Level Up (A5E) Barbarians without "reckless attack"

[xiphumor]

if nothing else, i think brutal critical should be changed so that even if your critical hit is reduced to a regular hit by an effect other then a reroll, you still get the effect of the brutal critical. that way even if the enemy you crit decides to take a level of fatigue or sacrifice their shield to reduce it to a regular hit, your class feature that's already hard to make use of doesn't become completely irrelevant.

I think that would be a reasonable rule.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Berserker would need to be completely redesigned to remove the crit-fishing aspect, so we’re already past that point. This did make me wonder if the berserker might benefit from having a unique “soft crit” with a much more generous range, not guaranteed chance to hit, and lower-but-not-insubstantial bonus to damage. Or maybe a number of times per long rest that a Furious Critical could be applied even if you didn’t crit.
There’s an archetype here that we’re basically formulating.

Something along those lines would seem a bit more palatable to my player.

if nothing else, i think brutal critical should be changed so that even if your critical hit is reduced to a regular hit by an effect other then a reroll, you still get the effect of the brutal critical. that way even if the enemy you crit decides to take a level of fatigue or sacrifice their shield to reduce it to a regular hit, your class feature that's already hard to make use of doesn't become completely irrelevant.

And that.

I don't want to overpower a class, and I can see that at levels 12+ (critting on 15% of d20 rolls) that advantage would be a nasty, likely broken innate combo, but gives me something to think on. Pure brainstorming, but would it break the class if:

• 2nd level, critical damage on rolls of 19-20 (but only a natural 20 is an auto-hit)
• Your furious critical effects apply when rolling a critical hit, even if your enemy negates the bonus damage (by using its bonus reaction to take a level of fatigue or sacrificing a proficient shield).
• You may apply your furious critical effects to a hit. This ability is renewed after a long rest.

 

[xiphumor]

Something along those lines would seem a bit more palatable to my player.

And that.

I don't want to overpower a class, and I can see that at levels 12+ (critting on 15% of d20 rolls) that advantage would be a nasty, likely broken innate combo, but gives me something to think on. Pure brainstorming, but would it break the class if:

• 2nd level, critical damage on rolls of 19-20 (but only a natural 20 is an auto-hit)
• Your furious critical effects apply when rolling a critical hit, even if your enemy negates the bonus damage (by using its bonus reaction to take a level of fatigue or sacrificing a proficient shield).
• You may apply your furious critical effects to a hit. This ability is renewed after a long rest.

Those seem like pretty reasonable changes. The 19-20 alone would change it to an expected 6-7 turns before expecting a crit. There could be some multiclassing funny-business, but for a straight berserker it should be fine.

 

[xiphumor]

The Surgical Combatant feat is also useful here. Perhaps you could extract the first bullet?

 

[lichmaster]

We've started our Dragonlance campaign (pure coincidence with Morrus's timing!), and my gamers have been used to 5E rules. Our "barbarian" gamer hit level 2 and realized the 5E feature of "reckless attack" no longer exists, instead replaced with a 5% chance to have a hit do something special (crit with a benefit), assuming it doesn't get nerfed by a monster using a reaction or breaking a shield to convert the crit to a normal hit.

I understand that can feel underwhelming for the player, I think the negative aspects are being a bit exaggerated:
First of all the possibility of sacrificing the shield is something that all PCs can do, but not necessarily NPCs can do. It makes sense that they can do so, but it's not guaranteed (npcs typically do not have death saves, etc, the game is designed to be asymmetric in many ways).
For monsters that do have a shield and sacrifice it, they lose part of the AC for the rest of the fight, which will result in higher DPR in all following attacks. In addition some of them may lose some actions, bonus actions or other traits related to shield use, which worsen their action economy.
Most monsters do not have shields though, so it also depends on how frequently they find enemies with shields

 

[W'rkncacnter]

First of all the possibility of sacrificing the shield is something that all PCs can do, but not necessarily NPCs can do. It makes sense that they can do so, but it's not guaranteed (npcs typically do not have death saves, etc, the game is designed to be asymmetric in many ways).
For monsters that do have a shield and sacrifice it, they lose part of the AC for the rest of the fight, which will result in higher DPR in all following attacks. In addition some of them may lose some actions, bonus actions or other traits related to shield use, which worsen their action economy.
Most monsters do not have shields though, so it also depends on how frequently they find enemies with shields

the problem (at least for me) is less that NPCs can negate crits for a cost in general and more that *furious critical itself gets completely negated for no extra benefit when they do so. also don't forget you (and thus theoretically NPCs too) can choose to take a level of fatigue to negate a critical hit (although personally if i were gonna let NPCs do that too i'd make them suffer the effects of that fatigue immediately instead of after the encounter, because otherwise why would they not just take that one free critical hit negation). so, sure, maybe it won't come up super often, but when it does, that berserker player's probably gonna feel really cheated.

