Level Up (A5E) Berserker too strong?

[DerDoktory]

I am the DM in a Zeitgeist Campaign and we are at Level 5 at the moment. We decided to use the LevelUp Rules and one of my players played a Berserker until now. He asked me the other day if he could change the class because he felt he was too strong, especially compared to other Martial User, ex. the Adept/Monk Player.
He played with a build using the Critital Strike features and was definitly tearing through some encounters with that, like getting several critial strikes in a row with relentless attack. He bought himself a weapon weapon to higher the crit chance und used ways to get advantage, ex. the Martial Scientist Background.

I thought he was really strong, but not necessary op, because the Berserker is build for combat and doesnst have the same creative ways for solutions like Spellcaster have. But i let him change his class to Druid.

Do other groups had similiar experiences with Berserker or was this player just lucky, because a build based on critical strikes is obviously dependent on some dice luck.

 

[thuter]

Attacks on an extended crit range (19-20) have a 19% crit chance with advantage. So getting multiple in a row is lucky but will happen somewhat frequently. When getting 2 attacks per action (at lvl 5), there's almost a 35% chance of at least one of them being a crit (given advantage and 19-20 range), which would then trigger even more attacks from Relentless Attack (again with 19% crit chance each to trigger recursive attacks).

I don't have experience with the A5E Berserker, but I do have experience with a very similar 4E critfisher build: Avenger with Twin Strike. Two attacks per Standard Action, each with double rolls from Oath of Enmity, 19-20 crit range from his weapon enchantment (and he got a crit if both of the rolls came up with the same number, if that number would result in a hit, from his paragon path). Any crit would deal extra (ongoing and regular) damage, and would trigger another attack. 4E was limited to one 'free action' attack per turn, however, which we didn't know back then. He did absolutely ungodly amounts of damage, and we LOVED him for it! It was OP for sure, however. Another problem was that his turns took rather long as he had to roll so many dice.

So... While it involves some luck, the main problems are I think these:
1. Is it still possible for you as a DM to balance encounters? Because the unstable damage output of these kind of builds makes it sometimes possible that hard encounters get demolished in two rounds, but if you just use stronger monsters and the crit trains don't go off, your party suddenly is in a bad place.

2. Is the player having fun? If he feels like his character is too strong and it takes away the fun in encounters, maybe it is better to play a different character indeed. I have played a 5E crossbow expert sharpshooter weaponmaster at lvl 13 for one session, almost soloed a tough encounter in 2 rounds, was proud and disgusted and trashed the character immediatly for something less ridiculous. The problem is: Being effective in combat is fun, and if you enjoy it, that can be a good thing. But if you feel like you should be ashamed of the insane munchkin you created, that's not great.

3. Are the other players having fun? If they feel like their participation in combat is irrelevant, because the berserker will kill anything anyways, that might not be great. On the other hand, maybe they try to work to set the berserker meat grinder up as much as possible and play the encounter to his strengths. I have DM'd for a party with a wizard that was absolutely delighted to paralyze or sleep monsters, so that the barbarian in our 5E campaign could utterly slaughter the target with almost guaranteed crits. Even though he didn't deal the damage, he made sure things died.

 

[DerDoktory]

Like i wrote, he got himself a weapon that lowered the crit rate to 18-20- Maybe i shouldnt have allowed this but in the Zeitgeist Campaign the players are advised to buy their own equipment instead of finding it.

Than its the way the relentless attack is written in the book. It goes: "When you score a critical hit, you may immediately make an additional melee weapon attack (no action or reaction required)." Its not written, that you have to use the same weapon. For example he took the Polearm Master Feat and could attack with his polearm as a bonus action, so he got 3 attacks in a round. But if he scored a crit with the polearm he could use the normal weapon for the relentless attack, at least this is the way we interpreted the rules.

He also took the combat maneuver "cleaving swing" that allowed him to use his reaction to attack a second creature. So he could actually attack 4 times in a round at Level 5 with advantage and a crit range of 18-20. He made a lot of crits.

