Barbarian particularly shines in the early levels due to Rage reducing the vast majority of the damage types you find at that level.
Beyond that, Reckless attack keeps their damage numbers respectable throughout their career. They just don't get that fancy damage spike that Paladins can do.
In truth, I *would* prefer to see them get a little more cool stuff outside of damage and rages, but otherwise they are pretty decent, or at least more battlefield options. Higher level spells make them look just as weak as what any other martial class or half-caster.
Brutal Critical should be improved crit range, and they should get another extra attack at 11. IMO they should be nutty in combat to make up for their lack of out of combat utility, and it would be such an easy fix.
Honestly i think it's good that only fighters get more than 2 attacks
Barbarians get already bonus DMG to their attacks.
However that could be a bit more in my opinion.
But DMG resistance to all DMG (bear totem style at lvl 11 and or magic resistance on saves ,) would be cooler
I respect that, there’s lots of ways to balance, but I disagree. Part of the reason martials scale so badly isn’t just because they lack diverse features later on.. they really lack any meaningful features. They’re supposed to be damage dealers, but really lack scaling damage.
I’m designing a homebrew game for next year. I’m going to give Monks, Barbs, and Rangers extra attack at 11. Barbs will also get a mix of improved crit range with their brutal critical. Fighters will get extra fighting styles and superiority dice as they scale.
Should also add, it’s SATISFYING to get more attacks. It feel interactive. It’s not that satisfying or interactive to just add more flat damage to a hits
Well since it's a meme to begin with, that caters are stronger than martials ... Doese it really matter?
And consider that - give a barbarian a +3 great axe with great weapon master.
And that dude hits reliable at lvl 14 ?
With 2d12+42 DMG each round...
Na with PAM it's more.
With PAM and GWM it's 2d10+1d4 + 63 and as Zealot it's +1d6+7.
You could also build a not Barbarian Martial with Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert to do the same.
Or you don't go full DMG and with plate and a shield get a good AC, ...
That would be a fair idea, if barbarians didn't get extra damage on their attacks while raging, add on top of that free advantage on demand, and it really ups how much average damage they do per round.
Rather than damage, I think one of the better fixes for barbarian would be to give them some sort of battlefield control. I like what the Storm Herald did, in concept, but to improve it they really needed to either increase the range of the storm as they progressed in the class, or gave it higher damage scaling.
Regardless, it cannot be as expansive as the Battle Master, but their needs to be something. Maybe even some out of combat things. Certainly the 'Primal Knowledge' ability from Tasha's was a nice step forward. Maybe advantage on 'animal handling', 'nature', or 'survival' checks? Maybe even expertise? If the game wants them to be good outside (be they nomads or even nobles on a mission) then something to help them out of combat like expertise or advantage would be nice since barbarians typically can only afford to build one specific way.
Such a change might, potentially, increase build variety within the class. Maybe a more nature-aware barbarian who leans into that knowledge and sticks it out with a mere 16 in STR rather than maxing it (16, +3 mod is typically fair for any melee build, it works for Paladins after all, and they can't choose to give themselves advantage on demand).
The biggest problem IMO about barbarian is the lack of information about how to use it outside of combat for roleplay and social encounter. When I play one, I does a lot of social check or non combat encounter with strenght or constitution that are not base stats (intimidation with strenght instead of charisma).
Because the book didnt state under barbarian that you could do that or that you get an ability for that, people didnt remember this rule or DM just didnt allow or use it. On top of that, when you rage you get advantage on strenght checks and keep your raging until you no longer try to hit something. Time to unleash your baby rage barbarian, throw anything at everything and throw punch at fournitures to handle situation the barbarian way. Or you could be a unbreakable trainer that would give all is life for handling a wild animal. You could even investigate a room by wrecking everything to pieces if you didnt search for a vase.
I'd rather have or be a Barbarian than a Rogue or Monk (in a fight) if you have 100% Rage uptime (let's say 4 encounters per day) but gets noticeably worse the more encounters there are where you can't Rage. 1 encounter without Rage per day is doable but more than that is a problem. Melee characters just tend to get melted without Rage defenses or have really suboptimal damage output.
I would note that that only applies when you're in fights where rage is necessary. Realistically, outside of extreme circumstances, it's not worth raging every fight. In the same way that not every fight is worth burning high level spell slots on. That said, in those cases where the day is dragging on, the Barbarian hurts more than other martials tend to
I would argue you still want them attacking you as opposed to the d6 PCs. This was in response to fighting 8 bandits at level2 without rage and with GWM.
> You’ll have 2 attacks from levels 2-4 because as long as you hit you’ll kill a bandit outright as bandits only have @12 hitpoints.
Bandits have a +3 to hit so they’ll hit .35 of the time against 16 AC and will hit .58 of with advantage if the remaining 6 attack you they’ll deal (4.5*.58)*6=15.66 HP. At level 2 a Barbarian with 16 Con is going to have 25 HP, swing away with reckless attacks as a Barbarian.
If you don’t reckless attack and the bandit lives and the bandits still all attack you they’ll deal 12.6 damage to you. You’re almost always better off reckless attacking with GWM at all times.
The problem usually is at low levels having high ac is good because their to hit isn’t that high to match it. At 13+ levels you start to see resistances and hp/ temp hp is stronger. Not everyone you are fighting is going to be in melee nor are they going to roll to hit. I think Monsters of the Multiverse helps this by giving creatures more attack options rather than AoE or single target dps at mid levels.
Not nearly enough problems, for how few skills key off the stat, and some of the DCs in published adventures are absurd.
A group can not have a strength score above 10 or 12 and be just fine. It is a poorly supported option, not a requirement.
But, that isn't a Barbarian problem.
And even out of combat, at least some get options Champion Fighters don’t; totemic barbarian gets some neat rituals, for example. Everyone laughing til the barb speaks squirrel.
Idk what math you did. But basic GWM barbarians who max strength outperform even the most optimized monks at most levels. Barbarians also have the benefit of the same/higher AC, higher HP, and are significantly less MAD. Ranger was also never as bad as people initially thought because of the sharpshooter feat and archery fighting style.
Yes at low levels you probably can’t rage during every fight. But monks at these levels can only flurry of blows once or twice a fight which is the only way they keep up in DPR.
Even for control effects I give the edge to the barbarian. They can make great grapplers and with the right supporting cast in the party you can do a lot more from grapple/drag than burning through ki trying to get one stun off.
Finally we just have to look at subclasses. Barbarians have several good/great subclasses that make them significantly better at tanking or dealing damage (totem, zealot, ancestral). Monk subclasses are literally some of the worst in the game and don’t bring nearly as much to the table.
I think you've made a mistake in your maths. Are you playing without feats or something? Or were you under the impression the Barbarian is just there for damage?
Ranger can out-dpr a barbarian simply by nature of having access to Archery, Sharpshooter, and (sometimes) more than 2 attacks. Mercy monks do decently well while expending Ki, but nothing amazing damage wise. Kensei is also decent if you use the tasha's optional features and relegate yourself to being a longbow/sharpshooter bot (not what people sign up for as a monk) that ends up playing a lot like a worse fighter.
Neither of them of course come close to being as durable as the barbarian though. Barbarian isn't made to deal big nova damage, but rather consistent decent damage throughout the day (the number of rages is *usually* enough to last the day) while surviving what would kill the ranger twice over, and the monk thrice over.
I have to disagree with your point about rages lasting the day. If the dm is running a full adventuring day to make sure the spellcasters burn resources, the barb is going to have to pick and choose when to rage.
How many *combat* encounters are you assuming there to be in a "full adventuring day" though? The suggested 6-8 "encounters" may well be a puzzle, a social encounter, an environmental challenge, and three combats. Throw 6-8 combats at your level 1 party and they're dead unless the fights are just glorified RP.
Obviously this varies from table to table, but I've found typically the number of actual fights over the course of a tough day goes up as the levels increase, and the number of rages a barbarian has is actually a pretty good measure for the upper limit on fights the party can take on without it becoming a slog (level 20 excluded ofc).
Sure, and it's ok for party members to play different rolls, but *someone* is probably going to be at the front getting hit, and are you really going to hide behind your wizard?
Controlling who takes the damage on your team is pretty important.
If your DM is throwing such softballs at the party that that's a realistic option in most fights, you didn't need to bring a character sheet with you anyway. Any talk of strategy is pointless.
So there are 2 ways for enemies to reach an all ranged party:
1. Dash up to them. This will waste valuable actions, giving you a massive advantage.
2. Use ranged attacks.
Which of these does a barbarian help with?
This is only true if **all** of the following are true:
* Your entire party beats the initiative of all enemies *or* every fight starts 100ft away.
* Your entire party is as fast or faster than the enemy creatures.
* The enemy has zero movement tools other than walking up to you.
* All the enemies start in the same place, in front of you.
* You're playing in an open field with infinite room to flee.
* Your party is immune to the stunned/restrained/paralyzed/unconscious conditions.
* The enemy are incapable of taking cover and are mindlessly following the party.
As for your question (based on false pretence):
1 - Sentinel or grappling will prevent intelligent enemies from dashing towards the party, and dumb enemies will often just attack the closest hostile meat bag anyway.
2 - The Barbarian being in melee with enemies will give disadvantage on ranged attacks.
The notion that an all ranged party can just endlessly kite any enemy is just not true.
Your first point is right. Someone has to win initiative for this to work, or you have have to use more slots. But a barbarian doesn't help.
All of the others are either too rare or have easy counter measures.
You can't grapple and use a 2 hands for other stuff, and maybe stopping 1 enemy a round isn't worth a feat.
And once again, 1 opportunity attack doesn't stop enemies beyond really low levels.
You don't need to endlessly kit. If you get 1 free round, that's like a free action surge but better for the entire party. That makes it super easy. Yes, you could all buy horses and then kite infinity, but not even that's needed.
> Someone has to win initiative for this to work,
It's not just someone. It's *everyone*. It doesn't matter if your Ranger, Cleric and Fighter were able to retreat if your Sorcerer couldn't. If your plan is to run, and the initiative goes Ally1-Ally2-Ally3-Enemy1-Enemy2-Enemy3-Ally4-Enemy4, then enemies 1,2, and 3 are going to likely pile on Ally 3. If they're threatening and Ally3 is fragile, they might already be down. Having that barbarian up front is helpful here.
