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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class Dragonsouled Berserker PRC: Like Dragon Disciple, but Better! [PEACH]



Draconium
2015-10-14, 03:44 PM
The Dragonsouled Berserker


http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y368/Drakonium/natsu_dragonize_by_chisau_pro-d8tlq8i_zpst9i3ifm2.jpg

"The fury of a dragon. This is what fuels me. A rage that can burn the earth and shake the heavens. Until you have felt the pure, unadulterated anger that flows through my and my ken, you have not experienced a true anger."


Dragon blood runs through the veins of many creatures. Many who discover their draconic ancestry decide to follow the path of the arcane arts, their innate talents with magic allowing them to accomplish great deeds. Some dragon-blooded beings, however, do not choose this path. Instead, their draconic bloodline awakens in them as a lust for battle, a passionate rage that can sunder mountains. Those who are aware of this will often take strides to increase their battle prowess by awakening their draconic blood further, giving them abilities akin to the True Dragons themselves. These are the Dragonsouled Berserkers.

Entry Requirements:
Race: Any non-Dragon with the Dragonblooded subtype.
Base Attack Bonus: +5
Skills: Intimidate 8 ranks
Special: Must have the ability to Rage, or a similar class feature

Hit Die: d12
Class Skills (2+Int per level): Climb (Str), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Listen (Wis), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis)




Level
BAB
Fort
Ref
Will
Special


1
+1
+2
+0
+0
Dragon's Fury +2, Raging Breath, Scales +1, Energy Resistance


2
+2
+3
+0
+0
Draconic Body, Dragon Senses


3
+3
+3
+1
+1
Dragon Wings, Scales +2, Natural Weapons


4
+4
+4
+1
+1
Dragon's Fury +4, Overwhelming Breath, +2 Str, +2 Con


5
+5
+4
+1
+1
Draconic Resistances, Raging Blood, Elemental Attacks


6
+6/+1
+5
+2
+2
Scales +3, Raging Immunity, +2 Str, +2 Int


7
+7/+2
+5
+2
+2
Dragon's Fury +6, Natural Weapons, True Breath, Blindsense


8
+8/+3
+6
+2
+2
Permanent Dragon Wings, Improved Draconic Body, +2 Str, +2 Con


9
+9/+4
+6
+3
+3
Scales +4, Damage Reduction 5/-, Frightful Presence


10
+10/+5
+7
+3
+3
Tireless Dragon's Fury +8, Dragon Immunities, Draconic Apotheosis, +2 Str, +2 Cha



Note: All abilities are (Ex) unless specified otherwise.

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: The Dragonsouled Berserker gains no new proficiencies with armor or weapons.

Dragon's Fury: Your draconic blood comes alive whenever you enter battle. Whenever you enter a rage, you gain an additional +2 Strength and +2 Constitution on top of your other bonuses from raging. These bonuses increase to +4 at 4th level, +6 at 6th level, and +8 at 10th level In addition, you also gain one additional use of your rage per day at each of these levels, and you are no longer fatigued at the end of your rage at 10th level.

Raging Breath (Su): Whenever you enter a rage, you gain a breath weapon that deals 1d6 damage per Dragonsouled Berserker level. You must choose a type of energy it deals at first level, fire, cold, acid, or electricity, as well as a shape, 15-foot cone or 30-foot line. If you use this breath weapon, you must wait 1d4 rounds before using it again.

Scales: Your skin toughens, emulating a dragon's hide. Your natural armor improves by 1 at 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 9th levels, for a total of +4 at 9th. If you had no natural armor before, you are treated as having +0 natural armor.

Energy Resistance (Su): You gain resistance to the same energy your breath weapon deals equal to 3 x your class level in this class. This resistance doubles while you are raging.

Draconic Body: Your body begins to bulk up, emulating your draconic ancestry. Starting at level 2, you gain Powerful Build while you are raging. If you already have Powerful Build, you instead lose it and grow one size larger while you are raging, as the Enlarge Person spell. This overlaps (does not stack) with similar class features you already possess.

Dragon Senses: You gain Darkvision 60 feet and Low Light Vision. If you already possessed one or both of these, you may instead double the range of your Darkvision or Low Light Vision.

