I don't know about others, but in games that I play there are pretty much always 2 people in melee, and usually at least one more there part of the time. So let's start with Totem Warrior (Wolf). Which implies the Berserker should be, overall, better in the combat pillar-especially in the offense department. If I'm interpreting this correctly, a Berserker is supposed to be the more straightforward aggressive combat-oriented barbarian, while Totem Warrior is supposed to have some more utility. Plus, you gain the ability to cast beast sense and speak with animals as rituals. Totem Warrior (Wolf) – Flanking allies gain advantage on melee attacks against your foes. That means we can ignore those levels and focus entirely on the features granted at 3rd level (and their continued relevance as the character levels).īerserker – When entering a rage, choose to gain ability to use bonus actions on subsequent turns to make a single additional attack-then gain a level of Exhaustion at end of rage. You can't really compare those level mathematically, but it feels like a good fit. So, if you just look at those levels, they seem more or less balanced. I'd say it's a very good balance at this level. When the heck would you even want to use that? (Rhetorical question-we can all think of corner cases.) In general, the Berserker is the one who wants to get up in the bad guy's face-not keep him away.Īt 14th Level, they both come out with some nice options. The Berserker's feature, on the other hand, doesn't even make sense. While commune with nature isn't the best divination in the book, it provides some good utility. the Eagle Warrior being less likely to be surprised in the dark (which isn't a bad feature either).Īt 10th level, I think the Totem Warrior is the clear winner. They get a nice situational combat feature, vs. Totem Warrior (Wolf) – Use bonus action to automatically knock Large or smaller creature prone when you hit it in melee.Īt 6th level, the Berserker seems to come out ahead. Totem Warrior – Commune with nature as a ritual.īerserker – Reaction to attack adjacent creature that damages you. Totem Warrior (Eagle) – Dim light doesn't impose disadvantage on Wis (Perception).īerserker – Use actions to possibly frighten someone and keep them frightened for a short time, then they are immune for the rest of the day. This generally means I'm going for offensive combat features.īerserker – Immune to charmed and frightened while raging suppressed if already active. I'm also planning with what I see as the easiest to compare Totem Warrior features, where possible. Based on what I've experienced and what I hear from others, I'm going to say most combats run 3 rounds (we might push that to 4 for purposes of raging combats). I'm starting with standard assumptions of a 6-8 encounter, 2 short rest adventuring day. But does that make it too good? Beats me. That's just how I like to roll when I house rule.įor instance, the simplest house rule is just to eliminate the exhaustion from frenzy. The kind of things that fit in a single sentence. Something that involves one, or at most two, straightforward house rules.

I'm looking for some sort of extremely simple change I can make to the Frenzy feature which will make me happy about the balance. What I'm wanting to know is what the consensus is about how much weaker Berserker is than Totem Warrior, and what sort of change would be too much. This is intended to be a thread about raw, by the book, standard assumptions, subclass effectiveness comparisons. I realize that people have various preferred role-playing styles, and value different non-mechanical aspects of characters.

5e barbarian toem wolf