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D&D Barbarian 5E – Things You Can do While you Rage

We take a look at the 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Barbarian character class. Specifically the rage class feature and how it interacts with other class features for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons character classes. Below you can find the video and transcriptions.

D&D Barbarian 5E – Things You Can do While you Rage Video

D&D Barbarian 5E – Things You Can do While you Rage Video Transcription

Ted: “ All right. I got my next character concept all ready to go.”

Dave: “Oh really Ted What’s that?

Ted: “ rage mage”

Dave: “Man, that sounds awesome, but I don’t think it’s going to work. Ted, you can’t cast spells while you’re raging and you can’t concentrate on the spells while you were raging either. “

Ted: “I’m sorry to tell you Dave, but you are wrong. There’s loads of spells that you can use while raging, so let’s talk about D&D 5th Edition, Barbarian things you can do while your rage“

Dave: “ sounds like a plan.”

Dave: “ Welcome to Nerdarchy for nerds by nerd I’m Nerdarchist Dave and as always I’m hanging out with this nerd.”

Ted: “Nerdachist Ted.”

Dave: “ Hey, maybe this is the first time hanging out and Ted’s basement with us. It’s a place where we like to discuss news views and homebrews for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons and sometimes we talk about other role playing games too. “

Ted: “ You don’t want to miss a single video. Don’t forget to crit hit that subscribe button and attune to that notification bell. As we pointed out, we’re going to talk about raging and all the different things that you can be able to do while raging.”

Dave: “ So there’s a couple of limitations when it comes to rage. One, you have to make strength based attacks. They benefit from your extra rage damage. You can’t cast spells while raging and you cannot concentrate on spells while raging either.”

Ted: “ All right, so I gotta I gotta interject one more thing. In order to continue raging, you need to either be making attacks or taking damage to continue that process. “

Dave: “ Now we actually came up with a bunch of things that you can combine with raging. Now they might have their own requirements. For instance, we know that in order to get your rage damage, you need to make a strength based attack. Now say you wanted to use another class ability like sneak attack, which you can totally do while you’re raging, but it has to be with a light weapon or a finesse weapon in order to get that sneak attack damage. And you know there’s other requirements as well as like having an ally within five for the enemy vantage advantage. So there’s a couple ways, but as long as you meet all the Prereq’s, you can actually combine these and that’s what this video is going to be about. We’re going to go through the different character classes and we’re going to talk about how you can combine some of their abilities with barbarian rage. Before we go any further, let us take a moment so our sponsor doesn’t flying into a rage and talk about D&D Beyond because with the D&D Beyond I’m making, this video is so much easier, but no one else. It makes easy making your character’s, building your campaigns, altering and creating new monsters. There’s so much goodness over on the D&D Beyond website. Guys need to check it out “

Ted: “ They’re awesome.”

Dave: “ Link in the description.”

Ted: “All right, so I’m in, it looks like we’re going to go in order here. So first up is going to be bard”

Dave: “ Yeah, Bard is really awesome because one of their hallmark abilities is bardic inspiration, right And you give it out as a bonus action. A lot of times as a barbarian you don’t have anything to do with that bonus action. So you can be given it to other people. And then if you look into the subclasses, sometimes you can activate your bardic inspiration to do extra things like the college of whispers where he can do extra damage. So you would definitely be able to do that. Or you can just be giving it out to, you know, to your allies or using your reactions with cutting words. All great, great things that can be done, but that’s not all.”

Ted: “Some of the other things that are there, there are a load of spells as I kind of talked about in the intro that are going to get used and we’re going to get into all the different spell options later. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll touch back on that point. “

Dave: “Absolutely. So next up we have the cleric”

Ted: “ cleric. Channel. Divinity doesn’t say you’re casting a spell, you are just channeling the divine energy. So boom, you present your holy symbol. If you’ve got to, you’ve got a way to continue that rage going. There’s nothing stopping you.”

Dave: “ Now, one of the tricks to that is if it doesn’t involve making attack or you don’t take any damn it, you are in danger of coming out of your rage. But that being said, you can still do channel divinities”

Ted: “ sometimes it’s going to be worth it. I’m gonna come on. How many times have you ever found a barbarian who ran out of rages “

Dave: “ That’s a good point that I have rarely seen it at my table. And again, of course a cleric as a spell caster. They’re going to have spouse would get into that later.”

