Barbarian: D&D 2024 Class Optimisation Guide (5.5e)

Tap into primeval powers with this aggressive warrior class, revised for D&D 2024

Barbarians are primal warriors. Physically refined and recklessly aggressive in combat. While many barbarians are seen as berserkers with little care for life or limb, this is only true of some barbarians. In fact, many barbarians are tribal warriors and hunters, protectors of the natural world and even gentle in nature (unless provoked into battle).

As warriors go, barbarians lack the same level of training and swordsmanship as fighters, the lightning fast precision of monks or the divine enhancements of paladins. Instead, barbarians are more about raw power, utilising a primal power known as their rage which enhances their combat capabilities. This enables them to take more damage and dish it out in greater measure too.

Barbarians will specialise by taking subclasses known as paths that utilise their rage in more profound and unique ways. This can include resorting to a mindless frenzy, taking on beastly powers, accessing divine aid or utilising the powers of the world tree to control the battlefield.

In the D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook, barbarians have seen significant improvements, making them more versatile and tactical to play. Read on to learn how to build, optimise and play as these reckless warriors.

At a glance

Strengths

Powerful melee warrior
The most durable class in the game
Easy for beginners

Weaknesses

No spellcasting
Mostly only has functions in combat and these aren’t hugely varied
Not great at ranged combat

What’s changing for barbarians in D&D 2024?

Check out my full article on barbarian changes in D&D 2024 to find out everything that’s changing. As a summary, the big changes include:

Gaining weapon masteries for greater utility in combat
More ways to use their rage, and more ways to recharge it too
Better utility outside of combat with improved skill capabilities
Combat abilities that help them do more than just inflict damage
Revamped subclasses
A brand new subclass in the path of the world tree

Related articles

Tactics

While the main tactic for a barbarian is to get into the thick of melee as quickly as possible, there is some nuance to how they can be played most effectively.

Rage

Barbarians are very reliant on rage to give them maximum defence and some extra damage and other perks. The earlier in combat you can switch this on, the better as you’re more vulnerable without it.

Part of this could mean increasing your initiative to ensure you’re not vulnerable during that first round of combat. Feral instinct will help here, as will a high dexterity or maybe the alert origin feat.

Durability

You should be working to take the brunt of attacks in the party, but you’re not indestructible. Beef up your durability with a high constitution, AC, plenty of resistances and anything else that can help you last longer in a fight.

When raging, your hit points are worth twice anyone else’s, so make sure you’re a priority target of healing too. With unarmoured defence, constitution has the double benefit of increasing hit points and AC making it particularly useful here. At early levels, especially if you prioritise strength, you may find that medium armor is better for your AC, but unarmored defence does have a higher ceiling.

Enhancing damage

Often, the best form of defence is attack, and you should certainly be working to thin the herd of enemies with your attacks. You’ll do more damage in melee so ensure you get in melee range quickly. You also have reckless attack if hitting is more important than defending.

Just remember that you likely have 1 or 2 attacks that will benefit from advantage whereas enemies could have more attacks targeted at you with advantage so the trade-off isn’t necessarily balanced. The biggest reason to use reckless attack is to gain the extra damage and benefits from brutal strike so both accuracy and damage will be helped.

Tactical strikes

Barbarians aren’t just about raw damage. Strikes can be tactical too. Brutal strikes are a great way to control movement of enemies. You can slow them down or push them about.

Weapon masteries will help here too and they can stack so a push mastery can be used with a forceful blow to smash someone really far away. Or you can mix and match. Something like topple will help you gain advantage without having to use reckless attack, for example.

Optimising a barbarian

four elements monk Goliath 2024 — Goliath barbarian: Wizards of the Coast

Barbarians are all about absorbing lots of damage and dealing a fair bit of it themselves. You’ll want to build around being a tanky melee warrior. I’ve suggested how you can do that below.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Strength: Important for dealing damage. The most important ability score for most barbarians.
Constitution: Hugely important for durability and to enhance your unarmored defense which, if you can swing it, is superior to medium armor.
Dexterity: Either go for 14 dexterity to maximise on medium armor or put a bit more into this for an enhanced unarmored defense. I’d often prioritise strength and constitution ahead of dexterity still, but you’ll want this as high as you can get it.

