Starts to come online at Level 3: Barbarian - Path of the Beast's Form of the Beast feature reads, "Until the rage ends, you manifest a natural weapon. It counts as a simple melee weapon for you". You can attack 2 times per round at this point using only the "claw" natural weapons. Level 4: Feat: Dual Wielder, key focus on point 2, "You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light." You can attack 3 time at this point using only the "claw" natural weapons (2x action attack and 1x bonus action attack). Level 5: Extra attack
Bonus action: Off-hand Natural Claw weapon 1d6 +2 Rage (remember there's no STR MOD added here since we don't have the "Two-Weapon Fighting" fighting style)
Downside to this build is that you won't be getting a lot of benefits from any +1 magic weapons that you come across.
Variations:
Use Custom lineage for a feat that gets you the +1 in STR for more accuracy and damage early on.
Use Tortle and re-jig stats so that you have 13 INT to multiclass to Blood Hunter for Base 17 AC +1 from Dual Wielder and +1 from Lycan Blood Hunter's Transformation Multiclassing to Blood Hunter of at least 2 levels gives you access to the Two-Weapon Fighting Fighting style that's been missing this entire time plus the Crimson Rite bonus Damage
There are lots of ways to optimize the Path of the Beast Claws for damage that are thankfully not the usual GWM/PAM build. It is a large part of why I like Path of the Beast.
However there are two potential RaW problems with this approach. First is that Dual Wielder only applies to weapons the character is "wielding". Since you do not hold your claws I have seen it argued that this means they do not meet the "wielding" requirement. This leads to the second and more important problem. The Two-Weapon Fighting rules require that you make an attack with a weapon you are holding in one hand and grants the ability to make a bonus action attack with a weapon you are holding in your other hand. This "holding" requirement is why you can't use Two-Weapon Fighting with Unarmed Strikes and the PotB claws runs into the same issue.
It is still possible to benefit from Two-Weapon Fighting and PotB claws at the same time. However it requires using two manufactured weapons to perform Two-Weapon Fighting and juggling one of them so you can also make your claw attacks.
There are other ways of weaponizing your bonus action to consider too. Longtooth Shifter is one way and with Monsters of the Multiverse it got improved so you can make your bite attack when you Shift. This avoids the extra run up time that Order of the Lycan has. Also your number of Shifts per day scales at almost exactly the same rate as your Rages. Lizardfolk also get a way to make a bite attack as a bonus action but it is very limited.
This is a weird one but Crossbow Expert also technically works. The issue is now you have to mix Dex based attacks with Str based attacks. This means your Rage bonus damage and Reckless attacks are less impactful.
Probably the next best way after Longtooth Shifter is multuclassing into Monk. Since your claws count as Simple Weapons and they don't have any weapon properties they also count as Monk Weapons. So while you can't use your claws themselves to make Unarmed Strikes, you can still use Marital Arts to be making 4 attacks a round by level 6 and 5 attacks a round by level 7. This is very MAD though and works best with a race that has natural armor and a natural weapon that can make Unarmed Strikes like Tortle or Lizardfolk.
Completely doesn’t work. You either make a single attack with a weapon in each hand (primary attack followed by bonus action attack from two weapon fighting) OR you make an attack with each of the 2 claws (primary attack followed by bonus attack with other hand). You only get one bonus action per turn and the attack action only lets you make a single attack unless you have the extra attack feature. Even then at 5th level a martial can only make 3 attacks without extra abilities and feats. It is possible to get a fourth attack but it uses your reaction and requires the enemy to provoke an attack of opportunity.
Completely doesn’t work. You either make a single attack with a weapon in each hand (primary attack followed by bonus action attack from two weapon fighting) OR you make an attack with each of the 2 claws (primary attack followed by bonus attack with other hand). You only get one bonus action per turn and the attack action only lets you make a single attack unless you have the extra attack feature. Even then at 5th level a martial can only make 3 attacks without extra abilities and feats. It is possible to get a fourth attack but it uses your reaction and requires the enemy to provoke an attack of opportunity.
Here is the exact wording from the Form of the Beast feature regarding the Claw option: "Once on each of your turns when you attack with a claw using the Attack action, you can make one additional claw attack as part of the same action."
Ahh that snuck in there, I thought the second claw attack was a bonus action like the monk gets with martial arts. I didn’t realise it was a free attack.
RAW there are no problems combining Path of the Beast Claws with Flurry of Blows. Flurry of Blows only has three requirements to use:
You must make the Attack Action as your action this turn.
You must use your bonus action to perform the Flurry of Blows immediately after completing your Attack Action.
You must spend one ki point to perform Flurry of Blows.
I think a Beast Barb/Monk multiclass has potential but I haven't ever had the chance to play one in a campaign. Path of the Beast opens up a lot of non-standard builds for Barbarian that can do good damage if you can find a way to attack with your Bonus Action. As far as Barbarians go nothing beats a GWM+PAM Zealot in damage but Beast can get real close while allowing a free hand and/or a Small race if you want.
RAW there are no problems combining Path of the Beast Claws with Flurry of Blows.