Dragon Wings: Starting at level 3, you gain draconic wings while you are raging. These give you a +10 bonus on Jump checks, and a Fly speed equal to your base land speed (Average Maneuverability). These go away at the end of your rage. At level 8, you gain these wings permanently, though you can dismiss them or regrow them as a free action, and your flight speed increases by 50% while you are raging.

Natural Weapons: You gain a bite and two claw attacks as a dragon one size category smaller than you. If you use only natural weapons, your bite is your primary natural weapon, and your claws are secondary. If you wield manufactured weapons, you may attack with your bite as a secondary attack during your full attack sequence. Starting at level 7, these instead deal damage as a dragon of your size category. If you already have a natural Bite or Claw attack, instead increase their damage by one die size at each of these two levels. If your size is increased, the damage for these attacks in increased as well.

Overwhelming Breath (Su): At level 4, your breath weapon may now ignore a resistance against it's energy type equal to your own resistance (when not raging). For example, a fire breath weapon at this level may ignore up to 12 points of Fire Resistance.

Ability Score Increases: Your body and mind begin to undergo more permanent changes as your draconic blood awakens further. You gain +2 to Strength at 4th level and every two levels afterwards, +2 to Constitution at 4th and 8th levels, +2 to Intelligence at 6th level, and +2 to Charisma at 10th level, for a total increase of +8 Str, +4 Con, +2 Int, and +2 Cha at level 10.

Draconic Resistances: You gain a +4 on saves versus sleep and paralysis effects.

Raging Blood (Su): Your elemental energy is now coursing through your bloodstream. Whenever you are damaged in combat while you are raging, your elementally-charged blood sprays out, dealing 1d4 damage of your energy type to everyone within 5 feet of you on the side you were injured from. You may apply your Overwhelming Breath ability to this energy damage.

Elemental Attacks (Su): Starting at 5th level, whenever you are raging, your natural attacks now do an additional 1d4 damage of your breath weapon's energy type. As a standard action, you may also give this property to any manufactured weapons you wield for the duration of your rage. You may apply your Overwhelming Breath ability to this damage.

Raging Immunity (Su): Your energy resistance is now energy immunity while you are raging.

True Breath (Su): At 7th level and above, you may now use your breath weapon even if you are not raging. If you are raging, your breath weapon now deals damage in d8's instead. Your breath attack's range also doubles.

Blindsense: You gain Blindsense out to 30 feet.

Improved Draconic Body: Your draconic blood has made you bigger and stronger than ever. You now have Powerful Build at all times, and when you rage, you lose this and become one size larger, as per an Enlarge Person spell. If you already had Powerful Build, you instead lose it and become permanently one size larger, as per a permanent Enlarge Person spell, and again regain your Powerful build whenever you rage.

Damage Reduction: Your body has become so tough, no weapon can easily pierce your skin. You gain DR 5/- at 9th level.

Frightful Presence: You can unnerve and frighten your foes with your mere presence. Whenever you attack, charge, or fly overhead, creatures within a radius of 30 feet of you are subject to this effect if they have as many or fewer HD than you. A potentially affected creature that succeeds on a Will save (DC 10 + ½ your HD + your Cha modifier) remains immune to your frightful presence for 24 hours. On a failure, creatures with -5 HD or less than you become panicked for 2d6 rounds and those with -4 or more HD than you become shaken for 2d6 rounds. You may ignore the frightful presence of dragons and other Dragonsouled Berserkers. The DC for the save increases by your Con modifier while you are raging.

Dragon Immunities(Ex/Su): You are now immune to sleep and paralysis spells and effects, and you are fully immune to your breath weapon's energy type. Your Overwhelming Breath ability now completely ignores energy resistance, and you can now deal half damage to creatures normally immune to that energy. While you are raging, you may choose to supress your own immunity for 1d4 rounds to deal full damage to a normally immune creature during this time instead, but only once per rage.

Draconic Apotheosis: Your type changes to Dragon, and you lose your Dragonblooded subtype. You no longer take penalties for aging, though bonuses still acquire, and you still die when your time runs out.

