"Tactical," meaning... about more than just hitting people? Here's some ideas:
Shove and Grapple are both incredibly powerful abilities against targets that you can't finish off yourself. As a Barbarian, when you Rage, you have advantage on both... and are pretty likely to be a character with a good Athletics score as well. Giving up 10-20 damage of your own on one turn, in exchange for shoving the enemy Prone for two or three of your friends to have Advantage on their own attacks... that's a pretty good trade! Or, reducing that enemy's speed to 0, so that it has to spend its turn attacking you (who have tons of hit points, probably some decent AC, and resistance against all their attacks) instead of going after the Rogue or the backline casters.... that's damn tactical. Shield Master is a great feat for a barbarian willing to use a one handed martial weapon, so that the Barbarian doesn't even have to give up an attack to consistently shove someone Prone every round.
Some of the subclasses can support their team with special class features.
The Ancestral Guardian gives enemies Disadvantage when they try to attack their other teammates, and at higher levels, can use reactions to reduce damage to allies
The Beast at high levels can buff its team
The Tundra Storm Herald is especially focused on buffing their allies, and debuffing/controlling their enemies
The Wolf Totem gives its allies advantage against the enemies that the barbarian is near to, and other totems at higher levels have interesting benefits for you or your team during exploration
The Zealot at 10 can give a powerful buff to its team for one round
The Wild Magic can also provide buffs to its teammates, including restoring spell slots!!
Feats like Sentinel can make melee combatants a big headache for enemy movement, positioning, and targeting
Feats like Healer, Chef, or Inspiring Leader (even with very low Charisma!) can provide incredibly helpful buffs to the whole party between combats
Feats like Fey Touched, Magic Initiate, or Ritual Caster can provide the Barbarian interesting tactical options in and out of combat that defy expectations
Weapons like Net can be used, if you've got the Dex for them (which some barbarians will)
It is worth mentioning that Barbarians are the class that "Get mad and kill stuff," or "HULK SMASH!" That isn't to say there isn't any way to make Barbarians tactical, the comment above does a great job of that. But as a tanking class, your primary goal in combat is USUALLY to deal lots of damage, and attract attention to keep the baddies attacking you instead of the squishy supports and spell casters. So, while I personally don't have any advice for clever tricks or tactics with a barbarian, I do want to bring up the fact that a barbarian's job is usually to attack and be attacked, so often times there doesn't need to be much in the way of tactics in the first place.
It is worth mentioning that Barbarians are the class that "Get mad and kill stuff," or "HULK SMASH!" That isn't to say there isn't any way to make Barbarians tactical, the comment above does a great job of that. But as a tanking class, your primary goal in combat is USUALLY to deal lots of damage, and attract attention to keep the baddies attacking you instead of the squishy supports and spell casters. So, while I personally don't have any advice for clever tricks or tactics with a barbarian, I do want to bring up the fact that a barbarian's job is usually to attack and be attacked, so often times there doesn't need to be much in the way of tactics in the first place.
Much can be done by simply filling gaps to impede enemies from being able to access your allies as well as moving your allies to spaces that aren't being threatened so that they can retreat. Moving in a way to draw OAs to help open lanes of retreat or drawing off the heavy hitters while the rest of the party take care of the other enemies are solid plans. Deciding when to attack recklessly to encourage attacks against you as well as when to rage can be a very tactical process as well. Much of what the barbarian does by default can be treated in a very tactical manner and you continue to gain more options as you gain levels or take feats, and many of those options have already been discussed. Sure, it mostly looks the same as just [Action]Attack[/ action]ing every round, but there can be very deliberate tactical reasons for doing everything. Just because the main feature is Rage doesn't mean that you have to point yourself at the nearest enemy and kill, you can choose to do things to draw as much attention to you as you can.
One of my personal favorites was to spit at enemies, growl at them, or offend them in some way. I have no idea how much it affected the way that the DM ran the enemies, but it helped flesh out my character and was always done deliberately.
Sometimes characters don't have their weapons and have to attack with whatever is at hand. An improvised weapon includes any object you can wield in one or two hands, such as broken glass, a table leg, a frying pan, a wagon wheel, or a dead goblin.
