2:30 Couple small corrections about 5e Rage: You didn't have to deal damage, you only had to make an attack. It used to only end if you were knocked Unconscious, but now it is Incapacitated which makes it a lot worse (Tasha's Hideos Laughter, Hypnotic Pattern, Psychic Lance, now all end Rage when they didn't before, and of course any stun/paralyze ability) 4:45 I refer to B/P/S as just Weapon Damage since that gets it across pretty well 12:00 ish, I have 2 big concerns with Primal Awareness. 1: I'm worried they might try to codify certain "skills with other abilities" into classes/subclasses and not present the idea in the books anymore. 2: Perception and Stealth currently have problems using other abilities, because some other features only affect them with the default ability. Pass Without Trace only works on Dexterity (Stealth), not Strength (Stealth), a Sentinel Shield only gives you Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks not Strength (Perception) etc etc 17:00 Indomitable Might kinda helps Barbarians because so many DMs ask for checks that they don't actually need to roll for. Like "Oh I wanna pick up this chest full of gold" -> "Okay it weighs like 400 lbs so give me a strength check". Buddy I'm a goliath with 20 strength I can pick up 1,200 pounds. Same things with like jumping 25:00 I feel like the risk of running out of rages is a lot higher now because of the change to Incapacitation and Rage not being extended by taking damage. If you enter a level 17+ combat with just one Rage, there's a good chance it gets ended just by the sheer number of spells and abilities at those levels that can Incapacitate 28:00 ish, we've talked about this before but it feels like they're really assuming heavily that there will be a lot of level 20+ play. If you're a normal group though and only play like, 6-10 games at level 20+ tops, who really cares if you're at 26 Strength instead of 24? 31:40 Sneak Attack and Smite crit again, we're back to 5e rules, they removed the modified crit rules. From the Rules Glossary sections of the UAs: "If a term doesn't appear here, use its definition in the 2014 Player's Handbook, and when playtesting this document, do not use the rules glossary of any other Unearthed Arcana Article". So because they removed Critical Hits from the Glossary, use the old rules. So Frenzy Damage does currently crit 37:00 My one criticism is I wish Retaliation was considered an Opportunity Attack. I think there should be more OA options and more OA riders like Sentinel 40:00 hey Berserker's whole thing was a BA attack that didn't need the Attack Action first! (jk that was still garbage) Final general note: I want Wotzy to expand their horizons from "giving martials out of combat stuff means giving them skills!". No. Skills are a design trap for this that I've seen so many people just fall into. Let martials just DO stuff, just like spells can do.
Pretty sure in one of the videos Crawford mentioned that they were gonna revert the crit rules. Also the wording of the smite spells implies that they do still crit.
At least with new brutal crit, I would be less disappointed when crit happens. However,since there's very little to no ways to get crit more often, brutal crit feels like non feature most of the time and reason why I multiclass out barb most of the time. I thought Smite still can get crit, I thought you cannot apply Smite after crit happens.
I think one benefit of moving Danger sense to the 7th level Feral instinct ability is that it makes the Barbarian class progression less front loaded it makes sense of narratively of "leveling up". I think that adding your rage bonus to checks would be an ok alternative. It would effectively be like giving expertise in those skills, but +1 or 2 less. And maybe it upgrades to double your rage bonus at either lvl 15 or 18. But I'm not sure whether just giving larger modifiers is the best solution. I love the change to Frenzy. Making it tied to Reckless attack is a great compromise to make it still have a risk when you go berserk.
I agree heartily that ability checks aren't interesting when there's no chance of failure. Similarly, one of my personal pet peeves in adventure design is when failure is not an option; i.e., when critical progress is gated by an ability check. For example, where you need to pass a DC 20 Perception check to notice the secret door in an otherwise featureless hallway that conceals the only path to the boss's lair, or when you need to pass a DC 20 History check in order to recall the lore that explains the villain's otherwise inscrutable motivations. My personal rule as a DM is to never call for an ability check unless there are interesting consequences for both success and failure. If the secret door is the only way forward, then there should be multiple ways to find that secret door: you could find it directly with a perception check, sure, but maybe you could also find a memo written on an underling's hand. Maybe the history check helps you learn that villain's specific weakness, but maybe the villain will brag about himself if the characters tell him that they've never heard of him.
