Barbarian Subclass Tier Ranking (Part 2) in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by stivel's codex of companions which is now available to order stivel's codex of companions is a fifth edition supplement that is filled with cute and crazy critters to bring to your dnd games not only is it filled with adorable companions and rules that you can use in your games but it's also been created by a great friend logan at runesmith coming off the back of their super successful kickstarter but is now available widely for anybody in both print and pdf so if you want to add some colorful companions into your games make sure to follow the links below to grab your copy of stibbles codex of companions today and now let's get on to this week's topic greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything d d including advice for players and guys for dms we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode this is part two of our subclass tier ranking for the barbarian in dungeons and dragons 5th edition in our previous uh episode we looked at the barbarian subclasses in the player's handbook and xanathar's guide to everything and this time around we're taking a look at the two new ones introduced in tasha's cauldron of everything if you look on the screen right now you're going to see the criteria that we use to rank the subclasses we have pitted the subclasses against each other and not those of other classes keep in mind that although we may mention the flavor or role playing potential as well as multi-classing these are not core mechanics that we use to judge the subclasses and of course when we do evaluate subclasses we look at how they augment the bass class in all pillars of play now the barbarian is a very combat oriented class and of course looking at how these features augment the barbarians ability to deal damage survive in battle and contribute in interesting ways to combat will be a primary metric but we also do want to look at and see do these subclasses offer the barbarian anything else because of all classes i think like the fighter the barbarian is one of those classes where you want to hope that you get something that helps you outside combat so you can contribute to exploration scenarios and maybe if you're lucky social interaction so let's take a look at these two new subclasses there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so first up is the path of the beast this barbarian through their rage channels their inner animal kind of like a i don't know i immediately look at this as like a wolverine like character um but of course you can have a relationships with like being a werewolf or a druid or your inner spirit animal i think that there's a potential to run this with a very similar lore to the path of the totem as well um and i think it really doubles down into that animalistic rage quite literally the first feature you're going to get is the form of the beast this is an augmentation to your rage that allows you to choose either having a bestial muzzle claws or a tail that grows out of you when you enter into your rage that lasts for the duration of the rage no matter which option you choose they become natural weapons that you can attack with using your strength and each of these features has its own little benefit when you choose the bite you now deal 1d8 damage and once per turn you can gain a number of hit points back equal to your proficiency modifier provided you have less than half your hit points when you hit with the clause it's pretty simple you deal 1d6 damage and you have to have your hands free but when you make an attack you can attack with the other claw as part of that action with the tail you use 1d8 for your damage die and when you are attacked you can use your reaction to add 1d8 to your ac at level six you gain a bestial soul this is a feature that you have all the time and you can change it during a short or a long rest it either gives you a climb speed equal to your walking speed that allows you to climb on ceilings and along walls or you can have a swimming speed and the ability to breathe underwater or finally you get a big augmentation to your ability to jump basically making a athletics check and adding the check result to how far you jump and now on top of this your natural weapons are magical for any instances where it comes up that there are resistances in play at level 10 you gain infectious fury when you hit a creature with one of your natural weapon attacks while you're raging you can try to infect them you can do this a number of times per day equal to your proficiency modifier and when you hit the target they get to make a wisdom saving throw the savings through dc determined by your proficiency bonus plus your con plus eight then you get to choose the effect that happens you can either force the target to use its reaction to make a melee attack against another target next to it or if there's nobody next to it you can force the target to take an additional 2d 12 damage at 14's level you gain call of the hunt now when you enter your rage you can use the call of the hunt to muster up the troops around you you can choose a number of willing targets equal to your constitution modifier when you do you gain five temporary hit points for each creature who is willing to give in to the call of the hunt and they all get to deal an additional 1d6 damage when they hit with an attack roll once per turn you can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency modifier so let's get into it here is the cool thing about this class you are your weapons it's kind of like this weird wolverine monkey sort of thing and i think on paper these claws look pretty impressive because right away you got two claws you get to make an extra attack they're going to get the benefits of your strength modifier and so at fifth level when you normally get extra attack you get to make three attacks with these claws all of which which benefit from your strength modifier all of which which benefit from your rage bonus damage the biggest issue here though is is that the claws aren't light weapons so you can't use them with two weapon fighting unless you take the dual wielder feet and even then it's a little dubious how it works all together that was my initial thought when i looked at this was like so the claws