The Path of the World Tree Barbarian is a brand-new subclass to Dungeons and Dragons, debuting in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. These Barbarians channel the power of Yggdrasil, a grand tree that connects the Outer Planes to the Material Plane. Its magic allows a DnD World Tree Barbarian to Rage, summon spectral tree roots, and harness the power of teleportation.
Wizards of the Coast shared plenty of details about the World Tree Barbarian earlier this year while explaining the changes being made to DnD classes and DnD races. But we’ve now got our hands on an early copy of the One DnD Player’s Handbook, and we can now tell you exactly how this new subclass works.
The short version is temporary hit points and teleportation – if you don’t want to spoil the reveal for yourself, sit back and wait for the Handbook’s September release date. Otherwise, read on:
Path of the World Tree Barbarian traits
Vitality of the Tree
Level: three
When you Rage, you automatically gain temporary hit points equal to your Barbarian level. Additionally, at the start of every turn when your Rage is active, you can give another creature within 10 feet temporary hit points. Their temporary hit points equal 1d6 + your Rage damage bonus – a tasty number, but the hit points disappear if your Rage ends.
Branches of the Tree
Level: six
While your Rage is active, if a creature you can see starts its turn within 30 feet of you, you can spend a reaction and force them to make a Strength saving throw. Flavor-wise, you’re sending the World Tree’s ghostly branches to hold them in place. Mechanically, they must beat a difficulty class of eight plus your Strength modifier and proficiency bonus – otherwise they’ll be teleported to a space within five feet of you and have their speed immediately reduced to zero.
Battering Roots
Level: 10
Battering Roots increases the reach of Heavy and Versatile melee weapons you wield by 10 feet, but this only applies during your turn. If you successfully hit with this weapon on your turn, you can use the Push or Topple DnD weapon mastery, plus another mastery property you can use with that weapon.
Travel Along the Tree
Level: 14
When you activate your Rage, and as a bonus action during your Rage, you can teleport up to 60 feet to another space you can see. You can also increase the range of that teleport to 150 feet and bring up to six friends, but this can only occur once per Rage. When you teleport this way, everyone lands within 10 feet of the space you plan to move to.
Suggested World Tree Barbarian build
After a thorough read-through of the new Player’s Handbook, here’s the World Tree Barbarian build we’d suggest trying first:
Background
Choose the Farmer background, and choose a +2 and +1 in Strength and Constitution. This DnD 2024 background gives you the Tough origin feat, which increases your HP maximum from the get-go and gives your HP an extra two every time you level up.
Farmers also get proficiency in Animal Handling and Nature. These aren’t exactly optimum skills for a Barbarian, but they fit the nature-like theme of the World Tree subclass well.
Species
If you’ve seen the recent hype around the Goliath, you’ll be unsurprised to see that they’re our species pick for this build. Choose the Stone Giant or Storm Giant ancestry – the first lets you reduce damage as a reaction, and the second lets you deal damage as a reaction. On top of this, you’ll have advantage on rolls to end a DnD grapple.
Once you hit level five, you can change your size to large as a bonus action. This gives you advantage on Strength checks and increases your (already 35-foot) speed by 10 feet.
Weapon
Our weapon of choice for the World Tree Barbarian is the Greataxe. As a Heavy weapon, this qualifies for your Battering Roots feature at level ten. Once you reach that level, you’ll be able to use Cleave to hit a second creature with your attack, as well as Topple or Push on the first. Plus, 1d12 damage is nothing to turn your nose up at.
For more on the new D&D rules, check out our 2024 Player’s Handbook review. Or, for more build ideas, here are the DnD 2024 feats you could consider for your next Barbarian character.
Source: Wargamer
