Giving Barbarians Choices In Combat: Primal Stunts

[WarrentheHero]

Hello all! One thing that I've come to dislike about martials in 5e is that they often don't have much true agency in combat. Ultimately, their turns boil down to "I run up to the bad guy and swing my d20 at him twice." Of course, this is moderated a little bit by things like Great Weapon Master, but lacking that, some martials don't have much meaningful choice on what they do, and the worst of them is Barbarian. Fighter has Maneuvers, or certain other class features like Magic Shot or Eldritch Knight Spellcasting. Paladin has spells and to-smite-or-not-to-smite. Barbarians can choose to Rage, but they almost always should do that, so it's not really a choice, and Reckless Attack, which is usually again should usually be used.

In an effort to rectify this, I've drawn up a series of bonus class features that allow the Barbarian to make a few more active choices on their turn. Overall, this does noticeably increase the power level of the Barbarian, but I am okay with this as it gives the player (hopefully) meaningful choice on how they approach their turn instead of attacking twice and passing turn. Some of these Stunts, namely Terrifying Might, are more passive than others, but on a whole my aim was that each one should have a use-case or a decision baked in.

The basic premise is that the Barbarian knows a few of these Stunts, and they can use the Stunts they know whenever they Rage, no resource required. No Proficiency times per day or anything; if you're Raging, you break your normal limits and can do cool stunts.

It's just a one-page document, so I'd appreciate it if y'all might give it a quick read and tell me what you think. Thanks everyone!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Whn7-1MtVigBYTcqrQ-kva9oR2rOAF6P/view?usp=sharing

[Amechra]

While I like the general idea, I feel like your chosen stunts don't actually achieve your goals (namely, giving Barbarians meaningful decisions in combat). Before I go down the list, I'm going to just say that Great Weapon Master's power attack is not an interesting or meaningful decision, since it's trading damage for damage — "should I use GWM?" is a question that you can easily answer with some quick number crunching.



Crushing Critical, Raging Rush, and Terrifying Might are all entirely passive.
"I make an attack that deals bonus damage" isn't really a meaningful decision, except insofar as picking the target is interesting (it's usually pretty straightforward). Looking at you, Bloody Finisher.
Exhausting Strike has a different issue — it's a cool idea, but it scales awkwardly and the cost is pretty nasty (think about how many people are turned off of Berserker because of how nasty exhaustion is). Personally, I'd combine it with Bloody Finisher — you can end your Rage to auto-crit, dealing an additional damage die if your target is below half HP.
Brutal Cleave, Kneecap, and Pincushion all share the problem that, while their effects are reasonably interesting... they're also automatic. If I only have Brutal Cleave, for example (because I chose it along with Crushing Critical and Terrifying Might at 1st level), I'm going to be spamming it every round when I'm raging, because I don't have any reason not to.
Quaking Crush is an alright idea, though you'd definitely have to increase the damage — 1d6 bludgeoning damage is absolute chump change even at 1st level.
Hulking Hurl is pretty decent looking. It's honestly pretty complicated, though, and could probably be handled more cleanly.


One potential alternate approach would be to do something like...



Finishing Strike is a Barbarian class feature that lets you end your Rage early to automatically crit on an attack. If that attack targets a creature below half of their HP maximum, the crit deals an extra weapon damage die.
Brutal Handling is another Barbarian class feature that slaps some damage onto successful Grapple or Shove checks (to make using those alternative attacks more tempting). You can toss stuff like Disarming on here if you'd like.
And so on and so forth until you're happy with what you see.

[Yakk]

Thoughts:

What if it was a table with 10 entries. You rolled 3d10 at the start of your turn, and can use any of the entries you rolled (but maybe only one) that turn.

This has the advantage that it offers a possibly meaningful choice each turn that differs each turn.

The randomness fits with the chaos of the barbarians' rage - they aren't making plans, they are ACTING.

A few of them would be tweaked based off of the "roughly 1 round in 3 you have a chance to do this". For example, the roar might be "as a bonus action, or as part of entering a rage".

Also, move the "you are not already using a stunt" into general rules not attached to each ability.

[WarrentheHero]

While I like the general idea, I feel like your chosen stunts don't actually achieve your goals (namely, giving Barbarians meaningful decisions in combat). Before I go down the list, I'm going to just say that Great Weapon Master's power attack is not an interesting or meaningful decision, since it's trading damage for damage — "should I use GWM?" is a question that you can easily answer with some quick number crunching.
I do agree that I'm not all the way there on actualizing this idea, so I really appreciate your feedback! The situation you talked about with GWM is an ongoing issue- options should be good/fun, and therefore strong, and therefore will basically always be used if they can. So the solution I think is to offer different specialized solutions for various situations. One for single-target, one for AoE, one for tanking, etc. At least, that's the mindset I try to keep.



