wild magic barb

[Skrum]

Anyone have any experience with this subclass? They look kinda cool, and at least have a few goodies to help barbs not be so boring. I was thinking of making a chef-themed wild magic barb that makes magical profiteroles with different fillings, and he eats one to "rage" and depending on what the filling is, he gets a different power.

[CTurbo]

I'm playing a 5th level Wild Magic Barb right now and he's really strong(20 Str) and REALLY dumb(6 Int) and I plan on taking 1 level of Wild Magic Sorcerer next for even more random magical wackiness. I rp him as having no idea that the magical effects are coming from him, but he's obsessed with magic in general. We have a Sorcerer in the group and he's fascinated by her.

So.... in general, yeah very fun subclass that feels pretty good at low levels, but the little Wild Magic table from raging you get does not scale at all, and will surely fall behind at higher levels. The 6th level feature is really good, but I'll probably stop there with the Barb levels.

[Leon]

I was thinking of making a chef-themed wild magic barb that makes magical profiteroles with different fillings, and he eats one to "rage" and depending on what the filling is, he gets a different power.

No advice but i love this idea.

[Skrum]

I'm playing a 5th level Wild Magic Barb right now and he's really strong(20 Str) and REALLY dumb(6 Int) and I plan on taking 1 level of Wild Magic Sorcerer next for even more random magical wackiness. I rp him as having no idea that the magical effects are coming from him, but he's obsessed with magic in general. We have a Sorcerer in the group and he's fascinated by her.

So.... in general, yeah very fun subclass that feels pretty good at low levels, but the little Wild Magic table from raging you get does not scale at all, and will surely fall behind at higher levels. The 6th level feature is really good, but I'll probably stop there with the Barb levels.

That was basically my assessment of it, but it's good to hear it works that way in practice. The group I play with has a soft-cap of 8 (and most characters are less than that), so it should work well.

I like the 7th level Feral Pounce, so I'll probably keep him straight barb. Though I suppose Fighter 1 for a fighting style would be good too. Or rogue, for some expertise. But yeah, those 6th level powers look really cool, especially for a chef-themed character.

[Evaar]

I haven’t played it. However, I was considering how well it might work with a 2 level War Wizard dip. The initiative bonus is fine, but the main feature would of course be Arcane Deflection (which is not a spell).

Low level spells can provide some meaningful combat benefits outside of Rage. And Find Familiar, of course, is always on.

I haven’t fully worked this out, not sure the best time to take this multiclass - probably right after Barb 5. But I think it’s worth some thought. And I like the flavor.

[Psyren]

I find the subclass interesting in concept but very underwhelming in execution. Treantmonk summed up the problem well in his review I thought - randomness is inherently a drawback, so if you're going to have an ability be balanced by it, the upside for randomly succeeding at landing on the feature you want should be fairly high. Wild Magic Sorcerer actually does this well, with the primary caveat being that you have little to no control over when you actually get to roll.

If I were tasked with buffing it I would do the following:

Magic Awareness: this is fine

Wild Surge:
- Tendrils: the burst effect is nice, but 1d12 once per combat that doesn't scale is basically nothing. Being able to repeat the effect as a bonus action while raging would make it much more useful, and should scale at higher levels (maybe an extra die.)

- Teleport: The best effect, no change.

- Flumph Bomb: the damage here is pathetic even for a bonus action AoE. Needs to scale.

- Force Throw: This would be fine if it worked with Extra Attack like javelins do, given its miniscule range.

- Force Retribution: Fine idea but needs to scale at higher levels.

- Protective Light: Fine albeit boring.

- Hindering Vines: The second best effect, no change.

- Blinding Bolt: Blind is a lot less exciting than it seems for a barbarian. You already have advantage on all your attacks, and for most melee enemies blind just cancels out their advantage to hit you making it a straight roll. This can protect you from a dangerous enemy caster however as most dangerous spells need sight.

Bolstering Magic: Who honestly has a d3? Just make it a d6 and then divide by two for the spell slot restoration.

Unstable Backlash / Controlled Surge: with the buffs above these would become fine.

[stoutstien]

From my experience its oddly more effective than it looks on paper even if it doesn't scale all that well.
One of the few subclasses that has a power option not tied to rage and also is directly able to be applicable in non combat challenges.
I rate it below AG and zealot but better than the rest.

*The direct damage based surges fall off quick but that only 1/4 of them*

[CTurbo]

I don't think this would be a subclass I would consider in a more serious campaign with point buy or standard array stats. We roll for stats to I was able to start with 20 Str, 16 Dex, and 18 Con and was even able to throw a 14 in Cha. I always go for the MAD classes when I get stats like that. Unarmored Barbs are MAD.

I think if I was going to play a Wild Magic Barb straight, I'd play it as a medium armor Vhuman GWM Barb and try to get Str maxed ASAP. The Wild Magic stuff would just be extra fluff. It would be a decent character. If I got to level 12, I'd grab some utility at first opportunity since I don't like how Barbs have nothing to offer outside of combat.

The Wild Magic table really should scale and by a lot. All of the damaging options should add an extra die every 4-6 levels at least capping off at 4x minimum.

[JLandan]

I played this once with a DM that ruled that the damage for Wild Magic scaled like a cantrip. It worked very well.

He was a halfling farmer, named Haversham Uxbridge, that one day was plowing a field and dug into what turned out to be a magic rock. It burst open, exposing him to magic energies that cause him to go into fits resembling Rage, but are really more like panic. His comrades call him Havoc.