It won't be as strong as your main weapon, but it will surely make an encounter fun. Also, as a 1st level Barbarian with your rage, it'll deal a minimum of 6 (average 7.5) damage per hit with 16 Str, which isn't awful.
If the battle is not dire for every point of damage, there are many ways to be creative. If it is, perhaps your character should just stick to the tactic that works.
If your team has many ranged characters that won't benefit from your enemy being prone, you can use the Help action too. It can be flavoured in any way, but I really like the example of spitting on someone from the post above, depending on your character of course.
If there's a Bard or Cleric in your party, you can combine grappling an enemy spell caster with one of your party's spell casters casting Silence. If you grapple an enemy spell caster inside the 20ft radius of the sphere of silence, that spell caster can't cast any spells that have a verbal component, and they can't get out of the sphere because you've grappled them, so they're stuck being unable to cast most spells until they can find a way to escape your grapple and get out of the sphere of silence. As an added bonus, you'll be deafened inside the sphere, which will protect you from some of the enemy charm and control spells that would require a Wisdom save.
I would consider using a barbarian as a human shield. stick it in front of a squishy spell caster or archer, then have them poke out and shoot, then retreat behin you. If you use a glaive or similar weapon, you could make an area of retribution, where if someone gets within 10 feet of you, you decimate them
Barbarians are great at not just dealing damage, but taking damage as well. You're the only class that gets a D12 in Health every level up, and if you're gonna have all that HP you might as well spend it. Interposing yourself between party members and attackers is an obvious tactic, but don't be afraid to bait enemies into Opportunity Attacks. When you've got a spellcaster pinned down by an opponent, take a step back, let them burn their reaction to hit you and let your ally make their escape.
If you want to completely pin an opponent down and are willing to spend a whole round doing so, get them with a grapple and also shove them prone. If an enemy is both prone and grappled their movement speed is 0, so they have no movement to spend to get up from prone. They have disadvantage on attacks, melee combatants have advantage against them, and breaking grapple is a full action. At best they can break grapple and stand up, but unless they've got an ability to disengage they're still stuck next to you and you can just grapple/shove them again next round.
Barbarians are great at not just dealing damage, but taking damage as well. You're the only class that gets a D12 in Health every level up, and if you're gonna have all that HP you might as well spend it. Interposing yourself between party members and attackers is an obvious tactic, but don't be afraid to bait enemies into Opportunity Attacks. When you've got a spellcaster pinned down by an opponent, take a step back, let them burn their reaction to hit you and let your ally make their escape.
If you want to completely pin an opponent down and are willing to spend a whole round doing so, get them with a grapple and also shove them prone. If an enemy is both prone and grappled their movement speed is 0, so they have no movement to spend to get up from prone. They have disadvantage on attacks, melee combatants have advantage against them, and breaking grapple is a full action. At best they can break grapple and stand up, but unless they've got an ability to disengage they're still stuck next to you and you can just grapple/shove them again next round.
That's not how grapple works. The condition grappled ends when the target breaks free of the grapple, and their speed is no longer zero once they're no longer grappled. Thus if they break the grapple, they can stand up and move away in the same turn that they ended the grappled condition.
Sorry, I meant that, if they break the grapple, they need to spend half their movement just to get up. They no longer have the Dash or Disengage action as an option, so if they try to run away you'll be able to get an opportunity attack, and they'll only be half-their speed away from you, so you can easily catch up to them and pin them down again. Most enemies will just stay in place after getting on their feet, so they're pretty effectively trapped.
Barbarians are shock troops. The best way to use shock troops is to blow a hole in the enemy's front line and let your side flood through the line into the enemies rear area. If they do this, your team is supposed to be able to ignore the enemies front line troops while they plunder the enemies softer targets, often combat multipliers like Bards and Clerics. They are also able to force the enemy out of their prepared positions into a mobile fight where their pre-battle plans don't matter and the fight develops into a brawl. In a brawl, the Barbarian is in his own element.
Unfortunately this approach to battle works when you have equal numbers or better, numerical superiority. Usually in D&D you are either fighting one enemy (so no rear area) or you are the numerically inferior force (and you need to keep your own lines as tight as possible).
