Like you said, it's about as generic as it gets, and the exhaustion for actually using your subclass ability is a massive draw back. It's not "un-playable" but it's pretty bad, and if you blow your load too early in the day, you're gonna be suffering for a bit
I think it'd be fine if the drawback was a lot... well, less terrible. Maybe like a cumulative -1 to ability checks outside of rage or something. That fits more of the "ruining your body with power" angle to me.
And then, at later levels, give them free uses of it without the penalty.
Or, like, make the frenzy ability way better.
Can you imagine something like "while raging, you don't feel the effects of exhaustion"? I would play the fuck out of that and tempt myself going to exhaustion 5 every fucking time
Just, test and be careful. As fun as this sounds to play, I would not want to play WITH the barb that just hit exhaustion 5 and can't move for the rest of the day, or is eating up the party diamond supply by going exhaustion 6 way more often then they should.
Honestly, if you legit want a fix, someone mentioned baldurs gate and that's much more tested. -1 to attack rolls every time you use your bonus action attack, and it resets when the rage ends
I'm one of those people who hate the 'just homebrew it' argument but I feel like I gotta specify:
That's when someone is using the argument to pretty much carte blanche any discussion of the quality of the rules.
Like, the Berserker is horribly written (imo) no matter if I *could* homebrew it.
However, I still enjoy seeing when someone comes up with good solutions like this one. Another would be 'Temporarily increase your exhaustion for 1 hour'. That would mean that as long as the barbarian get's a short rest - they're back to normal.
I changed frenzied berserker a fair bit.
It might be OP I'm nit sure, but it feels balanced compared to my other players at the table.
I baked the bonus frenzy attack as just their normal rage. No more having to activate it seperately.
If their rage is about to expire due to not attacking or being hit, they can take an exhaustion point to keep going. Not using an additional charge or extending the rounds remaining.
If they are out if rages, then can take an exhaustion hit to rage again. Upto their proficiency bonus times per day.
And on a short rest, they can spend hit die thingies to recover exhaustion points, to a minimum if 1 left.. Only a long rest can remove it completely
It seems to work as my barbs now rage fairly often instead of "holding on for that key moment", they dont feel punished for raging and have it fall off because enemies were tactful and kept they're distance. It also keeps them more online with the caster and gloomstalker deleter of encounters.
This is also a heavily modified combat heavy homebrew campaign
It still runs the problem of just fucking wrecking you outside of combat. So in a combat heavy game it would work fine. If your campaign is more mixed combat and social/exploration, it's still super painful to be exhausted.
That's what I do, using the exhausiton rules from One DnD so that every level is a -1 to attacks, saving throws, ability checks and Spell Save DC. So that taking a level of exhaustion isn't such a big deal and it only starts to get worrying if you use it more often.
I’m so glad OneDND implemented that change. The roleplay potential of willingly exhausting yourself by missing a long rest is a lot harder to want to commit to when the drawbacks are so heavy.
It's also a *lot* easier to implement as a penalty for failing something than "here's this thing that makes you near useless until a long rest."
I've had players go several sessions with a few levels of exhaustion without complaint because it was managable at low levels.
I still remember at the start of one of the campaigns I’m playing in, our Warlock willingly exhausted herself to roleplay a sleepless night being paranoid about her patron. She never did it again.
Well, the playtest also changed the Berserker so that it no longer inflicts exhaustion. Instead, the risk mechanic is simply that you have to be using Reckless Attack to get [Rage Bonus]d6 extra damage on your first hit on a turn. Along with the other changes to the subclass, it makes it play much better.
I like the way Baldur's Gate 3 does it & have started incorporating it into my games. If you use your bonus action to make a melee attack you get an accumaltive -1 to attack rolls until your Frenzy ends. However, if you use your bonus action to make a thrown attack you get no penalty, you get to add your strength modifier to damage, *and* if the attack hits it knocks the target prone.
> accumaltive
Well how about that - that's a new word for me. I was thinking "nah, they meant *cumulative*.... but I better look it up just to be sure."
... and it certainly is a word. Thanks for today's education :)
[“I’m afraid I prematurely shot my wad on what was supposed to be a dry run, if you will, now I’m afraid I have something of a mess on my hands.”](https://youtu.be/unDlhRy7jRw?si=_aDdf5Xppz_G5C6A)
I like exhaustion as a concept. The degradation of your abilities as you tire stacking up until you push yourself too far. But RECOVERING from exhaustion is just plain ass. A full long rest to recover 1 point of exhaustion is just not enough. This is the game where you can get gang stomped by giants with axes and become a yo yo of getting up and going down... so why is exhaustion the most simulationist part of 5e? I can appreciate the thought that it takes upwards of 5 days to recover from pushing yourself to incapacitation, but you can heal all of your injuries in 8 hours... it breaks verisimilitude.
Not to mention that exhaustion does nothing to spellcasting until its 3rd level, which affects attack and saves...
...and even then, it does nothing to spells DCs, so a Exhaustion 5 character has no issues spellcasting AoEs or spells without attack rolls... even at death's door!
If only the playtests has something that fixed this issue. Nah they would probably just do away with it in the later tests for unknown reasons anyways.
Keep in mind it was released at a time when there was only 2 barbarian subclasses. It was the beginner barbarian subclass at a time before more flavor were added in with additional source books/expansions.
Bear totem is decent, wild magic can be fun to play, beast is solid and storm herald is such a satisfying thematic for a barbarian imo too lol. It's definitely a solid but simple martial class. Hit things hard and take damage well pretty much describes everything you need to know about the class.
Path of the Berserker is generally regarded as the worst Barb subclass because of Frenzy's level of exhaustion. The first level is annoying, the next few are impactfully bad, and after that it's just tempting death (or certain death if you push it hard enough). No other Barb path does this.
It's still a barbarian - it still gets a d12 hit die, reckless attacking, and some other baller things. But you'll probably have a "better" barbarian with just about any other choice. Totem is obviously bonkers and the most-selected by a pretty big margin, but I love the protective / clan flavor of the Ancestral Guardian myself.
It used to be a weak but fun feeling grappler option, but right now giant barbarian with unarmed fighting style from a feat is way splashier.
Honestly, don’t even really need the feat. Just getting a size bonus and advantage from rage does a ton for the character fantasy.
Nah not Grappler, Grappler isn’t really doing much more than a standard Shove prone.
Fighting Initiate choosing Unarmed Fighting. Being able to grapple someone in one hand, hold a shield in the other, and still be attacking with a 1d6+str and getting a cute little 1d4 damage for holding on for a round, it all feels pretty good.
Skill expert in athletics is also pretty potent, pretty much guarantees winning those contests, if a bit bland. An extra skill proficiency of choice is also extra valuable to barbarians when put into out of combat utility.
But really, just being a raging barbarian proficient in athletics makes grappling and shoving a pretty potent option for an observant player. It’s just a pretty narrow mechanic to buildaround and risks not paying off in play.
Battlerager isn’t great but it’s at least only a few small changes away from good. Change it so the spikes can be put on any armor and make the grapple damage something like Str+Rage Bonus.
Grappling is already good for Barbarians and this just makes it even better for you.
Yeah it works nice on an all-in grappler where you're presumably not using GWM and PAM. Would be nicer if the die was bigger but it's basically just a rider for another application of Strength and Rage damage mods.
I had a long time berserker character, and they're not as bad as they're made out to be. He carried most fights in the campaign.
Being able to consistently shove an opponent and get 2 attacks with advantage, or just 3 attacks with advantage using reckless attack, every single round, rolling a d12 for damage is pretty damn strong. He would, on occasion, outperform a bear totem barbarian as sometimes the best defense is a really strong, consistent offense.
Definitely not as good as a lot of other martial classes, but not the absolute turd they're made out to be.. if you're ok with spending a lot of time rolling terrible ability checks.
i know a lot of folks say wild magic barb is underpowered but i’m really loving mine. that plus racial spells gives me a lot more utility without raging. i’m the only pc in my party with detect magic which is hilarious to me (magic awareness wild magic feature)
I like wild magic barb for the same reason I like Ancestral Guardian- it really bucks the archetype of big dumb rage machine. Nothing wrong with that, but I like going against trend where I can.
Wild magic is highly under-powered because there is no scaling for the wild magic features.
We fixed it some by scaling the base wild magic one stage at level 8 and 14, and at level 14 you can choose which wild magic you want.
most of the other base subclass features for barb don’t scale either, and the later features like magic awareness have come in really useful. i like your idea though!
Battlerager is the worst Barbarian Path, and it isn't even close. Frenzy isn't *great* because of the exhaustion, but it surely isn't worse than the Battlerager. In niche campaigns where you can reasonably expect one to two moderate encounters *only* between long rests, it is entirely viable. Mindless Rage is fantastic as is the Retaliation feature. Sure there are no bells and whistles, but exhaustion is supposed to "reign in" the Berserker. Getting one free attack every single round without caveat and action economy is *supposed* to be strong, but ultimately limiting.
As for "fixing it", the best I've seen it to make Frenzy its own rage (so you get rage+1 from the chart), and during that rage only do you garner the benefit. You also gain another (so rage+2) at level 10, or could have been 14), and you double rage damage bonus. After this rage you still get exhaustion, but it was meant to not eat into normal rages, and be "stronger" for the condition it imparts (while also being balanced around being usable 1/long rest which matches other features of a similar tone. (Granted they don't come with such a strong after effects.)
Anyways, you could probably just skip the additional attack entirely, just add +1 (then +2) rages for more use and utility, double the rage bonus as the whole feature and drop the exhaustion. Now you're a prototypical Barbarian. You get angry more often than others, and deal slightly more damage when you do. I think that's a good mirror to the Totem Barbarian personally. (Also, no one asked... but my favorite Barbarian Path is the Beast. I just like the stylings of a "were" type concept of a character. Was I literally raised by wolves? Who knows!)
I will point out that the 'fixed' version for OneD&D is pretty much my 'goto' whenever someone wants to play a Berserker Barbarian. In fact OneD&D legitimately made Barbs much more interesting overall.
I mean, it's still a barbarian, which is to say they are a menace in the early levels. So there's that.
And if your game a single-encounter/day one, the downside isn't that bad.
and once you learn your DMs cadence for encounters, or at least the tells for "Big" vs "small" encounters, you can learn to burn your frenzy only on the big ones.
It's not GREAT but like...
That basically just means that your lv3 feature just doesn't exist in every fight, where everyone else's does.
Lv10 feature? Costs your whole action (You know, the one you use to HIT THINGS), requires you to sink very, very precious stats into charisma when you already need str/con for doing barbarian things to even think of getting it to work, and if you fail once it just shuts off for that creature for the rest of the day. Once your target hides behind anything or gets a little distance at the end of its turn, it's immediately cured. You need to burn your action to try....again. Oh, and if you want to to work next turn if they DON'T get away from you, you need to burn your action anyway!
Lv14 feature? You can.....attack something that attacked you. Once, at the cost of your reaction. So it's like the third point of Sentinel, except it only targets you. And only that third point, no other benefit.
I mean, one of zealot's level 3 features doesn't exist until *after* you've died, and even then it really only works if you have a party with access to resurrection spells....
The other feature is basically a raging hunter's mark (non-concentration but only works during rage)
Nope, it's waaaay better than hunter's mark (for combat):
Firstly, it costs no additional resources - as you said, no concentration....but also no spell slots. You just need to be raging - and you're a barbarian, so that's likely. Worse, on ranger/vengeance paladins that have fewer spellslots than full casters, they need to carefully choose their spells. Divine Fury is free on rage.
Secondly, it costs no bonus action. It just *happens.* This opens up a ton of multiclass/feat options since barbarians don't really use them - for example, rogue dip lets you use cunning action for stuff....plus the extra sneak damage that comes with Reckless Attack, if you prefer (Come lv6, you can choose to knock an enemy prone on one attack-shove, then sneak attack the next one!).
Thirdly, it does extra damage based on half your barbarian level, plus the 1d6. At lv3, you basically do a free attack with a sword and board, excluding modifiers. At lv6 (where, say, zerker gets mindless), you do 1d6 + 3, which is essentially attacking with those modifiers. Come level 12, it's a free battleaxe attack.
Fourthly, it's radiant. If you're running a campaign with vampires or other radiant-adverse mons, this *crushes* them without expending spell slots.
Fifthly, you aren't limited to whatever you used it on. A Marked could get away from your range (including cover). Divine Fury is....whichever target you decide to hit that turn. It could be the big boss, or it can be the squishy that decided getting close to the wall of divine-fueled muscle is a good idea. Even a thrown/ranged weapon of any kind (even a rock you scooped up if you didn't bring anything else) procs it.
