DnD 2024 Path of the World Tree Barbarian Subclass Guide

2024 DnD 5e Path of the World Tree Barbarian Subclass Guide

Introduction

The Path of the World Tree Barbarian is all about channeling the world tree, Yggdrasil, to keep your friends safe and your enemies close. Early on, the World Tree Barbarian’s protection comes in the form of granting temporary hit points to an ally every round, a solid way to absorb the damage a fellow front-liner might take. Then later, as they grow stronger connections to Yggdrasil, the Barbarian can use their reaction to pull a creature close when the creature’s turn begins.

This, at first, might look to be only offensive, a way to be sticky enough to hold a foe close, but it can also be used on an ally (who are now explicitly allowed to fail saves on purpose) to pull them out of danger. The zero speed effect is an optional choice specifically for this purpose, allowing an ally to continue fleeing after being teleported to the safe side of the Barbarian.

If that’s not enough to sway you towards the Path of the World Tree, perhaps the excessive amount of reach these Barbarians are granted will: Any Heavy or Versatile weapon is extended by 10 feet (that’s a total of 15 unless it already had Reach as well, making it 20 feet). You might just never have to move if you don’t want to. These weapons also gain both Topple and Push masteries in this extended state.

Do take note, however, that this hyper extension is only during the Barbarian’s turn but it is not contingent on being in Rage. And just for good measure, at level 14, how about Teleporting 60 feet as a bonus action while Raging, once per turn. If that wasn’t enough, once per Rage, teleport yourself and up to six willing companions 150 feet. Just Barbarian things.

I came into this thinking the Path of the World Tree was going to feel like the Warden class from D&D 4e, a mighty Primal Defender that protects their allies and harasses their foes. It certainly has that theme and feeling on a superficial level, but it’s not really the Warden. It is, however, another Defender from D&D 4e: the Swordmage. The Arcane Defender that harasses foes with excessive amounts of Teleportation. So if you want to play the Swordmage in D&D 5e 2024, try the Path of the World Tree Barbarian. Trust me, that feels just as weird for me to type as it does for you to read.

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.

Path of the World Tree Barbarian Features

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.
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.

If you can fly, there’s nothing stopping you from using Branches of the Tree while airborn. This is dangerous for non-flying enemies because you can hit them with easy falling damage, but the ability to reduce flying enemies’ speed to 0 means that you can force them to fall, too, giving you an easy counter to enemies which might otherwise be difficult to hold in place. Once enemies have fallen, you’ve reduced their speed to 0, which prevents them from standing for the rest of the turn.
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.
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.

Barbarian Backgrounds

We’re gonna start by eliminating the backgrounds that do not help with our primary ability score, Strength.

Artisan ^(PHB): While Artisan can increase both Strength and Dexterity, Crafter is often unlikely to matter.
Entertainer ^(PHB): A boost to Strength and Dexterity are what we like to see, and Musician hands out inspiration to the party at every rest. Not a poor choice by any stretch.
Farmer ^(PHB): Strength, Constitution, and more hit points from the Tough feat. Useful all around.
Guard ^(PHB): It only has Strength going for us, but it has the Alert feat so it’s not completely terrible. Just mostly.
Noble ^(PHB): The only thing really going for us here is Strength. Skilled is rather neutral here, not bad but not good either.
Sailor ^(PHB): We can get Strength and Dexterity elsewhere on this list. Tavern Brawler will not see much use because one of our main features requires Heavy or Versatile weapons.
Soldier ^(PHB): Our only option for an even +1 to all the scores we care about and Savage Attacker isn’t bad either.

For information and advice regarding Origin Feats, including those granted by your Background, see the Path of the World Tree Barbarian Feats section, below.

Path of the World Tree Barbarian Species

Species with the ability to fly, such as the Aarakocra and the Owlin, have a unique interaction with the World Tree Barbarian: the Branches of the Tree feature allows you to pull creatures into the air at the beginning of their turns, dropping them for falling damage and reducing their speed to 0 so that they can’t stand up.

Otherwise, the World Tree Barbarian’s Species options are the same as a typical Barbarian.

