Playtest 8 will probably be remembered mostly for the changes it brought to the Monk, but the Barbarian also saw basically one major change (along with getting a single Rage back on a short rest - which is honestly a pretty big deal but doesn't really warrant too much in-depth discussion,) which is the removal of Brutal Critical and its replacement with Brutal Strikes.
First, I think we should talk about the implications of Brutal Critical's removal.
In the 2014 version of the class, Barbarians get to deal extra damage when they land a critical hit. At level 9, this adds an additional weapon damage die (after the normal doubling for a critical hit, and at levels 13 and 17, you add one more to that.
This did two major things:
First, it made critical hits more rewarding for a Barbarian.
Second, it incentivized using weapons with the highest damage die you could get your hands on.
While the difference is for certain subtle, Greatswords and Mauls typically have a higher average damage roll than a Greataxe, even though all three weapons have the same maximum roll. 1d12 has a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 12, while 2d6 has a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 12, and thus the average damage for a Greataxe (before any flat bonuses) is 6.5, while for the other weapons it's 7 (the most famous "average roll" for a set of dice in all of gaming, lucky number 7).
But, with a Barbarian, thanks to Brutal Critical, on a crit, your Greataxe was going to do significantly more - at level 9, a Greataxe is dealing 3d12 (or 19.5 on average) while a Maul is doing 5d6 (18.5). This gap expands as you get to higher Brutal Critical levels - 4d12 versus 6d6 (26 versus 21) and then 5d12 versus 7d6 (32.5 versus 24.5).
Now, I've done some napkin math on this and it turns out that even though your crits start to deal significantly more damage with a Greataxe, because crits are relatively rare, this benefit doesn't really kick in until you get the final Brutal Critical bonus (though I should note that I was not taking Advantage into account here - and Brutal Critical is one of the ways the game tries to incentivize Barbarians making Reckless Attacks).
But this incentive to use these sorts of weapons disappears now that Brutal Critical goes away. I don't think that means the death of the Greataxe, though, as players might want the high damage combined with the Cleave mastery, which neither the Maul nor Greatsword provide (though more and more I'm finding myself drawn to using polearms on anyone using a two-handed weapon, so you might just go for a Halberd).
Frankly, for maximizing damage, I actually think that Barbarians in 2024 and beyond are likely going to actually prefer fighting with light weapons - specifically using one with Nick in the off-hand. Even at 1st level, your Rage Bonus is granting +2 to the damage of that off-hand weapon, so without any two-weapon fighting style, you're still doing on average 5.5 damage with a nonmagical handaxe (two main-hand light weapon attacks are likely dealing 8.5 damage per hit while a Greataxe is doing 11.5, so... we're pretty close to balanced until we start getting magic weapons and a higher rage bonus).
But let's talk about what Brutal Strikes does.
The main goal, I think, of this new feature, is to give Barbarians a more reliable boost. Even with advantage from a Reckless Attack, you're still only rolling a natural 20 about 9.75% of the time.
Brutal Strikes, gained at level 9, is defined as the following:
If you use Reckless Attack, you can forgo Advantage on the next attack roll you make on your turn with a Strength-based attack. If that attack hits, the target takes 1d10 damage of the same type dealt by the weapon or Unarmed Strike, and you can cause one Brutal Strike effect of your choice, from the following options:
Forceful Blow: the target is pushed 15 feet straight away from you. You can then Move up to half your Speed straight toward the target without provoking opportunity attacks.
Hamstring Blow: The target's Speed is reduced by 15 feet until the start of your next turn.
Let's break that down:
First off, as a reminder, Reckless Attack officially triggers when you make your first attack on your turn, allowing you to choose to gain advantage on Strength-based attacks until the start of your next turn, in exchange for all attacks made against you during that time having advantage.
Thus, the attack on which you are forgoing Advantage will be the triggering attack. This means you can only really use a Brutal Strike once per turn.
This also means that if that attack misses, you get no benefit from this.