are two claws does that mean i'm automatically dual wielding and i get to attack with my bonus action worse the barbarian doesn't get fighting styles so they don't get any the other two weapon fighting kind of augmentations that would normally come with this unless they multi-class still it's pretty impressive damage but i think it's going to get outstripped by most manufactured weapons this is the hard part is that i think at early levels it might be a lot of fun to be beating people with your claws or biting them or using your tail but as you gain more levels and more importantly as your dm rewards you with a magical great axe suddenly using the natural weapons become less and less likely you're basically committing to never exploring the ideas of magic weapons or better weapons out there yeah uh if you are playing in a game that uses feats the idea of using great weapon master and a two-handed axe is going to beat this every time i i think it it will you'll fall behind in the overall damage race compared to great weapon master for sure um although low levels of play or in a campaign that you don't have feats i think the damage is still pretty impressive and i think that there's an interesting alternate build that you could do here where you could take the kind of like maybe even go for tavern brawler and grappler and do some sort of really interesting like grab people hold on to them and kind of tear them apart sort of thing so if you don't want to do the whole standard barbarian with a great axe thing and you want to have an alternate feeling here i think that there's a cool potential here for more of a grappler wrestler style barbarian it's not going to do as much damage but it might lend some interesting battlefield control that is worth exploring the only problem here with the grappler and tavern brawler for this combo is that these claws are not unarmed strikes they are simple melee weapons they're natural they're never referred to as an unarmed strike so does it even work with that build it doesn't work with tavern top tavern brawler's coolest feature is that it lets you grab somebody as a bonus action after you make an attack with an animal strike and then grappler kind of reinforces all of that you would have to ask your dungeon master to allow this to be counted as an unarmed strike for it to work because by the rules presented here it is not an unarmed strike i think the tail is a cool defensive feature the only problem with the tail is that it uses your reaction and you're likely going to be attacking recklessly to gain advantage so it's really kind of just compensating for the reckless attack i think the bite is a pathetic amount of healing i i thought the bite was like damage dealt like if the bite healed you for the damage dealt it would be sweet but it's it doesn't it's your proficiency mods it's not only your proficiency mod but you have to be under half health so this really doesn't come into play until you've already suffered yeah and once you're at half health this is a meager amount of healing it's not going to save you it's it's going to be one hit that you might save yourself so i i think the question really here is is maybe there's some creative alternative play styles that you can explore with this they're not going to have the kind of faux slaying fury that you get out of like your great weapon master zealot and i don't think that you're gonna be able to be anywhere near as tanky as a totem warrior barbarian but if you're sick of those things this will be fine it's just i don't think it's as good as those things as far as raw combat potential goes i i do like that we gain the climbing speed with swimming speed i could literally throw the jump option out and not care but a climbing speed where you can actually go on the ceiling is incredibly useful for now you can be useful for exploration and utility um having the boots of spider climbing in our recent campaign i can tell you for a fact that being able to be on the ceiling or climb up walls easily is really helpful swim speed in the right moment in a campaign if you come to a water area uh having a swim speed and being able to breathe underwater is going to be really important this is probably my favorite ability that this barbarian gains i think it's pretty cool it's fun and useful again i just think of the not to compare to outside classes but a bunch of subclasses natasha's called one of everything got flying speeds at level six and and the totem barbarian does get a fly speed but not until a much higher level so this is good stuff i think it adds a lot of mobility to the barbarian i think that the again the climbing speed is really good because it's useful in combat and the jump might even be useful in some combat scenarios as well so don't sell short the jump okay i think i think it's fine the infectious fury is basically getting the ability to smite a number of times per day equal to your proficiency modifier but the target gets to make a saving throw against it that's always tough yeah and the thing is is that with infectious fury and called the hunt both these are going to be based on your barbarians constitution modifier there you're going to have a good con but it's probably going to be 16 and then maybe you might boost that up at higher levels of play if you don't take any feats so you can use this three times per day probably when you get it because i don't think you're going to pump your con over your strength for this character yeah if you i mean there is a play here where you're literally just a big meat shield and you boost your con but i don't i think most people like to put their their most into strength i think that these higher level abilities are really neat um but at the end of the day is this a unique play style for barbarian yes if you really want to be wolverine then you have your ticket to do so but i don't i don't think this is the optimal barbarian it falls behind in damage it falls behind in tankiness those are the two things we want our barbarian to do the most deal out damage and be tanky yeah and if you're not helping on either of those if you're falling behind because of the subclass is this a b or is it a c the natural weapons that you get when you're raging here are not measurably better than using a weapon and that seems like a big problem