Dungeons & Dragons: How To Build A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian

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• What Are The Features Of A Path of The Berserker Barbarian?

• Why Should I Play A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian?

• Best Species For A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian

• Best Stats For A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian

• Best Feats For A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian

Every class in Dungeons & Dragons has a subclass whose purpose is to take the main traits of a said class and dial them up to 11. For Barbarians, that would be the path of the berserker.

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This subclass is built around making improvements to your rage, giving you options to make it even stronger. Barbarians are already built around hitting hard and shrugging off damage, and this subclass takes it a step even further, though at a very steep cost. This also means it's very simple for a beginner just getting into the game and not wanting to be too overwhelmed.

What Are The Features Of A Path of The Berserker Barbarian?

The Path of the Berserker Barbarian is focused on improving your rage, giving an extra option to increase damage while you’re raging.

Frenzy

Starting at third level, you can enter a frenzy whenever you’re raging. This lets you make an extra melee weapon attack as a bonus action, with the downside that when you exit, you gain a level of exhaustion.

The Frenzy status continues until your rage ends; it cannot be ended separately from raging.

Although frenzy is the Berserker's main feat, you'll have to be very sparing about using it, lest you put yourself at a major disadvantage.

Mindless Rage

At sixth level, you become immune to the charmed or frightened status while raging. These conditions can be very annoying for tanks, as they prevent you from getting close to enemies you want to attack, and many have no way of getting enemies to come to them.

With this, that's a major pitfall for tanks you don't even have to think about.

Many high-level enemies, such as the Adult Black Dragon, can use Frightful Presence on enemies, so this is handy even in the long term.

Intimidating Presence

Once you reach tenth level, you can force a single creature within 30 feet of you to make a Wisdom saving throw. If they fail, they're frightened of you until the end of your next turn.

You can use this feature on another turn to extend the duration of the frightened status. But that will be an action you could have spent attacking, so it's best used if you want to do some light crowd control and don't want to worry about another creature attacking you or want extra damage on them by forcing a nearby creature to take an opportunity attack trying to get away from you.

Retaliation

Finally, at 14th level, you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against a creature who has damaged you and is within five feet.

This is true even if they've taken the disengage action and wouldn't otherwise provoke an opportunity attack, allowing you to force enemies to stay near you or risk extra damage as another way of light crowd control.

Why Should I Play A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian?

Path of the Berserker is very good for beginners who aren’t yet used to all the intricacies of class features. There aren’t a lot of rules to consider or worry about, just good, clean, attacking.

Your frenzy is probably the worst part of this subclass, as while the extra damage is nice, the level of exhaustion you get will mitigate that very quickly.

You can clear one level of exhaustion with a long rest, the spell Greater Restoration, or a Potion of Vitality to remove all levels of exhaustion.

While you can only use it as often as you have rages, it only takes three levels of exhaustion before you start getting disadvantage on damage rolls.

However, the other class benefits are very useful. Immunity to being charmed or frightened even when you’re not frenzied means fewer annoying conditions to worry about. Plus, while being frightened is annoying, it’s just as annoying for opponents you want to inflict it on.

Finally, using your reaction to deal extra damage makes you well-suited for rushing into a crowd of enemies and drawing all the fire.

Best Species For A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian

Sturdier species will come in handy the most. Species that offer spells are nice but impractical since you can’t use them while raging.

Species

Benefits

Dwarf

Bonus weapon proficiencies, constitution bonus, and mountain dwarf will give you an extra strength increase.

Human

Flat increase to all your stats, or you can gain an extra feat if you choose a variant human.

Halfling

Dexterity increase, and stout halflings get a boost to constitution.

Dragonborn

Strength increase, charisma increase, extra resistance, and a breath weapon, though you can’t use it with most subclass features.

Half-orc

Strength increase, plus savage attack helps you deal even more damage.

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Best Stats For A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian

Since you’ll be primarily taking and receiving damage, strength and constitution are always safe to invest in. To round out your stats, here are the benefits of each stat in the context of this class.

Stat

Benefits

Strength

Determines strength of your attacks with melee weapons

Constitution

Determines your maximum number of hit points

Dexterity

Determines your armor class. Common saving throw

Intelligence

Uncommon saving throw from spell casters

Wisdom

Common saving throw from spell casters

Charisma

Common saving throw. Used to determine the DC of Intimidating Presence saving throws

Best Feats For A Path Of The Berserker Barbarian

The best feats will help you deal with mages and ranged attacks, as well as mitigate some of the effects of exhaustion if you try to use your frenzy.

Charger

Under normal circumstances, if you want to close the gap between you and a fleeing enemy, you have to use your action to make a dash, which means you can't attack directly unless you have two weapons.

With the charger feat, you can instead chase down a fleeing enemy and still attack as a bonus action. If you're barreling down at them in a straight line, you also get to add five damage to a successful attack roll as the sight of an angry barbarian running at them from the length of a football field leaves your opponents quivering in their boots.

Savage Attacker

Once per turn, when you roll damage for a melee weapon attack, you can roll the dice again and use either total. It's a bit of a risk-reward thing as you can't choose to reroll only some of your dice, but it's worth it if you already rolled low anyway and want to see if you can get more damage in.

Resilient

You choose an ability and increase its score by one. You receive advantage in saving throws using that ability. This is best used on a stat that's already low, so you have a better chance of succeeding even if you have a negative modifier to that stat.

Sentinel

This option lets you attack creatures even if they try to disengage, as they will always trigger an opportunity attack regardless. If you manage to hit them, they're unable to move, thus thwarting their escape.

You can use intimidating presence to force a creature to flee if they’re frightened, thus triggering an opportunity attack from you.

You can also use a bonus action to make a melee attack against a creature within five feet of you that attacks a target other than you, basically letting you use retaliation for allies.

Mage Slayer

Spellcasters and Barbarians are natural enemies, as rage doesn't protect barbarians from spells, and spellcasters usually have such poor defenses they die when you poke them lightly, to say nothing of a direct melee attack from a raging barbarian.

This feat helps you handle those pesky wizards and sorcerers and the like by letting you make a melee attack against a creature that casts a spell within five feet of you. If you damage them, which you're very likely to do because spellcasters have the defenses of a wet paper bag, they'll have disadvantage when rolling to keep up concentration spells like Wall of Fire.

As a final bonus, you'll get advantage on saving throws to resist spells cast by enemies within five feet of you. Depending on the spell, this won't completely protect you from damage but will mitigate the damage you take.

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