We’ve now completed a third rotation of the Player’s Handbook, meaning that almost every class has had every subclass from that book examined in the Class 101 series! Two classes with lots of subclasses—the cleric and wizard—will need a little extra time to cover. Starting this week, however, we’re moving away from the Player’s Handbook and taking a look at the brand-new subclasses that you’ll find in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything!
The second new subclass from Tasha’s a beastly chap indeed: the Path of the Beast barbarian. Equipped with a monstrous, transformative rage, this subclass invites your character to be descended from archdruids or lyncanthropes, or possessed by a fey spirit. Join us as this beginner’s guide shows you the basics of how to play this wild warrior!
Check out the other articles in the Barbarian 101 series, like the broad overview of the entire class in Barbarian 101: A Beginner's Guide to Relentless Fury, or the deep dives into specific subclasses in Barbarian 101: Path of the Berserker, Barbarian 101: Path of the Totem Warrior, and Barbarian 101: Path of the Battlerager.
Story of the Path of the Beast
“Look upon her gleaming face, my son.” A woman with silver streaks running through her black hair, creases upon her pale face that spoke of many years of hard living and a jawline that hinted at her strength and bullish perseverance, perched on a clifftop beside her son. The sound of shouts echoed from the forest behind them, and red, flickering light danced in the distant heart of the woods. One of her rough hands rested upon her son’s shoulder as she looked up at the moon. His gaze followed hers. His build was lanky and thin, for he was only barely a teenager, but his mother was sure that in time he would grow into the power that both she and his father possessed.
Blood dripped from her lips, her fingertips, and from a raw gash across her chest. Her simple, green tunic hung open, and her wolf-gray undershirt was spattered with a dark splotches of blood mixed with sweat and mud. She spoke in a voice as cool as the night air around her and as unwavering as the moonlight that shone from above, yet the undercurrent of fear was as palpable as the iron scent of the blood upon her body.
“The moon is mother to all of our family,” she continued. Her son knew what was going on. Why the fires were burning in the forest, why the roar of battle echoed in the distance. He hung on her every word. He couldn’t take his eyes off his mother’s scarred face, even as she stared at the distant moon. “She keeps us strong. We pray to her for guidance, as our foremothers did—even in the times when we called our gift a curse.”
“Why is this happening?” the son asked his mother, tears welling in his golden eyes. His mother’s hand pressed harder against his back as she took a deep, painful breath in. Tears had begun carving a path down her stoic face, too.
“The people of the south, in their castles. Do you remember the stories I told you before bed?”
“When I was young.”
“When you were young,” she repeated. “Remember them. They have come for us. They don’t understand our family’s ways like we have come to.” She paused for a long time, savoring what she knew might be the last moments she would have with her child. A scream rang out in the night, and she turned to look upon her son’s face. He was crying. So was she. “Run. Run until you reach the town on the woods’ northern border. Pretend to be one of them, and run again when they learn. I will meet you again, in the mountains of your father’s country.”
She stood, and growled deep in her throat. Her eyes flashed in the moonlight and thick gray fur sprouted along her arms as her nails sharpened into jet-black claws. The barbarian turned once more to her son. Though her form had begun to change, her voice was the same. “The moon blessed our people. It is not a curse. I love you.” Then she was gone, vanished into the woods’ blazing shadows.
Path of the Beast Features
The Path of the Beast grants you a number of features that make you a flexible, hardy combatant skilled in unarmed combat. 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 Beast features in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. In summary, your subclass features allow you to:
- Gain a special, bestial attack while you rage by transforming your teeth into fangs, hands into claws, or growing a tail.
- Bypass damage resistances with your bestial weapons
- Gain a unique benefit to climb, jump, or swim with primeval power
- Curse the targets of your attacks with rabid fury
- Lead your party by granting them additional damage while you rage, and grant yourself temporary hit points for each member of your pack.
Benefits of the Path of the Beast
The Path of the Beast’s greatest strengths are—in addition to its well-balanced offensive and defense power—its versatility. Like many other subclasses in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the Path of the Beast often grants you several options when you gain a subclass feature, and doesn’t lock you in to any one decision. Other subclasses in earlier books, such as the Path of the Totem Warrior barbarian, require you to pick a benefit and live with it for the rest of your adventuring career, but this subclass allows you to change up the combat benefits granted by your Form of the Beast feature whenever you rage, and alter the exploration benefits granted by the Bestial Soul feature whenever you finish a short rest.