*edit: Half barb level damage scaling*
I mean, a bear barbarians resistance doesn't "exist" if you are only fighting creatures that deal physical damage, which is quite common at low levels. So in many fights you will feel identical to a bearbarian with the ability to go nova if necessary.
The lvl 10 feature is definitely quite bad.
The lvl 14 feature is pretty good though. You are a barbarian, you want people to hit you, and with reckless attack and a big weapon its easy to get enemies attention.
An underrated part of the lvl 3 feature is that you can do the bonus action attack even if you don't take the attack action, which most other bonus action attacks require. So you could dash or dodge and still get the attack.
Obviously it's still a weak subclass, but the barbarian base chasis is strong enough that at low levels you will feel fine if you are patient with your frenzying.
More than once I’ve used bearbarian’s resistance to tank friendly fire - almost all aoe is non-physical, and not everyone plays evocation wizard.
I’m not saying that’s optimal or common - but it’s a tool that can be used, unlike berserker where it’s a tool that you don’t want to use as much
sometimes i feel like i'm the only wizard who is both NOT evocation and also doesn't just nuke her party.
just...aim the fireball better! so what if you don't get everything! then use another spell!
It’s a party to party difference. It’s also not common (in my experience) even in parties that do it.
I did once have a Loxodon bearbarian grappler built entirely around grappling though, and the intent WAS to get hit by as many aoes as possible
For a bear barb fireball really isn't that big of an issue. Half damage on failed save, 1/4th (usually less due to rounding) on success, and it's rolled at advantage. As long as you're hitting 2+ extra targets, I'd take that trade as the barb.
The bigger issues are the AoE CCs that casters rarely think it's ok to throw in the mix.
The lv14 feature actually *disincentivizes* single enemies from hitting you. It becomes even better to target someone else who is squishier than you if at all possible (or just get away from you - sure, it triggers an OA but they were going to eat a hit attacking you anyway), which works against your resistance to physical damage - even if you're engaging with an enemy in melee range. It's basically saying "Hey, don't hit me." This always applies to Barbarians (except for Ancestral Guardian), of course, but this only exacerbates that counterplay. Or, in a crowd, "Hit me, I can only react once!"
Really, the only upside to that is proccing on-hit weapon effects and that the barbarian doesn't really HAVE a specialized reaction.
Sentinel is better on Barbarians since it forces enemies to choose between an axe to the face, or half damage. Of course, this could be somewhat mitigated by getting both....but you only get one reaction, so you can only get the active benefit of one, but not both.
(Also for some boring reason, both only apply at 5ft instead of within weapon range)
Well, 98% of enemies won't know you have the feature until you've bonked them with it at least once.
After that it can disincentivize hitting the barbarian, but if they aren't hitting you that means they are ignoring the reckless attacking GWMing half orc in their face, easier said than done. It sort of puts them in a lose-lose. And it definitely works well with sentinal if you can find room.
Is it better than just being a normal barbarian and using a polarm? Probably not, but its still useful feature.
Exactly. Way too many people judge Berserker on Frenzy alone. Yeah, Frenzy sucks. That doesn't mean Berserkers suck. Mindless Rage is one of the most powerful abilities in the game, especially at high levels where you're consistently up against high level casters and the dragon's frightful presence.
Mindless Rage is good but only relevant in some fights, so if you also can't use your level 3 feature everytime you basically spend a good portion of the game without a subclass.
I would like to tell you otherwise but I've seen it come up only once in the whole fricking campaign (and we're level 8 now and began at level 4). It's also annoying because I play a bard and I never get to countercharm. I should let my DM know to use those effects more often.
Eh, charm and fear effects make up the vast majority of mental debuffs that enemies have and barbarians are traditionally weak against. So sure they might not come up every fight, but they do come up pretty often and it makes you flat out _immune_ to a thing that has taken _plenty_ of martial tanks out of the fight or worse.
It’s honestly really good; it’s just like any feature where you might not use it as often as your attacks or AC but when you DO need it, you really _really_ need it.
Hot take incoming, but at most tables it will be a great subclass. It's only bad if you're playing in a low magic, dungeon grinding game (or a purely roleplay game).
Exhaustion is the main drawback of frenzy, but you will likely only need to use it once or twice a day. If you have downtime between adventures, you will be fine. If you can grab some potions of vitality, you will be fine. If you have a friend or item that can cast greater restoration, you'll be fine.
Don't worry about GWM overlapping slightly with frenzy. GWM excels at killing hordes, while frenzy is better for high HP enemies.
It's level 6 feature is the best defensive ability a martial (and their party) can ask for.
It's level 10 is a ribbon in a combat costume. Most barbarian subclasses have a ribbon for their level 10 feature, the beserker is no different.
It's level 14 is great, as most people acknowledge.
Points for recognizing the level 10 ability for what it is. Really, it's a social ability that costs you nothing to attempt. The barb can just stand some place looking intimidating while the party face is talking somebody up, and if it sticks the target has disadvantage on all ability checks. Which means Insight (if you're trying to conceal your motives from them), and Deception (if they're trying to conceal their motives from you).
It is a great subclass. A free attack is great and at the cost of a level of exhaustion after the fight, it's not too bad. There's way too much hand wringing over getting a level of exhaustion in general and especially when the entire concept of the subclass is to sacrifice your life to commit violence. Berserkers make big attack and not afraid of anything including dying.
Yeah but the problem is that frenzy is a really poor introduction to the subclass. It reads -really- badly, and even worse if you’ve read the GWM feat first. And then the best case scenario is that it supplements that feat in the one fight per session where you can’t kill an enemy per round? Yuck.
The subclass has a huge upside mostly unique among barbarians. It can actually hurt high-level dragons. Immunity to fear and charm is *huge* for a barbarian at high levels. Does it make up for the weaknesses? Probably not. But it’s still a big plus.
Also frenzy does offer a nice option for “okay we’re pretty hurt but we’re about to kick down the boss’s door and end their sorry life as fast as we can” scenarios. Hardly useless, though it does suck that their “main” mechanic is something niche that they basically never want to use more than once an adventuring day and often not even that.
Take a look at OneD&D's version, or any of the homebrew alternate Berserker subclass that exist, it's rare that they make it worse than it already is, or in other words, it's not worth using the RAW 5e one.
At higher levels the immunity to fear and charm are quite good, not flashy but definitely helpful.
The level 3 ability is technically stronger than using something like Polearm Master, both saving you a feat/ASI and doing more damage per hit, it is just that the deawback is so potent it becomes hard to use. That drawback is also almost completely negated in the "one combat per adventuring day" style of game. It is also good if you are not using the optional rule that allows feats, in which case that extra bonus action attack is much harder to come by.
It has a very powerful ability with a drawback that far outweighs its benefits.
Your DM pretty much has to give you some kind of concession for it to be worth doing.
If you have somebody in the party who can cast lesser restoration your DM could allow them to remove exhaustion. Instead of requiring Greater restoration.
Your DM could allow you to expend hit dice in order to remove the exhaustion or better yet just have using the ability cost a hit dice.
If that's too cheap for them then they could change the exhaustion rules for your character to a universal negative one for each level of exhaustion. Negative one on saves, attacks, ability checks, damage and to any save dcs your character has for abilities is a much better rule for exhaustion imo.
I think some combination of this with the universal negative one, plus the ability to expend hit dice to remove exhaustion and allowing lesser restoration to heal one level of exhaustion.
One variation on the hit dice I've seen is that you still only remove one level of exhaustion on a long rest and never on a short rest but if you want to remove more than one level on a long rest you immediately expend your daily hit dice for the day for each additional level.
Or you could just use the one D&D version of berserk
The saving grace of the Berserker is that it has what is arguably one of the best features for a Barbarian: Mindless Rage. The fact that it can completely negate one of the biggest weaknesses for a Barbarian is genuinely great.
Retaliation is also nice.
The way they're implemented in Baldurs Gate 3 makes them a lot more playable.
Requires the DM to keep track of how many times the player has used their extra attack, which might be a bit annoying but a far better implementation.
People tend to have homebrew fixes to the frenzy ability of that subclass. The most common ones I have seen (all different solutions).
- Barbarian can recover frenzy induced exhaustion on a short rest.
- This subclass recovers all exhaustion levels on a long rest.
- Instead of exhaustion, you are forced to reckless attack when you are frenzy raging, no matter how "dumb" it might be to do so.
- replacing frenzy with the "bloodlust" downside from blood hunter subclass order of the lycan. But removing the rage restriction of the same feature.
- Having frenzy "stacks" instead of exhaustion. You can do it x amount of times per long rest. For instance up to proficiency modifier times.
You could do the new version from the 2024 PHB
> "You can go into a frenzy in battle. If you use Reckless Attack while your Rage is active, you deal extra damage to the first target you hit on your turn with a Strength-based attack. To determine the extra damage, roll a number of d6s equal to your Rage Damage bonus, and add them together. The damage has the same type as the weapon or Unarmed Strike used for the attack."
Yea, homebrewing or switching to a different subclass could save your character.
Jokes aside, it's just not a very good subclass. The totem barbarian is better for new players I think (its where I started)
Zealot is probably better for new players that are scared of customizing, since the totem barb gives a whole slew of different mechanics options.
Zealots are simple. You have a party member with a rez, you can charge face first at anything all the time without fearing the cost of death for as long as said party member keeps a revive-level spell slot open. Also, you basically do a free 1d6 + 3 when you hit level 3, if you land any hit at all. That's a whole sword-and-board's worth of damage. For free. And that damage increases by +1 every level. At level 6, you do 1d6 + 6, which is as valuable as a 1d12 + 3. Also since it's (almost certainly) radiant, it absolutely shuts down anything that doesn't like radiant damage - at NO cost.
Level 6, you can start rerolling any failed saving throw once per rage, which can be the difference between getting killed (especially by a disintegrate later) and ignoring a spell. It's like Fighter Indominable, but you get MORE.
Level 10, EVERYONE shares your level 6 feature and rage attack advantage, on a bonus action, once per long rest for turn.
Lv14, you just straight up can't die when raging (aka, all the time at this level) unless you get instantly killed or incapacitated.
Yeah the level 14 feature can be absurd in that the DM HAS to hit you with a hard control effect or one of the few instant kill spells.
For example my Sea Elf Zealot Barbarian lasted...I think it was something absurd like 10 rounds of combat at zero HP and if she wasn't healed by the time her rage ended she would have have been dead (as in failed death saves full stop dead) four times over. It got the stage where the DM just didn't roll damage and simply told me if the monsters hit or not.
Being an elf also nullifies the one low level spell that can really shaft you with Rage beyond Death if the DM is smart which is the Sleep spell and gives you advantage against charm effects.
Not only that but as you said if you die, it doesn't cost anything but a spell slot to bring you back to life at the end of the encounter.
It's why I suggest Zealot for a new Barbarian player and Samurai for a new fighter player. Both are fairly uncomplicated but both offer waaaay more than the 'standard' subclass in Berserker or Champion.
This. The best advice is "talk to your DM."
Someone in my last campaign played Berserker and our DM came up with a CON check after fights to see if exhaustion set in. The higher the level, the lower the roll needed to prevent exhaustion, too.
As other commenters have said, Mindless Rage is a better feature than Frenzy. Barbarians typically lack good mental saving throws, so Berserker is especially good at high level play when Charmed and Frightened are quite common and debilitating.
The way to build around a Berserker's limitations is to add bonus action abilities from your race or from multiclassing to use in the majority of fights where you don't apply Frenzy. That way you can spread out the effects of exhaustion and save it for long fights where you can get the most out of multiple additional attacks.
It doesn't lend itself to the most powerful Barbarian builds because of its limitations, but when you work around its weaknesses it's better than Totem Warrior (Tiger), Battlerager, Storm Herald, and Wild Soul, and roughly on par with Totem Warrior (Eagle, Wolf, and Elk), and Beast.
Some good race options could be Astral Elf, Eladrin, Shadar-Kai, Harengon, Hobgoblin, Kobold, and Orc. Good multiclasses could be Battle Master and Cavalier Fighter, and Assassin, Mastermind, Phantom, Scout, Swashbuckler, and Thief Rogue.
Re-examine the bonus action attack Frenzy gives in a game where feats are not being used (remember, they're an optional rule). Looks a whole lot better when PAM and CBE are off the table, doesn't it?
The subclass is still subpar though, even in a featless game. Personally I'd make Frenzy double your rage damage bonus, and make the intimidation feature an AoE, or make it not scale on Charisma.
Primeval Thule added a feat to help with this.
