So, I've been having fun figuring out what a fairly straight-forward single-class build of various sorts (arguably the Armorer and Eldritch Knight had a lot of moving parts, but weren't that complicated - the Rogue was the tough one because of how complex Vex makes things).
Of all D&D classes, Barbarian might be the one I've played the least (Druid is also there - both were basically partial one-shot characters).
That said, after playing Alan Wake II - a game that might have my favorite narrative and overall artistic ambition of all time - I started getting kind of excited about the idea for a Barbarian character. The premise was that the character had been trapped in the Shadowfell for over a decade. During that time, in order to survive there, he either manifested a dark alter-ego or perhaps in truth, some actual entity from there possessed him. Either way, when he rages, he becomes a terrifying shadow-monster (the visual would be like if you were watching a film and someone had taken a black sharpie and colored over a character frame-by-frame, but scratched a rough, grinning face out of the sharpie with a needle).
While the flavor of the character is highly supernatural, looking at the various subclasses, I actually felt that the Berserker wound up being the best fit - even if the Berserker is, in theory, the "basic, mundane" Barbarian, every subclass feature seemed to play into the fantasy of this character - you can't be frightened or charmed because the shadow-monster has already taken control, for instance.
And don't get me wrong: I really like the flavor of the World Tree Barbarian, not to mention its mechanics. I would also love the Path of the Beast if they fixed the "this subclass gives you special weapons but no obvious way for them to scale" problem, and can really imagine a kind of Werewolf Barbarian (guess I should play a Stormwight Fury in Draw Steel). But Berserker, heavily reskinned, feels the best option here.
Ok, so, as I've been doing with the other builds, this is going to be assuming a 10th level Barbarian versus a Death Knight as our really scary tier 2 boss monster (either a campaign boss or the hurdle we need to clear to get into tier 3). Likewise, I'm going to assume no magic items (which would be DM malpractice, but it makes the theorycrafting easier). We're doing a straight-class build, and we're assuming we've got a background that boosts Strength so we can get a 17 in Strength at level 1 with Point Buy.
I am also, perhaps unfairly, going to ignore Origin Feats - Savage Attacker would boost our damage, but I think (and maybe I need to do the math on it) it's not terribly significant (though as someone who often does the math here to like four decimal places, it's certainly more significant than that). Anyway, we're going to ignore it. Likewise, I'm ignoring Species features - I'm sure that a, like, Fire Goliath is probably optimal, but whatever.
So, let's talk about our build and then we'll get into our damage output.
Weapon Choice and Feats:
This is going to tie pretty closely into feats. Barbarians are arguably better-incentivized than most to make lots of attacks, because we get to add our Rage Bonus each time. But does that make up for the lack of a big heavy weapon, which both has bigger damage dice and also allows us to get Great Weapon Master? Not to mention Polearm Master?
I think (I think) that I did the math back in 2024 and found that basically every Strength-based character will do better with a two-handed weapon than Dual Wielding - even when you have Paladins getting Radiant Strikes. Barbarians don't get a Fighting Style, so they wouldn't get Two Weapon Fighting without sacrificing a chance at bumping their strength, which cuts into the potential benefit of getting one (or after turn one, two, if we're using a Nick weapon) extra Rage bonuses. GWM is just so powerful - 4 damage added to two attacks at this level is going to be better than adding 3 damage on two additional attacks. And if we're thinking damage dice, if we use a 2d6 weapon, we're basically getting the same number of d6s per turn making two attacks as we would making four attacks with 1d6 weapons.
Thus, I think we're going to stick to a big heavy weapon. But which one?
Mathematically, the best weapon of this type is the Greatsword, which edges out the Maul (the only other to share its dice) because Graze is just that powerful, especially against a high-AC monster like a Death Knight.
I know some people have underestimated Graze because it only does anything when you miss with an attack, but except when dealing with extremely low-AC enemies, it still winds up doing more. However, I will concede that its effect is pretty boring - it doesn't reshape the battlefield at all, except more efficiently killing your foes.
But, also: the math is easier.
That being said, there are two weapon types with Graze - the Greatsword and the Glaive. The latter will do less damage, having a 1d10 rather than 2d6 as its damage dice (5.5 versus 7). That being said, the Glaive will open up Polearm Master for you, which lets you get another hit in with a bonus action - kind of giving you that benefit of dual-wielding but without having to actually dual-wield.
