Welcome back to the weekly Tabletop Games thread! This thread is where we can talk about all kinds of RPGs, card games, board games, etc. Whether you gather around a physical table in the real world, or use a virtual space to play with friends who may live far away from you, this is where you can discuss your favorites, ask for and/or receive recommendations, recap your recent adventures, or even find some people to play games with!

Discussion Prompt: It’s been about 5 years since the last time I did class breakdowns for D&D 5e, and the game has recently been through a fairly extensive revision. So I thought this might be a good time to revisit the classes and see what has and has not changed with each class. So today I’m starting with a look at the 5.5e version of the Barbarian class.

The Barbarian is still a primarily melee-focused class, built to both dish out and soak up damage in combat. It’s two biggest class-defining features are Rage and Reckless Attack, and both were tuned up a bit in 5.5e. Rage still gives you resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and adds a modifier to your own damage rolls with STR based attacks. It also still gives you advantage on STR checks and saves and prevents you from casting or concentrating on spells. The biggest change is in it’s duration. In original 5e rules, Rage lasted for 1 minute, but ended early if you didn’t make an attack roll or take damage since your last turn. Now, in 5.5e, your Rage only lasts for one round, but is automatically extended for an additional round if you either make an attack roll or force a creature to make a saving throw. If you don’t have the opportunity to attack on your turn, you can also choose to spend your bonus action to extend your Rage for another round. You can keep extending your Rage in any of these ways for a full 10 minutes.

For the early levels of Barbarian, Reckless Attack still functions in more-or-less the same way it always has–you gain advantage on your attacks for the cost of giving enemies advantage on attacks against you. When you reach 9th level, however, you gain the option to give up having advantage on your attack rolls in exchange for dealing extra damage and an additional effect on a hit, called Brutal Strikes. You can push your target away from you, slow their movement speed, or at higher levels impose disadvantage on a saving throw or give an ally a better chance to land an attack.

Barbarians also get to take advantage of the new Weapon Mastery system, which also lets you add effects to your attacks depending on the weapon you’re using. You get two Weapon Masteries to start with and eventually learn up to four, and you can swap out one with each long rest, so you’re not necessarily locked into only using a single type of weapon for your whole campaign.

Each class in the 5.5e PHB is presented with four subclass options. For the Barbarian these include the Berserker (which deals massive amounts of damage and no longer saddles you with levels of exhaustion), the Wild Heart (formerly known as the Totem Warrior, but now lets you choose a new animal spirit every time you Rage), the World Tree (a brand new, super tanky subclass), and the Zealot (a holy warrior with smaller boosts to both damage and survivability).

Share your thoughts about Barbarians in any edition of D&D, or similar characters from other games, in the comments!

If you would like to suggest a prompt or contribute a write-up or discussion topic of your own, let me know in the comments!