So Plan C might be to wait until the really good soft target shows themselves behind the enemies front lines. Then a combination of the Barbarian blowing a hole open, and a quick character (Monk or Rogue) dashing through the opening to shut them down would be a good combination.
My party should be doing a variation on this soon. I picked up Dimension Door and our Paladin picked up Mage Slayer. When the right situation arises I plan to Dimension Door us next to the enemy caster and then let the Paladin do his Mage Slayer thing. Fageddibouddit.
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The ancestral guardian subclass feature doesn’t limit the barbarians movement after using its feature to impose disadvantage on attack rolls and resistance to that damage. If you make use of a reach weapon such as a glaive, you can potentially make those attacks outside of an enemy creatures each and move away if advantageous. The mobile feat enhances this a bit by further increasing the barbarians high movement speed, and allowing the barbarian to move away from creatures it attacks that have reach. The entire party’s defense will drastically increase vs that particular creature, and the barbarian may be able to make more use of its reckless attack feature if it is allowed to move to safety. This increases party defense and barbarian offense/defense. The spirit shield and vengeful ancestor features also work at a distance, which may further improve this barbarian hit and run style skirmisher. There can be further investment by choosing racial options that give movement bonuses. The orc option gives the ability use bonus actions to dash toward enemy’s which can be cool too since you don’t have a bonus action available besides rage, unless you decide to two weapon fight or spend a feat on polearm master. This style is similar to playing a rogue, but the support is increasing party defense. The swashbuckler has to spend an action to use its feature, and the masterminds bonus action only helps out the offense of one ally.
The ancestral guardian subclass feature doesn’t limit the barbarians movement after using its feature to impose disadvantage on attack rolls and resistance to that damage. If you make use of a reach weapon such as a glaive, you can potentially make those attacks outside of an enemy creatures each and move away if advantageous. The mobile feat enhances this a bit by further increasing the barbarians high movement speed, and allowing the barbarian to move away from creatures it attacks that have reach. The entire party’s defense will drastically increase vs that particular creature, and the barbarian may be able to make more use of its reckless attack feature if it is allowed to move to safety. This increases party defense and barbarian offense/defense. The spirit shield and vengeful ancestor features also work at a distance, which may further improve this barbarian hit and run style skirmisher. There can be further investment by choosing racial options that give movement bonuses. The orc option gives the ability use bonus actions to dash toward enemy’s which can be cool too since you don’t have a bonus action available besides rage, unless you decide to two weapon fight or spend a feat on polearm master. This style is similar to playing a rogue, but the support is increasing party defense. The swashbuckler has to spend an action to use its feature, and the masterminds bonus action only helps out the offense of one ally.
Default Barbarians are limited in what they can do aside from pick and choosing choice targets from the battlefield. Without looking at feats and special attacks your available tactical options are:
Hulk Smash - enemies can't do anything if they're dead
Place yourself in a strategic location to assist your comrades on the battlefield.
Pincer attacks for melee allies to give them advantage on attacks (if using flanking)
position yourself to help the rogue get sneak attack on squishy targets
Interpose yourself between the enemy and your squishy mid and back liners
If including shove and grapple then more options are available to you.
Shoving:
take advantage of the terrain or kill zones that your party have created
make enemies go prone, benefits are:
they (normally) have to waste half their movement speed to get up
Advantage to all melee attacks made against prone targets and prone target has disadvantage on attack rolls
Grappling
See that spell caster? Grapple so that they can't disengage and will have to spend a spell to escape through one spell or another. That's one spell less that your party has to deal with.
You are aware that you can drag grappled people right? Half movement for similar sized target and full movement for smaller so grab that Halfling/Gnome/Gobbo or your preferred small enemy and run them into the middle of your party for that good ol JoJo party stompin.
Shove the target and then grapple - congratulations you now have the benefits of the grappler feat without the downsides (flavor wise - kneel on the target's throat so that you are not prone yourself).
If taking into account pre-existing mundane items then consider taking a net or two.
1 "attack" is pretty cheap at level 5 to give you and your team mates advantage on further attacks until the target waste an action to break free/cut the net.
