Alternate Barbarian/Berserker Rages: Need Help!

Was flicking through my D&D books today and came across the Alternate Rage ability in UA, the "Whirling Frenzy". I thought that was pretty cool.

Other rage-like abilities I found later on:

Spell Rage (Rage Mage, Complete Warrior)
Lion's Fury (Singh Rager, a Lawful raging class in Oriental Adventures)

There's also the Bear Warrior's transformation ability that allows them to turn into a bear when they use their existing rage ability.

I got to wondering what other kinds of rage you could create (but not like the Frenzied Berserker). The reason for all this pondering is that I wanted to have unique rage abilities for each of my "Barbarian" peoples in my Selan campaign.

The "Rage" in this case is brought on by invoking the power of their ancestors to punish trespassers. Hexblades channel this hatred of outsiders differently (their curse). In both cases I've removed the alignment restrictions (since I'm not using alignment in this game anyway).

So, any ideas? I was planning on basing the rages on the specific tribe, but it could make sense to base it on the individual ancestor as well.

Happy for any input. Thanks in advance!

Mind Rage - Immune to Mind-affecting, +4 to all saves. Increases as normal.

Regenerating Rage - Gain fast healing 4 for duration. Increases by 2 each improved rage.

That's all I've got for now....

A while back, my group replaced the Barbarian with the "Berserker" class, just to fix this sort of issue; players wanted a more flexible Rage system. Oh, sure, there were a few small changes (no longer illiterate, for instance), but the main point was a "Build-a-Rage" system.

I don't have the notes in front of me, but it went something like this.

At level 1, pick one Major Drawback ("can't cast spells", "can't move", "can't attack", "enemies automatically hit you", "fails all saving throws", etc.); this drawback never goes away, and pretty much defines your ability. Generally speaking, you'll refer to it as a Rage, Stance, Trance, etc. based on this.
Also at level 1, pick two Minor Drawbacks ("fatigued for rest of encounter", "-2 AC", etc.). You can't pick something that would be overridden by the Major Drawback (like no picking "-2 AC" when you selected "enemies automatically hit you")
Finally, we have three tables of bonuses, labelled A, B, and C. Table A includes basic stat boosts like "+2 STR" or "+2 Will". Table B includes things like Damage Reduction, Darkvision, AC, Flurry of Blows, +10' speed, or Temporary HP. Table C includes a few really exotic things, like "re-roll any one die", "weapon deals max damage", or "+4 to any one stat or save, changeable each round".
At level 1, pick 3 bonuses from Table A. You can't pick anything that counteracts your Drawbacks.

At every odd level (3, 5, 7, etc.), you can do one of the following:
A> Gain a new ability from Table A (or in the case of the +STR-like ones, add more.)
B> Replace an ability from Table A you've already taken with one from Table B.
C> Replace an ability from Table B you've already taken with one from Table C.
D> Remove one Minor Drawback (not available before level 10).

Thematically, each player picked a totem animal they were trying to emulate. So, the PHB Rage, which buffs up STR and CON, was the "Bear" rage. One player in our group (Berserker/Rogue multiclass) went with one that gave him massive DEX, speed, and vision boosts instead.

Anyway, I've got the tables of abilities at home, so I might try to post those later.

that sounds really interesting.

I would favour making set one's for various barbarian tribes rather than allow players to choose.

each tribe would have its totem animal which effects its rage

kirstar said:

I would favour making set one's for various barbarian tribes rather than allow players to choose.

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There were four reasons we didn't do that.

1: Part of the reason we replaced the name "Barbarian" with "Berserker" is that this class WASN'T restricted to primitive tribes (which is why we dropped the illiteracy part). It's now a widely-accepted combat style, embracing your primal nature to gain short-term combat advantages. Note the specific drawbacks I gave; the Dwarven Defender would actually be reworked into this system as well, although we had to tweak the alignment part a bit. So would a few OA classes. In those settings, a tribe-based limitation just wouldn't fit at all.

2: IMC we encouraged players to help design new content. So, it'd have the same effect in the end, as players would simply think up tribes that HAPPENED to have exactly the sort of rage they wanted. This'd especially be true if two characters disagreed on what exactly constituted an animal's nature. Does the "Panther" rage include speed and DEX, or is it Flurry and STR? At what level exactly would the "Bear" rage remove the Fatigue drawback? So, forcing a specific upgrade path just wouldn't work well.

3: Changing it like that would violate one of our prime design philosophies, which is that every class should provide both Strategic and Tactical flexibility. That is, players should have to make decisions every time the character levels up (instead of just feeling like "more of the same"), and characters should be able to do stuff in combat (like Rage) besides the baseline attack mechanism. In this case, the first one's the problem; without giving the someone the ability to tweak his rage as he goes along, there's no real decision-making, no way to separate yourself from the other Berserkers out there.

4: Tribal Berskerers could go on a "vision quest", at which point they'd meet the totem animal that would inspire their Rage. This'd be different for each person, and it was just too cool of an image to pass up, so even if you ignored the "civilized" Berserkers I mentioned in point #1, I'd still not want to change it this way.

Now, maybe the Berserkers within a given primitive tribe would pick the same totem animal as a matter of pride, but this shouldn't be forced on them by the class itself.

Spatzimaus, sounds very cool.. please post the whole deal sometime

For the "vision quest", was this a feat or paragon level deal.. or just good old fashioned roleplaying?

As for the totem spirits, if you keep it semi-tribal then thematically the totem spirit chooses you, not the other way around. This means most in a given tribe would follow the same totem but there would be the occasional ones who follow someone else. It would be nice to maintain the potential options as brining a group together from various tribes could get a bit sticky otherwise

Primitive Screwhead said:

For the "vision quest", was this a feat or paragon level deal.. or just good old fashioned roleplaying?

