Barbarian rage replacement

[Sammael]

As a part of my overall D&D redesign effort, I'm currently going through various warrior classes, streamlining their abilities and turning them into class features of my revised Fighter class. Right now, I'm considering the barbarian's rage ability. This is what I currently have:

Once per encounter, as a free action, you can become enraged. While enraged, you suffer a -2 penalty to AC and cannot use any abilities that require concentration, but you also receive a bonus to your Strength attribute and Resolve skill, and your resistance to all forms of damage increases by the value of this bonus. The bonus is equal to 2 plus the sum of your Fighter level and Endurance rating divided by 10. If you begin your turn enraged, you suffer 2 points of nonlethal damage from exertion. The rage lasts until the end of the encounter or until you end it as a free action. After the rage ends, you become fatigued.

Some clarifications are probably needed:

• Attributes (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha) no longer go from 3-18 (or whatever), they go from -4 to +4. Basically, attributes are what ability modifiers used to be.
• Resolve is a new skill that combines the former Will save and Concentration skill, and Endurance is a new skill that combines the former Fortitude save and Endurance feat. There's obviously more, but I don't want to clog the discussion down with explanations.
• Rating refers to the number of ranks, which may not exceed level/2, rounded up. Thus, if we take a pure rage fighter, he would have a bonus of +2 at 1st level, +3 at 7th level, +4 at 13th level, and +5 at 20th level.

The "once per encounter" part is intentional, since one of my main goals is to eliminate the tracking of rounds.

The reason why the total bonus is not just a function of the fighter level is to allow multiclassed fighters to eventually improve their rage if they keep their Endurance skill maxed out (e.g. A character with, say, 2 levels of fighter would improve his rage bonus to +3 at 15th level if he kept maxing out his Endurance skill).

Fatigue can be removed with another high-level fighter class ability, to simulate tireless rage.

Since there is no limit to the number of times per day one can become enraged, I introduced nonlethal damage as a sort of a balancing measure.

Resistance to all forms of damage (effectively DR x/- plus resist cold x, fire x, etc.) is in lieu of the Con increase and barbarian's DR class feature.

Now that I've finished writing, I see that it's quite difficult to single out one ability without explaining all other changes I've made to the system, but hopefully it's enough for people to tell me if the ability (1) is clear (2) still fits the barbarian's flavor and (3) appears to be worth it.

 

[Aus_Snow]

As a part of my overall D&D redesign effort, I'm currently going through various warrior classes, streamlining their abilities and turning them into class features of my revised Fighter class. Right now, I'm considering the barbarian's rage ability.

If I am being obtuse, my apologies. Is it your intent to have only the one Fighter class, and no others (such as Barbarian, etc.) ? I mean, that's how it reads to me, but. . . *

Since there is no limit to the number of times per day one can become enraged, I introduced nonlethal damage as a sort of a balancing measure.

Is this even necessary though, given that 'once per encounter' is the cap, regardless of class (or, indeed, Endurance) level? So, if you have lots of encounters in a given session, this character will be more powerful for it, but if you have fewer, they'll prove 'weaker'. Pretty much down to the DM's running of it, and the players' luck and decisions each session. 'Per day' might not even mean very much, depending on DM style and playing style/fortunes, basically.

Now that I've finished writing, I see that it's quite difficult to single out one ability without explaining all other changes I've made to the system

* Heh. That's often the way it goes. My own house rules, and Raven Crowking's RCFG rules, are a couple of examples where this has been the case. Well, it's seemed that way to me, at least.

I (or anyone else, probably) can only try to comment usefully based on what you've posted, plus whatever else seems logical to assume.

Is a 'rage Fighter' someone who's stuck with one Fighter 'path' entirely, or for the most part? Or is it a Fighter who's consistently taken the required feats, outside of class?

Anyway, (translated back to 3e) : +10 to Strength, and +5 to Will saves [and Concentration checks] and DR/- plus Resistance (all) seems OK to me, for super-high levels. Of course, this depends on so many other system factors. . .