like i think that this form of the beast i want the like the claws and the claws don't scale like they're as good right away when you get them as they as they are at higher levels so you don't really like if there was even something here like the infectious fury just added an extra d6 necrotic damage on all your claw attacks or something that made this more impressive as you gained levels um again it's good at low levels but i think it really just drops off and the fact that you there there's no yeah i don't know this is not strong to me no it it's a compelling concept but we're not ranking flavor here flavor's fun this is a fun idea but i actually don't think it delivers what we wanted to deliver if i wanted to imagine a beastial barbarian i want them to be ravaging and destroying their enemies i want them to be one of the best damage dealing barbarians out there and it's not is it okay looking at the lowest ranked subclasses is it about on par with the storm herald or are we looking at like battle rager or even berserker territory here i want to say that this is nicer than the battle rager but not much yeah i feel like it's a little bit better than the battle rager i i feel that it's kind of got some cute things in the way that the storm herald does as well like it gives you a theme in an interesting way i could see giving this one a b but it's a low b and i don't know what campaign it's s t are in it's estuary in a campaign where uh there's no feats okay and you're playing low level yeah i guess so like a one to eight i i think it's really strong at level three it says it's probably at its very strongest from level three to six cool so a low level campaign where there's no feats allowed you are going to be good um in other cases are you going to be bad no but if again if you're in a party and you're this barbarian and then there's a totem and a zealot barbarian you'll be sad i think that the case where it stays holds on to the b ranking i'm really interested in this grappler tavern brawler sort of thing i think that by taking those feats and kind of going for more of the control wrestler sort of route with it i think you might have something there yeah i'm i'm willing to give this a b uh i think that there's much stronger options but this is a compelling concept as we move on to the path of the wild magic this is a really fun addition for the barbarian where the magical energies flow through them in unexpected ways monty and i are well known for enjoying the way that wild magic works let's see if the wild magic barbarian holds up well at third level you don't gain the ability to sense magic including possibly at school of magic without needing to be proficient in the arcana skills so that's kind of fun also a third level you're going to gain your wild magic table every time that you go into a rage you roll on this d8 table to determine what ability you get these abilities range from some really cool options like teleporting or gaining temporary hit points and dealing necrotic damage to some other interesting options that deal a little bit of damage i quite like the exploding fairy or being able to shoot rays of blinding light out of your chest um all of these effects unlike the sorcerer's wild magic table there is nothing here that is destructively negative you're not going to fireball yourself when you start your rage you're not going to turn into a potted plant you're not going to summon a bunch of flumps there's there's nothing here that is going to um cause you to lose control of your character or negatively impact your party in this respect it's a very conservative wild magic table and if you were hoping for that kind of combination of fun cool things that are random and chaotic and have the really high highs of the sorcerer's wild magic table and the really low lows of the sorcerer's wild magic table you're gonna actually be disappointed by this one i will say though that for those people who don't like the wild magic sorcerer because of the high highs and low lows with this table you are sticking pretty much in the middle on all accounts everything here is a benefit all of the effects are cool they start when you enter your rage some of them they just happen when you enter your rage and some of them give you an ability that you can use throughout your age as a bonus action such as the aforementioned teleportation which is amazing or the blinding bolt that you can fire as a bonus action on subsequent turns it's just that you don't get to choose at sixth level you gain bolstering magic this ability you use as an action and you can use it a number of times equal to your proficiency modifier you touch a willing creature this creature can be yourself and you imbue it with one of two options for the next 10 minutes it can now add a d3 to an ability check or an attack roll or you can add a spell slot back to a spell caster you roll a d3 and it can gain a spell slot of the level rolled or lower their choice so your barbarian is a walking battery for the spell i mean the spellcasters in your party are going to love you um being able to get even a third second or third level spell slot back is great that is a benefit that extends to the rest of your party and that's a pretty rare attribute actually you know who this is going to be incredibly useful for warlocks at early levels you know actually who really like this ability as well paladins and rangers and other subclasses that don't get the very high level spell slots because for a paladin getting a third level spell slot back is a big deal for or even a first level spell slot that's another smite so whereas a wizard at higher levels of play not too impactful i mean you get this ability at sixth level when you have you can use it three times per day and you can potentially give back third level spell slots which is the highest level spell slot that can be cast again when this ability comes online it's amazing um i think that the the bless effect of it as well is great it just doesn't apply to savings rose at 10th level you gain unstable backlash now when you receive damage on your turn you can use your reaction to roll on the wild magic table again this effect happens immediately and you shift to that role on the wild magic table so if you rolled on the wild magic table and didn't like what you got and