Class is back in session with this revival of Class 101. This series takes a close look at every subclass in the Player’s Handbook, and break down that subclass’s strengths, weaknesses, thematic elements, and everything else a player would want to know before playing this subclass. Starting with the first class in the Player’s Handbook and its most iconic subclass (the one found in the Basic Rules), this week’s entry is the barbarian class’s Path of the Berserker.
Story of the Berserker
The berserker snarled and panted like a dog as froth filled the corners of his mouth, and stamped his bare foot onto the chest of the panicked hobgoblin beneath him. The berserker’s eyes were wide and were so shot with blood that they seemed to glow crimson in his fury. His muscles bulged and veins popped with every miniscule movement of his thick-corded arms. He laughed in short, manic bursts like a howling ape, and raised his blood-slick greataxe to the sky—then brought it down in one swift, furious stroke.
You are a berserker. The thrill of battle turns you into a warrior possessed by an uncontrollable and all-consuming frenzy. If you want to play a character that lives for battle, that is a relentless survivor, and is the scariest and most intimidating son-of-an-orc on the battlefield, the berserker is the right path for you.
A character may become a berserker for a number of reasons. The Path of the Berserker is, of course, based off of the mythic Norse berserkers who wore bear-skins and fought in a “trance-like fury.” Once relieved of this fury, the warriors fell into a deep lethargy that could last for days. Some sources believe that this battle fury was the result of hallucinogenic drugs or alcohol, and you could play a berserker whose frenzy was created by a magic potion, or a maddening substance.
A berserker could also be played as a person possessed by a devil, demon, or other evil spirit. When battle begins, the spirit sometimes takes control of the berserker and grants that warrior incredible martial power, and the cost of sapping their vital essence.
A berserker in the vein of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde is a balance of the two above archetypes, incorporating elements of both alchemy and a savage alter-ego. On the other hand, you can play a berserker without incorporating any of the above stories. Grog Strongjaw, the beloved goliath barbarian of Critical Role, was a berserker without any mystical qualities. He was just a warrior prone to fits of frenzy when defending those he cared about.
No matter what story you create for your berserker, you may want to know a few things about how this subclass plays before you commit to playing it.
Berserker Features
In short, the berserker is the logical extreme of the barbarian class. The berserker improves upon the natural strengths and flavor of the barbarian, and leans heavily into the class’s existing weaknesses. The barbarian gains access to four subclass features in addition to their barbarian class features, gained at fairly regular intervals at 3rd, 6th, 10th, and 14th level. You can read all of the Path of the Berserker features for free in the D&D Basic Rules. In summary, your subclass features allow you to:
- Enter a frenzy to improve the offensive power of your Rage.
- Become immune to fear and certain enchantments while raging.
- Use your fearsome presence to terrify one of your opponents.
- React to damage by attacking the creature that wounded you.
Benefits of Playing a Berserker
First and foremost, the berserker is a straightforward class. It’s an excellent choice for first-time D&D players, as it’s streamlined, but still offers choice; most of your abilities are active rather than passive—meaning you get to choose when to use them, rather than simply always gaining a benefit. Most of these abilities are offensive in nature, such as gaining an additional attack during your frenzy and making reactive attacks during enemy turns. This is a good balance for the surprisingly defensive core barbarian class.
The defensive abilities the berserker does get are actually quite potent. The Mindless Rage feature grants immunity to being charmed, which nullifies one of the classic banes of the barbarian: being dominated by an evil wizard or vampire and forced to fight your party.
Despite the berserker’s individualistic and combat-focused features and narrative theme, you can actually be a strong team player—especially when you gain the Intimidating Presence feature. Once you have this feature, you can still contribute to fights that make it difficult to employ your combat abilities. By frightening a creature, you seriously hinder its offensive and capabilities and restrict its movement, making it easier for your party to defeat it. This also has application in social situations, a setting which barbarians typically suffer in.
Drawbacks of Playing a Berserker
The berserker’s greatest strength—Frenzy—is also your greatest weakness. The drawback of entering a Frenzy is gaining a level of exhaustion afterward. A single level of exhaustion confers disadvantage on all ability checks, which is troublesome but not incapacitating. By the second level, however, you also suffer halved movement—which makes it difficult to get into the fight at all. And by the third, you suffer disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws, a devastating disadvantage for any melee fighter!
