Barbarian

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A tall human tribesman strides through a blizzard, draped in fur and hefting his axe. He laughs as he charges toward the frost giant who dared poach his people’s elk herd.

A half-orc snarls at the latest challenger to her authority over their savage tribe, ready to break his neck with her bare hands as she did to the last six rivals.

Frothing at the mouth, a dwarf slams his helmet into the face of his drow foe, then turns to drive his armored elbow into the gut of another.

These barbarians, different as they might be, are defined by their rage: unbridled, unquenchable, and unthinking fury. More than a mere emotion, their anger is the ferocity of a cornered predator, the unrelenting assault of a storm, the churning turmoil of the sea.

For some, their rage springs from a communion with fierce animal spirits. Others draw from a roiling reservoir of anger at a world full of pain. For every barbarian, rage is a power that fuels not just a battle frenzy but also uncanny reflexes, resilience, and feats of strength.

Primal Instinct

People of towns and cities take pride in how their civilized ways set them apart from animals, as if denying one’s own nature was a mark of superiority. To a barbarian, though, civilization is no virtue, but a sign of weakness. The strong embrace their animal nature—keen instincts, primal physicality, and ferocious rage. Barbarians are uncomfortable when hedged in by walls and crowds. They thrive in the wilds of their homelands: the tundra, jungle, or grasslands where their tribes live and hunt.

Barbarians come alive in the chaos of combat. They can enter a berserk state where rage takes over, giving them superhuman strength and resilience. A barbarian can draw on this reservoir of fury only a few times without resting, but those few rages are usually sufficient to defeat whatever threats arise.

A Life of Danger

Not every member of the tribes deemed “barbarians” by scions of civilized society has the barbarian class. A true barbarian among these people is as uncommon as a skilled fighter in a town, and he or she plays a similar role as a protector of the people and a leader in times of war. Life in the wild places of the world is fraught with peril: rival tribes, deadly weather, and terrifying monsters. Barbarians charge headlong into that danger so that their people don’t have to.

Their courage in the face of danger makes barbarians perfectly suited for adventuring. Wandering is often a way of life for their native tribes, and the rootless life of the adventurer is little hardship for a barbarian. Some barbarians miss the close-knit family structures of the tribe, but eventually find them replaced by the bonds formed among the members of their adventuring parties.

The Barbarian
Level Features Rages Rage Damage
1st Rage, Unarmored Defense (Barbarian) 2 +2
2nd Reckless Attack, Danger Sense 2 +2
3rd Primal Path 3 +2
4th Ability Score Improvement 3 +2
5th Extra Attack, Fast Movement 3 +2
6th Primal Path feature 4 +2
7th Feral Instinct 4 +2
8th Ability Score Improvement 4 +2
9th Brutal Critical (1 die) 4 +3
10th Primal Path feature 4 +3
11th Relentless Rage 4 +3
12th Ability Score Improvement 5 +3
13th Brutal Critical (2 dice) 5 +3
14th Primal Path feature 5 +3
15th Persistent Rage 5 +3
16th Ability Score Improvement 5 +4
17th Brutal Critical (3 dice) 6 +4
18th Indomitable Might 6 +4
19th Ability Score Improvement 6 +4
20th Primal Champion Unlimited +4

Creating a Barbarian

When creating a barbarian character, think about where your character comes from and his or her place in the world. Talk with your DM about an appropriate origin for your barbarian. Did you come from a distant land, making you a stranger in the area of the campaign? Or is the campaign set in a rough-and-tumble frontier where barbarians are common?

What led you to take up the adventuring life? Were you lured to settled lands by the promise of riches? Did you join forces with soldiers of those lands to face a shared threat? Did monsters or an invading horde drive you out of your homeland, making you a rootless refugee? Perhaps you were a prisoner of war, brought in chains to “civilized” lands and only now able to win your freedom. Or you might have been cast out from your people because of a crime you committed, a taboo you violated, or a coup that removed you from a position of authority.

Quick Build

You can make a barbarian quickly by following these suggestions. First, put your highest ability score in Strength, followed by Constitution. Second, choose the outlander background.

Class Features

As a barbarian, you gain the following class features.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d12 per barbarian level

Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + your Constitution modifier

Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d12 (or 7) + your Constitution modifier per barbarian level after 1st

Proficiencies

Armor: Light armor, medium armor, shields

Weapons: Simple weapons, martial weapons

Tools: None

Saving Throws: Strength, Constitution

Skills: Choose two from Animal Handling, Athletics, Intimidation, Nature, Perception, and Survival

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

Rage 

 In battle, you fight with primal ferocity. On your turn, you can enter a rage as a bonus action. 
 While raging, you gain the following benefits if you aren’t wearing heavy armor:

• You have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws. • When you make a melee weapon attack using Strength, you gain a bonus to the damage roll that increases as you gain levels as a barbarian, as shown in the Rage Damage column of the Barbarian table. • You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. 

