Barbarian

In the desolate expanse of the Wraith Coast, where the sun has long surrendered to the sinister embrace of eternal night, the Barbarian emerges as a primal force, a living embodiment of the indomitable will to survive amidst the encroaching shadows. These formidable night explorers, marked by resilience and an unyielding spirit, have become the bulwark against the encroaching horrors that plague the moonlit realm.

In this benighted age, the Barbarian is a survivor who has not merely adapted but thrived in the face of unrelenting darkness. Their strength is not only physical but also a testament to an unwavering resolve that defies the encroaching despair. Whether driven by an ancestral connection to ancient spirits, a personal vendetta against the undead, or an innate yearning for the remnants of life, Barbarians embody the untamed fury that courses through the veins of Faerun.

These warriors of the moonlit lands are attuned to the ebb and flow of the lunar cycle, drawing strength from the silvery glow that bathes the world in haunting radiance. The Barbarian’s connection to the Moon is more than symbolic; it is a lifeline in the perpetual night, guiding them through the silent and perilous landscapes that conceal both ancient terrors and hidden truths.

As they navigate the treacherous terrain of superstition and occultism, Barbarians stand resolute, a bulwark against the encroaching darkness. The fate of the realm teeters on the edge, and it is upon the shoulders of these fierce warriors that the delicate balance rests. The Moon becomes both ally and guide, leading the Barbarian through the abyss, where only the strongest, both in body and spirit, can hope to endure. In the face of insurmountable odds, the Barbarian rises, a beacon of primal strength in the unending night.

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	Rages	Rage Damage
1st	+2	Rage, Unarmored Defense	2	+1d4
2nd	+2	Reckless Attack, Danger Sense	2	+1d4
3rd	+2	Primal Path	3	+1d4
4th	+2	Ability Score Improvement	3	+1d4
5th	+3	Extra Attack, Fast Movement	3	+1d4
6th	+3	Path Feature	4	+1d4
7th	+3	Feral Instinct	4	+1d4
8th	+3	Ability Score Improvement	4	+1d6
9th	+4	Brutal Critical (1 die)	4	+1d6
10th	+4	Path Feature	4	+1d6
11th	+4	Relentless Rage	4	+1d6
12th	+4	Ability Score Improvement	5	+1d6
13th	+5	Brutal Critical (2 dice)	5	+1d6
14th	+5	Path Feature	5	+1d6
15th	+5	Persistent Rage	5	+1d8
16th	+5	Ability Score Improvement	5	+1d8
17th	+6	Brutal Critical (3 dice)	6	+1d8
18th	+6	Rampage	6	+1d8
19th	+6	Ability Score Improvement	6	+1d8
20th	+6	Primal Champion	Unlimited	+1d8

Class Features

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 an attack with a melee weapon that uses Strength, you gain a +1d4 bonus to the damage roll. This die grows as you gain levels in this class, to 1d6 at 9th level, and 1d8 at 16th. This replaces your Rage Damage listed on the Barbarian class table. When a feature adds your Rage Damage bonus, you roll this die and add the result instead.
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, unless the spell was granted by a racial feature or racial feat.

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.

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.

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.

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 attack rolls using Strength until the start of your next turn, but attack rolls against you have advantage until your next turn.

When you reach 3rd level and again at 10th level, you gain proficiency in one skill of your choice from the list of skills available to barbarians at 1st level.

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.

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

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

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.

At 7th level, as part of the bonus action you take to enter your rage, you can move up to half your speed.

Beginning at 9th level, you can roll each damage die an additional weapon damage die when determining the extra damage for a critical hit with a melee attack.

At 13th level you roll the weapon’s damage dice two additional times, and 17th level you roll the dice three additional times.

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.

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.

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

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

At 3rd level, you choose a path that shapes the nature of your rage. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level and again at 6th, 10th, and 14th levels

Barbarians who draw on their ancestral guardians can better fight to protect their tribes and their allies. In order to cement ties to their ancestral guardians, barbarians who follow this path cover themselves in elaborate tattoos that celebrate their ancestors’ deeds. These tattoos tell sagas of victories against terrible monsters and other fearsome rivals.

Source: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Ancestral Protectors

Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, spectral warriors appear when you enter your rage. While you’re raging, the first creature you hit with an attack on your turn becomes the target of the warriors, which hinder its attacks. Until the start of your next turn, that target has disadvantage on any attack roll that isn’t against you, and when the target hits a creature other than you with an attack, that creature has resistance to the damage dealt by the attack. The effect on the target ends early if your rage ends.

