Path of the Zealot Barbarian: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide - Dungeon Mister (2024)

Devoted warriors that draw upon divine powers to hit harder and last longer than most barbarians.

At a glance

What’s changing?

This subclass didn’t work as well as it should have in the 2014 iteration as your signature ability relied on you dying to actually come into play. With the updated version, zealots become much more interesting, with powers that are more fun and come into play throughout combat. These changes include:

• Warrior of the gods now grants you a pool of hit points to heal yourself with rather than making it easier to raise you from the dead.
• Rage of the gods replaces rage beyond death which makes you more effective as a warrior, rather than simply staving off death a little longer while you’re unconscious which was fairly pointless.
• Rage of the gods basically transforms you into an avatar of destruction for your god!

Path of the zealot features

Divine fury – Level 3

How it works

Deal an extra 1d6 + half your barbarian level in necrotic or radiant damage on your first hit each turn.

Tactics

• Radiant damage is rarely resisted so unless you’re fighting celestials, I’d default to this damage type.
• Zealot barbarians are bigger damage dealers than other barbarians, as such you want to make sure you are taking the attack action and landing those attacks even more than with other barbarians.

Warrior of the gods – Level 3

How it works

You gain a pool of 4-7 d12s (the number increase as you gain barbarian levels) that you can use to heal yourself with a bonus action. These are replenished on a long rest.

Tactics

To preserve your action economy, the best way to use this healing is all at once (or at least a bunch of hit dice at once). Avoid the temptation to keep expending bonus actions on healing unless you really have nothing better to do with your bonus action (which is quite possible for a barbarian). At the same time, don’t leave it too late to heal yourself only to get killed the next turn.

Fanatical focus – Level 6

How it works

You can reroll a failed saving throw once per day and add your rage damage bonus to the score.

Tactics

• This adds a little to the resilience of a zealot barbarian. The tricky part is knowing when to use it. Really debilitating saving throws are rare though so unless you know you’re going to fight a wizard or a dragon later in the day, I’d just use it unless you’re in an easy encounter with low stakes. Otherwise you’re likely to waste the trait.

Zealous presence – Level 10

How it works

Cause up to 10 allies within 60ft of you to gain advantage on attacks rolls and saving throws until the start of your next turn. You can use this for free once per long rest and must expend charges of rage to use it any subsequent times.

Tactics

• Use early in combat when saving throws are more likely and there are more allies available to buff.
• You can affect enough creatures to help the whole party, but if you must choose, martials are more important than spellcasters as they tend to make more saving throws and attack rolls. Plus, spellcasters can cast spells that don’t require an attack roll.
• Use at times when advantage may not come from other sources like prone or flanked enemies. It works especially well for ranged attacks advantage which is harder to come by.

Rage of the gods – Level 14

How it works

Assume the form of a divine warrior for a minute, once per long rest, and gain the following benefits:

• Flight: You can fly as quickly as you can move.
• Resistances: You become resistant to necrotic, psychic and radiant damage.
• Revivification: When someone nearby would drop to 0HP, you can use your reaction to instead have them go to a number of HP equal to your barbarian level. You must expend a use of your rage when you use this.

Tactics

• Flight is excellent but this is too rare an ability to waste outside of combat, so really, it’s there to allow you to get to hard to reach enemies. Think flying enemies, archers on the walls of a keep and so on.
• Save for tough combat encounters that require extra resilience, accessing high up places or allies needing reviving.
• When it comes to revivification, you have a lot of demands on your rage at this point, but you also have at least 5 uses of rage (more than enough for the day’s encounters on most instances). You can also recover a use of rage each short rest. At level 15 you’ll also be able to recover all expended uses of rage when you start combat. This means you can afford to be fairly cavalier in how often you use your rages. Just be aware that you may want to rage outside of combat too.
• The principle here is don’t be afraid to revivify and horde your rages, you should have plenty!
• But also be aware that this only works if you stay in the fight so try not to be too reckless!

Building a path of the zealot barbarian

Below is some guidance on making an optimal build for your zealot barbarian.

Ability scores

Recommended options

• Strength: Important for dealing damage. Depending on whether you want to go heavier as a tank or a damage dealer will determine whether this or constitution is your most important ability. Dealing lots of damage is fun though!
• Constitution: You’ll need to be really resilient, as you’ll be the focal point of many attacks. This also affects your unarmoured defense making constitution extra important for you.
• Dexterity: Unarmoured defense is better than medium armor if you can get your dexterity and constitution high enough. In the meantime, you can wear medium armor, but even that needs a 14 dexterity to be properly effective so you’ll want to invest here.

Options to avoid

• Wisdom: Only needed for skills and saving throws so not important
• Intelligence: Dump, you don’t need this.
• Charisma: If you need to convince someone of something, then rage and use strength for intimidation. Otherwise, charisma isn’t important for a barbarian.

Skills

Recommended options

• Athletics: Great if you want to do a lot of grappling

• Perception: Always a useful skill as it’s often used by multiple party members and barbarians can fill in as scouts when necessary.
• Intimidation: Primal knowledge lets you use strength for this ability check now (while raging). And those big muscles really are intimidating!

Options to avoid

• Nature: Used far too little to be of much use.
• Survival: Used far too little to be of much use.
• Animal handling: Used far too little to be of much use.

