The Barbarian
Tremble in fear of the bitter cold and the almighty toppling wolf
Foreword
For many of these classes, we will need to establish context for the class—perceptions of it, how it fared in the original game, or external factors that affect the class. For the Barbarian, we need to acknowledge a pretty clear issue with the overall game design of 2024 5e.
I'm certain that most of the changes in the revision were made in a complete vacuum from each other—with little consideration for how those changes affect other elements in the game. This leads to rules confusion (RAW, most monsters' melee attacks are invalid for opportunity attacks) and contradictions in effects (most effects that stun reduce movement speed if they fail, but stunning itself doesn't affect movement).
The Barbarian suffers massively from two changes in monster design. The first is that many effects that monsters can cause on hit that previously forced a saving throw now automatically inflict their effects on hit. The majority of such effects are things like knocking prone or poisoning, effects that were countered by the two saves Barbarians are strongest at.
The second is that many monsters beyond low CRs have extra non-B/P/S damage tacked onto their attacks. This means that for most Barbarians, whose damage resistance only applies to B/P/S, their Rage becomes less and less effective at mitigating damage as you progress to higher levels and higher-leveled foes.
These two factors take a class that is supposedly the pinnacle of resilience and might...and coupled with other class features, make them especially vulnerable to anything that doesn't exclusively deal B/P/S damage.
Level 1
Like most martials, Barbarians get Weapon Mastery. Perhaps I'll address my issues with that feature in another post. It is worth noting that of the classes that get Weapon Mastery, Barbarians are the only ones with
restriction on what weapons they can take masteries for: melee weapons only. Given that they get proficiency with all ranged weapons nonetheless, it's bizarre for them to have an exclusion.
Unarmored Defense is unchanged.
Rage has a few changes. It now lasts 10 minutes. You get one back on a short rest, which I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, for longer adventures at low levels, this gives the Barbarian a bit more oomph. On the other hand, at higher levels this becomes largely irrelevant for the Barbarian, while for a character who takes a one-level dip into the class, this
doubles the number of Rages they get on a day with two short rests.
Forcing a saving throw maintains your Rage, but taking damage does not. This means that if you can't make an attack or force a save, you have to use your bonus action to keep your Rage up. It also means you get to spam said BA out of combat to keep your Rage up, which we will get to the problem with later.
Previously, the only instance where this would be a problem is if you get incapacitated. Except now, being incapacitated
drops your Rage immediately (until level
15). This is a significant problem for the Barbarian, due to how their features encourage them to make themselves more vulnerable and how they typically rely more on Rage than AC. Anything that can incapacitate knocks them out of their tankiness, leaving them exposed to heavy damage without the saving grace of higher AC that other martials may have.
Level 2
Danger Sense now no longer cares if you're blinded or deafened. This isn't a huge change, but it's strange in light of the Evasion change that does now care if you're incapacitated. Lessened restrictions here, increased restrictions there.
Reckless Attack now applies to off-turn attacks and non-melee attacks, which is fine.
Level 3
This is where you can expect to see a mention of 2024 5e removing the flavourful titles for subclasses every time I write a summary up.
The Barbarian also gets Primal Knowledge, which in addition to giving them another skill now lets them make certain skill checks using Strength—Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth, or Survival. While most 2024 features have the flavour stripped from them, this one describes how "
When you use this ability, your Strength represents primal power coursing through you, honing your agility, bearing, and senses." This is presumably an excuse for how
stupid this function is.
For starters, this bears little connection to Barbarian skills. If it applies to all the skills on the Barbarian list, that would make sense for the primal connection. Instead, we are somehow able to Stunt Angrily and Sneak Angrily even though Barbarians have no regular inclination towards the Acrobatics and Stealth skills to begin with.
Furthermore, we have to acknowledge that, by being Strength checks during Rage, these checks
automatically get advantage. So we're not just using our best ability for a bunch of skills, but we get advantage on our Tracking Angrily. This gives a
huge boost to a Barbarian's early-game skill utility, to the point where a skill with proficiency will give them better performance than the class that eschews combat focus for skill mastery (the Rogue).
Level 9
Yes, we're jumping to level 9, because the 2024 Barbarian gets nothing new between Level 3 and Level 9. This is very much A Thing, because most other classes get significant new boosts in this stretch and a Barbarian gets...nothing.