Well, you see, the Dragon Disciple's flavor has always attracted me. Slowly transforming your body into one reminiscent of a dragon while gaining more power? Yes, please! However, the class's mechanics are... Well, they suck. So I decided to rework it into my own concept.

I removed the Arcane Casting requirement, because the whole point of that was to have a way to "genetically" tie your characters to dragons. Now, though, we have a Dragonblooded subtype for that, so the new class can drop casting altogether and just focus of martial fighting. After a while, I decided to focus my new class as another Barbarian PRC. I've always liked playing them, after all. Now I have a way to turn my otherwise human barbarian into a dragon! :smallbiggrin:

I've added in a lot of special benefits for this class - there's a few every level! - but most of them are small, only becoming bigger as you level up in this class. Most of the big benefits, I tried to put towards the end of the class, to avoid front-loading it horribly. I also decided that, while this class should be able to do things without raging, it should still get most of it's benefits while a rage is active. Many of the abilities start out as "only while raging," then become permanent at later levels. However, they still preform better while raging - faster flight, deadlier breath weapon, growing even larger while raging, etc.

I wasn't sure whether to keep this as a PRC, or turn it into a full class. I could certainly turn it into a full class - there's a few features I could add to what it already has that would spread it out into 20 levels just fine - but in the end, I decided to go with a PRC for now, since it was based off of one in the first place.

This is one of my first homebrew attempts, so I'm not sure how well it's gonna be compared to official classes. It certainly doesn't look overpowered, though it seems like a strictly better option than straight barbarian. However, I'm worried that there might be a bit much. I might have to cut some stuff out... Well, let's see what you guys think first, before I do anything else.

Solaris
2015-10-15, 06:31 PM
Looks pretty good. I wouldn't call it broken by any stretch of the imagination, but you might want to be a bit careful about what sorts of games you bring it to - a game where they stand in awe of the mighty barbarian and think clerics are supposed to be healbots and healbots alone might not be a good place to whip this out, but one where the casters are played fairly decently would definitely be. After all, the cleric's just a couple of spells away from doing everything this class can do.
That's not damning it with faint praise; I think you've excuted this class rather nicely, and is far better-designed than the not-sure-what-it-wants-to-be Dragon Disciple.

I like that it grants flight - that's a rare ability granted to non-casters, and it of course fits thematically.

For Raging Blood, you might want to change the wording to something to the effect of it producing a 5-ft. cone centered on the attacker; D&D doesn't natively have facing.

I'd up the damage from Elemental Attacks to a d6, and change the action required to a move action. A d4 improvement to damage isn't worth a round spent not attacking.

In True Breath, does the range double just in a rage, or does it double all of the time?

Draconium
2015-10-15, 09:45 PM
Looks pretty good. I wouldn't call it broken by any stretch of the imagination, but you might want to be a bit careful about what sorts of games you bring it to - a game where they stand in awe of the mighty barbarian and think clerics are supposed to be healbots and healbots alone might not be a good place to whip this out, but one where the casters are played fairly decently would definitely be. After all, the cleric's just a couple of spells away from doing everything this class can do.
That's not damning it with faint praise; I think you've excuted this class rather nicely, and is far better-designed than the not-sure-what-it-wants-to-be Dragon Disciple.

Why, thank you. I designed this around my personal starndard of optimization - good, but not brokenly good.


I like that it grants flight - that's a rare ability granted to non-casters, and it of course fits thematically.

That was one of the things I liked about the original Dragon Disciple, so I decided to keep it, with a few tweaks, of course.


For Raging Blood, you might want to change the wording to something to the effect of it producing a 5-ft. cone centered on the attacker; D&D doesn't natively have facing.

I was having trouble figuring out how to word that. I think I may have to steal that description. :smalltongue:


I'd up the damage from Elemental Attacks to a d6, and change the action required to a move action. A d4 improvement to damage isn't worth a round spent not attacking.

I was considering doing this anyways - leave them a standard action to attack, and have the damage mimic the energy enchantments for weapons. This comment has finalized my decision.


In True Breath, does the range double just in a rage, or does it double all of the time?

