A shockingly good new Barbarian thunders off the pages of Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt. Check out the Lightning Vessel.
Of the seven new subclasses featured in Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt (Player Pack), my favorite might just be the Lightning Vessel Barbarian. I mean, yes, part of it is just how cool it is to have lightning powers that can impede your enemies while also doing big damage numbers. But this subclass also turns the Barbarian into more of a battlefield controller. They use lightning to pin enemies in place or bolt around the encounter wherever they’re needed.
Now, where it gets interesting is when you start to consider how balanced it is. And here’s where I feel compelled to point out that this is a third-party book (from MonkeyDM). It hasn’t been subjected to the same balancing/design process that WotC uses for its own book. This isn’t inherently bad. By no means am I trying to suggest that 3rd-party books don’t get exhaustively playtested and balanced (sometimes more so than WotC) – just that the tuning might be a little different than what you’re used to if you’ve only ever played Vanilla D&D.
All that to say it’s probably worth considering how this subclass might affect your campaign if you bring it in. You’ll definitely want to talk to your DM before setting your heart on this. That said, let’s check it out and see why the Lightning Vessel Barbarian is so electrifying.
Lightning Vessel Barbarian – Electricity Is All The Rage
As you might expect from a subclass called the Lightning Vessel Barbarian, picking this option turns your Barbarian into a vessel for some sort of lightning. It does exactly what it says it does, starting right away at level 3 with the feature Galvanic Heart.
Leaving aside the implication that this means Luigi Galvani is somehow canon in the world of Steinhardt’s Guide, this feature is one half of the “you do lightning stuff” part of the subclass. It gives you Resistance to Lightning Damage (and if you already have Lightning Resistance, you get extra Lightning Resistance), as well as the concept of Vessel Damage, which is a number of d4s equal to your Rage Damage.
How does that get used? The other level 3 feature, Unbound Storm, is a prime example. While you’re Raging, you can unleash the lightning that flows through you in one of three different ways. You can electrify your weapon as a Bonus Action, dealing your Vessel Damage (+ normal Rage Damage) as additional damage when you hit, and you can ensnare your target, causing them to save or take damage (and stop moving) if they move more than 10 feet.
You can also hit an enemy and then call down lightning to strike them (as a Bonus Action), dealing your Vessel Damage to the creature and everyone else in a 10-foot emanation from your target, including you. Fortunately anyone who saves takes no damage. And you have Advantage on the saving throw, so hopefully you don’t lightning yourself to 0 hp. Because for all that this is a damage-dealing Barbarian, it gains no extra resilience.
Finally, you gain the ability to move half your speed as a Bonus Action, dealing your Vessel Damage to one creature that you end your move next to. No saves. No rolls. It’s real strong. This is sort of tempered by the fact that all of these are Bonus Actions, and so you won’t be doing anything extra fun the turn that you Rage, which is enough to turn some Barbarian players off of the whole thing.
It’d be a shame though, because starting at level 6, with the Roaring Crash feature, you gain the ability to start doing lightning things the turn you Rage. In fact, it makes going into a Rage extremely dramatic. Not only do you get all the Rage bonuses, but you also can leap up to 30 feet as part of entering your Rage, dealing a pile of d4s to creatures within a 10 foot emanation of wherever you land.
You can even land on a creature, pushing them away or knocking them prone. And your damage and distance leapt scales with your Barbarian level, maxing out at a leap of 90 feet at Barbarian level 14. This is extremely good, and where you can start to see the higher tuning that these designers are going for.
At level 10, Lightning Reflexes lets you add your Constitution modifier as a bonus to any Dexterity check. If that’s all it did, it would be huge. This means adding your Con to Stealth Checks and Acrobatics Checks, sure, but Initiative is a Dexterity Check, so it’s a huge bonus there, too. But then on top of that, while you’re Raging, you can use Lightning Step once per turn without taking a Bonus Action.
Again this illustrates how this subclass might be overtuned compared to other Barbarian subclasses. I’m saying this, not as a judgement, because I really like it and think more things should just let you do cool stuff instead of paying a resource for it, especially as you level up – but your mileage may vary.
At level 14, the subclass caps off with Electric Beast, which now lets you add your Con modifier to your Vessel Damage. And it upgrades each of the options from the level 3 Unbound Storm feature. All in all, simple and straightforward. This subclass is sure to be a crowd pleaser.
Find the Lightning Vessel and six other subclasses in the Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt Player Pack
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Source: Bell of Lost Souls
