Equipment
Barbarians can wear medium armor and still rage. With 14 dex we can maximize its effect. Below are the weapons and gear you will be using, as well as some magic items to always keep your eye out for.
- Half-Plate (Medium Armor): AC 15 + DEX
- Shield: +2 AC
- Spear: to trigger the Pole Arm Master feat, a huge boost to the Totem Warriors damage since enemies can’t use their bonus action reliably.
Magic items to search:
- Staff of Striking: it functions as a quarterstaff
- Cloak/Ring of Protection: AC boosts, and helps with saving throws
- Boots of Speed: this avoids being kited.
General Barbarian Guide
The Basics:
You have the largest hit dice in the game (D12). This solidifies your role as a front-line tank, or damage dealer. You are proficient in all of the weapons, good. You should be hitting people. You can wear Light, or Medium Armor, and shields… But you also get something called “Unarmored Defense.” We’ll cover that later.
Early Class Features:
These are what define you as your class, the Barbarian. You’ll start with Two.
Rage: This makes you into a battle monster, but a social monster as well. People see you as crazy, and murderous. They’re right. But you don’t care. Raging makes you do more Damage, Take less, and be harder to push around and knock over. You also get good at athletic checks, meaning you can chase that thief up the cliff if you really wanted to.
Unarmored Defense: You don’t have to wear armor if your Dex and Con Modifiers are high enough. In fact, you can have a better AC than if you were even wearing armor.
And later on you’ll pick up more. This are the ones i took the most notice of.
Reckless Attack: This is what can make you into a huge damage threat, you can make yourself easier to hit, and make it easier to hit things. You don’t mind being hit, you have 174 hitpoints, doubled. They don’t have that many. So whack away.
Extra Attack: By the time you get this, you were just starting to trail off. Enjoy slamming things twice.
Brutal Critical: Do a serious chunk of more damage when you land a critical on things. They won’t be walking away from that.
A summary of later features: Fun Faster, Hit Harder, Hit Even Harder, Don’t Die, Have a Maximum of 24 Base Strength and Constitution, Dodge a Wrench so you can dodge a fireball, etc… You become a huge monster on the battlefield. But that’s all you get. No social skills, just murder and destruction.
Archetypes (Primal Paths):
You’ve got two to pick from, the Path of the Berserker, which makes you into even more of a damage threat. If you go this path, i recomend picking up a large two handed weapon, get the Great Weapon Fighting Feat eventually to slam, and jam. You can increase your likelyhood of hitting, even with the -5 from Great Weapon Fighting. Your rage means you’ll be hitting hard, and the Frenzy Feature, which can grant you additional attacks on later turns, and Retaliation, which also grants you additional attacks.
And then there’s the Path of the Totem Warrior. You get to speak with animals, well… that doesn’t really fit the class. If you were worried about fitting the idea of the class, then i would go Berserker. This archetype makes you into a champion of nature. This Archetype can give you some utility that lets you support other front-line fighters, makes you into a good scout, or makes you literally unkillable.