Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 7988363">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:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">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.</li> </ol>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.)</blockquote>

Verification