Sword of Spirit
Legend
I realize that people have various preferred role-playing styles, and value different non-mechanical aspects of characters. This isn't a thread about that. This is intended to be a thread about raw, by the book, standard assumptions, subclass effectiveness comparisons.
What I'm wanting to know is what the consensus is about how much weaker Berserker is than Totem Warrior, and what sort of change would be too much. I'm looking for some sort of extremely simple change I can make to the Frenzy feature which will make me happy about the balance. Something that involves one, or at most two, straightforward house rules. The kind of things that fit in a single sentence. That's just how I like to roll when I house rule.
For instance, the simplest house rule is just to eliminate the exhaustion from frenzy. Period. It doesn't get any simpler than that. But does that make it too good? Beats me. That's what this thread is for.
Here is my inconclusive analysis so far. I'm starting with standard assumptions of a 6-8 encounter, 2 short rest adventuring day. Based on what I've experienced and what I hear from others, I'm going to say most combats run 3 rounds (we might push that to 4 for purposes of raging combats). I'm also planning with what I see as the easiest to compare Totem Warrior features, where possible. This generally means I'm going for offensive combat features.
6th Level (we'll hold 3rd for the end)
Berserker – Immune to charmed and frightened while raging; suppressed if already active.
Totem Warrior (Eagle) – Dim light doesn't impose disadvantage on Wis (Perception).
10th Level
Berserker – Use actions to possibly frighten someone and keep them frightened for a short time, then they are immune for the rest of the day.
Totem Warrior – Commune with nature as a ritual.
14th Level
Berserker – Reaction to attack adjacent creature that damages you.
Totem Warrior (Wolf) – Use bonus action to automatically knock Large or smaller creature prone when you hit it in melee.
At 6th level, the Berserker seems to come out ahead. They get a nice situational combat feature, vs. the Eagle Warrior being less likely to be surprised in the dark (which isn't a bad feature either).
At 10th level, I think the Totem Warrior is the clear winner. While commune with nature isn't the best divination in the book, it provides some good utility. The Berserker's feature, on the other hand, doesn't even make sense. When the heck would you even want to use that? (Rhetorical question—we can all think of corner cases.) In general, the Berserker is the one who wants to get up in the bad guy's face—not keep him away.
At 14th Level, they both come out with some nice options. I'd say it's a very good balance at this level.
So, if you just look at those levels, they seem more or less balanced. You can't really compare those level mathematically, but it feels like a good fit. That means we can ignore those levels and focus entirely on the features granted at 3rd level (and their continued relevance as the character levels).
3rd Level
Berserker – When entering a rage, choose to gain ability to use bonus actions on subsequent turns to make a single additional attack—then gain a level of Exhaustion at end of rage.
Totem Warrior (Wolf) – Flanking allies gain advantage on melee attacks against your foes. Plus, you gain the ability to cast beast sense and speak with animals as rituals.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, a Berserker is supposed to be the more straightforward aggressive combat-oriented barbarian, while Totem Warrior is supposed to have some more utility. Which implies the Berserker should be, overall, better in the combat pillar—especially in the offense department.
So let's start with Totem Warrior (Wolf). I don't know about others, but in games that I play there are pretty much always 2 people in melee, and usually at least one more there part of the time. Unless my experience is extremely atypical, I'm going to assume the Wolf Warrior will have 1.5 allies who will take advantage of the advantage he grants them.
Let's be highly conservative and assume each of those allies is wielding a single d8 weapon. We will give them Extra Attack at appropriate levels.
So at levels 3-4ish, the Totem Warrior is providing advantage to about 13.5 melee attacks (not counting his own). 6th-11ish we can assume more like 36 melee attacks; and then maxing out at level 17+ at about 54 melee attacks. That's a lot of advantage going around.(1) And the stronger the melee abilities of the Totem Warrior's allies are, the better this gets. Conversely, with fewer or weaker allies it gets worse.
