Introduction
The Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian is a reasonably easy subclass to play despite leaning heavily on the Bonus Action, Path of the Storm Herald is a great option for new players but still complex and interesting enough for veterans. It has a single decision point which you can change every time you gain a barbarian level, which is great for players who might have trouble deciding, and all three options are reasonably good.
Your roles in the party vary little from those typical to the Barbarian: Defender and Striker. Your choice of environment from the Desert, Sea, and Tundra options places some additional emphasis on a specific role. Desert lets you deal area fire damage in an aura around you, arguably giving you a splash of Blaster, but not enough damage to really fill the role. Sea’s single-target direct damage is good for a Striker. Tundra’s temporary hit points give you extra durability to serve as a Defender. The 14th-level Raging Storm feature puts all three options’ focus squarely on Striker, but the lower-level subclass features still emphasize different playstyles.
The ability to change your Environment means that you can adapt your abilities to suit the needs of your party. However, you can only make this change once per level, and if your choice of Environment is problematic in an encounter you may be unable to make use of your subclass abilities. Storm Herald is also much more heavily dependent on your Bonus Action than most barbarian subclasses, so avoid two-weapon fighting and feats like Polearm Master where the primary benefit relies on your Bonus Action. The 14th-level subclass features also consume your Reaction, so options which rely on your Reaction may also be less appealing.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Disclaimer
- Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Features
- Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Ability Scores
- Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Races
- Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Feats
- Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Weapons
- Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Armor
- Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Multiclassing
- Example Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Build – Fireball Me in the Face
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.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : 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 2014 DnD 5e 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 Storm Herald Barbarian Features
- Environment Choices: Your choice of environment defines
the benefits of the subclass. You can only change your environment once
every time you gain a level, so expect to be locked into your choice for
several game sessions. Generally you’ll be happy with your choice for a long
time, but you might consider changing if your party composition changes, or
if you get a new subclass ability that makes another option more appealing.
- : Excellent for raw damage and for handling crowds of enemies.
- : The worst of the three options, though not necessarily bad. You definitely want this in an aquatic campaign, but you might get better results from other options if you don’t need to breath underwater.
- : The best defensive option. Excellent if your party already does plenty of damage.
- : Damage enemies or grant
temporary hit points to yourself and your allies. Only functions while
raging, but it makes your rage super cool.
- : If you don’t have other melee allies, or if your party has trouble handling crowds of enemies, this is a good option. However, the damage is small and still consumes your Bonus Action, so if you need to use your Bonus Action for something else on a turn don’t feel like you’re giving up a whole bunch of damage.
- : Single-target damage, and the average damage isn’t much better than the damage from Desert, but it still allows a saving throw for half damage. If you have another melee ally who might get hurt when you activate Desert, but you still want more damage output, this is fine.
- : This can affect you and any number of allies in the 10-foot aura. Start every encounter within 10 feet of your allies and you’ll always go into combat with temporary hit points. The ability to renew them as a Bonus Action means that you can consistently pad your own hit points while you’re up front taking damage. On rounds where you’ve still got temporary hit points, you can use your Bonus Action for something else, but don’t take that as a good reason to consider two-weapon fighting or Polearm Master.
- :
- : Fire damage is one of the most common damage types.
- : Lightning damage isn’t especially common. This will generally only be useful in aquatic campaigns.
- : Cold damage isn’t as common as fire, and the weak version of Shape Water isn’t especially useful.
- : This requires your allies to stay within your aura, which in some cases might put them in the way of effects they’re trying to resist, like breath weapons or fireballs. Still, it’s an occasionally useful option.
- :
- : A little bit of free damage on your Reaction.
- : Not your Bonus Action, but your Reaction. You won’t be able to make opportunity attacks for the round, but the rest of your attacks will be at Advantage against the prone target, and you can still use your Bonus Action for the active effect of Storm Aura. Of course, you could already use Reckless Attack to get Advantage easily, and if you need a creature to be Prone you can use Shove and get Advantage on the Strength (Athletics) check from Rage.