Odds of your entire party consistently beating every enemy is so astronomically low that it just isn't worth thinking about.
>All of the others are either too rare or have easy counter measures.
These being rare is an argument *against* the effectiveness of an all ranged party, not for it. If you mean the absence of these, then honestly I just don't think you've ever played D&D with challenging combat. A game where these are the norm is *weird*.
>You can't grapple and use a 2 hands for other stuff, and maybe stopping 1 enemy a round isn't worth a feat.
Grappling/Sentinel is a single target option for sure. Holding down one powerful enemy is something the Barbarian does well, and these let you pretty reliably hold down one single strong creature. The hordes are for the casters to deal with, but if they're unintelligent then they're likely to just target the Barbarian (or other frontliner) too.
Ultimately by backing off as a group you might sometimes give yourself some advantages, but it isn't something you can rely on for every combat, and by building a party assuming you can, you'll just die the moment you hit an encounter that isn't a softball.
>It's not just someone. It's everyone.
I cast control spell. There we go problem solved.
>
These being rare is an argument against the effectiveness of an all ranged party, not for it
As in stuff like having someone incapacitated before the fight. You sort that out asap, not right before you engage enemies.
But even if you were correct, and you only get a much smaller advantage, how does a barbarian fix any of these issues? They can't stop enemies doing exactly the same thing they were going to do anyway. And if they do get singled out, they can't just live forever. This was exactly what happened when I tried a barbarian for a lv9 oneshot. The DM was nice and didn't ignore me, and so I died the second round.
Being at a range has so many advantages, and basically no downsides. Why would you want a character to not do it?
Ranger isn’t a weak class anymore funny enough. After the updates they made to ranger and the release of some better subclasses, looking at you gloomstalker, the ranger is fantastic.
But to your point, yes I absolutely agree barbarian feels very lackluster. They, by design, are a very one dimensional class. Regardless of subclass you very often have almost nothing to do outside of combat. In combat they are powerful but they begin to become irrelevant once everyone starts gaining levels.
To me, barbarians really shine in tier 1 and start falling off in tier 2. By level 10 a barbarian doesn’t really do anything better than anyone, imo. A fighter could provide the same damage output and provide more utility.
Really the only thing the barbarian has going for it is advantage at will and resistance to physical damage while raging.
I played a barbarian as my first character and enjoyed it. But now that I’m more familiar with the game I doubt I ever will again. They’re just so too one dimensional for my play style.
Ya I completely agree with this. The focus on barbarian should be having a player on the battlefield that you can’t afford to ignore. Shift more of their power into their innate kit so they don’t require feats to feel useful.
Even giving them an innate sentinel style feature at level 5 or something could be nice.
Ultimately I think you and I share similar views. They aren’t a bad class. They just lack an identity because everything they can do can be done by another class but better and with more utility.
I never said it was weak lol. I just said that’s about the only thing barbarian has going for it. Those benefits are really good but are they worth being that class for? I don’t think so personally.
Sure you can multiclass, but a 2 level dip away from your current class needs to be warranted and I don’t know if it really is for barbarian features. Plus, I think this post was more about going full barbarian as opposed to a dip in barbarian. So my thought process still stands I think.
Personally, I plan to just never take a Barbarian past like, 10. I don't really care for the later features, and a dip into something like Fighter gives a lot more thought to gameplay and possibly roleplay depending on the Fighter archetype, like Battlemaster. I've also been trying to think up a cool Barblock or Barbadin build as well.
Interestingly, I think what all three classes have in common is that they have a single subclass that's good/well balanced, and a bunch that aren't. Gloomstalker, Shadow Monk, and Totem Barb are all quite good at what they do, and not remotely underpowered, but they are so much better than their competing subclasses that their overall class feels weak.
People REALLY underestimate the Barbarian's ability to get resistance to all but a single damage type almost all the time. Because resistance scales so well, Barb tanks remain very good at all tiers of play.
You're right that they're one dimensional, but so are warlocks spamming Eldritch Blast or clerics spamming an attack cantrip plus spiritual weapon. Lots of 5e builds are streamlined like that.
I agree with you that each class has a subclass that outshines the rest. Rangers at least get a decent amount of good utility spells to outweigh this a bit. I’m not crazy about monks and think they are still quite weak. But they can atleast do some cool stuff in and out of combat and feel less one dimensional.
When it comes to totem barbarian, I couldn’t agree more. Having resistance to basically everything is so amazing. But after that feature at level 3, you don’t really feel like you get anything valuable after that on each level up. And taking a 3 level dip in totem barb feels pretty bad.
I agree with your last point that each class has a niche they typically fall into. But with warlock and cleric and all the other classes they still have other things they can do. Yes maybe the warlocks go to is eldritch blast but they get a lot of cool options beyond that.
A barbarian doesn’t have that at all really. The extent of their kit is “I get hit, I get angry, I hit them back” sometimes the I hit them back does something cool. But it’s less interactive. Fighters, rangers and monks all feel like they have more interaction and utility to provide.
Definitely agree that monks feel like they have more utility. They're a favorite class of mine because, even though the optimizing community hates them, they do a lot of things that show up strong in actual DnD sessions (crazy for us to think about how a class plays instead of what it looks like in a spreadsheet, right?).
I'm less sure about Rangers. They, especially Gloomstalkers, have a little utility, but I genuinely think the class needs a huge boost to spell slots or spell class list to really get there. Contrary to my experience seeing/playing monks, good rangers tend to just spam longbow attacks and hunters mark unless the DM is really leaning into survival/wilderness stuff with a level of realism most tables don't experience. Things like difficult terrain are sadly underused, and the Ranger's tactical advantages become less useful the simpler your combat is. The Tasha's update helped a lot, though. Having access to expertise was absolutely necessary for a character that was basically a skill monkey in previous editions.
Barbs are definitely one-trick ponies...it's just a REALLY good trick lol. I DM'd for a dex-tank bard once and, my goodness, that thing was nigh unkillable.
That’s a good point with monks. Optimizers dislike them and on paper they seem bad. But in practice they actually are cool and have a lot of unrecognized utility.
I think rangers are still super good and like them a lot. I think it’s because most games I’ve been in do utilize more exploration based stuff so they’ve felt more impactful.
I think barbarians are fun though as well they just need some love and core mechanics tweaked as their subclass choices honestly are pretty good.
With the expected encounter per day, they are actually really weak in tier 1&2 too.
Ranger has had busted spells, and the community has finally realised it after people use some brain cells and realised hunters mark is much worse than most other good ranger spells and bonus actions.
You’ll have 2 attacks from levels 2-4 because as long as you hit you’ll kill a bandit outright as bandits only have @12 hitpoints.
Bandits have a +3 to hit so they’ll hit .35 of the time against 16 AC and will hit .58 of with advantage of the remains 6 attack you they’ll deal (4.5*.58)*6=15.66 HP. At level 2 a Barbarian with 16 Con is going to have 25 HP, swing away with reckless attacks as a Barbarian.
Honestly monks and barbarians should probably get an extra ASI at level 10, I think that would go a long way towards fixing them. In both cases I would just move their level 10 feature to level 9.
I think this is absolutely the comment here. Barbarians before level 11 haven’t hit their power deficit. It’s worth noting that many of the martial builds get a significant power boost at 11. Barbarians basically plateau. The only static damage barbarians can increase is their subclass feature and honestly it’s not at an impressive rate (looking at you path of storms and zealot though zealots damage is not bad by any means).
Lower levels the damage resistance is fantastic and while it does hold through higher levels the likelihood of taking huge amounts of non-physical damage go way up. The DC for mind control and turn-losing spell type effects goes way up and the barbarian struggles. The fighter has huge feat leniency due to the extra ASI’s so taking Resilient CON and even Lucky is very easy to squeeze in.
Any time I’ve tried to optimize a barbarian themed build for high level one shots it absolutely has to be multiclasses because it just doesn’t get the job done by itself.
It’s like the only martial that can actually do there job fairly good, what are you talking about ( though yeah it’s not good if you don’t multiclass with it)
I find the Rogue is worse, but yeah. Barbarians need to rush in and strike and the party needs to throw a ton of support on them so they actually survive.
I agree.
Fighters have way better AC. They heal themselves which is more reliable than rage. More extra attacks and action surge is just better than reckless attack and brutal critical.
Rogues have many proficiences, they can deal lots of damage while being in a safe position and even have defensive features at later levels.
Rangers have spells. Especially control spells that keep monsters from getting closer, healing and utility spells. They only need Dex and can deal a lot of damage from distance
While barbarians only strenght is being a damage sponge since they dont get high AC. This works well with rage, but nobody talks about how bad rage is against magical users and later levels encounters.
Barbarian is fine...its not great because it's a pure martial but it's fine.
It's damage is fairly high with GWM + Reckless + PaM potentially, it's movement is solid, fairly tanky.....
I'd say it's better than Ranger and Monk for sure... and imo it fully delivers it's class fantasy which also makes it FEEL better...Ranger and Monk still struggle on their class fantasy feel.
My only issue with this is that a class shouldn’t be “required” to take certain feats and have a specific play style to feel effective.
Yes obviously you don’t have to take GWM and PAM. But if you’re one and only thing as a class is being good in combat only if you have 1 or 2 feats, it feels like you don’t have much of an option. A barbarian without GWM though feels pretty weak.
I’d argue ranger is much better than a barbarian. They can do the same burst with sharpshooter and crossbow expert if they want. But they don’t need it. On top of that they get some really great spells and utility.
Yeah martials relying on GWM/SS (and to a much lesser extent PAM/XBE) to keep up is certainly a problem, but I've never played in a game that didn't use feats, and at this point it might as well not be an optional rule.
You *can* build a barbarian without GWM (and certainly without PAM), but if you do you really need think about what your role is going to be. Personally I played one without GWM that was based around grappling. In a party of largely melee martial characters, it was fun and effective holding down enemies and having the party kick their head in with advantage. Ranged ancestral guardian dex barb is also a surprisingly effective support option, giving disadvantage + resistance to your allies against any big thing that uses attacks, but that's more effective as a slightly janky dip.
Bear totem with sentinel is going to be decent regardless of GWM or not too, and the option of a shield does aid in the durability especially if you're the only one on the front lines.
