Author Topic: Berserker (3.5)  (Read 8023 times)

Offline RobbyPants

  • Female rat ninja
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 8172
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #20 on: August 31, 2017, 01:25:52 PM »
In that case I would switch around the language of the ability to this: "At 4th level, the berserker lessens any falling damage he takes by an amount equal to his damage reduction per damage die. He also may spend a point of fury as a move-action to jump a distance of up to his base land speed. He may instead use a full-round action to jump up to double his land speed. If he does, he may make a charge attack at the end of his movement."

That way the damage reduction is clearly not a part of the leaping.
That makes sense.

I'd have to go through the abilities again and see what the worst case scenario is for a nova like that before being able to give an opinion.
  • You could use Adrenaline Surge multiple times to heal a bunch in one round. The Enhancement bonus to Str would not stack. Probably not too powerful.
  • Haste won't stack with itself, so there's no issue there.
  • Burst shouldn't give any bonus if used more than once. It gives a +10 untyped bonus to some checks, but I don't think untyped bonuses from the same source stack. I should probably give that a type of some sort. Enhancement? Circumstance? Hell, I could just call it a "rage bonus" and it would still be explicit, at least.
  • They way it's worded, the My Love for You is Like a Truck, Berserker (that's actually annoying to type out) works, it could be used more than once if you had more than one immediate action, but you'd then lose two move actions the next round, which is sort of undefined behavior. The DM could rule you have to spend your standard action to cover the other move action, but that's kind of annoying. Perhaps this one just needs an explicit caveat that says you can only use it once per round, period.
  • Second Chance gives an extra save re-roll. A strict reading of it would say you can't use it a second time on the same save, but I don't care hugely if you could. Getting this ability on multiple saves a round probably isn't terrible. It'll go a long way to making the guy hard to put down.
  • Shake it Off will let him drop more than one status condition a round.
  • Back on Your Feet kills all of your fury, so this can't be reused.
  • Tireless Rage would let you get rid of fatigue and exhaustion in one round, but would cost almost all of your available fury to do so (unless your Con is super high).
  • Tenacity would allow you to bounce back from death (or a debilitating condition) more than once per round.
The only two of those that worry me are Second Chance (too many save rerolls might make it near impossible to kill the guy outside of HP damage, and he's resistant to that) and Tenacity.
My creations

Please direct moderation-related PMs to Forum Staff.

Offline Nanshork

  • Homebrew Reviewer
  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 13393
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #21 on: August 31, 2017, 06:08:27 PM »
I agree with giving Burst a bonus type, even if the bonus type is "rage".

My Love for You is Like a Truck, Berserker (I just copy/paste that one honestly) should be 1/round explicitly I agree.  If nothing else, there are other ways to gain bonus swift actions and losing multiple move actions in a round isn't explicitly defined anywhere.

If Tenacity and Second Chance are a concern, you've got three options as I see it (I tried to write up examples but I'm tired and my brain isn't working good).  Option 1: leave it be and let people burn a bunch of rage on being unkillable.  Option 2: restrict the class feature (I'm calling it Burn Adrenaline in my head) so that the swift/immediate action can't be used on a class feature already used this round (the language on this one feels really clunky).  Option 3: Burn Adrenaline costs an additional point of fury for each time the class feature it powers has been used this round.

I'm not sure if any of the options are genuinely better than the others.

Offline RobbyPants

  • Female rat ninja
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 8172
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #22 on: September 01, 2017, 08:17:55 AM »
Thanks for all your help looking at this.

I agree with giving Burst a bonus type, even if the bonus type is "rage".
Done.

My Love for You is Like a Truck, Berserker (I just copy/paste that one honestly) should be 1/round explicitly I agree.  If nothing else, there are other ways to gain bonus swift actions and losing multiple move actions in a round isn't explicitly defined anywhere.
I added the 1/round stipulation.

I came pretty close to not using the name, but I had that Clerks reference in my head when I was making the class and just went with it.

If Tenacity and Second Chance are a concern, you've got three options as I see it (I tried to write up examples but I'm tired and my brain isn't working good).  Option 1: leave it be and let people burn a bunch of rage on being unkillable.  Option 2: restrict the class feature (I'm calling it Burn Adrenaline in my head) so that the swift/immediate action can't be used on a class feature already used this round (the language on this one feels really clunky).  Option 3: Burn Adrenaline costs an additional point of fury for each time the class feature it powers has been used this round.

I'm not sure if any of the options are genuinely better than the others.
I ended up naming it Never Stop, and added an explicit 1/round limitation on Tenacity and made it clear that Second Chance can only be used once per save, even if used more than once per round.

