QoL changes for Barbarians

[PhoenixPhyre]

These aren't intended to bring things fully into balance, but just smooth things out a bit for barbarians.

General change--All non-spell sources of bonus action attacks are now "Once on each of your turns as part of another action". Dropping this from this work because it's too much of a distraction. Instead, TWF will use the Light Weapon rules from the UA. That's the only bonus action that will change.

Features
(Level 7, additional) Peerless Leap: The distance you can jump increases by a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus. At level 13, you always count as having a running start for jumping and you can jump your regular distance as long as you have at least 15' of movement left.

(Level 7, additional) Imposing Presence: You can always use Strength instead of Charisma when attempting to intimidate someone.

(Level 9, part of Brutal Critical) Once per round when you score a critical hit or reduce a creature to 0 HP with an attack, you can immediately make another weapon attack as part of the same action.

(Level 9, Additional) Power Attack. When you make an attack and have advantage, you may forgo the advantage. If you do so and hit with the attack, you deal an additional 10 damage and the target must make a Strength saving throw against a DC of 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier or be knocked prone.

(level 13, additional) Peerless Grip. While climbing you cannot be dislodged or fall against your will as long as you are conscious. Additionally, the amount you can lift, drag, and push doubles.

(Level 17) Improved Brutal Critical. You can make the extra attack from Brutal Critical as many times as it would trigger in a round.

Note: Naming things is hard. So names are provisional.

[Breccia]

General change--All non-spell sources of bonus action attacks are now "Once on each of your turns as part of another action".

This...really needs to be clarified. Because it sounds like all your Bonus Action attacks can be used all at once, and then you get to take your Bonus Action. Because the phrasing now sounds like each individual source of bonus attack actions can each be used once on your turn. I'm not sure that's a QoL change, that sounds like more attacks.

If you really want Barbarians to get "a single extra Bonus Action only for attacking" you should probably make it more clear that's what you mean. If that's not what you mean, I need a better description, because that's how it reads to me.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This...really needs to be clarified. Because it sounds like all your Bonus Action attacks can be used all at once, and then you get to take your Bonus Action. Because the phrasing now sounds like each individual source of bonus attack actions can each be used once on your turn. I'm not sure that's a QoL change, that sounds like more attacks.

If you really want Barbarians to get "a single extra Bonus Action only for attacking" you should probably make it more clear that's what you mean. If that's not what you mean, I need a better description, because that's how it reads to me.

When I say general, I mean general. For everyone. Across the whole game. However, in the final overhaul most of the current sources of bonus action attacks will be class-bound deep enough to make them hard to dip (except TWF, which comes with costs of its own). The point is so that you can, if you TWF as a barbarian, use both your TWF extra attack AND the one from Brutal Critical (in this QoL scheme) on the same turn. And still rage. Is it a buff? Yes. Is it useful, primarily for martials? Yes.

Bonus actions will be for things like setting up buffs, utility effects, etc. Things that don't individually contribute to DPR.

[Yakk]

Care about the bonus action thing. I can break your game with using every bonus action once per turn.

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(Level 7, additional) Peerless Leap: The distance you can jump increases by a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus. At level 13, you always count as having a running start for jumping and you can jump your regular distance as long as you have at least 15' of movement left.

Meh, just double your strength for leaping. Simpler and less fiddly.

(Level 7, additional) Imposing Presence: You can always use Strength instead of Charisma when attempting to intimidate someone.

Add Strength to Intimidation rolls? You aren't gonna dip 7 levels to get that feature, and might as well make Charisma-barians get something out of it.

(Level 9, part of Brutal Critical) Once per round when you score a critical hit or reduce a creature to 0 HP with an attack, you can immediately make another weapon attack as part of the same action.

GWM feat already gives this. Oh, you just want to stack another? I dunno.

An easy fix for Brutal Critical is by making level 9 give 19-20 crit range *and* an extra set of dice.

Then the later upgrades give 2 extra dice.

Ignoring the reduce to 0 HP, this isn't strong without lots of optimization. I don't like giving optimization traps as class features myself.

(That is how bad it is).

(level 13, additional) Peerless Grip. While climbing you cannot be dislodged or fall against your will as long as you are conscious. Additionally, the amount you can lift, drag, and push doubles.

