D&D: Griffon’s Saddlebag – ‘Barbarian Path Of The Glacier’ Is More Than Cold Comfort
In the Griffon’s Saddlebag: Book One, you’ll find twelve new subclasses – including the icy new Path of the Glacier Barbarian.
You might say that the new Path of the Glacier Barbarian is all about that icy rage, the cold fury that you see when someone gets very, very calm and then the nine hells break loose. But it’s also accurate to say that this new Barbarian subclass is also all about a surprising amount of resilience. If you think that your Barbarian isn’t tanky enough, then the Path of the Glacier might be the way to go.
Because at its core, it’s about enduring massive amounts of damage, usually while you’re in your Barbarian Rage. In a nutshell, you’ll be a little harder to hit, you’ll have a surprising amount of temporary hit points, and you’ll do handfuls of extra cold damage.
As always, this is a third-party subclass, so you might want to check with your DM before you leap wholeheartedly into this for your next character. But it’s on D&D Beyond, which means someone at WotC thought, “yeah this is good enough that we’ll have it here on the marketplace”. It’s also for 5E, not 5.5E, though converting a Barbarian subclass from one to the other is perishingly easy, you practically don’t have to do anything. So with all that in mind, let’s check this out.
Barbarian Path of the Glacier
The Barbarian Path of the Glacier is all about the toughness of the tundra. In the same way that we think of like Nords from Skyrim as being extra tough and muscly, that’s this kind of Barbarian. In The Griffon’s Saddlebag: Book One, this is explained via the ‘Everglacier’ a magical glacial region. But you could just as easily come up with a connection to the rugged endurance of winter through many other paths for your own campaign.
It all kicks off at level 3 with Permafrost. This is one of two main features, and where you’ll find the core of your icy resilience. Everything else builds off of this. Permafrost gives you a number of passive benefits, including a +1 bonus to AC when not wearing armor, which is great for a Barbarian; the ability to extend your Rage (no action required) when it would otherwise end; and Resistance to Cold Damage. Not a bad package of abilities at all.
Couple that with the other level 3 feature, Frostbite, and you have a recipe for a rugged Barbarian that carves an icy swath through their enemies. With Frostbite, once per turn while you Rage, you can deal an extra 1d6 Cold damage when you hit with a Strength-based attack. This means it works even on Opportunity or other Reaction attacks if it’s not your turn and you’re still raging.
What’s more, the extra damage scales as you level up. So at level 9, you’ll do 2d6 extra damage, and at level 16, 3d6 extra damage. It’s not bad at all – especially since any creature that you deal this Cold damage to also has its speed reduced by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.
So right away you get this picture of a real tanky Barbarian. With a better AC you can get in the midst of foes, and you can really punish anyone that tries to get away from you, since your AoO’s will deal extra damage. Even moreso since you reduce their speed and make it hard for anyone to escape you in the first place.
Higher Levels Of Glacial Power
At higher levels, the Path of the Glacier only piles on the toughness. At level 6, Cold Fortress gives you an extra layer of resilience in the form of a bonus pool of Temporary Hit Points. You basically gain another whole hit die: 1d12 + Con Modifier, effectively giving you the hit points of a Barbarian one level higher.
But it gets better, because you can refresh this pool of Temporary Hit Points by spending a Bonus Action while you’re raging. Before you go thinking that this is absolutely busted, it comes with a price – you have to spend one of your hit dice to replenish the pool. So doing so can really bite you if you get rolled. But it can keep you in a fight well above your pay grade. I really love this mechanic, it makes hit dice a little more active and important a role in the game.
At 10th level, you gain Deep Sleep. That’s right, you can hibernate. Whenever you take a Long Rest, you can hibernate for 6 hours. When you do so, you get a special pool of bonus Hit Dice that last until your Long Rest. How many extra hit dice? Your Constitution Modifier. And as you might infer, these can be used to power your Temporary Hit Point pool from Cold Fortress. Or you can use them for anything else that hit dice do.
The subclass caps off with Avalanche Stomp at 14th level. You can take a Magic Action to stomp the ground and hit every creature of your choice within 15 feet of you with a shockwave that deals 3d6 + Strength Modifier bludgeoning damage, and knocks them prone. It’s not a bad feature, but considering the rest of the subclass, it feels a little anemic. I think it’s that it takes an Action to do a trivial amount of damage. But knocking creatures prone plays extremely well with the speed-reducing powers of your Frostbite ability.
All in all, this is a solid subclass for players that want a character who’s hard to hit and tough as the walls of a glacier.
Check out the Barbarian Path of the Glacier (and 11 other subclasses) in The Griffon’s Saddlebag: Book One!