I'll clarify it next time I edit it, but the range increase is permanent.

Amnoriath
2015-10-15, 09:47 PM
I admit I have been away from 3.X for a while but the formula of a well built PrC is the idea is that it getting some kind of special power and flavor in trade of the generic, mostly passive abilities of a base class. This has all kinds of attribute increases on a chasis that sacrifices nothing while getting everything a Dragon gets(except for spells) just as often as any equivalent level Barbarian can rage is just stupidly powerful. I am sorry but the cleric can lose his buffs and they can't compete to the general stats this thing has not to mention all the base Dragon perks. It is also ridiculously easy to get into meaning it is at least a +2 tier level PrC.
This could be handled with far more sophistication and better flavor by emulating specific Dragons in certain custom abilities. This also while still being tough and powerful it has some actual selective versatility.

Draconium
2015-10-15, 09:55 PM
I admit I have been away from 3.X for a while but the formula of a well built PrC is the idea is that it getting some kind of special power and flavor in trade of the generic, mostly passive abilities of a base class. This has all kinds of attribute increases on a chasis that sacrifices nothing while getting everything a Dragon gets(except for spells) just as often as any equivalent level Barbarian can rage is just stupidly powerful. I am sorry but the cleric can lose his buffs and they can't compete to the general stats this thing has not to mention all the base Dragon perks. It is also ridiculously easy to get into meaning it is at least a +2 tier level PrC.
This could be handled with far more sophistication and better flavor by emulating specific Dragons in certain custom abilities. This also while still being tough and powerful it has some actual selective versatility.

Hmm, you make some good point. I'll try to add in some losses next time I edit it, so it makes it less of a "take this now!" class. I also have been considering raising the requirements for qualifying for it, but I haven't figured out what exactly to do for it yet.

I was originally going to add in a sort of "totem dragon" feature, but I was too lazy to add it in at first. I may end up adding it in, but I want to wait and see how many others feel the same way before I go about doing that. It would replace certain "general" features with more specifics ones depending on your totam dragon.

Solaris
2015-10-15, 11:04 PM
I admit I have been away from 3.X for a while but the formula of a well built PrC is the idea is that it getting some kind of special power and flavor in trade of the generic, mostly passive abilities of a base class. This has all kinds of attribute increases on a chasis that sacrifices nothing while getting everything a Dragon gets(except for spells) just as often as any equivalent level Barbarian can rage is just stupidly powerful. I am sorry but the cleric can lose his buffs and they can't compete to the general stats this thing has not to mention all the base Dragon perks. It is also ridiculously easy to get into meaning it is at least a +2 tier level PrC.
This could be handled with far more sophistication and better flavor by emulating specific Dragons in certain custom abilities. This also while still being tough and powerful it has some actual selective versatility.

You have been away; the formula really only applies for spellcasters. For a competent non-caster, it's a good idea to have a net gain if you're playing in a game that has T1/T2 casters played well.

All it does is deal damage in combat. That's not going to bump the barbarian up a tier, it's just making the barbarian better at what he does. It compares well to the frenzied berserker, without the problem of forcing your entire party to tread carefully lest you destroy them. On the surface, the frenzied berserker's drawback looks like a good drawback, but it's not - it's only a problem for the berserker's allies, not the FB himself.
It also rates about on par with taking a sorcerer or bard dip to get into Dragon Disciple.

A cleric who runs out of his buffs is doing it wrong (and that's leaving aside the fact that a lot of the boosts are either similar to the Dragon Disciple's or are in a rage only, which utterly torpedoes your point about a buff going down). A cleric who runs out of all of his spells is also doing it wrong - and this class is mutually exclusive with a spellcaster, being as it's built around boosting the rage ability. If nothing else, you're losing the ability to cast any spells but pre-battle buff spells.

Amnoriath
2015-10-16, 04:23 PM
You have been away; the formula really only applies for spellcasters. For a competent non-caster, it's a good idea to have a net gain if you're playing in a game that has T1/T2 casters played well.