The Path of the Beast is a strongly offense-focused subclass, with most of its abilities making it easier for you to deal more damage—sometimes in interestingly roundabout ways, such as forcing an enemy to attack one of its allies. Beyond this, the Path of the Beast is one of the barbarian’s most party-focused subclasses. While it’s not a particularly potent tank per se, since it lacks a way to discourage foes from attacking the barbarian’s allies, the subclass does grant you features that buff your allies and debuff your enemies, making it easier for your allies to fight with the same ferocity as you.
Drawbacks of the Path of the Beast
There’s a lot to love about the Path of the Beast, from their versatility, to their reliable damage output and their enduring physical durability. But no subclass is without their weaknesses. As with most barbarian subclasses, the Path of the Beast’s greatest drawback is their lack of options when it comes to out-of-combat actions. The exploration buffs granted by the Bestial Soul feature are useful, but when compared to the broad utility of spellcasters who have access to spells like charm person, disguise self, and other abilities that give them an edge in noncombat situations.
Of course, there’s something to be said for the pure simplicity of a barbarian. It’s the class for you if you want to fight, or if you prefer on-the-fly ingenuity to pre-determined magical tricks, and the Path of the Beast does it in an interesting and fresh way, with several new tricks to play with.
Suggested Build
Like most classes in D&D, the barbarian doesn’t choose their subclass until 3rd level. If you’re playing a barbarian from 1st level and think you want to follow the Path of the Beast later, consider working with your Dungeon Master to figure out the source of your power early on. Why does bestial power linger dormant in your soul? Or perhaps you might ask your DM to come up with an event in the campaign that will grant you these remarkable powers.
A Path of the Beast barbarian should place their highest ability score in Strength and their second-highest in either Dexterity or Constitution, depending on whether you think more hit points or a higher Armor Class is more important to you. Thanks to the new “Customizing Your Origin” section in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, you don’t have to let your character’s race dictate their ability scores; you can reassign your racial ability score bonuses to any score you see fit. If you’re playing without these rules, the half-orc and mountain dwarf races grant useful bonuses to Strength and Constitution, as well as other useful mechanical bonuses. However, the best way to create a character is to choose the race suits your character best, and build outward from there.
Choose EQUIPMENT instead of GOLD at the end of character creation. You’ll need a weapon to work with until you gain the ability to manifest bestial claws, fangs, or a tail, and a greataxe is a perfectly useful heavy weapon—but you have the choice of any other martial weapon, if you prefer. Having two handaxes is always useful, since a barbarian without a way to fight foes at range is a barbarian stymied by the first crevasse or cliff they find.
Feats
Once you’ve improved your Strength score to 18 or 20, you can increase your power with a few useful feats. The following feats are good picks for Path of the Beast barbarians, and will improve your reliability in your own desired area of expertise:
Mobile. You already get expanded movement speed from your class, and movement options from your subclass. Double down and tear across the battlefield with ease by taking this feat!
Sentinel. When you’ve got your tail out, the extended reach of your tail synergizes quite well with this feat, which wants you to make plenty of opportunity attacks.
Slasher. This new feat from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything makes you a ferocious mauling beast when paired with two or three claw attacks per turn. The Crusher and Piercer feats are also good if you prefer to fight with fangs or a tail instead, but Slasher is head and shoulders the best of the bunch for you.
If you want more advice for building an barbarian, check out Barbarian 101. Have you ever played a Path of the Beast barbarian? What advice would you give to players that want to play this subclass? Join us next week as we dive deep into the contents of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything with Bard 101: College of Creation!
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James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
great article
second!
I really enjoy this subclass, great article. You are likely going to get comments about recommending the Dual Wielder Feat since the claws are not "wielded", by RAW it doesn't count. The other issue is RAW, the Claws are not marked as a "Light" weapon in the class feature.
I would allow it. I just wrote a forum post on a work around strictly adhering to RAW, but really I believe it should just be allowed (Post here). Here is the way around it:
Setup: Barbarian with two (2) Short Swords and is raging.