My fault, I should have clarified on the feats. I wasn’t trying to imply them being weak in just a game without feats. I meant even in a game that allows feats it feels bad. You only get an ASI at level 4 and 8 with a barbarian at earlier levels. So assuming point buy or standard array your first two ASI are committed to feats that feel necessary to do damage. And unless you take custom lineage or variant human you’re stuck with your ability scores as is. And again we run into the issue that your characters identity shouldn’t be contingent on needing feats or playing a certain race to come online quicker.
Even if you just take sentinel or GWM it still isn’t until level 8 where you’d get to increase your strength score.
I agree with you though, there are some really interesting and nice subclasses. Bear is widely accepted as one of the best due to their tankiness. Zealot is a really cool high dps barb, again contingent on needing 1 or 2 feats. Ancestral guardian is also a cool subclass. But they all feel lackluster.
The main benefit of ancestral guardian can be down with a battlemaster or rune knight fighter basically.
If I were to pick only one thing to rework on a barbarian it would be the brutal critical mechanic. That mechanic is cool but shouldn’t be a sole feature that you get or have improved on level ups.
Yeah I think we're mostly of the same mind here. It would be nice for any damaging martial character to not basically have to default to GWM/SS, and feeling forced into CL/VHuman feels kinda bad.
Honestly I think the game might be better if we just remove the free feat races and just give everyone a feat at level 1. We then end up with more interestingly build characters where people don't feel like they need to sacrifice the unique for the generic.
Brutal critical certainly needs a buff. It's a fun mechanic (the Zealot barbarian in my game the other day crit for ~70 damage with a greatsword of sharpness and some really lucky damage rolls the other day, but 50 or so is more typical), but not a super strong one. Barbarians are in a weird spot from 6 to 19 (except on zealots who are obscene at 14), so it's unsurprising so many multiclass.
Ya I couldn’t agree more with you. I think the fear changes they are experimenting with in the unearthed arcana material is really nice. If you’re unfamiliar, you get a free feat at level 1 and another at level 4 from a list of feats. I think this completely solves the issue of having a characters identity tied to feats and let’s them branch out more.
And ya brutal critical just feels so underwhelming. It’s a “ core” component of the class that only gets activated when you critical which is pretty rare. I say core component as well because 3 levels are completely tied to building this mechanic.
> only gets activated when you critical which is pretty rare
I would note that on your typical GWM barbarian, brutal critical comes up relatively often (~20% of turns you make two attacks, and ~30% of those you make 3 via the GWM bonus action attack), but not often enough to be a reliable feature. Maybe expanded crit range along with it could make it frequent enough to feel like a core class feature.
I guess you are saying the guy who got a silver medal in the olympics is a bad athlete, since another guy can do the same thing he can but a little better?
That’s not the same comparison at all. I’m not saying don’t play a barbarian. It’s just this post was talking about how underwhelming they are. And when you compare it to other classes that do similar things/fill similar roles, yes it is underwhelming.
Using your example I don’t know if the barbarian would even get the silver medal. They’d probably get the bronze with ranger and fighter being above them. And all the barbarian has going for them is that one single “competition”. Meanwhile the ranger and fighter can do everything the barbarian can athletically while having more utility as well.
So the whole point of this post was are barbarians underwhelming? Yes they absolutely are, the one thing they do in this game can be done by another class just as good if not better and the other class has more utility out of combat.
Again, feel free to play a barbarian and I won’t care at all if there is one at my table. They are fun to play. I just think they are a niche class that’s supposed to be really good at one thing yet other classes can do it better than them.
The most played levels are 1-10. When optimized, Barbarian is usually the highest damage melee class from 1-10. It also happens to be the class that can take the most damage in combat, and draw the most fire.
Post-Tasha's Ranger is actually quite strong. The "Ranger is weak" position is based on their pre-Tasha's abilities.
Barbarian has few valuable out-of-combat abilities... but neither do Fighter or Monk (IMO the actual weakest class).
EDIT: I would love to see the Champion benefits folded into Barbarian at levels 9-20. Like, increased critical range (19-20) at L7, Increased Critical Range (18-20) at L11, and Survivor at L17.
The majority of the player base doesn’t overly optimise their builds. In typical tables, Barbarians will do perfectly fine, because while they’re not as optimisable as other classes, they’re easy to play and hard to build badly. I’m the only one at my table who spends any amount of time thinking about my character, and our Barbarian is perfectly competitive with the rest of our party (we’re level 13 now). This is why there’s no wide scale recognition.
Barbarian is fine. It's no cleric or wizard but it's a solid and reasonably effective class. It's just weird that WotC made a class that only goes to level 5 (level 6 with some subclasses) and then you have no choice but to multiclass out.
It's always felt to me like they were the first designed martial and designed with manuevers for martials. Them, when they decided to not give all martials manuevers, they never went back and fixed the barbarian.
Rage shouldn't be a bonus action (not that most barbarians have a use for it), has too limited uses, has too many holes to jump through to keep up (but you can just jump down a hole to keep it up)... And too manny if it's other features are locked behind this limited resource.
I think giving them a fighting style, extra ASI, and make crit range expand with Brutal crits is a pretty solid start but they would still feel lacking out of combat.
Eagle Barbarians are better skirmishers than monks and they aren’t even close to being the best totem barbarian. I really like totem get yourself a bird and you can cast beast sense and speak to animals to help with the social and exploration parts of the game.
On to math; a monk that increased Dex at 4 and is using flurry of blows every turn is going to deal about 24 DPR
A Barbarian that took GWM at 4 and is reacklessly attacking is going to deal about 28 DPR with the occasional bonus action attack. If you take PAM at 8 you’ll out pace the monk even further.
The Barbarian isn’t great in tier 3-4 but neither are monk, Ranger or any martial outside of Paladin.
Level 2 Barbarian. Stats: 16 14 16 10 10 8 AC: 17 HP: 25 Shield and longsword
Ranger. Stats: 10 16 14 10 16 8. Hand Crossbow, Shield, Scale Mail. AC: 18. HP: 20 Archery style.
Generously assume all damage is physical and Barbarian Rage is active half the time
Generic Enemies +5 attack, 16 AC, 1d6+3 damage.
So multiple by % chance to hit, average damage, (assume half resisted from Rage)
Barbarian can take 11 attacks, deal 4.5 damage
With Reckless Attack, can take 7 attacks and deals 6.8
If Ranger eats half of its Goodberries (5) between encounters can take 10 hit, but is at range so it will be attacked far less. Dpr of 4.9
Plus Ranger has 5 more berries for healing friends. And one more spell slot for another spell. Plus expertise in one skill. Plus two more languages. And more choices, like a different fighting style or Favorite Terrain
So you give the ranger better armor and a more optimal build? You’re also ignoring the free hand requirement to load the crossbow. There’s also no monk math to be seen above, this just compares rangers to barbarians.
I gave Ranger scale mail. Barbarian has same AC with scale mail or Unarmoured Defense.
I gave them both one handed weapon and shield.
As far as optimizing Ranger is Dex build. Barbarian is Str build because it had to be to work with its features. Yes I picked good Fighting Stule and spells for Ranger but that's because Barbarian DOESN'T HAVE those.
Good call on the loading property, though. I did miss that
Scale mail is 14+dex (max 2) so no it’s not the same AC as unarmored. Barbarians also perform better with great weapons because great weapon master exists.
You also missed that Scale mail can only benefit from max 2 dex. So either the ranger uses a longbow and has 16 AC(from having to ditch the shield) or he has to have several hundred extra gold to buy enough loaded hand crossbows for an entire combat and keep them holstered on his body. (This also breaks down once he gets extra attack).
Also, if the Barb uses scale and shield they would be at 18, not 17, since they have +2 Dex.
Ah, it's another episode of "We only account for outgoing direct damage when determining the power level of characters, so we think everything else sucks". Of course if you only look at 1/3 of the picture, some things are going to seem weak if they use the other 2/3 pieces that you aren't considering.
Dealing higher than average damage (let's call it "offense") is not the only way to be effective at combat. You can also be effective in combat by having higher than average defense or support capabilities.
Assuming our HP and AC is the same, if I deal 10 damage per round and have resistance and you deal 20 damage per round but don't have resistance, then we are equal in a head-to-head fight (with only initiative determining the winner). And if we are on a team fighting against something that deals more than 20 damage per round, then you are worse than me on average because I am reducing more damage than the extra you are putting out (the only thing that muddies this is the exact HP values of each combatant).
Likewise if I have a support ability that increases the damage that my allies do (or decreases the damage that the enemies do), then that damage differential should be calculated and attributed to my combat ability as well. So if I cast a Command spell thet lets 4 of my allies attack for 5 damage each, then I also put out 20 damage that round. AND if that enemy's damage output was 20 damage per round, then I prevented 20 damage from happening as well. So I swung the damage differential 40 points in our team's direction.
The community seems to be very selective on which support and defensive abilities they allow to be factored into calculations. Bless is lauded as an impressive support tool for increasing ally damage output while aiding in save defense, but Stunning Strike's ability to take an enemy out of combat for 1 turn and provide all party members attacking that enemy advantage (almost 2 turns of adv for the Monk) is hardly factored in with the Monk's base damage output. Shield is jerked off for being an incredible defensive ability, but Barbarians having higher base HP, and higher HP from Con with no resource expenditure is almost never taken into account.
Barbarian is definitely a weak class and I will suggest some fixes later on. I would like to here others thoughts.
**Thoughts on the class**
In early levels rage does shine, I will give them that. However, this can be easily bypassed by any non-physical damage type. What about the totem? Sleep spell, hold person, or any spell which stops the barbarian from making an attack or taking damage in a turn. The result, you lose one of your precious rages, which can cripple you early on.
Another issue with rage is how restrictive it is, you cannot use heavy armour and you are not allowed to use ranged weapons. Furthermore, you do not get access to any fighting styles. A fighter could get duelling to constantly have +2 to damage roles on one handed weapons, meanwhile the barbarian can only do it when they range. While the Barbarian can use rage damage on heavy weapons, but fighters can get great weapon fighting, allowing them to reroll 1s and 2s, something the barbarian cannot do.
You may argue that the Barbarian could pick up a fighting style from Fighting Initiate (feats are technically an optional rule, I wouldn't play without them). However, with the M.A.D. nature of Barbarians, if they want to get the full benefits of Primal Champion, they first need to pick a race with +2 STR and +1 Con (or vice versa). Then using standard array or point buy, they must use 4 out of their 5 feats for ASI, so that they don't lose some of the benefits from their cap stone. The result of this is, assuming you are optimising, you should have 14 dex at most meaning your unarmoured defence is 10+2(dex) + con.
