Berserker Rogue

For a lot of time I've been thinking of the Berserker Barbarian. The exhaustion penalty of using Frenzy is very punishing, and taking into account you can just get Polearm Master at level 4 (with ability score improvement) with any other subclass makes it super not worth it. At first I tried to get rid of the penalty, But what if frenzy was just more powerful?

As you may have guessed from the title, today we are building a Barbarian/Rogue. So lets get started with this build!

Race

First off race, try to go for a race with a high dex here (like elfs or halflings). I'll choose a stout halfling here because I love the idea of a halfling barbarian.

Stats

For our stats we will use standard array. We need at least a 13 in both Strength and Dexterity in order to have a Barbarian/Rogue, and another important focus for us will be Constitution (I'll explain this one later). Our stats will look something like this:

Str	Dex	Con	Int	Wis	Cha
13	16	16	8	12	10

Progression

We will spend our first three levels in being a Berserker Barbarian and we will use a rapier for our damage. Because of Unarmored Defense, our AC will be 16 (18 with a shield). We should use our dexterity to attack instead of our strength with our build; and we will do less damage than a regular barbarian but will be a tad more durable because of our AC.

For the rest of our levels we will go the path of the Scout Rogue! 

Level 4 (Rogue 1):

The expertise we get can go to our Athletics (so now we can grapple and shove effectively with rage!). Also Sneak Attack! If we use the ready action wisely we can sneak attack twice per round. We do this by using our Frenzy's bonus action to attack and use our ready action to attack when something random happens outside of our turn.

Level 5 (Rogue 2):

Cunning Action! More things we can do with our bonus action! Even when we are raging!

Level 6 (Rogue 3):

I recommend taking the Scout Archetype, because of more things we can use with our reaction.

I won't go over the rest of the levels because you may already get the picture. Uncanny Dodge, Evasion and the rest of the rogue's features have very good synergy with the barbarian's abilities. Our ability to use two sneak attacks per round will become stronger the more we level up, it will become really powerful from level 8 onward.

As an important note, you may not want to get to Scout Rogue 17, this is because the ability you get, kind of overlaps with your Frenzy. You may want to take an extra level on barbarian (to get a feat) or in another class for an ability that works better with Frenzy. If you are ok with not getting the 9d6 sneak attack.

Illustration created by jeffchendesigns on Devianart

PD: I started tackling the berserker barbarian trying to get rid of the exhaustion penalty and I kind of did it. The problem with that one, is that it achieves it at level 13.

If you make a Berserker Barbarian 3/ Moon Druid 10. You can frenzy when you are an elemental without the problem of the exhaustion. This is because Elementals are inmune to exhaustion, but that's about it. The elemental form doesn't get much better with more levels in barbarian sadly, but feel free to also try this idea.