Having played my home campaign up to 5th level so far I have not really encountered any glaring balance issues between my player characters, but there are a few things I'm considering tweaking a bit about the so far officially published player options.
I wanted to throw them out here to get some feedback. Which of these are unnecessary, go to far, or not far enough?
Italics have a hopefully short explanation of my reasoning
RACES
Dragonborn Gain darkvision 60 ft.; Breath Weapon deals 4d6 damage at level 6, 6d6 at level 11, and 8d6 at 16th level dragonborn basically have no racial features outside of their breath weapon and resistance. And the breath weapon rapidly becomes irrelevant because its damage scales so slowly for a limited use ability.
Orc Lose the Int penalty. I like orcs, and i think they can and should be more than brutish idiots, especially as player characters. Also their racial stats are kinda weak altogether
CLASSES and CLASS OPTIONS
Barbarian (Frenzied Berserker) Frenzied rage is no longer a separate step to rage. When the berserker enters a rage, it goes into a frenzied rage automatically. It doesn't suffer exhaustion at the end of the rage. Totem Warriors get to choose between resistance to virtually everything, massive mobility and granting Pack Tactics to their melee friends, and then have multiple choices again as they level up, while the berserker has to rev up for two rounds to get a bonus attack and then has to sit on a level of exhaustion for the rest of the day, making it effectively a once per day ability. And being able to use your action to intimidate one enemy isn't exactly impressive either.
Sorcerer Sorcery points are replenished on a Short or Long Rest. Sorcerers do not have anything that replenishes on a short rest, aside from spending hit dice for HP, but being an arcane caster you would expect to have less need for that anyway. I haven't seen sorcerers in action too much, but the talk of the town seems to be that they are still lagging behind wizards a bit, so a straight buff wouldn't be too bad, but this may be a little too strong.
As far as rangers go, i will stick with the unearthed arcana version.
Augh, the internet ate my post! I'm going to redo it in brief:
Dragonborn: They're fine, they could use darkvision but they're currently one of the 3 races in Core that lack it I believe. The Breath weapon adds an AOE option to characters that often lack one since they tend towards warrior classes. If I gave them a buff, it'd be a free social skill proficiency.
Orcs: They're essentially Half-Orcs but with the very powerful Aggressive feature if you take out the Int penalty. I'd just reflavor half-orcs as orcs if you want 'em in.
Frenzied Berserker:
- I think it's just one turn wind up to frenzy, you choose to do it as you start the rage.
- Bear Totem is overrated, Wolf Totem is great but requires party coordination to get mileage
- Intimidation at lvl 10 is essentially fluff, but so are the lvl 6 and 10 features for Totem. Frenzied gets immunity to two common mental save imposed conditions at 6, which is relevant.
- A bonus action attack with a 2handed weapon is super powerful. I've seen it in action, it has to come at a cost or it blows everything else out of the water if they do it every combat.
Sorcerer:
-Sorcerers are mostly fine. They could use some sort of buff since they're basically the only caster without Ritual Caster, but it should be a light touch.
-Sorcery points can be turned into spell slots. Regaining points on short rest = regaining spell slots on a short rest.
Thanks for the feedback. I feel like 5d6 damage on a 15 foot cone or 30 feet line at level 16+ is chip damage at best, aside from a rogue surrounded by low level mooks or 4e-style minions i don't see it really be a viable option for anyone ever, that's why i thought of bufffing the damage on the breath weapon, only slightly. A social skill, perhaps the choice between persuasion and intimidation, (or even persuasion if you chooose a metallic lineage and intimidation if you choose chromatic might be quite flavorful) is a good alternative. I figured since they are dragon descended having some form of improved senses made sense, dragons after all are famed for having darkvision and blindsight both. But I agree that darkvision is a little too ubiquitous among player races.
Edit: Thinking about it more, i really like the idea about Persuasion for metallic dragonborn and Intimidation for chromatics it makes the choice between Silver or White, Blue or Bronze, Copper or Black, and Gold or Red more mechanically meaningful.
Orcs do not get the Half-Orc's savage attacks and relentless endurance features. They only have aggressive, which admittedly is powerful, and powerful build, which on the other hand is meaningless in many campaigns, comes into play rarely in others, and even when it does at best removes a minor inconvenience.
As for the Berserker, i'm probably underestimating that bonus attack. Especially at pre 5th level its probably very strong. But I feel like a level of exhaustion is a bit extreme. Maybe the if the exhaustion is removed or could be resisted with a Con save from level 10 and up.
I figured the sorcery buff would be too strong. They could use something that recharges on a short rest, maybe just a small number of sorcery points.
I agree that a good addition to Sorcs would be some freebie spells each level, such as a Cleric's Domain spells.
For Dragonborn, how many targets should the breath weapon hit to be better than a weapon attack?
At levels 1-5, it deals 2-12 (7 average) damage to X opponents, save half.
A greatsword attack (let's say 1-4, since there is a level offset between Extra Attack at 5 and Breath scaling at 6) deals 5-15 (10 average) damage to 1 opponent (0 on miss, 5% to crit).
