UA: Path of Unlight Barbarian

 Seems like Barbarians are getting a lot of subclasses. Let's check this one out.

One of the major throughlines of this UA is the city of Deep Imaskar, which seems to be the remnants of an ancient empire that exists in the lowest depths of the Underdark, and among their powers is Unlight, a powerful magic that helps them survive so far from the surface.

Unlight Barbarians basically have a lot of radiant-damage elements, with a flavor table (something all three of these subclasses get) that describes how their inner light manifests.

Level 3:

Radiant Rage:

This is your only 3rd level feature. When a creature hits you with a melee attack while you're raging, they take Radiant damage equal to your rage damage bonus. Additionally, you shine with 20 feet of bright light when you rage.

    This feels underwhelming. If you get hit by a ton of attacks, this could add up, but even at high levels, if a foe hit you three times in a round, that's just 12 damage. Compare this to a Zealot Barbarian who could do a bonus of up to 13.5 without taking any hits.

    The light aspect is cool, but also potentially a problem if you're trying not to draw attention to yourself (granted, the sounds of combat likely already do that). I think we just need something more here. My homebrew Inner Shadow Barbarian has the reflective damage, but also buffs to Unarmed Strikes as part of its level 3. Maybe if they bumped up the damage here, like Rage bonus plus Strength, this might feel a bit more substantial.

Level 6:

Unlight Revelation:

You gain proficiency in Perception if you don't already have it, and also gain expertise with it. While raging, you have Blindsight equal to the radius of the bright line you shine.

    One little note: I think that there needs to be compensation if you already have Perception. Maybe let you pick a different Barbarian class skill if you already have it. The blindsight is cool (and as this hints, the radius expands later on). But once again, that's something that will be situationally useful but might not come into play very often.

    Perception is great, though: it's probably the best skill proficiency to have in the game, and expertise is a way to really make it feel like you're truly good at something.

Level 10:

Infectious Unlight:

Damage you deal with Brutal Strike can be Radiant or its normal type (your choice). Also, you gain a new Brutal Strike option:

Radiant Infection: The target becomes infected with Unlight for 1 minute. While infected, it sheds Bright Light in a 10 foot radius and takes 1d6 radiant damage at the start of its turn. It can make a Con save (DC based on your Strength) at the end of each of its turns to end the effect.

    This is interesting: building on the Brutal Strike mechanic is fun. One thing I'd probably add in there is to make it so that if you infect an invisible creature with this, it no longer benefits from being invisible, which would make this a really cool feature to make the Unlight Barbarian the ultimate "hidden foe" finder (with their Blindsight to help them find it in the first place).

Harbinger of Unlight:

You have resistance to radiant damage.

    This is a pretty rare damage type for monsters to use, though often when they do, it's very high damage. But I don't think this will come up very often.

Level 14:

Brilliant Rage:

The aura of the light you shed when raging increases to a 30 foot radius (and thus also your blindsight). As a bonus action, you can force each creature of your choice within 30 feet to make a Con save (DC based on your Strength) or take 1d12 Radiant damage and be blinded until the end of your next turn (or take half damage only on a success). You can do this once per long rest, but you can expend a use of Rage to restore your use (no action required to restore the use).

    While Rage is a much easier resource to fling around now in 5.5, I don't think you can do this every turn. Mainly, I think the damage is kind of secondary - 6.5 average damage isn't much at level 14, though at least it's multiplied by how many targets you can hit. But the AoE blinding effect is actually quite nice, if you can get it.

Overall Thoughts:

    Yeah, ultimately I think there are some cool themes and a visual aesthetic to it that I like, but I just don't think there's enough going on with this subclass to get me excited to try playing it. Admittedly, I'm not much of a Barbarian player, but given the relative simplicity of the class, I really need a Barbarian subclass to give me some very cool tools to make up for that.

    I also think the power level here is overly conservative.