[Subclass] Path of the Skinchanger - a lycanthropic Barbarian PEACH

[PhantasyPen]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lk5AJ5p_W7xcR4pAveX6eFtRybDqMXESl6M-3MTQbtw/edit?usp=sharing

I have recently gotten quite bored and decided to put myself to work designing a subclass with a focus that I haven't really seen done much in 5e proper: natural attacks that aren't monk abilities.

I mostly built this class while going over the existing barbarian archetypes, so hopefully it's not too broken when compared to the others (over-all I think it should be on par with the subclasses presented in Xanathar's in terms of power) and tried to design it based on the principles I perceived therein, such as the 10th level ability always being a ribbon (which is stated in an early Unearthed Arcana) and the 14th level ability usually builds off of the 3rd level ability in some way.

[nickl_2000]

Rending Claws and Biting Fangs

I'm not sure why you need this to gain in damage. A PC who is wielding a weapon and a shield will be doing 1d8 for their entire career with no bonus action. This seems to be to much to me. If you want to make natural strikes magical at 6, sure that's fine, but leave it at that.

Hide of the Lycan
This is flat out to much, I don't think a PC should ever get immunity to the 3 most common damage types.


Blood for Blood
This fails the bag of rats test and is massively powerful. If you give temp HP instead it will still give the flavour and limit it more.

[PhantasyPen]

Rending Claws and Biting Fangs

I'm not sure why you need this to gain in damage. A PC who is wielding a weapon and a shield will be doing 1d8 for their entire career with no bonus action. This seems to be to much to me. If you want to make natural strikes magical at 6, sure that's fine, but leave it at that.

I increased the damage for the reason that otherwise a PC would be locked to 2d8+1d6 damage, while a character wielding a weapon would be dealing 4d6-6d6 damage, so I was trying to give the player a reward/incentive to stick to their natural weapons rather than just grabbing a greatsword.



Hide of the Lycan
This is flat out to much, I don't think a PC should ever get immunity to the 3 most common damage types.


Well what do you propose should be done with it then? Barbarian's already have Resistance to damage, and a Bear Totem barbarian has resistance to every damage type except psychic, is that really any less powerful than this?



Blood for Blood
This fails the bag of rats test and is massively powerful. If you give temp HP instead it will still give the flavour and limit it more.

I don't know what the bag of rat's test is, can you explain it? And I made Blood for Blood give actual healing rather than temp HP as a conscious design choice against what I see as 5e's unwarranted and excessive neutering of self-healing capability.

[Fredaintdead]

Rending Claws and Biting Fangs
I'd move the "At 6th level, your natural attacks are considered magical weapons" to its own separate feature at 6th, likely replacing or added as a modification to the current 6th level feature.

Hide of the Lycan
While I agree that this feature is VERY strong (a PC having an immunity to three damage types at 6th level is ridiculous), my main issue with it is that it doesn't gel with the rest of the Barbarian Subclass design space. On the whole, Barbarian subclasses offer direct combat boosts at 3rd and 14th level, while giving more utility, roleplay and exploration focused abilities (ribbon features) at 6th and 10th. See: Totem Warrior (Bear gets to lift stuff, Eagle gets a sight boost and Wolf gets to travel faster while tracking/stealthing), Ancestral Guardian (Reaction to protect others), Storm Herald (Elemental defensive benefit + utility feature) and Zealot (Reroll a saving throw once per rage).

What I'd suggest is renaming this something more general (King of Savagery comes to mind), and making it more like:
"Starting at 6th level, your unarmed strikes and bite attack count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage."
I'd then add one of the following if you're DEAD SET on having something else at this level:

"When you use Reckless Attack with an unarmed strike while raging, gain temporary hit points equal to your Constitution modifier. These temporary hit points go away at the end of your rage."
"When hit by a nonmagical non-silvered weapon while raging, you may use your reaction to reduce the damage taken by 1d12 + Your Constitution modifier. You can't use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest."


