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.
I"m planning on playing a Simic Hybrid character with this subclass, flavored as a bioengineered soldier. Very fun abilities.
IF you're not wearing armor, which is not optimal if you're using point buy stats.
Yes, that's what i mean. Personally, I would not do it if it's less effective. There are certainly a lot of interesting directions you can go, combining claws or tail with various weapons and/or shield. Shield Master + 3 claw attacks is direction I'm considering. I have an odd Str score at the moment. Piercer + bonus action shove prone and the target only has 5 feet of movement when it gets back up (assuming normally 30 feet).
Good article, I just want to highlight a couple things particularly in the light of my favorite optimization tool, multiclassing.
The ability to make an extra attack with claws without using a bonus action or your reaction is a rare, potent ability. A straight-up additional attack per action is a major advantage. The major disadvantage is that you can't use the Great Weapon Master feat with your claw attacks, which is a major bummer.
A 5th-level Beast, Str 18, attacking an AC15 target with a greatsword and the GWM feat has a 64% chance to hit and deal (2d6 + 4 + 2 + 10 = 23pt) damage. With 2 attacks, that's 29 points of damage per round.
Attacking the same target with claws gives an 88% chance to deal (1d6 +4 +2 = 9.5) times 3 attacks: 25 points of damage per round. Slightly less damage on average, although the damage is more reliable and slightly more flexible (since it can be divided between three targets instead of two.) If you buy that Dual Wielder allows two-weapon fighting with these claws (I do: relevant passage "Each of your hands transforms into a claw, which you can use as a weapon if it’s empty") then you deal an average of 30 points per round (you don't get the strength bonus on the off-hand attack), offering a slight improvement.
How do we improve this? Multiclassing! One build that makes all the sense thematically is Beast/Oath of the Lycan. This nets you +1 (feral might)+ 1d4 (Crimson Rite) which gets you up to 42 points per round. Unfortunately, there's a lot of redundancy in the features of the 2 subclasses. They both have features that grant resistance to non-magical damage and slashing claw attacks. The Ranger is an excellent choice if you DM allows the optional Favored Foe feature. (Note that Favored Foe requires concentration but is not a spell, and therefore can be used during Rage, as Rage only prevents concentration on spells.) With 2 levels, you can pick up Favored Foe and Two-Weapon Fighting and get up to 40 points of damage per round.
Fighter is a consideration any time you collect extra attacks per action because it is the only class that grants the ability to use two actions in the same round. Beyond the ability to nova, however, there's not a lot here. Battle Master would probably be the best choice. The Paladin is an interesting choice, because Divine Smite is not a spell either and there is no limit to how many times you can use it per round. The Beast/Paladin can burn four spell slots per turn if the mood strikes them, although to be playable you would probably need ANOTHER class with a full spell progression, eg Beast 6/Ranger 2/Paladin 2/Divine Soul 10.
If you're an ambusher (guilty) a half-orc Beast 14/Assassin 3/Dark Stalker 3 is a heavy hitter (Claw/shortsword 5d6 + 3 +5 + 2d4 = 20.5) x 5 + 2d8 (Dark Stalker) + 4d6 (sneak attack) 125.5 x hit chance. But give the same character a pike, and the GWF and Piercer feats, and your surprise round looks like (6d12 +3 +5 + 10 + 2d4 = 62) x 4 = 248 + 2d8 = 257 x hit chance (at -5 to hit). So the Beast is not breaking any records for damage per round.
23 points of damage per hit, when P=0.64 = 14.72 points of damage per attack.
2 Claws: 2d6 + 8 + 4 = 19. (with the same AC) P=0.88 = 16.72 points of damage. AND, that feat could have been spent on +2 Strength, making it 21 x 0.88 = 18.48 per 2 attacks. Wouldn't your example in red = 42 damage if all the attacks hit?
Granted, you only get to use the extra attack once, so I'm not disputing your strategy. I just wanted to point out those 2 claw attacks do more damage than a Greatsword + GWM. Damn!
Does a monk dual wield his fists? No. Same here.
There's one issue against RAW in each of his 101 articles, and they're aimed at new players. I dont wanna be that guy, but we have to hold them to a professional standard.
