Why do people dislike the Zealot

[Blue]

Not sure how that follows. At 3rd level sneak attack is 2d6 while Divine Fury is 1d6+1. Sneak attack then gets another d6 per two levels while DF gets +1 damage. Not quite the same.

It follows through THE AWESOME POWER OF MATH!(tm)

It also follows through I AM AN IDIOT!!(tm)

I missed the "HALF" barbarian level. So I thought it was going up 2 points for every 3.5 average that sneak attack went up.

Me bad.

Though it does stay around half of SA for a good chunk of levels. At 3rd it's SA 7 (average of 2d6) vs. DF of 4.5 (avg of 1d6+1). When you get to 8th it's still 14 (avg 4d6) vs. 7.5 (avg 1d6 + 4). It's not until 9th that DF shrinks to less than half of SA and stays there.

But still, that's just luck - I made a math mistake. Thanks for catching it.

 

[Krachek]

I think people view the barbarian as the typical Norseman or Viking or waste land inhabitant.
The flaw in the path of the berserker has amplified the stereotypical view of the barbarian.
But the phb present the barbarian in a wider range of characters, including all brute archetype you can find in a civilized society.
The zealot still suffers that tie to the Norseman archetype.

 

[jaelis]

I like the zealot fine. I like other classes better though. Among the barbarians, I think the totem barb is pretty neat. Zealot I guess is my second favorite.

But then barbarian is probably one of my least favorite classes. I pretty much think it should have been a subclass of fighter (or possibly ranger, if they had done ranger a bit differently).

 

[BookBarbarian]

Barbarian is my favorite class, and I still think it could have been folded into Fighter or Ranger.

As far as Zealot goes i's easily my favorite Barbarian. Totem warriors were always a bit too "shaman-y" for my tastes. I really don't need spells tied to my undisciplined melee monster thank you very much. Exhaustion from Frenzy is thematic, but too punishing for using a level 3 feature IMHO. Battlerager is too restricted by race, equipment, and lackluster mechanics. Ancestral Guardians is awesome, but also gets spells. Storm Herald is a neat theme, but none of the abilities made me really want to play one.

Looking at the Zealot I immediately had ideas for a warrior either blessed or cursed by the gods so that death was an inconvenience to them rather than something terrifying. I could even strip the fluff away and just have a character that is really hard to kill, that's wonderfully thematic to me.

 

[Eltab]

I don't have Xanathar to comment on the sub-class mechanics, so this is just reacting to the name:

Shouldn't a class called Zealot be some sort of Cleric, or maybe another form of "fallen Paladin"?
The name just oozes Divine connotations, not berserker-warrior.

 

[neogod22]

Barbarian is my favorite class, and I still think it could have been folded into Fighter or Ranger.

As far as Zealot goes i's easily my favorite Barbarian. Totem warriors were always a bit too "shaman-y" for my tastes. I really don't need spells tied to my undisciplined melee monster thank you very much. Exhaustion from Frenzy is thematic, but too punishing for using a level 3 feature IMHO. Battlerager is too restricted by race, equipment, and lackluster mechanics. Ancestral Guardians is awesome, but also gets spells. Storm Herald is a neat theme, but none of the abilities made me really want to play one.

Looking at the Zealot I immediately had ideas for a warrior either blessed or cursed by the gods so that death was an inconvenience to them rather than something terrifying. I could even strip the fluff away and just have a character that is really hard to kill, that's wonderfully thematic to me.

Cursed, interesting. I like that. I think my barbarian will be cursed to fight forever until he can atone for a sin that angered the god.

 

[gyor]

I like the Zealot.

 

[Immoralkickass]

I don't have Xanathar to comment on the sub-class mechanics, so this is just reacting to the name:

Shouldn't a class called Zealot be some sort of Cleric, or maybe another form of "fallen Paladin"?
The name just oozes Divine connotations, not berserker-warrior.

I wouldn't count on D&D class/subclasses to have the same meaning as whatever they sound like. I mean, just look at the Bard. Technically, bards refer to poets or musicians, but in D&D they are musical casters.

 

[CapnZapp]

I like the zealot, but one thing I dislike is that it's a better berserker than the actual berserker subclass.

Since the Berserker is poorly implemented, I see it as a good thing that they decided to stealth-fix the concept.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm not terribly familiar with the subclass, because I don't use first-party supplements, but it strikes me that it's too similar to the berserker to justify different mechanics. You should be able to just take the berserker subclass and call yourself a zealot, and nobody would know the difference.

Which means there's no reason for this subclass to exist, since any character that could be built with it could be built just as easily without it.

But you never want to implement a berserker concept using Berserker.

If they had to stealth-fix this under a new name, so be it.

If it helps you like the new subclass more, consider renaming the Zealot the "Berserker v2".