On to Berserker. Ignoring for the moment that fact that more than one level of Exhaustion means you will stay penalized for days (campaign dependant, but makes the penalty significantly worse for any campaign with back to back adventuring days), we'll focus just on the comparison during a self-contained standard adventuring day.
First off, lets address Exhaustion up-front, and then get into the day.
Level 1 – Disadvantage on ability checks. That means initiative. That causes an indirect but real reduction in your damage output. It also means you can't grapple, shove, or trip as well. That's just the combat effects. In the exploration pillar, you are now no longer the strong guy/gal in the group. The character with Strength 10 is the better choice than you for feats of strength for the rest of the day (at least). While you gain a Strength check advantage while raging, and an initiative check advantage at 7th level, that means exactly squat for this penalty. If you didn't have the penalty, you would have advantage, rather than just not having disadvantage. It's a major penalty.
Level 2 – Speed halved. This indirectly reduces your damage, because you can't get yourself where you want to be in melee as easily. It also slows down the rest of the party in exploration—possibly including cross-country travel (DM's ruling on that). The party is going to hate you if they have to flee…or just leave you behind.
Level 3 – Disadvantage on attacks and saves. Okay, this is where pretty much everyone agrees it has gone way, way too far. You've already used three of your rages, and now you can't even fight at your expected level unless you rage again (hopefully not a frenzy!) So this is something you are just not going to use unless you think it is the last fight of the adventuring day.
Being generous to the Berserker, I'm going to assume he uses his Frenzy 3 times per adventuring day—saving the last one for the last fight. More likely he'd use it 2.5 times, because he wouldn't want to end up using the last one too soon and be stuck with the consequences, but I'm trying to be generous.
Each frenzy will give him approximately 2 attacks (since they won't do anything on his first turn, and we are assuming 3 round battles). They will, however probably have advantage, which is important for comparison purposes. What we end up with is the Berserker getting approximately 6 extra raging attacks with advantage per adventuring day. Granted, he is a raging barbarian, so those are really good attacks.
To compare:
Totem Warrior – Advantage on 13.5 to 54 allied good melee attacks, with zero downside.
Berserker – 6 extra raging really good attacks with advantage, at the cost of all of the exhaustion combat and exploration penalties addressed above.
Increasing the assume average length of combat has little substantial effect because both subclasses benefit from it.
Even without the exhaustion at all, it seems like the Berserker is getting the short end of the stick here. At levels 3-4ish, the Berserker is probably better than the Totem Warrior if you don't take into account the drawbacks. But after that the Totem Warrior continues to climb higher and higher above him.
If we make it even more favorable to the Berserker by dropping the Totem Warrior down to one ally and increasing the length of an average combat to 5 rounds, we end up with Totem Warrior at 15 to 60 allied attacks with advantage and Berserker at 12 extra raging attacks with advantage. If we assume that advantage on a non-barbarian's attack is worth about half a "comparison attack", and a barbarian's raging advantaged attack is worth 2 "comparison attacks"(2), then this puts the Berserker ahead at low levels, then sliding into a rough equivalency at mid to high levels, with Totem Warrior pulling clearly ahead after 17th level.
So is that the trick? Berserker assumes they get 12 extra attacks per day, aren't playing at high level, don't care about the exploration penalties for Exhaustion, and...I don't think that is doing it.
Now granted, the way 5e works no class is supposed to be so incredible that it blows everything similar out of the water. Also, personal damage is rated more highly than indirect damage caused by assisting allies. So we would expect that a properly functioning Berserker should only be a little better than the best Totem Warrior in daily damage output.
I don't know. Maybe replacing Exhaustion with damage akin to the Evoker's Overchannel feature would do the trick.
Thoughts? (Note: I'm not on here with my mind made up to remove the exhaustion penalty just trying to get support. I'm on here because I'm not sure my conclusions are correct and I don't want to inadvertently over-correct for the problem.)
(1) I honestly suck at advantage math. I'm not going to try to figure out how much damage that would add up to because it involves too many considerations. We'd have to guess at the average chance to hit a monster at various levels, etc.