So on average, if you catch 2 people in the breath and they fail save, you've done more average damage. If you hit 3 people and they all make the save, you've done equal damage.
That seems about right to me. Of course, there's a lot that can be done to tilt the odds in the favor of weapon attacks. Class features and feats that apply to it, but not the breath weapon.
That was some quick math, but if people are interested I'd be happy to find some time to make a spreadsheet of breath vs. weapons.
Of course, that's just numbers. There's no measure besides personal for considering the utility of using breath to harm enemies just out of reach, to kill someone that's low and harm others at the same time, to target a vulnerability or to avoid a resistance (particularly when lacking magical weapons), to cause unavoidable damage to force a caster to roll concentration, or on the flipside the obvious power of stacking damage onto one target at a time.
For Frenzy, proceed with caution. It is a very powerful ability. That said, if you do run it with short rests removing exhaustion stacks, I'd be curious to hear how it goes (and how often your party does short rests a day).
What if the dragonborn breath weapon recharged on a 5-6 on a 1d6 roll? Any reason it doesn't scale like cantrips or with the proficiency bonus? Maybe up the damage to 2d8 at 1st, then +1d8 with each proficiency bonus increase?
I think giving orcs -2 Int is OK. Int is basically useless except for wizard, eldritch knights, arcane tricksters, or anyone making Investigation or "Knowledge" checks. So not your typical orc. If you want to be an atypical orc, be a half-orc.
EDIT:
About Sorcerers, what about the ability to spend a Hit Die to gain a Sorcery Point. You can also spend Hit Dice as Sorcery Points to create a spell slot that can be used to cast a wizard spell.
SmiloDan, the DC scales with proficiency bonus. The damage is a little better than cantrips, a little worse than Burning Hands (which is a very close comparison).
If the ability feels too weak in damage, I'm not sure how allowing people to use it more often is going to help. If the situations where you can hit enough enemies with it for the damage to be good enough is rare, having it recharge on a d6 or at-will won't solve the core issue as experienced.
I was just spitballing here.
I think doing more damage less often is better, too. Like an emergency blast when you absolutely positively need to set every m0f0 in the room on fire.
I don't like putting the recharge on a dice roll mechanic from the monster manual on a player character. Because it potentially allows for scenarios where players roll d6s uselessly just because they don't happen to come up 5 or 6.
Tying the number of damage dice to proficiency bonus would only net them one more d8 than before about half the time.
Spending hit dice for sorcerer points is an interesting idea.
My sorcerer player's character recently died and now he made a warlock so he has no more problems with getting nothing back on short rests.
CLASSES and CLASS OPTIONS
Barbarian (Frenzied Berserker) Frenzied rage is no longer a separate step to rage. When the berserker enters a rage, it goes into a frenzied rage automatically. It doesn't suffer exhaustion at the end of the rage. (snip)
I have heard a few suggestions about "fixing" Frenzy. All derive from the same rationale that a) as a fantasy archetype, the barbarian should be good at resisting exhaustion, not be the one in the group who's always exhausted and b) exhaustion primarily kills your ability to succeed at skill checks, which is the only thing that the berserker barbarian can contribute to outside of combat.
Of the best suggestion I heard...
- Convert the exhaustion price into a HD price. Some suggested 2 HD per frenzy, others suggested half of your HD ('cause otherwise 2 HD is not significant at high level).
- Give the first Frenzy per long rest "free", additional uses cause exhaustion levels (if you're making it a pseudo one use per long rest, then just make it so).
- Give barbarians (or perhaps just berserkers) the ability to ignore the effect of the first level of exhaustion, or add a virtual exhaustion level with no effects just before disadvantage on skill check (so that it still requires a long rest to heal that virtual level)
Many also suggest to allow barbarians to heal an exhaustion level on a short rest, but the problem with that (IMO) is that it still doesn't solve the issue that from a game design perspective, going frenzy makes you even more useless outside combat.
Sorcerer Sorcery points are replenished on a Short or Long Rest.
Unfortunately, there is no way to make sorcery points recovery mesh perfectly with arcane recovery when you convert the points to spell slots, but regaining 3/4 of your sorcery points gets close (except its a b#!~@ to calculate). At "on a short rest, you regain a number of sorcery points equal to half your level", you're a bit behind the arcane recovery feature, which is perhaps not a bad place to be, if you feel that the sorcerer needs a little boost.
'findel
Thanks for the input, laurefindel. I like the idea of expending half your hit dice for frenzy.
How about during a short rest, you regain a number of Sorcery Points equal to half your level + your Charisma modifier?
That's essentially all of them, until after level 10.
If you want sorc points back on SR, it should be at least be a 1/LR thing, like the Wizard's Arcane Recovery.
Then maybe just half then? And not limit it to once per day?
I don't see why you wouldn't limit it though, unless you want sorcerers to be able to refill all their spell slots given enough short rests.
Or just once per long rest.
Whatever is most fun for you and your group! :-D