D&D 5E barbarian damage reduction and combat healing economy

[Chocolategravy]

One of several reasons we use a homebrew initiative system that is not cyclic: Precisely so situations of that nature aren't remotely so predictable. (And in fact, a few games ago we had our first PC death, and it happened in part because of the initiative system. The bard didn't get a chance to heal the rogue before it was too late; on a cyclic system, he would have. And yes, this is a feature, not a bug. )

You can't have deadly fights with random initiative as it is a way of randomly making fights harder and will too often turn a deadly fight into a TPK. Without a mechanic like Savage World's benny system to soak hits when team monster goes back to back it's very easy to butcher a D&D party where many PCs can already go from full health to dead in 1 crit.

 

[Psikerlord#]

You can't have deadly fights with random initiative as it is a way of randomly making fights harder and will too often turn a deadly fight into a TPK. Without a mechanic like Savage World's benny system to soak hits when team monster goes back to back it's very easy to butcher a D&D party where many PCs can already go from full health to dead in 1 crit.

Random initiative is supposed to make fights harder and more unpredictable. That's why we use it. Standard 5e is too hard to die. Not enough suspense.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Attack the other PCs.

For some reason I read this and thought of the barbarian attacking the other PCs. Which certainly would reduce the amount of healing the barbarian gets.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You can't have deadly fights with random initiative as it is a way of randomly making fights harder and will too often turn a deadly fight into a TPK.

Yes you can. I always use random initiative (AD&D-style/Speed Factor, with a declare-actions-in-order-of-int-ascending modification and no speed modifiers), and I run deadly fights of one kind or another probably every other session or every third session, which is to say about every five or six combats. The deadliest fight I've run so far was 287,000 XP, 30 times the deadly threshold of 9600 XP for a 12th level, 11th level, and 7th level PC/NPC (they did have a friendly-but-insane-ish Grey Slaad, the necromancer's 26 skeletal archers, and a spelljamming ship full of 0th level sailors on their side, and the Grey Slaad died in the fight).

You can have deadly fights with random initiative and they are lots of fun in part because of that unpredictable deadliness. Standard initiative is way too easy to game.

 

[Celtavian]

Yes you can. I always use random initiative (AD&D-style/Speed Factor, with a declare-actions-in-order-of-int-ascending modification and no speed modifiers), and I run deadly fights of one kind or another probably every other session or every third session, which is to say about every five or six combats. The deadliest fight I've run so far was 287,000 XP, 30 times the deadly threshold of 9600 XP for a 12th level, 11th level, and 7th level PC/NPC (they did have a friendly-but-insane-ish Grey Slaad, the necromancer's 26 skeletal archers, and a spelljamming ship full of 0th level sailors on their side, and the Grey Slaad died in the fight).

You can have deadly fights with random initiative and they are lots of fun in part because of that unpredictable deadliness. Standard initiative is way too easy to game.

And Karinsdad called the xp budget of my fight against gnolls insane.

I kind of like the intelligent deciding initiative order given its near uselessness to anyone but wizards in this game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

WotC is busy giving them higher AC with things like Mariner.

That's a fighting style. Barbarians don't get a fighting style. If anything, the existence of the mariner style means that the relative survivability of a barbarian compared to a fighter has gone down.

Advantage would only double the hit rate if they were getting hit only on a 20. At 50% hit rate it is only a 50% increase in hits.

Barbarians are also starting with a lower AC, though, since they don't have the heavy armor or defensive fighting style that a fighter has. If their base AC is three points lower than the fighter, then disadvantage pushes that awfully close to twice as many hits as the fighter.

 

[Mouseferatu]

You can't have deadly fights with random initiative as it is a way of randomly making fights harder and will too often turn a deadly fight into a TPK. Without a mechanic like Savage World's benny system to soak hits when team monster goes back to back it's very easy to butcher a D&D party where many PCs can already go from full health to dead in 1 crit.

Gosh, I'm so glad you told me it can't be done. It's good to know I completely imagined the last six months of gaming that my players and I all really enjoyed while using this system.

Makes sense you'd be the one to point it out. After all, you're the expert on "imaginary games," since you've spent about that same amount of time commenting on a game that, by your own admission, you weren't even playing. It's certainly much easier to critique that way than it would be if you actually had to learn and experience the game first.

 

[sithramir]

Barbarians lose rage if they can't attack someone and didn't take damage. This happens often when its out in the open (in my games). Another little negative.

If using point by their low AC really becomes noticeable when being attacked.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Gosh, I'm so glad you told me it can't be done.

You're welcome. Now in the future you'll have more fun.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And Karinsdad called the xp budget of my fight against gnolls insane.

I know, right? That's the kind of thing that happens when the players decide to ram and board a neogi deathspider. No survival instinct at all.

I kind of like the intelligent deciding initiative order given its near uselessness to anyone but wizards in this game.

One neat thing about it is that it makes fights against intelligent enemies much, much harder than against stupid fodder. For example, against the umber hulks, since umber hulks are smarter than skeletons, once the neogi recovered from their surprise and got mentally adjusted they made sure whichever umber hulk got targeted by the archers would just Dodge for that round. And the neogi wizard with Fireball was very, very scary since nobody but the Int 18 PC wizard could know when he was going to pop out of a doorway and roast a few skeletons, so they either had to maybe-waste their actions Readying an action to hit him as soon as he came out (in which case he just wouldn't come out) or pursue him into his hiding place in order to proactively kill him.

Having played with this initiative variant I could never go back to static, cyclic initiative. (Not that I used it very much before switching.)