Options to avoid

Wisdom: Of little use to a barbarian.
Intelligence: Of little use to a barbarian.
Charisma: Of little use to a barbarian. You can even intimidate with strength now.

Example ability score spread

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	15	15
Dexterity	15	13
Constitution	15	14
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	8	12
Charisma	8	10

Skills

Recommended options

Athletics: Great if you want to do a lot of grappling
Perception: Important for most characters as you’ll use it regularly, plus you can use your strength for this with primal knowledge now too.
Intimidation: You may be dumping charisma, but primal knowledge lets you use strength for this ability check anyway. And those big muscles really are intimidating!

Options to avoid

Survival: Used far too little to be of much use.
Animal handling: Used far too little to be of much use.

Species/races

There are a couple of things to consider when choosing a species for a barbarian:

Resilience: Damage resistances will protect your tank even more, especially as you should be on the frontlines.
Avoid Innate spellcasting: Innate spellcasting can be fine for out of combat spells, but is pointless for spells you might use in combat (as you’ll likely be raging and not have a great spellcasting ability).
Movement Speed: Increasing movement speed can be helpful for getting into melee combat quicker.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your hardiness and extra damage from celestial revelation both work really well for any barbarian. I’d primarily look to inner radiance as your charisma will likely be a bit low for necrotic shroud. Flight can be useful but inner radiance will often be your best option.
Dragonborn (2024): An AoE breath weapon with scalable damage that only takes up a single attack is great if you want to deal damage to the masses (and lets be honest, you definitely do)! On top of that, you get a resistance and temporary flight which is always a useful option.
Dwarf (2024): An extra hit point per level is great for a protector character and for even more resilience, you have resistance against poison and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition.
Goliath (2024): The quintessential barbarian race! Faster movement makes you even better at traversing the battlefield. There are lots of good giant ancestry options too. Gain greater resilience from the stone giant, damage from the fire giant or knocking enemies prone with the hill giant.
Orc (2024): Adrenaline rush gets you some temporary hit points and bonus action dash for some added distance when you need it. Relentless endurance will keep you in the fight even longer too.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Below are the options I think work best for a barbarian:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Criminal	Dexterity, constitution, intelligence	Alert	Sleight of hand, stealth	Thieves tools
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Soldier	Strength, dexterity, constitution	Savage attacker	Athletics, intimidation	One kind of gaming set

Of these options, I think farmer is probably your best bet with strength and constitution increases and the tough feat. The skills aren’t great, but barbarians aren’t your best option for most skills anyway.

Choosing your subclass

Different barbarians have different primal powers which come from the barbarian path they follow. You can learn more about each subclass in my guides below:

Path of the berserker

A frenzied warrior that gives no care for life nor limb. They strike with greater power and are even more durable than other barbarians.

Path of the Berserker

Path of the Wild Heart

Previously called the path of the totem warrior, wild heart barbarians take their powers from beasts granting them a flexible range of utility abilities. Choose from options like darkvision, a climb speed, flight, extra resistances and more.

Path of the Wild Heart

Path of the World Tree

A devastating protector of the planes capable of teleporting wherever they need to be. No enemy can escape the wrath of this barbarian. They make a great tactical option that works well with allies.

Path of the World Tree

Path of the Zealot

Divinely invested barbarians that operate something like a paladin with things like healing and damage resistances as well as other divinely granted features.

Path of the Zealot

Feats

Origin feats

To help with picking your background (or if you’re playing a Human), I’ve evaluated your origin feat options for a barbarian:

Recommended options

Alert: Ensures your initiative rolls are higher allowing you to go earlier in combat. Allows you to activate rage early on. Just be careful if your wizard wants to land AoE spells early, you might get in their way. If that’s an issue though, just swap your initiative roll with them.
Lucky: Great on any class to gain advantage on some rolls.
Musician: A generally excellent origin feat for helping your allies out with some heroic inspiration (kind of like a slightly better lucky you give to your friends).
Tough: Really valuable extra hit points as you can expect to take a beating.