Species/race

There are a couple of things to consider when choosing a species for a path of the zealot barbarian:

• Resilience: Damage resistances will protect your tank even more, especially if you’re planning on dragging a lot of nasty martials away from your allies and into arms reach.
• Innate spellcasting: Innate spellcasting can be useful for out of combat spells, but is pointless for spells you might use in combat (as you’ll likely be raging and not have a great spellcasting ability).
• Flight: You don’t get flight till level 14 and even then, it’s once per long rest and primarily reserved for combat use. This means flight can remain useful, especially for low level campaigns.
• Dealing damage: Any species that can enhance your damage dealing will help. You’ll likely be in the thick of combat so AoE damage can certainly help as barbarians naturally don’t really get this.

Recommended options

• Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your hardiness (just be aware that once you hit level 14, rage of the gods grants you this anyway once per long rest so of less use at higher levels). You also get extra damage from celestial revelation which works really well for any barbarian. I’d primarily look to inner radiance as your charisma will likely be a bit low for necrotic shroud. Flight can be useful for our of combat needs, saving rage of the gods for in combat flight.
• Dragonborn (2024): An AoE breath weapon with scalable damage that only takes up a single attack is great if you want to deal damage to the masses (and lets be honest, you definitely do)! On top of that, you get a resistance and temporary flight which is always a useful option.
• Dwarf (2024): An extra hit point per level is great for a tank character and for even more resilience, you have resistance against poison and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition.
• Goliath (2024): The quintessential barbarian species! Faster movement makes you even better at traversing the battlefield. Your giant ancestry grants some very useful options too. You can go for extra durability with stone giant ancestry, more damage from fire giant or knocking enemies prone with hill giant.
• Orc (2024): Relentless endurance stacks with relentless rage to make you last even longer in combat. You surviving is especially important for helping keep allies in the fight with revivification from rage of the gods making this especially useful for a zealot. Adrenaline rush is good for a few extra temporary hit points and to get around more quickly.

Options to avoid

• Elf (2024): Too much reliance on innate spellcasting which barbarians are no good at.
• Tiefling (2024): Too much reliance on innate spellcasting which barbarians are no good at.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. Remember that you can either choose to increase one of the ability score options from a background by 2 and the other by 1, or you can choose to increase all 3 ability scores by 1.

You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

For a zealot barbarian, you’ll want to get strength, constitution and/or dexterity increases (dexterity being the least important). Below are probably your best options :

Of these options, I think farmer is probably your best bet with strength and constitution increases and the tough feat. The skills aren’t great, but barbarians were never built for skills anyway. The savage attacker feat from soldier isn’t really that great unfortunately while criminal lacks the all important strength increase, though works well if you want to invest in defence.

If you’re not keen on these combinations, then you can customise a 2014 background instead.

Weapons

You can go for a couple of approaches when choosing your weapon:

• Damage: the biggest damage dealers are those that do d12 or 2d6 damage. These include a greataxe (d12), maul and greatsword (2d6). 2d6 edges things on average damage (7 Vs 6.5) but the difference is negligible.
• Protection: Alternatively, you can trade off that extra damage for extra protection by going the sword and shield route and wielding a one handed weapon instead. We’re looking at the likes of longswords, battle-axes, spears and warhammers here.

Weapon mastery: You’ll want to make sure the weapon you choose has a weapon mastery that fits your tactics.

Of the top damage dealers, this includes:

• Maul (topple): Knocks your opponent prone. Great for working with allies to give them advantage on attacks. You can easily accomplish something similar with wolf though, so potentially less useful for a wild heart barbarian.
• Greataxe (cleave): Hit 2 enemies in a single swing. Great for dealing more damage to crowds.
• Greatsword (nick): Good for ensuring some damage even if you miss. This feels like a typically weaker option than the other 2 though, especially with the option to grant yourself advantage with reckless attacks.

And for one handed shield weapons, we’re looking at:

• Spear (sap): Impose disadvantage on the next attack and you can throw it if necessary. But less damage means you’re probably better off with another weapon.
• Battleaxe (topple): Similar situation to a maul.
• Longsword (sap): Since you probably don’t need to throw your weapon, a longsword is the better option for sapping your opponent with d8 damage rather than the spear’s d6 (and if you need to, you can easily swap to a thrown weapon anyway).
• Warhammer (push): You can however combine the effects of your pushes making for one heck of a launch backwards!

I’d also make sure you grab some thrown weapons for when you need to attack at range. Tridents, then spears and javelins, offer the best damage output at range. Deciding which you want will mainly be a case of working out which weapon mastery property you’d prefer (sap,.slow or topple).

Armor

You can go one of 2 ways with armor:

• Unarmoured defense: If you’re happy sacrificing damage output by investing in dexterity over strength, then you can get your best AC by maximising your dexterity and constitution and using unarmoured defense.
• Medium armor: If you’d prefer to have only decent armor and deal more damage, then go for 14 dexterity, half plate and high strength.

You may want to start with medium armor, and as you gain ability score improvements, switch to unarmoured defense once this becomes a better option.

You can also throw in a shield if you want to go higher on defense and lower on damage. Importantly, shields don’t count as armor for the purposes of unarmoured defense.

Other class guides

Not sure a zealot barbarian is for you. Not to worry, why not check out one of our other class guides.

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