Now, I had a generous GM - but having advantage on strength checks isn't to be sneezed at. Said GM allowed my barbarian to leap up onto balconies, from rooftop to rooftop, even charge right through walls (it was in a rotting clapboard type of neighborhood, but still). Throwing or moving bits of terrain around - like, archers are less of a hassle of you have full cover behind something you can move towards them until you're in charge range. And again, if they're in an elevated position but you can jump up there, that's nice.
But it does require your GM to feel that's a cool way to go about it. I suppose it also really requires a high STR mod, advantage or no.
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I'm looking for some ways you can make a barbarian tactical? Is there any way. Im struggling to find some
"Tactical," meaning... about more than just hitting people? Here's some ideas:
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
It is worth mentioning that Barbarians are the class that "Get mad and kill stuff," or "HULK SMASH!" That isn't to say there isn't any way to make Barbarians tactical, the comment above does a great job of that. But as a tanking class, your primary goal in combat is USUALLY to deal lots of damage, and attract attention to keep the baddies attacking you instead of the squishy supports and spell casters. So, while I personally don't have any advice for clever tricks or tactics with a barbarian, I do want to bring up the fact that a barbarian's job is usually to attack and be attacked, so often times there doesn't need to be much in the way of tactics in the first place.
Much can be done by simply filling gaps to impede enemies from being able to access your allies as well as moving your allies to spaces that aren't being threatened so that they can retreat. Moving in a way to draw OAs to help open lanes of retreat or drawing off the heavy hitters while the rest of the party take care of the other enemies are solid plans. Deciding when to attack recklessly to encourage attacks against you as well as when to rage can be a very tactical process as well. Much of what the barbarian does by default can be treated in a very tactical manner and you continue to gain more options as you gain levels or take feats, and many of those options have already been discussed. Sure, it mostly looks the same as just [Action]Attack[/ action]ing every round, but there can be very deliberate tactical reasons for doing everything. Just because the main feature is Rage doesn't mean that you have to point yourself at the nearest enemy and kill, you can choose to do things to draw as much attention to you as you can.
One of my personal favorites was to spit at enemies, growl at them, or offend them in some way. I have no idea how much it affected the way that the DM ran the enemies, but it helped flesh out my character and was always done deliberately.
Use one grappled enemy as a weapon.
It won't be as strong as your main weapon, but it will surely make an encounter fun. Also, as a 1st level Barbarian with your rage, it'll deal a minimum of 6 (average 7.5) damage per hit with 16 Str, which isn't awful.
If the battle is not dire for every point of damage, there are many ways to be creative. If it is, perhaps your character should just stick to the tactic that works.
If your team has many ranged characters that won't benefit from your enemy being prone, you can use the Help action too. It can be flavoured in any way, but I really like the example of spitting on someone from the post above, depending on your character of course.
Varielky
If there's a Bard or Cleric in your party, you can combine grappling an enemy spell caster with one of your party's spell casters casting Silence. If you grapple an enemy spell caster inside the 20ft radius of the sphere of silence, that spell caster can't cast any spells that have a verbal component, and they can't get out of the sphere because you've grappled them, so they're stuck being unable to cast most spells until they can find a way to escape your grapple and get out of the sphere of silence. As an added bonus, you'll be deafened inside the sphere, which will protect you from some of the enemy charm and control spells that would require a Wisdom save.
I would consider using a barbarian as a human shield. stick it in front of a squishy spell caster or archer, then have them poke out and shoot, then retreat behin you. If you use a glaive or similar weapon, you could make an area of retribution, where if someone gets within 10 feet of you, you decimate them
N/A
Barbarians are great at not just dealing damage, but taking damage as well. You're the only class that gets a D12 in Health every level up, and if you're gonna have all that HP you might as well spend it. Interposing yourself between party members and attackers is an obvious tactic, but don't be afraid to bait enemies into Opportunity Attacks. When you've got a spellcaster pinned down by an opponent, take a step back, let them burn their reaction to hit you and let your ally make their escape.
If you want to completely pin an opponent down and are willing to spend a whole round doing so, get them with a grapple and also shove them prone. If an enemy is both prone and grappled their movement speed is 0, so they have no movement to spend to get up from prone. They have disadvantage on attacks, melee combatants have advantage against them, and breaking grapple is a full action. At best they can break grapple and stand up, but unless they've got an ability to disengage they're still stuck next to you and you can just grapple/shove them again next round.
