The new paths are
- Path of the Ancestral Guardian
- Path of the Storm Herald
- Path of the Zealot
What does this mean?Woof.
I never said that. The leadership clearly knows their theology and are able to justify everything they do with scripture, but we also know that a lot of the fighters barely know the basics.Leaving to one side the paternalistic normativism of the talking point that these organizations don't really understand the religion they profess to follow,
Nothing's stopping you. It shouldn't be required for the archetype though.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.
Because the crusaders were Knights and not Barbarians. Unless you count the Norwegian Crusade that is, that was pretty much an old school viking war expedtion in the name of God.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.
But the class to take if you want to be a Crusader is....paladin.
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.
I would agree that they should get Religion skill automatically. If they want to be Acolytes or some similar religious background so as to have Religion during 1st-2nd, that's fine, and I don't think granting that skill proficiency upsets the balance of the subclass. It adds something that should be inherent to all members of the subclass, but if you already have it you already have it.
It could also say "or another knowledge skill if you already are trained in Religion" if they don't want to penalize Acolytes etc but I really don't think it's a big loss for Acolytes. All it does is allow you to have your background represent a different past before you took up the path of the Zealot.
Huh. High-level Zealot Barbarians are now like Vampires: they don't go unconscious at 0 HP, and keep fighting at zero HP until killed. (The exact conditions under which a 0 HP vampire can be killed are subject to some dispute; said dispute has been occurring over the last couple of days, which is why I notice the correlation. Odd coincidence that.)
Zealot Barbarians are clearly the best of the new Barbarians from a powergaming standpoint, but it doesn't really matter because they're not good enough to obviate other options. Still, I like the flavor of the Ancestral Guardian and Zealot Barbarians particularly. Reminds me very much of the Ancestor Vessel barbarians from Dominions 4: The Awakening, except obviously Ancestor Vessels would have a fear aura.
Mechanically, the Ancestral Guardian 10th level feature is very flavorful, but interacts poorly with 5E's actual mechanics, in particular the Help action but also the vagueness of the ability check rules. Like many abilities which grant advantage (Keen Smell or whatever it's called), it has the problem that it only lets you succeed at things you could have succeeded at anyway. It doesn't actually grant any new capabilities. I would like it better if it gave some new affordance, even if it's just the ability to cast Augury three times per long rest or whatever. (The unreliability of repeated Auguries just makes the hypothetical ability more entertaining and flavorful.) Advantage on Int/Wis checks is quite bland.
Alternately, you could just give the DM a bit of advice and say, "If you want to make Ancestral Guardian a thing in your campaign, make sure you don't allow players to Help each other on Intelligence or Wisdom checks except under extraordinary circumstances, like if they're both trying to remember the same event that they were both present for."
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.
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.
It's not a problem in the sense that it would be the end of the world or some horrible abomination of game design or anything. It's just a question of using the best tools for the job.
I guess I think that if the only reason you want to use a barbarian to model this archetype is because barbarians have rage and so does this archetype, that's kind of a weak reason.
Ignore the rage mechanic for a second. Pretend the barbarian had no rage. Maybe they're rangers, whatever. If you wanted to make a character that was inspired with a holy lust for violence against the enemies of the faithful, would you still make it a barbarian?
I'd be inclined to go Cleric, or maybe Paladin. Give them a mechanic similar to rage (maybe Channel Divinity! Maybe a holy fury spell! An Oath of Zeal? A Zeal domain?), and you've got what you need.
It's not that using barbarian for this is wrong, it just doesn't fit very well. It's a square peg in the barbarian's round hole. Cram it in and shave the edges down and it'll fit well enough, but the two aren't clearly made for each other.
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.