarmed strikes to count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Designer notes: Obligatory magical punches. Nothing new there.

Necessary around this level, no arguments here.


Additionally, when a hostile creature within 5 feet is reduced to 0 hit points while you are raging, you can use your reaction to roll a fury die to charge their body with explosive energy. When you do you can push the creature up to 20 feet away from you in a straight line. Each creature in a 10-foot radius sphere around the body must make a Dexterity saving throw equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + half your fury die roll, as the with a thunderous clap. On a failed save a creature takes thunder damage equal to your fury die roll, or half as much damage on a successful one. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your constitution modifier, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

[/i]The second part however is something I REALLY wanted in this subclass. I know that level 6 features are usually a bit more toolbox/roleplay focused, but since level 3 already got something like that I thought I could get away with this here. Again the weird DC calculation to really promote the use of this feature at higher combo counts. The radius is tuned in accordance with the DMG to hit about 2 creatures. This way the damage output is on par with a regular opportunity attack, except that it's an AoE ability.[/I]

Let me say right off of the bat I like the idea of throwing guys at other guys. Perfect fit. But...the bodies, they... explode? Why? That's... that's just really weird to me. It's entirely a matter of opinion, but this is a total thematic mismatch. Except for this, there's nothing about this class that suggests they do explicitly supernatural stuff. What's the lore here?

I'd really like to see a throw where you toss one guy into another guy, or even into several other guys in a line, but I'm really turned off at "charging corpses with explosive energy".

But also, barbarians generally don't a big improvement to their combat capabilities at level 6. This should probably be moved to level 10. At level 10 you could probably justify throwing living guys around too.


Level 10
Consecutive Hits Starting at 10th level, while raging, every time after you deal damage with a melee attack on each of your turns, and your previous attack this turn increased your fury die, you increase the fury die by two sizes instead of one.

Designer notes: This is around the level that the fighter gets their third attack, so I wanted to give something that would increase the speed with which the fury die increases. A bit boring, but I think it's a must at this point.

I would be careful comparing a subclass to a base class like this: the barbarian chassis gains progressively more rages per day and bigger rage damage while the fighter's attacks per round increases. If your fury die increase by 2 with each attack at this level you'll be dual-wielding d12s after the first round, which is probably too strong.

As I said earlier, your throw ability should move here to level 10. If you make usable on a living (maybe grappled?) target it becomes a great control power. Maybe allow the brawler to move a certain number of feet with the guy in tow before the throw so it's easier to set up a 2+ person line attack so you still get the AoE you're looking for, just as more of lighting bolt than a fireball. At level 10 you're pushing the limits of realism further than before, so you could justify a longer distance throw too.


Level 14
Overkill At 14th level you learn the ability to focus your fury into an all-out punch. When you hit with an attack and your fury die is larger than a d4, you can choose for the hit to become a critical hit. When you do you roll your fury die and every lower die for the damage. Your fury die then resets to a d4.

Once you use this feature you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Designer notes: Before you get your panties in a bunch; this averages out to ~60 damage on max fury die size at this level. A rogue on a crit does more damage at this level, as does a smiting paladin. And they can do it more frequently and without as much setup as this subclass.

Now for the proper explanation: I was thinking hard about a good capstone for a skirmisher and when I looked at the monk I noticed that their capstones are mostly about ridiculous damage in one strike (Long Death Monks especially). I then wanted to merge subclass features with main class features and I thought it would be cool to make a parade of dice (all fury die sizes) and combine it with a class feature that is only sporadically used: Brutal Critical. By ensuring this hit is a crit this feature is under the player's control for once.

To be honest, while I think it is a fine ability, which displays the powers of the subclass and the main class beautifully, just dealing damage is also one of the most boring things you can do. An alternative feature could be a transformation (a final form so to speak) that benefits you for the rest of the combat, but I haven't thought of anything worthy of a capstone.

I worry a bit that being able to designate an attack as a crit steps on the assassin's toes who has to win two opposed checks (initiative, stealth) and succeed on an attack roll to be able to get a guaranteed crit, and even then they're subject to DM whims about whether a stealthy approach is even possible. In practice (though your mileage may vary) they actually get to use it far less than once per day.

Also, as you note, it's kind of boring for a 1/day ability.

A little while ago, I posted a monk here, a subclass that spent ki to sorta-smite. What I came up to sort-of increase his crit rate is I allowed him to "save" his crits: if he got a crit he could decide to treat it like a normal hit and he could use it up to a minute later (so generally sometime during that same encounter: he couldn't use a crit he got in the morning sometime that afternoon). I feel like something like that would work well here, where if your guy got a "wasted" crit when he punched a guy for 1d4 or 1d6 he could save it for later when he started punching for d10s or d12s. That's an ability I don't think you'd have to keep a daily limit on, though I would skip out on adding the extra dice to it.


Please let me know what you think. I'm pretty confident about it, but I alone cannot think of all the ways this could go horribly wrong, so consulting the collective hive-mind seemed like a good idea.