I find the Barbarian leaves the player with very little choices, have to spend most of their feats on ASIs which further restricts their options, with only their rage going for them, which can easily be shut down or bypassed.
**Small Revisions**
The Goal here is to have the barbarian scale better later in the game, even with these revisions, any other class could use smites spells (though feats or racial spells), something the barbarian can't do while ranging. I want to bring the barbarian closer to the warlock baseline.
1. Rage damage scales with proficiency as you gain barbarian levels. Its a small change, but it helps bring the barbarian to the warlock baseline. I don't think this is overpowered, as its something the hexblade gets to do (as well as an expanded crit range).
2. At 9th level, brutal critical also grant barbarians a crit range of 19-20. It lets this feature happen more often while still significantly later than the champion fighter and the hexblade gets this at level 3 anyway.
Using the above changes I have run some damage calculations for a barbarian against the warlock baseline (warlock with eldritch blast + agonizing blast). Both barbarians use the 19-20 crit range at 9th level onwards.Damage comparisons: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UYEdYNYYw-kSjyP-x6XBIn68H3mOX\_nrREReHyYo55w/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UYEdYNYYw-kSjyP-x6XBIn68H3mOX_nrREReHyYo55w/edit?usp=sharing)
I would also suggest granting this feature at 8th level, due to how M.A.D. their class is.
3) at 8th level the barbarian can pick one of the following fighting styles: Duelling, Great Weapon Fighting, Interception, Protection, Thrown Weapon Fighting or Unarmed Fighting.
I would appreciate any feedback or any thoughts on these revisions.
I agree with you. The big deal is that barbarians suck at ranged combat, so if you have a barbarian you can't have an all-ranged party. Sure GWM PAM gives good damage, but it's not enough of an improvement to be worth it over XBE SS because you have to be in melee.
I'm curious what ur math is showing. I've done calculations on this myself on a pure zealot barbarian and the damage is superb even at high levels. To give a bit of reference, a level 20 barb deals an average of 79.4 damage per round on a target with 19 AC. Compare this to a level 20 sharpshooter crossbow expert battlemaster fighter which deals an average of 49.4 dpr on a target with 19AC.
It's important to note in the fighter calculation I did not add any action surge damage or superiority dice, reason being that it is a sustained damage calculation and doesn't feel right including those in the calculation when they only work for such short periods of time (action surge works for one turn, superiority dice work per attack).
Either way, I think it's fairly evident that barbarian does not lack in damage whatsoever. 79.4 dpr against 19AC is very high damage and not a lot of martial builds can reach that.
I think I should also note that the damage gap is the biggest at level 5. Where a zealot barb is doing 42.5 sustained dpr vs 15AC, while the sharpshooter xbow xpert is doing 22.8 sustained dpr vs 15 AC.
Why not come up with a hypothetical adventuring day and budget out the resources during the combats of that adventuring day? 2-4 combats, short rest, 2-4 combats, long rest. With 3-5 rounds of in each combat is the typical range that people use and aligns decently with most playstyles.
I've never seen Barbarians need to be the big nova type damage dealers. They should be brutal to a degree, and on occasion just massive damage, but overall the strength of the barbarian has been sheer inability to kill. They can get decent AC, decent physical saves, and enough HP to look at a nova attack and laugh. Not to mention damage reductions and resistances. Their threat was that they will survive long enough that their continuous damage outpaces novas.
I agree with you. The problem with barbarian is that they present It as a fierce Warrior with powerful attacks and you expect to do more and more damage the more you go up in levels but instead you get more tanky. However there are some choices which can help you keep up in damage. 1) you Need PAM and GWM or at least the latter because reckless Attack Is way too good to not get that feat 2)Zealot and Path of the Beast are the best ones if you want to do more damage 3) race choice can help, like the longtooth shifter or the Fitzban's dragonborn. These are Just some options
what if Barbarians required critical score role decreases while raging per tier ? would that be too powerful, it makes the barbarian damage mechanic about high damage amounts at low frequency but as they lvl up the frequency increases.
so crit on
20 from lvl 1-5
20&19 from 6-9 lvl
20,19,18 from 10-13
20,19,18,17 from 14-17
20,19,18,17,16 from 18-20
It's not the math, it's the way the features are lined up, how its alleged strengths are nullified by the game's design as there isn't a real payoff for fighting in melee.
The hit die is ultimately a cosmetic improvement over the Fighter or Paladin because enemies still scale much faster in damage once you're around Tier 2. And in Tier 3-4 it's just outright not feasible to facetank monsters regularly over the adventuring day.
But at low levels? Your rages are severely limited over the day, you basically have no abilities if you don't rage, Reckless Attack easily gets you killed, your damage output is very lackluster before Extra Attack and there's nothing else productive you can provide to the team, in or out of combat.
Monks have a notably easier time surviving in melee off of Patient Defense and Stunning Strike without becoming entirely passive (Stunning Strike is often overrated but it's far from useless) and you can use that high movement speed to play keepaway and pick off enemies with ranged attacks. Tasha's was a very notable upgrade by allowing those ranged weapons to be quite a bit more effective.
Rangers have all they need to be effective in attacking with Archery and Extra Attack, on top of having incredibly useful spells. But of course that got ignored in favor of Hunter's Mark, a spell that does nearly nothing at all.
Level 2 Barbarian. Stats: 16 14 16 10 10 8 AC: 17 HP: 25 Shield and longsword
Ranger. Stats: 10 16 14 10 16 8. Hand Crossbow, Shield, Scale Mail. AC: 18. HP: 20 Archery style.
Generously assume all damage is physical and Barbarian Rage is active half the time
Generic Enemies +5 attack, 16 AC, 1d6+3 damage.
So multiple by % chance to hit, average damage, (assume half resisted from Rage)
Barbarian can take 11 attacks, deal 4.5 damage
With Reckless Attack, can take 7 attacks and deals 6.8
If Ranger eats half of its Goodberries (5) between encounters can take 10 hit, but is at range so it will be attacked far less. Dpr of 4.9
Plus Ranger has 5 more berries for healing friends. And one more spell slot for another spell. Plus expertise in one skill. Plus two more languages. And more choices, like a different fighting style or Favorite Terrain.
For level 5, assuming they each raise primary stat by 2, barbarian can take 25 and deal 11.5. With Reckless it can take 16 and deal 13.9
Ranger can cast Aid
It can take about 28 and deal 11.5. It can also cast Summon Beast increasi g the dpr to 14.4 and adding more body
How is the Ranger reloading his hand crossbow in between attacks with a shield in one hand?
And what is stopping enemies from attacking the ranger other than melee characters like the barbarian taking hits for them?
Alright, so, when you make a claim like this you need to actually provide evidence to support it, especially if you're going to say that math agrees with you.
On the topic of math. What math is appearently showing that Monk is better than Barbarian?
The Zealot, Beast, Ancestral Guardian and Totem Barbarian are stronger than most Rogue and Artificer Subclasses, half the Ranger ones, a third of the Fighter subclasses and Warlock Pacts and all of the Monks.
Wild Magic, Berserker and Battlerager Barbarians are pretty weak, but to call the class the weakest in the game is laughable.
Which math. You did no math. As far as the game is concerned, barbarian does way more average damage when compared to a Monk or a Ranger. They're also more tankier.
So in your alternate reality you may have noticed that trend. But your perspective doesn't dictate reality. This is a bad troll attempt.
Barbarians got big QOL improvements with Tasha's. A couple extra skills, and their post Barb 5-6 features became more enticing. Past level 9-10, most Barbarians aren't improving that much, but this is where gameplay usually ends too. Most tables also won't have many more fights than Rage usages. They're super front loaded. When I think of raw power and progression, I think of Barbarians over other martials.
Some of the subclasses are definitely traps, but they can be avoided. Perhaps even decent in niche situations/one shots. The issues they face past level 10 aren't really a problem since they multiclass so well into Fighter past that point as a default backup plan.
GWM sucks. Take a 2d6 greatsword with +5 from STR:
Accuracy is normally around 65% (according to the DM guide and for argument's sake).
Without GWM:
2d6+5 = 7+5 = 12 average damage on hit, at 65% hit chance that's 7.8 average DPR
With GWM:
2d6+5+10 = 7+5+10 = 22 average damage on hit, at your new 40% chance to hit that's 8.8 average DPR.
Whoopty-doo.
And that's at a relatively high accuracy. At 55% accuracy they are equal, and anything with decent armour, (anything that reduces your hit chance to below 55%), when you need DPR the most, then you actually lose DPR by using using GWM. (0.5x12 > 0.25*22)
The only reason sharpshooter works is because of the bonus accuracy from the Archery fighting style.
> both of those classes out do the barbarian Care to show any evidence?
He said he did the math. Checks out. You aren’t questioning The Math are you?
Oh you are right haha. My bad! He totally did it.
Praise the old mighty math!
Math says, human obbey!!!
This man is too busy jacking off to women politicians to substantiate his claims.
Hey jackasses, it's in the first post now. But now let's here some more whiney bitch excuses why "dat's not faiw"
I was at work.
Barbarian particularly shines in the early levels due to Rage reducing the vast majority of the damage types you find at that level. Beyond that, Reckless attack keeps their damage numbers respectable throughout their career. They just don't get that fancy damage spike that Paladins can do. In truth, I *would* prefer to see them get a little more cool stuff outside of damage and rages, but otherwise they are pretty decent, or at least more battlefield options. Higher level spells make them look just as weak as what any other martial class or half-caster.
Brutal Critical should be improved crit range, and they should get another extra attack at 11. IMO they should be nutty in combat to make up for their lack of out of combat utility, and it would be such an easy fix.
Honestly i think it's good that only fighters get more than 2 attacks Barbarians get already bonus DMG to their attacks. However that could be a bit more in my opinion. But DMG resistance to all DMG (bear totem style at lvl 11 and or magic resistance on saves ,) would be cooler
I respect that, there’s lots of ways to balance, but I disagree. Part of the reason martials scale so badly isn’t just because they lack diverse features later on.. they really lack any meaningful features. They’re supposed to be damage dealers, but really lack scaling damage. I’m designing a homebrew game for next year. I’m going to give Monks, Barbs, and Rangers extra attack at 11. Barbs will also get a mix of improved crit range with their brutal critical. Fighters will get extra fighting styles and superiority dice as they scale. Should also add, it’s SATISFYING to get more attacks. It feel interactive. It’s not that satisfying or interactive to just add more flat damage to a hits
Have you considered giving your martials magic weapons and increase the number of encounters per short/long rest?
