The Path of Lament is, in a word, the Banshee subclass. You are the victim of some powerful anguish and grief, and you turn to that grief to fuel your rage, inflicting fear, psychic damage, and some other specifically Banshee-like effects at higher levels.
From the start, I'll mention that this is certainly one of the "villain" subclasses that feels less outright villainous and more just dark and associated with a kind of monster - more like the Circle of Titans than the Hell Knight. You could easily play a sympathetic, good-aligned version of this. But let's get into the mechanics!
Level 3:
Banshee's Wail:
When you activate your Rage or as a bonus action while Rage is active, you can let out a doleful wail. Each creature in a 30-foot emanation of your choice makes a Con save (DC based on your Con). On a failure, they're deafened for 1 minute and take Psychic damage equal to a number of d12s equal to your Rage bonus.
You can use this Con times per long rest, and you can expend a rage to get an additional use.
This is conceptually cool, but given that this is everything we get at level 3, I think we need more. Initially I was going to complain that a Berserker or a Zealot can get bonus damage every turn, while this is likely going to be only 3 times a day until very high levels. However, it is an AoE, which most Barbarians don't get at all. The damage is decent for what it is (3d12 is going to be 19.5, which is actually ok for a bonus action from a non-caster). The ability to regain a use from a Rage does sort of mean we can get one back on a short rest, as long as we don't need all our rages for the day.
Still, I'd have liked something, even a ribbon feature, at level 3, beyond this.
Level 6:
Commune with the Dead:
You can cast Speak with Dead as a ritual, using Wisdom as your spellcasting ability.
Hey, question: for spells without an attack or a DC, does a spellcasting ability ever come into play? As a feature, this is decent and thematic, and importantly is not alone at level 6.
Horrifying Strike:
Once per turn when you hit with a Strength-based attack while raging, you can try to horrify the target. The target makes a Wisdom save (again, DC based on your Con) or be Frightened until the start of your next turn.
I think this should swap with Banshee's Wail. This makes a lot of sense as a level 3 feature, as you'll nearly always have it. Is it too powerful at level 3? Maybe. But truly, this feels like the banner, headlining feature of "the fear Barbarian." Again, it would be nice to base the DC on your Strength, but Barbarians will be pushing Con pretty heavily, so at level 6 we're probably talking a DC 14 or so.
Level 10:
Otherworldly Anguish:
You gain the following:
Deathly Wail: If a target fails its saving throw against Banshee's Wail and has HP equal to twice your Barbarian level or lower, it drops to 0 HP instead of taking damage.
Ok, this is probably not as insane as it appears, but it's still decent. At this level, they need to be at 20 HP or below. At level 10, that's pretty close to dead anyway, but might still take more than one hit to do so, meaning that you could clear out some weakened foes (though you're unlikely to fight anything that starts off that low at this level). Consider that at this point, your Rage bonus is 3, so we'd be doing 19.5 average damage anyway, meaning there's a good chance that you'd be killing them with the psychic damage. That said, this will scale up faster and by more than your Wail's damage (which caps out at 26 on average). Again, great to use if a big AoE spell just took a lot of foes to low HP (though the damage also works well in that situation).
Impenetrable Sorrow:
You can't be possessed.
Man, how often does that come up? Like the Circle of Pestilence giving you immunity to magical contagions (after 5.5 got rid of the idea of "diseases" as a mechanical thing) this feels extremely situational. I know that Ghosts do this, but does any other creature in the Monster Manual possess people? We can treat this like a ribbon.
Resistance:
You have resistance to Cold and Necrotic damage while raging.
This is pretty good, though of course situational. Still, both damage types are fairly common, especially in an Undead-heavy campaign. The lack of Poison resistance is actually sort of fitting with this very incorporeal-undead theming, though maybe they could get psychic resistance?
Level 14:
Sorrow Form:
When you activate your rage, you become empowered with undeath. You gain these benefits for 1 minute or until you drop to 0 HP, and cannot activate this again until you finish a long rest:
First off, weird that it only lasts 1 minute but is tied to Rage. And once per long rest "modes" like this in 5.5 usually have some alternate cost to reactivate them, though what might that be, "2 Rages?"
Immunities: You become immune to the Charmed and Frightened conditions and end those conditions if you have them when this is activated. You also cannot gain exhaustion levels.
The Charm and Fear element, of course, is something Berserkers get anyway. We'll need to see more monsters that impose Exhaustion for the second part to be relevant.
Life-Draining Strike: When a creature fails its save against your Horrifying Strike, they take 2d10 Necrotic damage and you regain HP equal to the Necrotic damage taken.
The damage here would be underwhelming if you didn't get the healing. Given that Barbarians are (at least in theory) more about soaking damage than avoiding it, healing is very good for them.
Undead: Your creature type is undead for the duration.
I think it's actually notable here that this does make you immune to some spells, like Hold Person. It does make you vulnerable to Turn Undead, and while you won't be Frightened, you will become Incapacitated, and the "have to move away from you" element is independent of these conditions. So, just coordinate with your party Cleric, and maybe hold off on this when fighting undead (the bonus necrotic damage won't be very useful against a lot of them).
Overall Thoughts:
I think there's a solid thematic idea to this, and the idea of tying Grief to Rage is a really potent one for roleplay opportunities. I don't see this character as being necessarily villainous, but that's fine - honestly the villain book will probably be more popular if the character options don't necessarily force you down the villainous route.
Mainly I think that the subclass could use some "always on" feature at earlier levels - swapping Horrifying Strike and Banshee's Wail might do that (while limited by rage, 5.5 Barbarians almost never run out of Rages, so I think we're ok).
Of all classes, Barbarian is one that I've spent the least time playing, so I'm always a little hesitant to proclaim with any great certainty how powerful this that or the other feature is. I suspect that this one won't do quite the damage of a Berserker, but the fear effect could be really powerful as a crowd control/defensive ability. And while limited, Banshee's Wail is a pretty hefty burst of AoE damage for a class that normally doesn't get to do any AoE.
So much of the Barbarian class is about being this thick-skinned raging maniac, and I think that there's something really compelling about leaning into the emotional aspect of the class in a way that requires some vulnerability.
No comments:
Post a Comment