Spirit Shield

Beginning at 6th level, the guardian spirits that aid you can provide supernatural protection to those you defend. If you are raging and another creature you can see within 30 feet of you takes damage, you can use your reaction to reduce that damage by 2d6. When you reach certain levels in this class, you can reduce the damage by more: by 3d6 at 10th level and by 4d6 at 14th level.

Consult the Spirits

At 10th level, you gain the ability to consult with your ancestral spirits. When you do so, you cast the Augury or Clairvoyance spell, without using a spell slot or material components. Rather than creating a spherical sensor, this use of clairvoyance invisibly summons one of your ancestral spirits to the chosen location. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells. After you cast either spell in this way, you can’t use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest.

Vengeful Ancestors

At 14th level, your ancestral spirits grow powerful enough to retaliate. When you use your Spirit Shield to reduce the damage of an attack, the attacker takes an amount of force damage that your Spirit Shield prevents.

For some barbarians, rage is a means to an end—that end being violence. The Path of the Berserker is a path of untrammeled fury, slick with blood, where anger for anger’s sake is king. As a berserker enters a rage, they thrill in the chaos of battle, heedless of their own health and well-being.

Source: The Warriors Codex

Frenzy

Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can go into a frenzy when you rage. During a frenzied rage, you can make one additional melee weapon attack when you take the Attack action, but every attack that you make during this rage must use your Reckless Attack feature.

Spirit Shield

Mindless Rage

Beginning at 6th level, the bloody joy of battle wipes out other influences. While raging, you can’t be charmed or frightened, and are immune to psychic damage. If you are charmed or frightened when you enter a rage, the condition ends.

Terrifying Rampage

Starting at 10th level, whenever you reduce a target to 0 hit points you can choose to force creatures of your choice within 30 feet of the slain target that can see and hear you to make a Wisdom saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier). Each creature that fails its save is frightened of you until the end of your next turn. A creature with fewer hit points than the damage you dealt has disadvantage on its saving throw.

Adrenaline Rush

Starting at 14th level, when you are attacked, you can use your reaction to make a weapon attack against the attacker. You can enter a frenzied rage as part of the same reaction, potentially gaining resistance to the damage from the attack.

Brawlers, battleragers, gladiators, and pugilists, Bonebreakers wield crude-but-powerful weapons older than any other: their own two fists. Seemingly impervious to pain, their bone-shattering blows dent the finest armor and sunder the hardest scales. To a Bonebreaker, magic and weapon alike can never compete with a strong right hook.

Source: The Warriors Codex

Flesh and Steel

Starting when you take this path at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in spiked armor. Spiked armor is light armor made from plates of leather embedded with steel spines that weighs 20 lbs. While you wear it, your AC is 13 + your Dexterity modifier. While wearing spiked armor, whenever you make a Strength (Athletics) check to Overrun or inflict, escape, avoid, or maintain a grapple with another creature, you deal 1d4 piercing damage to that creature. When another creature wears this item, it is considered leather armor. You also gain proficiency in leatherworker’s tools, and can use them to reassemble any leather or hide armor into a set of spiked armor and two cestus during a short or long rest. Finally, your raw bulk provides an additional layer of physical defense. Whenever you would use your Dexterity modifier to calculate your AC, you can use your Strength modifier instead.

Furious Fists

Also at 3rd level, your punches hit harder than any other. You gain the Unarmed Fighting style (detailed in Part IV), which you can also use when wielding a cestus as though you were wielding no weapons. Your unarmed strikes and attacks with cestus have the sundering property. Even though they lack the light property, you can use your fists to engage in two-weapon fighting, and you add your ability score modifier to the damage of the additional attack when you use a cestus or fist to make it.

I Am Unbreackable!

Starting at 6th level, your stamina in a brawl matches even the most hardened soldier. You have advantage on saving throws against being stunned or being put to sleep. In addition, you can use a bonus action while raging to expend a hit die and send a surge of strength through your body. When you do so, you end one of the following conditions on yourself: blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, poisoned, or restrained. When you expend a hit die in this way, you do not regain hit points. You can use this feature a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus.

Thorned Charge

At 10th level, you can barrel through many foes. When you take the Dash action, you can Overrun (Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 272) any number of creatures without expending an action or bonus action. When you successfully Overrun a creature it takes 2d4 bludgeoning damage and is knocked prone. If you are wearing spiked armor, you deal 2d4 piercing damage instead (for a total of 3d4 piercing damage). If the creature that you attempted to Overrun succeeds on the check, it takes half as much damage and isn’t knocked prone, but you still move through its space.

Right Hook

Beginning at 14th level, you can ruthlessly exploit the flaws in your enemies’ guards. If you have advantage on an attack roll with an unarmed strike or cestus and you hit, you can use the maximum possible result on all of the attack’s damage dice instead of rolling.

