Character Build: Manimal/Womanimal

I don’t like barbarians in 5e. They seem to me to be a fighter sub-class or character design idea and not their own class in Dungeons & Dragons. With that said, let’s build a barbarian. I want to build a character that is very animalistic based on the only barbarian subclass that grabbed my interest, the Path of the Beast.

I’m using the rolls I made for my last build for continuity across all these builds, which were 12, 10, 15, 16, 8, and 15. I am assigning them thusly:

Str 16   Dex 12   Con 15   Int 8   Wis 15   Chr 10

I would add the +2 to Strength and the +1 to Constitution which would make them 18 and 16 respectively.

Let’s really lean into the animalistic nature of this build and select Shifter as our race. With this race, we get to select a skill from a list of four, we have darkvision, and the Shifting ability. While shifted, we get to select one option that benefits us and I would select Wildhunt. Wildhunt gives us advantage on Wisdom checks and no creature within 30 feet can make attacks with advantage while we are not incapacitated.

First Level

We are starting out as a barbarian. At first level, we get the features of Rage and Unarmored Defense. Our Armor Class would be 14 plus I would have the character use a shield that increases our Armor Class to 16. I would choose the war pick as your main weapon because it does 1d8 piercing damage.

Second Level

We are now a second level barbarian and we get Reckless Attack and Danger Sense. Reckless Attack gets countered with our racial ability of Wildhunt. Danger sense is a nice defensive ability giving us advantage on Dexterity saving throws. In normal combat, we will use our bonus action on the first round to Shift so that we pick up Wildhunt and can immediately then start using Reckless Attack on our attack action. On the second round, we will go into our Rage. We can do this combination twice a day at this point. The weakness of this tactic is that attackers that are using missile weapons from a range of greater than 30 feet will get advantage on their attacks.

Third Level

At third level, we are now a third level barbarian which means we get to choose our Primal Path, which we will choose Path of the Beast. Each time we rage we get to pick a natural weapon of either Bite, Claws, or Tail for use in our attack Action. Each has a special bonus that can either heal (Bite), give an additional attack (Claws), or a reaction that gives a bonus to our Armor Class (Tail). Depending on the combat situation, each of the natural weapons has an advantage that can be useful. Just something to make a note of, we have one more Rage than Wildhunt at this level.

Fourth Level

We will leave the barbarian class to train as a druid. We get the ability to speak Druidic and Spellcasting. I would stay away from Concentration spells. I would also stay in the support or healing arena since our job in combat is to go into a Rage and melee attack everything in sight. While raging, we cannot cast spells nor maintain Concentration.

Fifth Level

We are now a second level druid where we pick up Wild Shape and we get to choose our Druid Circle. We will become a Circle of the Moon druid. This fast tracks the Maximum CR bonus to one and allows us to use spell slots for healing.

Our Proficiency bonus is now +3 so our Wildhunt and Rages are back to being balanced with the same amount of each.

In combat, you can Wild Shape as an Action and Shift on your Bonus Action. On the second round, you can rage. The Form of the Beast would add natural weapons to Beasts that might not have as good natural weapons such as a spiny tail to an ape. Again, pick spells with a more support-style function rather than a combative one.

In the long run, Wild Shape will become more of an infiltration or ambush tactic rather than a normal function of combat. Adding druid to the build was more about flavor and giving some additional options for the character. I thought about going far enough in druid to pick up third level spells, but it diluted the character too much and the two classes did not synergize well together.

Sixth Level

We go back to barbarian and can either do an ability score increase or add a feat. There are quite a few good feats, but I think adding +2 to our Strength to give us a 20 is the best idea. The bonus to attack and damage is useful in combat in most, if not all, situations.

The rest of the build will stay with barbarian. You can play with adding feats such as Piercer for some interesting features during combat. I also think Telepathic would be a nice addition for when you are doing stealth or infiltration missions while in Wild Shape.

Summation

This build was all about flavor. I think that Shifter and Path of the Beast barbarian do mix nicely together. A couple of levels of druid added some nice additional abilities that go along with the theme of the character. Tell me what you think. Let me know if you have any ideas for other builds.