2024 DnD 5e Barbarian Subclasses Guide

Introduction

While your Barbarian’s subclass won’t change the heart of how the Barbarian works (get mad and hit stuff), they can do a lot to change your tactics.

For legacy subclasses, see our 2014 DnD 5e Barbarian Subclasses Guide.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

  • Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
  • Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
  • Green: Good options. Useful often.
  • Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Barbarian Subclasses

Path of the Berserker (PHB)

The iconic Barbarian, Path of the Berserker leans into the Barbarian’s core capabilities, adding additional damage output to your attacks while also allowing you to shrug off charm and feat effects which frequently take martial characters out of a fight.

  1. Frenzy: While Raging, the first hit you land on your turn while using Reckless Attack does extra damage equal to Xd6 where X is your Rage Damage, so 2d6 when you get this feature and scaling to 4d6 at level 16. Like an angriest Sneak Attack, it’s just extra d6s of damage once per your turn while doing something you were going to do anyway (Reckless Attack). It’s straightforward and effective
  2. Mindless Rage: This makes you immune to two ways to take you out of combat without wearing down your huge pile of hit points.
  3. Retaliation: Absolutely fantastic. We can also can grapple or shove the target as our Retaliation since you’re able to make an Unarmed Strike.
  4. Intimidating Presence: Excellent crowd control, giving you a way to debuff big groups of enemies while you focus on them one at a time. The usage limitation is tight, and the cost to recharge it is high, so save this for encounters with multiple enemies. Burning this on single targets is an absolute waste unless you’re trying to burn through Legendary Resistances.

Path of the Wild Heart (PHB)

Deeply customizable, the Wild Heart Barbarian selects animal-themed abilities as subclass features, allowing you to create a very unique Barbarian. Bear Totem is abundantly popular for providing damage resistance to nearly all types of damage.

Path of the Wild Heart’s features which affect other creatures only work on enemies within 5 feet, so avoid reach weapons.

  1. Animal Speaker: Speak with Animals is exactly as useful as your DM decides that it will be. Beasts are abundant in most environments on the material plane, but they might not be willing or able to tell you anything useful.
  2. Rage of the Wilds: Choose each time you Rage. Generally you can pick what fits the situation, but Eagle is difficult unless you’re built to capitalize on it.
    • Bear: Damage resistance to most damage types in the game. Force, Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant are commonly used to overcome damage resistances, and resistance to them is rare. If you can keep enemies focused on you, this will reduce a lot of damage over the course of your career.

      Despite its general effectiveness, Bear won’t be useful in every fight. Reserve it for when you’re facing enemies that can deal non-weapon damage types, like dragons or spellcasters.

    • Eagle: This is a ton of additional mobility, but unless you build and play to benefit from that mobility, it will provide very little value.

      The easiest option is to use this to quickly reach high-priority enemies, but in many fights that’s not difficult. Your best bet is to use the mobility in combination with grappling the Push Weapon Mastery to force enemies into dangerous positions, such as in a tight group, so that allied spellcasters can hit them with area damage. In a party with multiple Blasters, this is very powerful.

    • Wolf: Excellent in a party that relies heavily on attacks, and the larger your party is, the better this gets. Parties with Fighters, Monks, Warlocks, or spellcasters that like to summon creatures will all get a ton of value from this.

      Because this is consistently useful if even one other person in your party relies on attack rolls, this is the default when you go into combat. If you don’t know for certain that Bear or Eagle will provide value, Wolf is usually a safe bet.

  3. Aspect of the Wilds: Choose each Long Rest.
    • Owl: Darkvision is available from a huge number of Species, including up to 120 feet of Darkvision. This is only useful if you are a Species without Darkvision, if you can’t find a magic item to solve the problem, and if you can’t convince an allied spellcaster to cast Darkvision on you.
    • Panther: The next best thing to a fly speed. If you don’t know for certain that you need Owl or Salmon, default to Panther.
    • Salmon: Only situationally useful. Most games never require swimming.
  4. Nature Speaker: Only situationally useful. Unless you’re constantly exploring new, unmapped areas, you might never use this. If you’re in a hexcrawl, this might be fantastic.
  5. Power of the Wilds: Choose each time you rage.
    • Falcon: Flight is extremely important at high levels, and flying without a spell or a magic item means that you can continue to fight in melee against flying enemies. If you don’t have any better ideas, combine this with Rage of the Wilds (Eagle), grapple an enemy or two, then fly them up into the air as high as possible before you drop them.
    • Lion: Excellent, provided that you can prevent enemies from moving away from you. Consider the Sentinel feat or grappling.
    • Ram: This is good, but you can use the Topple mastery to knock creatures prone.

Path of the World Tree (PHB)

With extended reach, the ability to teleport creatures and potentially lock them in place for a turn, the World Tree Barbarian is an excellent Defender, capable of controlling and blocking big chunks of the battlefield while forcibly detaching your enemies from your allies.

Path of the World Tree Barbarian Subclass Guide

  1. Vitality of the Tree: Two features to make you and your party more durable.
    • Vitality Surge: A nice pad of Temporary Hit Points. This will go an unusually long way when combined with the damage resistance from Rage, but you should only expect the THP to absorb 1 or 2 attacks per Rage, especially at low levels.
    • Life-Giving Force: A huge amount of Temporary Hit Points, but you can’t use them on yourself, you may not be able to apply them consistently in combat, and they expire when your Rage ends. Fortunately, Rage has a 10-minute duration, so you and your party can stand around for a few turns feeling generally angry while you pass out THP.