Ted: “ Next up is druid, druids like to do, they like to turn it into fun, cool stuff. So what’s a, what’s more interesting and then turning into a bear and raging all up on your monsters. Enemies.”

Dave: “ So what’s a, what’s more interesting and then turning into a bear and raging all up on your monsters. Enemies. Yeah. This is a great tactics as great combination a you’re going to be and you’re going to also be able to use your spells while you’re raging. Sort of if your circle of the Moon right cause circle the moon can actually sack that spells in order to heal their, their beast form, which normally a barbarian isn’t going to be able to do. But because you’re not actually casting a spell or concentrating on a spell, you’re going to make use of those spells while you’re wild shaping. Now that’s a kind of like a generic overview of the druid. If you then start going through the subclasses and this applies to everything on our list, you’re going to find even more opportunities to use abilities. Why your rage Uh, for the druid it for a druid, there’s an ability called core of the summer bomb and that’s a healing ability but it’s not actually a spell casting ability. So you might actually be able to get that one off. But like I said, you’re going to have to look and just make sure you meet all the requirements and you can mix and match. “

Ted: “ Absolutely.”

Dave: “ Obviously druids are spell casters. There’s so like we said later “

Ted: “ so next up is going to be fighter and now everything in fighter is going to wind up stacking with barbarians because let’s face it, the fighter is beaten down on stuff. So things like your fighting styles, your action surge is that kind of stuff. It’s just, you know, it goes without saying.”

Dave: “ This one is actually the opposite of most of the other classes. Uh, and most of the other classes. You can find other opportunities to use that rage in conjunction with class features. Right Well, with the fighter it kind of works the other way. It’s like eldritch knight is going to be the one that doesn’t have a lot of crossover Whether you’re a barbarian”

Ted: “ right So next up is monk”

Dave: “ so monk. All right, perfect. You can rage and you can kung fu fight. At the same time you’re going to be able to apply your martial arts. You’re stunning strike as well as your ki features as a monk. Here’s another one of those areas where you’re going to have to really pay attention to the requirements of each particular ability as well as rage. So you might not be able to use your abilities as a monk with every kind of weapon. You may not actually be able to get your rage damage because of unarmed strikes. But where you can do is mix and match those martial arts weapons and just make sure you’re making strength based attacks.”

Ted: “ The one here is if you go, you know the four elements monk, you know there’s one is going to be, you know, it’s going to severely limit what you, what you can do because a lot of those things are, you know, look like spells are spelled like abilities. So it’s going to be, you know, iffy.”

Dave: “Yeah. All your magic subclasses are going to limit you as far as what you can mix and match. Although there’s still some options when we get to spells. Next up we’ve got the Paladin. All right, so we already mentioned some things for the paladin”

Ted: “ paladin and you can smile all day long and it doesn’t matter if you’re raging because you’re sacrificing the spell, not actually casting it. So it works out pretty well. “

Dave: “ And then the thing that we had already mentioned was the channel divinity. So same thing for the, for the cleric and the paladin and it works exactly the same.”

Ted: “ Next up is ranger and you know, rangers and other martial class, they do have spells. Um, most of which you know, aren’t going to really apply here. But there are a couple that might, might fall into a usefulness here. But if you happen to be playing a beast companion or a beastmaster ranger, you can be able to command your beast companion to fight alongside of you because let’s face it, you’re doing damage so it should work us.”

Dave: “ So as we mentioned, as the beast companion ranger, you get the command your beast, but also other ranger abilities, like fighting styles is going to always come into play. So there’s definitely some options there.”

Ted: “ rogue, short and sweet. You know, you’ve got your ability to sneak attack as they’ve already said, and you’re also going to be able to use those, those cunning actions.”

Dave: “ Yep. Cunning actions. You’re also going to an invasion uncanny dodge. There’s a bunch of things that are going to crossover in nicely with the barbarian, whether you rage or not. So now that brings us to sorcerer sorry sorcerer the only thing we got essentially is going to be spells for the most part. I mean you can look in cherry pick some class features, but the bulk of being a sorcerer is all about casting spells. So you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have to figure out what spells are going to qualify and we’re going to talk about spells it a bit.”