All it does is deal damage in combat. That's not going to bump the barbarian up a tier, it's just making the barbarian better at what he does. It compares well to the frenzied berserker, without the problem of forcing your entire party to tread carefully lest you destroy them. On the surface, the frenzied berserker's drawback looks like a good drawback, but it's not - it's only a problem for the berserker's allies, not the FB himself.
It also rates about on par with taking a sorcerer or bard dip to get into Dragon Disciple.

A cleric who runs out of his buffs is doing it wrong (and that's leaving aside the fact that a lot of the boosts are either similar to the Dragon Disciple's or are in a rage only, which utterly torpedoes your point about a buff going down). A cleric who runs out of all of his spells is also doing it wrong - and this class is mutually exclusive with a spellcaster, being as it's built around boosting the rage ability. If nothing else, you're losing the ability to cast any spells but pre-battle buff spells.
Just because I have been away doesn't mean I don't know their tricks. Lets be clear I said a cleric can lose their buffs and they can't compete in general stats. A cleric is limited by how many turn undeads he can burn which is a cost of 1+level of adjustment. Additionally unless Dragon magazine is in play he has to balance wisdom and charisma on top of his general survival stats. So, unless he has magical dimensional space that manufactures night sticks it is very likely he is only going to have room for about 2 spells to persist. Otherwise he is eating his turns for buffs while this thing is flying at high speed tearing things apart left and right. Sure there are spells that can give obscene bonuses to specific checks as well as other battle changing possibilities but the kind of stats this thing cranks out even makes things you would choose to polymorph into look weak. What is worse is how easy it is to get and ultimately how it sacrifices nothing in comparison to a base class. This makes it such an obvious choice in base numbers that even damage fiends of Tome of Battle are shaking in their pants. It is one thing to make a powerful prestige class with sacrifices in mind or penalties of sorts but this has neither. On top of that it could of had thematically cool sub-abilities based upon certain dragons giving it some utility but instead it chooses to have +30 attributes as well as other bonuses on top of rage as at will dies of damage.

Solaris
2015-10-16, 05:30 PM
If we're letting buffs going down be a concern, then let's not forget the barbarian's myriad weaknesses (Will saves, anyone?) that this class isn't addressing. Heck, a calm emotions spell pretty effectively neuters him.
And even then, the cleric and other casters still have plenty of spell slots where those buffs came from for battlefield control, SoD, SoL, SoS, and of course more buffs. Though this class gives an obscene number of rages per day (could... probably stand to reduce that, Draconium), he's still going to need to work around the fact that he can only enter a rage once per encounter.

If you want to have a bunch of flavorful abilities, help the admitted newbie out. Don't just sit there and complain about what could have been as though this class were an enormous failure because it's letting the barbarian do big numbers of damage, make some suggestions.
Personally, I'd trade Dragon's Fury for access to SLAs, but that's just 'cause I kinda like SLAs more than I like big numbers.

At 15th level, this character's getting about +20 Strength (+4 Rage, +8 Tireless Dragon's Fury, +8 from the ability score increases), growing to Large size, and dealing 10d8 energy damage. There's some more, but primarily we seem to be focused on the character's damage-dealing capability. As stated in the first few posts, that's too much in a campaign where the other guys are playing blaster wizards and healbot clerics.
This class isn't aimed at a campaign where the other guys are playing blaster wizards and healbot clerics. This class is aimed at a campaign where the other guys are playing ToB, dragonfire inspiration bards, battlefield command-and-control wizards, and CoDzillas.
At 15th level, the wizard can pretty much be running everything. How he's doing so depends on what his specialties are.
At 15th level, the CoDzilla can make every other beatstick except the ToB and things on par with Dragonsouled Berserker obsolete, and even if he lets his buffs get dispelled he still has the rest of his spell slots to work with.
At 15th level, a Barbarian 1/ Sorcerer 4/ Dragon Disciple 10 has pretty much everything the Dragonsouled Berserker has, but can also use wands, scrolls, and staves when he's not in a rage in exchange for a big ol' boost to Strength and Constitution. It gets completely blown out of the water by a full-on Sorc with draconic polymorph and no levels of DD. DD is, after all, widely regarded as an underwhelming PrC.
At 15th level, the ToB character has access to 8th level maneuvers and effects that easily equal the efficacy of the DSB's +15 damage per hit (assuming a two-handed weapon) and average 45 damage with his breath weapon every 1d4 rounds. Yes, the DSB does more raw damage. That's a good thing - the ToB characters still have all their other neat tricks, while the DSB just has his damage.

