A friend of mine wanted to play an improvised weapon-wielding barbarian. He was using a homebrew subclass he found online, but frankly speaking, it was terrible, so I reworked it. This is the result of 2 hours of rushed brainstorming and development. I’m not a barb main, so I’m not really familiar with how they work, but I’m satisfied with the result.

While creating the subclass, I tried to satisfy the following demands:

  • Allow the player to use unarmed strikes and improvised weapons, obviously.
  • Try to make improvised weapons unique and not just “reflavoured martial weapons” (achieved with the random roll and additional effects to unarmed stirkes and attacks with improvised weapons, I hope).
  • More choices during combat. The person who was going to play this doesn’t like how shallow and same-y most martials in 5e play (hence the “Barbarian Exploits” feature at 6th level).

Any kind of feedback is very much appreciated!

  • Aielman15OP
    2•9 months ago

    All you wonderful people have provided some very good advice, so I made some quick changes to the brew.

    Path of the Magpie v2

    • Buff: Decoupled the unarmed strike bonus action from the attack action.
    • Buff: To increase the flavour of the magpie name, I moved the proficiency in investigation at 3rd level, and added expertise in investigation at 10th level. It’s still a mostly ribbon feature since Barbarians usually dump INT, but it will be nice investigating something once in a while.
    • Buff: 14th level feature now deals additional damage when breaking a weapon as part of an attack.
    • Added a custom magic item as a substitute for +1/+2/+3 weapons that lets the magpie barbarian bypass resistance to physical damage. It also has a bunch of other cool effects to further customize the character.

    Path of the Magpie v3

    • Nerf: Creatures who succeed on the save for Terror Display are immune to the effect for 24 hours.

    This will probably be the final version of the subclass, as included in my Tavern Tales compendium. Click on the link to read the wondrous item related to the subclass, as well.