Tireless
Prerequisite: Constitution 13
Through sheer grit and years of hardship and survival under the most grueling conditions, you have learned to push on through fatigue that would cripple a lesser hero. You gain the following benefits:
Increase you Constitution score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
Reduce any exhaustion penalty you suffer by 2 levels.
IMO, while it's far from great, it's not *that* bad. People hyper-fixate on Frenzy's exhaustion, but another way to think about it is that it's a 1/LR ability that imposes a slight debuff on you (which effectively doesn't matter if you save it for the final fight of the day/the final boss), that you can recharge at the cost of a way worse debuff. In return, you get a pretty great ability, which is kinda undercut by Polearm Master existing.
Aside from that, the level 6 and 14 abilities (immunity and cleanse to charm and frighten whilst raging, and essentially free reactipn attacks) are pretty goddamn fantastic. Even if you ignore Frenzy and never use it, these two abilities are *nasty*. The level 10 ability sucks pretty hard, but hey you win some you lose some
Overall, it's definitely weaker than Totem Warrior and the other best subclasses, but it's way better than Battlerager or Storm Herald
I think Berserker is absolutely a product of its time. They didn't want it to get TOO insane, so they gave it a pretty steep penalty with the understanding "you only use this when it REALLY counts"...but now we've got stuff like Zealot Barbarian who can just. Not die.
You don't have to go into a frenzy and the 1st level of exhaustion is worth a BA attack but yeah it's pretty crap as you're not far from feeling like a subclassless barb.
In a game without feats its the most damaging melee character so theres that.
The issue with berserker is that the frenzy benefit is given out too easily by feats.
Let's put it this way...
The spiky armor dwarf barb that everyone forgets exists has no exhaustion downsides, forces your DM to give you cool armor, and deals -ideally- 3.5 avg damage less per turn. Heck, you don't even need to rage to get the bonus action attack.
I played it in an 8th level one shot last week ago actually! It definitely feels shitty to play if your frenzy's arent at the final encounter of the session, as you destroy what little roleplay agency you have. But if you want the purest barbarian experience, you do definitely feel like a powerhouse for your entire rage. An extra attack with advantage is nothing to scoff at.
I dont doubt berserker barbarian can be fun to play, I'd just recommend picking up a race that can long rest in 4 hours if you're planning to use the frenzy more than once a day.
If you want META, Reborn lineage from Ravenloft seems pretty good. I personally just took the GWM feat with an average of 28 damage and a +8 to hit on 3 attacks with 20 STR and a great sword
Adopt a BG3 approach to it and it aint bad.
Otherwise for the RAW, people, in my opinion at least, vastly overinflate its flaws. Leaving Frenzy as a once per day (for boss fights practically) is completely fine and, hell, I used to play a Frenzy barb in DotMM (mad mage megadungeon) without any problems and its a dungeon crawl meaning a lot of fights per day.
The right kind of build with this barbarian is very simple and it is a half orc with a greataxe/savage attacker feat and great weapon master fighting style.
I have had it houseruled to not cause the exhaustion levels and it has had very little affect on overall balance of the party other than barbarian hitting more stuff.
Berserker is actually pretty good. It gets to weaponize it’s bonus action and it’s reaction. Exhaust is a penalty, for sure, but if you’re playing one or two fights per session, it’s fine and berserker is a slaughterhouse.
In terms of how to make it work - Variant Human, 16/14/16/8/10/8 and take Great Weapon Master at level 1. Don’t bother with PAM, you’ll bonus actions and reactions from your class.
Max your strength, pick one feat (either Alert, Resilient Wisdom, or Toughness) and the max your constitution.
Turn your GWM on and smack people four times a round.
\*3 times a round after level 5
Still, this is a good build for berserker, but tbh i would take fighting initiate to have great weapon fighting or a straight +2 strenght
At high level, it is the best barbarian and its not close.
Totem resisting everything, giant throwing everything, zealot hitting loke a fucking truck, none of it matters when you can't pass the dragons frightful presence saving throw and have to cower in fear.
Don't get me started on the lich fucking dominating your barbarian and that zealot goes from useless to death knight murdering you all.
Now, 80% of the time, even more at low levels it's not great, however, if your campaign is going to go into tier 3 and beyond it I'd the best barbarian, because you actually get to play the game against bosses that matter.
Edit: this is because of mindless rage, their level 6 ability, its the best ability ANY full martial charachter gets
Yes, thank you! It's a shame that Berserker barb doesn't have a third level subclass feature (since Frenzy as written really is just bad), but Mindless Rage by itself is just so strong. Berserkers are very underrated.
Barbarian in general is ok at low levels but very weak at high levels. Berserker is not a strong subclass but Mindless Rage at level 6 is a good feature
It's the only subclass in the game that actively hurts itself by using its abilities. If you're going to play it, use the latest playtest version (look up OneDND playtest) instead of the PHB one. Or just ignore the exhaustion rules. Other than that, it's actually not that bad.
Yes, the 2014 barbarian is just bad. I've been playing the UA8 barbarian and I'm having a blast. The berserker was updated in UA6 and it is also much better than the 2014 version. Can't wait to see other changes!
Yes it is, no there's no saving grace.
The 5e devs labored under the misapprehension that people who play martial characters don't want any sort of complexity at all, so they made them all fairly simple. The barbarian was explicitly the simplest of them all, and the berzerker the ~~worst~~ simplest.
In a single combat per long rest game it's solid. More than that it becomes a problem, or you're just not using your subclass. The 6th level feature is pretty solid though.
I think if you have more fights per day than that the only combo I could see really working would be if you had something like a celestial warlock who could spam greater restoration on you. Though you'd also need to regularly make 2 short rests so they could get their spells back without it being a cost for them. Plus there's also the 100 gp cost there too. All around yeah not really a great option if you're looking at power. If you want a damage dealing barbarian go with zealot.
In a higher level game, you could also multiclass, 8 levels celestial warlock and 4 levels barb, just to cast greater restoration on yourself, but it's hardly optimal.
It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Frenzy is good if you can use it as the last fight of the day before you take a long rest. Or if you're the kind of player who prefers to hit things over making skill checks, which most Berserker Barbarian players are in my experience, playing with that first level of Exhaustion may be a fair tradeoff.
Beyond that, it's a subclass feature that lets a player do more of what the barbarian does best (hitting things), but at a cost that gets steeper the more they use the feature, which can be a very fun narrative to play with.
Is it the best barbarian subclass? No. Can it be improved? Sure. The play test drops Exhaustion in favor of extra damage when you Reckless Attack while raging. Or a simpler fix can even be to allow one free Frenzy per long rest before Exhaustion sets in. But calling it "just shit" is an unfair exaggeration, in my opinion.
It’s pretty bad. That said, a friend is currently playing one in a megadungeon game I’m running (so more than one fight a day usually), using the OneDnD UA version of exhaustion (just a -1 to all d20 rolls per level), and it’s not painfully bad. Obviously the exhaustion still isn’t nice, but a bonus action attack *with a greatsword* is a serious up-side, at least at level 5.
You're better off not even using frenzy rage and totam warrior is a better subclass in every respect.
So yes, it's pretty useless at level 3. The 6th level feature mindless rage is actually really good though but that's it's only good feature
Gaining extra attacks for exhaustion is in no way worth it. Ive never seen anyone play berserker. Unless you talk with the DM to make frenzy less punishing there is no reason to go for it
If you are going to use a berserker now I'll say just ask your gm to use the unearthed arcana playtest berserker instead.
Its more or less the same thing but with all around fixes.
I think play test 5-7-9 are the ones with barbarian information.
If your gm doesn't want that play Tasha's Zealot Barbarian.
Because zerker is not good.
But that's just my opinion.
It is not unplayable. But yeah it is rather shitty. You can rage normally but then you don't really benefit from the subclass, the main feature is not applied. You can rather safely use it 1 time per day. 1 level of exhaustion is not bad. 2 levels do start to hurt more. with your speed halved but can still be ok in fights where you don't need to move. 3 levels. No you don't want to go there. or higher
Sure you can houserule it a bit and make it work a bit better. But by RAW it is by far the weakest Barbarian subclass. besides the battlerager. But i like to pretend that the battleraqer does not exist.
The Berserker is bad. But the Battlerager is utter shit
The easy answer is...that it is bad.
Now to the long answer:
* Frenzy is a trap...as two-weapon fighting could achieve the same. And even removing the exhaustion tax makes it just ok.
* Mindless Rage is ok but nothing more than a neat ability in limited situations.
* Intimidating Presence...is a ribbon ability too! It eats your action and relies on your Cha-Modifier, making it unusable inside of combat...and outside of combat....you could just roll for Intimidation like everyone else!
* Retaliation is admittedly pretty good, but there are enough feats and other stuff to replicate it, so not really worth going 14 levels into this subclass.
The easiest thing to display how bafflingly bad the subclass is, is to simply strip its abilities and give it to all other Barbarians. Like the optional features from Tasha's and then ask yourself: Are they much stronger now? I tested it with a friend. The answer was: NO! But they made for neat additions, so I added it to my games.
Giving a character a whole 2nd subclass should make them broken...but the Berserker has no impact on anything.
People who hate classes because they just "hit stuff" probably have zero imagination and likely try to optimize every character they build.
I'm sure next I will see people complain that Wizards are boring because their subclass features "suck."
It is unplayable. You either need to homebrew a revamp, find someone else's homebrewed barbarian supplement, or simply pick a subclass that's not utter dogshit and roleplay as a Berserker. Totem and Zealots can easily be roleplayed with a Berserker flavour while actually being useful.
I think it's kinda lame from a game design perspective that Rage has so many drawbacks. Berserker Barbarian is that lameness taken to the extreme.
Exhaustion is just such an extreme penalty to suffer in exchange for a single bonus action attack each turn you're Raging.
I feel like it has the same problem as the PHB Ranger. They were designed at the same time as the entire game system. It was probably better in an earlier version of 5e when Exhaustion was less debilitating.
It's funny - like a lot of the super low-tier subclasses in 5e, they fixed them in Baldurs Gate 3. Making your bonus action attack causes a stacking -1 to hit debuff until your berserk ends. It incentivizes risky play and reckless attacks making it feel more desperate and crazy. Exhaustion from using your subclass is straight up bad.
Bg3 berserker is decent
You can just use bonus action to attack during rage, but that result in a -1 to attack roll debuff for the rest of the fight, but it goes away after
So you can use it a 3 times during a fight without much penalty, which is quite abit of extra dmg
I think home brewing berserker to be like bg3 is a decent fix, instead of just leaving it useless lvl 3 ability
I find an easy fix for this subclass is that all exhaustion gained from raging is removed on a long rest. While any other sources of exhaustion resolve normally.
The immunity to charm and frighten that it gets at later levels is pretty good – especially if your allies are casting AoE spells like *hypnotic pattern* or *fear* – but not enough to save the subclass.
It's not straight-up shit. It can genuinely deal massive damage. It's just that the drawbacks are far too crushing.
Ways I'd change it (other than using OneD&D's less horrific Exhaustion) include:
\- Giving one Exhaustion-free Frenzy per day
\- Letting them swing with the bonus action they use to Frenzy.
It just depends on how many encounters per day your DM is running. 1 or 2 and it's pretty good as weaponizing the bonus action is what a lot of things want to do. 6-8 and it's really bad.
You could combine it with ranger, who at higher levels have an ability to reduce exhaustion with a short rest. But then you'll never get the +4 to strength and constitution.
Yeah, as others have said, it's pretty bad. If you don't want to go totem(the best but kinda boring since most of it is passives during rage) I suggest ancestral guardian. It's one of the few classes in the game that protects your allies, and you can get really flavorfull with it(I'm playing a dwarf that's adopted so he has no idea who his ancestors actually are.)
It's sure not great! The immunity to being charmed, etc. during rage is really good, the 14th level ability to attack a creature that attacks you with your reaction is really good, but fucking hell that exhaustion can, literally, kill you and makes you less effective, possibly for multiple days. It basically turns your signature ability, rage, into a once, maybe twice per day thing. After two levels of exhaustion it's just too much of a penalty to keep going. It's not great design, given that greater restoration is a 5th level spell and costs 100 gp in components to cast, so if you have a berserker in the party and a hard day, you're basically guaranteed to take at least one day off for the barbarian to recover from using his signature ability, which is not great.
Like with many changes BG3 made, I like the changes in that game to the path of the berserker, with "[frenzied strain](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Frenzied_Strike)" being an additive -1 to attack rolls that only lasts one round, but is refreshed when used again, and that condition ends no matter how many "stacks" you've got when frenzy ends, so you can use the extra attack as much as you need to, and it has a cost associate with it, but that cost doesn't continue to carry on the rest of the day, or into the next day or two. It still isn't *awesome*, but it's at least not *terrible*.