 If you are able to cast spells, you can’t cast them or concentrate on them while raging. 
 Your rage lasts for 1 minute. It ends early if you are knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then. You can also end your rage on your turn as a bonus action. 
 Once you have raged the number of times shown for your barbarian level in the Rages column of the Barbarian table, you must finish a long rest before you can rage again.

Unarmored Defense 

 While you are not wearing any armor, your Armor Class equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Constitution modifier. You can use a shield and still gain this benefit.

Reckless Attack 

 Starting at 2nd level, you can throw aside all concern for defense to attack with fierce desperation. When you make your first attack on your turn, you can decide to attack recklessly. Doing so gives you advantage on melee weapon attack rolls using Strength during this turn, but attack rolls against you have advantage until your next turn.

Danger Sense 

 At 2nd level, you gain an uncanny sense of when things nearby aren’t as they should be, giving you an edge when you dodge away from danger. You have advantage on Dexterity saving throws against effects that you can see, such as traps and spells. To gain this benefit, you can’t be blinded, deafened, or incapacitated.

Primal Path 

 At 3rd level, you choose a path that shapes the nature of your rage. Choose the Path of the Berserker or the Path of the Totem Warrior, both detailed at the end of the class description. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 6th, 10th, and 14th levels.

Ability Score Improvement 

 When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Extra Attack 

 Beginning at 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Fast Movement 

 Starting at 5th level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you aren’t wearing heavy armor.

Feral Instinct 

 By 7th level, your instincts are so honed that you have advantage on initiative rolls. 
 Additionally, if you are surprised at the beginning of combat and aren’t incapacitated, you can act normally on your first turn, but only if you enter your rage before doing anything else on that turn.

Brutal Critical 

 Beginning at 9th level, you can roll one additional weapon damage die when determining the extra damage for a critical hit with a melee attack. 
 This increases to two additional dice at 13th level and three additional dice at 17th level.

Relentless Rage 

 Starting at 11th level, your rage can keep you fighting despite grievous wounds. If you drop to 0 hit points while you’re raging and don’t die outright, you can make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw. If you succeed, you drop to 1 hit point instead. 
 Each time you use this feature after the first, the DC increases by 5. When you finish a short or long rest, the DC resets to 10.

Persistent Rage 

 Beginning at 15th level, your rage is so fierce that it ends early only if you fall unconscious or if you choose to end it.

Indomitable Might 

 Beginning at 18th level, if your total for a Strength check is less than your Strength score, you can use that score in place of the total.

Primal Champion 

 At 20th level, you embody the power of the wilds. Your Strength and Constitution scores increase by 4. Your maximum for those scores is now 24.

Primal Paths

Rage burns in every barbarian’s heart, a furnace that drives him or her toward greatness. Different barbarians attribute their rage to different sources, however. For some, it is an internal reservoir where pain, grief, and anger are forged into a fury hard as steel. Others see it as a spiritual blessing, a gift of a totem animal.


Xanathar’s Guide to Barbarians

I have witnessed the indomitable performance of barbarians on the field of battle, and it makes me wonder what force lies at the heart of their rage.

— Seret, archwizard

Rawr! I’m really angry! Funny, I don’t feel any stronger. Maybe because I’m always angry, I’m always in top condition. Stands to reason.

— Xanathar

The anger felt by a normal person resembles the rage of a barbarian in the same way that a gentle breeze is akin to a furious thunderstorm. The barbarian’s driving force comes from a place that transcends mere emotion, making its manifestation all the more terrible. Whether the impetus for the fury comes entirely from within or from forging a link with a spirit animal, a raging barbarian becomes able to perform supernatural feats of strength and endurance. The outburst is temporary, but while it lasts, it takes over body and mind, driving the barbarian on despite peril and injury, until the last enemy falls.

It can be tempting to play a barbarian character that is a straightforward application of the classic archetype—a brute, and usually a dimwitted one at that, who rushes in where other fear to tread. But not all the barbarians in the world are cut from that cloth, so you can certainly put your own spin on things. Either way, consider adding some flourishes to make your barbarian stand out from all others; see the following sections for some ideas.

