Deep diving into the paths of the fractured, primal spirit and wrathful dead.
In Grim Hollow barbarians must grapple with a dangerous land where they develop unique and unusual traits to help them survive. This can include harnessing dead souls, manifesting spirit companions and even separating their mind to specialise in the tasks at hand.
The 2024 version of the Grim Hollow Player’s Handbook has 3 barbarian subclasses. They are:
- Path of the fractured – Take on a split personality between your raging and non-raging self to become an unarmed master and very resilient.
- Path of the primal spirit – Highly in tune with primal spirits, allowing them to manifest a primal companion to fight at their side.
- Path of the wrathful dead – Speak to the spirits of the dead and control their powers for your own purposes.
In this article, I’ll dive into each subclass to provide advice as well as analyse how strong they are and which is the most powerful.
Path of the fractured
What are they?
Use esoteric rites to split their mind, allowing their id to take over during bouts of rage while the ego remains in control the rest of the time. The very embodiment of a split personality disorder.
Key abilities
Face of rage (lv3)
When raging, your unarmed strikes deal d8 damage which can cause force damage. Your unarmed strikes can also attempt to push or knock prone, you count as one size larger for grapples and your unarmed strikes have an extra reach of 5ft.
An average unarmed warrior needs 2 feats to achieve close to these levels of unarmed performance (tavern brawler and unarmed fighting style). But this is better. You can have a shield and deal d8 damage, the push is further, you can deal force damage and you have an extra 5ft of reach.
Funnily enough, this means you have greater reach with your fists than your weapons (which is kind of preposterous). Still, there are some great tactics here, like keeping 10ft from enemies so they’re in your reach but you’re not in there’s, allowing you to move more freely. You can also knock prone for subsequent advantage on attacks and if you grab the grappler feat, can also grapple them down there while still getting your damage in. Force damage is rarely resisted too making it a top damage type. It becomes hard to justify using weapons with all of this, especially when a shield is an option as well.
Mask of civility (lv3)
You gain a skill proficiency and proficiency in an artisan tool or a language. Sadly, the skills don’t lean into your strengths as a barbarian, but it likely compensates for lower ability scores in things like intelligence.
Well-rounded (lv6)
When you aren’t raging, you have resistance to psychic damage, when you are raging, you have resistance to all damage types other than psychic and force.
This is quite a huge buff while raging as psychic and force damage aren’t that common meaning you have resistance to practically all damage that comes in. It’s also a minor buff outside of a rage.
Cunning and brutal (Lv10)
Use the disengage and help actions as bonus actions when not raging. When you are raging, you land critical hits on a 19-20. It’s rare you’ll be in combat that’s of much threat while not raging, but for those times, help in particular is a decent option and disengage will give you some maneuverability.
Better half (Lv14)
Once per long rest, when you get knocked to 0HP, you instead go down to 1HP and get temporary hit points equal to half your hit point maximum. On top of this, you swap whether you were raging or not.
This is a huge boost to your durability and basically means you can afford to get battered even more than before. You can combine this with other traits that allow you to survive being knocked to 0HP, like an Orc’s relentless endurance.
What are they good at?
Unarmed combat and being really durable (even more than most barbarians).
How effective are they?
The path of the fractured is really good! It’s a no brainer to grab a shield and become really good at unarmed attacks. This already means you’re more durable than most barbarians. But you also have resistance to almost all damage and loads of temporary hit points when you’d normally drop to 0HP.
Unarmed strikes are a bit of a utility option too with pushes, prone and grappling (especially if you grab the grappler feat). I’d probably say this is one of the best grapple subclasses around and the investment in feats to do so is much lower than for most too.
Score: 5/5
Path of the primal spirit
What are they?
Barbarians that follow the path of the primal spirit are deeply in tune with the forces of nature. So much so that they are able to manifest a nature spirit to join with them as a companion.
Key abilities
Primal companion (lv3)
You get a spirit beast companion to fight at your side which you can command as a bonus action. It’s reminiscent of the beast master’s own primal companion and operates in similar ways. You can summon a flying, swimming or land companion as well as defensive and offensive options.
A flying companion can be a great option for a scout, especially if you or an ally can find a way to speak to your companion (it will understand you and you’ll get speak with animals at level 6 for exactly this purpose). You can also ride the sea and land options if you take the primal guardian as it’s a large creature.
The good news for the barbarian compared to the beast master is your bonus action isn’t under nearly as much demand. Rage is your main conflict which might affect the first round of combat. I’d avoid dual wielding (you could use nick mastery, but you’re likely better off with higher damage weaponry).
