Barbarian Archetype: Wild Soul [PEACH]

[MechaPilot]

I liek the changes to Bestial Nature, including a ribbon disadvantage that makes sense and offsets some of the advantages (skill gains).

I'm not a fan of War Paint. It gives a big increase in power, as opposed to a trade-off of no armor for gaining power elsewhere. The change of this vs. Unarmored Defense is +2+Proficiency vs. +Con. So it starts as if you have an 18 CON (an increase) and by high levels it's the equivalent of 26 CON. It's a definite power boost. And it relies on costly material components from a non-civilized character who conceptually does not have coin and no mechanical way to gather it for themselves because 5e doesn't have a mechanism for that.

Yeah, I definitely threw some wrong numbers at that one. I was a little too tired when writing that. Tax season. 10- to 11-hour days doing people's taxes leaves me a bit loopy by the end of the night.

With a bit more rest behind me, I'm thinking 14 + Dexterity modifier, with a +2 bump at 10th level. That makes it roughly equivalent to mage armor early on, and equivalent to plate (or plate and a shield) at later levels.

I'm okay with it being a little better than mage armor because of a component cost (which I agree is too high at 5 gp each time) and because it's an ability for a combat-focused class that, by default, can wear medium armor and use a shield.

I think 5 gp might be okay if you buy the materials for the war paint, but I feel like it should be more personal than that; that it should be individually made by the character from materials they gather. And that has the benefit of gating the ability behind a resource more easily controllable by the DM.