But... uh...
Ok, look, the Glaive approach is probably the most "optimized" one, taking GWM at level 4 and PAM at level 8.
But we sort of just did that with the Eldritch Knight.
So, instead, we're going to stick to a Greatsword. While it's tempting to just cap Strength at level 8 with an ASI (unlike the Fighter or Rogue, we only have two General Feat levels by 10) I think we'll instead take something like Mage Slayer. To be fair, this might be less important on a Berserker who's already going to be immune to fear and charm, but it's still pretty good. Beyond that, there aren't a ton of really appealing General Feats here.
Game Plan:
Ok, this will be relatively simple:
We're going to start off our first turn by Raging. And then, we're going to use Reckless Attack every turn.
We'll start off with an attack that has advantage from Reckless, because we have a higher crit chance and will prefer to use our Frenzy damage on this one.
Next, we forgo advantage to do a Brutal Strike. The secondary effect will vary - we can use the push effect if we need to maneuver them into a position, or default to slowing them if we like where they are.
Then, if we get a crit on either of these, we'll do our Hew attack.
Finally, if the Death Knight strikes back against us, we use our reaction for Retaliation (this one's DM/monster dependent).
Calculating:
Ok, this should be relatively simple. Brutal Strikes has to be called out on a particular attack, so unlike Sneak Attack, we'll only factor it into a single attack with hit and crit chances we already know. The non-damage effects of Brutal Strikes won't affect our damage output.
Now, unlike our previous builds, we only have a +4 to Strength at level 10, so we'll have a total of +8 to hit, meaning that we only hit on a 12 or higher against the DK's 20 AC - meaning we have a 45% chance to hit, without advantage. With advantage, we'll have a 57.75% chance to hit, and a 9.75% to crit. But we also know exactly when we'll have advantage or not (assuming something isn't giving us disadvantage).
The one complexity here is that our Frenzy bonus (which is part of why we're committing to always recklessly attacking) does have the Sneak Attack thing of potentially coming on different attacks. So we'll deal with it separately from the attacks themselves.
First Attack:
With advantage, we have a 57.75% chance to hit and a 9.75% chance to crit. Our damage on this attack with a Greatsword will be 2d6+4, but then we also add 4 from Great Weapon Master, so it's really 2d6+8. (Actually, had to go back and change this because...) And, of course, we have our Rage bonus, which is +3 at this level, so really, it's a total of 2d6+11, so we're talking an average hit damage of 18.
That said, we can slice out the 4 from everything because of Graze and add it in later. So, we have a 57.75% chance to do 2d6+7 (or 14, as we're just cutting the 4 from Strength) and 9.75% to do an additional 2d6 (or 7). So, that's 8.085 plus .6825, or 8.7675, and then we add the guaranteed 4 back in to give us 12.7675.
Second Attack:
Now, we're forgoing advantage, but getting to add a d10, so our hit damage is 2d6+1d10+11, and our crit bonus damage is 2d6+1d10, but the chances are 45% and 5%. Graze is still in effect, so we'll slice it out. 2d6+1d10+7 on average is 19.5, and then multiplied by 45% is 8.775, and 5% times 12.5 (the crit damage bonus) is .625, so the average damage for this is 9.4. Add that 4 back in and we get 13.4.
Mystery Bonus Attack:
We won't be able to get this on our first turn even if we do crit, but if we get Hew from Great Weapon Master, we'll have a chance to get another attack in at advantage. It won't get our GWM damage bonus, though. So we're talking 2d6+7 on a hit and an extra 2d6 on a crit. Graze applies to any and all attacks with our Greatsword, so we can once again slice out the 4, though because of our rage bonus, we can't just lump hit and crit damage together. However, we're still enjoying our advantage from Reckless, so we'll be at advantage. It's almost like our first attack, but we have to cut out the GWM bonus. So, we have 2d6+3 (the 3 is the rage bonus) or 10 on a hit, and a bonus of 2d6 (or 7) on a crit. 10x57.75% is, pretty obviously, 5.775, and then our crit bonus of 7x9.75% is, as before, .6825, so the average damage for this is 6.4575. And then, we add back in the 4 from our Strength, which we'll always get, so it's 10.4575.
