Comments from the Finger: In my mind, most of the characters of the Wild West genre are barbarians of some sort, but the rugged frontiersman is the single best example of this.
Path of the Mountain Man
You are a frontierman, hardened by your choice to live far beyond the outskirts of civilization in the rough wilderness. Though you rarely enjoy human contact, you are a skilled hunter and survivalist, and prefer to work and live alone.
Bonus Proficiencies
When you select this path at 3rd level, you become proficient in the hunting rifle.
Liquid Courage
At 3rd level, as a bonus action while raging, you can take a swig of moonshine to bolster your courage and toughness. Until the beginning of your next turn, you have advantage on Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom saving throws, and gain a number of temporary hit points equal to your level. After using this ability, you cannot do so again until after ending your rage.
Able Hunter
At 6th level, you are adept at navigating the wilderness. You have advantage on Dexterity (Acrobatics) and Strength (Athletics) checks made to climb, jump, swim, or otherwise navigate natural terrain.
Fearsome Yell
By 10th level, you can sound a blood-curling roar to terrify your foes. You begin a Fearsome Yell as a bonus action and can continue to yell as a bonus action on your turn, up to a duration of 1 minute. While doing a Fearsome Yell, each creature adjacent to you must make a Wisdom saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your bonus to Intimidation). On a failed save, the creature has disadvantage on attack rolls against you until the end of its turn. On a success, the effect ends for that creature and it is unaffected by this ability for 24 hours. At the end of each of its turns, affected creatures can make another Wisdom saving throw to end this effect. After beginning a yell, you cannot do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
You have advantage on Intimidation checks while you are making a yell.
At 14th level, you can shrug off punishment like a true son of the mountain. As an action while you are raging, you become immune to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and gain resistance to all other damage until the beginning of your next turn. After using this ability, you cannot do so again until you complete a short or long rest.
Changelog: 7/22/15: Liquid Courage changed to once per rage. Also, some rephrasing.
I might consider renaming Rebel Yell, seeing as that it refers to Confederates. Other than that, I'm really interested in how this class would operate as part of a party.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. I was actually wondering how people might react to that, as I thought it was a nice historical touch. In retrospect, pairing the Liquid Courage and Rebel Yell abilities probably sends the wrong message. I'll change it to 'Fearsome Yell' when I'm in front of a computer again.
DeleteLiquid Courage needs a X-times per Short/Long Rest, else you can just do it every turn to gain the temporary hitpoints and the relevant saving throw advantage. (Con modifier seems appropriate)
ReplyDeleteI´d kinda like this feat to give you advantage on Charisma ability checks, drinking alcohol making you smooth and laid back in social situations, but that doesn´t go well with this feat only beeing useable while raging. Maybe let the feat do both? One effect while raging, one while not, this subclass isn´t too complicated or strong, so you can still just add it.
I feel like the constant saving throw advantage wouldn't be too OP considering that Path of the Bear gives you resistance to ALL damage. (Well, not psychic, but that's easily the least common form of damage.) Plus, you can't stack temporary hit points from the same source anyway (making this very similar to the abjurer's Ward ability).
DeleteThis feat isn´t similar to the abjurer´s Ward at all, you want to refresh the temporary hitpoints as soon as they run out, which only happens in combat. Tell me the combat relevant abjuration spells a wizard gets? Shield and Counterspell until level 5, both situational, and afterwards basically only banishment as a reliable way of getting them in combat, which is somewhat suboptimal. Of course you can just cast a spell that doesn´t do anything in combat to regain the hp, but then you use your entire turn to do so, not like this path that does it as a bonus action.
DeleteTemporary hit point don´t stack at all as far as I know (even from different sources)
You're right that Liquid Courage needs to be more limited, as I believe I intended it to be when I originally wrote it. As is, it makes it very hard to take any real damage if you use it round after round. Basically, my simple options for limiting this are: once per rage, once per short, once per long, and Con mod per long. I'm leaning toward once per rage, but it seems a bit limited. Thoughts?
DeleteI think Con mod per long rest is flavorful and shouldn´t be too overpowered, I´d still like a non-raging application of gainging advantage on Cha ability checks, but that might be too much.
DeleteFor the moment, I think I'm going to keep it at once per rage, otherwise it could be used for 5 rounds in a row. I might rewrite this ability completely at some point, since other barbarians tend to get some constant buff while they're in rage, making this comparatively weak.
DeleteWhat would you recommend as a replacement ability for the bonus proficiency in a setting without gunpowder?
ReplyDelete