(2) Which is probably too high, given that they start suffering the combat penalties for exhaustion after their first usage.
What I'm wanting to know is what the consensus is about how much weaker Berserker is than Totem Warrior, and what sort of change would be too much. I'm looking for some sort of extremely simple change I can make to the Frenzy feature which will make me happy about the balance. Something that involves one, or at most two, straightforward house rules. The kind of things that fit in a single sentence. That's just how I like to roll when I house rule.
For instance, the simplest house rule is just to eliminate the exhaustion from frenzy. Period. It doesn't get any simpler than that. But does that make it too good? Beats me. That's what this thread is for.
Here is my inconclusive analysis so far. I'm starting with standard assumptions of a 6-8 encounter, 2 short rest adventuring day. Based on what I've experienced and what I hear from others, I'm going to say most combats run 3 rounds (we might push that to 4 for purposes of raging combats). I'm also planning with what I see as the easiest to compare Totem Warrior features, where possible. This generally means I'm going for offensive combat features.
6th Level (we'll hold 3rd for the end)
Berserker – Immune to charmed and frightened while raging; suppressed if already active.
Totem Warrior (Eagle) – Dim light doesn't impose disadvantage on Wis (Perception).
10th Level
Berserker – Use actions to possibly frighten someone and keep them frightened for a short time, then they are immune for the rest of the day.
Totem Warrior – Commune with nature as a ritual.
14th Level
Berserker – Reaction to attack adjacent creature that damages you.
Totem Warrior (Wolf) – Use bonus action to automatically knock Large or smaller creature prone when you hit it in melee.
At 6th level, the Berserker seems to come out ahead. They get a nice situational combat feature, vs. the Eagle Warrior being less likely to be surprised in the dark (which isn't a bad feature either).
At 10th level, I think the Totem Warrior is the clear winner. While commune with nature isn't the best divination in the book, it provides some good utility. The Berserker's feature, on the other hand, doesn't even make sense. When the heck would you even want to use that? (Rhetorical question—we can all think of corner cases.) In general, the Berserker is the one who wants to get up in the bad guy's face—not keep him away.
At 14th Level, they both come out with some nice options. I'd say it's a very good balance at this level.
So, if you just look at those levels, they seem more or less balanced. You can't really compare those level mathematically, but it feels like a good fit. That means we can ignore those levels and focus entirely on the features granted at 3rd level (and their continued relevance as the character levels).
3rd Level
Berserker – When entering a rage, choose to gain ability to use bonus actions on subsequent turns to make a single additional attack—then gain a level of Exhaustion at end of rage.
Totem Warrior (Wolf) – Flanking allies gain advantage on melee attacks against your foes. Plus, you gain the ability to cast beast sense and speak with animals as rituals.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, a Berserker is supposed to be the more straightforward aggressive combat-oriented barbarian, while Totem Warrior is supposed to have some more utility. Which implies the Berserker should be, overall, better in the combat pillar—especially in the offense department.
So let's start with Totem Warrior (Wolf). I don't know about others, but in games that I play there are pretty much always 2 people in melee, and usually at least one more there part of the time. Unless my experience is extremely atypical, I'm going to assume the Wolf Warrior will have 1.5 allies who will take advantage of the advantage he grants them.
Let's be highly conservative and assume each of those allies is wielding a single d8 weapon. We will give them Extra Attack at appropriate levels.
So at levels 3-4ish, the Totem Warrior is providing advantage to about 13.5 melee attacks (not counting his own). 6th-11ish we can assume more like 36 melee attacks; and then maxing out at level 17+ at about 54 melee attacks. That's a lot of advantage going around.(1) And the stronger the melee abilities of the Totem Warrior's allies are, the better this gets. Conversely, with fewer or weaker allies it gets worse.
On to Berserker. Ignoring for the moment that fact that more than one level of Exhaustion means you will stay penalized for days (campaign dependant, but makes the penalty significantly worse for any campaign with back to back adventuring days), we'll focus just on the comparison during a self-contained standard adventuring day.