      Since you apply this at the start of your turn while Raging, you won’t be able to use this until the turn after you Rage. Combat typically lasts 3 turns, so, if you Rage on turn 1, you might get to apply the THP twice in an encounter, and the points may not last long enough to have an effect. Allies need to be within 10 feet of you for you to target them, so encourage them to end their turns nearby. You can use Branches of the Tree to teleport them to you if necessary, but that occurs at the beginning of their turn, so they may be able to walk to you without eating your Reaction.

      This amount of temporary hp is typically expensive and requires feats like Inspiring Leader or upcasting spells like False Life. With the durability provided by this, you can protect relatively frail allies like horses and familiars which otherwise become a liability early in the game since their hp doesn’t scale. You might even try mounted combat.

  2. Branches of the Tree: The obvious use here is to pull enemies adjacent to you and reduce their speed to 0, usually forcing them to spend their turn there. This can usually put your allies out of harm’s way, and if your target resorts to ranged attacks, they’ll make them at Disadvantage since they’re in your reach.

    You can also use this to help allies. Creatures can choose to willingly fail saving throws, and reducing the target’s speed to 0 is optional, so you can teleport allies out of dangerous positions, then let them spend the rest of their turn doing whatever they like.

  3. Battering Roots: A World Tree Barbarian with a Reach weapon like a glaive can attack out to 20 feet, allowing you to reach enemies over a huge area. Adding the Push and Topple masteries also diversifies your tactical options quite a bit. If you’re using a Push or Topple weapon, now’s the time to switch. Note that you only get the extra mastery options with Heavy/Versatile weapons, so you may still want to throw tridents to deal with enemies more than 20 feet away.

    Remember that the extended reach only applies on your own turn. It does not allow you to make Opportunity Attacks at crazy distances unless you somehow cause a creature to move during your own turn.

  4. Travel Along the Tree: 60 feet is a wonderful amount of teleportation. Combined with Battering Roots and just plain walking, almost no enemy is out of reach. You may even be able to teleport into the air to grapple flying enemies. Remember that you can use this as part of the Bonus Action to activate Rage.

    The group teleportation option won’t be consistently useful, but using it to teleport into combat and ambush your enemies can be very effective. You need to be able to see the target location, and the range isn’t fantastic, but seeing through a keyhole, a crack underneath a door, or through a window all qualify.

Path of the Zealot (PHB)

Path of the Zealot tries to be an unstoppably durable Striker, but it does less damage than the Berserker, and it’s not significantly more durbale than any other Barbarian. The Zealot’s only truly unique features, Zealous Presence and Rage of the Gods, don’t come online until high levels, and they’re not worth the wait.

  1. Divine Fury: A large and consistent damage boost. You only get to use this once one each of your turns (you can’t use it outside of your own turn), so, if you’re using Reckless Attack, you likely don’t need to scramble for additional attack attempts to guarantee that you’ll deal this damage reliably. Resistance to Necrotic and Radiant damage is rare, and resistance to both is almost non-existent.
  2. Warrior of the Gods: A small amount of additional durability. There is no reason to split this up over multiple uses, so reserve it for when you’re in a bad situation and heal yourself as much as possible all at once.
  3. Fanatical Focus: Excellent for save-or-suck effects, and, since it works once per Rage, you get to use it numerous times in a single day. Rerolls are fantastic, but often put you in the position of rerolling a save with a poor modifier that you’re still going to fail. Adding your Rage damage bonus means that your chances to succeed on the reroll are a bit better. Unfortunately, save DC’s scale faster than the Rage damage bonus, so this won’t make it significantly easier to pass saves targeting your worst saving throw modifiers.
  4. Zealous Presence: Advantage on all attacks and saves for a round can be impactful, but it only lasts for one round, it does’t affect you, and you only get to use it once per day unless you spend a Rage to use it again.”

    This gets more useful the larger your party is, so encourage your allies to summon creatures, use pets, etc. If your allies happen to also need to make saves, we can consider that a bonus as the main purpose of this ability is the Advantage on attack rolls. It’s difficult to time abilities like this to protect allies from effects which call for saving throws.

    Despite how potentially powerful this is, it has a ton of problems. If you want to grant allies Advantage on attacks, you can knock enemies prone with unarmed strikes or a Topple weapon, or you can restrain them with a net. Neither of those options have daily resource limits. Providing Advantage on saves is much harder, but it’s also much less likely to take effect than the Advantage on attacks. On top of that, this doesn’t affect you. You’re using this purely to buff your allies. Is a replaceable 1-round buff really as impactful as 10 minutes of Rage? Probably not.

  5. Rage of the Gods: This lasts for 1 minute once per day, and you must choose to use it when you Rage, so you can’t walk around with Rage running to save yourself a Bonus Action like other Barbarians can. If you already have Rage running, you can let it expire the turn before, then Rage again to activate this.

    If you’re reading a physical book, note that two of the bullets wrap to the next column above the subclass art and can be easy to miss in the text. Tyler has done this repeatedly.

    • Flight: Flight is always excellent, though 1 minute per day doesn’t remove your need to throw weapons to handle flying enemies in most encounters.
    • Resistance: Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant damage are relatively rare, but they’re also typically used to get around resistances to Bludgeoning/Piercing/Slashing damage. Between the basic resistances from Rage and this, you’re very well protected.
    • Revivification: Good insurance for when things go badly. Remember that you’re a creature within 30 feet of yourself, so you can use this on yourself.