Strength Before Death - anyone used it?

[J-H]

Fighter - Samurai Subclass


Starting at 18th level, your fighting spirit can delay the grasp of death. If you take damage that reduces you to 0 hit points and doesn’t kill you outright, you can use your reaction to delay falling unconscious, and you can immediately take an extra turn, interrupting the current turn. While you have 0 hit points during that extra turn, taking damage causes death saving throw failures as normal, and three death saving throw failures can still kill you. When the extra turn ends, you fall unconscious if you still have 0 hit points.

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


Has anyone gotten the chance to use this, or seen it in use?

It seems like a pretty epic ability.
The enemy marilith, bleeding but still strong, unleashes a flurry of six scimitar attacks on you. Critical hit, hit, oh, you're at zero? She's going to strike your downed--
Strength before death! I attack her 3 times, then action surge and attack her three more times... with four of them being disarm attempts against the weapons she hasn't used yet. Also, Second Wind, I'm not dead yet.

[Hytheter]

It's definitely a clutch ability, I've seen it turn losses into wins more than once.

[Amdy_vill]

once, in a hardcore oneshot at lv 20. killed the boss. but yeah at level 18+ tanky classes dropping is rare and also a bad sign if your tanks are dropping at that level your ****ed.

[DeadMech]

Not personally but in 3.5 playing a crusader was a bit like this. Steely Resolve, depending on your level you had a certain amount of points of damage that are delayed until the end of your next turn.

And it certainly did produce a few memorable moments. Getting demolished in a game by going face to face with a young dragon at the end of a early dungeon my character was able to stand and deliver an inspiring strike that could heal himself or someone else. Choosing to bring the unconscious cleric back instead of himself to deal the finishing blow and patch us up after.

Not being able to interrupt in the turn order like you describe with strength before death is a downside but steely resolve came online from character creation and was also used to fuel another ability. Furious Counterstrike. Essentially the more damage you took in a round the better you got at hitting stuff back. Which was nice because Crusader maneuvers were one and done shots that relied on you hitting something to have any effect. So getting any bonus to hit was appreciated

[Psyren]

It seems like a pretty epic ability.

I'd say Zealot Barb's Rage Beyond Death is stronger. You get it earlier, it's automatic (no need to save a reaction to activate it - this means it also works if you can't take reactions), and no amount of death saves can kill you. It also lasts until your rage ends instead of giving you just one extra round.

[J-H]

I'm DMing for a Zealot... yes, it's generally stronger.... but Strength Beyond Death temporarily pauses the entire battlefield and lets you take an entire turn instantly too.

[Chronos]

It makes a big difference when you do use it... but the ideal number of times to use it in a character's entire career is zero.

[Ulsan Krow]

Its pretty weak as written because of the conditionality of it, as people have said the frequency of finding an ideal scenario to pop it is poor. But its DnD so hopefully your DM is focused on trying to kill your Samurai Fighter in an ideal place. Strange to type out like that.




So it's not that strong, but yeah it can be quite epic in practice and thematically its one of the coolest abilities in the game. You could make 22 attacks in a single round when you are hasted, have a way of bonus action attacking and have both action surges and a fighting spirit remaining.


4 attacks from attack action + rapid strikes attack + haste attack + bonus action attack + action surge 4 more attacks

Drop to 0 hp. Repeat

4 attacks from attack action + rapid strikes attack + haste attack + bonus action attack + action surge 4 more attacks


So thats alot of nuke potential and theatre of the mind awesomeness if you have a nice enough DM to facilitate this for you.

[Witty Username]

I have heard the best use of it is to drink a potion of healing... probably the most nonchalant thing you can do with it.

[jojo]

Narratively the ability is Epic. Rules-wise? It's just one of the most ridiculous things out there. Someone already pointed out, all you need to do is chug a potion and you're back up with the added benefit that you can use Second Wind to further top yourself off.

Samurai is not one of the better fighter sub-classes, it's just... weird. By extension it's capstone is equally weird.

[stoutstien]

Seen it used once in play. Probably didn't change the outcome but the party remembers it differently.