A berserker should never gain more than 2 points of exhaustion through the Frenzy feature, which essentially limits your use of Frenzy to twice per long rest—a serious restriction for a core feature. And all of these drawbacks stack with points of exhaustion gained from monsters or the environment, making it very likely that berserkers will suffer worse than most in harsh climates.
The only way to cure exhaustion is by completing a long rest (which cures a single point of exhaustion) or by being soothed by a greater restoration, which also only cures a single point of exhaustion. Unless you have a 9th-level cleric around to help, or a significant supply of potions of vitality, your core subclass feature is a tool to use sparingly.
If you’re playing in a home campaign, I strongly suggest your DM to adopt one of the following house rules, for your sake:
- All levels of exhaustion are cured by a long rest.
- The first use of your Frenzy after completing a long rest doesn’t result in a level of exhaustion, but all subsequent uses before your next long rest apply exhaustion as normal.
Suggested Berserker Build
If you’re building a berserker from 1st level, you should choose a well-rounded race like human or half-elf, or a race that skews towards Strength, like half-orc or mountain dwarf. Strength should be your highest stat, and Constitution next. However, make Charisma your third-highest stat, to make use of the Intimidation skill (to say nothing of your Intimidating Presence feature at 10th level). Additionally, instead of relying on your Unarmored Defense feature, invest in the best suit of medium armor you can afford. This is typically scale mail at 1st level, but you should constantly be on the lookout for new medium armor.
As usual, your character’s background is up to you. You can come up with all sorts of interesting stories and oddball characters by pairing unlikely backgrounds (like Sage or Acolyte) with a class as thematic as barbarian.
I would recommend choosing GOLD instead of EQUIPMENT at the end of character creation, and using that gold to buy a greataxe or greatsword, a few throwing weapons like hand axes and javelins, and a set of scale mail. If you’re still worried about your defenses, you can sacrifice a bit of offensive power and purchase a war axe or longsword and a shield, instead of a greataxe or greatsword.
When the time comes to pick a feat, the Great Weapon Master feat is a perfect choice for an aggressive barbarian like you, and it pairs well with the advantage on attack rolls gained by your Reckless Attack feature. Tavern Brawler is a fun and thematic, if not exceptionally powerful, feat that makes it easier for you to fight unarmed.
Also, once you reach 5th level in the barbarian class, you may wish to divert from your current path to multiclass into fighter for three levels. This three-level “dip” into fighter grants you the powerful Great Weapon Fighting Style, an Action Surge for more attacks, and the Improved Critical feature if you choose the Champion fighter subclass, all of which synergize well with your offensive barbarian features.
If you want more advice for building a barbarian, check out Barbarian 101. Have you ever played a berserker? What advice would you give to players that want to play this subclass?
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their sweet kitties Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
If I am not mistaken, the next subclass for Barbarian in the PHB is the Totem Warrior.
Another good article. Our house rule for our berserker was a "temporary level of exhaustion" which could be reduced with a "breather" (10-minutes rest). During a breather (general house rule), a character can spend one hit die to recuperate hit points. A full hour rest is still required for features that reset on a short rest.
Nice writeup.
If you rely on armor though, you might try to have 14 Dexterity over very high constitution. So my I would try to balance Dex and Cha and Con. 16 Str, 14 Dex, Con and Cha is easily affordable.
Loved it! And a great return to my favorite article series, Class 101!
Probably not alphabetical. If it was, he would be covering the Ancestral Guardian. My best guess is that he's doing the PHB first, then SCAG, XGTE, and any other books that I don't know off the top of my head.
I found that running Warforged subclass is nice with berserker barb alot of HP and armor class you become unstoppable
Don't think it's alphabetical cause we'd have had battle master before this
Just want to let you know, you need to use a finesse weapon or ranged weapon for Sneak Attack to work!
I really like the house rule that all exhaustion is cured on a long rest. I would add that greater restoration also cures all levels of exhaustion just to keep the symmetry between the two, especially since greater restoration cannot be spammed without diamond dust. Currently I use a house rule that limits a berserker's frenzy to its constitution modifier per day (minimum of once). This works fine, but I like the idea of retooling exhaustion altogether.
This wouldn't work. Persistent Rage specifies that those are the only things that end your rage "early," meaning that your rage still only lasts for 1 minute. Persistent Rage just means that you don't have to take or deal damage to keep your rage going.