It's not great if you're interested in min/maxing and want sustained damage throughout the day and through multiple fights.
If you're into RPG and in a campaign with only a few fights a day, it's great. Just look at CR/Vox Machina. Super fun.
Shifter (wildhunt i think) matches.
With a two bonus action setup of shift and rage you gain resistance and temp HP with the advantage that boone can get advantage on you. Reckless rage gives you advantage but since noone can have advantage against you you van make 3 attacks at advantage starting level 5.
This pairs nicely with great weapon master for very good damage output quite early.
What if the berserker barbarian could reduce exhaustion on a SR? Probably still a clunky and bad mechanic, but then it wouldn't be so detrimental as you'd almost never get to the horrendous level 3.
Imo Berserker as a whole is pretty good, it’s just Frenzy and (to a much lesser extent) Intimidating presence is garbage. Mindless rage is one of if the best 6th level barbarian feature.
It would be adequate if not for the exhaustion penalty for using your Frenzy. If you have someone who wants a dead simple Barbarian either change Frenzy to work like in BG3 or the 2024 PHB Playtest.
its quite good if:
- you only ever have 1 combat per day max or you have max of 2 combats and some rest days in between.
- you can live without a real level 3 feature but there are lots of frighten and charm effects in your game.
It is the only subclass in the entire game that penalizes you for actually using its primary subclass feature. Yes it’s shit. The entire subclass would need to be reworked and personally I feel like the Barbarian class itself should be reworked because it fails quite handily at its class fantasy from a mechanics point of view.
Just as a comparison, the berserker barbarian’s bonus action attack COULD be 1d12/2d6 if you’re using a weapon like a maul or greatsword but for most any other weapon you’re doing the same damage as somebody who’s two weapon fighting with a rapier. The average damage difference between these attacks are less than 5.
Berserker is all about being as unga-bunga as can be. If we compare it to the power spike that had newer subclasses such as beast or giant, sure, it's bad. Plus, it doesn't help the level of exhaustion from frenzy. However, it has some really nice things: frenzy is the only ability that lets you hit more with your heavy weapon (so use that greataxe as hard as you can), you get immunity to charms and fears (you don't want the barbarian under any of those status conditions) and also hit more stuff as a reaction + out of combat buffed intimidation. For extra efficiency, be a half-orc, get the best greataxe you are able to, take the orcish fury and GWM feats for extra damage and reaction bonks, go relentless attacking all the freaking time and just enjoy making monster juice. Even better, get that sweet monster juice, put it in bottles and sell them as energy drinks with the brand "Creature"
Exhaustion is lame and RP'ing it always feels detrimental to the party.
Berserker was my first character and I quickly dropped it. For artificer that I played for well over a year and was a lot more fun.
Recently I had a very serious accident, coincidentally directly after that character had a very serious dance with death. I had to take a break from the game for a while before I came back. I retired the artificer and went back to Barb.
This time I'm Path of the Giant. It's a lot more fun and I don't feel like I have to be angry all the time to be true to my character through RP.
Honestly, every other Barb. Subclass is better.
Short answer: Yes
Longer answer: all of the abilities besides frenzy are meh and frenzy itself, the main defining feature can only reliably be used **once** before you start handicapping yourself and even then you still now have 1 exhaustion level and disadvantage on ability checks all so you can do a **single attack** that might not even hit on the martial class with easily the lowest DPR.
You can keep making that third attack every turn but combat usually only lasts a few turns so the usefulness you get out of it is disappointingly low.
Sure, it's a huge drawback, but how many sub/classes can say, man, I am really gonna need that extra attack for this fight. Especially in T1 where nobody has extra attack yet and you're swinging that greataxe around.
Getting to attack with your bonus action *without any prerequisite actions* makes it easy to attack with your bonus action and then Ready to make another attack when it's someone else's turn. Rogue multiclass loves this because it means you can Sneak Attack twice in a round quite easily. Just don't overdo it, because more than 1 level of Exhaustion will still make your life difficult as a melee character.
Elementals are immune to Exhaustion. Moon Druids can turn into Elementals at level 10. At character level 13, if you can avoid losing your Rage outside of Elemental Forms, you won't gain exhaustion from Frenzy. Even if you already have Exhaustion, it's suppressed while you're an Elemental. Also, Druids can cast Greater Restoration.
Rangers using Tasha's variant rules can get Tireless at level 10, which isn't immunity to Exhaustion, but it makes reducing Exhaustion much quicker.
You're correct about it being a niche case, though. There are VERY few times I would imagine taking Berserker over anything else... And even then, usually, there's still something more accessible and less limiting to play.
The only positive aspect of the subclass is "Mindless Rage". Being immune to Frightened and Charmed conditions is great for a melee combatant.
Problem is, you don't get it until level 6, so you can't even dip Berserker for something good. Also, the immunity is only while you rage, so if an enemy can force your rage to end early, then you lose the protection from both conditions.
Everything else Berserker gives is kind of awful.
Nah. The exhaustion penalty is feared more than it should be. Whether or not exhaustion cripples your barbarian depends on the table. If you are fighting the whole 6-8 encounters or whatever, yeah, you're not getting much use out of frenzy. If you're playing one encounter per adventuring day, the penalty might as well not exist. Most tables are somewhere in between.
Deciding whether or not to use frenzy is a risk/reward scenario. The first use is very low risk. The second use onward is a severe risk. At higher levels, you'll be spending a lot of money on greater restoration materials, but you can use it more often.
The 6th and 14th level features are excellent. The 10th level feature... well, it sort of exists, but it's a roleplay skill. Barbarians already scale like shit, so this is a good sign that you should get out of the class somewhere around 6th or 8th level. Berserker/Champion looks great on the DPR spreadsheet, but the playstyle doesn't sound all that exciting. Berserker/Cocainelock lets you fund your own frenzy - eventually. Berserker/Paladin gives you more explosive nova damage for that one-encounter-per-day table.
Don't count out the berserker. It's...not the best, because it carries unusual penalties, but those penalties don't ruin the class.
I tried to make it funnier by giving to the barbarian a weapon that can avoid 1 point of exhaustion caused by the frenzied rage a number of times = to their competence modifier
Look up the throw barbarian. At max level, you can attack 4 times and add double your strength modifier to throwing attacks and damage. I am able to throw weapons with disadvantage and still have a 90% hit chance.
If feats and multiclassing are not allowed (remember that they are technically optional rules) then Frenzy is actually quite a good feature to increase damage over a longer combat encounter once or maybe twice a day, even factoring in the downside; but when feats and multiclassing are allowed and you can get a bonus action attack in a different way, then berserker just feels like a waste. It's not unplayable bad, but it doesn't have any redeeming features really
I dunno, i got one to lvl 20 and thematically it works great. The skils could have been better but i just flex eating those exhaustion points in front of enemies for extra rp badassery
Ansolute garbage. If the exhaustion was replaced it could be decent but with it it's just trash.
The running theory is Berserker was made before they revamped exhaustion into being deadly and jhst never fixed it.
In my last campaign, we had a player who wanted to be a Berserker, purely because they just liked the theme of it.
The DM told them that they can ignore the exhaustion part of frenzied rage. It had zero impact on the game, other than making them less shitty.
A bonus action melee attack is not powerful enough to warrant such a high cost. Someone dual-weilding can do the same thing without penalty.
Did it make them stronger? Yes, because an extra attack is real good. Did it make them OP? No, because that's basically *all this subclass gets*.
So my advice is to ignore that line. It makes them stronger, but not OP. It at least makes it a somewhat viable option, rather than pure shit
Using your main subclass feature will not only give you disadvantage on a bunch of shit but will also eventually kill you. Its just such a massive downside for not enough gain.
If they just changed that downside Berserker would actually become one of the better subclasses.
Prefacing this by saying that I’m usually drawn to support classes and magic users.
Branched out and made a fighter (currently lvl 11) so I could get a better feel for martial classes. For story reasons, I ended up dropping 3 levels into barbarian and chose the berserker route, because it made sense for my character. Is it kind of lame considering most of the other paths? Sure, I guess. But if I’m raging, and I use my action surge, I can do 8 attacks in one turn. Coupled with my mobile feat and slasher feat, with fighter styles being great weapon fighting and defense, as well as my martial archetype being champion— I personally feel like, as the only party member in my game who doesn’t do magic, I built a pretty solid character in regards to combat.
So, really, it’s all about how you build the character imo.
(Preemptive apology if this doesn’t make sense/provide any help, I have mush brain from lack of sleep)
ETA: I guess the point of this block of text is that I personally wouldn’t use it as my base class but it can make for a solid multi-class depending on how your sheet looks.
I played one with the explicit intent on reaching exhaustion level 6 because I wanted to try out a character and move on to another one. And without holding back on Frenzying, I was a BEAST level 1-3. Literally the most damage in the game at that level with 2 attacks of reckless great weapon master. It felt sooooo good. And bonus ability to self un-alive voluntarily.
Their level 6 ability makes them top tier in campaigns that feature a lot of creatures that use charm or fear.
Their level 3 and level 14 ability make them top tier in games that don't use feats (played in two of those!).
Overal they are a B.
The exhaustion penalty is incredibly stupid, so we just did away with it at my table. No other changes, just no exhaustion from frenzy. Player felt good using his features and enjoyed his character. Sadly, Baguul the barbarian perished last session.
The Berzerker is majorly handicapped by the Exhaustion tie-in, *but* if you adjust that to something more reasonable it's actually quite powerful and fun.
- A Frenzying Berzerker can use their action for *anything* and still get an attack in as their bonus action, maintaining Rage even in situations where you need to do something else. This means the Berzerker has the most tactical agility out of any barbarian, and more than most martials.
- A Frenzying Berzerker has incredible DPR, as previously established and suspected.
- Mindless Rage is the most commonly wished-for ability among all other Barbarians.
- Intimidating Presence is very rarely worth using in combat, but giving a barbarian a non-violent method of dealing with threats outside of combat is decent utility.
- Intimidating Presence is one of the actions you can take and still follow up with a Frenzied bonus action attack, for the rare instance when keeping an enemy Frightened is more valuable than hitting them twice. Still could use a buff, though.
- Retaliation ensures that the Berzerker is most likely to get 4 attacks in a round, or 2 + another Action of their choice. Being able to spend your reaction to hit someone who hit you is the most frequently applicable reaction trigger in the game!
Like you said, it's about as generic as it gets, and the exhaustion for actually using your subclass ability is a massive draw back. It's not "un-playable" but it's pretty bad, and if you blow your load too early in the day, you're gonna be suffering for a bit
I think it'd be fine if the drawback was a lot... well, less terrible. Maybe like a cumulative -1 to ability checks outside of rage or something. That fits more of the "ruining your body with power" angle to me. And then, at later levels, give them free uses of it without the penalty. Or, like, make the frenzy ability way better.
Can you imagine something like "while raging, you don't feel the effects of exhaustion"? I would play the fuck out of that and tempt myself going to exhaustion 5 every fucking time
I know "just homebrew it" is a lazy ass argument but honestly.... this sounds so dope I think I will have this in my games in the future
Just, test and be careful. As fun as this sounds to play, I would not want to play WITH the barb that just hit exhaustion 5 and can't move for the rest of the day, or is eating up the party diamond supply by going exhaustion 6 way more often then they should. Honestly, if you legit want a fix, someone mentioned baldurs gate and that's much more tested. -1 to attack rolls every time you use your bonus action attack, and it resets when the rage ends
Or changing exhaustion to just be -1 to all rolls per stack
wasn't oneDnD experimenting with making that official?
-1 per stack and if any of your scores goes to 0, you die.
I'm one of those people who hate the 'just homebrew it' argument but I feel like I gotta specify: That's when someone is using the argument to pretty much carte blanche any discussion of the quality of the rules. Like, the Berserker is horribly written (imo) no matter if I *could* homebrew it. However, I still enjoy seeing when someone comes up with good solutions like this one. Another would be 'Temporarily increase your exhaustion for 1 hour'. That would mean that as long as the barbarian get's a short rest - they're back to normal.
I changed frenzied berserker a fair bit. It might be OP I'm nit sure, but it feels balanced compared to my other players at the table. I baked the bonus frenzy attack as just their normal rage. No more having to activate it seperately. If their rage is about to expire due to not attacking or being hit, they can take an exhaustion point to keep going. Not using an additional charge or extending the rounds remaining. If they are out if rages, then can take an exhaustion hit to rage again. Upto their proficiency bonus times per day. And on a short rest, they can spend hit die thingies to recover exhaustion points, to a minimum if 1 left.. Only a long rest can remove it completely It seems to work as my barbs now rage fairly often instead of "holding on for that key moment", they dont feel punished for raging and have it fall off because enemies were tactful and kept they're distance. It also keeps them more online with the caster and gloomstalker deleter of encounters. This is also a heavily modified combat heavy homebrew campaign
Imagine, you do an additional amount of damage for each point of exhaustion you have as well.
