Making Your Own Barbarian Subclass

You may decide that you want to create your own barbarian subclass that best fits your campaign. Before embarking on this task, you want to be sure that no existing barbarian subclass meets your design goals. One of the greatest flexibilities offered in 5e class design is how open it is to reflavor the features. If there is a subclass that can meet your mechanical needs and stylistic vision, it is best to simply use that and save a lot of time in designing, writing, and playtesting.

If, however, you find that no existing subclass achieves the fantasy or has the mechanics to match your vision, this section will guide you toward making a barbarian subclass that fits the 5e D&D model. The guidelines will help you create the features for your subclass and detail how you should balance the class to fit within the official options and those offered by Therin Creative and similar content creators.

Please note that despite the guidance offered herein, your subclass may need further tuning. Be certain to spend the time to playtest your subclass.

Class Chassis

The barbarian is a class that favors Strength and Constitution. It is designed to be a melee-focused class that primarily uses weapons to deliver strong attacks. While the barbarian can go unarmored, it is more efficient for the class to use armor.

Hit Dice

With a d12 Hit Dice, the barbarian has the most hit points of all the classes. Since it typically wants high Constitution and ultimately gets a bonus to that score, the barbarian can generally take the most damage in any adventuring party.

Proficiencies

The barbarian has proficiency with all weapons, but its kit leans heavily toward melee and thrown weapons. It has light and medium armor and can use a shield, providing a reasonable AC. Its skill proficiencies position the barbarian to support wilderness exploration.

Ability Score Improvement

The barbarian uses standard progression for the Ability Score Improvement (ASI) feature (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level). Its capstone feature further grants it a +4 bonus to Strength and Constitution that can exceed the usual cap of 20 in an ability score. This doesn’t give the barbarian ability score points to play with outside Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, so if your subclass uses Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, be sure the stat spread feels worthwhile, but don’t simply grant the barbarian extra points because such as subclass would simply be superior to its peers.

Rage

Rage is the core mechanic for the barbarian class. It serves as both the barbarian’s defense and offense. Rage gives damage resistance to most weapons, natural and manufactured. It also adds a small damage bonus to each attack the character makes. The Rage feature’s resistance plays into the barbarian’s other core feature: Reckless Attack.

Reckless Attack

Instead of the Fighting Style feature that fighters, paladins, and rangers get, barbarians get the Reckless Attack feature. This means that a barbarian has advantage on attack rolls during its turn on demand. The cost for this is that the barbarian is likely to get hit by its foes, but during rage, much of this damage is reduced by half. After factoring in the barbarian’s high hit point count, this allows the barbarian to maintain a steady, strong offense.

Ribbon Features

The barbarian class doesn’t grant many ribbon features, and the two it does gain in the Player’s Handbook both have combat functions as well. Most Primal Paths grant a ribbon feature of some kind, if not a full utility feature.

Primal Path Features

Primal Paths grant features at 3rd, 6th, 10th, and 14th level. This is a fairly standard progression more or less used by a number of classes.

Building a Primal Path

Once you understand the class chassis, you’re one step closer to building a subclass. You’ll also want to review existing subclasses to get a feel for their design and balance. This section will aid you in understanding what your subclass features should accomplish.

Before starting on the formal work to build your subclass, devise its theme and role. What is your subclass’s purpose? What roles does it fill in an adventuring party? How are its mechanics interesting and unique? Why would a player choose your subclass?

Let’s start by looking at some existing barbarian subclasses.

Path of the Berserker. Merging risk and reward, the Berserker Primal Path allows the character to make one more attack at the cost of exhaustion. When willing to incur this drawback, the Berserker can output heavy damage compared to its peers. Players choose this primal path to make a character inspired by the fearless, frenzied warrior.

Path of the Totem Warrior. As a spiritual leaning Primal Path, the Totem Warrior uses the power of animal spirits, pushing itself beyond humanoid limit. Players choose this primal path to commune with nature and to draw upon its strength.

Path of the Zealot. The Path of the Zealot morphs rage into a state of faith-based fervor. It can serve concepts from a religious fanatic to a consummate warrior with unmatched resolve. Players choose this archetype because they want to cut their foes does with absolute fury.

Path of the Beast. Taking on a bestial aspect, the Path of the Beast is a versatile barbarian. It can focus on offense, defense, or blend the two, and can later bolster its allies. Players choose this archetype for its ability to become beast-like and attack with tooth and claw.

