Giants are paragons of primordial power, once intended by Annam the All-Father to rule over all the Material Plane. As a Path of the Giant barbarian, you’ll tap into these same primal forces to surge with elemental energy and tower over your foes. (To learn more about the history and origin of your giant powers, pick up a copy of Bigby's Presents: Glory of the Giants!)

Let's take a look at some of the giant features this subclass and how to build around them:

• Path of the Giant Barbarian Features
• Path of the Giant Barbarian Compared to Other Barbarian Subclasses
• Things to Keep in Mind
• How to Build a Path of the Giant Barbarian
• Sample Build

Path of the Giant Barbarian Features

What makes a giant dangerous? Well, its size allows it to swing a weapon over a pretty big area of the battlefield, it’s often picking up whatever heavy thing is nearby and throwing it at your head, and it might be brimming with elemental energy. Ready to follow in those enormous footsteps?

As a Path of the Giant barbarian, you’ll manifest the strength of giants, growing in size and filling with primordial power. Think about what you want your character’s transformation to look like, and what emotions you want it to evoke in your enemies and allies. Does your character’s new form mostly resemble a giant version of themselves, or do they shapeshift more intensely into an elemental-like being?

Art by Nikki Dawes

• Giant’s Power (3rd level): Giants are innately tied to the primal energies of the universe, and this connection will manifest with a touch of magic as you learn the druidcraft or thaumaturgy cantrip. You’ll also learn how to communicate with giants—handy, as you’ll be channeling their power!
• Giant’s Havoc (3rd level): Your rage taps into primal forces, boosting your size, reach, and even your damage with thrown weapons. You become Large, your reach increases by 5 feet, and you can add your Rage Damage bonus to damage rolls with thrown weapons. Use your newfound size to wreak havoc on a much larger area than most of your martial allies can ever hope to affect.
• Elemental Cleaver (6th level): Infuse a weapon with primordial energy, dealing extra damage to enemies near and far. Pick up your pike, imbue it with elemental power, and hurl it like a spear, because any weapon that you infuse in this way gains the thrown property. Additionally, the infused weapon magically reappears in your hands the instant it misses or hits a target, so you don’t have to worry about prying that pike out of the wall later.
• Mighty Impel (10th level): You’re big; it stands to reason that you should be able to pick up smaller things—or enemies—and throw them. Instead of a contested Athletics check, this feature forces the enemy to make a saving throw using a DC that scales with your Strength modifier. You can throw enemies into dangerous terrain as well, so keep an eye out for cliffs, quicksand, lava, and other hazards. Hope you’ve been lifting!
• Demiurgic Colossus (14th level): Demiurgic Colossus boosts all of your aforementioned features, ensuring they’ll keep up with the threats you’ll face at this level. Large becomes Huge, the extra 1d6 elemental damage from Elemental Cleaver becomes 2d6, and Mighty Impel can now affect Large creatures. With Demiurgic Colossus, take all of your giant powers and dial them up to 11.

The Path of the Giant Barbarian Compared to Other Barbarian Subclasses 

Barbarian subclasses tend to be easy to play and kind to your action economy, and the Path of the Giant is no different. Its features, like those of most other barbarian subclasses, take effect as you make an attack or enter a rage. And in keeping with the barbarian class’ approachability, the Path of the Giant grants additional features without giving newer players too many new things to remember.

A barbarian’s subclass can guide them toward a role on the battlefield. For example, barbarians who want to deal as much damage as possible might find themselves drawn to the Path of the Berserker or Zealot. Conversely, barbarians from the Path of the Totem Warrior are known for finding the biggest group of enemies, jumping in the middle, and staying alive while allies deal damage with ranged attacks.

The Path of the Giant is fairly well-rounded, but it’s particularly suited for controlling the area around you to defend your allies, making it most similar to the Path of the Ancestral Guardian or the Storm Herald. Giant barbarians are also more capable of affecting the battlefield at a distance; only the giant barbarian adds Rage Damage to ranged attacks with thrown weapons, and who else can pick up your fighter and throw them right next to the boss?

Things to Keep in Mind

Your Giant’s Havoc feature helps you take up space, demand enemy attention, and damage foes from afar. But your increase in size makes you an easier target for enemy archers—good luck finding cover when you’re over 10 feet tall!

The Path of the Giant delivers what I think most players want out of a barbarian subclass: straightforward mechanics with some unique options that make you a menace on the battlefield. Your party’s wizard has to spend a 2nd-level spell slot on vortex warp to move an enemy against their will; you can simply pick them up and throw them.

You can adapt your elemental power to target your foes’ weaknesses too, or grapple a hill giant. If your Dungeon Master permits feats, you can customize your barbarian even further.