Like I said, I like it a lot. I wouldn't have gotten so in depth in my criticism if I hadn't. Really great job.

[Crucius]

First off, thank you so much for answering with in depth feedback! There is a lot so I'll tackle each subject separately.


A great starting point, like I said I love the flavor. I worry some that they have no unarmed ability outside of their rage. Upgrading their base unarmed damage die to a 1d4+str would be appropriate here I think, just the very basic "brawler" equivalent to get by.
Yes I agree, I will rewrite the ability such that it states that the fury die exists outside of rage (thus giving them 1d4 unarmed damage) but that you cannot increase it, and since losing rage resets the die size, cannot keep it 'big'.


I notice the fury die increases with any melee attack you make while raging, not just an unarmed attack. That means you could take the first swing of the fight with a shortsword before going barefisted. With the Dual Wielder feat you could take the first two swings of a fight with any two melee weapons, so your damage would be 1d8->1d8->1d8->1d10->1d2 Not sure if that was intentional or not. I don't mind it, it's kind of neat if he starts a fight with escrima sticks or something then drops them and just goes in hard.
Ah hmm, no that was not intentional. I feel that part of the balance here is that the damage should start a bit lower if I want to justify 'poor-man smiting' and 3 attacks with d12's (eventually), without stepping on the Zealot and Berserker's toes.


I'm going to suggest that your "increase your unarmed damage dice by 1 size" becomes one of the specific "maneuver" choices you can pick for your attack, mostly because this helps you avoid having to use fiddly language and extra math to result the dice decreasing by 1. So in other words, instead of a "passive" ability that says "whenever you deal damage with an attack your fury damage increased by one" one of your "maneuvers" is "Build Up- After you deal damage with this attack, increase your fury die by one size."
This actually makes a lot of sense! Yeah, I'll do that!


I actually don't think it's strong enough (as you note, due to rage's resistance it's actually only protecting half the hitpoints of the Battlemaster equivalent) and I also think it's too similar to the Battlemaster's Parry. It also doesn't seem particularly barbaric.

Suggestion: Distinguish it from Parry by making it function only against melee attacks (intercepting arrows with your bare hands is a monk thing, let them keep that) but at the same time include some damage to the attacker (probably equal to damage prevented without an attack roll to keep things simple and fast). In this way the the battlemaster, the brawler and the monk would each have a similar ability but with a unique spin: the battlemaster's deflects ranged or melee but doesn't counterattack. The monk's blocks only ranged and the bralwer's blocks only melee, but both also get a counter-strike.

Flavor-wise, I would see this as a sort of Krav-Maga-eque strike to the outstretched arm of the attacking enemy.

I wanted to give them some protection from ranged attacks, but I'm still on the fence about that. You directly trade offense for defense with this ability, so having it trigger more often only makes the choice to make relevant more often.

You raise good points here. When looking at similar features I actually think it is a bit too strong; Interception fighting style (works on ranged as well) and Parry Maneuver often reduce the damage by a lesser amount, so I don't know what to do here yet. While rebuking does feel barbaric, I'm concerned about pumping the damage output too high (this includes reactions as well).


Also, I don't think this needs to be limited to once per turn: if you've dutifully filled up your combo bar, I don't see why you can't blow it a little faster. Minor quibble, probably fine either way.

I limited it to once per turn since the Zealot also does this. The only difference is that you can also add it to opportunity attacks to make them more dangerous (which they should be on a barbarian), whereas the Zealot does not allow its extra damage to be added outside of your turn. Again; I'm scared of pushing the damage output sky high.


Adding a die roll is itself kind of distasteful (two dice rolls where there only needs to be one: dice rolls and the accompanying math take table time) but then it's not even the result of the dice roll, it's half the result. And while I understand that blinded isn't necessarily as strong as stunned, it's still pretty strong. The battlemaster just gets prone, disarm, push and fear and this sort of thing is his whole jam, so I don't know that this sounds reasonable to me, especially at level 3 when the monk can't stun until level 5.

As an alternative suggestion: it seems like a missed opportunity to have an unarmed-focused barbarian that doesn't have any explicit grappling ability. Maybe retool this to be a no-action grapple when an attack hits, with the fury dice result as a bonus to the athletics check.

I could have this unlock at level 6? It would put it behind stunning strike in two ways this way. I still would like to keep the fury die in there, even though it is a bit finnicky. I could have it default to the average roll of the die, that way you don't have to calculate it on the fly but only have to reference a table. Still not really elegant, but a lot less mathy.


Let me say right off of the bat I like the idea of throwing guys at other guys. Perfect fit. But...the bodies, they... explode? Why? That's... that's just really weird to me. It's entirely a matter of opinion, but this is a total thematic mismatch. Except for this, there's nothing about this class that suggests they do explicitly supernatural stuff. What's the lore here?

I'd really like to see a throw where you toss one guy into another guy, or even into several other guys in a line, but I'm really turned off at "charging corpses with explosive energy".

But also, barbarians generally don't a big improvement to their combat capabilities at level 6. This should probably be moved to level 10. At level 10 you could probably justify throwing living guys around too.