General feats

At level 4, you can start picking up general feats.

Charger: Extra damage or extra pushing (that stacks with weapon mastery push and brutal strike for a potential 35ft push)!
Crusher: Extra pushing and advantage following criticals are solid options.
Great weapon master: Straight-forward and effective damage increase.
Mage slayer: Great for handling spellcasters.
Polearm master: Many barbarians aren’t consistently using their bonus action and the ability to more reliably make opportunity attacks is handy.
Resilient: Grab proficiency in dexterity saving throws. They’re often nasty when you fail them and you need to increase your dexterity for unarmored defense anyway.
Sentinel: Great when defending allies.
Shield master: Effective for a strength-based character.

Epic boon feats

At level 19, you can pick an epic boon feats (as well as at levels beyond level 20). I’d recommend the following:

Boon of combat prowess: Great for negating the lack of advantage from brutal strike.
Boon of energy resistance: More resistance to damage is welcome and barbarians only utilise their reaction for opportunity attacks, which many enemies will choose to avoid incurring.
Boon of fortitude: A big stack of extra hit points is great for increasing your durability
Boon of irresistible offense: Lots of opportunities to roll a 20 for an attack roll. And ignoring some resistances is handy too for a class that can often be stuck with bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage.
Boon of recovery: Allows you to heal yourself with a bonus action and recover half your hit points if you’re reduced to 0.
Boon of dimensional travel: Free uses of misty step every turn without expending a bonus action is super useful for anyone but a world tree barbarian (who gets to teleport about anyway). Helps you get into combat faster and zip around the battlefield to the places you need to be.

Weapons

The weapons you choose will depend largely on how you want to fight and what weapon mastery properties you want to be using:

Pure damage: Go for two-handed weapons like a greatsword, greataxe, glaive, halberd or maul. Greatswords and glaives have the graze weapon mastery which is generally inferior in my opinion (as advantage on attack rolls isn’t hard to come by for a barbarian) so I’d go with other options.
Sword and shield: If you want to go heavier on defense, you’ll need a one handed weapon like a longsword, battleaxe, morningstar or warhammer.
Two weapon fighting: If you want to fight with two weapons for the extra rage damage from an offhand attack, you’ll need to use light weapons. Handaxes and scimitars are best for this.
Ranged: Tridents, spears and javelins can be thrown allowing you to make ranged attacks with your strength and gaining the benefits of your rage’s damage bonus.

Armor

You’ve essentially got 2 options here:

Unarmored defense: Offers the best protection if you can get your ability scores high enough. The challenge here is prioritising all 3 of strength, constitution and dexterity. Remember, you can use a shield for Unarmoured defense so if you want to go for a higher AC and lower damage, that remains an option.

Medium armor: If you can’t get your dexterity high enough, then you can go for medium armor while you beef up your strength and constitution. Half plate is your best option if you can afford it.

Damage dealer

Good for

Devastating enemies with powerful attacks.

Ability Scores (Point Buy/Standard Array)

Strength: 15/15
Dexterity: 15/14
Constitution: 15/13
Intelligence: 8/8
Wisdom: 8/12
Charisma: 8/10

Skills: Athletics, intimidation

Species: Goliath

Background: Farmer – Add +2 to strength and +1 to constitution.

Subclass: Path of the berserker

Weapons: Greatsword, handaxe

Armor: Half plate armor (or scale mail if that’s still too expensive). Once your dexterity and constitution are high enough, you can ditch the armor for unarmored defense.

Tank

Good for

Ensuring enemies attack you and that you can survive those attacks.

Ability Scores (Point Buy/Standard Array)

Strength: 15/13
Dexterity: 15/14
Constitution: 15/15
Intelligence: 8/8
Wisdom: 8/12
Charisma: 8/10

Skills: Athletics, perception

Species: Dwarf

Background: Farmer – Add +2 to constitution and +1 to strength.

Subclass: Path of the world tree

Weapons: Battleaxe and javelins

Armor: Half plate armor (or scale mail if that’s still too expensive) and a shield. Once your dexterity and constitution are high enough, you can ditch the armor for unarmored defense.