We should also note, here, that it says that to use Brutal Strike, you "forgo Advantage on the next attack roll you make." This does not specify that this is only the advantage granted by Reckless Attack. So, if you were, say, flanking or attacking a prone target, you could not use Reckless Attack to get Brutal Strike while still being able to attack with advantage. Any time you make a Brutal Strike, you are at best rolling straight (and you might be doing so with Disadvantage, such as if it's invisible. If you're forgoing Advantage, you won't have anything to cancel out the Disadvantage).
So, in a bizarre way, this is going to be a feature that is more reliable to use, but which makes your attacks less reliable. If you have a 50% chance to hit a target (say you have an attack bonus of +9 and the target has an AC of 20) Reckless Attack would normally give you a 75% chance to hit them. Here, we're remaining at that 50%.
But, we're also giving ourselves an extra d10 of damage.
Here, again, I think there's a subtle encouragement to dual-wield as a Barbarian. Imagine the following scenario:
If I have a Handaxe in my main hand and I attack Recklessly, (and I have a +5 to Strength and +4 Proficiency bonus and my target has an AC of 20) I've got a 75% chance to hit. The damage I deal with this nonmagical handaxe (because apparently my DM is a hardass and hasn't given me a magic weapon despite being level 9) is, on average, 1d6+8, or 11.5. So, we get 75% of 11.5, which is 8.625, and add 3.5x9.75% for the extra damage on a crit, which is .34125, and we get an average of about 8.97 damage with this first attack.
If we instead make a Brutal Strike, we've got a 50% chance to hit, but our damage is now 1d6+1d10+8, or 17, or 8.5, plus a 1-in-20 chance to add 9 (1d6+1d10) to that, or .45 damage, giving us a total average damage of 8.95 damage with that first attack - which is only .02 damage off on average (basically negligible) and we also get a powerful secondary effect.
The reasons I think this encourages dual-wielding is twofold:
The first is that weapons that deal more damage are going to make critting more attractive - the extra d10 of damage doesn't thrill me as much with Brutal Strike if my weapon would already be dealing 1d10 more on a crit.
Also, if I'm dual-wielding, I'm going to be getting two additional attacks that will benefit from Advantage, rather than just one.
Honestly, we could look into the math of this in a lot of scenarios.
The caveat to this math is that, at this level, a monster with an AC of 20 is pretty rare - we're probably going to get a higher chance to hit overall, which dilutes the power of critical hits and will favor Brutal Strike (which of course can still crit, but is not reliant on advantage to get that extra damage).
Like Brutal Critical, Brutal Strike gets two improvements at levels 13 and 17.
At 13, you get two new options for your Brutal Strike:
Staggering Blow gives the target Disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes, and it can't make Opportunity Attacks until the start of your next turn.
Curiously, I think technically, as written, there's no expiration to this saving throw effect - meaning that if the monster flees before it needs to make a saving throw, it might have disadvantage the next time you face it - maybe even years later. I think realistically we should just make this until the start of your next turn.
Sundering Blow gives the next attack roll made by someone other than you against the target a bonus to the attack equal to your Rage Damage.
This is interesting, as I think it might be one of the few times a class feature gives a flat bonus to an attack roll rather than rolling a die or just granting advantage.
At 17, the improvement is simpler: the bonus damage of a Brutal Strike increases to 2d10. At this stage I think it's almost always going to be more overall damage than the higher chance to hit and crit you get with advantage, perhaps unless you're using a weapon that has a lot of extra damage dice, like the Adz of Annam.
And really, that's kind of the point. Brutal Critical encouraged you to go for critical hits, but even if you used something like a Butcher's Bib or multiclassed into Champion Fighter, the 19% chance to deal an extra 3d12 damage is probably not going to be as good as a 60% to deal an extra 2d10 (though they're close) and the secondary effects make any rare cases in which the damage should swing the other way still make this a more worthwhile feature.
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