D&D 5E Barbarians: Why Rage per Day?

[Li Shenron]

3. One thing I don't like is the fact that your rage ends if you haven't hit something or moved towards an enemy or whatever the conditions are. That's lame. You should be able to maintain anger while moving towards something and doing nothing else.

I agree on this. There are probably only rare cases when it matters, but I don't see why e.g. a Barbarian's rage should end if you are spending the whole round moving towards the next enemy just because you were too far, or because it's trying to escape.

Also, why should the DM disallow Rage against objects? What is wrong with a Barbarian getting mad at a stuck door, and entering Rage to smash it down?

 

[leonardoraele]

[MENTION=57494]Xeviat[/MENTION]

I don't know how much is it balanced, but I would change the barbarian to be able to use one range per short rest. This means that you will be ignoring the number of ranges/day column of the barbarian table. Also, this change is flavorously reasonable: the barbarian will rage as the opportunity presents it to, but will be tired enough to be unable to rage again until it rests.
I know that this custom rage is stronger than the original at the first levels, but I think it balanced for 6th level barbarians.

An alternative would be to create a new barbarian path that reflects your vision of the barbarian. Here is a drafty one: (lack playtesting)

Path of the Insane Warrior
You can call this path as you please, I didn't come to a good name (nor to the features), but this path is intended for the barbarian that leaves it's emotions of madness, insanity, bloodthrist and fury take control of it's body and give it unthinkable destructive power. Also, it can enter rage quickly and often.

Bloodthirst
Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you becomes so insane while you are raging, that whatever damage you takes, makes you stronger. Whenever you take damage while you are raging, you received a bloodthrist dice, which is a d6. Whenever you hit a creature with a melee attack until the end of your next turn, you can add any amount of bloodthrist dices you have to the damage. You loose all unspent bloodthrist dices at the end of each of your turns.

Unstable Mind
Beginning at 6th level, the primal ferocity that represents your rage is the strongest feeling within you and you are so unstable that anything harmful can easily trigger your rage. Whenever you take damage while you are not raging, if that damage reduced your hit points to half your hit points maximum but didn't let you uncounscious, you can use your reaction to enter rage. entering rage this way doesn't count against the number of times you can voluntarily enter rage per day.

 

[krakistophales]

@Xeviat

I don't know how much is it balanced, but I would change the barbarian to be able to use one range per short rest. This means that you will be ignoring the number of ranges/day column of the barbarian table. Also, this change is flavorously reasonable: the barbarian will rage as the opportunity presents it to, but will be tired enough to be unable to rage again until it rests.
I know that this custom rage is stronger than the original at the first levels, but I think it balanced for 6th level barbarians.

An alternative would be to create a new barbarian path that reflects your vision of the barbarian. Here is a drafty one: (lack playtesting)

Path of the Insane Warrior
You can call this path as you please, I didn't come to a good name (nor to the features), but this path is intended for the barbarian that leaves it's emotions of madness, insanity, bloodthrist and fury take control of it's body and give it unthinkable destructive power. Also, it can enter rage quickly and often.

Bloodthirst
Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you becomes so insane while you are raging, that whatever damage you takes, makes you stronger. Whenever you take damage while you are raging, you received a bloodthrist dice, which is a d6. Whenever you hit a creature with a melee attack until the end of your next turn, you can add any amount of bloodthrist dices you have to the damage. You loose all unspent bloodthrist dices at the end of each of your turns.

Unstable Mind
Beginning at 6th level, the primal ferocity that represents your rage is the strongest feeling within you and you are so unstable that anything harmful can easily trigger your rage. Whenever you take damage while you are not raging, if that damage reduced your hit points to half your hit points maximum but didn't let you uncounscious, you can use your reaction to enter rage. entering rage this way doesn't count against the number of times you can voluntarily enter rage per day.

While I commend the effort to switch things up, the one rage/short rest I think is flawed because it essentially makes the barbarian on par with a fighter in terms of action economy, ergo action surge. The fighter, however, has many more features going for it other than action surge to make him constantly deadly, whereas the barbarian is so reliant on his rage that he simply needs to be able to rage more than once per short rest or otherwise he'll be nerfed even more than he already was. The only way I could see this working is a scaling increase in the amount of rages per short rest as you level up, but then that presents my next point:

First of all, I love the fact that at level 20 you get 24/24 STR/CON and unlimited rages. That is definitely the epitome of rage. However, scaling up, I feel like they had to make a judgement call: They knew they had to have multiple use of rage, and then the only other question was: short or long rest? If long rest, it sounds pretty balanced. Short rest? Nonsense. Imagine a barbarian that got his rages back with a short rest. Why play any other martial class then?

 

[leonardoraele]

I know that it isn't balanced just as I wrote, but are you saying Action Surge alone is in par with one use of Rage? I disagree with that.

Anyways, I wasn't comparing the barbarian to the fighter when I suggested the rage/short rest option, but with the barbarian as it is in PHB. At first levels, (i.e. at 5th or lower levels), the rages/short rest option can probably take more rages than the rages/day option. This makes the change not a debuff, but a change of perspective. In later levels, however (i.e. at 12th level and greater levels), the rages/day option will most likely take more rages than the rages/short rest option would. Maybe changing this approach to 2 rages/short rest beginning at 12th level would make it balanced.