 

[Sammael]

If I am being obtuse, my apologies. Is it your intent to have only the one Fighter class, and no others (such as Barbarian, etc.) ? I mean, that's how it reads to me, but. . . *

No, that's fine - I should have explained it better. My revision has 8 base classes: Bard, Champion, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Mage, Ranger, and Rogue. I feel that these 8 classes are sufficient to cover all possible character concepts. Here's a brief rundown:

• Bard - diplomat, negotiator, and master of buffs and beguilements; class features include Bardic Lore (successful check provides a bonus to other skill checks) and Spellsongs (three tiers - spellnotes, spellchords, and spellmelodies - all usable at will)
• Champion - warrior whose power comes from his beliefs; picks two causes and then receives a host of powers based on those causes, including auras (passive ongoing effects), pledges (mostly offensive effects channeled through his weapon), and smites (expend a pledge for an area effect or enhanced standard effect)
• Cleric - highly specialized, each priest receives 5 domains (dependent on deity) and each domain has 2 prayers per tier; no more generic cleric spells - those are replaced with various divine channeling abilities; in addition, clerics receive bonus rituals and each deity grants one or more special abilities.
• Druid - shapeshifter (from level 1), spontaneous caster (with a limited number of invocations known), call animals as a bonus ritual that always succeeds.
• Fighter - master of arms and armor; chooses fighting style at first level (berserker, which grants rage, is one such style), gets maneuvers (instead of bonus feats), veteran lore (various passive effects), and trophies (magic items that each fighter crafts himself from parts of various slain beasts).
• Mage - Sorcerer and Wizard in one (he chooses a list of spells each day but can then cast any of them as much as he likes); Tradition of Magic at 1st level (like specialization, but broader and different benefits); cantrips at will; also gets metamagic; spell mastery and related feats (a lot more often than before); spells toned down in power somewhat.
• Ranger - 3.5 scout on steroids, gets to choose exploits (various movement-related abilities), bonus skirmish damage/AC benefits, monster slayer benefits (based on monster tactics; can only pick them for monsters he has encountered; e.g. benefit from Monster Slayer (Bugbears) is that the ranger takes 1d6 points of damage less from sneak attacks).
• Rogue - Sneak attacks, bonus skill-related feats every couple of levels, and gets to pick skill tricks (which include former rogue abilities, lots of PrC abilities, and more).

Is this even necessary though, given that 'once per encounter' is the cap, regardless of class (or, indeed, Endurance) level? So, if you have lots of encounters in a given session, this character will be more powerful for it, but if you have fewer, they'll prove 'weaker'. Pretty much down to the DM's running of it, and the players' luck and decisions each session. 'Per day' might not even mean very much, depending on DM style and playing style/fortunes, basically.

You are probably right and I was just being too cautious on the side of "balance."

Is a 'rage Fighter' someone who's stuck with one Fighter 'path' entirely, or for the most part? Or is it a Fighter who's consistently taken the required feats, outside of class?

As I stated above, 'rage fighter' is a fighter who picks the berserker fighting style at 1st level. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course, there are fighter maneuvers that play off the rage, but he doesn't need to take them if he doesn't want to.

Anyway, (translated back to 3e) : +10 to Strength, and +5 to Will saves [and Concentration checks] and DR/- plus Resistance (all) seems OK to me, for super-high levels. Of course, this depends on so many other system factors. . .

One of the important factors that I probably should have mentioned is that magic items are a lot less powerful than in stock 3.x. For instance, no magic item grants a bonus greater than +2. Well, maybe artifacts will, but they are a special case anyhow. The purpose, of course, was to make PCs less dependant on magic items and that's why I'm comfortable making the class abilities a bit stronger.

As an aside, all fighters get an ability at 2nd level that's called "Master of Arms" that lets them add 1/2 their fighter level to damage. That's basically to replace the iterative attacks, which I got rid of.

I have a wiki with most of the system laid out, if not exactly detailed yet, but I am not comfortable posting a link to it since it uses a fair amount of D&D product identity stuff. I have two playtesting groups and, thus far, they seem to be enjoying all the changes (which ended up as substantial as 4E, but not going in the same direction).