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

[BookBarbarian]

The berserker deserve a fix. It is the only none magical barbarian and thus he own an exclusive niche.

The forgotten Battlerager cries in the corner

 

[BookBarbarian]

Gotta admit, I've never played Frenzy Barb but now I'm starting to want to.

My favorite character is a Tavern Brawler Berserker, primarily grappling and shoving in combat while using his versatile weapon in one hand, but when facing creatures that he cannot grapple or shove entering a Frenzy and gripping his weapon in both hands.

He won't win an optimization contests but he gets points for style.

 

[Guest 6801328]

With the caveat that I have not actually played a frenzy barbarian, it seems obvious to me that the reality must be somewhere between the extremes:

1. While players can't always know when the "boss" fight is, I think in general we have a pretty good sense for both how serious a fight is, and where we are in the adventuring day. If we want to try to only Frenzy when it's either super-important or(and) when we're very likely to get a long rest afterwards, we can do that reasonably well. It's really not so different from knowing when to blow those high-level spell slots. And if you get the timing right, there's effectively no penalty.
2. Sure, sometimes we'll get that wrong. And sometimes after we get it wrong we'll then suddenly need to make a vital Athletics check and the whole party is counting on us to succeed. That's sometimes squared, and sometimes^2 == rarely. (And even then, we might still succeed, or we might still have failed without Exhaustion. That's RNG.)
3. And sometimes, after we already have a level of exhaustion, it will be super-duper-important, and we'll use it again. Now it's getting more serious. But it's on us as players, knowing the consequences, to decide when it's worth that risk. And I would posit that we will, again, have a good sense of when it's worth doing that.
4. Frenzy is really quite powerful.* Agree or disagree with the exhaustion, it needs some mechanism to create a trade-off for its use. I think once per long rest, with the (mildly) risky calculation of where in the adventuring day you are, is perfectly reasonable. And unlike most once per long rest abilities, you can...if you want...take the risk of using it again.

Honestly, this is nearly identical to the magic system I've been imagining for a long time: instead of hard caps to how many spells you cast, it gets increasingly risky to keep using your magic.

*Quick math for 3rd level: Assume 4 round combat, Str 16, Reckless Attack, vs AC 15, non-magical greataxe: (6.5 + 5) * 4 * 80% chance of hitting * 19% crit chance = ~43 expected additional damage. Compare to Assassin, whose 3rd level ability is worth an additional 10.4 damage (dual wielding shortswords) if he gets surprise. Heck, Frenzy is almost exactly equal to Assassination in a one round combat. Sickness. Imagine if Assassination let you get free crits against a non-surprised target for the entire combat. That's Frenzy (at least at lower levels.)

 

[BookBarbarian]

I'll happily play the worst class if I think it's fun. I play Berserkers and I play strength based Rangers.

But I do think there are some questionable decisions in regards to the class and subclass design. Rather than Rangers being better at wilderness stuff, things like Natural Explorer completely bypass some wilderness stuff in certain terrain. I don't like reminding my DM that I can't get lost in Mountainous Terrain when he is reasonably calling for a Survival check. I think a bonus is better than a bypass.

Overall I think the recent UA on Class features has a Ranger than fits the fiction better. Canny, Tireless, Roving make a Ranger feel more enduring, mobile, and skilled to me. And I think a lot of new players especially look more for "feels right" than anything else.

 

[Haffrung]

No matter how hard you try, there will always be a "best" and "worst" class in every game. Even in classless games, you can't get away from this as some options will always be better than others. The key is to limit the difference between them which I feel 5E has done fairly well. With very few exceptions (mostly white paper comparisons), an average character of one of the "worst" builds is not going to be dramatically weaker than the average character of one of the "best" builds. There may be a notable difference over time, but due to the impact of the d20 randomization, the difference in the moment is fairly negligible.

Pretty much sums it up. If you enjoy running white-room data comparisons, sure, some classes will be worse than others. But in my experience, most players don't analyze and optimize to that fine gradient. Unless a class is way worse than others, it's not an issue at the tables I've played at. And I haven't seen that disparity in 5E.