This does the exact same thing as if you just called it claws rather than short sword except it uses your Free Action and Interact With Object. (Sage Advice)
The attempts to argue that weapons that aren't held in your hands but are attached to them in some way (like the Path of the Beast's claws or the Armorer's gauntlets) has to be one of the silliest, most overly literal examples of rules lawyering I've ever seen.
Back to this, good article. It's not my favorite barbarian subclass, but it's an interesting one.
Because of unarmored defense, having a high CON also increases your AC, so DEX is really only better than CON if you want to focus on skills. Which most barbarians don't. Still, great article, those intros are amazing.
I agree, but it is prevalent on here and elsewhere. That's why I wrote the post to show how even if you worship RAW, it can still be made to work... and you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to do it.
I personally love the subclass because the tail and bite attack free up your hands to be a strong shove/grappler...
Doesn't the claws mean you can take 4 slashes at 5th Level?
Using the claws you can make an extra attack every time you make a claw attack as part of the attack action. By using the Extra Attack feature, you make 2 claw attacks as an Attack Action. Doesn't that mean an extra attack for both of them? Or am I talking out my hat here?
Definitely going Shifter Path of the Beast Barbarian for my next character!
Great article!
Is there any official source which says you would be able to dual wield claws? Like sage advice or similar?
I only ask because the written rules look like they would not allow this. Without an official source to show it as allowed, this is going to be highly dependant on your DM whether it is allowed or not, and listing it in this guide without a warning is likely to lead to many disappointments.
Can't wait to make a Dragonborn Path of the Beast barb with a dinosaur tail.
No, the claws rules state that once per turn, when you make an attack action with the claws you may make one additional claw attack as part of that action.
I'm not so sure the Dual Wielder Feat lets you use your natural attacks.
Dual Wielder
You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits:
And even if they did, no bonus damage. You would be averaging 3.5 points of damage per hit.
Well, I would say that given that they are basically your hand, they are composed of a single hand, and that makes them one-handed. Also, while you don’t add your ability mod, you do add your rage damage mod.
Edit: unless your problem is with wielding, to which I would say you can attack with them so you are wielding them.
They changed the ruling on Claws, the additional attack can only trigger once per turn now.
The claws are simple melee weapons. The issue is with the word weilding. While there is currently no way to get a bonus action claw attack, it is possible to get additional unarmed strikes by multi-classing into Monk. Just a 2 level dip will get you an extra 10 feet of movement plus an unarmed strike with your bonus action.
Given that the description for Form of the Beast (where the claws come from) specifically states "It counts as a simple melee weapon" for every one of the options I'd say Dual Wielder should absolutely apply to the claws.
My issue would be that the only benefit you'd get would be the slight boost to AC, since the other two factors of the feat don't really apply, and you're only getting the benefit if you're in a rage and if you're picking that one particular option out of three. Doesn't quite seem worth it
I don't think the problem is with either wielding or one handed. The problem is that the TWF rules state that you must be holding the weapon in your hands. This conflicts on 2 points: firstly, wielding or not, you are not holding your claws. Secondly, you no longer even have hands, because your hands have turned into claws.
I suspect many DMs would allow it, but there are many who would not.
How about a path of the beast hexblade?
+dmg from rage, str and hexblade curse. = 8dmg per attack + dicerolls
x3 attacks at lvl 5, maybe 4 attacks.
Oh Yeah.
Missed the Once Per Turn Bit.
I Suppose if they didnt have that, a case could be argued that you could continuously claw something with one attack action
You contradict yourself, first you say it has a good balance of offense and defense, then say the subclass focuses entirely on offense. You also suggest prioritizing Dex over Con for AC, forgetting the first ability a barbarian gets: unarmored defense makes AC equal 10+Dex+Con while unarmored (meaning Con adds to health AND armor, rendering your statement false).
Proof read. Do it. You work for a site that hosts dnd rules, don't misrepresent them.
Dex *IS* an important stat, regardless, for other things like Dex saves, Initiative, and various skills.
BUT, some of the Beast higher level abilities depend on Con (and it also makes you more tanky) so I would say given the choice I would elevate Con.