Bit little for 13. I'd reduce forced movement? And not prone? That covers most of "being dislodged" I think, and is more generally useful.

13: Unstoppable. While you are not incapacitated, forced movement is reduced by 20' and you cannot be knocked prone unless you fall. In addition, your strength is doubled for the purpose of calculating how much you can lift, drag or push.

(Level 17) Improved Brutal Critical. You can make the extra attack from Brutal Critical as many times as it would trigger in a round.

I guess, "feel free to trigger an infinite damage combo".

Get 19-20 crit range, elven accuracy, for 27% crit rate. Each attack spawns .27 other attacks, so this works out to 1.37x attack multiplier.

Huh. Even with heavy optimization, this isn't all that good. As a baseline, before this from 2 attacks with advantage and crit on 20, you got an extra .18 attacks per turn. Getting this and the number becomes .22 extra attacks per turn. Very lackluster.

With heavy optimization, it becomes 0.74 extra attacks per turn (of course, the same build without this feature hits 0.47 extra attacks, so this just makes that specific optimization 0.27 more attacks strong.)

So we have a very weak feature (0.04 attacks per turn) that can be optimized into up to 0.27 extra attacks with a very specific build (elven accuracy based, so dex-based barbarian, gets advantage from another source). Without EA, but with 19-20 crit range, we get... 0.35 extra attacks from first feature, and this upgrades it to 0.47. So in a realistic crit-fishing optimization this build is worth 0.12 attacks per round.

In the baseline it is worth 0.04 attacks per round.

I mean, meh. (I could be missing some exploit; but the possibility of an exploit doesn't make this ability BETTER).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Care about the bonus action thing. I can break your game with using every bonus action once per turn.

There just aren't that many sources of non-spell bonus action attacks that aren't super deep into things or aren't mutually exclusive. Sure, if you dip a bunch of times into a bunch of different, mostly incompatible classes, you can be...MAD as heck and not particularly effective at anything. Because remember, this is part of a bigger overhaul. And trying to hedge out all possible risks just makes for obnoxiously restrictive things.

Personally, I'd rather have strong single classes and let multiclassing go hang or be dropped entirely. I'm not going to deny people good things because someone, somewhere, at some other table might decide to dive into a bunch of classes. If they try that at my table, I'll simply say no.

Meh, just double your strength for leaping. Simpler and less fiddly.

?? Adding proficiency bonus to jumping isn't fiddly at all.

Add Strength to Intimidation rolls? You aren't gonna dip 7 levels to get that feature, and might as well make Charisma-barians get something out of it.

There are Charisma barbarians? The whole point is to lean into the archetype.

GWM feat already gives this. Oh, you just want to stack another? I dunno.

It's the same trigger, so it doesn't stack. This is just giving GWM with any weapon for free.

An easy fix for Brutal Critical is by making level 9 give 19-20 crit range *and* an extra set of dice.

Then the later upgrades give 2 extra dice.

Ignoring the reduce to 0 HP, this isn't strong without lots of optimization. I don't like giving optimization traps as class features myself.

Bit little for 13. I'd reduce forced movement? And not prone? That covers most of "being dislodged" I think, and is more generally useful.

Possibly. I was thinking "I can climb anything" as the fix here. Sort of the Man in Black climbing the Cliffs of Despair, except being able to do that in an ice hurricane.

I guess, "feel free to trigger an infinite damage combo".

Get 19-20 crit range, elven accuracy, for 27% crit rate. Each attack spawns .27 other attacks, so this works out to 1.37x attack multiplier.

Huh. Even with heavy optimization, this isn't all that good. As a baseline, before this from 2 attacks with advantage and crit on 20, you got an extra .18 attacks per turn. Getting this and the number becomes .22 extra attacks per turn. Very lackluster.

With heavy optimization, it becomes 0.74 extra attacks per turn (of course, the same build without this feature hits 0.47 extra attacks, so this just makes that specific optimization 0.27 more attacks strong.)

So we have a very weak feature (0.04 attacks per turn) that can be optimized into up to 0.27 extra attacks with a very specific build (elven accuracy based, so dex-based barbarian, gets advantage from another source). Without EA, but with 19-20 crit range, we get... 0.35 extra attacks from first feature, and this upgrades it to 0.47. So in a realistic crit-fishing optimization this build is worth 0.12 attacks per round.

