It’s RAW! A Giant Barbarian Build for 5e
Recently released in Bigby Presents: Glory of Giants, the Path of the Giant Barbarian initially left me feeling a bit underwhelmed, though I still thought it was easily in the upper half of Barbarian subclasses. I figured the best build for it was pretty simple: take Polearm Master and Great Weapon Master and leverage our long reach with Sentinel to lock down enemies and deal big damage with our 3 attacks each turn, all boosted by our choice of elemental damage. Then, my eyes were opened to a new build. A darker, more devious build. A build that is 100% rules as written, uses rules in ways that they clearly were never intended to be used, and will definitively be the silliest thing at the table every time. Special thanks to YouTube commenter Shye X for bringing this concept to light, now let’s see just how far we can run with this concept.
Race: Variant Human
This build lives and dies by its feats, so we need as many as possible. Taking Variant Human means we get a feat at level one, and the feat we select will give us something powerful to do until we really come online at level 6.
Feat: Great Weapon Master
Normally I’d recommend that Barbarians take Polearm Master first, then this feat, but this build is not your typical Barbarian. We can leverage both parts of this feat in conjunction with Reckless Attack at level 2 to consistently deal great damage, occasionally getting a bonus action attack along the way.
Starting Stats (Point Buy):
15+1/13+1/14/9/13/8 (+1 to Strength and Dexterity from our race)
We get a 16 Strength as we’ll be using it to make all of our attacks, 14 Dexterity to fill out medium armor, 14 Constitution for more HP, 9 Intelligence instead of 8 because we had a spare point from point buy, 13 Wisdom for saving throws, and dump Charisma.
Level 1-5: Giant Barbarian
For these first five levels, we stick to the standard, tried and true Barbarian strategy: hit stuff with a big stick. Grab your choice of big stick, put on the best medium armor you can find, and rage. Take advantage of our extra reach and large size to lock down areas and grapple and drag foes into damaging AoE spells set up by our friends. At level 4, we get another feat, and this might be one of the few builds on the internet to take both Great Weapon Master and…
Feat: Sharpshooter
Yep, we grab both of the -5/+10 feats, and while we can’t use the power attack aspect of them both at once, we can take advantage of their other bullet points. We will be switching to throwing weapons soon, and while Sharpshooter doesn’t usually work with thrown weapons, we have a way around that. Notice how the feat only requires that we make an attack with a ranged weapon. This means that if we could somehow give a ranged weapon the thrown property, it would qualify for Sharpshooter when we throw it. Which leads me into…
Level 6: Giant Barbarian 6
Here it is. To clarify, this all works RAW, even with it being this silly. Follow me on this journey. We use our 6th level feature to give the thrown property to a heavy crossbow. This feature has no restrictions on what kind of weapon we can give the thrown property, so this works. Now we have a d10 thrown weapon that we can boost with Sharpshooter, all using our strength. Note that sadly we cannot use Reckless Attack, as that only works with melee attacks, meaning we need to start looking for means to get advantage on our attacks elsewhere. We’ll work on that in a minute, but let me take this moment and inform you of something you may be unfamiliar with.
Weapons sized for large creatures actually double their weapon damage die. This means our thrown heavy crossbow actually deals 2d10 damage instead of 1d10. Yes, these rules are in the DMG, but they also very clearly lay out what happens when player characters wield them. A creature who is to small for the weapon has disadvantage when swinging it, but thankfully we grow with our weapon. Also, Sharpshooter’s first line of text does work with thrown weapons, meaning we can throw our heavy crossbow a full 60ft without disadvantage. So to recap, we are a 20ft tall raging Barbarian wielding a flaming heavy crossbow that goes around the battlefield throwing it around like a boulder, it reappearing in our hand after every toss. This is completely silly, makes no logical sense, and is all completely RAW.
Side note: we aren’t using the -5/+10 of Great Weapon Master anymore, but we can still gain a bonus action attack on turns we down a foe or land a crit. This won’t grant a bonus action attack on every turn, but we’ll be picking up more ways to do that as we continue to gain levels.
Level 7-10: Giant Barbarian 6, Battlemaster Fighter 4
Fighter is a very common multiclass option for Barbarians, and same goes for the Battle Master subclass. Let’s go through what we get for the first two Fighter levels. We get Action Surge for nova rounds where we really need something dead, Second Wind for some extra HP, and, hilariously, the Archery Fighting Style. Archery doesn’t normally help with thrown weapons, as it requires you to make an attack with a ranged weapon. But our heavy crossbow is a ranged weapon with the thrown property, meaning we get the +2 to hit. Don’t believe me? Darts are ranged weapons with the thrown property, and have been confirmed to work with Archery. Our heavy crossbow is essentially a really big dart, and that +2 helps a lot to mitigate the -5 from Sharpshooter. With Battle Master maneuvers, we gain another method of improving our accuracy with Precision Attack, adding a d8 whenever we feel like it will make the difference between a hit and a miss. We have somewhat limited uses, 4 per short rest, but this should essentially equate to 4 extra hits per long rest, and that’s a huge increase to our overall damage. We get some other maneuvers as well, and I’d definitely look at Menacing Attack to protect our friends, Pushing Attack for keeping enemies in AoE spells, Quick Toss for the occasional bonus action attack when we really need it, Commander’s Strike if you have a Rogue in the party, and Disarmimg Attack if you don’t for the occasional utility of knocking something important out of someone’s hand.