Depends what you mean by combining; you can certainly use Martial Arts or Flurry of Blows after making your three claw attacks if you wish, but you can't use Flurry of Blows to attack using the claws themselves, as they're not unarmed strikes (they're natural weapons). This differs from racial natural weapons which usually say you can make unarmed strikes with them.
So those extra attacks would be regular bludgeoning unarmed strikes, so they'll deal slightly less damage (you need five levels in Monk to get the same d6 damage dice).
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Yes, Path of the Beast Claws work with Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows in the same way that a Quarterstaff does. You can't use the Claws to make the Unarmed Strikes themselves but you can use them during the normal Attack Action.
And if you want to increase your Unarmed Strike damage there are a number of ways to do this. Picking up more levels of Monk is one way, there are also feats, fighting styles, and races options you can use.
um question, since a barbarian can stack rage can you manifest multiply of the three options from the form of the beast?
You can't actually stack rages. Per the DMG "Different game features can affect a target at the same time. But when two or more game features have the same name, only the effects of one of them—the most potent one—apply while the durations of the effects overlap." - https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/dmg-2014/running-the-game#CombiningGameEffects
So you can burn an activation of Rage to change your manifested natural weapon, but you only have one manifested natural weapon at a time.
But that is just what RAW says. I would recommend discussing this with your DM.
If you are ok with going Shifter, you can make a bonus action bite attack as Longtooth Shifter and don't even need Dual Wielder. But Shifter works thematically really well with the Path of the Beast Barbarian.
Shifting is a bonus action, just like raging. That means that the soonest a Shifter barbarian could start doing that is round three, by which point combat is usually over.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I see, yes, that may be a problem if combat at your table is designed to generally be that short. I have used the combo quite frequently, but I generally combined Wildhunt with Berserker or Zealot. On another note, if you use your bonus action in round 1 of combat to rage, what do you do in round 2 with your bonus action that you don't get around to shifting until round 3?
Round two you need to use the bonus action to activate shifting, which means you don't get the bonus action attack until round three. And it's not my table, it's that combat in 5E is generally 3-4 rounds, that's just the nature of the game.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You can make the bonus action attack with the same bonus action that you use for shifting. It says "When you shift and as a bonus action on your other turns while shifted, you can use your elongated fangs to make an unarmed strike."
At my table, combat is hardly ever 3-4 rounds, unless it's a throw-away-mob.
That must have been changed in the 2024 rules. In Rising From the Last War, they could only do it while shifted, not on the turn they shifted. And apparently combat in your games is not the norm or your table is very high level. In Tiers 1 & 2, combat that lasts more then 3-4 rounds is usually one that risks one or more PCs dropping.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I just checked and yes, they were changed, but that happened with MotM and the new Forge of the Artificer copied MotM verbatum.
And yes, combat at our table is always at least hard if not deadly. If there is no risk of losing, it's not worth doing imo. The exception is random encounters during rests and encounters until level 3 (we mostly start at level 3).
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Race: Doesn't Matter
Stats: 15 STR, 14 DEX, 15 CON, 08 INT, 10 WIS, 08 CHA
Starts to come online at Level 3: Barbarian - Path of the Beast's Form of the Beast feature reads, "Until the rage ends, you manifest a natural weapon. It counts as a simple melee weapon for you".
You can attack 2 times per round at this point using only the "claw" natural weapons.
Level 4: Feat: Dual Wielder, key focus on point 2, "You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light."
You can attack 3 time at this point using only the "claw" natural weapons (2x action attack and 1x bonus action attack).
Level 5: Extra attack
Downside to this build is that you won't be getting a lot of benefits from any +1 magic weapons that you come across.
Variations:
Multiclassing to Blood Hunter of at least 2 levels gives you access to the Two-Weapon Fighting Fighting style that's been missing this entire time plus the Crimson Rite bonus Damage
There are lots of ways to optimize the Path of the Beast Claws for damage that are thankfully not the usual GWM/PAM build. It is a large part of why I like Path of the Beast.
However there are two potential RaW problems with this approach. First is that Dual Wielder only applies to weapons the character is "wielding". Since you do not hold your claws I have seen it argued that this means they do not meet the "wielding" requirement. This leads to the second and more important problem. The Two-Weapon Fighting rules require that you make an attack with a weapon you are holding in one hand and grants the ability to make a bonus action attack with a weapon you are holding in your other hand. This "holding" requirement is why you can't use Two-Weapon Fighting with Unarmed Strikes and the PotB claws runs into the same issue.
It is still possible to benefit from Two-Weapon Fighting and PotB claws at the same time. However it requires using two manufactured weapons to perform Two-Weapon Fighting and juggling one of them so you can also make your claw attacks.
There are other ways of weaponizing your bonus action to consider too. Longtooth Shifter is one way and with Monsters of the Multiverse it got improved so you can make your bite attack when you Shift. This avoids the extra run up time that Order of the Lycan has. Also your number of Shifts per day scales at almost exactly the same rate as your Rages. Lizardfolk also get a way to make a bite attack as a bonus action but it is very limited.