In the baseline it is worth 0.04 attacks per round.

I mean, meh. (I could be missing some exploit; but the possibility of an exploit doesn't make this ability BETTER).

Sure. It's not particularly strong. But as I said, this is more about just baking in some things that feel cool at baseline. Not actually fixing all the disparities. That'd take a bunch more effort.

Oh, and Elven Accuracy isn't a thing at my tables =)

[Breccia]

When I say general, I mean general. For everyone. Across the whole game.

Hmm...that's a pretty potent upgrade for a lot of martials. Is this really called for? I'm with Yakk on this one, I'd look at the ways to break this before casually sliding it into a game under the heading "QoL".

[PhoenixPhyre]

Hmm...that's a pretty potent upgrade for a lot of martials. Is this really called for? I'm with Yakk on this one, I'd look at the ways to break this before casually sliding it into a game under the heading "QoL".

Meh. I guess I could do a more targeted change here. Basically limiting the scope to the Brutal Critical change + TWF (because I want those to work together).

[Yakk]

There just aren't that many sources of non-spell bonus action attacks that aren't super deep into things or aren't mutually exclusive. Sure, if you dip a bunch of times into a bunch of different, mostly incompatible classes, you can be...MAD as heck and not particularly effective at anything. Because remember, this is part of a bigger overhaul. And trying to hedge out all possible risks just makes for obnoxiously restrictive things.

Personally, I'd rather have strong single classes and let multiclassing go hang or be dropped entirely. I'm not going to deny people good things because someone, somewhere, at some other table might decide to dive into a bunch of classes. If they try that at my table, I'll simply say no.

The thing I have looked at and was difficult to abuse was:
1) You can use each named bonus action at most once. So one cunning action, one cast a spell, etc.
2) You can make no more than one bonus action that grants an attack.
3) You can cast at most one non-cantrip spell on your turn.

I couldn't come up with a way to seriously abuse it with those limitations.

You could do the Rogue 2 Monk X and get 2x dash per turn kind of thing.

?? Adding proficiency bonus to jumping isn't fiddly at all.

The running leap bit, and the full distance if you have 15' of movement. Those are fiddly.

"Your strength is doubled for jumping distance" is simple.

The limitation on jumping to your speed is to prevent the fastest way of getting around being BOING BOING. I'd keep it; if you want barbarians to be faster, give them more speed, not BOING BOING.

There are Charisma barbarians? The whole point is to lean into the archetype.

There are barbarians with 8 and 12 charisma, some even with 14 or more!

The point is, you have this Barbarian that was intimidating at lower levels. Was trained. Had a 12 charisma for an extra +1 or +2 over others.

And now charisma does nothing.

If we say "add strength to intimidation checks", we do get the slim chance of a 20 charisma 24 strength barbarian having a +18 intimidation check. But (a) that ain't a problem, and (b) it is about as good as expertise is anyhow (it does stack with expertise -- so max +24 with a feat, max strength, max charisma).

If it was a low-level feature, I'd worry a bit about stacking it; but here, saying you also add charisma and strength is going to have a 1 or 2 point difference practically. So why not give the barbarian who does invest in cha a slight boost? Meanwhile, str-barians are still intimidating.

It's the same trigger, so it doesn't stack. This is just giving GWM with any weapon for free.

Well, that is a massive change on how 5e rules work. If you have 10 things that go off when someone goes to 0 HP, they all start going off in 5e, not just one.

Same for dropping someone to 0 HP -- all of the things happen.

As written, you get a GWM bonus action attack and you get this one.

And, I'd avoid giving class features that overlap partly with feats. Someone who is like "I want to be good at X" now has a trap -- they can wait until they get it from the class, or get it early and become relatively worse than characters who invested less.

Possibly. I was thinking "I can climb anything" as the fix here. Sort of the Man in Black climbing the Cliffs of Despair, except being able to do that in an ice hurricane.

That is very narrow thing for all 13th level barbarians to suddenly be able to do. And meanwhile, they can still be disarmed.

Sure. It's not particularly strong. But as I said, this is more about just baking in some things that feel cool at baseline. Not actually fixing all the disparities. That'd take a bunch more effort.

