Path of the Old Bones

Rage, for the Old Bones barbarian, means taking on the anatomy of something extinct. Tusk sends them 15 feet at a target to hit it, and the target gets pushed or knocked Prone. Shell means nothing their size or smaller can move them or knock them down, and every attack that lands does less.

Neck and Stride come in at 6th level. Neck adds 5 feet of reach and ignores Half Cover, Stride adds 10 feet of Speed and makes Difficult Terrain free, and all four keep deepening. At 10th the barbarian counts as one size larger for everything that helps, and once per Rage can Trample through a line of enemies, each of whom saves or goes down. At 14th they carry two anatomies at once, and once a day the old animal stops fitting inside their outline for a minute.

Out of combat there's the Remembered Country. It knows the weather and the water, and which way the big thing went.

WHAT'S INSIDE

• One full subclass on the 2024 rules, with features at levels 3, 6, 10, and 14.
• Balanced against the strongest official 2024 subclasses.
• A play note and a d6 flavor table.
• A conversion sidebar for the 2014 rules.
• A screen edition and a plain-white print edition, both US Letter, plus the full text as a plain text file for VTT import.
• The PDF is bookmarked, with no password or lock on it.

Compatible with the 2024 rules for fifth edition. Includes material from the SRD 5.2 by Wizards of the Coast LLC under CC-BY-4.0. Full license statement in the PDF. Unaffiliated with Wizards of the Coast.

It sits with the other three deep-time subclasses in The First Age (Options No. 7, $5.95), if you'd like the set.

We'll Pick Up Next Week, the free letter: sleepersartifice.substack.com