D&D (2024) Class features with drawbacks

[Phazonfish]

That's the the nature of a lot of moral/philosophical/religious beliefs. Full of contradictions, illogical, and eventually you'll come up with a scenario too challenging to be answered by rigid principles. The question is whether you can imagine the founders of a druidic sect convincing themselves working metal is wrong, or at least worse than using other naturally occurring materials.

Emphasis mine. I feel like the bolded word is the important one. If you get really attached to an ideology, but then at some point down the road find a bit of a contradiction you can kinda just try and rationalize it or deal with it, but when the elevator pitch to get me into it in the first place is blatantly flawed things fall apart a lot faster.

Yes.

Fair enough, I like your conviction.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Fair enough, I like your conviction.

It's just like Kirk and Nomad.

Except replace Nomad with Warforged, and Kirk with "internal self monologue."

I tell ya, you haven't lived until you see a Warforged Druid realize that somewhere along the line, a serious mistake was made.

 

[Rikka66]

Emphasis mine. I feel like the bolded word is the important one. If you get really attached to an ideology, but then at some point down the road find a bit of a contradiction you can kinda just try and rationalize it or deal with it, but when the elevator pitch to get me into it in the first place is blatantly flawed things fall apart a lot faster.

I imagine the metal armor bit wasn't part of the elevator pitch. They entice you with the hippie nature talk and chance at magic weather predicting powers, and don't start telling you the restrictions are hard-coded until you're in deep and ready to sign the bark contract.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I imagine the metal armor bit wasn't part of the elevator pitch. They entice you with the hippie nature talk and chance at magic weather predicting powers, and don't start telling you the restrictions are hard-coded until you're in deep and ready to sign the bark contract.

Hacky sack is probably involved too.

...and drum circles.

 

[Guest 6801328]

No it's not. Just get rid of it. Done. Congrats you just fixed the Berserker!

You really think it's an appropriately balanced 3rd level ability if there's no drawback?

In the other thread I offered some numbers. You know how good Assassinate is if you can manage to get surprise? Frenzy is just as good in that first round, without surprise. Then it continues to be equivalent to the rogue's free crit in every subsequent round.

The problem with the berserker is that incurring exhaustion is an extremely steep price to pay, and one that no other class has to pay.

As was discussed elsewhere, it's only an extremely steep price if you just pop it every time you rage. Sure, if you want to whiteroom a scenario where you rage and frenzy in the first three fights of the day, then you do the same thing the next day, and THEN you suddenly discover that being exhausted was really a bad idea...well, yeah. No $#%&.

If you play as smart as I'm sure you're able to, and use frenzy strategically, it's only sometimes a price, and pretty reasonable at that.

 

[HJFudge]

Putting aside any specifics and speaking purely conceptually, I think Drawbacks are a good thing for a game. They open up design space in a lot of ways and make both design of a character (or a deck or a build or a whatever) more interesting and decisions during play more meaningful.

That said, theres this school of thought that I have seen from people that any drawback, any failing, any sort of penalty that is meaningful in anyway is to be avoided at all costs. So from a 'sell more stuff' perspective, it makes sense NOT to have Drawbacks. Since this school of thought in my entirely anecdotal experience seems far larger than the 'hard choices are interesting!' school.

There's also the additional fact that Drawbacks can be implemented well or implemented very very poorly. A poorly implemented drawback overshadows the benefits provided. OR is so meaningless that it isn't an actual drawback. In both cases, it becomes a False Choice. There is no situation where you have to sit and think 'Do I want to use this ability even with the drawback?'. In the first instance, the answer is almost always No (so why even have the ability?) but the answer to the second is equally almost always Yes (so, again, why have the drawback at all?)

Blah blah blah yack yack yack...

In short: Drawbacks make for, in my opinion, a more interesting and enjoyable game. However, most others I meet tend to not enjoy meaningful/interesting drawbacks so perhaps from a business perspective should be avoided.

 

[Lanefan]

Errr....no. But if we play a campaign together, and one of us has a clumsy elf, does that mean “all the clumsy elves” go adventuring?

I guess it does if you assume there’s only one in the entire world.

Campaigns I play in or run tend to go through a lot of characters over a lot of time (particularly at low level!), thus you're not just looking at one Elf but at enough to give a bit of a sample.

Couple that with knowing that a) the PC Elves are not the only adventuring Elves in the setting and b) PCs and NPCs use the same char-gen mechanics; and yes: not having a racial Dex boost for Elves while at the same time claiming they're dextrous directly tells us that it's the clumsy Elves who go adventuring.

 

[GlassJaw]

You really think it's an appropriately balanced 3rd level ability if there's no drawback?

Yup, or at least not exhaustion as a drawback.

As was discussed elsewhere, it's only an extremely steep price if you just pop it every time you rage.

If you play as smart as I'm sure you're able to, and use frenzy strategically, it's only sometimes a price, and pretty reasonable at that.

So now the price the Berserker has to pay is to not use their signature ability.

Again, no other class has to make that kind of choice.

 

[Redwizard007]

So now the price the Berserker has to pay is to not use their signature ability.

Again, no other class has to make that kind of choice.

But should they?

 

[NotAYakk]

The way to fix it is, Frenzy gives you an extra attack per round, not as a bonus action. This way, it works with PAM and GWM.

I'd go another way.

Frenzy gives you an extra damage die on your melee weapon attacks.

So greataxe becomes 2d12/4d12, a TWF shortsword user becomes 4d6/6d6, a 2HSword becomes 3d6/6d6.

16 str, GWF at level 4, 18 str at level 8.

3: 2d12+6 (19) vs 2d12+3 (16)
4: 2d12+26 (39) vs 2d12+13 (26)
5: 3d12+39 (58) vs 4d12+26 (52)
8: 3d12+42 (61) vs 4d12+28 (54)

It is actually weaker (with GWF) than an extra attack. But now it stacks with other bonus action attacks, and it "turns on" on your first turn (which is big).