Path of the World Tree Barbarian Ability Scores

Barbarians need Strength for hitting, and Dexterity and Constitution for Unarmored Defense. This is just as true for the Path of the World Tree. We can either follow the suggested standard array for Barbarians on page 38 of the 2024 PHB or point buy our way all in on our Physical Stats. Because Ability scores are now also boosted by your Background we’ll need to use the Soldier background if we want to increase all three of these stats by +1. Alternatively, the Farmer Background can boost +2 Strength and +1 Constitution. Both of these grant useful feats which are detailed below.

Str: We need this to hit things and do damage.

Dex: We want to avoid getting hit as much as possible so we want to pump up our AC.

Con: This pulls triple duty as more HP, an important save stat, and additional AC with Unarmored Defense.

Int: If you want skills, sure.

Wis: If you want skills, sure.

Cha: If you want skills, sure.

	Point Buy	Standard Array
Str	15	15
Dex	15	13
Con	15	14
Int	8	10
Wis	8	12
Cha	8	8

Path of the World Tree Barbarian Feats

Origin Feats

These feats typically come from your Background, but humans get an additional Origin feat.

Alert ^(PHB): Going first to enter Rage before we get hit is pretty useful. Something to consider if you’re not taking advantage of Rage’s 10-minute duration to activate it ahead of time. This boost becomes even stronger when we gain Advantage on Initiative checks later on.
Crafter ^(PHB): Sometimes this might do something cool, like wake up and build a ladder, but that’s not going to be useful nearly often enough.
Healer ^(PHB): I don’t see this coming into play very often. It’s possible that, being so tough, you might be the last one standing, but we shouldn’t be so far gone in the first place. Buy some healing potions instead.
Lucky ^(PHB): We have Reckless Attack, but with Lucky we can occasionally gain Advantage without giving it in return, or impose Disadvantage when it might be prudent. For example, we could Reckless Attack against a solo monster and then if it swings back with one big attack we can use Luck Points to reset the attack to Neutral.
Magic Initiate ^(PHB): No spells in Rage.

Musician ^(PHB): It’s not bad, it’s just okay. Giving out free Inspiration every rest is cool for sure.
Savage Attacker ^(PHB): Rolling twice on weapon damage dice once per turn is pretty good and this is the feat that comes from the Soldier background. Good option.
Skilled ^(PHB): Three more skill proficiencies is not a bad thing, skills just don’t do as much in combat as they did in 2014 with how Grappling changed.
Tavern Brawler ^(PHB): One of our features only works with Heavy or Versatile weapons, so having better Unarmed Attacks isn’t a priority.
Tough ^(PHB): Rage makes our Hit Points better than other people’s Hit Points, so we like having more of those. You could pick this up from the Farmer Background which can also boost Strength and Constitution.

General Feats

Athlete ^(PHB): If you’ve already gotten everything you need for offense and you still need another +1 Strength, a Climb Speed and getting up from Prone at a major discount are pretty good benefits.
Charger ^(PHB): Bonus 1d8 damage or push the target just by moving towards it before the attack. This gets better once we can Teleport at level 14, allowing us to Teleport out to charge back in. Bonus speed on Dash is just a nice bonus.
Crusher ^(PHB): Smack a target with a Bludgeoning weapon and move it over slightly. Tell people to step away from the Wizard.
Grappler ^(PHB): We want to use weapons to get our bonus reach, so we don’t want to be punching people.
Great Weapon Master ^(PHB): More damage is more damage. Sometimes getting a bonus attack is nice too.
Piercer ^(PHB): It’s not as great if we already have Savage Attacker, but if you want to use a Piercing weapon, it’s still ok.

Polearm Master ^(PHB): Heavy Reach weapons are how Path of the World Tree Barbarians get things done from across the room. We might be spending our Reaction to Teleport people, but getting the bonus action attack has some great synergy.
Sentinel ^(PHB): Our Reaction is likely going to be spent on Teleporting creatures, so we might not have many occasions to make Opportunity Attacks. The teleport can also set the foe’s speed to 0 so this becomes double redundant.
Shield Master ^(PHB): Because our Battering Roots reach works with Versatile weapons, we can optionally use a shield for more defense. This opens up using Shield Master to put people on the ground if we attack within 5 feet. Because this no longer takes a Bonus Action to use, we could even Teleport in before smacking people. This would mean we’re not using our reach when we shield bash, but that just gives us options to switch things up depending on the conditions of the fight.
Slasher ^(PHB): If we’re into kiting, slowing targets down while abusing our potentially 20 feet of reach is a possible plan.
Speedy ^(PHB): Going even faster on top of Fast Movement can be good in some setups, but not everyone really needs to go 50 feet and then also have a 60-foot bonus action Teleport.