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That's not how grapple works. The condition grappled ends when the target breaks free of the grapple, and their speed is no longer zero once they're no longer grappled. Thus if they break the grapple, they can stand up and move away in the same turn that they ended the grappled condition.
Sorry, I meant that, if they break the grapple, they need to spend half their movement just to get up. They no longer have the Dash or Disengage action as an option, so if they try to run away you'll be able to get an opportunity attack, and they'll only be half-their speed away from you, so you can easily catch up to them and pin them down again. Most enemies will just stay in place after getting on their feet, so they're pretty effectively trapped.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Your insights are well appreciated I can see how a barbarian with some of those tactics could take down another that doesn't use them
Barbarians are shock troops. The best way to use shock troops is to blow a hole in the enemy's front line and let your side flood through the line into the enemies rear area. If they do this, your team is supposed to be able to ignore the enemies front line troops while they plunder the enemies softer targets, often combat multipliers like Bards and Clerics. They are also able to force the enemy out of their prepared positions into a mobile fight where their pre-battle plans don't matter and the fight develops into a brawl. In a brawl, the Barbarian is in his own element.
Unfortunately this approach to battle works when you have equal numbers or better, numerical superiority. Usually in D&D you are either fighting one enemy (so no rear area) or you are the numerically inferior force (and you need to keep your own lines as tight as possible).
So Plan C might be to wait until the really good soft target shows themselves behind the enemies front lines. Then a combination of the Barbarian blowing a hole open, and a quick character (Monk or Rogue) dashing through the opening to shut them down would be a good combination.
My party should be doing a variation on this soon. I picked up Dimension Door and our Paladin picked up Mage Slayer. When the right situation arises I plan to Dimension Door us next to the enemy caster and then let the Paladin do his Mage Slayer thing. Fageddibouddit.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
All of this. Shove and Grapple can totally dominate and embarrass certain enemies.
The ancestral guardian subclass feature doesn’t limit the barbarians movement after using its feature to impose disadvantage on attack rolls and resistance to that damage. If you make use of a reach weapon such as a glaive, you can potentially make those attacks outside of an enemy creatures each and move away if advantageous. The mobile feat enhances this a bit by further increasing the barbarians high movement speed, and allowing the barbarian to move away from creatures it attacks that have reach. The entire party’s defense will drastically increase vs that particular creature, and the barbarian may be able to make more use of its reckless attack feature if it is allowed to move to safety. This increases party defense and barbarian offense/defense.
The spirit shield and vengeful ancestor features also work at a distance, which may further improve this barbarian hit and run style skirmisher.
There can be further investment by choosing racial options that give movement bonuses. The orc option gives the ability use bonus actions to dash toward enemy’s which can be cool too since you don’t have a bonus action available besides rage, unless you decide to two weapon fight or spend a feat on polearm master.
This style is similar to playing a rogue, but the support is increasing party defense. The swashbuckler has to spend an action to use its feature, and the masterminds bonus action only helps out the offense of one ally.
The Crusher feat also enables this play style.
Default Barbarians are limited in what they can do aside from pick and choosing choice targets from the battlefield. Without looking at feats and special attacks your available tactical options are:
If including shove and grapple then more options are available to you.
If taking into account pre-existing mundane items then consider taking a net or two.
That's a stereotype that doesn't have to dictate RP and combat. It's actually cooler when people don't play the dumb dumb with a club.
Discord: Bardic.Pisces
Now, I had a generous GM - but having advantage on strength checks isn't to be sneezed at. Said GM allowed my barbarian to leap up onto balconies, from rooftop to rooftop, even charge right through walls (it was in a rotting clapboard type of neighborhood, but still). Throwing or moving bits of terrain around - like, archers are less of a hassle of you have full cover behind something you can move towards them until you're in charge range. And again, if they're in an elevated position but you can jump up there, that's nice.
But it does require your GM to feel that's a cool way to go about it. I suppose it also really requires a high STR mod, advantage or no.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.