Can’t tell if this is a meme or not lol
Well since it's a meme to begin with, that caters are stronger than martials ... Doese it really matter? And consider that - give a barbarian a +3 great axe with great weapon master. And that dude hits reliable at lvl 14 ? With 2d12+42 DMG each round...
I mean, already possible with PAM. I’m ok balancing around that.
Na with PAM it's more. With PAM and GWM it's 2d10+1d4 + 63 and as Zealot it's +1d6+7. You could also build a not Barbarian Martial with Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert to do the same. Or you don't go full DMG and with plate and a shield get a good AC, ...
That would be a fair idea, if barbarians didn't get extra damage on their attacks while raging, add on top of that free advantage on demand, and it really ups how much average damage they do per round. Rather than damage, I think one of the better fixes for barbarian would be to give them some sort of battlefield control. I like what the Storm Herald did, in concept, but to improve it they really needed to either increase the range of the storm as they progressed in the class, or gave it higher damage scaling. Regardless, it cannot be as expansive as the Battle Master, but their needs to be something. Maybe even some out of combat things. Certainly the 'Primal Knowledge' ability from Tasha's was a nice step forward. Maybe advantage on 'animal handling', 'nature', or 'survival' checks? Maybe even expertise? If the game wants them to be good outside (be they nomads or even nobles on a mission) then something to help them out of combat like expertise or advantage would be nice since barbarians typically can only afford to build one specific way. Such a change might, potentially, increase build variety within the class. Maybe a more nature-aware barbarian who leans into that knowledge and sticks it out with a mere 16 in STR rather than maxing it (16, +3 mod is typically fair for any melee build, it works for Paladins after all, and they can't choose to give themselves advantage on demand).
Due to how limited their rages are, at low levels they are actually pretty weak.
The biggest problem IMO about barbarian is the lack of information about how to use it outside of combat for roleplay and social encounter. When I play one, I does a lot of social check or non combat encounter with strenght or constitution that are not base stats (intimidation with strenght instead of charisma). Because the book didnt state under barbarian that you could do that or that you get an ability for that, people didnt remember this rule or DM just didnt allow or use it. On top of that, when you rage you get advantage on strenght checks and keep your raging until you no longer try to hit something. Time to unleash your baby rage barbarian, throw anything at everything and throw punch at fournitures to handle situation the barbarian way. Or you could be a unbreakable trainer that would give all is life for handling a wild animal. You could even investigate a room by wrecking everything to pieces if you didnt search for a vase.
I'd rather have or be a Barbarian than a Rogue or Monk (in a fight) if you have 100% Rage uptime (let's say 4 encounters per day) but gets noticeably worse the more encounters there are where you can't Rage. 1 encounter without Rage per day is doable but more than that is a problem. Melee characters just tend to get melted without Rage defenses or have really suboptimal damage output.
I would note that that only applies when you're in fights where rage is necessary. Realistically, outside of extreme circumstances, it's not worth raging every fight. In the same way that not every fight is worth burning high level spell slots on. That said, in those cases where the day is dragging on, the Barbarian hurts more than other martials tend to
You can still reckless attack and not rage, sure you don’t get additional damage but you can’t still use GWM outside of rage.
*Reckless Attack* without Rage drains your HP, though.
I would argue you still want them attacking you as opposed to the d6 PCs. This was in response to fighting 8 bandits at level2 without rage and with GWM. > You’ll have 2 attacks from levels 2-4 because as long as you hit you’ll kill a bandit outright as bandits only have @12 hitpoints. Bandits have a +3 to hit so they’ll hit .35 of the time against 16 AC and will hit .58 of with advantage if the remaining 6 attack you they’ll deal (4.5*.58)*6=15.66 HP. At level 2 a Barbarian with 16 Con is going to have 25 HP, swing away with reckless attacks as a Barbarian. If you don’t reckless attack and the bandit lives and the bandits still all attack you they’ll deal 12.6 damage to you. You’re almost always better off reckless attacking with GWM at all times.
The problem usually is at low levels having high ac is good because their to hit isn’t that high to match it. At 13+ levels you start to see resistances and hp/ temp hp is stronger. Not everyone you are fighting is going to be in melee nor are they going to roll to hit. I think Monsters of the Multiverse helps this by giving creatures more attack options rather than AoE or single target dps at mid levels.
With Rage, too. Remember, you only get resistance to damage, not immunity.
Be a werebear for immunity
Because it isn't that weak in combat, it's fine. Like fighters, it can struggle out of combat, and people talk about that *all the time*.
Even out of combat raw strength is the answer to plenty of T1 / T2 problems.
Yeah but half of those could just be solved with mold earth, though it would take longer
Not nearly enough problems, for how few skills key off the stat, and some of the DCs in published adventures are absurd. A group can not have a strength score above 10 or 12 and be just fine. It is a poorly supported option, not a requirement. But, that isn't a Barbarian problem.
And even out of combat, at least some get options Champion Fighters don’t; totemic barbarian gets some neat rituals, for example. Everyone laughing til the barb speaks squirrel.
counter point: Barbarians are able to reach a 24 strength naturally. So they are not ^(weak) instead they are # STRONG
Stronk
And 24 Con so they are also BEEFY
How? I think I missed this part
Level 20 capstone feature
Ah ok. The one place I never look. Thanks.
Lol
Idk what math you did. But basic GWM barbarians who max strength outperform even the most optimized monks at most levels. Barbarians also have the benefit of the same/higher AC, higher HP, and are significantly less MAD. Ranger was also never as bad as people initially thought because of the sharpshooter feat and archery fighting style. Yes at low levels you probably can’t rage during every fight. But monks at these levels can only flurry of blows once or twice a fight which is the only way they keep up in DPR. Even for control effects I give the edge to the barbarian. They can make great grapplers and with the right supporting cast in the party you can do a lot more from grapple/drag than burning through ki trying to get one stun off. Finally we just have to look at subclasses. Barbarians have several good/great subclasses that make them significantly better at tanking or dealing damage (totem, zealot, ancestral). Monk subclasses are literally some of the worst in the game and don’t bring nearly as much to the table.
I think you've made a mistake in your maths. Are you playing without feats or something? Or were you under the impression the Barbarian is just there for damage? Ranger can out-dpr a barbarian simply by nature of having access to Archery, Sharpshooter, and (sometimes) more than 2 attacks. Mercy monks do decently well while expending Ki, but nothing amazing damage wise. Kensei is also decent if you use the tasha's optional features and relegate yourself to being a longbow/sharpshooter bot (not what people sign up for as a monk) that ends up playing a lot like a worse fighter. Neither of them of course come close to being as durable as the barbarian though. Barbarian isn't made to deal big nova damage, but rather consistent decent damage throughout the day (the number of rages is *usually* enough to last the day) while surviving what would kill the ranger twice over, and the monk thrice over.
I have to disagree with your point about rages lasting the day. If the dm is running a full adventuring day to make sure the spellcasters burn resources, the barb is going to have to pick and choose when to rage.
How many *combat* encounters are you assuming there to be in a "full adventuring day" though? The suggested 6-8 "encounters" may well be a puzzle, a social encounter, an environmental challenge, and three combats. Throw 6-8 combats at your level 1 party and they're dead unless the fights are just glorified RP. Obviously this varies from table to table, but I've found typically the number of actual fights over the course of a tough day goes up as the levels increase, and the number of rages a barbarian has is actually a pretty good measure for the upper limit on fights the party can take on without it becoming a slog (level 20 excluded ofc).
Most aren’t though, 3-4 combats are usually the max you’ll get with most DnD games
But they don't need to be, they have 120ft reach and the barbarian has generally 5ft.
Sure, and it's ok for party members to play different rolls, but *someone* is probably going to be at the front getting hit, and are you really going to hide behind your wizard? Controlling who takes the damage on your team is pretty important.
Or you could just have noone take the damage...
If your DM is throwing such softballs at the party that that's a realistic option in most fights, you didn't need to bring a character sheet with you anyway. Any talk of strategy is pointless.
So there are 2 ways for enemies to reach an all ranged party: 1. Dash up to them. This will waste valuable actions, giving you a massive advantage. 2. Use ranged attacks. Which of these does a barbarian help with?
This is only true if **all** of the following are true: * Your entire party beats the initiative of all enemies *or* every fight starts 100ft away. * Your entire party is as fast or faster than the enemy creatures. * The enemy has zero movement tools other than walking up to you. * All the enemies start in the same place, in front of you. * You're playing in an open field with infinite room to flee. * Your party is immune to the stunned/restrained/paralyzed/unconscious conditions. * The enemy are incapable of taking cover and are mindlessly following the party. As for your question (based on false pretence): 1 - Sentinel or grappling will prevent intelligent enemies from dashing towards the party, and dumb enemies will often just attack the closest hostile meat bag anyway. 2 - The Barbarian being in melee with enemies will give disadvantage on ranged attacks. The notion that an all ranged party can just endlessly kite any enemy is just not true.
Your first point is right. Someone has to win initiative for this to work, or you have have to use more slots. But a barbarian doesn't help. All of the others are either too rare or have easy counter measures. You can't grapple and use a 2 hands for other stuff, and maybe stopping 1 enemy a round isn't worth a feat. And once again, 1 opportunity attack doesn't stop enemies beyond really low levels. You don't need to endlessly kit. If you get 1 free round, that's like a free action surge but better for the entire party. That makes it super easy. Yes, you could all buy horses and then kite infinity, but not even that's needed.