it's not working for you in that combat you can now use a reaction to switch it up actually pretty useful considering that the barbarian will be taking hits this is a great way to get more wild magic happening more often and get into a better effect it gets even better at 14th level when you get controlled surge this feature allows you to roll twice and choose which effect you want when you roll on the wild magic table and if you roll a double you get to actually choose any effect you want from the entire list so i think that the 10th and 14th level features actually combine really really nicely to help ensure you're getting the effect that you want to get the only problem is is by 10th and 14th level a lot of these effects are kind of weak this is the problem as we get into this i think that my major detriment for this subclass is that none of the wild magic options scale when you're doing 1d6 extra damage at low levels yeah that's kind of neat when you're level 14 doing an extra 1d6 damage who cares the damage dealing features here are pathetic i would almost always fish for the teleportation yeah and that's because it's great at all levels of play and there's even combat encounters where the teleportation isn't that useful and unfortunately the teleportation is hard to use outside of combat because you have to be raging which means that you have to be fulfilling the requirements of your rage otherwise your rage ends and those requirements are you have to either be up to a creature or attacking or taking damage so you can't even use this teleportation effectively outside of combat because it's dependent on your rage and you have to roll for it so like you're the time that you need to teleport around you're outside of combat you're not going to be able to rely on this at all basically all of this barbarian's features aside from one are tied to its use of rage yeah and what magical effect you're going to bring online during that which means that this barbarian gains nothing for exploration nothing for social encounters and a non-scaling combat bonus and i just have to say i think this is a really boring wild magic table i i don't like like unlike there's an argument to people oh it's so fun and random it's eight things and most of them are amount to an extra d6 points of damage it doesn't have any of the character or the flavor or the risk of the sorcerer's wild magic table it is totally defanged and so i don't even think we can make the argument that this is a fun wild magic search table because it doesn't do anything like it's just a table of random buffs and they're they range from pretty awesome to not that great at all um there's nothing mind-blowing honestly again the teleportation is my favorite thing on here and then it quickly drops after that yeah and you will never be able to with reliability get the effect that is the most impactful at that moment you'll be able to gamble at higher levels by taking damage and rolling twice to maybe get the effect that you want but you'll never be able to fully count on it i as much as i love wild magic and i love the idea of a wild magic barbarian and i do think that this could be a really fun subclass to see at the table i think it's a c i agree it's it it's almost like not having a subclass in some respects if you roll the ability that you don't need in that moment you you don't have a subclass yeah other than being a walking battery and giving extra spell slots to some party members you might be useless yeah and like the spellcasters in your party are gonna come at you with the straws to drink all the magic out of you and that's great like that adds a lot to the group but i don't want to be a battery yeah if you roll if you want to be a barbarian yeah i don't want to be a battery i want to be a barbarian you know 100 if you're you're just there's a chance that you're just walking around being like uh who needs a charge up who needs to fill up on a third level spell slot actually i'm not that i rolled a one you get a first level spell slot this time thanks for coming by um hey i can shoot a laser out of my chest do you want to see it no okay yeah it only deals d6 damage oops we're at level 14. uh shoot it with your chest beam steve like i don't know and again the saving throw bonus is based on your constitution which is going to be a good score but not necessarily your highest score all the effects because they're all based on saving throws like they could happen and not do nothing do nothing yeah so i i don't know i i feel like this subclass would have been amazing with a really cool wild magic table that actually was a 50 item massive table with cool and random stuff and that triggered on a few more things like i feel like one of the things that this thing is missing is like why doesn't the wild magic surge trigger on a crit why doesn't it trigger on a natural one why did like there's so many cases like i like that it triggers when you get hit but there's so many circumstances under which it could have gone off and whether there could have been more things and it could have been just a cooler class but i i actually think that it it this is this is one of those subclasses that says it's something with its name and there's only eight things on this table like after two or three game sessions you're going to have seen everything and nothing here is going to surprise you it's not like the wild magic surge table where with 50 things on it it really takes a lot of game sessions before you actually see everything that it does nobody at the table is going to be chanting potted plant and that's a sad thing yeah um it is it's it is and like the biggest argument that i saw looking through the comments was that this was a fun and random subclass and i disagree i don't think it's i don't think any of the options here on here are particularly fun and creative an interesting point that i want to make here is i actually would be more excited if there were both options that were too powerful and options that were less powerful like give me one that is give me a few that are a slight detriment but still somewhat useful um and then give me a few that are oh my gosh i rolled this option and now i get to use my reaction to throw a fireball every turn or something like give me something ridiculous that maybe maybe that's a