D&D: Do Not Sleep On The New ‘Spiritual Guardian Barbarian’ Playtest
Barbarians have a potent new playtest subclass, the Path of the Spiritual Guardian. With a new name and a big buff, it feels real good!
The latest Unearthed Arcana, the Subclasses Update, is a feast for Barbarians. It has two subclasses, both feel good, but today, especially, we’re looking at the new ‘Path of the Spiritual Guardian’ playtest. This subclass is an updated version of the Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian out of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. This was a subclass focused on protecting other party members by summoning up protective spirits whenever they Rage.
The newly revamped version, the Path of the Spiritual Guardian, is still all about helping your party members, but there’s a lot of flexibility at play with the new kit. Including the option to protect your allies with reduced damage, deal extra damage, or make your enemies have disadvantage on attacks. And you can spread the love around. Let’s dive in!
Barbarian: Path of the Spiritual Guardian – Protect Your Enemies But Also Still Deal A Bunch Of Damage
The Path of the Spiritual Guardian is still very much the “protect your allies” Barbarian. That fundamental fact hasn’t changed – but now it has the Path of the World Tree to compete with. And between the two, it’s an interesting split. The Ancestral Guardian, as it once existed, was much more focused on locking down one guy.
But the Spiritual Barbarian is more about making lots of attacks. In fact, this may be one to reach for if you want to play a dual-wielding Barbarian. It all comes down to the revamped core identity, which is serving as a conduit for spirits – spirits of nature, spirits of the element, spirits of departed ancestors; whatever the case, they grant you power.
And this power is right there at the start of the subclass, too. It’s something I really appreciate about the designs of subclasses in D&D 5.5E: they give you your identity right away. Or at least, the good ones do. In the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian playtest, this comes in the form of the level 3 feature Spiritual Protectors.
When you go into a Rage, you summon spectral warriors to your aid. You decide what they look like, and pick from three different effects whenever you hit a creature with a weapon or Unarmed Strike. You can either give whoever you hit Disadvantage against targets other than you, make whoever you hit deal half damage (grant their targets resistance) on their next attack roll, or just straight up deal an extra 1d6 of Acid, Cold, Fire, Force, Lightning, or Thunder damage. Every last one of these options is a winner.
Especially since it’s not limited to one enemy per turn. You can give multiple enemies disadvantage or just deal a ton of damage. It’s a powerful enough effect that the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian doesn’t have any little ribbon feature either. That’s all you get, but what an effect – especially since the old version only let you give disadvantage/half damage to one enemy, and did no extra damage.
High (Level) Spirits For This New Barbarian Subclass
In fact, the whole subclass is pretty solid throughout. There’s one that’s a little bit of a dud, but that’s it. At level 6, the Spirit Shield feature brings the other part of a Spiritual Guardian Barbarian’s toolkit online in the playtest. This feature lets you use your Reaction to reduce the damage that a creature would otherwise take. You can only pick someone within 30 feet of you, and you have to see them.
But now, you can shield them from damage with more efficacy. You reduce the incoming damage by a number of d6s equal to your bonus Rage Damage. For reference, at 6th level, this is 3d6 off of an incoming attack. Couple that with the feature that lets you halve an enemy’s damage, and you can potentially negate an attack’s damage entirely.
At 10th level, you’ll gain Consult the Spirits. This feature is completely unchanged from the Xanathar’s version. You still can just cast Augury or Clairvoyance, and you still have to use Wisdom which makes it less fun, especially since this Barbarian already wants to be focusing on making as many attacks as possible.
Finally, at level 14, you become the ultimate instrument of spiritual power. Which is to say you gain Vengeful Spirits which is quite possibly one of my favorite new features. Whenever you make a melee weapon attack as part of the Attack action and roll a natural 18-20, you get a free extra weapon attack as part of the action. Which is huge. This is a leap in power for the Spiritual Guardian Barbarian in the playtest.
It’s not only a ton of fun, it’s a huge improvement over the old feature. What used to be Vengeful Ancestors only let you deal damage with your Spirit Shield feature. Which was not bad, but I think players will have much more fun making multiple attack rolls.
Keep an eye out for the Unearthed Arcana survey, opening November 6th!
