D&D By The Numbers: This Barbarian Is Best In Life
Barbarians are the best. Especially when those d12 hit dice between you and the enemy. Let’s run the numbers and cook up the iconic Barbarian.
What is best in life? Odds are good we all agree that it’s crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and so on… which illustrates two things. One: being a barbarian (like Conan) is awesome. And two, what is best in life is also what most people agree on. Obviously. With that in mind, we’re going to take a look at what most people agree on and build the best possible Barbarian. We can only run the numbers though.
But what are numbers compared to the hand that wields it? That’s up to you to find out.
Clearly the answer is big muscles and bigger swords. I don’t know what else you’d expect. Here’s what tops the charts, Barbarian wise, according to a survey by D&D Beyond.
And it is a rare treat to find that Barbarians are one of the least likely classes to be multiclassed–though even then that weighs in at a little under half. So multiclassing is under half, which means that most people don’t agree on it, so it’s clearly not the best option. We are going for pure Barbarian here folks. Already this is shaping up to be great.
Looking at the numbers, Path of the Totem Warrior is far and away the most popular barbarian build. And with good reason. Their totemic spirit powers are incredibly powerful, with the most popular one being the Bear Spirit. At least at 3rd level, where everyone’s likely to be. That’s because Bear gives you resistance to all damage except psychic damage while raging. The other options give you… considerably less. You can maybe move a little faster in combat, or be more resistant to opportunity attacks–but I know which one I’d pick. And so do you. And so does everyone.
They don’t say “strong like an elk” after all.
And odds are good we’re in that 3rd-5th level range, looking at this spread of characters across active campaigns:
Which means that all we have left to do is pick out gear. Though that’s an interesting one to run, considering the data. As far as armor and weapons go, barbarians typically are outliers according to the charts:
Barbarians are likely to have access to leather armor from their background, but they gain significant benefit from not wearing it. Still, it’s good to know they have the option. Weapons push them even further towards the outlying scale:
The iconic barbarian definitely has a dagger, and looking at the iconic barbarian choices, it looks like Greataxe outclasses the other two-handed weapons, so it’s probably that one–after all this barbarian is the strongest:
It seems like most barbarians have a maxed out Str and the ones that don’t are probably using a racial bonus to bump from 14 to 16 and putting their 15 in Constitution. Looking at this spread, our barbarian has a Str of 15, a Con of 14, a Dex of 13, a Wisdom of 12, a Charisma of 10, and an Intelligence of 8. One last thing, if we’re playing with feats, we probably boosted strength, but if not…
Great Weapon Master. So we can hit even harder with that Great Axe. That’s our iconic Barbarian. See you next time.
Happy Adventuring!