Epic Boons

Boon of Combat Prowess ^(PHB): Once per round, hit instead of miss. You can’t get any simpler than this. We have Advantage on command, so it’s less likely for us to miss, but it’s not impossible, especially when we use Brutal Strike.
Boon of Energy Resistance ^(PHB): Buffer against additional damage types to leverage our giant health bar. Not bad for a defensive option.
Boon of Fortitude ^(PHB): 40 additional hit points and some additional healing once per round. With our Resistances, these numbers are essentially doubled against physical damage types.
Boon of Irresistible Offense ^(PHB): Ignoring resistances on our attacks is great. Doing 25+ additional damage on crits is amazing for someone that has Advantage on command.
Boon of Recovery ^(PHB): We shouldn’t hit 0, but healing up to half of our hit points instead of going unconscious is pretty nutty when we’re Raging.
Boon of Skill ^(PHB): It won’t help us fight better, but it could be fun to be proficient in every skill.
Boon of Speed ^(PHB): Yes, by this point we have a Bonus Action teleport, but we also have 15 to 20 feet of reach, so if we want to kite people forever we can.

Path of the World Tree Barbarian Weapons

We’ll want to use either a Heavy or Versatile weapon to take advantage of Battering Roots. Because every Heavy option is a two-handed weapon, the choice first comes down to whether we want to use a Shield or not. Then, because we have Weapon Mastery, we have to consider what properties we might want to use. In addition to that, Battering Roots adds Push or Topple to attacks made on our turn once we’re level 10, not instead of, but in addition to at the same time on the same attack, such as using a Topple weapon and getting to also activate Push.

Versatile

Quarterstaff (Topple): If you want to mix a Shield and Polearm Master, this is one of your two options. With Polearm Master and Shield Master, you can force a creature to make up to four saves against falling Prone in a single turn. Pretty good combo. The base damage is a bit lower than other weapon options, but the flat bonus of Rage damage makes up for that.
Spear (Sap): Instead of saves against Prone, the target of these attacks gets Disadvantage on their next attack. If we’re using Reckless Attack, this can help us mitigate the penalty while still goading the target to swing at us since now they have to choose between Disadvantage on our allies or a flat roll against us.
Battleaxe (Topple): Trading out Polearm Master compatibility for higher dice and Slashing damage gives a different synergy: using Slasher to reduce their speed which makes trying to stand hurt more. Good for being a really sticky Defender type.
Longsword (Sap): Slashing is good, Sap is good, being compatible with Shield Master is good. Solid pick all around.
Warhammer (Push): Push and Crusher and Shield Master to put someone into the timeout corner.
Warpick (Sap): This is a Longsword that does Piercing damage, but versus the Spear we give up Polearm Master access for a die increase. Just go with a Spear over Warpick if you’re looking for Piercing damage instead of having this as a backup for your Longsword.
Trident (Topple): We can throw it I guess.

Heavy

While Versatile weapons offer the ability to use a shield and potentially the Shield Master feat, Heavy weapons offer the possibility of Reach and potentially the Great Weapon Master feat.

Glaive (Graze): Graze is a bit of insurance that even on a miss, we do some small damage. Alone, it’s not that great, but this weapon can use Polearm Master and, once we’re 10th level, this means we can either use Topple or Push on a hit and still Graze on a miss with all of those attacks. While Reckless Attack makes missing much less likely, it does still happen, and once we have Brutal Strike, Reckless Attack no longer makes hitting with attacks a near certainty, so Graze’s guaranteed damage is helpful.
Greataxe (Cleave): Cleave is a free extra attempt at a hit on another creature, once per turn. There is hidden synergy here: the extra attack is an attack which means Battering Roots can apply Push or Topple to this bonus attack, and while our ability modifier doesn’t apply, our Rage damage bonus dues. Greataxe is only losing to Halberd in these ratings by lacking Reach and by being incompatible with Polearm Master.
Greatsword (Graze): Like Glaive above, except Greatsword can’t use Polearm Master.
Halberd (Cleave): It’s a lower die Greataxe with Reach that can Polearm Master.
Lance (Topple): I would only use this while mounted so I can have a Shield too, but then I would just use a Battleaxe to still get Topple anyways.
Maul (Topple): If we compare this to the Pike, since with Battering Roots both of these weapons will always be able to activate both Topple and Push, we gain a little more damage but we lose Polearm Master access. If you want to Topple before 10 and use Great Weapon Master earlier instead of Polearm Master, then of course use this.
Pike (Push): Polearm Master compatible Push and Topple combo.