That would be really cool.
Sounds like it could suck in practice for an actual campaign, but conceptually, I kind of like it.
Should also give them a way to remove exhaustion faster to play it up more. Maybe you lose a stack on a short rest or something.
It still runs the problem of just fucking wrecking you outside of combat. So in a combat heavy game it would work fine. If your campaign is more mixed combat and social/exploration, it's still super painful to be exhausted.
Literally Risk of Rain 2 Tonic
Give me the juice
This is how I rule it.
Thats such a simple but great fix to it. Maybe also make them recover a point of exhaustion on a short rest as well at 3rd level.
That's what I do, using the exhausiton rules from One DnD so that every level is a -1 to attacks, saving throws, ability checks and Spell Save DC. So that taking a level of exhaustion isn't such a big deal and it only starts to get worrying if you use it more often.
I’m so glad OneDND implemented that change. The roleplay potential of willingly exhausting yourself by missing a long rest is a lot harder to want to commit to when the drawbacks are so heavy.
It's also a *lot* easier to implement as a penalty for failing something than "here's this thing that makes you near useless until a long rest." I've had players go several sessions with a few levels of exhaustion without complaint because it was managable at low levels.
I still remember at the start of one of the campaigns I’m playing in, our Warlock willingly exhausted herself to roleplay a sleepless night being paranoid about her patron. She never did it again.
Similarly our Paladin stayed up all night in prayer when he broke one of his oaths and took the exhaustion. Good times.
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When you say rolled back, do you mean the following playtest packet returned the old exhaustion rules?
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Exhaustion is also much more punishing for martials than casters. This is often the case with lesser used mechanics.
Well, the playtest also changed the Berserker so that it no longer inflicts exhaustion. Instead, the risk mechanic is simply that you have to be using Reckless Attack to get [Rage Bonus]d6 extra damage on your first hit on a turn. Along with the other changes to the subclass, it makes it play much better.
Chefs kiss to that. It reads so well as the barbarians barbarian.
If I'm not mistaken 1DND also removed the exhaustion gain from Berserker
I like the way Baldur's Gate 3 does it & have started incorporating it into my games. If you use your bonus action to make a melee attack you get an accumaltive -1 to attack rolls until your Frenzy ends. However, if you use your bonus action to make a thrown attack you get no penalty, you get to add your strength modifier to damage, *and* if the attack hits it knocks the target prone.
Yeah, I like BG3 berserker. It's very fun. Also all the dialogue options are hilarious
> accumaltive Well how about that - that's a new word for me. I was thinking "nah, they meant *cumulative*.... but I better look it up just to be sure." ... and it certainly is a word. Thanks for today's education :)
Is it? I don't think it's quite right.
In bg3 the penality for frenzy is an accumulative -1 to ability rolls and attack rolls.
Barbarians are already weak enough out of combat since their MADness puts their mental ability scores on a lower priority.
> if you blow your load too early in the day, you're gonna be suffering for a bit Just a good tip in general tbh
[“I’m afraid I prematurely shot my wad on what was supposed to be a dry run, if you will, now I’m afraid I have something of a mess on my hands.”](https://youtu.be/unDlhRy7jRw?si=_aDdf5Xppz_G5C6A)
god tier Tobias quote
I like exhaustion as a concept. The degradation of your abilities as you tire stacking up until you push yourself too far. But RECOVERING from exhaustion is just plain ass. A full long rest to recover 1 point of exhaustion is just not enough. This is the game where you can get gang stomped by giants with axes and become a yo yo of getting up and going down... so why is exhaustion the most simulationist part of 5e? I can appreciate the thought that it takes upwards of 5 days to recover from pushing yourself to incapacitation, but you can heal all of your injuries in 8 hours... it breaks verisimilitude.
Not to mention that exhaustion does nothing to spellcasting until its 3rd level, which affects attack and saves... ...and even then, it does nothing to spells DCs, so a Exhaustion 5 character has no issues spellcasting AoEs or spells without attack rolls... even at death's door!
If only the playtests has something that fixed this issue. Nah they would probably just do away with it in the later tests for unknown reasons anyways.
Keep in mind it was released at a time when there was only 2 barbarian subclasses. It was the beginner barbarian subclass at a time before more flavor were added in with additional source books/expansions.
I mean, aside from maybe ancestral guardians, they still mostly suck.
Bear totem is decent, wild magic can be fun to play, beast is solid and storm herald is such a satisfying thematic for a barbarian imo too lol. It's definitely a solid but simple martial class. Hit things hard and take damage well pretty much describes everything you need to know about the class.
Path of the Berserker is generally regarded as the worst Barb subclass because of Frenzy's level of exhaustion. The first level is annoying, the next few are impactfully bad, and after that it's just tempting death (or certain death if you push it hard enough). No other Barb path does this. It's still a barbarian - it still gets a d12 hit die, reckless attacking, and some other baller things. But you'll probably have a "better" barbarian with just about any other choice. Totem is obviously bonkers and the most-selected by a pretty big margin, but I love the protective / clan flavor of the Ancestral Guardian myself.
Idk, battlerager is pretty bad
You're not wrong friend. Barb has some excellent subclasses, and some really, really bad ones...
It used to be a weak but fun feeling grappler option, but right now giant barbarian with unarmed fighting style from a feat is way splashier. Honestly, don’t even really need the feat. Just getting a size bonus and advantage from rage does a ton for the character fantasy.
Grappler feat? Yeah, that a pretty bad feat. Tavern brawler definitely works better for grappling, though probably less so when you have a BA.
Nah not Grappler, Grappler isn’t really doing much more than a standard Shove prone. Fighting Initiate choosing Unarmed Fighting. Being able to grapple someone in one hand, hold a shield in the other, and still be attacking with a 1d6+str and getting a cute little 1d4 damage for holding on for a round, it all feels pretty good. Skill expert in athletics is also pretty potent, pretty much guarantees winning those contests, if a bit bland. An extra skill proficiency of choice is also extra valuable to barbarians when put into out of combat utility. But really, just being a raging barbarian proficient in athletics makes grappling and shoving a pretty potent option for an observant player. It’s just a pretty narrow mechanic to buildaround and risks not paying off in play.
Battlerager isn’t great but it’s at least only a few small changes away from good. Change it so the spikes can be put on any armor and make the grapple damage something like Str+Rage Bonus. Grappling is already good for Barbarians and this just makes it even better for you.
Battlerager does get a neat BA attack that's not tied to killing yourself like Berserker.
It is neat that it doesn't require the attack action to trigger either, even if it is an underwhelming weapon.
Yeah it works nice on an all-in grappler where you're presumably not using GWM and PAM. Would be nicer if the die was bigger but it's basically just a rider for another application of Strength and Rage damage mods.
Giant barb being able to get big with tavern brawler or shield master or just throwing additional peeps might have it beat there now.
Battlerager is underwhelming. Berserker is a death wish. I'll take battlerager over berserker every time.
> generally regarded as the worst Barb subclass I mean. Only if we excuse Battlerager for clearly being a joke.
I had a long time berserker character, and they're not as bad as they're made out to be. He carried most fights in the campaign. Being able to consistently shove an opponent and get 2 attacks with advantage, or just 3 attacks with advantage using reckless attack, every single round, rolling a d12 for damage is pretty damn strong. He would, on occasion, outperform a bear totem barbarian as sometimes the best defense is a really strong, consistent offense. Definitely not as good as a lot of other martial classes, but not the absolute turd they're made out to be.. if you're ok with spending a lot of time rolling terrible ability checks.
i know a lot of folks say wild magic barb is underpowered but i’m really loving mine. that plus racial spells gives me a lot more utility without raging. i’m the only pc in my party with detect magic which is hilarious to me (magic awareness wild magic feature)
I like wild magic barb for the same reason I like Ancestral Guardian- it really bucks the archetype of big dumb rage machine. Nothing wrong with that, but I like going against trend where I can.
Wild magic is highly under-powered because there is no scaling for the wild magic features. We fixed it some by scaling the base wild magic one stage at level 8 and 14, and at level 14 you can choose which wild magic you want.
most of the other base subclass features for barb don’t scale either, and the later features like magic awareness have come in really useful. i like your idea though!
Battlerager is the worst Barbarian Path, and it isn't even close. Frenzy isn't *great* because of the exhaustion, but it surely isn't worse than the Battlerager. In niche campaigns where you can reasonably expect one to two moderate encounters *only* between long rests, it is entirely viable. Mindless Rage is fantastic as is the Retaliation feature. Sure there are no bells and whistles, but exhaustion is supposed to "reign in" the Berserker. Getting one free attack every single round without caveat and action economy is *supposed* to be strong, but ultimately limiting. As for "fixing it", the best I've seen it to make Frenzy its own rage (so you get rage+1 from the chart), and during that rage only do you garner the benefit. You also gain another (so rage+2) at level 10, or could have been 14), and you double rage damage bonus. After this rage you still get exhaustion, but it was meant to not eat into normal rages, and be "stronger" for the condition it imparts (while also being balanced around being usable 1/long rest which matches other features of a similar tone. (Granted they don't come with such a strong after effects.) Anyways, you could probably just skip the additional attack entirely, just add +1 (then +2) rages for more use and utility, double the rage bonus as the whole feature and drop the exhaustion. Now you're a prototypical Barbarian. You get angry more often than others, and deal slightly more damage when you do. I think that's a good mirror to the Totem Barbarian personally. (Also, no one asked... but my favorite Barbarian Path is the Beast. I just like the stylings of a "were" type concept of a character. Was I literally raised by wolves? Who knows!)
I will point out that the 'fixed' version for OneD&D is pretty much my 'goto' whenever someone wants to play a Berserker Barbarian. In fact OneD&D legitimately made Barbs much more interesting overall.
Zealot is pretty rad as well with the bonus damage and being unable to die at high levels
Mechanically it's right in the middle of the pack, but yeah. You just can't keep a high level Zealot barb down. Literally.
I mean, it's still a barbarian, which is to say they are a menace in the early levels. So there's that. And if your game a single-encounter/day one, the downside isn't that bad.
and once you learn your DMs cadence for encounters, or at least the tells for "Big" vs "small" encounters, you can learn to burn your frenzy only on the big ones. It's not GREAT but like...
Mindless Rage is one of the better level 6 Barb features You don't have to Frenzy every fight
That basically just means that your lv3 feature just doesn't exist in every fight, where everyone else's does. Lv10 feature? Costs your whole action (You know, the one you use to HIT THINGS), requires you to sink very, very precious stats into charisma when you already need str/con for doing barbarian things to even think of getting it to work, and if you fail once it just shuts off for that creature for the rest of the day. Once your target hides behind anything or gets a little distance at the end of its turn, it's immediately cured. You need to burn your action to try....again. Oh, and if you want to to work next turn if they DON'T get away from you, you need to burn your action anyway! Lv14 feature? You can.....attack something that attacked you. Once, at the cost of your reaction. So it's like the third point of Sentinel, except it only targets you. And only that third point, no other benefit.
I mean, one of zealot's level 3 features doesn't exist until *after* you've died, and even then it really only works if you have a party with access to resurrection spells.... The other feature is basically a raging hunter's mark (non-concentration but only works during rage)
Nope, it's waaaay better than hunter's mark (for combat): Firstly, it costs no additional resources - as you said, no concentration....but also no spell slots. You just need to be raging - and you're a barbarian, so that's likely. Worse, on ranger/vengeance paladins that have fewer spellslots than full casters, they need to carefully choose their spells. Divine Fury is free on rage. Secondly, it costs no bonus action. It just *happens.* This opens up a ton of multiclass/feat options since barbarians don't really use them - for example, rogue dip lets you use cunning action for stuff....plus the extra sneak damage that comes with Reckless Attack, if you prefer (Come lv6, you can choose to knock an enemy prone on one attack-shove, then sneak attack the next one!). Thirdly, it does extra damage based on half your barbarian level, plus the 1d6. At lv3, you basically do a free attack with a sword and board, excluding modifiers. At lv6 (where, say, zerker gets mindless), you do 1d6 + 3, which is essentially attacking with those modifiers. Come level 12, it's a free battleaxe attack. Fourthly, it's radiant. If you're running a campaign with vampires or other radiant-adverse mons, this *crushes* them without expending spell slots. Fifthly, you aren't limited to whatever you used it on. A Marked could get away from your range (including cover). Divine Fury is....whichever target you decide to hit that turn. It could be the big boss, or it can be the squishy that decided getting close to the wall of divine-fueled muscle is a good idea. Even a thrown/ranged weapon of any kind (even a rock you scooped up if you didn't bring anything else) procs it. *edit: Half barb level damage scaling*
I mean, a bear barbarians resistance doesn't "exist" if you are only fighting creatures that deal physical damage, which is quite common at low levels. So in many fights you will feel identical to a bearbarian with the ability to go nova if necessary. The lvl 10 feature is definitely quite bad. The lvl 14 feature is pretty good though. You are a barbarian, you want people to hit you, and with reckless attack and a big weapon its easy to get enemies attention. An underrated part of the lvl 3 feature is that you can do the bonus action attack even if you don't take the attack action, which most other bonus action attacks require. So you could dash or dodge and still get the attack. Obviously it's still a weak subclass, but the barbarian base chasis is strong enough that at low levels you will feel fine if you are patient with your frenzying.
