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.
I love the concept of the Berserker but the exhaustion for your primary subclass focus is, in my opinion, a turn off and punishing to players especially lower level PCs as exhaustion is basically a GLYF situation. There are instances where Long Rests cannot be taken for extended periods, having to rely on short rests only. In these situations with the Berserker having to use Frenzy to contribute fully to the party's dungeon crawl keeps increasing the exhaustion rank switching from GLYF to the Berserker being JWF.
Proposals: Exhaustion caused by Frenzy is cured on Short Rests, BUT ONLY exhaustion caused by Frenzy.OR Frenzy does not cause exhaustion except the first time it is used at the start of an encounter.
GYLF and JWF are acronyms which I will not spell out to keep this SFW.
This subclass isn't broken. It functions, and it functions well enough that other people in this comments section have praised their experiences playing it. I'm of the opinion that the class is underpowered, but under absolutely no circumstances is it broken. My objection to the phrasing "viable" in the post you're responding to is that "viable" is a completely subjective phrase. Viable how? In what context? With what group?
Perhaps you and I are simply having a semantic disagreement. I consider it a disingenuous exaggeration to call something broken when it's, at most, suboptimal.
What a cool character!
I personally don't consider it suboptimal. It's a choice you have to make. Risk/Reward to get an extra attack. It's meant to be balanced. I also agree that it isn't that fun. Other barbarians rage when they want, Berserkers have to "think" more tactically and plan when to rage and when not to more often because its min/max choices. For some players that is super fun. I felt for a berserker to have to "think" broke my immersion and going around exhausted all the time was a pretty crappy on the fun factor, but I didn't think it was ever broken. It did make me want to try out a different mechanic for it, like temporary Exhaustion that was removed on a short rest or no exhaustion but removes max HP or something, but in the end I never felt it was needed.
"I have an intelligence of 6. I know what I'm doing." - one of the most famed berserkers ever
Right. The only thing saving the class is that frenzy doesn't replace rage, it is a secondary rage mode. You either rage, or frenzy. That's how Mercer runs it. Idk if that's intended by WotC, but it is suggested otherwise. It is implied that frenzy replaces rage, which IS broken.
Some people will enjoy the tactics of frenzy, others will plop down and say "we killed the mook army. I'm sleeping right here, right now" and have a blast.
OP suggests a house rule to fix it. Mercer used a house rule to fix it. The issue of people enjoying the sub is sidestepping the issue of it being broken. PHB ranger is widely agreed to be brokenly weaker than other martial or hybrid classes. People still enjoy it. That's another one that Mercer house ruled into being relevant (trinket was a CR2 bear, which is higher than BM rangers get) until about level 14, after which time, Vex stopped using Trinket except for RP because trinket would get 1shot.
I'm pretty sure Mercer hand-waived the exhaustion by the end.
Do people also enjoy Ranger? Heck yeah they do. It doesn't make the class better or worse, but it is a problem that so many people keep having to house rule things into relevance.
My favourite NPC is a berzerker/rogue nobleman armed with a shield and sunsword. When the PCs met him he came across as a womanizing coward but whereever they went they would hear stories about his bravery in combat and how he is most famous for single handedly defending a breach of the main wall in a famous battle. He reddily accepts the praise but seems unable to provide any details of the battle after his unit broke and left him at the breach.
Mechanically, he spends the beginning of the battle taking the dodge action and looking for an opportunity to run away. When he does attack, it is with a fencing style mauver. Once he takes damage though, he breaks into terrifying laughter and charges whoever is closest and suddenly becomes combat effective and ignores all injuries he sustains. When his rage ends, he screams somewthing like "I wasn't finsihed!" and then loses consciousness.
He's been a fun NPC to throw into the occasional large scale battle because the PCs have worked out how he funcions and they have to try to funnel the enemies toward him to get him to take damage and become combat effective... then they need to stand well back.
Wonderful article! I also really appreciate you gave some love to the Tavern Brawler feat. Too often it is not even considered in forums and discussions but is it a + 1 STR or CON feat that gives you so much fun as a Barbarian.
Consider this: You are a Greataxe wielding barbarian fighting skeletons. What is more badass? Trying to still damage them with an axe, swapping to a maul or hammer.. or throwing your axe to the side and just punching the skeletons to dust in a frenzied rage. Yeah.. I thought so ;-)
Also, the improvised weapon proficiency it adds allows for a lot of creativity on what you want to use as a weapon and adds options to the table for what is otherwise a simple "I rage and attack x times" class in combat. Using a grappling hook as an improvised thrown weapon you can use to drag people from a wall? Sure!