This is a weird one but Crossbow Expert also technically works. The issue is now you have to mix Dex based attacks with Str based attacks. This means your Rage bonus damage and Reckless attacks are less impactful.
Probably the next best way after Longtooth Shifter is multuclassing into Monk. Since your claws count as Simple Weapons and they don't have any weapon properties they also count as Monk Weapons. So while you can't use your claws themselves to make Unarmed Strikes, you can still use Marital Arts to be making 4 attacks a round by level 6 and 5 attacks a round by level 7. This is very MAD though and works best with a race that has natural armor and a natural weapon that can make Unarmed Strikes like Tortle or Lizardfolk.
Completely doesn’t work. You either make a single attack with a weapon in each hand (primary attack followed by bonus action attack from two weapon fighting) OR you make an attack with each of the 2 claws (primary attack followed by bonus attack with other hand). You only get one bonus action per turn and the attack action only lets you make a single attack unless you have the extra attack feature. Even then at 5th level a martial can only make 3 attacks without extra abilities and feats. It is possible to get a fourth attack but it uses your reaction and requires the enemy to provoke an attack of opportunity.
Here is the exact wording from the Form of the Beast feature regarding the Claw option: "Once on each of your turns when you attack with a claw using the Attack action, you can make one additional claw attack as part of the same action."
Here is a link to the full text of the class feature of you are curious: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/tcoe/barbarian#FormoftheBeast
Ahh that snuck in there, I thought the second claw attack was a bonus action like the monk gets with martial arts. I didn’t realise it was a free attack.
What happens if you're multi-classed as a Monk at higher levels? Can you Flurry of Blows for 5 total attacks? Or is that crossing too many streams?
RAW there are no problems combining Path of the Beast Claws with Flurry of Blows.
Flurry of Blows only has three requirements to use:
I think a Beast Barb/Monk multiclass has potential but I haven't ever had the chance to play one in a campaign. Path of the Beast opens up a lot of non-standard builds for Barbarian that can do good damage if you can find a way to attack with your Bonus Action. As far as Barbarians go nothing beats a GWM+PAM Zealot in damage but Beast can get real close while allowing a free hand and/or a Small race if you want.
Depends what you mean by combining; you can certainly use Martial Arts or Flurry of Blows after making your three claw attacks if you wish, but you can't use Flurry of Blows to attack using the claws themselves, as they're not unarmed strikes (they're natural weapons). This differs from racial natural weapons which usually say you can make unarmed strikes with them.
So those extra attacks would be regular bludgeoning unarmed strikes, so they'll deal slightly less damage (you need five levels in Monk to get the same d6 damage dice).
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Yes, Path of the Beast Claws work with Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows in the same way that a Quarterstaff does. You can't use the Claws to make the Unarmed Strikes themselves but you can use them during the normal Attack Action.
And if you want to increase your Unarmed Strike damage there are a number of ways to do this. Picking up more levels of Monk is one way, there are also feats, fighting styles, and races options you can use.
You can't actually stack rages. Per the DMG "Different game features can affect a target at the same time. But when two or more game features have the same name, only the effects of one of them—the most potent one—apply while the durations of the effects overlap." - https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/dmg-2014/running-the-game#CombiningGameEffects
So you can burn an activation of Rage to change your manifested natural weapon, but you only have one manifested natural weapon at a time.
But that is just what RAW says. I would recommend discussing this with your DM.
If you are ok with going Shifter, you can make a bonus action bite attack as Longtooth Shifter and don't even need Dual Wielder. But Shifter works thematically really well with the Path of the Beast Barbarian.
Shifting is a bonus action, just like raging. That means that the soonest a Shifter barbarian could start doing that is round three, by which point combat is usually over.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I see, yes, that may be a problem if combat at your table is designed to generally be that short. I have used the combo quite frequently, but I generally combined Wildhunt with Berserker or Zealot. On another note, if you use your bonus action in round 1 of combat to rage, what do you do in round 2 with your bonus action that you don't get around to shifting until round 3?
Round two you need to use the bonus action to activate shifting, which means you don't get the bonus action attack until round three. And it's not my table, it's that combat in 5E is generally 3-4 rounds, that's just the nature of the game.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You can make the bonus action attack with the same bonus action that you use for shifting. It says "When you shift and as a bonus action on your other turns while shifted, you can use your elongated fangs to make an unarmed strike."
At my table, combat is hardly ever 3-4 rounds, unless it's a throw-away-mob.
That must have been changed in the 2024 rules. In Rising From the Last War, they could only do it while shifted, not on the turn they shifted. And apparently combat in your games is not the norm or your table is very high level. In Tiers 1 & 2, combat that lasts more then 3-4 rounds is usually one that risks one or more PCs dropping.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I just checked and yes, they were changed, but that happened with MotM and the new Forge of the Artificer copied MotM verbatum.
And yes, combat at our table is always at least hard if not deadly. If there is no risk of losing, it's not worth doing imo. The exception is random encounters during rests and encounters until level 3 (we mostly start at level 3).