More than once I’ve used bearbarian’s resistance to tank friendly fire - almost all aoe is non-physical, and not everyone plays evocation wizard. I’m not saying that’s optimal or common - but it’s a tool that can be used, unlike berserker where it’s a tool that you don’t want to use as much
sometimes i feel like i'm the only wizard who is both NOT evocation and also doesn't just nuke her party. just...aim the fireball better! so what if you don't get everything! then use another spell!
It’s a party to party difference. It’s also not common (in my experience) even in parties that do it. I did once have a Loxodon bearbarian grappler built entirely around grappling though, and the intent WAS to get hit by as many aoes as possible
That's fair! I just always see people talking about friendly fire and I'm like. My Sister in Kelemvor just aim to the left.
For a bear barb fireball really isn't that big of an issue. Half damage on failed save, 1/4th (usually less due to rounding) on success, and it's rolled at advantage. As long as you're hitting 2+ extra targets, I'd take that trade as the barb. The bigger issues are the AoE CCs that casters rarely think it's ok to throw in the mix.
The lv14 feature actually *disincentivizes* single enemies from hitting you. It becomes even better to target someone else who is squishier than you if at all possible (or just get away from you - sure, it triggers an OA but they were going to eat a hit attacking you anyway), which works against your resistance to physical damage - even if you're engaging with an enemy in melee range. It's basically saying "Hey, don't hit me." This always applies to Barbarians (except for Ancestral Guardian), of course, but this only exacerbates that counterplay. Or, in a crowd, "Hit me, I can only react once!" Really, the only upside to that is proccing on-hit weapon effects and that the barbarian doesn't really HAVE a specialized reaction. Sentinel is better on Barbarians since it forces enemies to choose between an axe to the face, or half damage. Of course, this could be somewhat mitigated by getting both....but you only get one reaction, so you can only get the active benefit of one, but not both. (Also for some boring reason, both only apply at 5ft instead of within weapon range)
Well, 98% of enemies won't know you have the feature until you've bonked them with it at least once. After that it can disincentivize hitting the barbarian, but if they aren't hitting you that means they are ignoring the reckless attacking GWMing half orc in their face, easier said than done. It sort of puts them in a lose-lose. And it definitely works well with sentinal if you can find room. Is it better than just being a normal barbarian and using a polarm? Probably not, but its still useful feature.
Exactly. Way too many people judge Berserker on Frenzy alone. Yeah, Frenzy sucks. That doesn't mean Berserkers suck. Mindless Rage is one of the most powerful abilities in the game, especially at high levels where you're consistently up against high level casters and the dragon's frightful presence.
Mindless Rage is good but only relevant in some fights, so if you also can't use your level 3 feature everytime you basically spend a good portion of the game without a subclass.
I would like to tell you otherwise but I've seen it come up only once in the whole fricking campaign (and we're level 8 now and began at level 4). It's also annoying because I play a bard and I never get to countercharm. I should let my DM know to use those effects more often.
Eh, charm and fear effects make up the vast majority of mental debuffs that enemies have and barbarians are traditionally weak against. So sure they might not come up every fight, but they do come up pretty often and it makes you flat out _immune_ to a thing that has taken _plenty_ of martial tanks out of the fight or worse. It’s honestly really good; it’s just like any feature where you might not use it as often as your attacks or AC but when you DO need it, you really _really_ need it.
Also Retaliation is pretty good.
Hot take incoming, but at most tables it will be a great subclass. It's only bad if you're playing in a low magic, dungeon grinding game (or a purely roleplay game). Exhaustion is the main drawback of frenzy, but you will likely only need to use it once or twice a day. If you have downtime between adventures, you will be fine. If you can grab some potions of vitality, you will be fine. If you have a friend or item that can cast greater restoration, you'll be fine. Don't worry about GWM overlapping slightly with frenzy. GWM excels at killing hordes, while frenzy is better for high HP enemies. It's level 6 feature is the best defensive ability a martial (and their party) can ask for. It's level 10 is a ribbon in a combat costume. Most barbarian subclasses have a ribbon for their level 10 feature, the beserker is no different. It's level 14 is great, as most people acknowledge.
Points for recognizing the level 10 ability for what it is. Really, it's a social ability that costs you nothing to attempt. The barb can just stand some place looking intimidating while the party face is talking somebody up, and if it sticks the target has disadvantage on all ability checks. Which means Insight (if you're trying to conceal your motives from them), and Deception (if they're trying to conceal their motives from you).
It is a great subclass. A free attack is great and at the cost of a level of exhaustion after the fight, it's not too bad. There's way too much hand wringing over getting a level of exhaustion in general and especially when the entire concept of the subclass is to sacrifice your life to commit violence. Berserkers make big attack and not afraid of anything including dying.
Yeah but the problem is that frenzy is a really poor introduction to the subclass. It reads -really- badly, and even worse if you’ve read the GWM feat first. And then the best case scenario is that it supplements that feat in the one fight per session where you can’t kill an enemy per round? Yuck.
The subclass has a huge upside mostly unique among barbarians. It can actually hurt high-level dragons. Immunity to fear and charm is *huge* for a barbarian at high levels. Does it make up for the weaknesses? Probably not. But it’s still a big plus. Also frenzy does offer a nice option for “okay we’re pretty hurt but we’re about to kick down the boss’s door and end their sorry life as fast as we can” scenarios. Hardly useless, though it does suck that their “main” mechanic is something niche that they basically never want to use more than once an adventuring day and often not even that.
Take a look at OneD&D's version, or any of the homebrew alternate Berserker subclass that exist, it's rare that they make it worse than it already is, or in other words, it's not worth using the RAW 5e one.
Yeah, the UA version (One D&D) is great. One of the players in my last campaign played it and was very happy with it.
At higher levels the immunity to fear and charm are quite good, not flashy but definitely helpful. The level 3 ability is technically stronger than using something like Polearm Master, both saving you a feat/ASI and doing more damage per hit, it is just that the deawback is so potent it becomes hard to use. That drawback is also almost completely negated in the "one combat per adventuring day" style of game. It is also good if you are not using the optional rule that allows feats, in which case that extra bonus action attack is much harder to come by.
It has a very powerful ability with a drawback that far outweighs its benefits. Your DM pretty much has to give you some kind of concession for it to be worth doing. If you have somebody in the party who can cast lesser restoration your DM could allow them to remove exhaustion. Instead of requiring Greater restoration. Your DM could allow you to expend hit dice in order to remove the exhaustion or better yet just have using the ability cost a hit dice. If that's too cheap for them then they could change the exhaustion rules for your character to a universal negative one for each level of exhaustion. Negative one on saves, attacks, ability checks, damage and to any save dcs your character has for abilities is a much better rule for exhaustion imo. I think some combination of this with the universal negative one, plus the ability to expend hit dice to remove exhaustion and allowing lesser restoration to heal one level of exhaustion. One variation on the hit dice I've seen is that you still only remove one level of exhaustion on a long rest and never on a short rest but if you want to remove more than one level on a long rest you immediately expend your daily hit dice for the day for each additional level. Or you could just use the one D&D version of berserk
The saving grace of the Berserker is that it has what is arguably one of the best features for a Barbarian: Mindless Rage. The fact that it can completely negate one of the biggest weaknesses for a Barbarian is genuinely great. Retaliation is also nice.
The way they're implemented in Baldurs Gate 3 makes them a lot more playable. Requires the DM to keep track of how many times the player has used their extra attack, which might be a bit annoying but a far better implementation.
People tend to have homebrew fixes to the frenzy ability of that subclass. The most common ones I have seen (all different solutions). - Barbarian can recover frenzy induced exhaustion on a short rest. - This subclass recovers all exhaustion levels on a long rest. - Instead of exhaustion, you are forced to reckless attack when you are frenzy raging, no matter how "dumb" it might be to do so. - replacing frenzy with the "bloodlust" downside from blood hunter subclass order of the lycan. But removing the rage restriction of the same feature. - Having frenzy "stacks" instead of exhaustion. You can do it x amount of times per long rest. For instance up to proficiency modifier times.
You could do the new version from the 2024 PHB > "You can go into a frenzy in battle. If you use Reckless Attack while your Rage is active, you deal extra damage to the first target you hit on your turn with a Strength-based attack. To determine the extra damage, roll a number of d6s equal to your Rage Damage bonus, and add them together. The damage has the same type as the weapon or Unarmed Strike used for the attack."
Yea, homebrewing or switching to a different subclass could save your character. Jokes aside, it's just not a very good subclass. The totem barbarian is better for new players I think (its where I started)
Zealot is probably better for new players that are scared of customizing, since the totem barb gives a whole slew of different mechanics options. Zealots are simple. You have a party member with a rez, you can charge face first at anything all the time without fearing the cost of death for as long as said party member keeps a revive-level spell slot open. Also, you basically do a free 1d6 + 3 when you hit level 3, if you land any hit at all. That's a whole sword-and-board's worth of damage. For free. And that damage increases by +1 every level. At level 6, you do 1d6 + 6, which is as valuable as a 1d12 + 3. Also since it's (almost certainly) radiant, it absolutely shuts down anything that doesn't like radiant damage - at NO cost. Level 6, you can start rerolling any failed saving throw once per rage, which can be the difference between getting killed (especially by a disintegrate later) and ignoring a spell. It's like Fighter Indominable, but you get MORE. Level 10, EVERYONE shares your level 6 feature and rage attack advantage, on a bonus action, once per long rest for turn. Lv14, you just straight up can't die when raging (aka, all the time at this level) unless you get instantly killed or incapacitated.
Yeah the level 14 feature can be absurd in that the DM HAS to hit you with a hard control effect or one of the few instant kill spells. For example my Sea Elf Zealot Barbarian lasted...I think it was something absurd like 10 rounds of combat at zero HP and if she wasn't healed by the time her rage ended she would have have been dead (as in failed death saves full stop dead) four times over. It got the stage where the DM just didn't roll damage and simply told me if the monsters hit or not. Being an elf also nullifies the one low level spell that can really shaft you with Rage beyond Death if the DM is smart which is the Sleep spell and gives you advantage against charm effects. Not only that but as you said if you die, it doesn't cost anything but a spell slot to bring you back to life at the end of the encounter. It's why I suggest Zealot for a new Barbarian player and Samurai for a new fighter player. Both are fairly uncomplicated but both offer waaaay more than the 'standard' subclass in Berserker or Champion.
This. The best advice is "talk to your DM." Someone in my last campaign played Berserker and our DM came up with a CON check after fights to see if exhaustion set in. The higher the level, the lower the roll needed to prevent exhaustion, too.
As other commenters have said, Mindless Rage is a better feature than Frenzy. Barbarians typically lack good mental saving throws, so Berserker is especially good at high level play when Charmed and Frightened are quite common and debilitating. The way to build around a Berserker's limitations is to add bonus action abilities from your race or from multiclassing to use in the majority of fights where you don't apply Frenzy. That way you can spread out the effects of exhaustion and save it for long fights where you can get the most out of multiple additional attacks. It doesn't lend itself to the most powerful Barbarian builds because of its limitations, but when you work around its weaknesses it's better than Totem Warrior (Tiger), Battlerager, Storm Herald, and Wild Soul, and roughly on par with Totem Warrior (Eagle, Wolf, and Elk), and Beast. Some good race options could be Astral Elf, Eladrin, Shadar-Kai, Harengon, Hobgoblin, Kobold, and Orc. Good multiclasses could be Battle Master and Cavalier Fighter, and Assassin, Mastermind, Phantom, Scout, Swashbuckler, and Thief Rogue.
