The Furiously Feeble Orcish Fury Feat
The frustrating feat fit for fixing. Part 1.
Are you walking a bit on the wild side, playing a half-orc? Don’t fall for the allure of Orcish Fury, the partial feat specifically designed for Half-Orcs.
Now, we don’t know any Half-Orcs. We’re sure they’re nice people. We just don’t run in the same circles, you know? But we have to believe that they’re infuriated with this faint-hearted feat. They have a reputation to uphold. You know what we mean: their well-advertised lack of anger management skills. Their feral rage and menacing malice. None of that can be found in Orcish Fury. It’s more of an Orcish flare-up.
It’s a half-feat, so it can’t do much. And it doesn’t. Once per short or long rest, you can add a single damage die to a weapon damage roll. The idea is to hang onto it until you crit with a greataxe (d12) and it doubles. That doesn’t come up all that often. It tweaks Relentless Endurance to also grant a reaction attack when triggered, but that only comes up—let’s face it—pre-death, which is something to be avoided, and then it only works once per long rest.
An ASI is better spent on something else, especially if the +1 to Str or Con isn’t wanted. And what if there’s a well-designed Half-Orc with even-numbered Str and Con ability scores out there? They likely don’t want to add a +1 to either.
Out of these concerns, a few Homebrew feats have come to our minds. Here’s the first.
Eiame’s Berserker Orc Greataxe Mastery
Is you Half-Orc wielding a greataxe? You should be a barbarian, not a fighter. As a fighter, one way to get an advantage is with a maul and the Crusher feat, as we show in Eiame’s Basic Half-Orc Mauler Fighter. As a barbarian, you use reckless attacks to gain an advantage.
So this first full feat is going to be made with a half-Orc barbarian in mind. A berserker, specifically. And it needs to be worth it, as barbarians are not ASI-rich like fighters.
Eiame’s Berserker Orc Greataxe Mastery
You have found your calling as a berserker. Your assert your Orc heritage proudly in battle, and have gained the following abilities while wielding a greataxe:
When invoking Reckless Attack, you gain a number of temporary hit points equal to half your character level until the start of your next turn.
When in a Frenzy, once per turn, you can reroll one of an attack’s damage dice, and you must use the new roll. This does not apply to Brutal Critical dice rolls.
You now roll Brutal Critical with one extra die, dropping the lowest roll from the damage calculation. Once per long rest you may add the die to the damage total instead.
When you score a critical hit, you grievously wound the creature. Until the start of your next turn, the target has disadvantage on all attack rolls.
This feat commits the Half-Orc to using a greataxe and tempts even more use of the exhaustion-inducing Frenzy.
Reckless Attack is a useful gem—a hazardous one, mind you—and buffing with a few hit points to give some cover to its downside should be a welcome boon, especially since this feat is likely deferring a two-point boost to Con.
The second and fourth bullets borrow from the Slasher and Piercer partial feats. The second bullet additionally rewards using the exhausting Frenzy, and fits well with a Half-Orc’s temperament.
The Brutal Critical adjustment somewhat addresses a long-standing criticism that it’s not a great feature, being so rarely invoked. This feat can’t fix that, but it’s a step in the right way. The once/long rest adding of another damage die is inspired by Orcish Fury.
Orcish Fury could still be picked up and used alongside this feat—though we don’t think that’s a good use of barbarian ASIs.
A Half-Orc barbarian usually starts out like this:
Str: 16 | Dex: 14 | Con: 16 | Int: 8 | Wis: 12 | Cha: 8Some push Cha to 10 and drop Wis to 10.
Barbarians have five ASIs. The first two should be used to get Str to 20 (levels 4, 8). Two more to get Con to 20 (levels 12, 16). The final ASI is usually thrown on Dex, but not in this case, as it would instead go to Eiame’s Berserker Orc Greataxe Mastery. Other ASIs could be deferred, of course, to allow this feat to be taken earlier. Brutal Critical doesn’t show until 9th level. Perhaps this feat could be shoehorned in at 12th.
A multiclass Berserker/Champion as a 16/4 would have no less ASIs but would gain doing a crit on a 19-20, a fighting style (take Defense or GWF), Second Wind, and the ever-coveted Action Surge in exchange for an acceptable reduction in hit points and abandonment of the barbarian’s end-game features—which you may never see anyway. Though a deeper dive to 12/8 would gain you a bonus ASI you could use to push Dex up, it doesn’t seem worth it.
We have others in mind. We’re still mulling this one over. It seems… unfocused?
Anyway, let us know what you think of this one. When we have more, we’ll place a link right here.