I tried putting this all in a single post, but realized it was getting really unwieldy, and I think this subject probably deserves a more thorough examination.
Last year, we got a revised Player's Handbook (and DMG - the Monster Manual came out earlier in this interminable year). To mark both the 10th anniversary of 5E and the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons as a whole, WotC released this revision not as a full new edition of the game, but as a modular add-on that could sort of phase-out outdated rules, class designs, and subclasses.
Emphatically, though, the revisions were not a true new edition, and again and again it was repeated that old content, from adventures to subclasses to species, could still work with these new rules, and to a large extent be mixed-and-matched (though with a certain hierarchy - old subclasses could work with new versions of the classes, but you couldn't play, say a Path of the World Tree 2014 Barbarian. In some cases, new subclasses just wouldn't work with old classes, as they reference features that didn't yet exist.)
To me, this backwards compatibility comes with the implication that we shouldn't expect to see everything get updated. If it ain't broke, it doesn't need a fix. You can play an Order of Scribes Wizard or a Rune Knight Fighter using the 2024 versions of those base classes (just wait until level 3 to get the Wizard's first subclass features).
However, what we have seen WotC do to a large extent has been to introduce a whole lot of revisions to existing subclasses in their Unearthed Arcana playtests as well as actual published books.
For certain, some of the revisions we've gotten, like the Warrior of Elements update to the terrible Way of Four Elements Monk, have truly rehabilitated options that were once nigh-untouchable. There are some subclasses that I think could stand to be reprinted in a revised form.
A few notes:
WotC has shown itself not to actually be that great at doing this. The Banneret Fighter in Heroes of Faerun is only questionably better than the old Purple Dragon Knight (its 2014 predecessor) and is still probably the worst Fighter subclass in all of 5E. (Likely due to the initial playtest version being a radical redesign that gave you an actual amethyst dragon companion, which might have been way different from the lore of it, but would have almost certainly been a better subclass, and no subsequent playtest of the more-in-line-with-the-old-version we got).
The way I intent to evaluate the subclasses is this:
First off, if the mechanics of a subclass are fine, we don't need to touch it. This is going to mean leaving some of my favorite subclasses behind in a lot of cases, like the Undead Patron Warlock (which I honestly would have preferred seeing in the 2024 PHB over the Celestial, as I think it's a more "core fantasy" idea). The Undead Patron was always pretty decent, mechanically, and so I don't think it needs an update (though a setting-agnostic reprint wouldn't be out of the question. Maybe this was a bad example.)
Second, the concept has to be interesting enough for us to revisit it. If the core idea of the subclass is kind of dull, I don't see any need to return to it.
In other words, it needs to have Bad Mechanics and a Good Concept.
We'll be looking at all WotC-published subclasses that have not gotten a reprint already (or aren't known to be getting one in an upcoming project). That does mean skipping the Artificer entirely, as we know that all four existing Artificer subclasses are being published in Forge of the Artificer, which was meant to come in August, and is now coming in December. We will be including those with a revision that made it into Unearthed Arcana, though.
With that preamble out of the way (which I'll skip in subsequent posts,) let's look at the Barbarian subclasses: The Battle Rager, the Ancestral Guardian, the Storm Herald, the Beast, Wild Mage, and the Giant.
Battle Rager: No
The concept for this is so weird - a Barbarian who must wear armor, and specifically a special kind of armor that functions as a bad weapon. Now, I think that perhaps there is a place for subclasses that go against the grain of their class - the Kensei Monk, for example, made the class that doesn't need weapons now actually want to use weapons. Perhaps an armored Barbarian subclass is an area worth exploring. I think at best, they'd need to build this thing from the ground up, and if you're doing that, probably just come up with something new.
Ancestral Guardian: No
On the flipside, this subclass actually works just fine. I don't really see any reason to revisit it. Having one of these in my long-running Ravnica campaign, it's a subclass that does frustrate me a bit as a DM, because it really nearly forces you to focus on the Barbarian, but that's the whole point: this is a tank subclass. But it already works fine, so we don't need a new version.
Storm Herald: Yes
This subclass always seemed very cool, but it was very limited by its design. Not only are its damage bonuses anemic, but the need to pick your storm once and stick with it also meant that the variety and choices it seemed to present weren't actually there. Storms are a classic metaphor for chaos and primordial power, which is core to the Barbarian fantasy, and it would be really great to see this one done justice (which means a better revision than what we've gotten in the UA).
Beast: Yes
First off, I think they could lean into this subclass as a horror-themed one, really emphasizing a lycanthropic motif. Like any subclass that grants natural weapons, it also really needs to get some kind of scaling with magic items (I really wish they'd designed Wraps of Unarmed Prowess to buff not just Unarmed Strikes, but also natural weapons).
Wild Magic: No
Don't get me wrong, I like this subclass. It's the most whimsical Barbarian by far. But I don't know that we really need an update to it. This isn't a subclass that I think was every considered overpowered or anything, and I'm sure you could find some way to redesign it for more power. And conceptually, it's fun. But I just don't think we really need to re-do it. Again, the bar to reprinting should be a pretty high one.
Giant: No
While the World Tree Barbarian has overtaken this one as the "hey, a Bugbear with a Polearm would have an insane reach" subclass, I think that this subclass already works just fine as it is. We've got a decent concept and pretty good mechanics, so there's no real need to return to it.
And unless I'm forgetting something, that's our Barbarians for pre-2024 5E that have not gotten reprinted already. Next, we'll look at the Bard.
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