Path of Wild Magic 5e: Barbarian Subclass Review

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobld

There is something just fundamentally fun and exciting about the unlimited potential of wild magic. The sorcerer subclass is popular and can lead to wild, unpredictable moments of true chaos that the whole group will remember for years to come. Path of Wild Magic is trying to recapture the feeling of spontaneous, unpredictable magic and manages to nail the execution. I think this version of Wild Magic is my favorite to date, and delivers on the fantasy incredibly well.

3rd Level: Magic Awareness and Wild Surge

Magic Awareness is basically paladin’s Divine Sense for magic, like a hybrid of it and Detect Magic. While it may not seem like much, I can’t emphasize enough just how much better the barbarian at the table will feel by having some way to contribute to exploration, and Magic Awareness gives them that. It is a huge quality of life subclass feature I wish more barbarian subclasses could match.

Wild Surge is the reason you’re taking this path, though. It basically gives you one of eight variant rages you’ll hop between over the game. This can give you a different way to approach fights while staying close to the main gameplan most barbarians employ.

One gives you a d12 selective damage save that grants you a d12 + your level temporary hit points. Early, this will feel pretty solid to get, sometimes ending low tier fights before they begin. Late, this can feel like the worst option.

Two lets you Misty Step at will as a bonus action. Want to be highly mobile? This is how you do it.

Three is wonderfully crazy, giving you a bonus action to plant explosive flumphs around the map that explode in a 15 ft. diameter.

Four transform a weapon into a super-weapon with the light and thrown properties. This option may seem innocuous, but my god is it fun. You can charge something down, smash it once to kill it, then huck your maul at some other poor soul, getting your maul back immediately at the end of the turn. Niche, but potentially incredibly fun.

Five gives you a d6 damage reflection whenever you’re hit, making you thrive when being smacked around by large groups.

Six gives you and allies near you +1 AC- boring, yet still an interesting option to suddenly stumble into that will encourage slightly different tactics than in your average fight.

Seven grows 15 feet of difficult terrain around you which makes you decent at area of effect lockdown, highly encouraging whatever you engage with fights you instead of your allies.

Finally, eight gives you a d6 radiant blind on a Con save you can use as a bonus action each turn.

The largest problem with many of these modes is they just don’t scale at all. At 3rd level, they’ll all feel great to land on for the most part in most fights, offering you a new way to approach the battle. At 15th level, still only dealing 1d6 with the explosive flumphs is so deeply underwhelming.

6th Level: Bolstering Magic

Bolstering Magic gives you a bunch of free boons to aid in and out of combat exploration. The first mode is Guidance, but with a d3, that also applies to attacks for ten minutes, while mode two gives back a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level spell slot, which is quite useful.

Getting your proficiency bonus uses of this I think typically will look like the bonus d3 to you when going into a fight once or twice, and the rest giving your full-casters a bit of extra low level spell slots to play around with.

10th Level: Unstable Backlash

Unstable Backlash does a lot of heavy lifting in the upper tiers to get you off of the Wild Magic rages you don’t want to one you’d prefer to have in the specific fight. Almost all of the modes are great to get as a reaction, with one, two, and eight all standing out as decent in the mid tiers, and eight standing head and shoulders above the rest in the upper tiers as the blind gets a lot better when its hampering more attack rolls.

Generally, if you can use Unstable Backlash, you probably should. Dropping whatever you’re current rage is to get an immediate bonus effect will let you often double up the effectiveness of the bonus action options when you hit them, which majorly improves how this feels to use.

14th Level: Controlled Surge

Controlled Surge tends to push you a bit away from the “wild” element of the path and starts letting you consistently get one of four or five effects you’d much prefer over the other options. Consider that one sixteenth of the time you get to pick, and you get to one in eight shots at hitting the one you want most anyway, making it a lot more consistent at getting the modes you want. Want a bonus action damage option? Three and eight both offer you that, and with both being two in eight chances plus every duplicate always giving you the one you’d want, you’re going to find fairly often you’re getting it.

Paired with Unstable Backlash and you can near guarantee you’re getting an effect you want within the first two rounds of combat.

All Together

Path of Wild Magic absolutely is wild early on with some incredibly rewarding play patterns and options to open up how you engage a fight. Its scaling, even with getting more finite control of the table, is quite poor, though, and will heavily rely on your feats and base barbarian class to scale up your damage. Unstable Backlash gives you an extra roll every round, but without the damage numbers going up on the table, you’re really going to feel like each effect is at its best the moment you pick this subclass.

If you want a varied, uncontrollable option that makes you think on your feet and rewards great improvisation skills, Path of Wild Magic is the option for you. If you’re planning out a 20 level build, I struggle to see this being that compelling of an option, especially as the pull towards chaos withers away as you start getting more and more selection with your surges.

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Barbarian 5e