But how often do we get this? We're assuming this is a solo monster fight, so we won't get Hew from downing an enemy. Thus, it has to be from a critical hit. With our two normal attacks per turn, we've got two chances for that crit, but the chance of getting one is different because one is made with advantage. To figure out the chance of getting a crit on either of two attacks, we're basically taking the inverse of the chance of not getting a crit on both. So, if we have a 9.75% chance on the first attack to get a crit, that's a 90.25% chance not to. On the second attack, the 5% chance for a crit means that we've got a 95% chance not to get a crit. Therefore, the chance we have to not get a crit on either attack is 90.25%x95%, which winds up being 85.7375%, and therefore our chance to crit on either one or both of our attacks is 14.2625%.
Therefore, we multiply that damage of 10.4575 by 14.2625%, and we get, roughly, 1.49 damage per turn - though notably, only on turns 2 onward, because we needed our bonus action to rage on turn 1.
Retaliation:
Berskers at this level will get to respond to taking damage from a creature with an attack made as a reaction. This does mean that the Death Knight does have to attack us, but we are making ourselves a prime target (and this is often the Barbarian's role in a group).
If the Death Knight attacks us every round, we can reliably make this extra attack. Again, it should still benefit from Reckless Attack, but doesn't gain our GWM damage bonus, and so the damage is actually the same as our Hew attack (when we get it). We might not get it on the first round if the Death Knight goes before us (which is plausible) but if we're their primary focus, we should get it consistently.
The damage and hit/crit chance, again, are the same as our Hew attack, so we can just carry that forward: 10.4575.
Frenzy:
Ok, now we have the Frenzy bonus. At this level, our Frenzy bonus is 3d6, or an average of 10.5 extra damage.
We don't get to choose when our Frenzy goes off - it's the first hit we land when we make Reckless Attack on our turn (with a Strength-based attack, but duh). We'd probably choose to roll it that way anyway, especially because we're making our first attack the one with genuine advantage.
3d6 is an average of 10.5. On our first attack, we have a 57.75% chance to hit and a 9.75% chance to crit. Because this is all dice and thus all doubled on a crit, we'll just lump the hit and crit chances together for our total damage on this first attack, so it's 10.5x67.5%, or 7.0875.
Now, if we miss on the first attack, we'll have a 45% chance to hit and 5% chance to crit on the second. This means that we can just take 50% of the Frenzy damage, or 5.25. However, this only goes off if we miss on the first attack, so we take 5.25 and multiply it by the 42.25% chance we missed the first time. That's 2.218125.
What about Hew? Well, we sure as hell ain't getting Hew if we didn't hit anything with our two primary attacks, so we can ignore it. And we also ignore Retaliation, because Frenzy only works when we hit on our turn.
Thus, our Frenzy damage just sums those two earlier values, which comes to 9.305625 (too many decimal places?)
Totaling It:
It's a bit of a judgment call as to what, of these, we should count in the full calculation. Most reliably, we can count the two main attacks and the frenzy damage, which would total 35.473125. On turn 2, we can also reliably add in the 1.49 from Hew, giving us 36.96 (yeah, we're rounding, and frankly we can probably just round to one decimal place).
Retaliation is the one thing that is really dependent on the DM. We're presenting ourselves as a tempting target (actually, if we took Sentinel at level 8, we could basically ensure that we can get a reaction attack every round as long as the target isn't casting an AoE spell or something) by giving them advantage on attacking us (if we knew it was an undead-heavy campaign, being an Aasimar or Cthonic Tiefling could help us with the necrotic damage,) so I think it's not unreasonable to think that we could add it in. And if that's the case, that means that after round one, we'd be putting out 46.27 damage per round.
Honestly, that's actually quite good, and kind of surprising me by beating the Eldritch Knight even with a cooperative Death Knight. (Now, I think the EK will start outscaling it the next level with their third attack, but still).
I'm tempted, then, to look at a spellcaster next. I think it's nigh-impossible to beat the simple combination of Conjure Minor Elementals and Scorching Ray (real quick, with a 50% hit chance and both cast at base level, we're talking 26.4 damage. Blowing 5th level spells for both, it becomes 67.65 damage on round two, and then casting at 4th on rounds 3-5 it's 56.375, so once it gets going, it's freaking nasty). I'd like, instead, to see how a Warlock could do with a simple Eldritch Blast and summoned creature, maybe a GOO-lock with Summon Aberration.
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