Personally, I thought up the following system:
A barbarian can Rage for 3 rounds with no penalties Every round past the 3rd round, the Barbarian deals scaling lethal damage to themselves to stay in Rage (the exact numbers and scaling would be balanced, but exponential scaling would act as a soft limiter - something like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 ...) After the rage ends, you are fatigued for 1 round. I doubt Paizo would implement it, but (A) it gives the player a choice over how long they keep raging, (B) it creates a tradeoff between keeping your rage going and (eventually) taking an unsustainable amount of damage, and (C) I like the flavor of a character that can literally push themselves past what their body can handle.
I like the concept as well, but I think drained would work better than HP damage because HP damage is too cheap to get rid of.
Personally, I thought up the following system ...I like the concept as well, but I think drained would work better than HP damage because HP damage is too cheap to get rid of.
I considered Drained, but felt it was too big of a penalty, and (more importantly) too hard to get rid of. It would be nice if there was some kind of middle ground.
I wouldnt use it but thats just me. Im not a fan of hurting myself to use my class abilities.
That's a reasonable enough stance to take. Some players might not like that flavor. And some characters might not choose to push their bodies that far, even if it's allowed (even if the players controlling them would be fine with it). In that case, the class behavior defaults back to the behavior in the playtest - 3 rounds of rage, 1 round of fatigue. You haven't lost anything over the playtest. You've only gained more options.
Personally, I thought up the following system:
A barbarian can Rage for 3 rounds with no penalties Every round past the 3rd round, the Barbarian deals scaling lethal damage to themselves to stay in Rage (the exact numbers and scaling would be balanced, but exponential scaling would act as a soft limiter - something like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 ...) After the rage ends, you are fatigued for 1 round. I doubt Paizo would implement it, but (A) it gives the player a choice over how long they keep raging, (B) it creates a tradeoff between keeping your rage going and (eventually) taking an unsustainable amount of damage, and (C) I like the flavor of a character that can literally push themselves past what their body can handle.
It is an interesting option making there be a real penalty for raging past the normal limit. By doubling the damage each additional round you would in deed create a situation making it become something that high level characters eventually won't be able to ignore.
I'd put the limit that if you are already at a point where taking the damage would drop you, you shouldn't be able to kick in another round, since you know the damage will already down you, there actually becomes less of an incentive not to go ahead and keep going.
So if a barbarian only has 10 HP left, and they complete their extra turn that has boosted their rage damage to 8HP, they can choose to rage on, moving it to a 16HP cost next round. That round, they have a cost of 16HP and only have 10, so they can't choose to go on, instead they drop down dying. If someone had healed them for 7HP in the round before so they had 17 HP left at that point, sure, they can push on for 32HP.
I liked your mention of it being that they take lethal damage from this push. They shouldn't be able to pay for this damage using their rage's temporary hitpoints, or really any source of temporary hitpoints, it should really give them some hurt to push it. (although healing would be quite helpful option to recover from it)
Personally, I thought up the following system ...I like the concept as well, but I think drained would work better than HP damage because HP damage is too cheap to get rid of.I considered Drained, but felt it was too big of a penalty, and (more importantly) too hard to get rid of. It would be nice if there was some kind of middle ground.
I wouldnt use it but thats just me. Im not a fan of hurting myself to use my class abilities.That's a reasonable enough stance to take. Some players might not like that flavor. And some characters might not choose to push their bodies that far, even if it's allowed (even if the players controlling them would be fine with it). In that case, the class behavior defaults back to the behavior in the playtest - 3 rounds of rage, 1 round of fatigue. You haven't lost anything over the playtest. You've only gained more options.
I mean, it takes a day's rest to get rid of drained. I think thematically "pushing your body to the point it breaks for a day or two" works pretty well. Drained 1 goes away overnight, so it really only slows you down if you take it to drained 2+.
My issue with having it just deal HP damage is A) that really just means you can go forever as long as the cleric heals you every round, B) There are no consequences after combat is over and you get your Wounds Treated, and C) there really isn't much danger of dying from it with current dying mechanics. You fall over, you go to dying 1, you get stabilized in one of the myriad ways you get stabilized. In some ways it is safer than continuing to fight because might get crit and knocked to dying 2.
Hmmm. What about the Wounded condition? Maybe after 3 rounds, you can take the Wounded 1 to extend rage 3 more rounds, at which point you can take Wounded 2 to keep going another 3 rounds, etc. Really puts your body on the line for that fight but isn't costly to remove afterwards.