bad example but give me some ridiculous stuff on here that when i do roll those exciting options the table cheers and when i roll the one that just makes a bunch of rats appear and run away then we're all like ah shucks yeah exactly there there is nothing on this table that is going to cause the level of excitement oh and it's it's hard maybe it's not fair that we're comparing it to the sorcerer the wild magic sorcerer but it feels like a natural comparison because they're both wild magic tables and this subclass could have had an exciting wild magic table i think it would have even benefited even if the table just advertised that these options scale if they got better as you leveled up we would have had a better subclass but it didn't no i i think it should have been at least 20 things well let's take a look at what our community thought of these two subclasses so 11.5 of our community gave the path of the beast an s-tier ranking and 38.2 gave it an to your ranking and 38 gave it a b and 10.9 gave it a c which is a sliver for the d here ranking i think that this is a cool subclass and it's one that i can see the excitement behind it i just don't see the power here i think that i i'm comfortable with the b rank that we gave it it's nice to see that there are people out there who really want to give this an a and i'd love to hear some of the great builds that you have that are really strong on the battlefield yeah i i would too like again we talked a little bit about you know this tavern brawler grappler thing and does it work or does it not um what how are you building your characters what kind of things are you envisioning and how do they stack up against the other tanky damage dealer barbarians especially the totem because i think when you compare the totem and the beast side by side is not a very favorable comparison even the zealot i think can dish out yeah better damage but i'd love to hear it when we look at the path of wild magic we're looking at a 13.3 percent for s tier with 38.4 giving an a tier 40 giving it b 4.9 for c and a little bit here for d um interesting that this this lands in a b with a strong contender for a and i just don't see it yeah are we missing something with these subglasses i don't know i think in terms of the grand scheme of of all the barbarian subclasses these two are not doing any major favors from tasha's we've seen a lot of implementations of subclasses that have raised the bar yeah and i think the barbarians not that they needed the bar raised on them but i feel like they got no help and and i would have liked to see a little bit more and i'm i'm surprised the rankings yeah with so many of the other classes we saw the best subclasses in the game coming out in tash's culture and everything but i think that the zealot and the total barbarian are still soundly on top and i think that these two subclasses kind of fall in that middle of the pack with the storm herald i don't think that either as good as the ancestral guardian no um yeah again though i would be interesting to interested to see what we're missing for those of you that did give these subclasses an a or s tier ranking i would love to know about the character builds that you've been exploring with them your experiences with them at the table what feats or weapons you're using because of course with the wild magic barbarian there's nothing requiring you to use any weapon you can still be a great weapon wielding barbarian and you get those fun and random effects so they are piling on and so i guess there is a case that like sometimes with the totem barbarian if you're a bear totem and you're not having elemental damage being thrown at you the bear totem isn't doing anything but ah it's still too good in my mind i feel like the bear totem barbarian is one of the most tanky things that you can bring to the table in the whole game of d and neither of these feel like they're adding to the tankiness the strength they add meager damage both of them and they both have some fun and quirky options and i think actually the beast comes out on top for fun and quirky options that excel at the table the wild magic the randomness doesn't feel like you have as much to gain or lose which some people might enjoy yeah but i think that the cost of having some great gains and some potential losses is more fun at the table and more rewarding i think maybe the other thing about the wild magic barbarian that really does make it seem powerful is that sixth level feature that is the bless effect for a party member concentration free is pretty potent and being able to give back spell slots to your party members is really really good and so i could see bumping it up in that respect but again it's it comes back to that i don't want to be a battery as a barbarian yeah i want to be a battering ram yeah and and so and and i would also say with that is it is it's pretty low like it's good but it's not great right like it's a good feature it's there's nothing bad about it um but it it just fee is a weird one to have in the rest of this this class i think so far we've seen the best that the barbarian has to offer previously and both of these fall safely in the middle of the range of barbarian options out there both of these subclasses will produce a competent character that probably if you lean into the archetype and you role play it really really well you're going to have a lot of fun with this character but i don't think that either are capable of the raw power of the top tier barbarian subclasses so this has been part two of our tier ranking for barbarians in dungeons and dragons fifth edition please tell us about the builds that you've made with these barbarian subclasses in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on youtube and want to help us out please consider becoming a patron of our show by following the links in the description below don't forget to check out our live play shadows of drakenheim which is tuesday nights at 6pm eastern on twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got plenty more subclass tier rankings for all the classes in dnd5e right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 157,305

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: CFsa0Rrm9Z8

Length: 32min 47sec (1967 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 16 2021