How To Build A Path Of The Wild Heart Barbarian in Dungeons & Dragons

The path of the wild heart barbarian offers a savage and primordial connection to nature-a chance to unleash tremendous rages inspired by the primal force of nature. This subclass infuses the barbarians with spiritual, animal-tied skills, increasing their fighting prowess and imbuing them with magical benefits.

Making decisions that play to the character's feral strengths while maintaining their wild nature is essential when crafting a route for a barbarian with a wild heart. From the best possible ability scores to the characteristics that give this barbarian his fearsome reputation, we've got you covered in this comprehensive guide.

Notable Moments in Path of the Wild

Not all barbarians are frenzied, though, hurling themselves into battle unannounced. The instinctively gifted follow the way of the Wild Soul, fighting as much like an animal would without resorting to extreme bodily mutilation.

Perfect for those who want a more animalistic experience without all the tedious spell lists, this subclass allows you to be one of them, not to act or look like them. Unlike druids or rangers, you're accepted as one of their own, and you can still use a pretty sweet battleax.

Features Unique to the 2024 Player's Guide

For the barbarian, Strength is the most important ability score by a wide margin, followed closely by Constitution. Due to the fact that barbarians use an unarmored defense, which allows them to apply their Dexterity and Constitution bonuses to their armor class, Constitution is quite necessary, but Strength explains itself.

The benefits of increasing Dexterity are not quite as large as they might initially seem. The Barbarian has a large enough health pool to safely ignore dexterity to a large extent, but should avoid allowing the modifier to become negative.

Of the mental ability scores, Wisdom is the most important one to pay attention to. It provides your spellcasting modifier and can be used for saving throws. You cannot use it to attack, but if your Wisdom is very low, your Dungeon Master may rule that you are helpless.

Best Wild Heart Options

If you are a barbarian dedicated to the way of the wild heart, you can express your rage by tapping into the characteristics of various beasts. You can always swap those out whenever you're furious or fatigued, so there's no need to commit to one, but some are more versatile than others.

The Wilds' Fury: Game Options

You can choose between a wolf, eagle, or bear when you attain level three. You'll always want to go bear as your default because that protects you from all damage types except radiant, force, necrotic, and psychic; making you a tank that seldom gets weakened.

If dealing damage is more important to you, wolf is the way to go because it grants your friends an advantage when assaulting nearby adversaries. Eagle is great for pursuing adversaries because of its mobility, which isn't necessarily necessary but should be considered.

Optional Wilds Aspect

Whenever you want to take a break, you can choose one of these six level options, and they're always available. Given that panther gives climb speed, salmon gives swim speed, and owl gives darkvision, I think most players will opt for panther.

Darkvision is always useful, but it's better to take it from your race. Even if you think you'll ever need to swim salmon, your DM will probably just give you a boat or giant seahorses or something to avoid having to be underwater.

The Wild Power

When you get to level 14, added to what you already had, three more choices are given in anger. What this means is that now, you can enable two creatures whenever you rage: one from the wilds' rage ability and another one from the wilds' power ability.

All three of the available animals-the falcon, the lion, and the ram-serve unique but wonderful purposes. If you're ever in doubt, a falcon is a good choice because it grants you flight. The falcon is the most useful animal to have while you're not fighting, as you may use its ten-minute rage ability to fly and solve puzzles or dodge traps.

Lion is a great tank support ability, as it makes nearby foes less effective against you and your allies. Ram, which lets you knock adversaries prone with a single hit, is the best disruption and damage weapon. Be careful how you utilize this ability because it won't help your party members who focus on ranged combat.

Top-Rated Beginning Tools

Since barbarians seldom requires armor, the equipment that they get at level one is just perfect for them. You only have four handaxes in your hand, you are going to be basically doing a melee as a Path of the Wild Heart Barbarian.

Although a bow may seem like a good investment in the long run, you'd be better off focusing on weapons that need throwing skills instead. If you need to finish off an enemy that is escaping, a couple javelins will do the trick.

Top Performances and Experiences

Backgrounds that would enable barbarians to increase their Constitution and Strength are many. Two feasible solutions accomplish that: soldier and farmer. However, if you're going down the road of the wild heart barbarians, farmer is the way to go.

While the first feat is great for barbarians, nature and animal handling skills weigh in on the decision far too much. Barbarians may already have those, but it is a part of their culture and heritage, so they would rather focus their efforts on more specific feats such as intimidation and survival.

Athlete is a great feat to have if your race doesn't possess darkvision; it gives you climb speed, which is really good in many situations. That way, you can always have both benefits—darkvision and the ability to use your owl's aspect of the wilds—in your possession.

Great weapon fighter is a must for the ones who want to give raw damage. After you have a critical hit, you can immediately attack again, your Strength increases by one, and heavy weapons deal more damage. You may make all your careless strikes drop like a bomb with the help of the critical hit feature.

Options for Best Multiclassing

Spellcasters don't really help them since they can't focus when angry, and the martial arts don't really teach them much more than what they already know, it's almost a waste leveling up to fighter just to have that additional action, that is, at least, how a tight construction of a wild heart barbarian looks to me.

That makes it the most popular theme, at least at the lower two levels of the course. Being able to change into beasts, cast spells that had various non-combat uses, and use all your class mechanics in beast form make the moon druid/wild heart barbarian build very enticing. 

We hope that these steps have been useful. We have nothing more to add. Luck, and until next time.