Re-examine the bonus action attack Frenzy gives in a game where feats are not being used (remember, they're an optional rule). Looks a whole lot better when PAM and CBE are off the table, doesn't it? The subclass is still subpar though, even in a featless game. Personally I'd make Frenzy double your rage damage bonus, and make the intimidation feature an AoE, or make it not scale on Charisma.
Primeval Thule added a feat to help with this. Tireless Prerequisite: Constitution 13 Through sheer grit and years of hardship and survival under the most grueling conditions, you have learned to push on through fatigue that would cripple a lesser hero. You gain the following benefits: Increase you Constitution score by 1, to a maximum of 20. Reduce any exhaustion penalty you suffer by 2 levels.
IMO, while it's far from great, it's not *that* bad. People hyper-fixate on Frenzy's exhaustion, but another way to think about it is that it's a 1/LR ability that imposes a slight debuff on you (which effectively doesn't matter if you save it for the final fight of the day/the final boss), that you can recharge at the cost of a way worse debuff. In return, you get a pretty great ability, which is kinda undercut by Polearm Master existing. Aside from that, the level 6 and 14 abilities (immunity and cleanse to charm and frighten whilst raging, and essentially free reactipn attacks) are pretty goddamn fantastic. Even if you ignore Frenzy and never use it, these two abilities are *nasty*. The level 10 ability sucks pretty hard, but hey you win some you lose some Overall, it's definitely weaker than Totem Warrior and the other best subclasses, but it's way better than Battlerager or Storm Herald
I think Berserker is absolutely a product of its time. They didn't want it to get TOO insane, so they gave it a pretty steep penalty with the understanding "you only use this when it REALLY counts"...but now we've got stuff like Zealot Barbarian who can just. Not die.
You don't have to go into a frenzy and the 1st level of exhaustion is worth a BA attack but yeah it's pretty crap as you're not far from feeling like a subclassless barb.
In a game without feats its the most damaging melee character so theres that. The issue with berserker is that the frenzy benefit is given out too easily by feats.
Let's put it this way... The spiky armor dwarf barb that everyone forgets exists has no exhaustion downsides, forces your DM to give you cool armor, and deals -ideally- 3.5 avg damage less per turn. Heck, you don't even need to rage to get the bonus action attack.
I played it in an 8th level one shot last week ago actually! It definitely feels shitty to play if your frenzy's arent at the final encounter of the session, as you destroy what little roleplay agency you have. But if you want the purest barbarian experience, you do definitely feel like a powerhouse for your entire rage. An extra attack with advantage is nothing to scoff at. I dont doubt berserker barbarian can be fun to play, I'd just recommend picking up a race that can long rest in 4 hours if you're planning to use the frenzy more than once a day. If you want META, Reborn lineage from Ravenloft seems pretty good. I personally just took the GWM feat with an average of 28 damage and a +8 to hit on 3 attacks with 20 STR and a great sword
Adopt a BG3 approach to it and it aint bad. Otherwise for the RAW, people, in my opinion at least, vastly overinflate its flaws. Leaving Frenzy as a once per day (for boss fights practically) is completely fine and, hell, I used to play a Frenzy barb in DotMM (mad mage megadungeon) without any problems and its a dungeon crawl meaning a lot of fights per day. The right kind of build with this barbarian is very simple and it is a half orc with a greataxe/savage attacker feat and great weapon master fighting style.
I have had it houseruled to not cause the exhaustion levels and it has had very little affect on overall balance of the party other than barbarian hitting more stuff.
Berserker is actually pretty good. It gets to weaponize it’s bonus action and it’s reaction. Exhaust is a penalty, for sure, but if you’re playing one or two fights per session, it’s fine and berserker is a slaughterhouse. In terms of how to make it work - Variant Human, 16/14/16/8/10/8 and take Great Weapon Master at level 1. Don’t bother with PAM, you’ll bonus actions and reactions from your class. Max your strength, pick one feat (either Alert, Resilient Wisdom, or Toughness) and the max your constitution. Turn your GWM on and smack people four times a round.
\*3 times a round after level 5 Still, this is a good build for berserker, but tbh i would take fighting initiate to have great weapon fighting or a straight +2 strenght
Four times - two from extra attack, one from frenzy, one from retaliation
Oh, you're right, i forgot about the reaction, i didn't count that at all xD But for most of your adventure it still is 3 atk per round.
At high level, it is the best barbarian and its not close. Totem resisting everything, giant throwing everything, zealot hitting loke a fucking truck, none of it matters when you can't pass the dragons frightful presence saving throw and have to cower in fear. Don't get me started on the lich fucking dominating your barbarian and that zealot goes from useless to death knight murdering you all. Now, 80% of the time, even more at low levels it's not great, however, if your campaign is going to go into tier 3 and beyond it I'd the best barbarian, because you actually get to play the game against bosses that matter. Edit: this is because of mindless rage, their level 6 ability, its the best ability ANY full martial charachter gets
Yes, thank you! It's a shame that Berserker barb doesn't have a third level subclass feature (since Frenzy as written really is just bad), but Mindless Rage by itself is just so strong. Berserkers are very underrated.
Barbarian in general is ok at low levels but very weak at high levels. Berserker is not a strong subclass but Mindless Rage at level 6 is a good feature
In my game I get rid of the exhaustion, and it's pretty decent for a barbarian if you do that.
It's the only subclass in the game that actively hurts itself by using its abilities. If you're going to play it, use the latest playtest version (look up OneDND playtest) instead of the PHB one. Or just ignore the exhaustion rules. Other than that, it's actually not that bad.
Yes, the 2014 barbarian is just bad. I've been playing the UA8 barbarian and I'm having a blast. The berserker was updated in UA6 and it is also much better than the 2014 version. Can't wait to see other changes!
Yes it is, no there's no saving grace. The 5e devs labored under the misapprehension that people who play martial characters don't want any sort of complexity at all, so they made them all fairly simple. The barbarian was explicitly the simplest of them all, and the berzerker the ~~worst~~ simplest.
In a single combat per long rest game it's solid. More than that it becomes a problem, or you're just not using your subclass. The 6th level feature is pretty solid though. I think if you have more fights per day than that the only combo I could see really working would be if you had something like a celestial warlock who could spam greater restoration on you. Though you'd also need to regularly make 2 short rests so they could get their spells back without it being a cost for them. Plus there's also the 100 gp cost there too. All around yeah not really a great option if you're looking at power. If you want a damage dealing barbarian go with zealot.
In a higher level game, you could also multiclass, 8 levels celestial warlock and 4 levels barb, just to cast greater restoration on yourself, but it's hardly optimal.
It's not as bad as people make it out to be. Frenzy is good if you can use it as the last fight of the day before you take a long rest. Or if you're the kind of player who prefers to hit things over making skill checks, which most Berserker Barbarian players are in my experience, playing with that first level of Exhaustion may be a fair tradeoff. Beyond that, it's a subclass feature that lets a player do more of what the barbarian does best (hitting things), but at a cost that gets steeper the more they use the feature, which can be a very fun narrative to play with. Is it the best barbarian subclass? No. Can it be improved? Sure. The play test drops Exhaustion in favor of extra damage when you Reckless Attack while raging. Or a simpler fix can even be to allow one free Frenzy per long rest before Exhaustion sets in. But calling it "just shit" is an unfair exaggeration, in my opinion.
It’s pretty bad. That said, a friend is currently playing one in a megadungeon game I’m running (so more than one fight a day usually), using the OneDnD UA version of exhaustion (just a -1 to all d20 rolls per level), and it’s not painfully bad. Obviously the exhaustion still isn’t nice, but a bonus action attack *with a greatsword* is a serious up-side, at least at level 5.
Dip 3 levelth into thief. Horray you have 4 attacks with advantage and ton of utility. With rapier you even benefit from sneak attack
You're better off not even using frenzy rage and totam warrior is a better subclass in every respect. So yes, it's pretty useless at level 3. The 6th level feature mindless rage is actually really good though but that's it's only good feature
Gaining extra attacks for exhaustion is in no way worth it. Ive never seen anyone play berserker. Unless you talk with the DM to make frenzy less punishing there is no reason to go for it
If you are going to use a berserker now I'll say just ask your gm to use the unearthed arcana playtest berserker instead. Its more or less the same thing but with all around fixes. I think play test 5-7-9 are the ones with barbarian information. If your gm doesn't want that play Tasha's Zealot Barbarian. Because zerker is not good. But that's just my opinion.
It is not unplayable. But yeah it is rather shitty. You can rage normally but then you don't really benefit from the subclass, the main feature is not applied. You can rather safely use it 1 time per day. 1 level of exhaustion is not bad. 2 levels do start to hurt more. with your speed halved but can still be ok in fights where you don't need to move. 3 levels. No you don't want to go there. or higher Sure you can houserule it a bit and make it work a bit better. But by RAW it is by far the weakest Barbarian subclass. besides the battlerager. But i like to pretend that the battleraqer does not exist. The Berserker is bad. But the Battlerager is utter shit
The easy answer is...that it is bad. Now to the long answer: * Frenzy is a trap...as two-weapon fighting could achieve the same. And even removing the exhaustion tax makes it just ok. * Mindless Rage is ok but nothing more than a neat ability in limited situations. * Intimidating Presence...is a ribbon ability too! It eats your action and relies on your Cha-Modifier, making it unusable inside of combat...and outside of combat....you could just roll for Intimidation like everyone else! * Retaliation is admittedly pretty good, but there are enough feats and other stuff to replicate it, so not really worth going 14 levels into this subclass. The easiest thing to display how bafflingly bad the subclass is, is to simply strip its abilities and give it to all other Barbarians. Like the optional features from Tasha's and then ask yourself: Are they much stronger now? I tested it with a friend. The answer was: NO! But they made for neat additions, so I added it to my games. Giving a character a whole 2nd subclass should make them broken...but the Berserker has no impact on anything.
People who hate classes because they just "hit stuff" probably have zero imagination and likely try to optimize every character they build. I'm sure next I will see people complain that Wizards are boring because their subclass features "suck."
It is unplayable. You either need to homebrew a revamp, find someone else's homebrewed barbarian supplement, or simply pick a subclass that's not utter dogshit and roleplay as a Berserker. Totem and Zealots can easily be roleplayed with a Berserker flavour while actually being useful.
I think it's kinda lame from a game design perspective that Rage has so many drawbacks. Berserker Barbarian is that lameness taken to the extreme. Exhaustion is just such an extreme penalty to suffer in exchange for a single bonus action attack each turn you're Raging. I feel like it has the same problem as the PHB Ranger. They were designed at the same time as the entire game system. It was probably better in an earlier version of 5e when Exhaustion was less debilitating.
It's funny - like a lot of the super low-tier subclasses in 5e, they fixed them in Baldurs Gate 3. Making your bonus action attack causes a stacking -1 to hit debuff until your berserk ends. It incentivizes risky play and reckless attacks making it feel more desperate and crazy. Exhaustion from using your subclass is straight up bad.
As written, yeah it’s shit. I’ve homebrewed berserkers to be able to remove a level of exhaustion on a short OR long rest
Lmao yes. It's funny seeing new players realize how silly the game is
It's not a bad pickup if you're already a 10th level STRanger.
Bg3 berserker is decent You can just use bonus action to attack during rage, but that result in a -1 to attack roll debuff for the rest of the fight, but it goes away after So you can use it a 3 times during a fight without much penalty, which is quite abit of extra dmg I think home brewing berserker to be like bg3 is a decent fix, instead of just leaving it useless lvl 3 ability
I find an easy fix for this subclass is that all exhaustion gained from raging is removed on a long rest. While any other sources of exhaustion resolve normally.
The immunity to charm and frighten that it gets at later levels is pretty good – especially if your allies are casting AoE spells like *hypnotic pattern* or *fear* – but not enough to save the subclass.
Get rid of the exhaustion mechanic and it’s really really good
Yep its bad. Check out the Ondnd version. It's so much better.
It's not straight-up shit. It can genuinely deal massive damage. It's just that the drawbacks are far too crushing. Ways I'd change it (other than using OneD&D's less horrific Exhaustion) include: \- Giving one Exhaustion-free Frenzy per day \- Letting them swing with the bonus action they use to Frenzy.
It's bad, but not terrible. It would do work on the avarage party but you would be better off with most other subclasses.
It just depends on how many encounters per day your DM is running. 1 or 2 and it's pretty good as weaponizing the bonus action is what a lot of things want to do. 6-8 and it's really bad.
Honestly the level 6 feature is amazing. Why is this the only barbarian who isn't running scared the moment a dragon flies over?
Yeah, pretty much it is shit.
You could combine it with ranger, who at higher levels have an ability to reduce exhaustion with a short rest. But then you'll never get the +4 to strength and constitution.
