Best Feats for Berserker Barbarian 5e
by Prince Phantom
It’s a real shame that the very first subclass in the PHB is such a new player trap. Frenzy allowing a bonus action attack on every turn we rage sounds so cool, and in a vacuum it almost lives up to that. The problem is twofold: we gain a level of exhaustion when we frenzy, and Polearm Master exists. We’ll talk about that later point in a second, but exhaustion is crippling to any character in 5e.
One level gives disadvantage on on all ability checks, and a second does the same to attack rolls. Any level beyond that is probably going to result in your demise. Also, we can’t even make this third attack on the first round as our bonus action must be used to rage. This means we should only use frenzy on big encounters at the end of adventuring days that will last enough turns to make it worth our while. The only other feature we get thats even worth talking about is immunity to charm and fear while raging, which is actually enough to allow us to skip Resilient Wisdom, freeing us up to take a different feat.
Best Feats for Berserker Barbarian 5e
Great Weapon Master/Polearm Master* (ASAP): Obviously we are taking Great Weapon Master, I don’t feel like that needs much discussion. Polearm Master on the other hand is a bit contentious. If your table only ever does 1-2 encounters per day, I suppose frenzy is enough and you don’t need Polearm Master. If you face more encounters than that on average each day, using Polearm Master for our bonus action attack and saving frenzy for our biggest or final encounter of the day. The other benefits to Polearm Master are also quite good for us.
Sentinel (Lv 4 or 8): We don’t get any extra defensive features except for our immunity to charm and fear, so keeping enemies close to us is not quite as good for us as it is for other Barbarians, but we still might want to do it. Obviously Sentinel gets a lot better if we also have Polearm Master.
Crusher (Lv 4): If you didn’t need Polearm Master, you might should consider wielding a Mace. If you do, Crusher is a great pick. We can round up a relevant ability score, we get a best benefit to critical hits, and most importantly, a 5ft shove every turn. We don’t have a specific synergy with this, but the amount of times that this will be useful is immeasurable. It’s something you have to see in play to believe it. Encourage your spellcaster friends to use area of effect spells that we can shove people into.
Lucky (Lv 8): So we are already at the point where no more feats synergize well with our character. Lucky is generically good and will help us reroll bad saves, even helping on Wisdom saves that don’t involve fear or charm. Saving ourselves from crits isn’t bad either, as even our huge HP pool will get worn down, especially at higher levels.
Resilient Wisdom (Lv 16): So while our subclass has helped us on most Wisdom saves, not all of them involve fear or charm. This becomes much more true at higher levels, so Resilient Wisdom is still useful for us. We are thankful that we can get away with delaying it until now though.
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