D&D 5E It is OK for a class to be the worst

[iserith]

Today on enworld I learned my zealot barbarian sucks because I've played him such that he hasn't died.

 

[Charlaquin]

Frenzy isn’t the Berserker’s only subclass feature though.

 

[Asisreo]

I guess it is the opportunity cost.

Your core subclass feature is not used.

Meanwhile, the Totem barbarian is granting advantage on all allies attacks and disadvantage on all enemy attacks except against themselves. Or has resistance to all damage.

Or the zealot is getting revivified for nothing and blasting radiant magic, or is killing an entire army before they finally die from their wounds.

I mean, "it isn't too bad, the base barbarian is good enough" is a valid argument; but when comparing subclasses, if your position is "even if I don't have a subclass I'd be ok" seems a bit off.

That's called a playstyle, though. Understandably, some people prefer a good, limited ability. Others might like the strategy of a big-move at higher costs. Doesn't mean it's bad or need fixing, just means you could do more with it.

 

[Asisreo]

I’ve never been alone as a barbarian. Somehow I’ve always had a group to help me up when I’m down. I have to imagine others play them... solo?

Another relic of the "can build all but can't play all" situation that players find. They don't have the teammates in their face so they forget all of the benefits to other party members their features give if it's not explicit like bardic inspiration or a heal spell.

 

[Rdm]

Im pretty sure that even under 3.0 there wasn’t any class that someone couldn’t play and have fun with in a game.

 

[Lanefan]

In response to the OP (having skipped the intervening several pages):

Yes it's OK for a class to be the worst, and I mean completely sucky - sometimes. It's also OK for a class to be the best, and I mean absolutely dominant - sometimes. Meanwhile most of the rest of the classes hover around the middle.

What needs to happen is that they switch places now and then as the campaign goes along. The Nature Cleric that's almost useless against all those undead in the dungeon in adventure 1 suddenly becomes the dominant character in the outdoors forest-exploration adventure 2. Meanwhile the urban-based Rogue, completely out of its depth in forest adventure 2, shines brightest of all in urban-intrigue adventure 3.

And so on...

 

[Jester David]

The argument that "_____ is the worst" bugs me. Because there's always a worst option. Something has to be at the bottom. You can't have a twelve-way tie.

It's like the complaints about the Champion fighter vs the Battle Master, because in a white room test the Champion is X damage lower. But if they patched and "fixed" the Champion so it was undeniably better we'd instantly have complaints from Battle Master fans about having to "fix" the BM.

The most perfectly balanced game in the world is Rock-Paper-Scissors. Three options. All have one option they tie against, one option they lose against, and one option they win against. Perfectly balanced.
Except it's not.
Perfect balance is an illusion. A lie.
Because Rock is the default hand position, anyone who hesitates goes with Rock. So the odds of someone playing Rock are slightly higher than any other option. And on a tie, people tend to play what would have won the previous hand. If two people both play Rock they'll likely follow it with Paper. If playing someone at RPS the best move is to start with Paper and then go to Rock then Scissors. You won't always win, but you will slightly more than 1/3rd of the time.

 

[Asisreo]

Perfect balance is an illusion. A lie.
Because Rock is the default hand position, anyone who hesitates goes with Rock. So the odds of someone playing Rock are slightly higher than any other option. And on a tie, people tend to play what would have won the previous hand. So of two people play Rock, they follow it up with Paper. So if playing someone at RPS the best move is to start with Paper and then go to Rock then Scissors.

That's such a good metaphor because it also highlights how dumb the theory of it all is. Because theoretically the best move is to choose paper first and go down the line but in a case-by-case basis, it may take thousands, if not millions, of trials before we see the result appear. And that's if we're going against machines that can't see the pattern and adjust at some point.

 

[Jester David]

That's such a good metaphor because it also highlights how dumb the theory of it all is. Because theoretically the best move is to choose paper first and go down the line but in a case-by-case basis, it may take thousands, if not millions, of trials before we see the result appear. And that's if we're going against machines that can't see the pattern and adjust at some point.

That, and most "white room" tests of class balance assume average rolls of dice. Which isn't going to happen any more than playing RPS until you have an anomalous number of victories.

If using a single d20, in order to get an adequate number of rolls to get a decent bell curve determining how balanced the die is, you need to use that die for every d20 roll of an average level 1-20 campaign. Using it less will still allow for some lucky rolls that will skew the results.
If just playing a level 3 to 12 campaign, you're not likely to make enough rolls to see if a particular character was balanced or not.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I’ve never seen anyone come into these forums and say
“I played as a frenzy barbarian and it sucked!”.

We discussed this earlier, so that's a bit of a non-point you're making. I guess you didn't read all the posts though, who does?

Berserker is overall a solid Barbarian subclass. The L3 is hard to use well but powerful, and some DMs (clearly including iserith's DM) let you get away with basically no-consequences for the Exhaustion (5MWD will do that, and so will letting the player not roll stuff, as will doing stuff like letting people just take multiple long rests in a row to ditch the Exhaustion). L6 is very solid, a great ability. L10 is complete trash that's basically a joke (rare that I say that about an ability but wow. It's not just "niche" it's basically unusable unless you have a high CHA, which likely means rolled stats). L14 is extremely good to the point of bordering on the overpowered.

It's a design that they simply wouldn't do, now, in 2020. The L3 and L10 stuff (and likely the L14) would have been implemented differently. No way a designer now would go with CHA for the L10 for example, and the L3 would likely be weaker but more usable.

But none of the other Barbarian subclasses wildly outshine it, because they all have their own issues. Even if you literally never used the L3 or L10, it would be about as good as some subclasses (especially some Totem Warrior variants). The Zealot is probably overall better in most RAW-oriented groups, I'd suspect (opinion, not fact), but it's narrow and situational, because if you often face no real consequences for Exhaustion as iserith repeatedly describes, then Frenzy is amazing.

And the Barbarian class chassis is great, I think. It's a really nice class, even without a subclass. Definitely my favourite implementation of Barbarian in any edition.

People seem to assume that every battle requires frenzy or rage. They do not. I’ve gone while adventures without using frenzy once.

That's exactly what I'd expect, and an adventure where you don't have it means it might as well have not existed in many ways (not all ways). Whereas iserith seems to be saying he can use it basically all the time and just chat the DM ("player skill" as he puts it) into letting him not roll for stuff (sounds like he has a massively soft-touch DM to me, esp. as his Zealot has also never been killed, but hey whatever is fun!).

Anyway, if more Barbarian subclasses were competitive it'd be more criticised, but because they aren't...