Ability Score Improvement: +2 Strength
This is yet another means of improving our accuracy, which has really been the whole point of all 4 of these levels.
Level 11-14: Giant Barbarian 6, Battlemaster Fighter 4, Gloomstalker Ranger 4
Now that we’ve shored up our accuracy, let’s go back to cranking up our damage, and throw on a bit of utility on the side. We’ve got the Wisdom for it, so we’re taking some Ranger levels. The first few levels don’t give us much, as we can’t concentrate on Favored Foe, but we can still take advantage of non- concentration spells like Goodberry and Longstrider, and we get expertise in two skills. We’ll pick up the Thrown Weapon Fighting Style at Ranger level 2, adding an additional +2 damage when we hit with our thrown crossbow. At level 3 is when we hit the big money: Gloom Stalker. We get a bonus to initiative, extra movement and an extra attack on turn 1 of combat that also deals an additional d8 of damage, and we are invisible while in darkness to any creature that relies on darkvision to see us. That means we would have advantage to hit them, skyrocketing our accuracy and making the -5 from Sharpshooter feel like nothing at all. This level is such a huge power spike for us, something that a straight classed Barbarian certainly couldn’t say, at least not to this extent. At Ranger level 4, we get a feat.
Feat: Resilient Wisdom
With this we round our Wisdom up to a 14 and solve the problem that plagues all of Barbarian kind: mental saves. Wisdom is the most common and debilitating mental save by a country mile, and after taking this we will go from a +1 to a +7, massively increasing our chances to save. I should mention that you could easily take this back when we took Fighter level 4 if you’re finding that your DM is tired of this nonsense and keeps throwing Wisdom saves at you. If you do that, just take the +2 to Strength here instead.
Level 15: Giant Barbarian 6, Battlemaster Fighter 4, Gloomstalker Ranger 4, Peace Cleric 1
Alright, I admit this is a lot of classes and I know people have a problem with that for some reason. If you don’t want to take this Cleric level and would rather continue in Barbarian or something, that’s fine. We have the core features of the build locked down and nearly as powerful as they can get. However, I always aim to make my builds as powerful as possible, and one level of Peace Cleric adds a whole lotta power. Emboldening Bond is the big get here, allowing us to buff ourselves and our party with a d4 that can be used once per turn to boost an attack, ability, or saving throw roll. Obviously for us, this is best used to either make an attack that barely missed hit, or to help us make an important save. Aside from that, we get Guidance for out of combat utility, Sanctuary has some niche use and doesn’t require concentration, an extra skill proficiency, and Healing Word, which will sometimes be worth dropping our rage to cast it and save the life of an ally.
Level 16-20: Giant Barbarian 7, Battlemaster Fighter 4, Gloomstalker Ranger 4, Peace Cleric 1, Assassin Rogue 4
We take one more Barbarian level for Feral Instincts and Instinctive Pounce, giving us advantage on initiative rolls and extra movement on round one of combat. We finish the build off with 4 levels of Rogue, giving us even more skills, more expertise, Cunning Action, 2d6 of Sneak Attack (which does work with our thrown crossbow), Steady Aim for when we really need advantage and can’t get it any other way, and finally, the Assassin subclass. It gives advantage to all attacks on round one of combat if our foe hasn’t acted yet, and we get to crit our attacks if they are surprised. Not sure how often that last part will actually happen, especially at this tier of play, but the advantage on round one is reason enough for me to take this over the other options. At level 20, we get a feat or ability score increase.
Ability Score Increase: +2 Strength
I could get fancy here and go for something like Savage Attacker or Piercer, but on average a boost to our Strength will provide more damage than either of those two. This leaves us with a 20 Strength, just in time for your BBEG fight.
Final Notes and Considerations
I’m not 100% sure how many hands it takes to throw a heavy crossbow, or a light one for that matter. I say this because holding a shield would be pretty nice. I would rule that both a heavy and light crossbow would require two hands to throw, as they require two hands to hold and fire normally, but a hand crossbow could be thrown with one hand. This means you can sacrifice a bit of damage for a higher AC if you use a hand crossbow instead of a heavy one. You could even swap between them as needed, opting for more defense when you expect to get hit, and more offense when you don’t.
I love that this is a martial build that requires no magic weapons to stay relevant, as our weapon can deal our choice of Fire, Lightning, Cold, Thunder, or Acid. Not even Tiamat is resistant to all of those (she’s got no defense for thunder), so you shouldn’t ever have to worry about damage resistance or immunity.
I know that a lot of people are probably excited by Mighty Impel, and this build doesn’t reach that. I’m much less high on the feature, as it has some mechanical problems, but if you want it, I would just take Barbarian levels after we finished our Gloomstalker dip.
This is one of the silliest builds and concepts I’ve ever dreamt up, and the fact that it all works RAW just makes me happy in a way that only this game can. If you really can’t get past the whole “throwing a crossbow as an effective means of killing people” thing, then just reflavor the crossbow as something else like a boulder or stalagmite. Whatever you do with this build, I hope it brings not just a powerful damage dealer with a hint of utility, but also smiles to the faces of the whole table.
Check out Prince Phantom on Twitch!
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