Path of the World Tree Barbarian Armor

Just use Unarmored Defense. We’re capable of starting with 15 or 16 AC without a shield.

Example Path of the World Tree Barbarian Build – The Legendary Super Lumberjack

They say a mighty giant of a man clear-cut these plains to make way for civilization to spread, a man known only as Paul Bunyan. That’s right, the World Tree doesn’t need any competition from upstart Redwoods thinking they can do better, so it sent a champion to keep the other trees in line.

Ability Scores

We start by investing our point buy all in on our physical stats. We then take the Farmer background to boost Strength and Constitution as well as give us the Tough feat. Lumberjacking is just Arboreal Farming after all.

	POINT BUY	BACKGROUND ADJUSTMENT	LEVEL 20
Str	15	17	24
Dex	14	14	16
Con	15	16	20
Int	8	8	8
Wis	10	10	10
Cha	8	8	8

Background

We’re taking Farmer for the Strength, Constitution, and Tough feat. We also gain Animal Handling and Nature, to better care for any giant blue oxen we might happen to stumble over in our journeys.

Species

We’re going to be a Goliath. The speed is nice and Hill Giant’s Hill’s Tumble is a great trick to knock things Prone for free. Some trees are a little stubborn and we have to just force them down without a saving throw. Of course, we’re really here because Paul Bunyan was a giant man, which Goliath can become at fifth level.

Skill and Tool Proficiencies

From Barbarian we’ll be taking Athletics and Survival to go along with our Animal Handling and Nature from Farmer. We have to haul trees and live in the forest to make it as a Lumberjack.

Feats and Ability Score Increases

From Background: Tough – A little extra Hit Points goes a bit further with the Resistance from Raging.

At level 4: Great Weapon Master – This bumps our Strength to 18 and adds a little bonus damage to every swing with our mighty Greataxe, or our tree branch pruning Glaive.

At level 8: Polearm Master – Another Strength increase, to 19 this time, and we swap to using either a Glaive or Halberd full time, depending on whether we prefer Graze or Cleave. Remember that the bonus damage from Great Weapon Master does not apply to the bonus bonk of PAM, but Rage damage does.

At level 12: Athlete – Boost Strength to 20 and gain a Climb Speed, better jumping, and most importantly a major cost reduction to standing from Prone. Since Goliaths have 35 speed, only spending 5 to stand means we’re still as fast as most other player characters after doing so.

At level 16: Speedy – Boost either Dexterity to 15 (or Constitution, your choice depends on which Epic Boon you want at nineteen). We gain an increase of 10 feet to our speed as our legs grow to even more giant proportions, allowing us to step clear over difficult terrain when Dashing. Also Opportunity Attacks have disadvantages against us.
Optionally, if you think we’re already fast enough, which is fair, Resilient (Dexterity) works well with Danger Sense.

At level 19: Boon of Speed – Dexterity to 16. To continue the ‘giant man with giant legs’ theme, we’re gaining another 30 feet of speed as well as bonus action grapple escapes. This puts us at an absurd base speed of 85 (which is also our Climb speed thanks to Athlete). This is in addition to being able to Teleport 60 as a Bonus Action every turn while Raging.

