A level 20 barbarian gets unlimited rages. Can a Berserker barbarian extend his rage by raging again endlessly so that it never ends - which would lead to him never gaining exhaustion and never losing Frenzy?
1 Answer
This is likely not possible, some interpretation is required
The Berserker Barbarian's Frenzy feature states:
Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can go into a frenzy when you rage. If you do so, for the duration of your rage you can make a single melee weapon attack as a bonus action on each of your turns after this one. When your rage ends, you suffer one level of exhaustion.
The Barbarian's Rage feature states:
On your turn, you can enter a rage as a bonus action...
Your rage lasts for 1 minute...
I would argue that you cannot actually enter a rage while you are already raging and thus you could not activate a rage during another rage. This is also supported in the Rules As Written interpretation of the most upvoted answer to the question "Can I start a new rage before the previous one ends?"
Regardless, even if you could enter another rage while currently raging this would be a new rage. The rages wouldn't stack because they are game features of the same name but their durations would still count down. Therefore your first rage would still end after its minute had gone by and thus you would gain a level of exhaustion from Frenzy.
I believe you can't "extend" your rage at all, but even if you could enter a rage while currently raging, you wouldn't actually be extending it --- you would be starting a new one and the old one would end at its usual time.
One small interpretation requirement:
The Frenzy feature says "when your rage ends" but if we can have multiple rages at once we would have to interpret this as "when one of your rages ends" for the above analysis to work. If it instead meant "when you stop gaining the benefits of raging" then your strategy of never stopping would work. But presumably the exhaustion level from Frenzy will apply even if there are two simultaneous rages and one of them ends.
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6\$\begingroup\$ "I would argue that you cannot actually enter a rage while you are already raging and thus you could not activate a rage during another rage. This is also supported in the question "Can I start a new rage before the previous one ends?"" - Several of the answers to the linked question say exactly the opposite of what you claim; nothing mechanically prevents you from entering a rage while already in a rage. However, your subsequent point is correct; entering a new rage doesn't mean your previous rage never ends. \$\endgroup\$– V2BlastAug 31, 2019 at 4:15
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1\$\begingroup\$ @V2Blast the accepted answer uses only a now unofficial tweet. The most upvoted answer says that RAW agrees with me. The next answer argues there's no point in doing it. But I have edited to specify that the most upvoted answer agreed with mine \$\endgroup\$ Aug 31, 2019 at 4:29
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\$\begingroup\$ @medix2 I feel like the most sensical interpretation of the rage feature is that entering a rage while rageing resets the length of you rage to 1 minute. It doesnt really make sense game wise for a barbarian to have the ability to rage 10 times at once. \$\endgroup\$ Aug 31, 2019 at 14:53
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1\$\begingroup\$ @GersonLopez The feature does not say that it does this, so Rules As Written, it does not do that. That interpretation doesn't apply to any other effects in the game such as multiple castings of the same spell, one does not reset the other, instead they overlap \$\endgroup\$ Aug 31, 2019 at 14:53
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1\$\begingroup\$ @GersonLopez: I don't see how choosing which temp HP you keep means "the spell just gets reset"... And the rules of Wild Shape have no bearing on the rules of Rage. However, if you think you have your own different answer to the question, you're welcome to leave it as a separate answer. \$\endgroup\$– V2BlastSep 1, 2019 at 3:25