How to Build a Path of the Giant Barbarian

Ability Scores

As a barbarian, you’ll want to focus on Strength and Constitution. You use Strength for your melee and thrown weapon attacks, and you’ll use Strength (Athletics) to grapple and shove opponents. Constitution keeps you alive by increasing your hit point maximum, and it contributes to your Armor Class (AC) if you’re unarmored.

Most people recommend prioritizing Dexterity third, and I often build barbarians this way as well. But I also strongly advise that you prioritize Wisdom, because enemy mages will often take one look at you and try to dominate or hold you. You’ll also use your Wisdom when making Perception and Insight checks, both of which can be critical in keeping you out of trouble or preventing you from being surprised by an enemy rogue. Conversely, your barbarian will likely be making many Dexterity saving throws against threats like dragon’s breath attacks and the fireball spell, and it’s hard to resist Dexterity’s bonus to AC and initiative.

What about Intelligence and Charisma? Well, while Wisdom is critical to resisting most charm and fear effects, Intelligence is used to see through illusions and resist many psionic attacks, and Charisma is used to resist banishment and possession. Accordingly, you may want to consider your adventure’s main threat (if you know it ahead of time) when choosing which of these ability scores to invest in. After prioritizing your physical ability scores, you probably won’t be able to invest resources into more than one mental ability score, so choose wisely.

Character Creation

Many lineages perform well as a Path of the Giant barbarian. Most of those that I’ve recommended here boast lore-based connections to giants or defensive traits that guard against some of the barbarian’s classic vulnerabilities. I also like Small species for this subclass, because they can explore tighter spaces out of combat while benefiting from additional size during combat—plus it’s just fun to imagine a fairy or gnome shoot up to 12-feet tall before charging into battle.

• Bugbear: The bugbear is a fantastic choice for Path of the Giant barbarians. The Long-Limbed trait gives them extra reach, even further expanding their control over the battlefield when they use Giant’s Havoc. Their Fey Ancestry gives them advantage on saving throws against the charmed condition, they are proficient in Stealth, and their Powerful Build lets them to push, drag, and lift much more than their size would normally allow.
• Deep Gnome: Deep gnome barbarians are better at stealthing and skulking in the dark than most barbarians, better able to pull their weight in a heist or an ambush. But you might be selecting them for their Gnomish Magic Resistance, which grants advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against spells. Enemy mages tend to already fear a barbarian’s greatsword, but if they don’t, it’s because they think their spells will easily dominate your barbarian mind. Select the deep gnome to disabuse them of this notion.
• Earth Genasi: Earth genasi are elementally-infused humanoids, either the offspring of a dao (however distant) or simply imbued with their magic (however unintentionally), gaining power over sand and stone. As an earth genasi, you can cast blade ward as a bonus action, gaining temporary resistance to the same damage that your Rage protects you from. This allows you a few turns of rage-like defenses without having to expend a use of rage. Earth genasi can also avoid the stereotype of the noisy barbarian that ruins the party’s Stealth checks by casting pass without trace.
• Fairy: The fairy makes for a fun and tricksy barbarian. Not many barbarians can fly, and fewer still can fit through small spaces and then grow to Large in seconds. But the fey twists don’t stop there: Fairies can cast enlarge/reduce, allowing you to add extra damage to your weapon attacks without expending a valuable use of your rage. Lastly, the fairy evades the barbarian’s most common weakness to spells like charm person, hold person, or dominate person by having the Fey creature type instead of the Humanoid creature type.
• Goliath: As distant relatives of the giants, the goliath may have been the first species to enter your mind when considering the Path of the Giant subclass. Fortunately, goliath traits synergize well with the barbarian class in general, and the Little Giant trait complements the Path of the Giant subclass particularly (and predictably) well. The Mountain Born trait makes you resistant to cold damage; how useful this is might be adventure-specific, but any damage resistance is valuable to a character who expects to occupy enemy attention. Stone’s Endurance allows you to use your reaction to reduce incoming damage, and it scales off of your Constitution modifier, which you were probably already investing in. Finally, the Little Giant trait, in addition to granting proficiency in Athletics, allows goliaths to lift weight as though they were one size category larger; this means that when they use Giant’s Havoc, a goliath with 18 Strength could lift over 2,000 pounds.

Feats

Feats sharpen a character into the generalist or specialist that you want them to be. You might pick feats that cover gaps in your abilities, creating a more well-rounded character, or you might select a few that work together to make you an expert at a niche battlefield role.