You want sacrifice? He sacrificed playing a caster to play this character. In fact, if he's already a caster, he loses most of his casting efficacy because you can't cast in a rage. It only makes the beatstick better at what he already does - dealing damage - and provides only flight for expanding his capabilities.

I will say this, though, Draconium: You might want to put a Reflex save on the breath weapon, as pretty much all breath weapons have such a saving throw. I missed it the first time around 'cause I'd assumed it was there.
It also wouldn't hurt to reduce the bonuses from Dragon's Fury, perhaps to about +4.

Amnoriath
2015-10-17, 06:33 AM
If we're letting buffs going down be a concern, then let's not forget the barbarian's myriad weaknesses (Will saves, anyone?) that this class isn't addressing. Heck, a calm emotions spell pretty effectively neuters him.
And even then, the cleric and other casters still have plenty of spell slots where those buffs came from for battlefield control, SoD, SoL, SoS, and of course more buffs. Though this class gives an obscene number of rages per day (could... probably stand to reduce that, Draconium), he's still going to need to work around the fact that he can only enter a rage once per encounter.

If you want to have a bunch of flavorful abilities, help the admitted newbie out. Don't just sit there and complain about what could have been as though this class were an enormous failure because it's letting the barbarian do big numbers of damage, make some suggestions.
Personally, I'd trade Dragon's Fury for access to SLAs, but that's just 'cause I kinda like SLAs more than I like big numbers.

At 15th level, this character's getting about +20 Strength (+4 Rage, +8 Tireless Dragon's Fury, +8 from the ability score increases), growing to Large size, and dealing 10d8 energy damage. There's some more, but primarily we seem to be focused on the character's damage-dealing capability. As stated in the first few posts, that's too much in a campaign where the other guys are playing blaster wizards and healbot clerics.
This class isn't aimed at a campaign where the other guys are playing blaster wizards and healbot clerics. This class is aimed at a campaign where the other guys are playing ToB, dragonfire inspiration bards, battlefield command-and-control wizards, and CoDzillas.
At 15th level, the wizard can pretty much be running everything. How he's doing so depends on what his specialties are.
At 15th level, the CoDzilla can make every other beatstick except the ToB and things on par with Dragonsouled Berserker obsolete, and even if he lets his buffs get dispelled he still has the rest of his spell slots to work with.
At 15th level, a Barbarian 1/ Sorcerer 4/ Dragon Disciple 10 has pretty much everything the Dragonsouled Berserker has, but can also use wands, scrolls, and staves when he's not in a rage in exchange for a big ol' boost to Strength and Constitution. It gets completely blown out of the water by a full-on Sorc with draconic polymorph and no levels of DD. DD is, after all, widely regarded as an underwhelming PrC.
At 15th level, the ToB character has access to 8th level maneuvers and effects that easily equal the efficacy of the DSB's +15 damage per hit (assuming a two-handed weapon) and average 45 damage with his breath weapon every 1d4 rounds. Yes, the DSB does more raw damage. That's a good thing - the ToB characters still have all their other neat tricks, while the DSB just has his damage.

You want sacrifice? He sacrificed playing a caster to play this character. In fact, if he's already a caster, he loses most of his casting efficacy because you can't cast in a rage. It only makes the beatstick better at what he already does - dealing damage - and provides only flight for expanding his capabilities.