What we get at 9th level is an overhauled feature. Originally, Barbarians got Brutal Criticals, which beefed up their crits. This was a bit underwhelming, so now we have Brutal Strikes. What Brutal Strikes do is that when you use Reckless Attack and don't have any disadvantage on your attack, you can give up the advantage on one attack to do 1d10 extra damage and an added effect on a hit.
So, to use this feature:
1. You can't have any source of disadvantage (like, say, being bitten by a 1/2 CR snake and getting auto-poisoned).
2. You have to use Reckless Attack,
even if you have advantage on an attack already.
3. You have to
give up any advantage to get the benefit, making you more likely to miss.
For comparison, in a few levels, Paladins will get +2d8 damage on their baseline number of attacks just for existing. So these added effects better be worth someth...
...oh, you can move an enemy and then yourself, or you can slow an enemy. Remember that pushing and slowing enemies are already things you can do via Weapon Mastery—and even then, on something that's free with every attack, these options are situational unless you're building your strategy around abusing these mechanics.
Level 11
Relentless Rage is changed so that rather than dropping to 1 hit point, you instead have a number equal to twice your Barbarian level. On one hand, this seems like a benefit. However, you have to remember that 2024 monster damage is significantly inflated due to added non-B/P/S damage, so until you get to high levels, many monsters can wipe out 22 hit points on a Barbarian as easily as they can wipe out 1 hit point.
Level 13
Brutal Strike gets two new options, one which imposes disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes and prevent opportunity attacks and one which imposes a +5 bonus to the next attack someone else makes against it. Even though both of these options are significantly better than the Level 9 options, a single attack is very rarely more impactful than a failed saving throw, so you're going to have one option you'll be using more than everything else.
Level 15
Persistent Rage now lets you restore expended uses of Rage when you roll initiative once per long rest. We're going to see this "restore a resource when you roll initiative once per LR" mechanic in other places, and it always has the exact same problem: the assumption that you're only going to want to refresh a resource
for combat, even when there are non-combat uses for that resource.
As mentioned, this makes the one/SR Rage restore a bit useless, but more so, this creates a balance issue with the subclasses. Several of them have features that are limited by rest in use, but you can burn a use of Rage to use them again. Having a big stockpile of Rages means that those subclasses with features you can spam more often become more powerful than subclasses that don't have this mechanic.
It also still abides by the 10-minute limit, but this likely won't have much impact.
Level 17
Brutal Strikes goes up in damage to 2d10 and you get to use two effects at once. This will almost always be Staggering and Sundering. It's a bit lazy design-wise that all you get is just "more of the same".
Level 18
Indomitable Might now affects saving throws as well as ability checks. But as we covered in the foreword, many effects that previously called for Strength saves now auto-hit, so this is much less useful than it would have been in 2014 5e.
Conclusion
And that's the summary of 2024 Barbarian changes. All in all, as we described, the Barbarian suffers from having its primary niche eroded to a massive degree. Your damage resistance means much less, your saving-throw strengths mean much less, and your mechanics push you to make yourself more vulnerable to your major weaknesses. Once you get the cheesy-at-low-levels Primal Knowledge, you get very little new until Level 9, where you get the underwhelming-at-first Brutal Strikes.
So now that we've touched upon these issues...
Building a Better Barbarian?
- If giving monsters more non-B/P/S damage on attacks is going to be a facet of design, then the class meant to soak up attacks needs an answer for this. Some form of non-B/P/S damage protection would be perfect for a higher-level feature, giving an invested Barbarian more resilience than the quick-dip multiclass builds.
- A better way to handle Primal Knowledge? Make it based on Constitution. That way you don't get the unbalancing auto-advantage, and it incentivizes building up your secondary ability score. Heck, you could give a higher-level feature that extends Rage's benefits to Constitution ability checks and saving throws to make the feature better at high levels.
- If other classes get more new gimmicks earlier on, then so should the Barbarian—they shouldn't have to wait until Level 9 for new toys. I'm frankly of the opinion that, rather than throwing out Brutal Criticals, building on that would have been a much better design direction. Give the Barb a feature at Level 5 that allows added effects on crits—this way the opening options can be more impressive than just "push or slow someone". Retain Brutal Criticals, and add new features that give the Barbarian better crit chance when using Reckless Attack, thus making it an option and incentive but not an explicit requirement.