Ya, but don't add rules that don't do stuff?

Every rule requires effort by someone using your stuff to understand how it works, its impact, and their opinion of it. Adding rules that don't do anything is sort of rude for anyone you want to read the rules (players for example).

Oh, and Elven Accuracy isn't a thing at my tables =)

Oh. Ok. I don't really care? The rest of the entire point still stands. EA was just one example, where I was showing that the feature was a fiddly thing that didn't have much on-table impact.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The thing I have looked at and was difficult to abuse was:
1) You can use each named bonus action at most once. So one cunning action, one cast a spell, etc.
2) You can make no more than one bonus action that grants an attack.
3) You can cast at most one non-cantrip spell on your turn.

I couldn't come up with a way to seriously abuse it with those limitations.

You could do the Rogue 2 Monk X and get 2x dash per turn kind of thing.

Not sure how this is relevant. The change here is specifically and only to bonus action attacks from non-spell sources. Everything else is still a bonus action--I'm not proposing removing bonus actions. Just moving all the sources of attacks to be something separate. And the full list absolutely does involve more general rules and (probably) removing those options from feats (and eventually) spells. You want to make (what is now) a bonus action attack? Take the class levels necessary to do it or use TWF. No more "herp derp, level 1 feat and PAM". Instead, each class gets thematic, appropriate (and appropriately leveled) options baked in.

The point is to narrow the optimization spread. If a certain level of DPR is expected by the system, that should be baked into the classes and require active anti-optimization to avoid. While also letting people actually use their bonus actions for bonus things. Utility, movement, etc. Not be locked into "must spend bonus action to deal damage to keep up".

[Yakk]

I read it as "non-spell bonus action abilities" not "attacks". Because that seemed sane. I didn't imagine anyone would decide to let all bonus action attacks stack with each other.

Because that seems like the most obvious problem with bonus action stacking, not "a monk/rogue can dash twice", but rather "A TWF PAM war cleric monk 5 using quarterstaffs can make 8 attacks".

I'd think the 9 attack level 6 PC would be more of a concern, so I didn't imagine anyone would let bonus action attacks stack.

(Attack count:
2 attack action
1 pam
1 twf
1 war cleric
2 flurry of blows
1 martial arts)

Each of these are separate features, and if you remap "bonus action to make an attack" to "once on your turn", you get 8.

But now you are saying you are rewriting a whole bunch of other stuff in the game and haven't mentioned it. So who knows what stuff does! Maybe every 10' you climb your ranged weapon damage is doubled, and when you make an attack while climbing you fall unless you roll a natural 20 on a d20, making your climb feature insanely powerful. Without an idea of the (apparently pretty extensive) other houserules in play, it is tricky to know how your change could have problems.

Anyhow, I'd suggest against letting every source of "bonus action attack" stack. In almost any situation, two such abilities stacked is a massive massive boost.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I read it as "non-spell bonus action abilities" not "attacks". Because that seemed sane. I didn't imagine anyone would decide to let all bonus action attacks stack with each other.

Because that seems like the most obvious problem with bonus action stacking, not "a monk/rogue can dash twice", but rather "A TWF PAM war cleric monk 5 using quarterstaffs can make 8 attacks".

I'd think the 9 attack level 6 PC would be more of a concern, so I didn't imagine anyone would let bonus action attacks stack.

(Attack count:
2 attack action
1 pam
1 twf
1 war cleric
2 flurry of blows
1 martial arts)

Each of these are separate features, and if you remap "bonus action to make an attack" to "once on your turn", you get 8.

But now you are saying you are rewriting a whole bunch of other stuff in the game and haven't mentioned it. So who knows what stuff does! Maybe every 10' you climb your ranged weapon damage is doubled, and when you make an attack while climbing you fall unless you roll a natural 20 on a d20, making your climb feature insanely powerful. Without an idea of the (apparently pretty extensive) other houserules in play, it is tricky to know how your change could have problems.

Anyhow, I'd suggest against letting every source of "bonus action attack" stack. In almost any situation, two such abilities stacked is a massive massive boost.

It's actually simpler than that.
1. Feats will no longer provide bonus action attacks. They'll give something else instead.
2. Multiclassing as it exists now does not exist; the equivalent doesn't let you cherry pick features.