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What is rage had minimal drawbacks and actually provided useful bonuses like it did in PF1?
Could we possibly use that as a paradigm? You know, a core class ability being good.
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What is rage had minimal drawbacks and actually provided useful bonuses like it did in PF1?
Could we possibly use that as a paradigm? You know, a core class ability being good.
They main draw of the drawbacks is that they open up more space for power. Rage can provide more positive effects if its offsetting downsides at the same time. Rage is also a good fit for this as it thematically works as your character either pushing their body to its breaking point (the idea of taking damage or drained as you rage), or fighting with reckless abandon (The idea of taking an AC penalty, or as I posted earlier fatigue [a scaling ac/save penalty]).
I personally would rather see a very powerful ability, offset by a decent downside. As opposed to an ok ability, that you just use.
I mean, it takes a day's rest to get rid of drained. I think thematically "pushing your body to the point it breaks for a day or two" works pretty well. Drained 1 goes away overnight, so it really only slows you down if you take it to drained 2+.My issue with having it just deal HP damage is A) that really just means you can go forever as long as the cleric heals you every round, B) There are no consequences after combat is over and you get your Wounds Treated, and C) there really isn't much danger of dying from it with current dying mechanics. You fall over, you go to dying 1, you get stabilized in one of the myriad ways you get stabilized. In some ways it is safer than continuing to fight because might get crit and knocked to dying 2.
Hmmm. What about the Wounded condition? Maybe after 3 rounds, you can take the Wounded 1 to extend rage 3 more rounds, at which point you can take Wounded 2 to keep going another 3 rounds, etc. Really puts your body on the line for that fight but isn't costly to remove afterwards.
I actually really like the idea of refreshing rage by taking a condition, although I think drained is actually a better fit at that point. Give the barbarian the option top keep raging but increase their drained by 1, or to end and be fatigued as it originally was.
Wounded does give the same sense of risk, but it leads to weird circumstances where the barbarian inexplicably drops dead, and I'm not sure if I like that.
Another fit that would work is to allow them to become sluggish or increase their sluggish. This adds some longer stacking risk with the ac and ref penalty, but doesn't risk instant death.
What is rage had minimal drawbacks and actually provided useful bonuses like it did in PF1?
Could we possibly use that as a paradigm? You know, a core class ability being good.
They main draw of the drawbacks is that they open up more space for power. Rage can provide more positive effects if its offsetting downsides at the same time. Rage is also a good fit for this as it thematically works as your character either pushing their body to its breaking point (the idea of taking damage or drained as you rage), or fighting with reckless abandon (The idea of taking an AC penalty, or as I posted earlier fatigue [a scaling ac/save penalty]).
I personally would rather see a very powerful ability, offset by a decent downside. As opposed to an ok ability, that you just use.
I actually really like the idea of refreshing rage by taking a condition, although I think drained is actually a better fit at that point. Give the...
I mean, it takes a day's rest to get rid of drained. I think thematically "pushing your body to the point it breaks for a day or two" works pretty well. Drained 1 goes away overnight, so it really only slows you down if you take it to drained 2+.My issue with having it just deal HP damage is A) that really just means you can go forever as long as the cleric heals you every round, B) There are no consequences after combat is over and you get your Wounds Treated, and C) there really isn't much danger of dying from it with current dying mechanics. You fall over, you go to dying 1, you get stabilized in one of the myriad ways you get stabilized. In some ways it is safer than continuing to fight because might get crit and knocked to dying 2.
Hmmm. What about the Wounded condition? Maybe after 3 rounds, you can take the Wounded 1 to extend rage 3 more rounds, at which point you can take Wounded 2 to keep going another 3 rounds, etc. Really puts your body on the line for that fight but isn't costly to remove afterwards.
Yeah, IMO Barbarian should be high risk high reward. If they just have a bunch of static bonuses that are functionally always on, they might as well be fighters. When a barbarian rages, they should be better than the fighter. In PF1 this was theoretically balanced by the barbarian having limited rage rounds, though in practice that stopped mattering at high levels.
I prefer the limitless rage of PF2, but there needs to be some kind of downtime or limitation or else rage just becomes fighter bonuses by another name.
As for specific drawbacks, my gut still says drained might be best. I wouldn't say wounded makes you inexplicably drop dead though-- you have to get knocked to 0 for it to even factor in and at that point there's a pretty good narrative justification for it.
in an edition that rocket tag battles are more or less extinguished, it would be terrible to reintroduce a glass cnnon class,
A canon glass cannon?