- : Keep an enemy from running away. If you use Shove to knock them prone, they can’t get back up because they don’t have enough speed.
Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Ability Scores
No different from other Barbarians.
Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Races
Little different from other Barbarians. Avoid races which offer special Bonus Action options, such as the Hobgoblin, as your Bonus Action will be monopolized by your subclass.
Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Feats
Little different from other Barbarians. Avoid options which rely heavily on your Bonus Action or on your Reaction.
Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Weapons
No different from other Barbarians. You might prefer reach weapons since your reach will match the size of your 10-foot aura, but you don’t absolutely need to do so.
Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Armor
No different from other Barbarians.
Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Multiclassing
No different from other Barbarians.
Example Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian Build – Fireball Me in the Face
Barbarians thrive on high-risk, high-reward tactics. We’re going to lean into that by repeatedly standing in the middle of crowds of enemies, then asking our party’s spellcasters to drop area damage on top of us. This build pairs well with blaster casters like the Evocation Wizard, but we’re going to build ourselves to minimize area damage so that we can work alongside any Blaster.
We’ll use the Primal Knowledge Optional Class Feature in this build. Our Barbarian Class Guide recommends allowing Instinctive Pounce for any subclass which doesn’t already have a complicated secondary effect when you Rage, and Storm Herald is one of those subclasses, so we’ll forgo Instinctive Pounce.
Ability Scores
We’ll take the ability scores recommended in our Barbarian Guide, then put our +2 increase into Strength. We won’t need to worry about Constitution as much as most Barbarians because we’re relying on the Temporary Hit Points from Tundra.
| Base | Increased | |
|---|---|---|
| Str | 15 | 17 |
| Dex | 14 | 15 |
| Con | 14 | 14 |
| Int | 8 | 8 |
| Wis | 12 | 12 |
| Cha | 8 | 8 |
Race
Any race which gets us a non-Fire damage resistance can be a good choice here. We want to give our party members options for damage types. Cold and Fire are the most common damage types for offensive area damage spells, so I strongly recommend resistance to cold. Dragonborn is an easy go-to choice, so we’ll use the Fizban’s version of the Chromatic Dragonborn.
Background
Our background matters very little to the build, but I recommend something that doesn’t overlap with the Barbarian’s list of class skills since we’ll already get a total of 4 of those. Getting Insight would help you contribute to social situations, and Stealth is decent on a Barbarian.
Skills and Tools
We’ll take Athletics and Perception with our class skills. We’ll add Nature at level 3 and Intimidation at level 10 with Primal Knowledge. We’ll get two more from whatever you pick as your Background.
Feats
At level 4 we take Slasher and increase our Strength to 18.
At level 8 we’ll take Resilient (Dexterity) and increase our Dexterity to 16.
At level 12 we’ll increase Strength to 20.
At level 16 we’ll increase Constitution to 16.
At level 19 we’ll increase Constitution to 18.