 

[Mercule]

I just looked at my 2E Viking Handbook, which has a Berserker class modeled after the Norse guys who like to fight naked in sub-zero weather -- or maybe wear a bear sark (shirt).

The balance (such as was considered in 2E) came from a couple places:

1) The Berserker had to spend a round working himself into a fit. After that, he could roll to see if it worked. If not, spend next round and try again.
2) Must engage in melee, pretty much continuously. If you don't, you have to check to see whether you fall out of berserk.
3) Cannot run away without automatically ending the berserk.
4) Chance to be exhausted after the berserk ends. That kinda sucks in the middle of combat.
5) Maximum duration of 10 rounds, which isn't new, but worth calling out with #4.

Comparing the relative strength of the rages, I could see it being balanced if you took away the damage resistance and just made the Barbarian spend an action to enter Rage. No limit per day. Or, change the balance a bit by limiting rages based on short rests, rather than long -- "Hang on. I have to catch my breath after dismembering the ogre with my bare hands." Either way, I think it could have been balanced better -- I like per short rest, myself.

If you just want a rationale for the existing mechanic, I'd go with "it's a game". For a better way of handling it, in game, say that the character can always try to rage, but the player has control over whether the attempt succeeds or not. The player is then constrained by the per day mechanic.

 

[Xeviat]

@Xeviat

I don't know how much is it balanced, but I would change the barbarian to be able to use one range per short rest. This means that you will be ignoring the number of ranges/day column of the barbarian table. Also, this change is flavorously reasonable: the barbarian will rage as the opportunity presents it to, but will be tired enough to be unable to rage again until it rests.
I know that this custom rage is stronger than the original at the first levels, but I think it balanced for 6th level barbarians.

An alternative would be to create a new barbarian path that reflects your vision of the barbarian. Here is a drafty one: (lack playtesting)

Past the levels where you have 3/day, when it is basically an every other fight feature, you'd need to buff the benefits of rage. Interestingly, as I originally started looking into this in response to a player wondering what about the barbarian was keeping him from multiclassing after 9th level, I think that would actually go a long way to keeping people with the class for a longer time. They could even get a rage every fight feature at level 17, where they wouldn't need a rage buff anymore.

I do think that rage offers a different playstyle than Action Surge, though. Rage and Reckless Assault stack to grant advantage and bonus damage, while the rage damage reduction largely negates the granting of advantage to attackers. Rage also lasts an entire fight, while action surge is just a single round.

 

[Salamandyr]

Ironically, once per short rest is actually considerably more use limited than the current generous allowance of daily rages.

It may depend on how short rests work out in play at ones individual table, but taking an hour in the middle of an adventure is rarely an optimal decision, so players wind up hoarding abilities like action surge that are supposed to be used profligately, while spending spells and rages with much more abandon because they've got the extras to spare.

I find the short rest mechanic is really a subpar design choice, but changing it to a shorter time to allow it between every combat almost seems like too much of a buff.

 

[SailorNash]

My all-time favorite Rage system was the Atavism rules in IronClaw. Under that system, you'd fight like any furious, intensive Fighter...you weren't ever "holding anything back" as you do here. Instead, you had rage-powers similar to Battlemaster maneuvers which would let you do any number of impressive things due to your boundless fury. The more difficult the trick, the harder the roll. Most amusingly, your INT stat was added to the difficulty...you'd have to roll your Rage dice versus the difficulty dice PLUS your own common sense before you lost your mind enough to go that Saiyan-level crazy.

 

[Uchawi]

Ironically, once per short rest is actually considerably more use limited than the current generous allowance of daily rages.

It may depend on how short rests work out in play at ones individual table, but taking an hour in the middle of an adventure is rarely an optimal decision, so players wind up hoarding abilities like action surge that are supposed to be used profligately, while spending spells and rages with much more abandon because they've got the extras to spare.

I find the short rest mechanic is really a subpar design choice, but changing it to a shorter time to allow it between every combat almost seems like too much of a buff.

I agree that is a problem with the short rest mechanic in general. Where things that are designed on daily rests will always happen based on uses per day as a balancing factor.

 

[Xeviat]

I agree that is a problem with the short rest mechanic in general. Where things that are designed on daily rests will always happen based on uses per day as a balancing factor.

Remember, though, that the DMG says the game is balanced around 6-8 medium encounters per day (mostly 6 if you do the math on XP per day) and 2 short rests per day, which puts you into 1 short rest every 2 encounters or so. 1 rage per short rest would be equal to 3 rages per day, so once the barbarian goes over that you'd need to look into adding extra rages per day or switching over to every encounter. It would be a slight change to things, and you'd likely need to rebalance during the level range of 4 to 5 rages per day.

I feel like I'd like the notion of 1 rage per short rest over 3/day, only because I can envision the resting for an hour to recoup the rage more so then having 2, 3, or 4 per day that I then have to rest for the whole night. I know it is often described as a psudomystical thing, but that also seems to not mesh. The Monk's Ki is power from within and it recovers on a short rest, after all.