Imbue yourself with the powers of demons with this high retribution barbarian subclass.
Demonglass holds the essence of a fiend, and is used by some in the Eberron setting, to undergo a dangerous ritual to imbue its powers into their body. While the power this grants is significant, it also comes with the risk of becoming overcome with demonic malice.
If you play a demonshard barbarian, you should expect a high damage subclass that retaliates with damage when damaged. This retaliation grows in potency and scope as you gain levels.
The demonshard barbarian is a 3rd party subclass created by Keith Baker and Visionary Productions and Design for their 3rd party supplement; Frontiers of Eberron: Quickstone. The book was released for D&D 5.5e on D&D Beyond and is also available on DM’s Guild.
At a glance
- Highly resilient melee specialist
- Deal damage to those that damage you
- Some extra resilience to some conditions and psychic damage.
5/5 – A high damage subclass that deals damage when damaged. This may discourage DMs from attacking your barbarian altogether which could be a problem, but I suspect most demonshard barbarians will manage to dish out plenty of fiendish punishments making for a strong subclass.
Demonshard features
Demontongue (Lv3) – 1/5
A language is a paltry feature, even for a ribbon feature.
Fiendish punishment (Lv3) – 5/5
Fortunately, fiendish punishment is much better. That 1d4 damage may seem small, but it requires no reaction and works once per turn (not once per round) so will occur on every creature’s turn (at least the ones that damage you).
The reaction needed to harm enemies that damage allies is a little less worthwhile, but if you’re unlikely to use your reaction anyway, it could be worthwhile. Just be aware that part of a barbarian’s power is to keep enemies close and away from weaker party members. If you use your reaction on this, there’s nothing discouraging enemies from moving away from you.
The damage scaling is fairly generous here too and means this stays powerful as you gain levels.
Just one master (Lv6) – 4/5
Charmed and frightened are quire common conditions. Psychic damage isn’t a common damage type, but the resilience is still handy. Entering a rage in reaction to these is quite good too as it will allow you to save your bonus action on your first turn and means you can get your protections up for that first round of combat. Barbarians rarely run out of rage uses, but it’s nice that this doesn’t expend a use of rage.
Overflowing malice (Lv10) – 5/5
Barbarians are notorious for getting close to enemies and now you’ll be damaging everyone nearby when damaged as well as your attacker. This is really powerful! But there are a couple of drawbacks.
The first is that it does damage allies too which means you’ll want to be fighting isolated from other party members. It also creates another disincentive for creatures to attack you. Expect creatures to make a lot of effort to attack other party members when attacking you is so punishing.
Aspect of tyranny (Lv14) – 4/5
Frightening a creature affected by the damage from fiendish punishment is a pretty nice extra as it only requires your reaction. This can make the reaction from fiendish punishment less used as both will compete for this. There’s no limit on how often you can use this so expect just to frighten creatures as often as possible.
How good is the demonshard subclass?
The path of the demonshard is a strong barbarian subclass that relentlessly pumps out damage without having to do much more than be a target. There is potential for this to work against a party as demonshard barbarians will probably be targeted even less by DMs. In fact, I think as a DM, I would absolutely have to adapt how I fight a party with a demonshard barbarian in the group. More long range creatures and less focus on attacking the barbarian unless there weren’t any other targets.
The features are excellent though, and if you can keep other allies out of arms reach, the demonshard barbarian will be excellent, but I have a niggling feeling that it may also disrupt the tactic of using a barbarian to draw enemy attacks. I don’t think this prevents it from being a being a top option though.
5/5
Building a demonshard barbarian
The path of the demonshard works a lot like other barbarians. They’re there to charge into melee, draw attacks and pummel enemies.
For a full breakdown on how to build a barbarian, you can check out my barbarian guide. For this article, I’ll just recommend options available from Frontiers of Eberron that work well for a barbarian.
Species/race
Largely you’ll want a species that enhances your resilience and ability to deal damage with the following your best options from Frontiers of Eberron:
- Goblin: Some extra damage on some of your attacks. Most creatures will be larger than the small Goblin so this is easy to be applying. Disengage as a bonus action can be useful for moving around the battlefield more easily.
- Gnoll: The unarmed damage isn’t a lot, but the benefit here is you can basically just give yourself a bonus action attack so if you’ve nothing better to do with your bonus action, make 1 attack with your bite, 1 attack with your more powerful weapon and then use the bonus action to attack with your more powerful weapon too. You just got a 3rd attack, even if it is a little weak. A skill proficiency and darkvision are decent too.
- Minotaur: Decent for an unarmed build and some extra pushing can be a decent option too for keeping enemies where you want them.
- Warforged: The Warforged in this book is largely the same as the version in Forge of the Artificer. +1 AC will work with your unarmored defense, poison resilience is great and there’s a few other more minor perks. Great if you want to be a bit more defensive.
- Worg: The bite attack is great on an unarmed build. Grab the grappler feat to keep enemies within reach (especially good for this subclass). Barbarians tend to use their bonus action very little so you have plenty of chances to use the help action instead. The drawbacks aren’t as big a problem for you either as you already have unarmored defense for your AC, can easily go for an unarmed build and now you can be a mount!
Backgrounds
For a demonshard barbarian, you’ll want a background that enhances your strength, dexterity and/or constitution. Unfortunately, in Frontiers of Eberron, only dragonmarked bravo and dragonmarked foundling have suitable ability scores for a barbarian. However, both of these grant a lesser dragonmark as their origin feat which is mostly about granting spells which is no good for a barbarian that will likely have a poor spellcasting ability and can’t cast spells in combat while raging. I’d suggest going for a background not in this book.
Feats
Most of the feats in Frontiers of Eberron are intended primarily for spellcasting, which isn’t much good for a barbarian. There are a couple of good feats though, including:
- Hewn for battle: If you’re a Gargoyle and you want to invest less in dexterity or constitution, then you could pick this up for some quite good AC without needing massive ability scores in all 3 of dexterity, constitution and strength. Improved unarmed strikes could be useful on a grapple build too.
- Wings of stone: Flight is always useful. If you want that and are a gargoyle, then this could be handy.
More from Eberron
There are several 1st and 3rd party releases dedicated to Eberron, including Keith Baker’s Exploring Eberron and Frontiers of Eberron and the 1st party Forge of the Artificer. Check out all our coverage on these releases.
