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.
Thanks for the article, it was amazing👍
Hey James, enjoyed the article. But no need for armor a tunic & body paint. You will be the best en-raged negotiator ever!
Since you want to focus on Charisma for your Intimidating Presence feature, you'll probably be sacrificing Dexterity in order to get it. So I recommend wearing armor to shore up your AC. That said, bare-chested and slathered in war paint is an iconic image!
I DM for a berserker, and they easily put out the most damage of anyone in the party and are near impossible to knock out. And with the mindless rage thing they lose the most significant downsides of being a barbarian. I would counsel new DMs to not houserule to make the subclass better until you’ve seen it play out for a bit first. In my opinion there is really no need.
I played a Berserker Barbarian in Out of the Abyss and the madness combined with the exhaustion was rough. My DM was very kind about it. I had a blast playing her. She dealt a lot of damage with her Maul. But against a lot of things with all physical types of damage being their resistances, it got old and kinda boring. Love the honesty in the article!
Does anybody know what the next subclass is alphabetically? Because that will probably be the next one published.
Found a typo: "a race that skews towards Strenght"
Immunity to charm is nice, but frenzy doesn't read to me as good enough to merit the penalty. If the recommendation is to house rule a fix to make the class viable, then it really isn't viable... 3 attacks is nice, as opposed to 2, and its very very nice at low levels because you're doing stupid damage early game (2 full attacks at level 3 is great, 3 at 5th is also great, but after 11 its unremarkable) but there are other subs that give (admittedly lesser) bonus action attacks or non-damage bonus actions, which also do not have a penalty.
The point of this series isn't to discuss which subclasses are "viable" or not by comparison, or by any arbitrary metric. This is a series about examining the story potential, and mechanical strengths and weaknesses of all subclasses so that people can have fun playing the character that they want to. I proposed a house rule in this article because, even in a vacuum, only being able to use a subclass's core feature once or twice per day isn't fun.
Fair enough. I apologize, I wasn't trying to be rude.
Ah, fond memories of the berserker barbarian...a mountain dwarf named Fukov.
Anytime the party face had someone they didn't like, they'd call his name...and he'd go to work.
It's no problem. I just wanted to clarify the intentions of this series. It's not an optimization guide, it's a guide to having fun. (Though I concede that a certain level of optimization is sometimes necessary to have fun, depending on your playstyle and the overall playstyle of your group.)
I need to re-evaluate my Barbarian, good thing he’s only 3rd level at the moment. Thank you for the awesome insight into the class!
Since the exhaustion penalty from Frenzy doesn't kick in until *after* the Frenzy ends, I would argue, in the right circumstance, you could use Frenzy three times per long rest, *iff* you know that you are definitely going to get a long rest immediately after that third Frenzy.
Really enjoyed this article. While I was thinking of multiclassing after Level 8 to dip into fighter, I think your suggestion after 5 makes alot of sense early game taking advantage of action surge at level 7 can be a game changer, not to mention the fighting prof.
5th edition makes multiclassing very situational, as it is rarely necessary to take levels in more than one class, in order to stay powerful or optimized. I only suggest people multiclass if there is a specific thing they're looking for, as very often, by taking even 2 levels in another class, you're delaying your progression by an amount that is less long-term useful than the short-term benefit. Fighter is a solid choice for any class, but it works better to go from fighter to another class than to fighter from another class. I recommend you go (main class) at first level then either waiting until after 5 to take a different class, or taking only 1 level of another class at 2nd then taking your main class to 5th before returning to your secondary class. It is very, very easy to make a character that LOOKS like it might be amazing, who stinks out loud at the table. by multiclassing you also almost always give up an Ability Score increase, which is huge, and even if you do go for 4 levels in another class (not usually recommended) you push your ability increases back behind others at the table, which usually results in you feeling (or possibly being) significantly weaker than others at the table.
Also consider that Barbarian's best features are late in the list, and their 20th level feature is widely regarded as the second best one in the game (+4 Strength and +4 Constitution, which means a 10% better chance to hit, 2 additional damage, and 40 more HP, and possibly 10% reduced chance to receive a hit from Unarmored Defense), weighed against the idea that very few games go all the way to 20th level. [the only one that is more favorably regarded is Druid which gives you unlimited uses of Wild Shape, which for Moon Druids means you are nearly impossibly to kill from Hit Point damage]
ex:
Barbarian 1-5
Fighter at 6-7
Barbarian 8-20
--OR--
Barbarian 1
Fighter 2
Barbarian 3-6
Fighter 7
Barbarian 8-20
also, consider the why of a multiclass. if it is strictly for mechanical benefit, it may be better to rethink it. an example is "I want my barbarian to be an expert tracker and woodsman, so im going to take Ranger levels". before you take the plunge, ask yourself what you really want from that. if you just want to be better than the average player at tracking bad guys, consider instead taking the Survival or Nature skill as one of your skill choices, or even more basic, consider just including a few sentences in your character's backstory about how s/he comes from a clan/family of woodsmen or survivalists, and spent a great deal of time doing woodsy things before becoming an adventurer. if you're really set on that Fighting Style, or Class Ability, that's fine, but consider what you give up to have that. It helps to come up with a concept that youre looking for which can be summed up in one sentence. You may find that your original method doesnt fit your concept mechanically.
Ultimately, do what is fun for you though!
I've had a ton of fun making Conan the Barbarian. So far just 5 lvls of barbarian bear... but next up some rogue levels! Why? More skills, more avoidance of damage to just keep going non stop all day, and when you reckless attack you can toss in sneak attack without any set up pretty much! (dex/con are primary and str is tertiary)
So curiosity has struck me, not sure how other people feel about this, I know it's super late game but, at level 20 a Barbarian has unlimited use of rage.
This in addition to the "Persistent Rage" feature they gain at 15 the only 2 things that end a rage are choosing to end it and falling unconscious.
The way Frenzy is worded, "When your rage ends, you suffer one level of exhaustion."
Could you keep yourself in a perpetual state of frenzy for an entire day only suffering one level of exhaustion?
"That's my secret, I'm always angry."
Following the SRD, it'd be Bard College of Lore.
Well, I think it's kinda stupid that Intimidating presence uses your charisma and not your strength. There's even a variant rule that lets you use strength instead of charisma for an intimidation check.