(I apologize for poor formatting)
Can someone explain how a barbarian-type character works? By my reading, entering Battle Trance (the quintessential trait) is the most foolish thing one can do. It results in 24 hours of being at a negative (longer if you get into another fight), and potentially results in death if one uses Battle Trance six times in a row. Sure, there are other abilities to kind of help with fatigue, but I’m picturing a level one barbarian who rages for a minute and then better find a book and a cup of tea (technically cannot even exercise for 24 hours).
Am I misreading something? Is there another rule I missed? Are fights supposed to be so rare that my interpretation is the intended result?
Battle Trance
Cost: 3 points
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If you take three consecutive turns without making an attack roll against an enemy creature, the battle trance ends. When the battle trance ends, you automatically suffer 1 level of the fatigue bane.
Fatigued
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This bane has multiple tiers which are applied in succession. Each time this bane is inflicted, if it is already in effect on the target, the severity escalates by one level.
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Level 1 - The target has disadvantage 1 on all non-attack action rolls.
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(Then it gets worse)
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Special
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Unlike other banes, canceling this bane takes time and rest. Each 24 hour period of rest with little or no exertion removes one level of fatigue.
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It is affected a lot by how often you fight, yes. If your party are fighting less than once a day, then it’s a less restricted Attack Specialisation with an added defense bonus for the same cost. It also unlocks or gets much stronger in combination with some other effects, such as:
So basically, for one fight per day it’s stronger than a baseline feat but to pay for that increase in strength you have to take a drawback as well. It’s not universally useful, but it’s also not useless. Anecdotally, I can tell you that when I played a Battle Trance character with one level of Indomitable Endurance I only suffered consequences for Fatigue a couple of times in a campaign of about 20 sessions.
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I still don’t see it.
Restoration Boon of less than 7 removes only one Fatigue level per day.
Even with Indomitable Endurance 5, your Fatigue is F1I5 (fatigue 1, ignore 5). If your character activates Battle Trance twice a day, with Restoration being cast daily, on day six he begins at F5I5 and starts accumulating Fatigue as normal.
This seems like a very Feat-Heavy way to do what other systems allow several times per day at level one. Makes more sense to me to have a pseudo-fatigue that lasts minutes/hours after Battle Trance.
But hey, you’re the one who played the character, I’m just some guy sitting at a desk. 
This isn’t any different from DnD, except you could choose to do it over and over and over again. DnD you are limited in the number or rages you can take.
That’s the key is you deciding to do it or not. It won’t be worth it for every fight, if you get in multiple fights a day. So you would choose when to do it.
Have had many players take this feat, and have played with the feat as a character as well.
This feat becomes particularly strong in combination with other feats in the “tree” and having a person in the party with restoration (as Sam already mentioned).
Depending on the GM, they may decide how the recovering of fatigue works differently too, as well as the 24 hour thing, and what constitutes little activity. As with anything, always good to have a talk with the GM before hand so you can be on the same page and it can help influence your character choices.
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It appears that I am not misinterpreting or missing any rules. Players have used Battle Trance in games and apparently have not complained.
I’m convinced. Thank you both for your timely input.
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As I mentioned, it depends on how often you’re expecting to have combat encounters in your game. The accounts we’ve given are from games with what I’d consider a “normal” amount of combat, where 3 encounters in a day would be rare, most days will only have one combat encounter and there will frequently be days without combat (either spent travelling, or off-screen downtime, or plenty of social encounters but no fighting).
Your opinion isn’t wrong of course, it’s just circumstantial. If you’re playing a dungeon crawl where every room is a new combat encounter then Battle Trance is indeed a terrible feat to take, and in that situation maybe you can talk to your GM about introducing some house-rules for getting rid of Fatigue faster. We’d be happy to help them address balance with some details about what they want the game to be like.
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