Path of Escanor Barbarian Subclass 5e

[sayaijin]

So I have a player who is relatively new and wants to play as Escanor from Seven Deadly Sins. They went paladin/barbarian multi class which is frustrating them now that they're learning about spellcasting while raging, heavy armor, and spell save DC. So I decided to come up with a barbarian subclass that they could play instead. Please let me know how overpowered this is.

Path of Escanor - Barbarian Subclass
Some warriors show a reverence for the sun - using its radiance to fuel their fury. These barbarians' power rises like the sun as they take damage and they unleash it upon their foes.

Strength of Pride
Starting at 3rd level, choose a damage type. You have resistance to that type at all times, even when not raging. You can replace this damage type with another when you enter your rage.

Rising Sun
At 3rd level, whenever your resistances reduce damage, you store the mitigated hit points in a separate pool called your Rising Sun points. This pool empties when you finish a long rest.
You can use your Rising Sun points in the following ways:

You can spend 10 points to gain an additional rage.

Whenever you hit with an attack, you may spend Rising Sun points to deal additional damage. For every 10 points you spend, you deal an additional 1d8 damage. This extra damage is radiant or fire; you choose the type when you deal the damage, and you can roll a maximum number of d8's equal to your proficiency bonus.

Morning Heat
Starting at 6th level, when you choose a damage type with your Strength of Pride feature, you can choose an additional damage type. Also, if you would fail an ability check in which you are proficient, you can spend any number of Rising Sun points. For every 5 points you spend, you get a +1 to the ability check.

Cruel Sun
Starting at 10th level, you can create a ball that burns with the heat of the sun. As a bonus action, or as part of your bonus action to enter rage, you create a 5ft diameter ball of fire above your head that shreds bright light in a 30ft radius and dim light for an additional 20ft. You can move the ball up to your move speed in any direction on your turn, and both you and creatures within 10ft of the ball take 1d6 fire damage at the start of your turn. If used out of combat, the heat deals 10d6 damage to you for every minute it is active. This ability lasts until you use a bonus action to end it or until you are unconscious, and you cannot use this feature again until you finish a long rest or spend 30 Rising Sun points.

The One
Starting at 14th level, your connection with the sun grows so powerful that you gain the following benefits:

You can now use a bonus action to spend Rising Sun points and gain temporary hit points equal to the amount spent.

You can now ride on the Cruel Sun.

[sayaijin]

Design notes:
So after a player finishes a long rest, they no longer have any Rising Sun points and are thus weaker than later in the day - similar to Escanor before daybreak.

This subclass actively wants to get hit, so they are incentivised to reckless attack often. Also, if they take fire as one of their resisted types, then the level 10 Cruel Sun feature is a way to get Rising Sun points out of combat

The level 14 feature being a bonus action is strong, but being temporary hit points means they want to wait until they are all gone before getting more temp HP, otherwise it's a waste. I could potentially see making it an action though.

[sf_yak]

Cool concept. I must not have read enough 7 Deadly Sins to have met this character so I'm afraid I can't offer as informed opinion as I might have liked but here are my thoughts:

Strength of Pride
Strength of Pride reads extremely strong. If this were for general distribution, I'd worry about the lvl 3 dip. The same goes for Rising Sun. It's a very appealing 3-lvl dip. This is for a player who plans to go full barb and in that context, it's not as bad. That said, I think it would add more flavor to the class and tone down a questionable feature if they had to choose between a list of types. If radiant and fire are the class damage types, you could use offer radiant, fire, necrotic, and cold as options? Basically, if the character is resistant to the primary non-physical damage type (and later the top two) this will be very close to the bear-totem ability with all the other toys below on top. As a DM, I've found bear totem to be one of the abilities that has made it hard for everyone at the table to have fun. My one sentence summary of a larger topic is: If the barb is resistant to everything, how do you keep the barb engaged without vaporizing the sorcerer?

Rising Sun
Rising Sun needs a cap on the number of HP you can store. As written, you risk the players finding some regeneration technique and having the barb spend their time out of combat sitting in a campfire. A cap also encourages the player to use the points rather than banking them for huge smites only. I think a limit of prof*10 would be fine though I'd personally prefer (Con mod)*10 because that gives the player a greater sense of control over their resource pool and (possibly irrelevantly in this case) serves as another discouragement to dipping without commitment.