Blood for Blood
To elaborate, the bag of rats test is being able to spam an ability (usually one that grants healing when you attack) on a bag of rats (or other helpless non-threatening creature) to generate infinite healing. As it stands, I'd cap the healing at up to half maximum health. It's still a big chunk of healing (an average of ~15 at Lv20 [1d8 + 7 Strength + 4 Rage]), which is still getting doubled effectively (due to Rage resistance to physical damage). The comparable feature is Champion, which heals 5-10 automatically, whereas this heals 12-19 with the need to hit, so to keep it in line it should really have the same limitation of "Doesn't heal you past half". If you'd prefer not to nerf it too much, I suggest that any overhealing past 50% hit points gets converted to temporary hit points rather than being lost.

[PhantomSoul]

I increased the damage for the reason that otherwise a PC would be locked to 2d8+1d6 damage, while a character wielding a weapon would be dealing 4d6-6d6 damage, so I was trying to give the player a reward/incentive to stick to their natural weapons rather than just grabbing a greatsword.

So at level 10:

Attack Action:
Attack 1: 2d8+STR+3
Extra Attack: 2d8+STR+3
Bonus Action:
Attack: 1d6+STR+3

(+3 from the Rage Damage Bonus)

Resources expended: None other than Rage, which you'd use anyway and can use 4 times per long rest (soon 5, eventually infinite).

For comparison, a weaponless monk at level 10:

Attack Action:
Attack 1: 1d6+DEX
Extra Attack: 1d6+DEX
Bonus Action:
Martial Arts: 1d6+DEX
For one ki: +1d6+DEX

And the monk is THE unarmed attacker, and getting that second Bonus Action attack is costing a Ki point. At level 20 the monk still only has 1d10 (avg. 5.5, range 1-10) to their unarmed attack, compared to your 2d6 (avg. 7, range 2-12) at level 10 [bonus action is 1d6 then 1d8]. And the Barbarian gets extra damage from raging on top of that.


Well what do you propose should be done with it then? Barbarian's already have Resistance to damage, and a Bear Totem barbarian has resistance to every damage type except psychic, is that really any less powerful than this?

Yes. Have a look at the number of creatures that suddenly don't hurt the PC at all ever. Add to that the number that lose most damage options or their main ones. It's not "a few monsters get shut down", it's basically meaning the DM has to never throw any beasts or regular monsters at the Barbarian, unless the intent is just to give free exp or waste time or justify the monsters quickly never even trying to attack the Barbarian while the Barbarian destroys them. Oh, and all this at level 6, so multiclassing is looking pretty good...


I don't know what the bag of rat's test is, can you explain it? And I made Blood for Blood give actual healing rather than temp HP as a conscious design choice against what I see as 5e's unwarranted and excessive neutering of self-healing capability.

Bag of rats test is basically "does this get broken if the PC carries around a bag of rats that just get murdered as freebie mechanical benefits?". Also worth remembering that that healing is in addition to completely ignoring the main types of damage the PC would take...

[PhantasyPen]

Rending Claws and Biting Fangs
I'd move the "At 6th level, your natural attacks are considered magical weapons" to its own separate feature at 6th, likely replacing or added as a modification to the current 6th level feature.

What I'd suggest is renaming this something more general (King of Savagery comes to mind), and making it more like:
"Starting at 6th level, your unarmed strikes and bite attack count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage."
I'd then add one of the following if you're DEAD SET on having something else at this level:

"When you use Reckless Attack with an unarmed strike while raging, gain temporary hit points equal to your Constitution modifier. These temporary hit points go away at the end of your rage."
"When hit by a nonmagical non-silvered weapon while raging, you may use your reaction to reduce the damage taken by 1d12 + Your Constitution modifier. You can't use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest."


I suppose the second option isn't unreasonable for what I was going for.