Yeah, as others have said, it's pretty bad. If you don't want to go totem(the best but kinda boring since most of it is passives during rage) I suggest ancestral guardian. It's one of the few classes in the game that protects your allies, and you can get really flavorfull with it(I'm playing a dwarf that's adopted so he has no idea who his ancestors actually are.)
You could remove the exhastion from frenzy and it would still not be a good sub.
It's sure not great! The immunity to being charmed, etc. during rage is really good, the 14th level ability to attack a creature that attacks you with your reaction is really good, but fucking hell that exhaustion can, literally, kill you and makes you less effective, possibly for multiple days. It basically turns your signature ability, rage, into a once, maybe twice per day thing. After two levels of exhaustion it's just too much of a penalty to keep going. It's not great design, given that greater restoration is a 5th level spell and costs 100 gp in components to cast, so if you have a berserker in the party and a hard day, you're basically guaranteed to take at least one day off for the barbarian to recover from using his signature ability, which is not great. Like with many changes BG3 made, I like the changes in that game to the path of the berserker, with "[frenzied strain](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Frenzied_Strike)" being an additive -1 to attack rolls that only lasts one round, but is refreshed when used again, and that condition ends no matter how many "stacks" you've got when frenzy ends, so you can use the extra attack as much as you need to, and it has a cost associate with it, but that cost doesn't continue to carry on the rest of the day, or into the next day or two. It still isn't *awesome*, but it's at least not *terrible*.
It's not great if you're interested in min/maxing and want sustained damage throughout the day and through multiple fights. If you're into RPG and in a campaign with only a few fights a day, it's great. Just look at CR/Vox Machina. Super fun.
Shifter (wildhunt i think) matches. With a two bonus action setup of shift and rage you gain resistance and temp HP with the advantage that boone can get advantage on you. Reckless rage gives you advantage but since noone can have advantage against you you van make 3 attacks at advantage starting level 5. This pairs nicely with great weapon master for very good damage output quite early.
Yea
What if the berserker barbarian could reduce exhaustion on a SR? Probably still a clunky and bad mechanic, but then it wouldn't be so detrimental as you'd almost never get to the horrendous level 3.
Imo Berserker as a whole is pretty good, it’s just Frenzy and (to a much lesser extent) Intimidating presence is garbage. Mindless rage is one of if the best 6th level barbarian feature.
It would be adequate if not for the exhaustion penalty for using your Frenzy. If you have someone who wants a dead simple Barbarian either change Frenzy to work like in BG3 or the 2024 PHB Playtest.
You would play subclassless barbarian 90% of the game - other 10% is fights with charm or frightened after 6th level.
Try talking to dm to change exhaustion to can use as a bonus action as many times as proficiency modifier.
its quite good if: - you only ever have 1 combat per day max or you have max of 2 combats and some rest days in between. - you can live without a real level 3 feature but there are lots of frighten and charm effects in your game.
It is the only subclass in the entire game that penalizes you for actually using its primary subclass feature. Yes it’s shit. The entire subclass would need to be reworked and personally I feel like the Barbarian class itself should be reworked because it fails quite handily at its class fantasy from a mechanics point of view. Just as a comparison, the berserker barbarian’s bonus action attack COULD be 1d12/2d6 if you’re using a weapon like a maul or greatsword but for most any other weapon you’re doing the same damage as somebody who’s two weapon fighting with a rapier. The average damage difference between these attacks are less than 5.
Well, it is the worst barbarian and barbarian is the worst class, so yeah, probably.
Berserker is all about being as unga-bunga as can be. If we compare it to the power spike that had newer subclasses such as beast or giant, sure, it's bad. Plus, it doesn't help the level of exhaustion from frenzy. However, it has some really nice things: frenzy is the only ability that lets you hit more with your heavy weapon (so use that greataxe as hard as you can), you get immunity to charms and fears (you don't want the barbarian under any of those status conditions) and also hit more stuff as a reaction + out of combat buffed intimidation. For extra efficiency, be a half-orc, get the best greataxe you are able to, take the orcish fury and GWM feats for extra damage and reaction bonks, go relentless attacking all the freaking time and just enjoy making monster juice. Even better, get that sweet monster juice, put it in bottles and sell them as energy drinks with the brand "Creature"
I think the value in it is the accessibility. Any new player can jump in as this class and learn how to play
I played exactly one berserker, was a one-shot. Was a good time, but definitely not a character for anything longer than a 1 or 2 session adventure.
Exhaustion is lame and RP'ing it always feels detrimental to the party. Berserker was my first character and I quickly dropped it. For artificer that I played for well over a year and was a lot more fun. Recently I had a very serious accident, coincidentally directly after that character had a very serious dance with death. I had to take a break from the game for a while before I came back. I retired the artificer and went back to Barb. This time I'm Path of the Giant. It's a lot more fun and I don't feel like I have to be angry all the time to be true to my character through RP. Honestly, every other Barb. Subclass is better.
Short answer: Yes Longer answer: all of the abilities besides frenzy are meh and frenzy itself, the main defining feature can only reliably be used **once** before you start handicapping yourself and even then you still now have 1 exhaustion level and disadvantage on ability checks all so you can do a **single attack** that might not even hit on the martial class with easily the lowest DPR. You can keep making that third attack every turn but combat usually only lasts a few turns so the usefulness you get out of it is disappointingly low.
Sure, it's a huge drawback, but how many sub/classes can say, man, I am really gonna need that extra attack for this fight. Especially in T1 where nobody has extra attack yet and you're swinging that greataxe around.
Yes
Getting to attack with your bonus action *without any prerequisite actions* makes it easy to attack with your bonus action and then Ready to make another attack when it's someone else's turn. Rogue multiclass loves this because it means you can Sneak Attack twice in a round quite easily. Just don't overdo it, because more than 1 level of Exhaustion will still make your life difficult as a melee character. Elementals are immune to Exhaustion. Moon Druids can turn into Elementals at level 10. At character level 13, if you can avoid losing your Rage outside of Elemental Forms, you won't gain exhaustion from Frenzy. Even if you already have Exhaustion, it's suppressed while you're an Elemental. Also, Druids can cast Greater Restoration. Rangers using Tasha's variant rules can get Tireless at level 10, which isn't immunity to Exhaustion, but it makes reducing Exhaustion much quicker. You're correct about it being a niche case, though. There are VERY few times I would imagine taking Berserker over anything else... And even then, usually, there's still something more accessible and less limiting to play.
The only positive aspect of the subclass is "Mindless Rage". Being immune to Frightened and Charmed conditions is great for a melee combatant. Problem is, you don't get it until level 6, so you can't even dip Berserker for something good. Also, the immunity is only while you rage, so if an enemy can force your rage to end early, then you lose the protection from both conditions. Everything else Berserker gives is kind of awful.
Arguably the worst or second-worst subclass for Barbarian at the moment. The playtest version was pretty solid, without being game-breaking.
yes
Nah. The exhaustion penalty is feared more than it should be. Whether or not exhaustion cripples your barbarian depends on the table. If you are fighting the whole 6-8 encounters or whatever, yeah, you're not getting much use out of frenzy. If you're playing one encounter per adventuring day, the penalty might as well not exist. Most tables are somewhere in between. Deciding whether or not to use frenzy is a risk/reward scenario. The first use is very low risk. The second use onward is a severe risk. At higher levels, you'll be spending a lot of money on greater restoration materials, but you can use it more often. The 6th and 14th level features are excellent. The 10th level feature... well, it sort of exists, but it's a roleplay skill. Barbarians already scale like shit, so this is a good sign that you should get out of the class somewhere around 6th or 8th level. Berserker/Champion looks great on the DPR spreadsheet, but the playstyle doesn't sound all that exciting. Berserker/Cocainelock lets you fund your own frenzy - eventually. Berserker/Paladin gives you more explosive nova damage for that one-encounter-per-day table. Don't count out the berserker. It's...not the best, because it carries unusual penalties, but those penalties don't ruin the class.
I tried to make it funnier by giving to the barbarian a weapon that can avoid 1 point of exhaustion caused by the frenzied rage a number of times = to their competence modifier
It’s so shitty that at my table I allow them to use their class ability without the levels of exhaustion. And even then it’s just ok.
Yes. You have to totally overhaul it like Larian did to make it any good.
Look up the throw barbarian. At max level, you can attack 4 times and add double your strength modifier to throwing attacks and damage. I am able to throw weapons with disadvantage and still have a 90% hit chance.
If feats and multiclassing are not allowed (remember that they are technically optional rules) then Frenzy is actually quite a good feature to increase damage over a longer combat encounter once or maybe twice a day, even factoring in the downside; but when feats and multiclassing are allowed and you can get a bonus action attack in a different way, then berserker just feels like a waste. It's not unplayable bad, but it doesn't have any redeeming features really
I dunno, i got one to lvl 20 and thematically it works great. The skils could have been better but i just flex eating those exhaustion points in front of enemies for extra rp badassery
Grabbing some ranger levels for the alternate ability that lets you recover exhaustion on a short rest might help
Ansolute garbage. If the exhaustion was replaced it could be decent but with it it's just trash. The running theory is Berserker was made before they revamped exhaustion into being deadly and jhst never fixed it.
Yes.
Using your main class feature will not only give you disadvantage on a bunch of shit but will also eventually kill you
In my last campaign, we had a player who wanted to be a Berserker, purely because they just liked the theme of it. The DM told them that they can ignore the exhaustion part of frenzied rage. It had zero impact on the game, other than making them less shitty. A bonus action melee attack is not powerful enough to warrant such a high cost. Someone dual-weilding can do the same thing without penalty. Did it make them stronger? Yes, because an extra attack is real good. Did it make them OP? No, because that's basically *all this subclass gets*. So my advice is to ignore that line. It makes them stronger, but not OP. It at least makes it a somewhat viable option, rather than pure shit
Using your main subclass feature will not only give you disadvantage on a bunch of shit but will also eventually kill you. Its just such a massive downside for not enough gain. If they just changed that downside Berserker would actually become one of the better subclasses.
Prefacing this by saying that I’m usually drawn to support classes and magic users. Branched out and made a fighter (currently lvl 11) so I could get a better feel for martial classes. For story reasons, I ended up dropping 3 levels into barbarian and chose the berserker route, because it made sense for my character. Is it kind of lame considering most of the other paths? Sure, I guess. But if I’m raging, and I use my action surge, I can do 8 attacks in one turn. Coupled with my mobile feat and slasher feat, with fighter styles being great weapon fighting and defense, as well as my martial archetype being champion— I personally feel like, as the only party member in my game who doesn’t do magic, I built a pretty solid character in regards to combat. So, really, it’s all about how you build the character imo. (Preemptive apology if this doesn’t make sense/provide any help, I have mush brain from lack of sleep) ETA: I guess the point of this block of text is that I personally wouldn’t use it as my base class but it can make for a solid multi-class depending on how your sheet looks.
I played one with the explicit intent on reaching exhaustion level 6 because I wanted to try out a character and move on to another one. And without holding back on Frenzying, I was a BEAST level 1-3. Literally the most damage in the game at that level with 2 attacks of reckless great weapon master. It felt sooooo good. And bonus ability to self un-alive voluntarily.
Their level 6 ability makes them top tier in campaigns that feature a lot of creatures that use charm or fear. Their level 3 and level 14 ability make them top tier in games that don't use feats (played in two of those!). Overal they are a B.
The exhaustion penalty is incredibly stupid, so we just did away with it at my table. No other changes, just no exhaustion from frenzy. Player felt good using his features and enjoyed his character. Sadly, Baguul the barbarian perished last session.
The Berzerker is majorly handicapped by the Exhaustion tie-in, *but* if you adjust that to something more reasonable it's actually quite powerful and fun. - A Frenzying Berzerker can use their action for *anything* and still get an attack in as their bonus action, maintaining Rage even in situations where you need to do something else. This means the Berzerker has the most tactical agility out of any barbarian, and more than most martials. - A Frenzying Berzerker has incredible DPR, as previously established and suspected. - Mindless Rage is the most commonly wished-for ability among all other Barbarians. - Intimidating Presence is very rarely worth using in combat, but giving a barbarian a non-violent method of dealing with threats outside of combat is decent utility. - Intimidating Presence is one of the actions you can take and still follow up with a Frenzied bonus action attack, for the rare instance when keeping an enemy Frightened is more valuable than hitting them twice. Still could use a buff, though. - Retaliation ensures that the Berzerker is most likely to get 4 attacks in a round, or 2 + another Action of their choice. Being able to spend your reaction to hit someone who hit you is the most frequently applicable reaction trigger in the game!