Yes, I'm doing a build/damage calculation for a homebrewed subclass!
As a note, I think that I'm already altering the design slightly: I love the flavor of Raging Hurl, the 6th level feature (see the previous post for a breakdown of the subclass as a whole,) but it's a little over-designed and fiddly.
Thus, I think I'm going to go with the alternative that I proposed in that previous post and switch it to something simpler:
Level 6: Enraged Manipulation:
While you are in a Rage, creatures have disadvantage on their saving throws against your attempts to Grapple or Shove them with an Unarmed Strike.
Now, that could make my life calculating damage a little harder, given that the Grappler feat gives us advantage on attacks against grappled targets, and so we would need to figure out how likely it is that the Death Knight gets grappled by us. Luckily, we have an out: we just use Reckless Attack every turn so that everything has advantage, whether we are grappling the Death Knight or not. Grappling would still have great utility, allowing us to keep the DK from our allies and even maybe drag them off of a steed, assuming they don't Legendary Resistance out of our grapples.
Still, we'll just assume we're hitting it with our unarmed strikes, and maybe making a grapple attempt one one attack each turn with the Grappler feat, but focusing more on damage.
Stats:
This is simple: we start off with 17 in Strength and then whatever we need for good Dex and Con. We can even kind of dump Wisdom a bit if we just want to rely on Primal Knowledge for the big Wisdom checks.
Feats:
Here's where we're going to need to be creative. Typical Barbarian feats like Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, and even Dual Wielding don't work with this build. Now, the obvious one to take is Grappler. We could just cap Strength at level 8, and thus be able to boost our Dex and Con more at levels 12 and 16 if we go up that high later on, but I might instead take something like Mage Slayer and then figure out whether to split an ASI at 12 or find one last Strength-boosting feat. For the purposes of this white-room test, it'd be better to just cap things, but I'm going to say we go Mage Slayer as a more realistic choice in a long campaign. Sentinel could also be a good option as further control. That means only a +4 to Strength.
Gameplan:
Very simple: we're going to rage and then we're going to do our best to pummel this Death Knight into next week. We'll use Reckless Attack, and I'm going to assume that we're taking at least a little damage each round and benefit from Shadow Manifestation. Notably, on round one, we aren't going to get our off-hand punch or that bonus because we A: need the bonus action to activate our rage and B: don't get the damage boost from taking damage until we are raging. If we can rage prior to combat, that's great, but we'll assume we can't.
So, turn one, it's rage-punch-punch, then turns two onward is punch-punch-punch.
Damage:
Ok, let's get that first turn. Our attacks at this level deal 2d6+7, or 14 average damage on a hit (naturally something like Wraps of Unarmed Prowess would be good to have, but we have done all of these sans magic items unless we're an artificer who can make our own). We have a +8 to hit, which would normally give us a 45% chance to hit, but we're recklessly attacking, so it's actually a 69.75% chance, and a 9.75% chance to crit. Our bonus crit damage is 7 on average. So, we're looking at 9.765 plus .6825, or roughly 10.4 damage per attack, giving us 20.8 damage on average for our first turn.
Now, turn two, things accelerate:
First off, assuming we take some damage from the Death Knight (which feels likely but not guaranteed - though more likely if we can grapple them or lock them down if we take Sentinel) we'll be adding an additional 3 damage to each attacks, so it becomes 2d6+10, or 17 on a hit. The crit bonus is the same and just as likely, so we just find 69.75% of 17, or 11.8575, and then add in the .6825 extra damage for crits, and we get 12.54 damage for our main action attacks, or 25.08 damage.
However, we then get our "off-hand" attack, which lands for 2d6+6, or 13 on average, so, 69.75% of 13 is 9.0675, and adding the crit bonus gives us 9.75 damage.
Thus, we get a total damage of 34.83, which is very respectable but not insanely outside of the range of damage outputs we've seen before (I'm pretty sure it's behind our Wizard and Sorcerer builds).
However, I realized something: we forgot Brutal Strike.
So, going back, if we assume our first attack is going for a Brutal Strike, we need to drop one of our attacks. Given that our bonus action attack hits for less than our other strikes, it's actually probably ideal for that to be the one we risk having a lower hit chance for. We can't do that on turn one, though.
So, turn one, we drop the 10.4 damage from one of our action attacks and then find what we get without advantage but an additional d10. We have a 45% chance to hit with this and a 5% chance to crit. A hit deals 2d6+1d10+7 damage, which becomes 19.5 on a hit and an extra 9 damage on a crit. So, 19.5x45% is 8.775 and then 9x5% is .45, so that attack now deals 9.225 - which is a damage loss, actually. We might still want to do it for the chance at a Hamstring Blow.
On turn two, though, we can do this with our off-hand attack. Thus, we lose the 9.75 damage to do 2d6+1d10+6 damage without advantage, or 18.5. Given that that's less than the attack on turn one, I think losing advantage really does wind up being a damage loss even with the extra d10. Against a lower-AC target, I think that would change.
But thus, we can expect to deal 25.08 damage on average on our first turn and then a very healthy 34.83 damage on subsequent turns. I'm actually quite pleased with this result, which feels in-line with what other characters can do.
The Berserker build I did does better, and even winds up getting into the 40s if they can reliably get a Retaliation attack, so perhaps there are ways I could even soup this subclass up.
EDIT: Oh duh. I forgot Graze.
Now, I realize that there's a flaw here: our "off-hand" attack doesn't add our Strength, typically, but Graze is a mastery that allows us to do our Strength modifier in damage on a miss. Perhaps there's a reason that they don't put it on light weapons!
Turn one that issue shouldn't matter: we have a 30.25% chance to miss when we're attacking with advantage, so we can add 4x30.25% to each of those attacks, giving turn one's 10.4 damage per attack an extra 1.21 damage, bringing them up to 11.61, and thus the total damage on the first turn ought to be 23.22.
That extra 1.21 can be added as well to the two regular attacks on turn 2. But how do we square the off-hand attack?
Well, here's a place where we might just buff the subclass. Maybe our bonus action attack also gets to add the Strength modifier? After all, I think this is true for the d6 option for the Beast Barbarian (who kind of presaged the Nick property). Given that we dropped it in our earlier calculation, we can very easily just add a flat 4 to the damage of our off-hand unarmed strike. (Essentially, the other 69.75% of the damage is already accounted for in our Attack action attacks, adding up to 4 with that extra 1.21). So, now we're going to basically add 2.42+4 to the total damage done on turn 2+, or 6.42.
Thus, it becomes 41.25 damage on those subsequent turns, which is quite good. Is it too good? ...Maybe, but I also think that martial characters could stand to do more damage. And this is still contingent on taking damage each round.
Naturally, you might decide to take other Masteries than Graze, but for damage output, especially against a high-AC target like a Death Knight, it's the clear winner.
And yeah, I think I will drop the "don't add your Strength modifier" thing on the bonus action attacks, because not only does it make the subclass feel cooler, it's also simplifies it!
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