Blood for Blood
To elaborate, the bag of rats test is being able to spam an ability (usually one that grants healing when you attack) on a bag of rats (or other helpless non-threatening creature) to generate infinite healing. As it stands, I'd cap the healing at up to half maximum health. It's still a big chunk of healing (an average of ~15 at Lv20 [1d8 + 7 Strength + 4 Rage]), which is still getting doubled effectively (due to Rage resistance to physical damage). The comparable feature is Champion, which heals 5-10 automatically, whereas this heals 12-19 with the need to hit, so to keep it in line it should really have the same limitation of "Doesn't heal you past half". If you'd prefer not to nerf it too much, I suggest that any overhealing past 50% hit points gets converted to temporary hit points rather than being lost.

The "only heal up to half" thing is specifically what I dislike and find about 5e healing. Also I do not feel this ability fails the bag of rats test, because you can only use it while raging. None of these abilities function outside of a Rage.


So at level 10:

Attack Action:
Attack 1: 2d8+STR+3
Extra Attack: 2d8+STR+3
Bonus Action:
Attack: 1d6+STR+3

(+3 from the Rage Damage Bonus)

Resources expended: None other than Rage, which you'd use anyway and can use 4 times per long rest (soon 5, eventually infinite).

I think you meant to use d6's there, not d8's.


For comparison, a weaponless monk at level 10:

Attack Action:
Attack 1: 1d6+DEX
Extra Attack: 1d6+DEX
Bonus Action:
Martial Arts: 1d6+DEX
For one ki: +1d6+DEX

And the monk is THE unarmed attacker, and getting that second Bonus Action attack is costing a Ki point. At level 20 the monk still only has 1d10 (avg. 5.5, range 1-10) to their unarmed attack, compared to your 2d6 (avg. 7, range 2-12) at level 10 [bonus action is 1d6 then 1d8]. And the Barbarian gets extra damage from raging on top of that.

Please stop right there, this isn't a monk sub-class, it's a barbarian sub-class (although now that I think about it, I supposed I could make a similar subclass based around Monk. ... Hmm, perhaps another time).

Let's pull up the Berserker Barbarian Path (which is what I was actually comparing this ability to)

At level 10:
Attack: 2d6+STR+3
Ex.Atk: 2d6+STR+3
Frenzy: 2d6+STR+3

This subclass does not have any abilities that the other barbarian paths don't have, although in hind-sight, perhaps the problem is that it does all of them at once, negating the need for any other option.

[PhantomSoul]

I think you meant to use d6's there, not d8's.


Oops, I thought I'd fixed that -- the math point doesn't change meaningfully, though.



Please stop right there, this isn't a monk sub-class, it's a barbarian sub-class (although now that I think about it, I supposed I could make a similar subclass based around Monk. ... Hmm, perhaps another time).

I'm aware that it isn't a monk, but if you're making an unarmed attacker, the monk is a logical comparison. The Barbarian doesn't have the control the monk would have (stun, essentially), but you've got more HP, more damage avoidance AND more damage at this point. A level 10 Barbarian beating out a level 20 Monk in damage with unarmed attacks without the resource expenditure on every turn seems like a pretty big thing to consider, all the more with everything else the barbarian is getting. (And non-THP healing every turn when you have rage to bump it up is massive.)



Let's pull up the Berserker Barbarian Path (which is what I was actually comparing this ability to)

At level 10:
Attack: 2d6+STR+3
Ex.Atk: 2d6+STR+3
Frenzy: 2d6+STR+3

This subclass does not have any abilities that the other barbarian paths don't have, although in hind-sight, perhaps the problem is that it does all of them at once, negating the need for any other option.

Except instead of the drawbacks of Frenzy -- Exhaustion, which quickly can be pretty heft to the point that people often just don't take that path or use the ability (commented on in his Happy Hours) --, you gave your subclass immunity to the most common sources of damage and no actual cost. That isn't comparable.

Like you said, it does everything the other classes do, and it's arguably doing it way better. It even bests the classes that are supposedly specialised in what it does! I love the thematic idea of the skinchanger and could see myself wanting to create it, I just find the subclass mechanically is too overpowered as is. I do appreciate that the damage immunity is specifically from (non-magical, non-silvered) weapons; it would have been easy to have phrased it in a way that accidentally made you immune to fall damage, for example.