I've gone back and forth on this one. Hopefully there will be an official clarification so we can all put it to rest.
He is one of the most prolific writers for 5e content I have seen. He is a machine of writing imo. And, he is writing content aimed at new players and also unofficial advice. It doesnt have to be RAW. A lot of the time he mentions it when it is not.
Claws are natural weapons .. not unarmed strikes. It's edge case on what wielding means mechanically. Does it mean hold or use?
Claws can be employed actively and used effectively. But, it's not common to say I am wielding claws ... you say I am using claws. This fall under Table.Variance imo.
"Claws are natural weapons .. not unarmed strikes."
Claws are not just natural weapons in this case. They are simple melee weapons. The description: "It counts as a simple melee weapon for you." You might consider it analogous to descriptions of the natural weapons of some PC races as "natural weapons that can be used to make unarmed strikes." Path of the Beast claws are natural weapons that can be used to make attacks with simple melee weapons. Mechanically, they are simple melee weapons. And simple melee weapons are wielded.
it comes down to semantics ... I agree with you. Saying simple melee weapon means something. The only thing is it's not explicit that the rules say simple melee weapons are wielded. It's just implied. There is one line about that uses the term but it's in that nebulous is this being used in a descriptive way and not a mechanical way. The feat is worded in a way that implies you are holding a weapon so If my DM wanted to say it didnt work, I wouldnt argue with him about it even thou I do think it does because of what you stated about simple weapons, not just natural weapon.
"Mechanically, they are simple melee weapons. And simple melee weapons are wielded"
But not held in your hands. You are not really holding your claws, they are attached to your body, and you no longer have hands. Even if you call the claws which your hands have turned into the equivalent of hands, you still need to be holding them for any of the TWF rules to apply, whether they are simple melee weapons or not, and whether they are wielded or not, if you are going by the written rule.
No you only get the free attack once per turn
Interesting article, as always.
Just a heads-up.
By RAW, the two-weapon fighting combat action requires you to hold weapons, the Dual Wielder feat requires you to wield weapons, and therefore both of them won't work with unarmed strikes, natural weapons, or weapons you don't hold or wield (like the Armorer's Thunder Gauntlets).
I (and probably a lot of fellow DMs out there too) will allow them to work even with natural weapons and manufactured weapons you don't wield.
Edit: when I've started writing this comment I didn't see all the other previous comments about two-weapon fighting. Mine is redundant now.
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.
barbarian gets ac from con as well so there is no reason to make dex your highest stat ...... (unless you want to nothing stopping you just saying these 2 reasons are stupid and written by a idiot who doesnt know the first thing about barbarian)
I really love the class 101 posts but I just gotta ask... is there a race 101? I know that’s probably a stupid question but I’m fairly new to D&D so yeah. :D
Mechanically, this would also mean that you can't grapple with your claws, because claws are weapons and it means that you don't have a free hand. And you can't really do anything that requires a free hand, like climbing the ladder, opening a door/chest, using an item, because your hands are busy wielding simple melee weapons.
Devs have already given claws the functionality oc dual wielding, as they give you an additional attack once per round, even better - it doesn't take up a bonus action. And treating claws like weapons that are wielded in both hands without the light property implies that you can't even use your own left hand in combat unless you take the feat... Which is silly.
This is my basic view on it, too. They have given you something both equivalent to and better than Dual Wielding. It doesn't use your bonus action, you can still grapple or use a shield while retaining the additional attack, it still adds your ability bonus etc. This (along with the specific wording of TWF) is why I would probably not allow the TWF bonus action attack with claws with or without the feat.
I might, however, allow the +1 AC from the Dual Wielder feat, but that would be a house rule and would mostly be because I felt sorry for the player having chosen an incompatible set of features. I'd also allow them to change the feat without penalty if one of the main reasons they chose it was for use with claws.
Is it just me or are are the articles on every page for the past 3 months all written by James?
It's good, but it's not necessarily a win-win. A regular base Barbarian can overpower it with GWM and especially wtih GWM + PAM. It does open up great options like carrying a shield and still having 3 attacks. Doing WAY more damage than a sword and board Barbarian.