Also, It's not that important but I'd just have the extra damage be radiant. It's a better fit for the sunlight theme, it's mechanically usually the better damage type, and it removes one decision the player has to make which will speed up combat by a second or two each time they use the feature.

Finally I'm not sure about getting another rage by spending points. I don't know exactly what the problem would be but it seems like the sort of thing that could lead to unintended results. In my experience, single-class barbarians don't usually have trouble with their rage count past the first couple levels and doing a minor combat without rage isn't a huge deal. Basically, it's probably not a huge deal but unless you're trying to solve a specific problem by including this power, I'd leave it out.

Morning Heat
I'd definitely cap the number of points that can be spent on Morning Heat as well. Again, capping the bonus at Con or Prof would be reasonable and I'd default to Con. This feels like a weird ability but I'm going to assume it'd make sense if I was familiar with the character.

Cruel Sun
I know it's just a typo but I live the imagery of a sphere of energy that "shreads" bright light.

Rather than 30' bright and 20' dim, I'd stick with the standard format to reduce confusion by making its light radius either 30 bright/30 dim or 20 bright/20 dim. Based on the description of this giant ball of fire, I'd use 30/30 or even 60/60 considering it's dealing damage within 10'. Again, I'm showing my lack of familiarity with the character but based on teh imagery you're conjuring, I'd have expected the ball to deal radiant damage rather than fire and for its light to count as daylight. The character is summoning a miniature sun right?

It's probably worth adding a max range for the ball and limiting it to when you're raging. The issue I see is not the intended use, character burning themselves to fill their Rising Sun pool, it's standing two miles away and slowly immolating everyone in that nice fortress you designed for them to infiltrate. - maybe "This ability ends if you are no longer raging, if the ball is more than 120 feet away from you when your turn ends, or when you use a bonus action to dismiss the ball." Rage ends when you fall unconscious so that's built in.

I assume from context that the Cruel Sun is supposed to fly. It might help to clarify when you describe moving it.

The One
Riding the sun seems fine at 14th level. The temp HP could be a problem. There is a risk of making the character very close to damage immune as long as they're able to resist most of the damage they're taking. Resistance applies to damage taken before it's applied to temps so it can keep building while they're shielded. I don't know how to salvage the temp HP. Maybe move the lvl 6 ability check bonus to 14, scrap the temp HP, move the first resistance from lvl 3 to 6 and either scrap the second resistance or move it to 14?

[sayaijin]

First off, thanks for the feedback!



Strength of Pride
As a DM, I've found bear totem to be one of the abilities that has made it hard for everyone at the table to have fun. My one sentence summary of a larger topic is: If the barb is resistant to everything, how do you keep the barb engaged without vaporizing the sorcerer?

It's funny, the totem was my guiding upper limit here. I figured giving them a floating resistance wasn't as good as bear. I appreciate the insight though.



Rising Sun
Rising Sun needs a cap on the number of HP you can store. As written, you risk the players finding some regeneration technique and having the barb spend their time out of combat sitting in a campfire. A cap also encourages the player to use the points rather than banking them for huge smites only. I think a limit of prof*10 would be fine though I'd personally prefer (Con mod)*10 because that gives the player a greater sense of control over their resource pool and (possibly irrelevantly in this case) serves as another discouragement to dipping without commitment.

So there is no limit on the number of the pool size, but there is a limit on how many d8's they can add to an attack. This means they could save everything for the final battle of the adventuring day, and burn prof*2 d8 extra damage per turn starting at level 5, but that will cost nearly the whole pool. It's a tricky incentive. Will there be a bigger battle? Should you spend the pool now or wait? I could see nerfing it. If they save prof*20 points by not using them throughout the day, then they essentially didn't have a subclass (other than extra resistance) for most of the day.



Also, It's not that important but I'd just have the extra damage be radiant. It's a better fit for the sunlight theme, it's mechanically usually the better damage type, and it removes one decision the player has to make which will speed up combat by a second or two each time they use the feature.

See this is why I post asking for input. You're so right. I was thinking about flexibility, but just radiant is fine.



Finally I'm not sure about getting another rage by spending points. I don't know exactly what the problem would be but it seems like the sort of thing that could lead to unintended results. In my experience, single-class barbarians don't usually have trouble with their rage count past the first couple levels and doing a minor combat without rage isn't a huge deal. Basically, it's probably not a huge deal but unless you're trying to solve a specific problem by including this power, I'd leave it out.