I will say this, though, Draconium: You might want to put a Reflex save on the breath weapon, as pretty much all breath weapons have such a saving throw. I missed it the first time around 'cause I'd assumed it was there.
It also wouldn't hurt to reduce the bonuses from Dragon's Fury, perhaps to about +4.
1. Oh you mean the Will save in which Rage increases against a 2nd level spell? Not to mention a prime candidate for Steadfast Determination.
2. Rages are intended to last for the encounter. Especially when they have Constitution like this guy.
3. I replied once and I made my suggestions. I usually wait until they ask me to do so.
4. Yes, casters are versatile and have many encounter changing option without much of barrier hence why I have been away, but this is a prime example of the second reason. In order to compete with that martial types had to rack up numbers to deal obscene amounts of damage meaning a well done 3.X party is one that actually ends the encounter in about 3 turns on average. It is a huge numbers racket in many respects which also makes it a candidate for being broken. Especially when it is as easy to qualify for, so let the multi-classing and feats begin.
5. Having a general character in mind is not a sacrifice. Yes I do know casting is broken but as I said it doesn't mean you should have a PrC which does everything better with virtually no cost. This outclasses the martial types in their specialties.

Solaris
2015-10-17, 07:30 AM
1. Yes, those Will saves which even with Steadfast Determination the barbarian-types are still bad at. Not everyone takes Steadfast Determination, considering how feat-starved beatsticks tend to be. I've never seen it at a table.
2. So are buffs.
3. You've posted a few more times than that, and his response wasn't exactly negative. In fact, he said he'd thought about doing something like that but wanted to see what others thought about it.
That was a prime opportunity.
4. About that encounter math - you know something interesting about dealing obscene amounts of damage? If this guy encounters three guys not standing right next to each other, the encounter's still going to last three rounds. The breath weapon's a nice-to-have but not overwhelmingly powerful, and it's the only ability the DSB gains to affect multiple targets at once. It doesn't matter if he's dealing moderate damage or obscene damage, because most well-built barbarians at his level of optimization were already one-shotting most anything they could catch to begin with.
5. No, no it doesn't. It outclasses the damage-dealers, but if that was the character's only specialty then he was getting outclassed at that anyways (as I mentioned in my previous post).

Amnoriath
2015-10-17, 08:00 AM
1. Yes, those Will saves which even with Steadfast Determination the barbarian-types are still bad at. Not everyone takes Steadfast Determination, considering how feat-starved beatsticks tend to be. I've never seen it at a table.
2. So are buffs.
3. You've posted a few more times than that, and his response wasn't exactly negative. In fact, he said he'd thought about doing something like that but wanted to see what others thought about it.
That was a prime opportunity.
4. About that encounter math - you know something interesting about dealing obscene amounts of damage? If this guy encounters three guys not standing right next to each other, the encounter's still going to last three rounds. The breath weapon's a nice-to-have but not overwhelmingly powerful, and it's the only ability the DSB gains to affect multiple targets at once. It doesn't matter if he's dealing moderate damage or obscene damage, because most well-built barbarians at his level of optimization were already one-shotting most anything they could catch to begin with.
5. No, no it doesn't. It outclasses the damage-dealers, but if that was the character's only specialty then he was getting outclassed at that anyways (as I mentioned in my previous post).
1. There are no feats here so he has plenty of opportunity.
2. So why did you say once per encounter as if it was limiting?
3. I was replying against you, not him. I will happily be more specific with his permission but you are trying to justify this simply because SPELLS when that is usually not the majority of the party.
4. Since when is this about just about the breath weapon? Please keep the red herrings to yourself.
5. As I said this character has a lot of room to be good at other things because it doesn't sacrifice anything or require any payment. Honestly saying that is just insulting the incentivisation of their specialty so they can constantly contribute which just makes your endorsement of this an insult to their general existence, not just badly built ones.

Solaris
2015-10-17, 11:39 AM
1. Not if he wants to be effective at doing damage to things, or doing more than one sort of trick in battle he doesn't. D&D 3.X has some pretty gnarly feat taxes for the good feats. Melee-based PrCs that have heavy feat taxes (unless they're feats directly linked to the fighting style) are just punishing them even more for not being spellcasters.
After all, there's no feat tax for righteous might (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/righteousMight.htm), wild shape (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/druid.htm#wildShape), or any of the other abilities casters have that render melee effectively obsolete without trying too hard. They just get them as a virtue of their class. The fact that this class permits freedom of design is, in fact, a good thing in its intended environment.

2. That's (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/barbarian.htm#rage) why. There's a hardcoded, unavoidable limitation to the number of times a barbarian can rage in an encounter. There's no such limitations on the cleric's buffs, druid's wild shape and buffs, or wizard's spells.