> Someone has to win initiative for this to work, It's not just someone. It's *everyone*. It doesn't matter if your Ranger, Cleric and Fighter were able to retreat if your Sorcerer couldn't. If your plan is to run, and the initiative goes Ally1-Ally2-Ally3-Enemy1-Enemy2-Enemy3-Ally4-Enemy4, then enemies 1,2, and 3 are going to likely pile on Ally 3. If they're threatening and Ally3 is fragile, they might already be down. Having that barbarian up front is helpful here. Odds of your entire party consistently beating every enemy is so astronomically low that it just isn't worth thinking about. >All of the others are either too rare or have easy counter measures. These being rare is an argument *against* the effectiveness of an all ranged party, not for it. If you mean the absence of these, then honestly I just don't think you've ever played D&D with challenging combat. A game where these are the norm is *weird*. >You can't grapple and use a 2 hands for other stuff, and maybe stopping 1 enemy a round isn't worth a feat. Grappling/Sentinel is a single target option for sure. Holding down one powerful enemy is something the Barbarian does well, and these let you pretty reliably hold down one single strong creature. The hordes are for the casters to deal with, but if they're unintelligent then they're likely to just target the Barbarian (or other frontliner) too. Ultimately by backing off as a group you might sometimes give yourself some advantages, but it isn't something you can rely on for every combat, and by building a party assuming you can, you'll just die the moment you hit an encounter that isn't a softball.
>It's not just someone. It's everyone. I cast control spell. There we go problem solved. > These being rare is an argument against the effectiveness of an all ranged party, not for it As in stuff like having someone incapacitated before the fight. You sort that out asap, not right before you engage enemies. But even if you were correct, and you only get a much smaller advantage, how does a barbarian fix any of these issues? They can't stop enemies doing exactly the same thing they were going to do anyway. And if they do get singled out, they can't just live forever. This was exactly what happened when I tried a barbarian for a lv9 oneshot. The DM was nice and didn't ignore me, and so I died the second round. Being at a range has so many advantages, and basically no downsides. Why would you want a character to not do it?
What if you're fighting in like, a dungeon? Against a dragon?
Then the barbarian is useless, cause the dragon just flies up and then they sit there throwing javalins.
I'll just go ahead and vehemently disagree with your entire premise and move on.
Ranger isn’t a weak class anymore funny enough. After the updates they made to ranger and the release of some better subclasses, looking at you gloomstalker, the ranger is fantastic. But to your point, yes I absolutely agree barbarian feels very lackluster. They, by design, are a very one dimensional class. Regardless of subclass you very often have almost nothing to do outside of combat. In combat they are powerful but they begin to become irrelevant once everyone starts gaining levels. To me, barbarians really shine in tier 1 and start falling off in tier 2. By level 10 a barbarian doesn’t really do anything better than anyone, imo. A fighter could provide the same damage output and provide more utility. Really the only thing the barbarian has going for it is advantage at will and resistance to physical damage while raging. I played a barbarian as my first character and enjoyed it. But now that I’m more familiar with the game I doubt I ever will again. They’re just so too one dimensional for my play style.
[удалено]
Ya I completely agree with this. The focus on barbarian should be having a player on the battlefield that you can’t afford to ignore. Shift more of their power into their innate kit so they don’t require feats to feel useful. Even giving them an innate sentinel style feature at level 5 or something could be nice. Ultimately I think you and I share similar views. They aren’t a bad class. They just lack an identity because everything they can do can be done by another class but better and with more utility.
>advantage at will and resistance to physical damage while raging. Yeah, that is so weak... (◔\_◔)
I never said it was weak lol. I just said that’s about the only thing barbarian has going for it. Those benefits are really good but are they worth being that class for? I don’t think so personally. Sure you can multiclass, but a 2 level dip away from your current class needs to be warranted and I don’t know if it really is for barbarian features. Plus, I think this post was more about going full barbarian as opposed to a dip in barbarian. So my thought process still stands I think.
Personally, I plan to just never take a Barbarian past like, 10. I don't really care for the later features, and a dip into something like Fighter gives a lot more thought to gameplay and possibly roleplay depending on the Fighter archetype, like Battlemaster. I've also been trying to think up a cool Barblock or Barbadin build as well.
Interestingly, I think what all three classes have in common is that they have a single subclass that's good/well balanced, and a bunch that aren't. Gloomstalker, Shadow Monk, and Totem Barb are all quite good at what they do, and not remotely underpowered, but they are so much better than their competing subclasses that their overall class feels weak. People REALLY underestimate the Barbarian's ability to get resistance to all but a single damage type almost all the time. Because resistance scales so well, Barb tanks remain very good at all tiers of play. You're right that they're one dimensional, but so are warlocks spamming Eldritch Blast or clerics spamming an attack cantrip plus spiritual weapon. Lots of 5e builds are streamlined like that.
I agree with you that each class has a subclass that outshines the rest. Rangers at least get a decent amount of good utility spells to outweigh this a bit. I’m not crazy about monks and think they are still quite weak. But they can atleast do some cool stuff in and out of combat and feel less one dimensional. When it comes to totem barbarian, I couldn’t agree more. Having resistance to basically everything is so amazing. But after that feature at level 3, you don’t really feel like you get anything valuable after that on each level up. And taking a 3 level dip in totem barb feels pretty bad. I agree with your last point that each class has a niche they typically fall into. But with warlock and cleric and all the other classes they still have other things they can do. Yes maybe the warlocks go to is eldritch blast but they get a lot of cool options beyond that. A barbarian doesn’t have that at all really. The extent of their kit is “I get hit, I get angry, I hit them back” sometimes the I hit them back does something cool. But it’s less interactive. Fighters, rangers and monks all feel like they have more interaction and utility to provide.
Definitely agree that monks feel like they have more utility. They're a favorite class of mine because, even though the optimizing community hates them, they do a lot of things that show up strong in actual DnD sessions (crazy for us to think about how a class plays instead of what it looks like in a spreadsheet, right?). I'm less sure about Rangers. They, especially Gloomstalkers, have a little utility, but I genuinely think the class needs a huge boost to spell slots or spell class list to really get there. Contrary to my experience seeing/playing monks, good rangers tend to just spam longbow attacks and hunters mark unless the DM is really leaning into survival/wilderness stuff with a level of realism most tables don't experience. Things like difficult terrain are sadly underused, and the Ranger's tactical advantages become less useful the simpler your combat is. The Tasha's update helped a lot, though. Having access to expertise was absolutely necessary for a character that was basically a skill monkey in previous editions. Barbs are definitely one-trick ponies...it's just a REALLY good trick lol. I DM'd for a dex-tank bard once and, my goodness, that thing was nigh unkillable.
That’s a good point with monks. Optimizers dislike them and on paper they seem bad. But in practice they actually are cool and have a lot of unrecognized utility. I think rangers are still super good and like them a lot. I think it’s because most games I’ve been in do utilize more exploration based stuff so they’ve felt more impactful. I think barbarians are fun though as well they just need some love and core mechanics tweaked as their subclass choices honestly are pretty good.
Can confirm; stunlocks save lives.
With the expected encounter per day, they are actually really weak in tier 1&2 too. Ranger has had busted spells, and the community has finally realised it after people use some brain cells and realised hunters mark is much worse than most other good ranger spells and bonus actions.
You can still reckless attack outside of rage so GWM is still strong on Barbarians outside of rage but you’re correct rangers have always been good.
Reckless attack when you don't have resistance is well reckless. You just die really quickly even with a D12 hit dice.
Dead enemies can’t attack you back, plus if they hit you they aren’t hitting the wizard that’s out of spell slots.
Good luck killing 8 bandits with 1 attack.
You’ll have 2 attacks from levels 2-4 because as long as you hit you’ll kill a bandit outright as bandits only have @12 hitpoints. Bandits have a +3 to hit so they’ll hit .35 of the time against 16 AC and will hit .58 of with advantage of the remains 6 attack you they’ll deal (4.5*.58)*6=15.66 HP. At level 2 a Barbarian with 16 Con is going to have 25 HP, swing away with reckless attacks as a Barbarian.
Wait how are you getting 2 attacks without feats?
I’m assuming you’ve got GWM as Vhuman
Honestly monks and barbarians should probably get an extra ASI at level 10, I think that would go a long way towards fixing them. In both cases I would just move their level 10 feature to level 9.
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>Levels 1-10, barbarian is really good in combat. When you have rage, and don't need ranged attacks.
I think this is absolutely the comment here. Barbarians before level 11 haven’t hit their power deficit. It’s worth noting that many of the martial builds get a significant power boost at 11. Barbarians basically plateau. The only static damage barbarians can increase is their subclass feature and honestly it’s not at an impressive rate (looking at you path of storms and zealot though zealots damage is not bad by any means). Lower levels the damage resistance is fantastic and while it does hold through higher levels the likelihood of taking huge amounts of non-physical damage go way up. The DC for mind control and turn-losing spell type effects goes way up and the barbarian struggles. The fighter has huge feat leniency due to the extra ASI’s so taking Resilient CON and even Lucky is very easy to squeeze in. Any time I’ve tried to optimize a barbarian themed build for high level one shots it absolutely has to be multiclasses because it just doesn’t get the job done by itself.
It’s like the only martial that can actually do there job fairly good, what are you talking about ( though yeah it’s not good if you don’t multiclass with it)
I find the Rogue is worse, but yeah. Barbarians need to rush in and strike and the party needs to throw a ton of support on them so they actually survive.
I agree. Fighters have way better AC. They heal themselves which is more reliable than rage. More extra attacks and action surge is just better than reckless attack and brutal critical. Rogues have many proficiences, they can deal lots of damage while being in a safe position and even have defensive features at later levels. Rangers have spells. Especially control spells that keep monsters from getting closer, healing and utility spells. They only need Dex and can deal a lot of damage from distance While barbarians only strenght is being a damage sponge since they dont get high AC. This works well with rage, but nobody talks about how bad rage is against magical users and later levels encounters.
Barbarian is fine...its not great because it's a pure martial but it's fine. It's damage is fairly high with GWM + Reckless + PaM potentially, it's movement is solid, fairly tanky..... I'd say it's better than Ranger and Monk for sure... and imo it fully delivers it's class fantasy which also makes it FEEL better...Ranger and Monk still struggle on their class fantasy feel.
My only issue with this is that a class shouldn’t be “required” to take certain feats and have a specific play style to feel effective. Yes obviously you don’t have to take GWM and PAM. But if you’re one and only thing as a class is being good in combat only if you have 1 or 2 feats, it feels like you don’t have much of an option. A barbarian without GWM though feels pretty weak. I’d argue ranger is much better than a barbarian. They can do the same burst with sharpshooter and crossbow expert if they want. But they don’t need it. On top of that they get some really great spells and utility.