Never Stop (Ex):  At 9th level, the berserker may spend a point of fury as a free action to gain another swift or immediate action for their turn. This new action must be spent on an ability that costs rage to use.
   The berserker may use this ability when it is not his turn when gaining an immediate action.
My creations

Please direct moderation-related PMs to Forum Staff.

Offline Nanshork

  • Homebrew Reviewer
  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 13393
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #23 on: September 01, 2017, 10:28:14 AM »
Didn't I tell you that my brain was not working well?  You found option 4, and option 5 was to not grant the Never Stop ability to bypass the concerns.

Barring playtesting I think it all looks good.

And you're welcome.  I wasn't joking when I mentioned that I'm the unofficial homebrew reviewer, and I don't think I've ever actually reviewed any of your stuff before.

Offline RobbyPants

  • Female rat ninja
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 8172
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #24 on: September 01, 2017, 11:02:11 AM »
Barring playtesting I think it all looks good.
I made up and NPC for a game I'm running tomorrow. I think he's one level behind the rest of the group (6 compared to  7) because I tend to want to avoid NPCs overshadowing the group, and also the group doesn't really have this sort of melee character, so he'll likely over perform in that regard. The opponents will include a lot of ogres and likely some smaller humanoids.

I'm toying with running this through a Same Game Test at levels 5, 10, and 15, but I haven't really taken the time with my other classes for that, so I'm not sure how much that will tell me.

And you're welcome.  I wasn't joking when I mentioned that I'm the unofficial homebrew reviewer, and I don't think I've ever actually reviewed any of your stuff before.
Thanks. Most of my other stuff on these forums is from other iterations of house rules I've tried. I tend to aim for a similar power level in design, so I guess some of my old stuff could work along side some of my newer stuff.
My creations

Please direct moderation-related PMs to Forum Staff.

Offline Nanshork

  • Homebrew Reviewer
  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 13393
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #25 on: September 01, 2017, 06:07:28 PM »
Hooray, playtesting!

If you want me to look at any of your other stuff just let me know.

Offline RedWarlock

  • Hero Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 628
  • Crimson-colored caster of calamity
    • View Profile
    • Red Blade Studios
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #26 on: September 01, 2017, 09:05:27 PM »
I just want to say I love this class! If I ever get a chance to run another 3e/PF heavy-nodded game, I may replace the Barb with this. (Just need something to fill in the PF barb shapeshifty-rage stuff..)

For my homebrew system/d20 rewrite, I had a similar ideas for about a third of these mechanics (rage points as a core mechanic, and the intercede-for-an-ally ability is foundational to one of my class paths, for instance), and I may take inspiration/creatively borrow from the other third that is compatible with my action-economy rework and power system.
WarCraft post-d20: A new take on the World of WarCraft for tabletop. I need your eyes and comments!

Offline RobbyPants

  • Female rat ninja
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 8172
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #27 on: September 02, 2017, 09:32:56 AM »
I was originally going to make a Totemist as a set of ACFs that worked off of this class, but I realized it was going to be different enough to justify it's own class. The idea is you'd pick up various totems based on animals (real and fantasy), aspects of nature, and your ancestors to get magical abilities. I was planning on running it as a fairly tough fighter type with the totems to give enough magical ability to justify playing in high level D&D.
My creations

Please direct moderation-related PMs to Forum Staff.

Offline RobbyPants

  • Female rat ninja
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 8172
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #28 on: September 08, 2017, 01:30:09 PM »
Hooray, playtesting!
I got to run the NPC in one fight along side the players. So far, he seems to do about what I'd expect in terms of what they all do. I did find myself having to carefully monitor his fury. I just grabbed five red fishbowl glass beads to keep track. Even grabbing three on the first hit, it gets spent quite quickly.

Granted, with the other PCs taking actions, I think he was only exposed to one, maybe two attacks after he went into rage. This left me having to resort to a full attack to keep his fury up.


If you want me to look at any of your other stuff just let me know.
This is huge, so I understand if you don't have time to look at it, but I did work on a Tome of Battle rework. The main idea was to leave all of the maneuvers in the book as-is (I think I changed two), and then lower the level of any I felt were underpowered, and I add new maneuvers in to fill out the levels. Several maneuvers drop quite a few levels, and many stay at their current level. All of the original 9th level strikes are dropped to 7th or 8th level.

I modified the classes somewhat, but not much. Also, I got rid of the prereqs for maneuvers (other than minimum level).
« Last Edit: September 08, 2017, 01:36:55 PM by RobbyPants »
My creations

Please direct moderation-related PMs to Forum Staff.

Offline Nanshork

  • Homebrew Reviewer
  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 13393
    • View Profile
Re: Berserker (3.5)
« Reply #29 on: September 08, 2017, 03:15:11 PM »
If I can look at Strat's multiple large systems I can look at that.