Levels
| Level | Feat(s) and Features | Notes and Tactics |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rage Unarmored Defense | At this level, we’re a very standard Barbarian. Do Barbarian things. |
| 2 | Reckless Attack Danger Sense | Still standard Barbarian stuff here. Danger Sense will play an unusually large role for us. Because we’re planning to be the epicenter of every Fireball, Advantage on our Dexterity saves is very impactful. The hope is that we’ll both pass our save and have resistance to the damage, allowing us to take 1/4 of the spell’s damage. |
| 3 | Primal Path: Path of the Storm Herald Storm Aura | We’ll choose Desert as our environment, and keep it there for our whole career. We’re not quite ready to be fireballed yet, but we can run into crowds and trigger the automatic fire damage. 2 isn’t a lot, but if you can hit 2 or 3 enemies every turn, it will add up. |
| 4 | Feat: Slasher (Strength 17 -> 18) | Slasher gives us a splash of crowd control while also allowing us to increase our Strength. The speed penalty will help us keep an enemy nearby so that it’s easier to keep them inside our 10-foot aura. Strongly consider using a glaive. If you feel the needle to grapple (which reduces enemies speeds to 0, keeping them inside your aura), 5e’s grappling rules only require you to have a free hand when you initiate the grapple. |
| 5 | Extra Attack Fast Movement | More attack damage is always great. Storm Aura (Desert) damage increases to 3, so we’re getting more damage all around. At this level our spellcaster allies start getting access to Fireball, so it’s time to put our 8 Intelligence to work to figure out how to take advantage. |
| 6 | Storm Soul | This gives us resistance to fire. It took us an entire level worth of deep thought, but resistance to fire and Danger Sense gives us reasonably good protection against Fireball. Also, we can touch objects to set them on fire. Free arson, no tools required! |
| 7 | Feral Instinct | Advantage on Initiative plus decent Dexterity means that we will frequently act before our spellcaster allies. Normally spellcasters want to act early so that they can drop area damage and control spells without endangering their allies, but we’re actively encouraging them to Fireball us, so feel free to dive into crowds of enemies and Rage. |
| 8 | Feat: Resilient (Dexterity 15 -> 16) | A massive improvement to our Dexterity saves. Let’s look at the math in a bit more detail: we want our saves to reliably pass our allied spellcasters’ spell save DCs to minimize incoming damage. The spell save DC will be 13 + PB (assuming +5 ability modifier and no items boosting the save DC). Resilient negates the PB, and we have a +3 Dexterity modifier, so we’re effectively rolling a d20 with Advantage against a target number of 10. According to AnyDice, this gives us a 79.75% chance to succeed on the save, so we’re reliably succeeding. That math never changes unless you increase your Dexterity even more. From here on, our tactics are fairly stable. Get into the middle of a crowd of enemies, discourage them from moving away with some combination of grappling and Slasher, use Storm Aura to deal automatic damage, and encourage your party to drop every area fire damage effect they can muster on top of you. As long as your hit points hold up, you’re turning every encounter into an attrition fight where your and your party have a massive efficiency advantage. |
| 9 | Brutal Critical (1 Die) | This feature will never not make me sad. |
| 10 | Shielding Storm | Our allies now also enjoy resistance to fire damage while within 10 feet. They probably shouldn’t adopt our “fireball me, please” tactics, but not every situation calls for area damage. Storm Aura (Desert) damage increases to 4. |
| 11 | Relentless Rage | Think long and hard before you ask your party members to Fireball you to 0 hp. Do it anyway, but at least consider the consequences first. |
| 12 | ASI: Strength 18 -> 20 | We’ve been behind the Fundamental Math for a bit. We could take Sentinel here. The ability to keep enemies within our 10-foot aura is very useful. But remember that Raging Storm also likes to eat our Reaction, so we’ll be adding competing options to the build, which means that we’re losing some of the value of both. |
| 13 | Brutal Critical (2 Dice) | More math. |
| 14 | Raging Storm | Desert’s retaliatory damage isn’t huge, and it’s all-or-nothing, but against enemies who are happy to remain in your aura, it’s a reliable boost to your damage output. Plus, our save DC is as high as a full spellcaster’s, and even at this level most enemies have unimpressive Dextertity saves. |
| 15 | Persistent Rage | Storm Aura (Desert) damage increases to 5. |
| 16 | ASI: Con 14 -> 16 | We really want more hit points. Tough is definitely an option, but we’re already close to the tipping point where Unarmored Defense makes sense, so we’ll lean into Constitution. If magic armor has been an option, go for Tough instead. |
| 17 | Brutal Critical (3 Dice) | It feels odd that so many of the Barbarian’s high-level considerations amount to “Math?”. |
| 18 | Indomitable Might | Math. |
| 19 | ASI: Con 16 -> 18 | Our Unarmored Defense now matches the AC provided by half plate. |
| 20 | Primal Champion | 24 Strength, 22 Constitution, Unarmored Defense AC of 19, save DC of 21. Feels good. Storm Aura (Desert) damage increases to 6. |