Barbarians who hail from cultures that revere the raw primordial rage of the elements are deeply connected to the natural forces that shape the world. These individuals draw their strength and inspiration from the untamed, chaotic energy that manifests in the form of cyclones, volcanoes, tidal waves, and earthquakes. This cultural perspective not only influences their combat style but also shapes their worldview, rituals, and societal structures.

Source: Soulforge Adventures Homebrew

Unarmed Fury

Primal magic empowers your strikes. At 3rd level when you adopt this path, you gain the following benefits while you are raging and unarmed:

When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike on your turn or when you attempt a shove or grapple, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.
You can roll a d4 in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strikes. This die changes to a d6 at 6th level, and a d8 at 14th level.

Reckless Inferno

At 6th level, your Elemental Rage empowers your reckless strikes. If an effect require a saving throw, the DC equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Constitution modifier.

Air
- You strike with the fury of the wind. Whenever you’re raging and you make a reckless attack with an unarmed strike, you can make two unarmed strikes as a bonus action.
Earth
- Your strikes embody the earthquake. Once per turn whenever you’re raging and you make a reckless attack with an unarmed strike, you can force your opponent to succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone.
Fire
- If you’ve made a reckless attack on your turn, fire tendrils erupt around you and lash out at your foes. Until the start of your next turn, if a creature hits you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to force that creature to make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes fire damage equal to half your barbarian level.
Water
- Your limbs flow like the river. Whenever you’re raging and make a reckless attack, your unarmed strikes gain a range of 10 feet.

Elemental Rage

At 3rd level, when you adopt this path, you gain the ability to go into an Elemental Rage. You can choose a different element whenever you rage. At your option, you also gain minor physical attributes that are reminiscent of your elemental spirit.

Air

While raging, ranged weapon attacks have disadvantage against you.

Earth

Whenever you rage, you gain temporary hit points equal to your barbarian level.

Fire

While raging, you gain resistance to fire and radiant damage. You also shed bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light in an additional 30 feet.

Water

While raging, you are immune to being grappled, prone and restrained.

Primordial Guardians

At 10th level, as an action, you can summon elementals while raging, as per the effect of the Conjure Minor Elementals spell. These elementals must be of the same element than your rage, and disappear when your rage ends.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Elemental Attunement

At 14th level, you gain a magical benefit based on your Elemental Rage.

Air

While raging, you have a flying speed equal to your current walking speed. This benefit works only in short bursts; you fall if you end your turn in the air and nothing else is holding you aloft.

Earth

While raging, you can burrow through nonmagical, unworked earth and stone. While doing so, you do not disturb the material you move through.

Fire

While raging, you can use a bonus action during your move to pass through the space of a creature. That creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take fire damage equal to 2d8 + your Constitution modifier.

Water

While raging, you have a swimming speed equal to your current walking speed and you can breathe underwater. In addition, you can move your normal speed while grappling creatures.

Titans of physical strength, barbarians who follow the Path of the Ironclad have mastered defensive combat by using civilization’s greatest innovation: metal. Eschewing leather and furs for heavy plate crude weapons for gigantic, finely-forged instruments of destruction, these warriors clad in shining steel are barbarians for a new industrial age.

Source: The Warriors Codex

Crucible of Might

Your rage is tempered by a defensive nature, yet your strength and ability to exploit weight are unparalleled. Starting at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in heavy armor, and can use your Rage and Fast Movement features while wearing it even though those features state otherwise. Finally, you gain proficiency with smith’s tools, and can produce armor and weapons twice as quickly.

Furious Fists

Unyielding

Starting at 6th level, your armor’s weight lets you barrel through obstacles. While wearing heavy armor, you can move through difficult terrain and effects that require you to spend additional feet of movement such as the wall of thorns spell without being slowed. In addition, when you are subjected to an effect that would move you, knock you prone, or both against your will, you can use your reaction to be neither moved nor knocked prone.

Iron Curtain

At 10th level, the bulk of your mighty armor forces enemies to work around your presence, reducing their effectiveness against your allies. When a creature other than you within 5 feet of you takes nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, you can reduce the damage taken by an amount equal to your armor’s damage reduction, if any.

Dreadful Dreadnought

Starting at 14th level, your ability to shrug off mighty blows demoralizes your enemies and weakens subsequent strikes. Whenever you take an amount of bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage less than your barbarian level, the creature that inflicted that damage has disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes against you before the end of its next turn.