Levels

Level	Rages/Damage	Feats and Features	Notes
1	2/+2	Rage Unarmored Defense Weapon Mastery Giant Ancestry: Hill Giant Farmer: Tough Feat Skills: Animal Handling Athletics Nature Survival	Knocking down trees is hard work and requires great Strength. Luckily, we can Rage for Advantage on Strength checks. It also increases our damage and makes us resistant to physical Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage. But that is definitely secondary to Lumberjacking. Unarmored Defense allows us to wear the traditional red flannel and blue jeans common to all Lumberjacks without impairing our defenses against wildlife we may encounter out in the forest. That comes to 15 AC without a shield, or 17 AC with one. With Weapon Mastery, we have access to the bonus features built into weapons. We can choose to change these weapons every day, but keep in mind that eventually Battering Roots will only work with a subset of weapons that have been detailed above in the weapons section, above. As a Goliath, we are choosing to have Hill Giant ancestry in order to get some free knockdowns a few times each day. Farmer is giving us the Tough Feat for a bit more Hit Points.
2	2/+2	Danger Sense Reckless Attack	Advantage on Dexterity Saves is helpful. We do not have proficiency in this save, so every little bit helps. Reckless Attack: Give Advantage, get Advantage. If the risk is worth it, hit ‘em harder.
3	3/+2	Path of the World Tree Vitality of the Tree Primal Knowledge: Perception	We take our subclass, Path of the World Tree, and now we get some Temporary HP whenever we enter Rage. Then, every time our turn starts, a nearby ally gets a small dose of THP as well. It’s a good little buffer to help protect our allies. Remember that the ally needs to be within 10 feet when our turn begins to receive the temporary hit points, so try to cover your whole party before you get into combat (remember that Rage lasts 10 minutes), and encourage allies to pay you a visit during combat for fresh THP before retreating to a safe distance. Primal Knowledge gives us another skill proficiency, so we can pick up Perception. We can also use Strength for a handful of skills while Raging. From our list of skills, that includes Perception and Survival.
4	3/+2	Great Weapon Master +1 Strength (17=>18)	The new Great Weapon Master is a bonus to damage for all attacks made with a Heavy weapon during the Attack action on our turn. This means that it will not improve any attacks made as a Bonus Action or Reaction, such as if we make a critical hit or drop a creature to 0 hit points with this same feat, or make an Opportunity Attack. On the other hand, it’s a hybrid feat now, so taking it doesn’t knock us off the Fundamental Math.
5	3/+2	Extra Attack Fast Movement Large Form	Swing twice. Hit more. Apply the bonuses from Rage and GWM twice. Run faster, close the gap. 45 move speed (remember that goliaths start at 35). Goliaths can grow larger as a Bonus Action for 10 minutes per day. This increases move speed by another 10 feet to a total of 55 move speed. With a Glaive, which has Graze, our Raging DPR at this level is 22.20 or 27.50 if we use Reckless Attack. With a Halberd, which has Cleave, our Raging DPR at this level is 26.06 or 34.59 if we use Reckless Attack and have a valid target for Cleave.
6	4/+2	Branches of the Tree	Whenever a creature starts their turn, we can attempt to teleport them. They make a Strength saving throw and, if it fails, we teleport them to an adjacent space. We then get to optionally reduce the target’s speed to 0 for the turn. The reason setting the speed to 0 is optional is so that we can use it on an ally as an escape trick. If your ally stays nearby until your next turn, we can give them fresh Temporary Hit Points.
7	4/+2	Feral Instinct Instinctive Pounce	Advantage on Initiative checks so that we can go first more often. Whenever we Rage, we can now also move half of our speed, which is sitting at 45 unless we’re Giant Sized, which rounds down to 20 feet, or 25 if we are Giant before Raging.
8	4/+2	Polearm Master +1 Strength (18=>19)	We’re taking Polearm Master to gain the Bonus Action hit, which we’ll be using to apply our Weapon Masteries and our growing damage bonuses (+6 at this level because we don’t add GWM to the extra swing) another time per turn.
9	4/+3	Brutal Strike	Whenever we Reckless Attack, we can give up the Advantage on one attack on our turn for more damage and additional rider effects, either a 15-foot push and follow, or reducing a target’s speed by 15 feet. Both are good options which will be enhanced by some of our later features. Particularly, with our extreme reach from Battering Roots and speed from feats and features, we can use Forceful Blow to push someone 15 feet and still end up closer to the target than when we started, perhaps in a corner of the room. Great for isolating a target away from our vulnerable allies. Unlike the Push mastery, there is no size limitation for the target of Forceful Blow.