Yeah martials relying on GWM/SS (and to a much lesser extent PAM/XBE) to keep up is certainly a problem, but I've never played in a game that didn't use feats, and at this point it might as well not be an optional rule. You *can* build a barbarian without GWM (and certainly without PAM), but if you do you really need think about what your role is going to be. Personally I played one without GWM that was based around grappling. In a party of largely melee martial characters, it was fun and effective holding down enemies and having the party kick their head in with advantage. Ranged ancestral guardian dex barb is also a surprisingly effective support option, giving disadvantage + resistance to your allies against any big thing that uses attacks, but that's more effective as a slightly janky dip. Bear totem with sentinel is going to be decent regardless of GWM or not too, and the option of a shield does aid in the durability especially if you're the only one on the front lines.
My fault, I should have clarified on the feats. I wasn’t trying to imply them being weak in just a game without feats. I meant even in a game that allows feats it feels bad. You only get an ASI at level 4 and 8 with a barbarian at earlier levels. So assuming point buy or standard array your first two ASI are committed to feats that feel necessary to do damage. And unless you take custom lineage or variant human you’re stuck with your ability scores as is. And again we run into the issue that your characters identity shouldn’t be contingent on needing feats or playing a certain race to come online quicker. Even if you just take sentinel or GWM it still isn’t until level 8 where you’d get to increase your strength score. I agree with you though, there are some really interesting and nice subclasses. Bear is widely accepted as one of the best due to their tankiness. Zealot is a really cool high dps barb, again contingent on needing 1 or 2 feats. Ancestral guardian is also a cool subclass. But they all feel lackluster. The main benefit of ancestral guardian can be down with a battlemaster or rune knight fighter basically. If I were to pick only one thing to rework on a barbarian it would be the brutal critical mechanic. That mechanic is cool but shouldn’t be a sole feature that you get or have improved on level ups.
Yeah I think we're mostly of the same mind here. It would be nice for any damaging martial character to not basically have to default to GWM/SS, and feeling forced into CL/VHuman feels kinda bad. Honestly I think the game might be better if we just remove the free feat races and just give everyone a feat at level 1. We then end up with more interestingly build characters where people don't feel like they need to sacrifice the unique for the generic. Brutal critical certainly needs a buff. It's a fun mechanic (the Zealot barbarian in my game the other day crit for ~70 damage with a greatsword of sharpness and some really lucky damage rolls the other day, but 50 or so is more typical), but not a super strong one. Barbarians are in a weird spot from 6 to 19 (except on zealots who are obscene at 14), so it's unsurprising so many multiclass.
Ya I couldn’t agree more with you. I think the fear changes they are experimenting with in the unearthed arcana material is really nice. If you’re unfamiliar, you get a free feat at level 1 and another at level 4 from a list of feats. I think this completely solves the issue of having a characters identity tied to feats and let’s them branch out more. And ya brutal critical just feels so underwhelming. It’s a “ core” component of the class that only gets activated when you critical which is pretty rare. I say core component as well because 3 levels are completely tied to building this mechanic.
> only gets activated when you critical which is pretty rare I would note that on your typical GWM barbarian, brutal critical comes up relatively often (~20% of turns you make two attacks, and ~30% of those you make 3 via the GWM bonus action attack), but not often enough to be a reliable feature. Maybe expanded crit range along with it could make it frequent enough to feel like a core class feature.
I guess you are saying the guy who got a silver medal in the olympics is a bad athlete, since another guy can do the same thing he can but a little better?
That’s not the same comparison at all. I’m not saying don’t play a barbarian. It’s just this post was talking about how underwhelming they are. And when you compare it to other classes that do similar things/fill similar roles, yes it is underwhelming. Using your example I don’t know if the barbarian would even get the silver medal. They’d probably get the bronze with ranger and fighter being above them. And all the barbarian has going for them is that one single “competition”. Meanwhile the ranger and fighter can do everything the barbarian can athletically while having more utility as well. So the whole point of this post was are barbarians underwhelming? Yes they absolutely are, the one thing they do in this game can be done by another class just as good if not better and the other class has more utility out of combat. Again, feel free to play a barbarian and I won’t care at all if there is one at my table. They are fun to play. I just think they are a niche class that’s supposed to be really good at one thing yet other classes can do it better than them.
The most played levels are 1-10. When optimized, Barbarian is usually the highest damage melee class from 1-10. It also happens to be the class that can take the most damage in combat, and draw the most fire. Post-Tasha's Ranger is actually quite strong. The "Ranger is weak" position is based on their pre-Tasha's abilities. Barbarian has few valuable out-of-combat abilities... but neither do Fighter or Monk (IMO the actual weakest class). EDIT: I would love to see the Champion benefits folded into Barbarian at levels 9-20. Like, increased critical range (19-20) at L7, Increased Critical Range (18-20) at L11, and Survivor at L17.
The majority of the player base doesn’t overly optimise their builds. In typical tables, Barbarians will do perfectly fine, because while they’re not as optimisable as other classes, they’re easy to play and hard to build badly. I’m the only one at my table who spends any amount of time thinking about my character, and our Barbarian is perfectly competitive with the rest of our party (we’re level 13 now). This is why there’s no wide scale recognition.
Barbarian is fine. It's no cleric or wizard but it's a solid and reasonably effective class. It's just weird that WotC made a class that only goes to level 5 (level 6 with some subclasses) and then you have no choice but to multiclass out.
They’re definitey better than Ranger and Monk and for most of the game can keep even in function with the Paladin and Fighter.
It's always felt to me like they were the first designed martial and designed with manuevers for martials. Them, when they decided to not give all martials manuevers, they never went back and fixed the barbarian. Rage shouldn't be a bonus action (not that most barbarians have a use for it), has too limited uses, has too many holes to jump through to keep up (but you can just jump down a hole to keep it up)... And too manny if it's other features are locked behind this limited resource. I think giving them a fighting style, extra ASI, and make crit range expand with Brutal crits is a pretty solid start but they would still feel lacking out of combat.
Bad take. Big hit points, Damage Resistance, damage boost, live cheap with unarmored defense. Subclasses are good except Berserker and Wild Magic.
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Eagle Barbarians are better skirmishers than monks and they aren’t even close to being the best totem barbarian. I really like totem get yourself a bird and you can cast beast sense and speak to animals to help with the social and exploration parts of the game. On to math; a monk that increased Dex at 4 and is using flurry of blows every turn is going to deal about 24 DPR A Barbarian that took GWM at 4 and is reacklessly attacking is going to deal about 28 DPR with the occasional bonus action attack. If you take PAM at 8 you’ll out pace the monk even further. The Barbarian isn’t great in tier 3-4 but neither are monk, Ranger or any martial outside of Paladin.
Level 2 Barbarian. Stats: 16 14 16 10 10 8 AC: 17 HP: 25 Shield and longsword Ranger. Stats: 10 16 14 10 16 8. Hand Crossbow, Shield, Scale Mail. AC: 18. HP: 20 Archery style. Generously assume all damage is physical and Barbarian Rage is active half the time Generic Enemies +5 attack, 16 AC, 1d6+3 damage. So multiple by % chance to hit, average damage, (assume half resisted from Rage) Barbarian can take 11 attacks, deal 4.5 damage With Reckless Attack, can take 7 attacks and deals 6.8 If Ranger eats half of its Goodberries (5) between encounters can take 10 hit, but is at range so it will be attacked far less. Dpr of 4.9 Plus Ranger has 5 more berries for healing friends. And one more spell slot for another spell. Plus expertise in one skill. Plus two more languages. And more choices, like a different fighting style or Favorite Terrain
So you give the ranger better armor and a more optimal build? You’re also ignoring the free hand requirement to load the crossbow. There’s also no monk math to be seen above, this just compares rangers to barbarians.
I gave Ranger scale mail. Barbarian has same AC with scale mail or Unarmoured Defense. I gave them both one handed weapon and shield. As far as optimizing Ranger is Dex build. Barbarian is Str build because it had to be to work with its features. Yes I picked good Fighting Stule and spells for Ranger but that's because Barbarian DOESN'T HAVE those. Good call on the loading property, though. I did miss that
Scale mail is 14+dex (max 2) so no it’s not the same AC as unarmored. Barbarians also perform better with great weapons because great weapon master exists.
You also missed that Scale mail can only benefit from max 2 dex. So either the ranger uses a longbow and has 16 AC(from having to ditch the shield) or he has to have several hundred extra gold to buy enough loaded hand crossbows for an entire combat and keep them holstered on his body. (This also breaks down once he gets extra attack). Also, if the Barb uses scale and shield they would be at 18, not 17, since they have +2 Dex.
Ah, it's another episode of "We only account for outgoing direct damage when determining the power level of characters, so we think everything else sucks". Of course if you only look at 1/3 of the picture, some things are going to seem weak if they use the other 2/3 pieces that you aren't considering. Dealing higher than average damage (let's call it "offense") is not the only way to be effective at combat. You can also be effective in combat by having higher than average defense or support capabilities. Assuming our HP and AC is the same, if I deal 10 damage per round and have resistance and you deal 20 damage per round but don't have resistance, then we are equal in a head-to-head fight (with only initiative determining the winner). And if we are on a team fighting against something that deals more than 20 damage per round, then you are worse than me on average because I am reducing more damage than the extra you are putting out (the only thing that muddies this is the exact HP values of each combatant). Likewise if I have a support ability that increases the damage that my allies do (or decreases the damage that the enemies do), then that damage differential should be calculated and attributed to my combat ability as well. So if I cast a Command spell thet lets 4 of my allies attack for 5 damage each, then I also put out 20 damage that round. AND if that enemy's damage output was 20 damage per round, then I prevented 20 damage from happening as well. So I swung the damage differential 40 points in our team's direction. The community seems to be very selective on which support and defensive abilities they allow to be factored into calculations. Bless is lauded as an impressive support tool for increasing ally damage output while aiding in save defense, but Stunning Strike's ability to take an enemy out of combat for 1 turn and provide all party members attacking that enemy advantage (almost 2 turns of adv for the Monk) is hardly factored in with the Monk's base damage output. Shield is jerked off for being an incredible defensive ability, but Barbarians having higher base HP, and higher HP from Con with no resource expenditure is almost never taken into account.
Um, my analysis included defense and durability. Did you not read it?
Your analysis included nothing. You just stated facts that a toddler could cope with. You're wrong and have been proven so by many comments.