They haven't run out of rages yet, but I like the idea of them not worrying about it. I don't think it will break anything...? Hopefully... I'll look at this more.



Morning Heat
I'd definitely cap the number of points that can be spent on Morning Heat as well. Again, capping the bonus at Con or Prof would be reasonable and I'd default to Con. This feels like a weird ability but I'm going to assume it'd make sense if I was familiar with the character.

Yeah, this is the ability I like the least. I kinda want to move the Cruel Sun feature down here, but I don't want them flying until level 14. If you have other ideas for what to do here, I'm open to ideas. Maybe making a mini sun at 6 and then something else at 10...

The character in the show uses their health to extend their short duration power up, so I thought about an ability that lets them use actual HP as Rising Sun points...idk



Cruel Sun
I know it's just a typo but I live the imagery of a sphere of energy that "shreads" bright light.

METAL!!!



Rather than 30' bright and 20' dim, I'd stick with the standard format to reduce confusion by making its light radius either 30 bright/30 dim or 20 bright/20 dim. Based on the description of this giant ball of fire, I'd use 30/30 or even 60/60 considering it's dealing damage within 10'. Again, I'm showing my lack of familiarity with the character but based on teh imagery you're conjuring, I'd have expected the ball to deal radiant damage rather than fire and for its light to count as daylight. The character is summoning a miniature sun right?

It's probably worth adding a max range for the ball and limiting it to when you're raging. The issue I see is not the intended use, character burning themselves to fill their Rising Sun pool, it's standing two miles away and slowly immolating everyone in that nice fortress you designed for them to infiltrate. - maybe "This ability ends if you are no longer raging, if the ball is more than 120 feet away from you when your turn ends, or when you use a bonus action to dismiss the ball." Rage ends when you fall unconscious so that's built in.
The idea was actually that they would be able to use this even when not raging. I wanted some out of combat utility and a way to get Rising Sun points out of combat. Until they can fly on it, it's not that impressive to just make a light source, but it's something.

But the radiant damage type, light distance, and limit on how far it can move definitely sound good.



I assume from context that the Cruel Sun is supposed to fly. It might help to clarify when you describe moving it.

I was hoping "move in any direction" like the Echo Knight subclass would work, but I can definitely be more explicit.



The One
Riding the sun seems fine at 14th level. The temp HP could be a problem. There is a risk of making the character very close to damage immune as long as they're able to resist most of the damage they're taking. Resistance applies to damage taken before it's applied to temps so it can keep building while they're shielded. I don't know how to salvage the temp HP. Maybe move the lvl 6 ability check bonus to 14, scrap the temp HP, move the first resistance from lvl 3 to 6 and either scrap the second resistance or move it to 14?
So I guess context is very important. We also have a Moon Druid on the team, and once they hit a similar level, (especially at level 20) the druid is going to majorly out scale them on at tanking. I'm not going to get into the martial vs. caster debate, but I do often make my homebrew with the intention of making martials more useful. It's still a very powerful ability, so I'm fine with nerfing it if necessary.

Thanks again for all your input.

[sf_yak]

I figured giving them a floating resistance wasn't as good as bear.
I agree it's not as good as bear.
The barb feels cool and powerful when they shrug off a huge attack with a pile of HP and resistance. That's great! I've found that bear makes it hard to justify intelligent enemies attacking the bearbearian without breaking immersion for the players. That leaves the barb ending fights with nearly full HP and not feeling cool because stuff was refusing to attack the thing that's impossible to kill. Alternately, if an enemy has enough damage to seriously hurt the bear and to make it reasonable to attack it, it has enough damage to absolutely destroy other players. The solution for this I've found is to let the dumb things attack the bearbearian and make specific enemies that do an absolute boatload damage rarely enough that they only hit once in a combat. Set it up so the bearbearian takes the hit, they feel badass because it would have beheaded the cleric, the party feels badass because they killed a dangerous thing. The problem is that setting that up takes a lot more effort on your part and that effort might have been spent elsewhere.

Are bearbearians more powerful than casters or a fully optimized character? no. That's not the issue really. The issue is that they change the way an encounter needs to be designed when you want to keep everyone engaged, meaning that some encounters won't keep everyone engaged and the ones that do will be limited in design options.
I imagine you'll be fine with whatever you choose to do!