10	4/+3	Battering Roots	10 feet more reach, but only with Heavy or Versatile weapons on our turn, which means 20 total if we’re using a Reach weapon. Also, these attacks can activate Push or Topple in addition to our other Masteries. This means that if we’re using a weapon with Cleave, we can also Push or Topple on the extra hit. We can also use these properties on our Bonus Action attack with PAM. We can just keep trying to Topple a target until they fall over and then Push them away after they fall if we feel like it. Checking in on DPR again, our Glaive with Graze is doing 32.50 or 40.08 when just Reckless or 42.56 if we use the weaker Bonus Action attack for our Brutal Strike. A Halberd, when we can Cleave, instead does 37.36 DPR or 53.05 if we’re Reckless and again 54.07 if we use the Bonus Action attack for our Brutal Strike.
11	4/+3	Relentless Rage	Make a save when we hit 0 to not be at 0. With Proficiency +4 and Constitution +3 right now, we succeed on a 3 the first time, and on an 8 the second time.
12	5/+3	Athlete +1 Strength (19=>20)	Our offense is already solid at this point. Athlete is just pushing our Strength to 20 and bringing in some utility. A 45-foot Climb speed for example, which is nothing to sneeze at, nor is reducing the cost of standing from half of our 45 foot speed to only 5 feet.
13	5/+3	Improved Brutal Strike	We gain additional rider options when we use Brutal Strike. Staggering Blow in particular would allow us to impose Disadvantage on the next save against Topple. Staggering Blow is also great if we want to set up an ally’s next big hit.
14	5/+3	Travel Across the Tree	60 Feet Teleportation. As a Bonus Action. Every Turn. On top of our ludicrous speed. Keep in mind that Instinctive Pounce will also trigger when we Rage, so that’s 20 feet of movement, and then a 60-foot teleport, whenever we enter Rage. Also keep in mind that we like to use our Bonus Action for PAM bonks if we can, so there is some competition for our Bonus Action. But wait, also consider that by Teleporting behind someone, we can trigger Push (or Brutal Strikes Forceful Blow push and follow) towards our allies. There’s a lot to consider here without even getting to the part where once per Rage, the teleport is 150 feet and brings along 6 other creatures. Just Barbarian Things.
15	5/+3	Persistent Rage	Now we can double our total number of Rages in a day. When rolling initiative, we can regain all of our expended Rages, once per day, which in practice can double our total. This is not reflected in the column to the left to avoid confusion. Rage also always lasts 10 minutes without having to take the specified actions to maintain it.
16	5/+4	Speedy +1 Dexterity (14=>15)	Time to run 10 feet faster, 55 base speed. But we can go even faster than this soon enough.
17	6/+4	Improved Brutal Strike	The damage from Brutal Strike increases and we can use two rider options whenever we activate it, such as Forceful Blow and Hamstring to send a target 15 feet away and steal 15 feet of their movement. Now that our Strength is 20 and we’ve got the final upgrade to Brutal Strike, we’ll check our DPR again. Glaive is now doing 40.05 DPR or 49.22 when Reckless and 55.33 if we again use Brutal Strike on our Bonus Action bonk. Halberd is doing 45.96 DPR or 65.12 when Reckless and 69.41 when Brutal bonking and when we have a valid Cleave target.
18	6/+4	Indomitable Might	Whenever we make Strength checks or Strength saves, the lowest we can get is a 20. With Primal Knowledge, we can turn a lot of skill checks into Strength checks while Raging, such as Stealth. Literally so angry nobody can find us.
19	6/+4	Epic Boon of Speed +1 Dexterity (15=>16)	55 feet was already absurd. So now our base speed is 85. Or 95 when we’re Giant Size. Which is also our Climb Speed because of the Athlete feat. We have longer legs than everyone else. We take bigger steps.
20	6/+4	Primal Champion +4 Strength (20=>24) +4 Constitution (16=>20)	More Strength and Constitution for making it all the way here. With our final Strength boost all the way to 24, we might as well check our DPR. Glaive is now all the way up to 49.15 DPR or 57.08 when Reckless and 63.18 with a Brutal bonk. Halberd, once again if we have a target to Cleave, is hitting up to 57.83 DPR or 75.16 when Reckless and 80.67 with a Brutal bonk.