Unearthed Arcana New Barbarian Primal Paths in November 7th Unearthed Arcana

The new paths are

• Path of the Ancestral Guardian
• Path of the Storm Herald
• Path of the Zealot

 

[mykesfree]

Glad to see 4E's power sources are alive and well. In case you never played 4E, they were:

Martial, Arcane, Divine, Primal, Psionic, Elemental, and Shadow.

 

[Prism]

It's usually quite easy to engage the same foe as your ally while remaining more than 5 feet away from your ally.

Assuming of course that a raging barbarian would care. Then again, I get berserkers to make perception checks to perceive friend from foe. What's a little blue on blue between party members eh?

 

[benbatman]

With regards to the Zealot not having enough access to 'religious' skills, please remember this paragraph from the PHB about customising a background:

Customizing a Background
You might want to tweak some of the features of a background so it better fits your character or the campaign setting. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think the reason they want to use this archetype is that it works better for what they are going for. I think "Zealot" is a misnomer. Paladins are Zealots, filled with holy fury, like you describe. This is not supposed to be righteous fury. It is more like being possessed by Mars, Ares, or Tempus. Maybe Hextor. They rage because they are human avatars of battle, which, in many D&D cosmos, is a divine characteristic. I think it is a little bit of a twist on the normal Barbarian fluff but in the end it works perfectly.

There's a lot of things that the Barbarian has that don't make a lot of sense for a character like that. While stuff like Fast Movement/Bonuses vs. Traps and the like can be handwaved away, it's a pretty clear handwave, and it weakens the archetype overall to handwave it.

Rage is not the point of the Barbarian class, and if that's all you're really interested in, just loot some version of it and stick it in whatever class makes more sense for you.

But...the Barbarian is just the Rage mechanic; that's like their entire thing, that and not wearing armor. There is actually shockingly little flavor, outdoorsy or bot: it's Rage and the ability to rock the AC without a shirt on.

Well, we fundamentally disagree about what the Barbarian is, I guess! To me, a class is not simply a package of mechanics, it's an archetype to play, a story to tell. The Barbarian story is not simply the story of rage.

There is a tendency among some players--an unfortunate and unnecessarily narrow one, IMO, but that's me--to treat the flavor text and archetypal view of the classes as inviolable writ, rather than as a general starting point. For such players, anything that falls outside of those lines is viewed with suspicion at best.

I might just as well say that there's an unfortunate and unnecessarily narrow tendency among some players to treat the mechanics of a class as inviolable writ, rather than as support for certain archetypes. For such players, anything that uses a Rage mechanic that isn't a Barbarian is viewed with suspicion at best.

And, to be clear, I am entirely comfortable with saying that the story of the Barbarian or Paladin or Cleric absolutely overrides the mechanics of the Barbarian or Paladin or Cleric. The design function of a class in my mind is to support the play of a particular archetype - that's why you have classes in the first place. If you aren't going to play into that story and that archetype, your class isn't doing its job anymore.

If your holy warrior needs to rage, steal the rage. You don't need to cram yourself into the Barbarian mold just because you want to rage.

I can't say I see any problem with this. Historically religious zealots have often only had a rudimentary understanding of their faith, and that also applies to modern examples like Boko Haram and Islamic State fighters. If you want to play a zealot who actually knows his theology then simply pick the acolyte background, or customize any other background you like to have Religion proficiency. No need to force the skill on every zealot.

Woof. Leaving to one side the paternalistic normativism of the talking point that these organizations don't really understand the religion they profess to follow, I don't think D&D is interested in depicting modern terrorist organizations as PC options - and even if they WERE, I'd want to pick up the Religion skill.

And if you toss this back to a more period-appropriate version of the trope, you might pick up on the Crusaders as an expression of a similar motif: violent, warlike people claiming to be inspired by a religion they don't seem to truly understand.

They even come to a more civilized country to loot and pillage!

But the class to take if you want to be a Crusader is....paladin.

 

[Marandahir]

Also, this goes to players as well as WotC: please stop stealing the name of a Jewish anti-Roman rebellion and religious movement to use as a synonym for terror-inducing warriors of evil religions. The zealots shared much of their ideals with that of the historic figure Jesus, even if he wasn't formally a member of their movement.

I'm quite happy with the Zealot archetype, but there's no reason to tie it to Erythnuul, Gruumsh, and their ilk, or even worse, to groups like DAESH and Boko Haram. The idea of a Divine Barbarian is excellent and approaches the cloth-wearing Avenger of 4e even moreso than the Oath of Vengeance Paladin!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Rage is not the point of the Barbarian class, and if that's all you're really interested in, just loot some version of it and stick it in whatever class makes more sense for you.