They haven't run out of rages yet, but I like the idea of them not worrying about it. I don't think it will break anything...? Hopefully... I'll look at this more.
Totally fair. I tend to try to simplify things as much as I can by taking the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" stance.


Yeah, this is the ability I like the least. I kinda want to move the Cruel Sun feature down here, but I don't want them flying until level 14. If you have other ideas for what to do here, I'm open to ideas. Maybe making a mini sun at 6 and then something else at 10...
Perhaps reduce the AoE range to 5' around the player and have it stay fixed above their head at lvl 6. At lvl 10, add the ability to move it. Honestly, a 5' AoE is probably enough but you could boost both range and damage @ 14 without a problem. You can also add the second (or IMO, the first) floating resistance @ 10th.


The character in the show uses their health to extend their short duration power up, so I thought about an ability that lets them use actual HP as Rising Sun points...idk
This could be an option, make it 1/short rest to burn HP as points. This is always a dangerous path. The barb is burning their HP but it often becomes someone else's job to heal them. I've seen that sort of mechanic really get on a support player's nerves in the past. Honestly, it's already a risk since the barb is encouraged to take damage to power up.


I'm not going to get into the martial vs. caster debate, but I do often make my homebrew with the intention of making martials more useful. Understood. I often find it pretty natural to keep the martials up using magic items since they're easier to hand out as needed than class features that need to be pre-planned.

To be clear, this is still a VERY strong subclass relative to published options. The floating DR, damage pool, AoE damage sun, and temp HP could each be the primary selling point of a separate subclass. I'm reading between the lines to get that you're running a pretty high power game so I'm trying to keep my feedback in that line. I'm sure your player will like whatever you settle on!

[sayaijin]

I agree it's not as good as bear.
The barb feels cool and powerful when they shrug off a huge attack with a pile of HP and resistance. That's great! I've found that bear makes it hard to justify intelligent enemies attacking the bearbearian without breaking immersion for the players. That leaves the barb ending fights with nearly full HP and not feeling cool because stuff was refusing to attack the thing that's impossible to kill. Alternately, if an enemy has enough damage to seriously hurt the bear and to make it reasonable to attack it, it has enough damage to absolutely destroy other players. The solution for this I've found is to let the dumb things attack the bearbearian and make specific enemies that do an absolute boatload damage rarely enough that they only hit once in a combat. Set it up so the bearbearian takes the hit, they feel badass because it would have beheaded the cleric, the party feels badass because they killed a dangerous thing. The problem is that setting that up takes a lot more effort on your part and that effort might have been spent elsewhere.

Are bearbearians more powerful than casters or a fully optimized character? no. That's not the issue really. The issue is that they change the way an encounter needs to be designed when you want to keep everyone engaged, meaning that some encounters won't keep everyone engaged and the ones that do will be limited in design options.
I imagine you'll be fine with whatever you choose to do!


Totally fair. I tend to try to simplify things as much as I can by taking the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" stance.


Perhaps reduce the AoE range to 5' around the player and have it stay fixed above their head at lvl 6. At lvl 10, add the ability to move it. Honestly, a 5' AoE is probably enough but you could boost both range and damage @ 14 without a problem. You can also add the second (or IMO, the first) floating resistance @ 10th.


This could be an option, make it 1/short rest to burn HP as points. This is always a dangerous path. The barb is burning their HP but it often becomes someone else's job to heal them. I've seen that sort of mechanic really get on a support player's nerves in the past. Honestly, it's already a risk since the barb is encouraged to take damage to power up.

Understood. I often find it pretty natural to keep the martials up using magic items since they're easier to hand out as needed than class features that need to be pre-planned.

To be clear, this is still a VERY strong subclass relative to published options. The floating DR, damage pool, AoE damage sun, and temp HP could each be the primary selling point of a separate subclass. I'm reading between the lines to get that you're running a pretty high power game so I'm trying to keep my feedback in that line. I'm sure your player will like whatever you settle on!

So I made some changes to the subclass and ran two simulations against a Vampire Spawn (CR5): Multiclass 6 Zealot / 3 Vengeance (his current build) and level 9 in this homebrew subclass.

I used the exact same rolls for the characters, so the only differences were divine smite vs homebrew stuff. Both his current build and the homebrew beat the vampire on turn 6, but he had more health with the homebrew.

https://imgur.com/a/8x1rGcQ