Personal Totems

Barbarians tend to travel light, carrying little in the way of personal effects or other unnecessary gear. The few possessions they do carry often include small items that have special significance. A personal totem is significant because it has a mystical origin or is tied to an important moment in the character’s life—perhaps a remembrance from the barbarian’s past or a harbinger of what lies ahead.

A personal totem of this sort might be associated with a barbarian’s spirit animal, or might actually be the totem object for the animal, but such a connection is not essential. One who has a bear totem spirit, for instance, could still carry an eagle’s feather as a personal totem.

Consider creating one or more personal totems for your character—objects that hold a special link to your character’s past or future. Think about how a totem might affect your character’s actions.

Examples:

  • A tuft of fur from a solitary wolf that you befriended during a hunt
  • Three eagle features given to you by a wise shaman, who told you they would play a role in determining your fate
  • A necklace made from the claws of a cave bear that you slew singlehandedly as a child
  • A small leather pouch holding three stones that represent your ancestors
  • A few small bones from the first beast you killed, tied together with colored wool
  • An egg-sized stone in the shape of your spirit animal that appeared one day in your belt pouch

Tattoos

The members of many barbarian clans decorate their bodies with tattoos, each of which represents a significant moment in the lift of the bearer or the bearer’s ancestors, or which symbolizes a feeling or an attitude. As with personal totems, a barbarian’s tattoos might or might not be related to an animal spirit.

Each tattoo a barbarian displays contributes to that individual’s identity. If your character wears tattoos, what do they look like, and what do they represent?

Examples:

  • The wings of an eagle are spread wide across your upper back.
  • Etched on the backs of your hands are the paws of a cave bear.
  • The symbols of your clan are displayed in viny patterns along your arms.
  • The antlers of an elk are inked across your back.
  • Images of your spirit animal are tattooed along your weapon arm and hand.
  • The eyes of a wolf are marked on your back to help you see and ward off evil spirits.

Superstitions

Barbarians vary widely in how they understand life. Some follow gods and look for guidance from those deities in the cycles of nature and the animals they encounter. These barbarians believe that spirits inhabit the plants and animals of the world, and the barbarians look to them for omens and power.

Other barbarians trust only in the blood that runs in their veins and the steel they hold in their hands. They have no use for the invisible world, instead relying on their senses to hunt and survive like the wild beasts they emulate.

Both of these attitudes can give rise to superstitions. These beliefs are often passed down within a family or shared among the members of a clan or a hunting group.

If your barbarian character has any superstitions, were they ingrained in you by your family, or are they the result of personal experience?

Examples:

  • If you disturb the bones of the dead, you inherit all the troubles that plagued them in life.
  • Never trust a wizard. They’re all devils in disguise, especially the friendly ones.
  • Dwarves have lost their spirits, and are almost like the undead. That’s why they live underground.
  • Magical things bring trouble. Never sleep with a magic object within ten feet of you.
  • When you walk through a graveyard, be sure to wear silver, or a ghost might jump into your body.
  • If an elf looks you in the eye’s, she’s trying to read your thoughts.


Barbarians of the Sword Coast

Closest to the dark elves, Pwent lowered his head, with its long helmet spike, and impaled one elf through the chest, blasting through the tme mesh of draw armor easily and brutally. The second drow managed to deflect the next battlerager’s charge, turning the helmet spike aside with both his swords. But a mailed fist, the knuckles devilishly spiked with barbed points, caught the draw under the chin and tore a gaping hole in his throat. Fighting for breath, the drow managed to score two nasty hits on his opponent’s back, but those two strikes did little in the face of the flurry launched by the wild-eyed dwarf.

- R.A. Salvatore, Siege of Darkness

Many of the lands of the Sword Coast and the North are savage, where day-to-day survival is a struggle. Such lands breed hardy tribes and fierce warriors, such as the Reghed and Uthgardt barbarians of the North and the seafaring Northlanders of the Moonshae Isles and the northernmost reaches of the Sword Coast.

Barbarians of these lands are most often humans or half-orcs, occasionally half-elves born of contact between savage human tribes and the elves of the North or Western Heartlands, or tieflings from tribes known to consort with fiends. Dwarf barbarians are famed and feared warriors among the fiercely proud clans that have reclaimed territories like Mithril Hall and Gautlgrym. Barbarians of most other races hail from warmer southern lands, rather than the Savage North, although southern foundlings are sometimes adopted in the North and raised by tribes there.

Primal Paths

Barbarians in the Forgotten Realms have the following Primal Path options, in addition to those in the Player’s Handbook. Reghed and Northlander barbarians tend to follow the Path of the Berserker, while Uthgardt barbarians are nearly always followers of the Path of the Totem Warrior.


Sources:

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