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Just roleplaying. At first it was just a joke, inspired by the "Guatemalan Insanity Peppers" episode of The Simpsons, when one of the players insisted he wanted his quest to involve Johnny Cash. But then by coincidence we had a week where half the group couldn't make it; so, the Berserker did his vision quest, while the others played the NPCs he encountered in it.

It would be nice to maintain the potential options as brining a group together from various tribes could get a bit sticky otherwise

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That's the basic idea. Plus, if we decide down the road that certain options are underpowered/overpowered, and things need to be rebalanced, the players don't feel like they were railroaded into a bad choice as much.

Primitive Screwhead said:

Spatzimaus, sounds very cool.. please post the whole deal sometime

Click to expand...

Okay, found it. Here goes:

TRANCE
The Berserker’s key ability, often called “Rage” or “Trance”, is the ability to drop his mind to an instinctual level during combat, tapping into his more primal natures to increase effectiveness. Each Berserker has a distinctive trance, developed over time into a unique fighting style. Berserkers in primitive societies tend to refer to their trances by a totem animal whose personality or fighting style mirrors their style.

At first level, the Berserker chooses one Major Drawback, two Minor Drawbacks, and three of the Bonus abilities on A list. These define his individual trance. Trances last 3 rounds plus your Constitution modifier, and are entered as a Free Action. If the Trance increases your Constitution, this increases its duration as well. The Berserker may go into a Trance once per day at class level 1, and one additional trance per four class levels (2 trances per day at 4th, 3 at 8th, 4 at 12th, 5 at 16th, 6 at 20th).

At every odd level (3rd, 5th, etc.) level, the Berserker chooses one of the following:
1> Add one Bonus ability from Table A
2> Upgrade a Bonus ability to one on a higher table (A -> B, B -> C)
3> Remove a Minor Drawback. Note that the Major Drawback you select can never be removed, and a Minor Drawback cannot be removed before class level 10.

Only abilities in table A may be selected multiple times, and this cannot be done at level 1. All numerical bonuses are “trance” bonuses. Trances do not stack with each other, although taking the same ability multiple times in a single trance does stack. Even when abilities do not overlap, no one may be in multiple trances at the same time.

You cannot select a Bonus that offsets one of your Drawbacks in any way. (For example, if you take the "cannot move" Major or the "1/2 movement" Minor, you can't later take the "+10' movement" or "gain a Move Action" Bonuses.) Likewise, you cannot select a Minor Drawback that penalizes something already penalized by your Major Drawback.

Major Drawbacks
Cannot move (including any skills requiring movement; see the Dwarven Defender)
Cannot concentrate (see PHB Barbarian)
Cannot take offensive actions (attacks or offensive spells)
Cannot defend (all attack rolls hit the Berserker unless a natural 1 is rolled)
Cannot save (fail all saving throws)

Minor Drawbacks
-2 STR
-2 DEX
-2 CON
-1 to all saves
-2 AC
-2 to all attack rolls
1/2 base movement speed
Take (1d6 + character level) Subdual damage when Trance ends
Fatigued for remainder of encounter once Trance ends
Trance duration decreased by 3 rounds
Requires Standard Action to enter Trance
Cannot voluntarily end Trance

Bonuses
Table A
+2 STR
+2 DEX
+2 CON
+2 Fortitude
+2 Reflex
+2 Will
+10' base movement
Low-Light Vision x2 (if you already have, increase by x1)
Darkvision 30’ (if you already have, increase by 30’)

Table B
+2 to INT, WIS, and CHA
+3 Natural Armor AC
+2 to all skill checks
DR 3/-
Trance duration doubles
Gain an extra Move Action each round
Flurry of Blows (On a Full Attack, take –2 to all attacks to gain one extra melee attack at your full BAB)
Elemental resistance 5 (all elements)
Add two Temporary Hit Points per class level at start of Trance
Re-roll any one die
Minor Scent (as Scent, but 1/3rd range, +5 DC, and can't localize a target to a specific square)
May go into Trance an extra number of times per day equal to CHA modifier
Evasion (increases to Improved Evasion if you already have Evasion)
Mettle of Fortitude (as Evasion, but for Fortitude)
Mettle of Will (as Evasion, but for Will)

Table C
Automatically succeed at any one skill check, ability check, attack roll, or saving throw
Weapons deal max base damage
+4 to any one stat or save, selected at the time the Trance is activated and at the start of each round. (If CON is selected, it does not extend the Trance's duration.)
Can interrupt Trance and continue at a later point during the same encounter

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Effectively, you get 12 A's by level 20, trading 2:1 for B's or 3:1 for C's. Since the A's stack with themselves, you can make a really nice Trance just by piling those up (imagine +24 STR!), but generally speaking you're better off mixing in a few expensive abilities in. Some of the B's could, in theory, be cut in half and moved to A, but we didn't want people stacking some of them too far.

Kewl system

IMC I introduced a Spirit Warrior who was able to 'Rush' basically the Rage ability but applied to any 2 ability scores (so a Rush to Dex and Wis might be possible at one use and then in the next it might be a Rush to Int and Cha). Other abilities included +10 speed, Resistances and various BAb, AC and skill boosts

However your menu system might be a great enhancement to the Spirit Warriors repetoire

Thank you Spatzimaus, this system is awesome. I love playing barbarian races (Big brute tanks of doom), but I have always wanted to extend this rage like ability to my other characters that I think should have one but one that isn't necessarily adding to str and con. I will probably tweak it a little and add some more major drawbacks because not all of them there would be good for some characters.

Again thanks for the awesome system.

-El Jeraldo