Yeahhhh... I hear ya. Dammit, I really liked this feature. This was meant to stimulate thinking about positioning; Normally it doesn't really matter from which side you beat someone up, but when you can knock them away in a straight line on death then it starts to matter. I hope you can appreciate that knocking a body into someone else is such a precise maneuver that it will never happen, therefore it has to be some sort of AoE. Do you agree? Hey, at least the flavor is very barbaric hehehe. (This is me from the future: I just reread the part you wrote about the level 10 feature, and that answered my question: you agree :P I'll think about doing it as a sort of catapult spell.)

Furthermore, I put this here at level 6 because... it's a cool feature. With games rarely going high into the double digit levels, I figured the player would like to get the cool features first, before improving existing features.


I would be careful comparing a subclass to a base class like this: the barbarian chassis gains progressively more rages per day and bigger rage damage while the fighter's attacks per round increases. If your fury die increase by 2 with each attack at this level you'll be dual-wielding d12s after the first round, which is probably too strong.

As I said earlier, your throw ability should move here to level 10. If you make usable on a living (maybe grappled?) target it becomes a great control power. Maybe allow the brawler to move a certain number of feet with the guy in tow before the throw so it's easier to set up a 2+ person line attack so you still get the AoE you're looking for, just as more of lighting bolt than a fireball. At level 10 you're pushing the limits of realism further than before, so you could justify a longer distance throw too.

First round gets you from a d4 to a d10 (since your first bonus action will always be a rage, so your speed is always hampered here), assuming both attacks hit (first +1: d4->d6. Second +2: d6->d10). This means that in the 2nd round, after the first attack you get the d12 and can start doing big boy stuff, and keep doing it (+2 size on second- and bonus-action-attacks).

I'll think about moving the body throwing feature here, though I really think the current level 10 feature is very much needed for this subclass to stay relevant in tier 3.


I worry a bit that being able to designate an attack as a crit steps on the assassin's toes who has to win two opposed checks (initiative, stealth) and succeed on an attack roll to be able to get a guaranteed crit, and even then they're subject to DM whims about whether a stealthy approach is even possible. In practice (though your mileage may vary) they actually get to use it far less than once per day.

Also, as you note, it's kind of boring for a 1/day ability.

A little while ago, I posted a monk here, a subclass that spent ki to sorta-smite. What I came up to sort-of increase his crit rate is I allowed him to "save" his crits: if he got a crit he could decide to treat it like a normal hit and he could use it up to a minute later (so generally sometime during that same encounter: he couldn't use a crit he got in the morning sometime that afternoon). I feel like something like that would work well here, where if your guy got a "wasted" crit when he punched a guy for 1d4 or 1d6 he could save it for later when he started punching for d10s or d12s. That's an ability I don't think you'd have to keep a daily limit on, though I would skip out on adding the extra dice to it.

Hey, yeah, that could work! Banking a crit that would be less impressive would be a very strategic thing to do, I dig it!




Like I said, I like it a lot. I wouldn't have gotten so in depth in my criticism if I hadn't. Really great job.

Thanks! I really appreciate it! Lot's of work still I can see, but that's only due to good feedback!

[Crucius]

I like the idea and most of the execution. Maybe allow for the fury die to be applied to grapple checks as well, to help give some utility?

Name suggestion for Poor-Man's Smite: Shattering Blow. Further, "your fists count as separate weapons for the purposes of two-weapon fighting," doesn't grant the light property in 5e.

Two-Step Goodbye should probably apply specifically it damages the creature hit. Just to establish what happens when it affects a creature to become unstable when reduced to 0 hit points instead of dead when reduced to 0 hit points.

I'm not clear how Overkill interacts with Brutal Critical and a critical hit. I'm assuming the extra dice only apply to the initial fury die, for an average of 6.5*3+5.5+4.5+3.5+2.5+5+3=43.5 average damage on a hit using a d12 fury die at 14th level. In that case, it may be easier to write it as "when you score a critical hit, you can deal additional die of damage of each die size smaller than your current fury die," or something similar. Although I'd be interested in how you got to "~60 damage," for this.

However, I read the idea in general as too strong. Contrast a rogue at 14th level, who deals 7d6+1d8+5 or 34 average in the same circumstances. Now, the rogue can apply crit damage to that, for 63 damage, but the rogue can't do that at will; they have to actually score a critical hit. Can't do this every turn, but it still steps well into the rogue's features. The barbarian class is already just below the rogue's damage per turn anyway, and the class has far more bulk to boot.

Light property added. Good catch!

If one were to Overkill on a d12 fury die, they would roll the following: 4d12 (one from the fury die base weapon damage, one from regular critical hit, two from brutal critical) + 2d10 + 2d8 + 2d6 + 2d4 + STR mod + rage damage, which is on average 66 damage (assuming 20 strength at this point).

The barbarian may have more bulk, but with Uncanny Dodge and Evasion I don't necessarily think it has more survivability than the rogue.