Excellent article. My idea for bringing this fun subclass up to par with the other barbarian ones is to rule that Frenzy only has a chance of causing a level of exhaustion with a Con DC of 10 that increases by 5 for every time a player frenzies between long rests. Otherwise the fact that they have to pay such a stiff penalty for an extra attack when others can get the same thing without paying a price at all makes berserkers a bit lackluster in comparison.
as a level 16, (12 frenzy barb/4 fighter champion) I approve this post ;)
get your hands on a +2 or +3 weapon(I prefer greatsword for slightly more consistent damage via rerolls of 1-2's on multiple d6, while sacrificing a little off the top end on crits), Great weapon master, Great weapon fighting, always attack with advantage with reckless or any other sources of advantage you may have.. watch stuff die.
My goal as a barb is on the first round rage and get into combat, then try to kill at least 1 target a round to trigger my extra attack from great weapon master, this allows me to get a bonus action attack without needing to rely on frenzy.
the duration of the rage doesn't change. you just don't lose rage if you have a round where you're not attacking / taking damage. That said on the round your rage is about to drop you could technically rage again extending hte durtion by a minute, staving off the exhaustion slightly, in those long grinding fights. once the minute goes by you still lose rage.
Great article and I'm very excited about this continuation of the Class 101 series. One of the things I love about dnd is how interesting and varied all the classes and subclasses are, and all the great potential they have to add to RP!
I would also like to shout out one of my other fave Beserkers, Kara Brynehilde of The Venture Maidens!
Pretty good, except for the part where you tell us to pick gold for starting equipment, Barbs have awful starting gold and it's mostly just gonna bite you in the ass, while you can just upgrade to scale armour after whatever your first mission is if you choose the standard equipment.
I played a Berseker Barbarian named Talulah, a Mark of Hospitality Halfling. I called her the Bar(maid)barian because her "Greatclub" was a heavy oaken serving tray that she would bash heads in with. In our next campaign she was an NPC with a successful tavern called the Cracked Tray, and she mounted her battlescarred serving tray above the bar. She was a fun character who acted motherly toward the group, but could fly off the handle if anyone hurt her cubs. Never stopped to loot after a fight, just curled up for a nap amidst the gore of her battered foes.
That sounds like a great fun character!
My only barbarian experience is with a Beast-hide Shifter Bear-totem barbarian named Sergei Dragunov, who spoke with an Eastern European accent and loved to read faerie stories to tell orphaned children in his hometown. Several of the children went missing and days later their bodies were found. The village blamed him and cast him out. He later joined up with a circus troupe, which is where the adventuring started. He was seven feet tall, a full head taller than our party's half-orc druid, and about the same height as our Minotaur forge cleric. Our lightfoot halfling wizard used to cling to Sergei's back during travel. In more than one fight, I never broke my temp HP. He was great fun, and made a great distraction while our halfling burgled.
I like the idea of the increasing DC. It's a mechanic that already exists in the system, so why not take advantage of that.
My personal work around for this was a simple magic item (listed here https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/391406-band-of-deep-reserves)(hopefully the link works). It's a similar idea in that you still have protection from the first level of exhaustion, but maintains the emphasis on recovery afterwards, even if the recovery period can be pushed much further into an adventure.
TL; DR: Exhaustion is a painful debuff; you will avoid using one of your core abilities. It's like a Wizard that won't do Arcane Recovery, or a Rogue that won't Hide as part of a Cunning Action. Berserker is self-nerfed.
It's a good thing that Barbs get advantage on Initiative and Strength checks while raging, because even on level of exhaustion is painful. Two or three are debilitating. At four levels of exhaustion, you may want to take a week off.
Exhaustion is a terrible condition to be hit by, and a class that self-inflicts is making bad life choices.
I can't envision the party that is grateful to their anchor (as in tied around them and dragging them down) for always pulling those so useful level 5 Spell Slots from their cleric. Assuming they have a cleric...
I rarely recommend against an archetype, bu this is one that I tell players they will most likely be unhappy with. Why? Because the more you use your Frenzy (kinda the thing these guys do...) the weaker you will be, relative to not using the ability. It gets worse if you use Frenzy multiple times, as a single Long Rest will only recover one level of Exhaustion.
Thanks. The link worked for me. That's a very useful item and not just for berserkers.