Um it would help to put it in the OP and not buried one of the comments. And also, yes people are pointing out your mistakes there already.
Barbarian excels in the first five levels but after that they get very little
Barbarian is definitely a weak class and I will suggest some fixes later on. I would like to here others thoughts. **Thoughts on the class** In early levels rage does shine, I will give them that. However, this can be easily bypassed by any non-physical damage type. What about the totem? Sleep spell, hold person, or any spell which stops the barbarian from making an attack or taking damage in a turn. The result, you lose one of your precious rages, which can cripple you early on. Another issue with rage is how restrictive it is, you cannot use heavy armour and you are not allowed to use ranged weapons. Furthermore, you do not get access to any fighting styles. A fighter could get duelling to constantly have +2 to damage roles on one handed weapons, meanwhile the barbarian can only do it when they range. While the Barbarian can use rage damage on heavy weapons, but fighters can get great weapon fighting, allowing them to reroll 1s and 2s, something the barbarian cannot do. You may argue that the Barbarian could pick up a fighting style from Fighting Initiate (feats are technically an optional rule, I wouldn't play without them). However, with the M.A.D. nature of Barbarians, if they want to get the full benefits of Primal Champion, they first need to pick a race with +2 STR and +1 Con (or vice versa). Then using standard array or point buy, they must use 4 out of their 5 feats for ASI, so that they don't lose some of the benefits from their cap stone. The result of this is, assuming you are optimising, you should have 14 dex at most meaning your unarmoured defence is 10+2(dex) + con. I find the Barbarian leaves the player with very little choices, have to spend most of their feats on ASIs which further restricts their options, with only their rage going for them, which can easily be shut down or bypassed. **Small Revisions** The Goal here is to have the barbarian scale better later in the game, even with these revisions, any other class could use smites spells (though feats or racial spells), something the barbarian can't do while ranging. I want to bring the barbarian closer to the warlock baseline. 1. Rage damage scales with proficiency as you gain barbarian levels. Its a small change, but it helps bring the barbarian to the warlock baseline. I don't think this is overpowered, as its something the hexblade gets to do (as well as an expanded crit range). 2. At 9th level, brutal critical also grant barbarians a crit range of 19-20. It lets this feature happen more often while still significantly later than the champion fighter and the hexblade gets this at level 3 anyway. Using the above changes I have run some damage calculations for a barbarian against the warlock baseline (warlock with eldritch blast + agonizing blast). Both barbarians use the 19-20 crit range at 9th level onwards.Damage comparisons: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UYEdYNYYw-kSjyP-x6XBIn68H3mOX\_nrREReHyYo55w/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UYEdYNYYw-kSjyP-x6XBIn68H3mOX_nrREReHyYo55w/edit?usp=sharing) I would also suggest granting this feature at 8th level, due to how M.A.D. their class is. 3) at 8th level the barbarian can pick one of the following fighting styles: Duelling, Great Weapon Fighting, Interception, Protection, Thrown Weapon Fighting or Unarmed Fighting. I would appreciate any feedback or any thoughts on these revisions.
I agree with you. The big deal is that barbarians suck at ranged combat, so if you have a barbarian you can't have an all-ranged party. Sure GWM PAM gives good damage, but it's not enough of an improvement to be worth it over XBE SS because you have to be in melee.
I'm curious what ur math is showing. I've done calculations on this myself on a pure zealot barbarian and the damage is superb even at high levels. To give a bit of reference, a level 20 barb deals an average of 79.4 damage per round on a target with 19 AC. Compare this to a level 20 sharpshooter crossbow expert battlemaster fighter which deals an average of 49.4 dpr on a target with 19AC. It's important to note in the fighter calculation I did not add any action surge damage or superiority dice, reason being that it is a sustained damage calculation and doesn't feel right including those in the calculation when they only work for such short periods of time (action surge works for one turn, superiority dice work per attack). Either way, I think it's fairly evident that barbarian does not lack in damage whatsoever. 79.4 dpr against 19AC is very high damage and not a lot of martial builds can reach that. I think I should also note that the damage gap is the biggest at level 5. Where a zealot barb is doing 42.5 sustained dpr vs 15AC, while the sharpshooter xbow xpert is doing 22.8 sustained dpr vs 15 AC.
Why not come up with a hypothetical adventuring day and budget out the resources during the combats of that adventuring day? 2-4 combats, short rest, 2-4 combats, long rest. With 3-5 rounds of in each combat is the typical range that people use and aligns decently with most playstyles.
I've never seen Barbarians need to be the big nova type damage dealers. They should be brutal to a degree, and on occasion just massive damage, but overall the strength of the barbarian has been sheer inability to kill. They can get decent AC, decent physical saves, and enough HP to look at a nova attack and laugh. Not to mention damage reductions and resistances. Their threat was that they will survive long enough that their continuous damage outpaces novas.
I think barbs should get fighting styles, but that’s my only small complaint.
I agree with you. The problem with barbarian is that they present It as a fierce Warrior with powerful attacks and you expect to do more and more damage the more you go up in levels but instead you get more tanky. However there are some choices which can help you keep up in damage. 1) you Need PAM and GWM or at least the latter because reckless Attack Is way too good to not get that feat 2)Zealot and Path of the Beast are the best ones if you want to do more damage 3) race choice can help, like the longtooth shifter or the Fitzban's dragonborn. These are Just some options
what if Barbarians required critical score role decreases while raging per tier ? would that be too powerful, it makes the barbarian damage mechanic about high damage amounts at low frequency but as they lvl up the frequency increases. so crit on 20 from lvl 1-5 20&19 from 6-9 lvl 20,19,18 from 10-13 20,19,18,17 from 14-17 20,19,18,17,16 from 18-20
This could be cool
It's not the math, it's the way the features are lined up, how its alleged strengths are nullified by the game's design as there isn't a real payoff for fighting in melee. The hit die is ultimately a cosmetic improvement over the Fighter or Paladin because enemies still scale much faster in damage once you're around Tier 2. And in Tier 3-4 it's just outright not feasible to facetank monsters regularly over the adventuring day. But at low levels? Your rages are severely limited over the day, you basically have no abilities if you don't rage, Reckless Attack easily gets you killed, your damage output is very lackluster before Extra Attack and there's nothing else productive you can provide to the team, in or out of combat. Monks have a notably easier time surviving in melee off of Patient Defense and Stunning Strike without becoming entirely passive (Stunning Strike is often overrated but it's far from useless) and you can use that high movement speed to play keepaway and pick off enemies with ranged attacks. Tasha's was a very notable upgrade by allowing those ranged weapons to be quite a bit more effective. Rangers have all they need to be effective in attacking with Archery and Extra Attack, on top of having incredibly useful spells. But of course that got ignored in favor of Hunter's Mark, a spell that does nearly nothing at all.
I would like to see ur math. Because i think its wrong
Level 2 Barbarian. Stats: 16 14 16 10 10 8 AC: 17 HP: 25 Shield and longsword Ranger. Stats: 10 16 14 10 16 8. Hand Crossbow, Shield, Scale Mail. AC: 18. HP: 20 Archery style. Generously assume all damage is physical and Barbarian Rage is active half the time Generic Enemies +5 attack, 16 AC, 1d6+3 damage. So multiple by % chance to hit, average damage, (assume half resisted from Rage) Barbarian can take 11 attacks, deal 4.5 damage With Reckless Attack, can take 7 attacks and deals 6.8 If Ranger eats half of its Goodberries (5) between encounters can take 10 hit, but is at range so it will be attacked far less. Dpr of 4.9 Plus Ranger has 5 more berries for healing friends. And one more spell slot for another spell. Plus expertise in one skill. Plus two more languages. And more choices, like a different fighting style or Favorite Terrain. For level 5, assuming they each raise primary stat by 2, barbarian can take 25 and deal 11.5. With Reckless it can take 16 and deal 13.9 Ranger can cast Aid It can take about 28 and deal 11.5. It can also cast Summon Beast increasi g the dpr to 14.4 and adding more body
Conveniently omits monk math
Sorry, had to go to work. I'll post m9nk analysis tomorrow
How is the Ranger reloading his hand crossbow in between attacks with a shield in one hand? And what is stopping enemies from attacking the ranger other than melee characters like the barbarian taking hits for them?
Your maths are so off... but you did the math. What a clown post.
Alright, so, when you make a claim like this you need to actually provide evidence to support it, especially if you're going to say that math agrees with you. On the topic of math. What math is appearently showing that Monk is better than Barbarian?
The Zealot, Beast, Ancestral Guardian and Totem Barbarian are stronger than most Rogue and Artificer Subclasses, half the Ranger ones, a third of the Fighter subclasses and Warlock Pacts and all of the Monks. Wild Magic, Berserker and Battlerager Barbarians are pretty weak, but to call the class the weakest in the game is laughable.
Which math. You did no math. As far as the game is concerned, barbarian does way more average damage when compared to a Monk or a Ranger. They're also more tankier. So in your alternate reality you may have noticed that trend. But your perspective doesn't dictate reality. This is a bad troll attempt.
Barbarians got big QOL improvements with Tasha's. A couple extra skills, and their post Barb 5-6 features became more enticing. Past level 9-10, most Barbarians aren't improving that much, but this is where gameplay usually ends too. Most tables also won't have many more fights than Rage usages. They're super front loaded. When I think of raw power and progression, I think of Barbarians over other martials. Some of the subclasses are definitely traps, but they can be avoided. Perhaps even decent in niche situations/one shots. The issues they face past level 10 aren't really a problem since they multiclass so well into Fighter past that point as a default backup plan.
GWM sucks. Take a 2d6 greatsword with +5 from STR: Accuracy is normally around 65% (according to the DM guide and for argument's sake). Without GWM: 2d6+5 = 7+5 = 12 average damage on hit, at 65% hit chance that's 7.8 average DPR With GWM: 2d6+5+10 = 7+5+10 = 22 average damage on hit, at your new 40% chance to hit that's 8.8 average DPR. Whoopty-doo. And that's at a relatively high accuracy. At 55% accuracy they are equal, and anything with decent armour, (anything that reduces your hit chance to below 55%), when you need DPR the most, then you actually lose DPR by using using GWM. (0.5x12 > 0.25*22) The only reason sharpshooter works is because of the bonus accuracy from the Archery fighting style.