Acrobat:
Had left off the 17th level ability when last we saw it, so wanted to finish it off. The problem had seemed to have been that he was putting too much focus on replicating the capstone +damage ability from Thief and Assassin. Dropping that, he instead went to doubling up on the Aerial Artistry ability, essentially doubling movement. The idea is to let this be more focused on freeing the character's creativity, rather than copy/paste the combat approach. Don't feel like you have to chase the abilities from another subclass.
To WC, the idea of "broken" means overshadowing the other players in a way to make them feel less needed, or they aren't really contributing. However if there isn't competition for the same functionality (which is much easier for abilities constrained to a specific subclass), it's OK to double down on that. If it hasn't broken in the previous ~16 levels, then you're probably safe to boost the "specialness" of it.
Related note: People are willing to accept a lot more forgiving of magic, or resource-based abilities, than they are of "always on" abilities. Always-on abilities are more tiresome to deal with and plan around, and are more easily able to overshadow other players (which leads back to the 'broken' definition). They also tend to warp the game more than abilities that you use and then they go away.
People are more OK with more outlandish things when the user has to pay for the ability. So WC tend to be a lot more conservative with the design for those options. And, as seen in the Barbarian subclass design, continual-use abilities also tend to be more problematic on the multiclassing side.
All of this is relevant to the ongoing discussions regarding the Warlord class design.
In any case, all of this gets into whether the Aerial Mastery would start to become too problematic to deal with. It's not something that can be numerically evaluated, but can very much be something that players or DMs just are uncomfortable with, and also has an impact on adventure design. For this particular case, he didn't expect it to be, but it gets the usual, "Needs to be playtested" caveat.
The example he gave was the Aarakocra race, with its inherent flight, being something that enough DMs had problems with that they exclude it from AL availability. I've seen threads about it here and on other sites, and it's easy to see the contention, and thus easy to understand why it's restricted. WC has to view all DM's reactions in aggregate, rather than individually.
Barbarian Marauder:
Based on requests, he looked at the idea of Dex-based Barbarian. The key to this HFH is looking at how to do something that may not actually be doable.
Action Economy: If this phrase comes up as part of the design process, we (WotC) have probably done something wrong. That starts getting way too fiddly, and too mechanics-focused.
Main problem: Rage only works on Str-based attacks. It also has a restriction against heavy armor while raging, for a similar reason. Multiclassing. In addition, these restrictions came about because of multiple years of playtesting, with hundreds of thousands of players. You don't just kick those design limits to the side, because they're based on hard play data.
We don't want you to change your character in a seemingly nonsensical way when you gain your subclass. That is, don't create radical alterations to how the class in played between levels 2 and 3. So we can't just change Rage from requiring Str-based attacks to Dex-based attacks when you select your subclass.
Getting to the multiclassing, having the ability to dump 'important' stats because you can just grab an ability from a multiclass choice that negates that dump, doesn't feel like a good place for the game to be in. At least, per Mike.
* Comment: One would then question why a Paladin with 8 Dex (because he can just take heavy armor and ignore Dex entirely) is OK, but an 8 Dex Barbarian is not. Flavor-wise it makes sense, but mechanics-wise it doesn't seem quite as well justified.
In any case, the damage profile combination of the multi-attack classes (Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin) has trouble when stacking with a high-damage single-attack class like Rogue.
Aside: Mike did try to make a comment about how making Rage attacks or Sneak attacks actions unto themselves, this stacking issue wouldn't be a problem. However since they're layered on top of the standard attack action, this becomes more complicated.
He also answered a question regarding Fighter having the same issue. His answer that it does, somewhat, but it's really the damage bonus from Rage that's causing the conflict, and Fighter doesn't really have the same thing. (Except the Dueling fighting style, which he never addressed.)
Aside: Even with these multiclass issues, they try to design something satisfying first, and balanced second, rather than try to balance it first, leaving you with a dry or boring class/subclass. Still, the Rogue is a common "problem" class in terms of multiclassing that they have to be careful about.
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Outline details:
Marauder
Speed, agility, hitting power
Threat vs a group
More attacks?
More speed
Fluid
Raider, pillager, gets in, destroys, leaves
Really feel like a predator - bird of prey or hunting cat
Not good at claiming territory
TWO WEAPON FIGHTING!
Aside: Has to be careful not to overlap with Eagle Totem
3rd level - defining ability
When you rage, you turn into a tornado of attacks when using two weapon fighting and using finesse weapons.
10 attacks!
Hit everything in the room!
When you rage, if you use two weapon fighting, you can attack everyone in your reach. (explicitly not a bonus action) Can't attack a target more than once, but allow for extra attacks to pile on.
* Aside: Various commentary on optimal tactics vs what might be suggested by abilities.
6th level - ribbon ability
Roleplaying specific
10th level - useful utility
Movement ability - super dash?
14th level - combat upgrade
Lay Waste - bunch of attacks against one target
Burst of damage, once per rage
* Aside: Comment on the Wolf Totem lvl 14 ability to knock a Large or smaller creature prone with an attack — It's more of a 2014 approach, and WotC wouldn't really care about the specific size, now.
Next week, look at how the strength based usage of dex-type weapons works, and what sort of repercussions there would be to making it fully dex-based. See if there are other classes where this sort of issue comes up, and how it's dealt with.
Mike noted that it needs better flavor, as "Marauder" is fairly generic, and may not evoke the proper image of what the class was designed to be. Chat stream suggested "Dervish", given the focus on two weapon fighting and Tasmanian Devil-like approach to fighting, though Mike didn't seem to notice, as the stream was coming to an end. Personally, Dervish does seem to evoke an image that better matches the mechanics outline.