Path of the Shamanic Adherent. This Primal Path opens the barbarian to casting spells. The Path of the Shamanic Adherent calls on the power of the divine to support its allies. Players choose this archetype because they want to blend the barbarian class with druidic magic.

Each barbarian subclass interprets what it means to be a primal warrior in a different way, but at its core, each is a barbarian, entering rage and benefiting from the core class’s feature as it charts its unique path.

Building the Subclass

This guide covers building a Primal Path consistent with official published material. Each Primal Path adds a new facet to the barbarian’s Rage feature and adds progression to support its fantasy.

Subclass features are granted at 3rd, 6th, 10th, and 14th level. Each Primal Path feature should usually grant one subclass feature. Consult the Barbarian Subclass Features table for when you should grant features.

There are exceptions for the rule of only granting a single subclass feature:

• Ribbon features are frequently weak on their own, so in certain cases you may grant a second, minor feature, which could be another ribbon feature.
• The feature has some complex interactions that are much clearer when separated. Often this is indication that something should be cut, but in rare cases, it makes sense to split a feature for comprehension.
• You are expanding an existing feature in a minor way. Sometimes it’s better to include the enhancement in the core feature, and at other times it could be a note in another feature.

Barbarian Subclass Features

Barbarian Level	Feature
3rd	Rage Feature
6th	Utility or Defensive Feature
10th	Expansion or Rage Enhancement Feature
14th	Enhancement Feature

Rage Feature

3rd-level [Your Barbarian Subclass] feature

Each Primal Path augments the effects of the Rage feature in a unique way that defines the fantasy of the subclass. There are a number of ways you can enhance rage, and you’re not limited to offensive option, though this feature generally does enhance a barbarian’s damage.

When adding damage, be careful how you add that damage, and its frequency. Look at high-damage model Primal Paths to see the upper bounds for purely damage-focused rage enhancements, such as the Paths of the Berserker and Zealot. In each case, those subclasses add damage once per round. For more common increases, you want a much smaller amount of damage, similar to how Path of the Storm Herald’s damage options work.

You can also favor more tactical or defensive options. Path of the Totem Warrior is often regarded as strong because of its Bear Totem’s rage effect. It is also reasonable to offer the barbarian a choice of effects when it enters to rage, giving it a lot more tactical depth. This is useful, as it allows players to decide how to specialize the barbarian with the flavor and kit of the subclass.

If you don’t offer a choice between options when leaning into a defensive option, you want to make a later feature a Rage Enhancement feature to improve this feature or otherwise enhance the subclass’s kit. For example, the Path of the Ancestral Guardian’s Rage feature is purely defensive, but its 14th-level feature enhances its 6th-level Defensive feature to add a damage component.

For a damage boost, you want to aim around 20% for a purely offensive Rage feature (if you add a drawback, you could go higher, like with Path of the Berserker, but drawbacks tend to make for poor play experiences). If you offer a range of options, you want to aim for no more than a 10% boost, if any at all. If you add less than 10% damage that doesn’t grow with the barbarian’s level, you should consider using a Rage Enhancement feature for 10th or 14th level to get the subclass’s expected damage around 10% to 15% over the base class daily damage budget.

Utility or Defensive Feature

6th-level [Your Barbarian Subclass] feature

This feature grants new options to the barbarian, often augmenting its movement or defenses, but can also expand on its skills. For a defensive feature, you can make it situational if that makes more sense for your concept.

Depending on the power of the effect, you may choose to limit how often it can be used, especially if the feature duplicates a spell.

Expansion Feature

10th-level [Your Barbarian Subclass] feature

With this feature, you want to add something new to the barbarian’s kit, which can be a special action in combat or an out of combat utility. You don’t want to add damage to the class with this feature unless you determined this feature should be replaced with a Rage Enhancement feature (described below).

At times, it may make sense to make this feature a Defensive feature. This can be a good choice if the Rage feature already contributes defensive aspects to better space out the feature types.

Combat Enhancement Feature

14th-level [Your Barbarian Subclass] feature

The final feature granted by a Primal Path further enhances the barbarian’s combat prowess. Typically this is done as a Rage Enhancement feature active only during rage, but you can allow certain combat enhancements to always be active. Do this when the combat enhancement requires a trigger to active, such as getting hit by an attack.

This feature doesn’t have to add damage if the earlier features already scale the barbarian’s damage. It also can add damage to the barbarian’s party instead of the barbarian itself.