Crushing Critical, Raging Rush, and Terrifying Might are all entirely passive.
I agree, especially about Crishing Critical, but Terrifying Might helps to validate a character's skill choices. Players (and Barbs) like to have Intimidation, but outside of simply strongarming people it doesn't really have mechanical use. So while this doesn't offer a combat choice, it does validate a build choice. I could also see a world where this replaces an Attack to make an Intimidation check agaisnt a target to Frighten them, making it an active combat choice with an opportunity cost.

Raging Rush is also passive, but I think it does (or at least can) still effect meaningful choice by asking the question: do you continue to melee the boss/bruiser or do you finish off the mooks for temp HP? And sure the wizard should be AoE blasting the mooks, but if the barb wants to replenish then the wizard has something else to do, so the simple fact that the Barbarian has this ability can effect the tactics of the entire team. For this reason I actually really like this one; it's not a direct "do I have a better attack than this" but it still has an impact of what the Barbarian does with their turn.



"I make an attack that deals bonus damage" isn't really a meaningful decision, except insofar as picking the target is interesting (it's usually pretty straightforward). Looking at you, Bloody Finisher.
Yeah this one is a struggle for me and might be cut entirely. The primary choice for this one is that Bloody Finisher is an entire action, so you give up a second attack. So the choice is either a supercrit or two attacks. If you miss BF, you just miss, but if you hit it's big damage. But I agree that's on the chopping block.



Exhausting Strike has a different issue — it's a cool idea, but it scales awkwardly and the cost is pretty nasty (think about how many people are turned off of Berserker because of how nasty exhaustion is). Personally, I'd combine it with Bloody Finisher — you can end your Rage to auto-crit, dealing an additional damage die if your target is below half HP.
I'm not sure if the Exhaustion is as big of a deal for this Stunt since it explicitly drops off after a Short Rest. Maybe just even say it drops off after 1 minute. In my mind the damage scaling is pretty natural- Rage lasts 10 rounds, so 1d6 per remaining round. It's maybe not language that 5e typically uses, so I can look into more intuitive damage or something. I also really like your suggestion so I might just do that on its own. It's a good idea.



Brutal Cleave, Kneecap, and Pincushion all share the problem that, while their effects are reasonably interesting... they're also automatic. If I only have Brutal Cleave, for example (because I chose it along with Crushing Critical and Terrifying Might at 1st level), I'm going to be spamming it every round when I'm raging, because I don't have any reason not to.
These might be more effected by the existence of the "passive" Stunts as per your example.
Brutal Cleave is meant to answer the martial AoE problem, and also offer the same choice as Raging Rush: do I stay on the boss or do I clear minions? But with the way encounters gum up, I can easily see your fear of it being an automatic feature. I thought about making it target only a secondary target if that secondary is within 5ft of the primary, but that also gums up the works and slows things down. It will need some sort of revision to prevent its automatic nature, or careful encounter planning.
Kneecap spends a Reaction, so you give up AoOs for it, but that might not be enough of a trade-off to matter?
Pincushion just helps Barbarians hold aggro, something they desperately need. I went through several iterations in rapid succession and I think I sort of lost the plot on it. The original version had you actually lose resistance against the targeted foe, and bringing that back might reinforce the choice idea. Or it could just be cut in general.



Quaking Crush is an alright idea, though you'd definitely have to increase the damage — 1d6 bludgeoning damage is absolute chump change even at 1st level.
You're right, I meant to include cantrip-type scaling but forgot. Might need additional damage staring at level 5 to make up for Extra Attack, but also if you factor in the number of potential targets over a 10-foot radius, it can be comparable at around 4 or more targets.



Hulking Hurl is pretty decent looking. It's honestly pretty complicated, though, and could probably be handled more cleanly.

Yeah, this can be cleaned up. A simple "When you Shove you can push the target up to 30 feet" or something can be a much simpler way of handling this, and streamlining the damage component as a result. I often think of edge-cases and abuse-cases when writing features and rulesets and it can get a little wordy trying to cut those off. Like if I said you can just throw them X feet, then everyone will throw enemies straight into the air for 4d6 unresistable damage all the time.




Finishing Strike is a Barbarian class feature that lets you end your Rage early to automatically crit on an attack. If that attack targets a creature below half of their HP maximum, the crit deals an extra weapon damage die.
Brutal Handling is another Barbarian class feature that slaps some damage onto successful Grapple or Shove checks (to make using those alternative attacks more tempting). You can toss stuff like Disarming on here if you'd like.
And so on and so forth until you're happy with what you see.

These are good and simple! I want to explore the more robust list I have above, but if I fail to make those work, offering these as simple but elegant replacements to the entire Stunts list is very viable. Thank you!