My sense is much of these sorts of complains come from the char op branch of hobby, which is deeply invested in online theorycrafting and number-crunching rather than play at typical tables.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

No matter how hard you try, there will always be a "best" and "worst" class in every game. Even in classless games, you can't get away from this as some options will always be better than others. The key is to limit the difference between them which I feel 5E has done fairly well. With very few exceptions (mostly white paper comparisons), an average character of one of the "worst" builds is not going to be dramatically weaker than the average character of one of the "best" builds. There may be a notable difference over time, but due to the impact of the d20 randomization, the difference in the moment is fairly negligible.

That is one of the strengths of 5e.

The fact that making a good character is as simple as "Put the big number in the main stat." Sure, if you do just that you won't be the best character, but you will be effective enough to contribute meaningfully.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Y'know what? I'm going to call it out. Not only are my games that I play friendly to the Barbarian's Frenzy mechanic, I bet your games are also friendly to the barbarian encounter. Um, general "you" that applies to the majority of people on this thread but possible including Ruin Explorer

Well, a typical adventuring day is 6-8 encounters. If you're like me that attempts to run this, your encounters will run up to around medium or hard. It's obvious that the party will probably blow past the first and second encounter, after the third, players will start attempting short rests. At the fourth and fifth encounter, your party is struggling and they're running out of resources, so you rage on one of those encounters. On the sixth, seventh, and eighth encounters, your party is significantly spent from attrition, medium encounters suddenly feel threatening and hard encounters might knock a few PC's out. You'd have probably raged once more before and when your team desperately needs the damage, you can frenzy. If another unexpected encounter happens, use your best judgement but you have another frenzy opportunity.

But I doubt most games here are like that. There's probably 2 hard and 2 deadly encounters in an adventuring day at the most. Of course, it kinda wonks with the balance of spellcasters and martials but with less encounters and they're more swingy, Frenzying once becomes even better in this style. You get to be frenzied without much concern 1/4 of the combat encounters rather than 1/8. Plus, players will quickly try to long rest before the third or fourth fight anyways because it was an incredible and quick tax on their resources and they're fearful of an even stronger encounter.

But let's talk about afterwards: most games have moved from exp to milestone for some reason or other. This means that combats aren't worth much but an HP drain in the player's minds. This also means they're going to want to finish the quest as quickly as possible since there's no incentive to stay longer than they have to. Most adventures in homebrew games are probably 2 or 3 days consecutively.

Probably less, since there's usually the walking montage in-between so that the actual adventure takes place in a dungeon, which is usually cleared in a couple in-game hours. This means that most campaigns are structured: hook, travel (1-6 days), dungeon, travel back, completion. You get plenty of resting opportunities in the games.

In modules, it's even better since random encounters are usually just once a long rest anyways.

Not sure what you're really trying to say here, I have to say, just seems kind of meandering. I still think calling people "braindead" given how widely adventure designs can vary is pretty crap.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Overall I think the recent UA on Class features has a Ranger than fits the fiction better. Canny, Tireless, Roving make a Ranger feel more enduring, mobile, and skilled to me. And I think a lot of new players especially look more for "feels right" than anything else.

Yeah the Class Feature Variants UA, and a couple of recent UAs seem to suggest WotC might have somehow gotten distinctly "better" at class design than they were in 2014 (which is not unexpected, of course, but a lot of early subclasses were actually worse-designed than the PHB ones). Sorta makes me wish for a 5.5, but if they can implement the CFV UA into a book properly, it should be unnecessary.

 

[Guest 6801328]

My favorite character is a Tavern Brawler Berserker, primarily grappling and shoving in combat while using his versatile weapon in one hand, but when facing creatures that he cannot grapple or shove entering a Frenzy and gripping his weapon in both hands.

He won't win an optimization contests but he gets points for style.

And even despite not being optimized, I'm sure he contributes meaningfully.

 

[Asisreo]

Not sure what you're really trying to say here, I have to say, just seems kind of meandering. I still think calling people "braindead" given how widely adventure designs can vary is pretty crap.

I'm claiming that people are not braindead. People may make mistakes but it's very easy to know a climax when you see one. I'm playing Odyssey right now and I can say I'd never frenzy against the goatlings, the first boss monster, though, yeah.