Barbarian Subclass - Path of the Feast Bringer

[Xenothelm]

Inspired by a recent WebDM video on the topic of eating monsters, I figured I’d try my hand at my first homebrew subclass! The Path of the Feast Bringer is a pseudo support that buffs allies by literally eating their enemies! Link below, looking for feedback. Too op? Too weak? All over the place?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12JvMgIAzQClMP19wVIwBlLG8643fWbUJKc0imtrjgTA

[Composer99]

Consume Flesh and Blood
I'm not exactly sure why plant creatures are harder to consume than oozes. I mean, sure, plant creatures' bodies don't strike me as particularly edible, but they seem more so than do the acidic blobs of oozes. I'd suggest moving the two types in the order in which you can consume them. I'd suggest coming up with a difference between eating an aberration and eating a fiend. Finally, because the benefit doesn't scale with creature CR, you're strongly incentivised to always fight the weakest creatures, because your save DC will be lower but the benefit will be the same.

Wording Nitpicks
- "Its effects do not stack" - I think I get what you're trying to say with this, but it's kind of ambiguous. You should probably just specify that you can only gain the benefit of any given creature type once per round.

- Since this feature only affects "you" (the barbarian with this primal path), the effects should generally only refer to "you".

- Since you're not actually affecting other creature, I would say that "you do not gain any benefits from elementals [...] with this feature", rather than "this feature has no effect on ..."


Feed the Tribe
On the one hand, this is really limited, affecting no more than three creatures at a time. On the other hand, you can affect three creatures twice on each of your turns, every turn in which you are raging. That can add up, especially given your later abilities. I'd be inclined to allow you to affect a number of creatures equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum 1 creature), but then you can use this ability twice, and recover expended uses when you finish a short or long rest.

As a wording nitpick, you don't really need to specify "friendly" creatures, since you choose who benefits.


Spoils of Victory
This feature is overpowered. After every combat, you can harvest between 1 and 3 ingredients, save any useful ones for 7 days, and gain the temp hp benefits and short-rest-rage-recovery for each ingredient. Sure, you could spend a whole bunch of gold if you're only harvesting from high-CR creatures, but, save for low-wealth campaigns, most parties shouldn't have any trouble having that money to spend.

Most importantly, you're talking the ability to restore 1-2 rages per day, every day, for the entire duration of a campaign, which happens no matter the CR of the creature you use. CR 0 creatures still get you extra rages and spread around 1-2 temporary hit points per rest to any number of creatures, depending on the size of your adventuring party. Only at 20th level does this feature become less helpful, when you no longer have any limit to your rages.

Also, making it work after a combat encounter can lead to the strange case where you couldn't use this after trapping or hunting beasts, but you could use it after fighting beasts of the same (or less) CR. (I'm assuming most DMs won't call for regular combats with initiative when trapping or hunting.)

I would be inclined to suggest that this feature do the following:
- if you use this during a short rest, affected creatures can recover hit points as if rolling a Hit Die, without spending one
- if you use this during a long rest, affected creatures recover one additional expended Hit Die
- no, or minimal, material costs required


Expanded Palette
This feature has weird interactions:
- What is the duration of your spell effects? Is it until the end of your next turn, the default for the Consume Flesh and Blood feature, or is it for the spell's normal duration?
- You're not casting the spell, you're benefiting from its effects. So, does that mean you don't need to concentrate on it?
- As far as I know, not all elemental creatures fall neatly into the four-element paradigm. What happens when you eat "flesh" or "blood" from one of those?

I'd suggest this feature needs a re-write to bring it more inline with the base feature.


Expert Devourer
Spoils of Victory might be overpowered, but this feature is just plain weaksauce. Every other primal path gets some cool new, reasonably powerful thing it can do. All this does is make it easier for you to do the thing you learned how to do at 3rd level, without making doing that thing itself any better.



Overall
Interesting subclass, interesting concept. Needs some work.

[Xenothelm]

This was extremely constructive, thanks so much for your reply! I’ll try to address everything:


Consume Flesh and Blood
I'm not exactly sure why plant creatures are harder to consume than oozes. I mean, sure, plant creatures' bodies don't strike me as particularly edible, but they seem more so than do the acidic blobs of oozes. I'd suggest moving the two types in the order in which you can consume them.

This feels fairly subjective to me, as the PC could come up with a myriad of ways to RP being able to withstand one before the other. I wanted the lv10 feature to allow for more powerful effects and the spell list generally has more nature/plant based things to work with so that was reasoning for that direction.