3. That's a cop-out; he reacted positively to the idea, and you've had ample opportunity to post some suggestions in between repeating your points. Heck, if you're going to pretend replying to me prevents you from doing anything else, in my last post I threw out an idea for how to work it.
"Against [me]" is a bad attitude to be taking; it's a debate about the validity of a homebrew, not about who's right or wrong. And frankly, if I need to explain to you why and how spellcasting is an I Win button for D&D, you have no business commenting on someone else's homebrew. I'm not trying to be mean here, it's just... well, you don't know how 3.5E rage works, for Pete's sake.

4. Because the breath weapon is the only way to deal damage to multiple targets. I'm not using red herrings, I'm evaluating the class. Yes, he can deal big piles of damage. Big deal. At high levels of optimization, dealing lots of damage is trivial. A DFI bard can make the entire party deal big piles of damage, and if they're paired up with an archer can actually do that damage to more than just whoever the DSB is standing next to when he attacks. The only ability this class gains to deal damage to more than just who he's standing next to is his breath weapon. It's a whopping 45 average at 15th level, which compares poorly to the 100-150 hp most opponents at that level have.
Most importantly of all, though? A well-built barbarian murderizes whatever he's standing next to with a full attack with or without this PrC. Whether he deals 200 damage or 300 damage to the monster that has only 150 hp, it's still dead. That's why it's long been a tenet of encounter design that solo monsters against the party are going to die very, very quickly.

5. Even for this argument, that's a pretty poorly considered point. If you want to go down the "This is insulting to players and characters" route, why is it that you're arguing a melee-focused build shouldn't be able to effectively contribute to the fight at higher optimization levels? Why is +15 damage per attack with a two-handed weapon offensive and insulting when he's playing with spellcasters who are just a level away from literally rewriting reality at a whim, and have heretofore been only figuratively doing so? What do you have against melee classes?
We can also start wandering into the offensiveness of your trying to tell people what levels of optimization they ought to be playing at, too, if you really wanna go down that rabbit hole.
And that, my friend, is why arguments like "Honestly saying that is just insulting the incentivisation of their specialty so they can constantly contribute which just makes your endorsement of this an insult to their general existence, not just badly built ones" are just plain a bad idea. Twice in one post you've made it evident that for you, this is a debate focusing on the personal rather than the factual. See, I don't care about the fact that you're disagreeing with me, which is why I've no need for rhetorical tricks like using red herrings. Were you to come up with a convincing argument (say, one based on mathematical evidence) that this class outperforms its design intent, I'd gladly concede. Just look at my own homebrew, and how often I don't argue a well presented point.
No matter how many times you try and say it's just not true, playing a non-casting class is a sacrifice in a game with optimized spellcasters. Understanding this sacrifice necessitates an understanding of something called opportunity cost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost), as well as some of the things spellcasters can do (only some of which I've referred to below). The problem isn't that this class is too good. The problem is that the other non-casting classes aren't good enough. Big numbers is a popular solution, and if you're satisfied with making melee better at what it does then it's an adequate one - and this class does that.
If, however, it was a good solution, then the Dragon Disciple (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClasses/dragonDisciple.htm) would pretty much be the be-all, end-all of melee PrCs. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun and cool class, but it's on the low end of the optimization totem pole. It also requires practically no investment (its requirements can be filled pretty easily with just a 1- or 2-level dip into a spellcasting class) and yet is rarely picked in favor of better classes.

Look, I get it. You don't like how this class was executed, and you think it should be nerfed. Had Draconium stated an intent for the class to be played at a lower level of optimization, I'd agree with you. However, he stated he intended for it to be played in a high-op group, which is where melee characters like the barbarians have been pretty much rendered obsolete because they need to be very specific builds in order to contribute... and even then, they're only contributing big piles of damage to single targets. In high-op play, they've long since moved past that being the only way to win a fight - or even the best way.
You also aren't coming up with any new arguments, aren't bothering to answer half of mine, and I'm repeating myself because of it. We're both wasting our time here.