• Crusher: Your Path of the Giant features make you adept at moving enemies around the battlefield, and the Crusher feat is here to help make you an expert. Crusher adds +1 to your Strength or Constitution, allows you to push enemies 5 feet when you hit them with bludgeoning damage, and empowers your critical hits. Use this feat to push an enemy out of melee range of an ally, allowing that friend to move without fear of an opportunity attack. If you like the idea of a feat that boosts your martial prowess but you don’t prefer to deal bludgeoning damage, consider Piercer or Slasher.
• Resilient (Dexterity or Wisdom): Barbarians are proficient in Strength and Constitution saving throws but frequently find themselves making Dexterity and Wisdom saving throws. By picking up the Resilient feat, you receive +1 to an ability score and gain proficiency in saving throws using that score. Select Dexterity if you’re worried about dodging a lightning bolt or falling overboard a ship, or Wisdom if your party frequently encounters mind-altering or paralyzing magics.
• Polearm Master: When you use your Giant’s Havoc feature, your character can suddenly affect a much greater area of the battlefield. As a Large creature with additional reach, they can affect 32 squares on a grid. Put a polearm with the reach property in their hand, such as a glaive or halberd, and their range increases again, covering 60 squares on a grid. (Or 91 squares if you’re a Large bugbear using Giant’s Havoc and wielding a polearm, but at some point we’re getting carried away.) With the Polearm Master feat, you can make an opportunity attack when creatures enter your melee range, and you can use a bonus action each turn to make an attack with the weapon’s opposite end. Even though this bonus action attack’s weapon damage is reduced, your Elemental Cleaver damage may still apply, plus with Reckless Attack any swing is another valuable opportunity to land a critical hit.
• Skill Expert: The Skill Expert feat grants you +1 to an ability score of your choice, as well as the opportunity to become proficient in one skill and an expert in one skill. Path of the Giant barbarians love Skill Expert for the same reason Rune Knight Fighters do: expertise in Athletics, which you use to grapple and shove enemies. With your magically-enhanced size increasing your reach, use this feat to grapple foes before they can attack your allies.
• Strike of the Giants: Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants introduced new feats allowing you to choose a type of giant (perhaps an ancestor, or one with an elemental affinity that you share) and receive a unique corresponding martial ability. I recommend Path of the Giant barbarians look to the Frost, Hill, or Stone Strike options, as these all affect an enemy’s movement or its position on the battlefield. I particularly enjoy Frost Strike, which has allowed my character to stop a charging ogre in its tracks with a thrown handaxe.
• Tavern Brawler: When you’re ready to cause a little trouble, you may pick up any item—a mug, a chair, a torch—and use it as a weapon. However, you won’t be able to apply your proficiency bonus to your attack roll, because presumably you haven’t practiced fighting with mugs very often. Unless you’re a Tavern Brawler, that is. Characters with this feat are proficient in any improvised weapon, deal more damage with unarmed strikes, and they can use their bonus action to attempt to grapple a target under certain conditions. Though the mechanics are fun, I mostly love this feat for its comedic potential: Grab something like a candlestick or a mop, use Elemental Cleaver to infuse it with magic, and expertly bash enemies over the head with it.
• Tough: Stay alive! As a Large (and later, Huge) barbarian, you’re very easy to flank, it’s difficult for you to find cover, and you likely draw a great deal of attention. You already have the biggest Hit Dice of any class, and your rage will halve incoming bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. But that might not be enough. If you are your party’s only frontline combatant or if all of the enemy’s archers seem to focus on you, consider the Tough feat, which increases your maximum hit points by +2 per character level. That’s the equivalent of increasing your Constitution score by four!

Path of the Giant Barbarian Sample Build

I created my own Path of the Giant barbarian and have linked it below. Most difficult was the choice about what type of role I wanted the barbarian to play: The Path of the Giant is well-suited to protecting allies and controlling the battlefield, but its size also allows it to play a more classic tank, or they could use Elemental Cleaver and Mighty Impel to cause as much harm as possible.

This barbarian focuses on debilitating as many enemies as they can. They often use their action to grapple or shove opponents within reach, and their bonus action to pick up and throw any enemies who’ve gotten near the party’s mages. When they need to move enemies but want to deal damage at the same time, they use the Strike of the Giants (Stone Strike) feat. If an enemy is threatening an ally but is too far away to pick up with Mighty Impel, this barbarian uses the Keenness of the Stone Giant feat to throw a rock that can knock the foe prone. This behavior will probably attract a lot of enemy fire, so hopefully the +3 Constitution modifier is enough to keep him alive!

Building Your Own Path of the Giant Barbarian

Have you ever picked up a lich and thrown them into a brick wall? Do you want to supercharge your rage with the primordial fury of the giants? Well, get ready to, cause the Path of the Giant barbarian is just one of the giant character options that can be found in Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants.

For a closer look at what player options this book offers, check out the video below:

Damen Cook (@damen_joseph) is a lifelong fantasy reader, writer, and gamer. If he woke up tomorrow in Faerûn, he would bolt through the nearest fey crossing and drink from every stream and eat fruit from every tree in the Feywild until he found that sweet, sweet wild magic.