Well, we fundamentally disagree about what the Barbarian is, I guess! To me, a class is not simply a package of mechanics, it's an archetype to play, a story to tell. The Barbarian story is not simply the story of rage.

While you aren't neccesarily wrong, what is so hard to swallow about a Barbarian that believes in and follows a god?

And then, if it is a god of war, them blessing the barbarian with power?

I get clerics derive their power from the gods, but that is spellcasting. Paladins more draw their power from their oaths and convictions, they don't neccesarily need a god in 5e.

There is plenty of room their for a Barbarian blessed by the Rage of Kord to fight alongside his brothers-in-arms. And making something like this a paladin sub-class instead would not only break the style of the oaths, but be much more mechanically difficult to pull of. Barbarian fits better.

Order of Operations (7th-Grade math) dictates that, as written, it has to be the second. You multiply/divide before you add/subtract.

Parentheses is done before division.

When you are using natural langauge to "Talk" the formula instead of writing it, you can confuse people as to whether or not you intended parentheses to be included or not.

But, I also think it is the second now, as the math for the first is just really wierd and pointless.

 

[I'm A Banana]

While you aren't neccesarily wrong, what is so hard to swallow about a Barbarian that believes in and follows a god?

And then, if it is a god of war, them blessing the barbarian with power?

Nothing. For, like, the third time, it's mostly a question of using the best fit for the job, and fitting the square peg into the square hole. You can make that archetype fit the Barbarian mold, but it is super-janky, so why would you want to? You don't need to go Barbarian to get Rage (or no armor!), so what's the benefit of going Barbarian? It doesn't seem to bring with it much else that plays to the archetype.

I get clerics derive their power from the gods, but that is spellcasting. Paladins more draw their power from their oaths and convictions, they don't neccesarily need a god in 5e.

There is plenty of room their for a Barbarian blessed by the Rage of Kord to fight alongside his brothers-in-arms. And making something like this a paladin sub-class instead would not only break the style of the oaths, but be much more mechanically difficult to pull of. Barbarian fits better.

Fitting this into Oaths is easy. The Oath of Fury. The Oath of the Annointed (they bless you before you go into battle because you're not expected to live!). The Oath of the Martyr's Blood. You swear that your life and your blade are extensions of your cause, and that your life is a tool of what you swear to. Hell, the existing Oaths skirt similar thematic areas (giving up your life for vengeance or a king or devotion to the people).

There's also other ways to thread this needle. For instance, you could have a paladin spell (or maybe a few) that gave you this Rage. You could have it as an alternative option to Divine Smite.

Once you drop the misconception that Barbarian = Rage and Rage = Barbarian, it's not hard to find a home for a Rage mechanic in any number of different and more fitting mechanical homes.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I might just as well say that there's an unfortunate and unnecessarily narrow tendency among some players to treat the mechanics of a class as inviolable writ, rather than as support for certain archetypes. For such players, anything that uses a Rage mechanic that isn't a Barbarian is viewed with suspicion at best.

You might. And I'm comfortable with changing either, where appropriate.

But it is far easier to expand/change flavor without damaging playability than mechanics. You're not going to accidentally under/overpower a character, or break the system.

And some concepts truly are better served by stretching one than the other. The zealot? Isn't a cleric or a paladin. It's a barbarian with some divine flavor. It would be less efficient and poorer design to try to twist and turn a cleric into a barbarian than to add a few divine-inspired powers to the barbarian, in such a case. Now, if we had a class that was a cleric with some added rage? Sure, tweak the mechanics on the cleric. But it would be inappropriate to do the latter to accomplish the former.

 

[Zaran]

I think the Warrior of the Gods feature is quite weak. I would at least give them the religion skill on top of it. How many groups out there have to deal with character death often enough for this feature to be used? I suppose the player will have incentive to get himself killed, if there is a cleric with the correct spells memorized around. This feature needs a bit more for me.

 

[Marandahir]

Parentheses is done before division.

When you are using natural langauge to "Talk" the formula instead of writing it, you can confuse people as to whether or not you intended parentheses to be included or not.

But, I also think it is the second now, as the math for the first is just really weird and pointless.

This is true, but there were no parentheses used in the paragraph. I'm quite aware of the full order, just didn't mention non-relevant operations.

As for natural language to talk the formula, that's why I said the wording was unnecessarily confusing and should be refined before publication.