I'd suggest coming up with a difference between eating an aberration and eating a fiend.

Very open to suggestions here!


Finally, because the benefit doesn't scale with creature CR, you're strongly incentivised to always fight the weakest creatures, because your save DC will be lower but the benefit will be the same.

This will likely be true at the start of an encounter, especially with varying CRs of the same Type. It puts a little strain on DMS to navigate this when building encounters. On the other hand, I feel like tanking the “boss” is a focus of the Totem Path... Will think about this observation more, thank you!


"Its effects do not stack" - I think I get what you're trying to say with this, but it's kind of ambiguous. You should probably just specify that you can only gain the benefit of any given creature type once per round.

I do like the idea of being able to chain the benefits from round to round (as long as you can make the saving throw!). Having the number of benefits maxed at 2 per round is supposed to allow for interesting interactions with actions out of turn (opportunity attacks, legendary actions, etc.). For example:

1. Lv6 Barbarian hits a Red Dragon, makes saving throw, and grants fire resistance to 3 allies.
2. Barbarian takes extra attack, hits and makes saving throw but the resistance effect doesn’t grant any added benefit (doesn’t stack)
3. Dragon takes legendary action to fire breath the 4 PCs with resistance, then moves away.
4. Barbarian takes AoO, hits and makes saving throw, granting a second(max) fire resistance to the same allies until the end of their respective turns.


Since you're not actually affecting other creature, I would say that "you do not gain any benefits from elementals [...] with this feature", rather than "this feature has no effect on ..."

Thanks, will adjust the wording here.


Feed the Tribe
On the one hand, this is really limited, affecting no more than three creatures at a time. On the other hand, you can affect three creatures twice on each of your turns, every turn in which you are raging. That can add up, especially given your later abilities. I'd be inclined to allow you to affect a number of creatures equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum 1 creature), but then you can use this ability twice, and recover expended uses when you finish a short or long rest.

As a wording nitpick, you don't really need to specify "friendly" creatures, since you choose who benefits.

For an ally to gain some of these benefits 2x a round, both that PC and the Feast Bringer would have to pop reactions to utilize the buff and then have it reapplied in the same round. I feel like such a situation is earned if the PCs pull it off. And you’re right, the wording does not need to specify friendly creatures.


Spoils of Victory
I would be inclined to suggest that this feature do the following:
- if you use this during a short rest, affected creatures can recover hit points as if rolling a Hit Die, without spending one
- if you use this during a long rest, affected creatures recover one additional expended Hit Die
- no, or minimal, material costs required

Thanks for picking this apart; my first draft of the class didn’t have any cooking features, which just didn’t feel right for the tribe chef so I tried to come up with something lol.

I definitely like playing with Hit Die instead of temp HP, will adjust with that in mind! The material costs felt like a way for Barbarians to do something with their gold, since they’re not buying spellcasting components or armor...

Maybe I’ll nix the rage recovery, since it becomes moot anyway at Lv20.


Extended Palette
- What is the duration of your spell effects? Is it until the end of your next turn, the default for the Consume Flesh and Blood feature, or is it for the spell's normal duration?
- You're not casting the spell, you're benefiting from its effects. So, does that mean you don't need to concentrate on it?
- As far as I know, not all elemental creatures fall neatly into the four-element paradigm. What happens when you eat "flesh" or "blood" from one of those?

I'd suggest this feature needs a re-write to bring it more inline with the base feature.

RAI, the spell effect lasts until the player’s next turn; just an extension of Consume Flesh and Blood.

I didn’t intend for concentration to be necessary as the effect fades at the end of the turn. While writing this reply, however, I realized this is a STRONG buff against multiattacks. I will take another look at possible spell effects that don’t use concentration, otherwise I will re-write the buffs completely.

As far as more ambiguous creatures typed as elementals, I would leave it to DMs to decide what benefit would apply.




Expert Devourer

Will look at the other paths as a foundation for what direction to go with this, thanks!

[Bjarkmundur]

I thought I was finally getting Gordon Ramsay as a barbarian subclass.

He get's really angry and then cooks you a meal!!!

Guess I was mistaken, and now a little disappointed :/

[Xenothelm]

I thought I was finally getting Gordon Ramsay as a barbarian subclass.

He get's really angry and then cooks you a meal!!!

Guess I was mistaken, and now a little disappointed :/

LOL, I’ll work on a cooking bard next ;D

[Composer99]

Pretty sure for a Gordon Ramsay character you'd just go lore bard for Cutting Words. :smallbiggrin: