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 wouldn't say that requiring the dual wielder feat or a level in monk to "use your offhand fist in combat" is unreasonable -- it would be a fairly unorthodox fighting style that would require training to be able to consistently throw a jab in a sword fight without getting your hand cut up on the daily. Grappling and punching certainly has a place in any scrap, but i think having a bar for entry in terms of mechanics isnt too bad. Just my opinion tho.
I think many folks are simply too set in their ways-- you can sheathe an offhand dagger to use that hand, the most reasonable limitation would be to require the same "action cost" for the claws, rather than a blanket "your hands cant hold shit while you have claws". Personally i wouldnt impose any grapple/interaction penalty as there are plenty of races with natural attacks that dont have to worry about it.
Maybe so. That doesn't really relate to whether you can combine Claws with Dual Wielder, though. GWM+PAM is one of the mechanically strongest combinations available in the game.
That's my point. Claws are already giving you the equivalent of TWF, but with a bunch of the downsides of it removed. There is nothing stopping you, for instance, taking GWM and then making a bonus action attack on crit or kill while still getting the normal 3 claw attacks, where a TWF wielding barb with GWM would only get 2 normal attacks plus the bonus one on crit or kill. It's basically TWF on steroids.
There are upsides and downsides when compared to other options, and that includes having three attacks as a Fighter. A fighter with three attacks can use the big weapons, for which magic options, feat options, etc. are abundant. They can also use polearm master for a bonus action attack.
Don’t get me wrong, overall I think the claws are a very cool and mechanically effective option. But it’s not just all benefit with no downsides and no sacrifices. That’s my only point.
Urth, I kind of skimmed over some thing you had said, and it’s actually a really good point.
The first part of GWM would also apply to your claws....with three attacks that’s 6 chances for a Crit every turn, and also whenever you strike a killing blow, which should be a regular occurrence.
Carry a greatsword and now you can do 1 attack using (-5 +10), plus + claw attacks.
There’s just so many interesting options and combinations when you introduce claws. And they’re all pretty good. It’s nice not to have one cliché build outshining everything else, GWM + PAM + GLAIVE
Great Weapon Master
You’ve learned to put the weight of a weapon to your advantage, letting its momentum empower your strikes. You gain the following benefits:
yes. Maybe the other writers didn't get as many "views" or they got other gigs. He seems to be able to produce a lot of pretty decent content given the rate of production.
Hey there! A feat that I think would be even better than Dual Wielder is Fighting Initiate (Two-Weapon Fighting)!
You can already make a two-weapon bonus attack with claws by default rules, since the natural weapons count as simple melee weapons (it'd be silly if they weren't counted as light as well: they're a part of your body!). Default rules state that as long as the weapons are light melee weapons, you can use them to make a two-weapon attack without Dual Wielder! You could argue that the +1 AC with the claws would be worth it, but at that point just forgo the feat and put 2 points into Constitution (as a Barbarian)
However, what Dual Wielder does not give you, is your ability modifierto the bonus attack, which Fighting Initiate (Two Weapon Fighting) does! This makes it so that bonus action claw attack does the same damage of a regular claw attack.
Edit: In hindsight, barring items or weird stuff, this only gives you 5 extra damage max to your bonus attack. Personally, I'd still rather have the +2 to Con.
Thank you for the nice read though! Last thing I'll leave you is that earlier you said Barbarian should have Strength as primary and either Dex or Con as secondary; however, Barbarian already gains AC from Con (without armor), so I would personally say Constitution should get the priority over Dex IF AND ONLY IF you're going to be armor-less.
The rules for two-weapon fighting in the PHB is the first obstacle you must overcome. Must have the light property, and you must be holding it in your hand.
Two-Weapon Fighting
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you're holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you're holding in the other hand. You don't add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.
IMO, he's got too much on his plate, and he's phoning in the 101 articles at this point. I'd much rather see him doing less 101 (have it be a round-robin assignment in the writer's pool), and more articles with depth & substance, where he has time to dig in, do the research, and actually write. For some reason DDB has assigned a Prof to do the TA's work, no idea why. And if something isn't RAW, as a professional writer, yes, he absolutely has to state that. No exceptions. New players will read this & go to their table saying "But in this DDB article it says..."
I feel like there are a lot of beast-based classes. We’ve got circle of the moon, order of lycan blood hunter, etc. and there are a lot of races with claws or spells that give claws. We’ve got primal savagery, alter self for spells, and then Tabaxi, Aarakokra, Tortle, etc. for races. This feels like another version of the Order of Lycan, but maybe a bit more thought-out.
Also, is there any way to add lycanthropy or vampirism to a character on D&D Beyond? Like an extra feat that makes you a lycanthrope?
@ everyone who has posted about TWF with the claws and whatnot:
IMHO, you already are wielding both claws. The additional attack's flavor is that it attacks with the other claw(unless you change that in a specific character), b/c it is an additional attack per round. I am not saying anything about whether you can use feats and that stuff. I am just saying that if you want your character to wield both claws at once, you already can.
Also, completely unrelated: has anyone considered multiclassing 2 levels into druid(circle of the moon) and being able to turn into a grizzly bear twice per rest. You still get all of your barbarian abilities(with the possible exception of Unarmored Defense). You aren't as great of a barbarian, but it is an idea. Also you have a little spellcasting(which you can't use in a rage, I know, but still).
The problem with TWF isn't whether you're wielding your claws or not; that's besides the point. The real issue is the TWF rules require you to hold two melee weapons, one in each hand. It's written explicitly in the TWF rules and also confirmed in Sage Advice Compendium. The Soul Knife doesn't use the TWF rules either.
In all likelihood the only reason the second claw attack isn't a bonus action is because they wanted you to be able to use it on the same turn you rage.
it says "once on each of your turns" meaning no, it is once per turn, so three attacks total with extra attack
yo would get two benefits, the only two ones that really matter, you would get AC boost, and you would get a bonus action attack, you wouldn't get the drawing an extra weapon thing but that doesn't really matter to most DM's anyway
technically no, you don't get a bonus action attack at level three, unless you are a variant human who took dual wielder at first level, also mathematically speaking that would be an average of 9.75 flat damage per round for those three attacks, not 15, because of the attacks vs. AC progression giving you a most likely 65% chance to hit. also I think you underestimate the tail's AC bonus, especially because you can also be wielding a shield, giving you an average AC at level 3 of 19.5 (assuming 16 con and 14 dex and you use your tail reaction)
fists aren't used in the dual weilder feat, no one has ever argued that they do, claws are considered simple weapon here, not natural weapons or unarmed strikes, categorically different.
i would argue that you could hold gauntlets if you fought with closed fists
unless you are playing a mechanically subpar barbarian or you are rolling stats you should have good dex and a set of half-plate, as it is better ac than you would get with any less than 20 con 16 dex.
also Dex has better saves associated with it for the barbarian, and initiative is also important, I agree that the argument for putting high Dex is the wrong one, but you should still put points in dex as a barbarian.
you can't GWM your claws, they are one-handed, unless you somehow fuse your arms together to use your claws, losing the benefit of said shield.
lol, you're right. It implies that the WOTC has any idea how to write a book.
I like D&D. I play it... I'm not here to rain on any parades, but the source books are absolutely packed with errors. Rules often conflict with each other, many spells and abilities are unforgivably vague or open-ended. This current edition is an unplayable mess compared to 3e (which was really peak D&D).
James is probably a decent human being - I suspect he enjoys playing D&D and probably has an imagination capable of "explaining away" any poorly written rule... but he's a blogger by trade and did just contradict himself at least twice in a very short blurb designed not to inform players but to entice them to purchase new material.
I think letting him know about his errors is a fine thing to do - perhaps he will take the criticism to heart and improve as a blogger. Maybe not - if internet white-knights just rush to defend every mistake, no one will ever improve at anything.