Ted: “ And if you go with the draconic, you’ve got the ability to have your scales. So if you’ve got that low constitution modifier, you know you can be able to derive your armor class from your sorcery ability as opposed to your con plus dex ”

Dave: “ Next up is, you know, a fan favorite and that is the warlock. So warlock spells Okay, we’ll get into that in a bit. But then you got an invocation. You can definitely cherry pick different invocations as well as different class features that you’re going to be combining with your barbarian and you can use them. Why your rage and also it might be a fun combination. I think the barbarian warlock is a bit odd but you know it would definitely work from a creepier tribe”

Ted: “. Pact of the blade, you know that definitely is more and more of the Martial and it’s going to mix well with the uh, with the barbarian abilities”

Dave: “Last but not least, we have the wizard and of course the wizard is all about spells. So we should just roll right into that section and start talking about spells. “

Ted: “ Alright, so Dave, you went, you went and put together a list of awesome spells that you can wind up using while you’re raging. So I’m going to guess these are things that you cast the spell, they don’t require concentration and then you start your rage.”

Dave: “Exactly. Basically there are spells that last a minute, 10 minutes, an hour, eight hours and 24 hours. Some of them are quite high level so it’d be really hard to mix and match to the classes. But that being said, any of these spells, they have a duration, there’s not concentration. You could cast them, you could layer them on yourself, especially if you have a couple of rounds of the play with and then you could go into your rage and use them quite effectively.”

Ted: “It’s a silly combination but you get ninth level spells at 17th level. So that still gives you access to ninth level spells and three levels of barbarian to play with. “

Dave: “ And I also think the highest level spell we actually got was an eighth level spell anyway, so you wouldn’t even need it, You wouldn’t even need it. ”

Ted: “ I still got five levels of barbarian to play with for a ridiculous combinations. So let’s dive in it.”

Dave: “ All right, so we’ve got a total of 14 spells. And to be honest with you, I ignored a lot of spells that I said, this smell doesn’t have a direct combat application. So there’s no reason for a barbarian to cast this spell and then rage. But that being said, they could have cast it and something happens and now they’re raging. So it would still technically be going on, but it just didn’t meet the qualifications for the sake of this video. “

Ted: “ With those you have things like blink, you have jump, you know, both. Both things have have the capacity to be useful in and out of combat. All right, we have four spells that have a duration of one minute. We have blink, we have jumped, we have mirror image, and we have spiritual weapon.”

Dave: “Now three of those spells can be garnered from all over the place, different arcane castings. That spiritual weapon is clearly a cleric spell. So you know, for that raging cleric, they can have their spiritual weapon going on, why they’re beating things with their greatsword.”

Ted: “ So spiritual weapon as a bonus action to cast. So it it’s, it’s pretty useful to get an there. You just have to cast it before you start your rage”

Dave: “ Exactly. Next up we have one spell for our 10 minute duration and that’s fire shield. It’s going to give you a defensive properties if you’re not totem of the bear and already have resistance to fire and code. It’s also going to give you a bit of offensive capabilities as well. So our real bread and butter though is those hour spells and there’s a bunch of them that are going to be super useful for a barbarian. Why he’s raging.”

Ted: “ So six spells fallen and this and this is going to have the, the potential depending upon how your games go of winding up lasting through multiple combats.”

Dave: “So armor of agathys, crown of stars and false life are all great spells that lasts an hour. That’ll barbarian would benefit by casting them before raging.”

Ted: “ We also have long stride regenerate and see invisibility. So you’re always going to be able to benefit from more movement. You’re always going to be able to benefit from having your wounds knit back together, including, you know, picking your arm up, arm up and reattaching it or you know, the ability to see invisible foes.”

Dave: “ Next up we want to dive into those spells that have a duration of eight hours and there’s two of them. “

Ted: “ So we have mag armor and non detection. Now mag armor is not going to stack with you’re a barbarian. Uh, you know, unarmored defense. But it’s definitely another way if you wind up having, you know, those lower stats. Next we have the last category and that spells, it lasts for 24 hours.”

Dave: “ We get a whopping one and its mind blank. But it’s a great spell for fortifying news, mental defenses, which is oftentimes a weakness of the barbarian”

Ted: “ So there we go, we’re wrapped up, we got all of those awesome abilities from classes, all of those fantastic spell options that don’t require concentration. So you want to mix it up, you want to add barbarian to any of those other great classes that are out there. Here’s a way to do it.”

Dave: “So let us know what you think. We got a place for it that is down in the comments below. While you’re at it, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe”

Ted: “ on your way down to that. Stop by the description and check out the link to the awesome people over at D&D Beyond “

Dave: “ So until next time”

Both: “Stay Nerdy”