Basically, the only source of bonus action attacks will be your own core class abilities (including spells) and TWF. Period.

[Breccia]

It's actually simpler than that.
1. Feats will no longer provide bonus action attacks. They'll give something else instead.
2. Multiclassing as it exists now does not exist; the equivalent doesn't let you cherry pick features.

Basically, the only source of bonus action attacks will be your own core class abilities (including spells) and TWF. Period.

This is starting to sound a lot more involved than "QoL changes for Barbarians". Perhaps a more details writeup is called for, considering the scope is now much wider?

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is starting to sound a lot more involved than "QoL changes for Barbarians". Perhaps a more details writeup is called for, considering the scope is now much wider?

That's really separate from this work though. Easier to just assume that that first "general" bullet point doesn't exist (in which case this is basically independent of those larger changes).

The general idea is that the combat feats are broken down and sprinkled into martial classes directly as features. Multiclassing is (eventually) going to be replaced by something along the lines of what I'm calling "Emulation/Specialization Features". At 4 (levels 3, 8, 13, 18 IIRC) points along the leveling process you'll have a choice between

1. Picking the Emulation feature from another class. This is repeatable--each time you do, you get more/bigger features. For example, picking up the Cleric Emulation gives
* A domain's channel divinity feature with more uses and stronger uses as you take it again.
* Limited spellcasting (not giving you more spell slots if you already have them, giving roughly half-progression if you don't have them at all).
2. Picking up the (next) specialization feature for your own class. This is mostly more/faster/stronger progression of your own key features--barbarians get an additional rage as the first step for instance.

And you can mix and match, but it's tiered. So if you're a barbarian and pick the first Rogue emulation at 4 and then choose a barbarian specialization at 9, you now have the first "tier" of each of them. If you pick the rogue emulation again at 13, you get the second tier.

This does not replace your class levels. It's parallel and everyone gets it. Yes, that's a power boost, but if done properly should be much more easily balanceable than existing multiclassing because it's quite narrow and specific.

Edit: the specialization features right now (WIP) for barbarians are (and this is what you get if you don't do Emulation at all):

Tier 1: +1 rage
Tier 2: Wisdom saves vs loss-of-control have a minimum roll of 10 while raging.
Tier 3: Increased crit threat range (19-20)
Tier 4: Increased crit threat range (18-20)

[Kane0]

TWF will use the Light Weapon rules from the UA

I haven't done the full delve into how strong this is, but a free extra attack before level 5 is a big deal with or without stat to damage for any class that wants to be making attacks.

(Level 7, additional) Peerless Leap:
The distance you can jump increases by a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus. At level 13, you always count as having a running start for jumping and you can jump your regular distance as long as you have at least 15' of movement left.

Perhaps a little late, maybe put this in with the move speed boost? Could make level 5 a bit stacked though. But what if we moved it to 4?

(Level 7, additional) Imposing Presence:
You can always use Strength instead of Charisma when attempting to intimidate someone.

Again, a little late. How about merging it with Primal Knowledge from Tasha's at 3?

(Level 9, part of Brutal Critical)
Once per round when you score a critical hit or reduce a creature to 0 HP with an attack, you can immediately make another weapon attack as part of the same action.

This would interfere with the GWM feat, unless you've changed it? Could import the DMG Cleave rule actually, with some tweaks.

(Level 9, Additional) Power Attack.
When you make an attack and have advantage, you may forgo the advantage. If you do so and hit with the attack, you deal an additional 10 damage and the target must make a Strength saving throw against a DC of 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier or be knocked prone.

I have personal distaste for static +X damage, I would prefer +level or something. Also, perhaps make it a choice between damage or knockdown.

(level 13, additional) Peerless Grip.
While climbing you cannot be dislodged or fall against your will as long as you are conscious. Additionally, the amount you can lift, drag, and push doubles.

At level 13? Id just let them move/carry anything up to X size regardless of weight, and jump while climbing.

(Level 17) Improved Brutal Critical.
You can make the extra attack from Brutal Critical as many times as it would trigger in a round.

Neat

Note: Naming things is hard. So names are provisional.

I maintain that this is the hardest part.