Their eyes are filled with the oblivion of darkness. When the battle is raging, they gasp with lust and laugh with fierce joy, emitting verses of inhuman creatures. Emptiness and terror surround them while the massacre takes place, consuming their very hearts.

They call them Unholy Barbarians, and in their ranks are counted those rare wild warriors who do not fear the night, but welcome it into their soul.

Many fear the Unholy, as their impulses of wrath are punctuated with madness, which makes them as unpredictable as they are unreliable. The heat of battle takes over in these warriors, blinding them to danger with the sacrilegious darkness that bloats their hearts and moves their arm.

These characters draw strength and fervor from their own soul’s distress. The descent into the oblivion of madness awakens violent and obscure powers along with the insatiable desire to use them: a desire to which they often decide to succumb.

Those who choose to follow this path of brutality and insanity will take strength from the approach of the end, and will weaponize the corruption of their spirit.

Unholy Thirst

At 3rd level, you learn to yield to the temptation of darkness, forgoing fragments of your soul in exchange for a promise of power that can only really be unleashed when pervaded by rage. At the beginning of each turn while in Rage, you may choose to lose a Soul Point: in doing so, the next Strength-based attack with a melee weapon will deal 1d12 additional damage. If the attack is not enough to reduce the target to 0 Hit Points, you take 1d6 necrotic damage that cannot be resisted or reduced in any way.

Blade of the soul

At 3rd level, you learn to draw power from the darkness instead of being swallowed by it. When you suffer an involuntary Soul Point loss, you can use your Reaction to gain 1d12 temporary hit points and have Advantage on Saving Throws until the end of your next turn.

On the Verge of Oblivion

At 6th level, you begin to feel more comfortable on the verge of oblivion; one step away from seeing the darkness of your soul reunited with those of the Dark Mirror. While your Soul Point total is below your character level, you ignore the effects of the first five levels of exhaustion (the sixth is fatal anyway).

Dark Devourer

At 10th level, you get nourishment from the essence of the dark creatures that die in your vicinity. If you were in rage within 30 feet of an undead, fiend or an aberration when it drops to 0 Hit Points, you regain an amount of Soul Points equal to the creature’s challenge rating.

Unholy Wrath

At 14th level, your wrath permanently devours what remains of your soul: entering Rage involves a loss of Soul Points equal to your Constitution modifier, and you add your Constitution modifier to the damage inflicted with melee weapons as long as you are in Rage.

Some deities inspire their followers to pitch themselves into a ferocious battle fury. These barbarians are zealots – warriors who channel their rage into powerful displays of divine power.

Source: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Divine Fury

Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can channel divine fury into your weapon strikes. While you’re raging, the first creature you hit on each of your turns with a weapon attack takes extra damage equal to 1d6 + half your Barbarian level. The extra damage is necrotic or radiant; you choose the type of damage when you gain this feature.

Warrior of the Gods

At 3rd level, your soul is marked for endless battle. If a spell, such as Raise Dead, has the sole effect of restoring you to life (but not undeath), the caster doesn’t need material components to cast the spell on you.

Fanatical Focus

Starting at 6th level, the divine power that fuels your rage can protect you. If you fail a saving throw while raging, you can reroll it, and you must use the new roll. You can use this ability only once per rage.

Zealous Presence

At 10th level, you learn to channel divine power to inspire zealotry in others. As a bonus action, you unleash a battle cry infused with divine energy. Up to ten other creatures of your choice within 60 feet of you that can hear you gain advantage on attack rolls and saving throws until the start of your next turn. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Rage Beyond Death

Beginning at 14th level, the divine power that fuels your rage allows you to shrug off fatal blows. While you’re raging, having 0 hit points doesn’t knock you unconscious. You still must make death saving throws, and you suffer the normal effects of taking damage while at 0 hit points. However, if you would die due to failing death saving throws, you don’t die until your rage ends, and you die then only if you still have 0 hit points.

Restriction

There are no special restrictions for this class, unless noted elsewhere.

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, one exotic weapon or shield.
Tools: None
Saving Throws: Strength, Constitution
Skills: Choose two from Animal Handling, Athletics, Intimidation, Nature, Perception, and Survival

Equipment
You start with 150 gp spend on equipment. The following equipment is a suggested shopping list:

(a) any martial melee weapon or (b) an exotic weapon with which you are proficient
(a) two handaxes or (b) any simple weapon

Multiclassing and the Barbarian

Ability Score Minimum: As a multiclass character, you must have a Strength score of at least 13 to take a level in this class or to take a level in another class if you are already a barbarian.
Proficiencies. If barbarian isn’t your initial class, you gain proficiency with shields, simple weapons, and martial weapons when you gain your first level as a barbarian.