First off, lets address Exhaustion up-front, and then get into the day.
Level 1 – Disadvantage on ability checks. That means initiative. That causes an indirect but real reduction in your damage output. It also means you can't grapple, shove, or trip as well. That's just the combat effects. In the exploration pillar, you are now no longer the strong guy/gal in the group. The character with Strength 10 is the better choice than you for feats of strength for the rest of the day (at least). While you gain a Strength check advantage while raging, and an initiative check advantage at 7th level, that means exactly squat for this penalty. If you didn't have the penalty, you would have advantage, rather than just not having disadvantage. It's a major penalty.
Level 2 – Speed halved. This indirectly reduces your damage, because you can't get yourself where you want to be in melee as easily. It also slows down the rest of the party in exploration—possibly including cross-country travel (DM's ruling on that). The party is going to hate you if they have to flee…or just leave you behind.
Level 3 – Disadvantage on attacks and saves. Okay, this is where pretty much everyone agrees it has gone way, way too far. You've already used three of your rages, and now you can't even fight at your expected level unless you rage again (hopefully not a frenzy!) So this is something you are just not going to use unless you think it is the last fight of the adventuring day.
Being generous to the Berserker, I'm going to assume he uses his Frenzy 3 times per adventuring day—saving the last one for the last fight. More likely he'd use it 2.5 times, because he wouldn't want to end up using the last one too soon and be stuck with the consequences, but I'm trying to be generous.
Each frenzy will give him approximately 2 attacks (since they won't do anything on his first turn, and we are assuming 3 round battles). They will, however probably have advantage, which is important for comparison purposes. What we end up with is the Berserker getting approximately 6 extra raging attacks with advantage per adventuring day. Granted, he is a raging barbarian, so those are really good attacks.
To compare:
Totem Warrior – Advantage on 13.5 to 54 allied good melee attacks, with zero downside.
Berserker – 6 extra raging really good attacks with advantage, at the cost of all of the exhaustion combat and exploration penalties addressed above.
Increasing the assume average length of combat has little substantial effect because both subclasses benefit from it.
Even without the exhaustion at all, it seems like the Berserker is getting the short end of the stick here. At levels 3-4ish, the Berserker is probably better than the Totem Warrior if you don't take into account the drawbacks. But after that the Totem Warrior continues to climb higher and higher above him.
If we make it even more favorable to the Berserker by dropping the Totem Warrior down to one ally and increasing the length of an average combat to 5 rounds, we end up with Totem Warrior at 15 to 60 allied attacks with advantage and Berserker at 12 extra raging attacks with advantage. If we assume that advantage on a non-barbarian's attack is worth about half a "comparison attack", and a barbarian's raging advantaged attack is worth 2 "comparison attacks"(2), then this puts the Berserker ahead at low levels, then sliding into a rough equivalency at mid to high levels, with Totem Warrior pulling clearly ahead after 17th level.
So is that the trick? Berserker assumes they get 12 extra attacks per day, aren't playing at high level, don't care about the exploration penalties for Exhaustion, and...I don't think that is doing it.
Now granted, the way 5e works no class is supposed to be so incredible that it blows everything similar out of the water. Also, personal damage is rated more highly than indirect damage caused by assisting allies. So we would expect that a properly functioning Berserker should only be a little better than the best Totem Warrior in daily damage output.
I don't know. Maybe replacing Exhaustion with damage akin to the Evoker's Overchannel feature would do the trick.
Thoughts? (Note: I'm not on here with my mind made up to remove the exhaustion penalty just trying to get support. I'm on here because I'm not sure my conclusions are correct and I don't want to inadvertently over-correct for the problem.)
(1) I honestly suck at advantage math. I'm not going to try to figure out how much damage that would add up to because it involves too many considerations. We'd have to guess at the average chance to hit a monster at various levels, etc.
(2) Which is probably too high, given that they start suffering the combat penalties for exhaustion after their first usage.