I think the point is that other barbarian subclasses get extra abilities when they rage with no penalty when berserkers get exhaustion with theirs and it's not like having a extra attack is that big of a deal comparatively. Many people feel it needs a fix of some kind.
Your damage output increase is 50%at 3, sure, but it has massively diminished returns especially if there is even one other martial in the party.
Barbarian weapon damage becomes the rider effect of their attacks, due to Bonuses, so you can't specifically look at damage output as a direct relationship with number of attacks.
Level 1, single attack. Level 3, 2 stacks with exhausted.
War cleric: level 1 2 attacks up to 5 (likely 3) times per long rest
Literally any dual wielder 2 attacks from level 1 with likely a 3 damage less than you, cap at 1d8.
Battle rager: also gets an extra 1d4 attack which will do far more consistent, though less, damage than your full weapon attack, for free no exhaustion. Average 3 savage increase.
Sure but loads of other classes get extra attacks fo free. Even other barbs.
Also you dont get "extra rages' you can frenzy OR rage, not frenzy AND rage x number of times.
exhaustion is a big deal if you have to run, jump, climb, swim, push, break a lock, break a door, trip a bro charging your back line, land on your feet after a fall, avoid falling in the first place, avoid grapples, grapple, possibly drag your buddy while moving at speed, hold a door closed, hold a door open. how about if the guards want to know why youre covered in blood and want to arrest you. disadvantage on that, too. sneak? disadvantage. you dont need to be a skillmonkey for it to hurt you or your group.
how about when everyone -but- you passes the jump check, now, not only does the group have to get the mcguffin out, they have to go back for the barb too.
exhaustion is a big deal to a lot of players. it's clearly not to you, and thats fine (im not being hostile about that).
ok so yeah 100% more damage at 3rd level, my bad. my point was more that you place a huge /flex on the number of attacks. it isnt that wonderful, for everyone. 3 is a spike level for nearly every class. give me resist everything but psychic every time. youll hit real hard, sure, but ill live longer. bear druid has been hitting with the effect of a longsword and a great sword every turn for 2 hours since level 2 if you want to go that route, and only needs to stop for 1 hour (not 8) to recover and does it without exhaustion. sure, thats not 2 greatsword hits, but its close. if you want to get into the numbers game, im done here.
"just use it for a boss fight" isnt fun for everyone.
im glad that berserker isnt underwhelming to you. it is to me. for me, every other type of barb than totem warrior is a really hard sell for me because totem has so many options and most of the 3rd level options are very potent. the weakest is the bonus action dash.
At the end of the day it is the weakest of the subclasses for Barbarian, and the only subclass in the game that punishes the PC for using their class abilities. No matter how you slice it, no matter what math you do, Exhaustion is not a 'nitch' or negligible debuff. It is a tough one and a tough one to resolve.
It is objectively the weakest of the archetypes because at level three you get 1) Nothing, or 2) Debuff yourself. Every other class gets benefits they can use without being punished. Yes, you can house rule it, but is that what the class should have been?
Of course some players will take that in stride, but that does not change the the inherent flaw of this archetype.
I apologize, I get in this snarky combative place.
I agree about zealot. It's hard to turn away from bear, but theres one that increases your move by 15 while raging, which eventually makes your raging dwarf almost as fast as any monk
In play, the regular barb rage resistance is plenty fine.
isn't that more a problem that Totem (really bear) is too good and no one wants to take anything else?
I like options and I also hate penalties such as exhaustion for using my class as intended.
I'll repeat: berserker gives you a hefty penalty for even using its intended benefits. For me, that's a problem.
Every other sub looks appealing to me in some way. I look at berserker and I see a hole my team has to fill around until Grearer Restoration becomes available, and even then that's a hefty spell
The other archetypes outclass this one in every way, quite sad because the base idea is interesting.
My Berserker, Travok Ironblood, is a war veteran Dwarf. His Rage is just his skill as a barbarian and front line soldier, gained after 150 years on the front lines, refusing promotions so he could fight for Clan and Keep. (He's only 200, so that's the entirety of his adult life!) His Frenzies, on the other hand, are him flashing back to the event that sparked his retirement: a particular raid done by a Fire Giant. He lost his entire squadron.
When frenzied, he'll make nonsensical statements like "They're raiding from the east! Fall back men! Kezlar, ABOVE YOU!" and it'll be up to the party to stitch together from the hints.
As a house rule to fix the Berserker, I'd suggest changing Frenzy so that instead of gaining a level of Exhaustion you instead have disadvantage on attack rolls until you take a short rest.
That could be even worse.