Shared rage (lv3)
Your primal companion shares your bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage resistance while you’re raging for a nice bit of extra durability.
Kin to beasts (lv6)
You know the speak with animals and animal friendship spells and can cast them for free once per rest. The main benefit here is to communicate with your animal companion, especially if they’re scouting for you.
Skinrider’s trance (Lv10)
You can take control of your primal companion or a beast you’ve befriended with animal friendship. I don’t think there’s much benefit to possessing your primal companion this way as you can already communicate with them and make requests of them. The only real reason is if there’s more complex things that need doing.
Possessing another animal could be more useful as you can access new forms, but again, it’s situationally dependent on what creatures you can find to befriend. Still, it’s a fun ability, if a little situational beyond what you can already do through your primal companion.
Shape of the wild (Lv14)
You can now use a bonus action to change the form of your primal companion with more flexibility. Useful if you need to go from scout mode to combat mode for instance
What are they good at?
Scouting and utility. They also add a bunch more hit points and a bit more damage to your party.
How effective are they?
They make great scouts and there’s a lot of flexibility in the options for your primal companion. Their hit points and defence scale nicely making the primal guardian a good option for defence. Sadly, the damage barely scales at all. They get increasingly accurate, but only deal a tad more damage at higher levels making the striker a little too weak once you get to mid to high levels.
Having said that, the guardian is a robust option and also makes a decent mount too.
Score: 3/5
Path of the wrathful dead
What are they?
These barbarians commune with the voices of the dead. This can be both a blessing and a curse, but there is power to be wielded by those that can master it.
Key abilities
Rage of the dead (Lv3)
While your rage is active you ignore difficult terrain, can move through the space of other creatures, move 10ft faster, opportunity attacks against you have disadvantage and you can see creatures with the invisible condition.
All of this makes for an extremely mobile barbarian and one that can easily handle invisibility.
Final night catharsis (lv3)
Whenever you finish a long rest, you can choose an emotion for the spirits to manifest which either gives you advantage on attacks against a creature you’ve missed, the ability to impose disadvantage on an attempt to end the grappled condition or be able to use a bonus action to dash or disengage once bloodied.
I suspect advantage after missed attacks will be more commonly useful unless you’ve gone for a grapple build.
Dark doom revisited (lv6)
You can create a damage dealing emanation that can also cause creatures to be slowed or poisoned.
The damage here is decent and worth the action if you’re surrounded by enemies. Poisoned is likely to be more useful than slowing creatures, but it comes with poison damage which is more commonly resisted than cold.so choose your damage type wisely.
Death is but a door (Lv10)
You gain advantage on death saving throws and don’t die unless you fail 4 of these.
You can also cast cure wounds, revivify and raise dead in exchange for 1-3 levels of exhaustion. Exhaustion is quite debilitating so I’d only use this in emergencies, like when the cleric has died. I’d also use the minimum possible option for as little exhaustion as possible. When in desperate times though, the heavy sacrifice can be worthwhile.
Powered by pathos (lv14)
Final night catharsis grants extra benefits depending on the emotions you’ve chosen. This can involve critical hits on a 19-20, using a reaction to have spectral spirits grapple a creature when they start their turn or use a reaction to cause terror.
It’s worth being aware that terror is an automatic success, even if the effects are a bit smaller. I quite like the idea of knocking an enemy prone and then using jealousy to keep them down with a grapple.
What are they good at?
Mobility, dealing some AoE damage, dealing with invisible creatures and having a bit of a varied skillset.
How effective are they?
Mobility on a barbarian can be really useful so you can get to the enemies you need quickly. In particular, you’ll want to close the gap between you and melee range of your enemies. Having an AoE option makes them decent at tackling crowds and there’s a bunch of nice utility and enhancement options making them a really solid and varied option.
Score: 4/5
Which Grim Hollow barbarian subclass is best?
While the path of the primal spirit makes a great scout and a decent defensive option, its poor level scaling when it comes to damage is a bit of a shame and holds it back.
The path of the wrathful dead has tonnes of utility and is a great mobile barbarian. It does a lot of things without necessarily specialising in one area.
However, the path of the fractured does specialise by doubling down on the most core barbarian traits; being really tough and hitting really hard. It’s an excellent unarmed option that is also really resilient (even for a barbarian) making it the one I think is the most powerful.
What do you think of Grim Hollow’s barbarian subclasses? Let me know in the comments below.
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