Three new villainous options are out for playtest, and we’re going through them all, starting with the new Barbarian Path of Lament.
Three new Villainous Options dropped for playtest late last week. Each one has a dark new take on one of D&D’s classic classes. Are these gearing up for a new Book of Vile Darkness or the like? We don’t know for sure. But what we do know is that these are a little bit edgier than the usual subclass.
Some are a little more explicitly villainous than others. But each of the new Villainous Subclasses has its own darker side to explore. In the case of the Barbarian Path of Lament, it’s a look at how sorrow can turn to unbridled rage. Unprocessed grief and unhealed wounds can often translate into trauma inflicted upon others as the grief-stricken lashes out in anger.
This is a class inspired by the Undead. Specifically Banshees, as you’ll see from the Barbarian’s various abilities. In fact, you could think of this as the Undead-adjacent Barbarian, and you wouldn’t be too far off. This is a subclass all about losing yourself to your sorrow and your rage and gaining terrifying new abilities as a result. How does it actually hold up? Let’s take a look.
The Barbarian Path of Lament – aka The Banshee Barbarian
This subclass is an interesting one. As far as Villainous Options go, it does seem designed to make you a wellspring of unrelenting grief and rage. It also seems weirdly designed at killing low-level NPCs like your average townfolks (or any other creature with around 13 or fewer hit points). All on account of how sorrowful you can wail.
Seriously. The first and perhaps foremost of the Barbarian Path of Lament’s features is Banshee’s Wail. This is an ability you can use whenever you enter a Rage or as a Bonus Action any time your Rage is active. You let out a “doleful wail” that can deal damage to any creature of your choice within a 30-foot emanation of you (which is a huge radius on a typical encounter map).
If creatures fail their save, they take Psychic damage and are Deafened for a minute. The damage you deal scales according to your Rage Bonus Damage. You roll your bonus Rage Damage in d12s, which for most characters will be 2d12 (though it will eventually scale up to 6d12). Of course, this is a limited-use feature.
You can only unleash your Banshee’s Wail up to your Constitution modifier times per day (sort of). You regain all uses on a Long Rest. But you can also spend a use of your Rage to regain all uses – which offers up an interesting choice for Barbarians on the Path of Lament. Do you save your Rage to be a better Barbarian later, or spend it to deal even more wail damage to multiple creatures.
Either way, the Banshee Wail is going to carry you through most of the subclass. Most of your features are going to revolve around it – but, if you like the idea of a Barbarian that can do an AoE attack as a Bonus Action (which is pretty strong) then that kind of plays into the whole idea of it.
Lamentations At Higher Levels
At higher levels, the Barbarian Path of Lament leans more into the undead nature. You gain Commune with the Dead at 6th level, which is a nice little ribbon feature that lets you cast Speak With Dead as a Ritual Spell.
You also get Horrifying Strike at level 6, which sets you up for bigger growth later. This ability lets you decide to attempt to horrify a creature you hit with a Strength-based melee attack whenever you are Raging. If they fail a Wisdom save, they become Frightened until the start of your next turn – a nice little combat debuff that doesn’t cost you extra resources.
At level 10, Otherworldly Anguish makes you even more of a Banshee. This is an upgrade to your Banshee’s Wail, allowing it to kill any creature that has twice your Barbarian level or fewer hit points (so 20 or fewer at 10th level). It’s nice, but at that point, anything you’re fighting that was at 20 hp is already dead in a single hit anyway. This feature also makes you immune to being possessed, and gives you Resistance to Cold and Necrotic Damage while raging.
The whole subclass caps off at level 14 with Sorrow Form. Whenever you activate your Rage, you can decide that you become a bastion of undeath and sorrow (once per Long Rest). When you do so, you gain several powerful benefits, including changing your creature type to be Undead. You also gain Immunity to being Charmed and Frightened, and you cannot gain Exhaustion levels. Finally, you gain a Life-Draining Strike, that deals an extra 2d10 points of Necrotic damage to any creature that becomes Frightened by your Horrifying Strike, healing you for the extra damage dealt. It’s a nice once-per-Long-Rest battle transformation that feels like Rage+.
All in all, not a bad subclass at all. It’s a little weaker against a single target than your typical Barbarian. And I think some players might chafe against the limited resource recharged by a different limited resource of the Banshee Wail, but, it is exciting to see WotC getting a little weird with the design.
Of course, WotC wants to know what YOU think – so be sure to tell them by taking the Villainous Options 2 survey on April 30th!
Don’t Miss:
Read more at this site