*also, i just realized i called it brutal critical earlier. o5e brain moment.

 

[lichmaster]

I feel like the Release version of Press The Attack is really underwhelming. Expertise on either side would be fine, but only gaining Expertise yourself but Advantage on attacks against you is awful. Especially when Fall Back negates the benefits of using it but doesn't mitigate the negatives. I think it was much more potent in the Playtest, Advantage on both sides plus Fall Back causing Disadvantage on attacks of whoever used it iirc, which may have been a bit too much but it just feels impotent now.

I'm also not fond of this expertise/disadvantage asymmetry and I agree that it makes the use of this action very situational.
That said, I think PTA was not designed to replace reckless assault, but to introduce some forms of forced movement resulting in more tactical repositioning (pressing enemies down a cliff or inside a hazard). Grappling and shoving might be the better solution in some cases, but PTA is not size restricted and does not require a save.

 

[lichmaster]

the problem (at least for me) is less that NPCs can negate crits for a cost in general and more that *furious critical itself gets completely negated for no extra benefit when they do so. also don't forget you (and thus theoretically NPCs too) can choose to take a level of fatigue to negate a critical hit (although personally if i were gonna let NPCs do that too i'd make them suffer the effects of that fatigue immediately instead of after the encounter, because otherwise why would they not just take that one free critical hit negation). so, sure, maybe it won't come up super often, but when it does, that berserker player's probably gonna feel really cheated.

*also, i just realized i called it brutal critical earlier. o5e brain moment.

I totally see your point, which is why I'd reiterate that those options are specifically discussed in the Adventurer's guide and are not in the Monstrous Managerie. Specific monsters may have legendary actions that do negate some effects, but in the *5e asymmetric design philosophy there's no way for monsters to either sacrifice the shield or take a level of fatigue or strife. Of course this is up to the DM, but it seems very reasonable to me.

Edit: also, I do agree that having one of your cool features negated for no benefits is not cool. But in there you should also place all the spells which negate on save. Spells that may require a high level slot. So that's a concept that should be treated from a much wider perspective IMO

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I totally see your point, which is why I'd reiterate that those options are specifically discussed in the Adventurer's guide and are not in the Monstrous Managerie. Specific monsters may have legendary actions that do negate some effects, but in the *5e asymmetric design philosophy there's no way for monsters to either sacrifice the shield or take a level of fatigue or strife. Of course this is up to the DM, but it seems very reasonable to me.

i'd disagree - the options to sacrifice a shield or take a level of fatigue to negate a critical hit are listed in generalist sections (sacrifice shield in the shields section of equipment, take fatigue under...well...fatigue). monsters can wield shields and, presumably, take fatigue, and considering sacrifice shield is written as if it is an inherent ability of shields, and taking fatigue to negate a critical hit is written as if it is an inherent property of fatigue, i think it's reasonable to say a monster could do either. after all, monsters can dash and dodge and disengage and whatnot, and those things are listed in the adventurer's guide and not the monstrous managerie. now, my point isn't that your proposed ruling isn't also reasonable - i could absolutely see a DM making a ruling that monsters can't negate critical hits by taking fatigue or sacrificing a shield - just that, when evaluating the balance of furious critical, i don't believe we can reliably assume it to hold in any given game.

 

[lichmaster]

i'd disagree - the options to sacrifice a shield or take a level of fatigue to negate a critical hit are listed in generalist sections (sacrifice shield in the shields section of equipment, take fatigue under...well...fatigue). monsters can wield shields and, presumably, take fatigue, and considering sacrifice shield is written as if it is an inherent ability of shields, and taking fatigue to negate a critical hit is written as if it is an inherent property of fatigue, i think it's reasonable to say a monster could do either. after all, monsters can dash and dodge and disengage and whatnot, and those things are listed in the adventurer's guide and not the monstrous managerie. now, my point isn't that your proposed ruling isn't also reasonable - i could absolutely see a DM making a ruling that monsters can't negate critical hits by taking fatigue or sacrificing a shield - just that, when evaluating the balance of furious critical, i don't believe we can reliably assume it to hold in any given game.

Point taken about dash and disengage.
But if we allow monsters to negate crits by sacrificing shields and taking fatigue, we might as well just remove crits altogether.
Rules for negating crits were likely put in place to reduce the unpleasant swinginess of 5e combat to the players detriment (something that 5.5e is also doing by basically removing monster crits, at least if things didn't change since last time I checked).
If we cannot assume that this asymmetry for negating crits is for the benefits of PCs only, we also have to conclude that the a5e berserker is essentially flawed, since it's defining feature (which cannot be triggered by the player and it occurs spontaneously quite rarely, btw) can be negated by every monster.
I'd rather err on the other side and assume that crit negation is something only PCs and very specific monsters can do.