And like i said, i personaly didnt have problems with that, like in encounter design, but we have a adept/monk player who also never said anything negative about this, but it was pretty abvious that the Berserker was way stronger in the combats.

 

[thuter]

Like i wrote, he got himself a weapon that lowered the crit rate to 18-20

My bad, I didn't see a mention of the specific range so I assumed 19-20. But 18-20 and 4 attacks shifts the numbers a bit. 28% chance to crit with advantage may be overdoing it a bit yeah. That's only a 27% chance to not crit in a turn.

I have played the other way around in a campaign once, I played a O5E Elemental Fist monk, my teammate a GWM Barbarian, and yeah... Didn't matter that I punched wolves, if he hit them with his greatsword they would die regardless. Was not too pleased about that myself.

 

[DerDoktory]

My bad, I didn't see a mention of the specific range so I assumed 19-20.

The LevelUp Berserker gets a crit range from 19-20 at Level 5 and then the player bought a weapon to get a range from 18-20.

 

[tetrasodium]

I haven't seen a berserker in play but the adept in my game seems to be doing extremely well when placed alongside the fighter & marshal PCs in my game. The adept had a bumpy start where they didn't really put much of any thought into maneuver selection though, once that got fixed it was good.

Since it sounds like the berserker has obviously put some thought into making choices that reinforce each other I'd recommend checking what maneuvers & choices made at levelup for the other PCs to see if they are putting any thought into synergizing the choices granted by their classes.

 

[Anselm]

He played with a build using the Critital Strike features and was definitly tearing through some encounters with that, like getting several critial strikes in a row with relentless attack.

I'm curious how you interpreted the "If this subsequent attack is also a critical hit, this feature can be activated again for a number of times equal to half your proficiency bonus." part of Relentless attack. It's not exactly clear to me when the "maximum" kicks in but at level 5 I'd think even a pretty liberal interpretation would stop the total number of attacks per turn at a total of 4.

 

[DerDoktory]

I'm curious how you interpreted the "If this subsequent attack is also a critical hit, this feature can be activated again for a number of times equal to half your proficiency bonus." part of Relentless attack. It's not exactly clear to me when the "maximum" kicks in but at level 5 I'd think even a pretty liberal interpretation would stop the total number of attacks per turn at a total of 4.

Pretty simple. The part with only "half of your proficiency" counts only for a crit on the subsequent attacks, at least so its written. So the first extra attack after a crit is always possible, only every extra attack after that is limited.

 

[Anselm]

Pretty simple. The part with only "half of your proficiency" counts only for a crit on the subsequent attacks, at least so its written. So the first extra attack after a crit is always possible, only every extra attack after that is limited.

It's the "only every extra attack after that" is where I'm not sure how to read. Is it every attack in the chain after the first "regular attack" crit? Or is it every attack after that during the turn? The former seems very strong and quite silly. The latter steems strong but at least reasonable. If my berserker player takes the feature I think I'll limit it to the total number of extra attacks cannot be more than half prof bonus per chain. I know that's not strictly the raw but the potential of 8 or 10 attacks a turn at level 9 seems way too much.

 

[DerDoktory]

It's the "only every extra attack after that" is where I'm not sure how to read. Is it every attack in the chain after the first "regular attack" crit? Or is it every attack after that during the turn? The former seems very strong and quite silly. The latter steems strong but at least reasonable. If my berserker player takes the feature I think I'll limit it to the total number of extra attacks cannot be more than half prof bonus per chain. I know that's not strictly the raw but the potential of 8 or 10 attacks a turn at level 9 seems way too much.

They wote "If this subsequent attack is also a critical hit..." not "if any other attack in that turn..." So in my interpretation they mean the subsequent attack coming from the relentless attack. If this was limited to only the first attack in a turn oder just once in a turn it should have been written much clearer.
But yeah, limiting this feature to a certain amount per turn oder even per round is propably the way to balance this.