Todd Kenreck: The Barbarian Path of the Ancestral Guardian gets their power from their ancestors to protect their tribe, and their D&D group. I talked to Mike Mearls about this latest subclass in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

Mike Mearls: A lot of people think that the nature paladin is the ranger. I've never seen it that way. You might say you could build the ranger similar to a paladin since take the mechanical concept or mechanical structure of it. But I think the ranger is very much like, I am between civilization and the wild. I know of serve both.

To me, the paladin of the wild is the Barbarian. The Barbarian is the person who, like a paladin says, "I have an oath and I become this oath and I represent it." The Barbarian says, "I am the wild. I rage. This is what I do."

And so, with this idea of, okay, you are the wilderness barbarian, what does that mean? And so the ancestral guardian takes that concept and says, "Okay, you're the protector of the tribe." You are part of the tribe, and your rage which you tap into is this idea that the ancestral spirits of the land, of your tribe, watch over you. And they pick you as a barbarian, as this champion to be their vessel. And so, when the tribe's threatened, you rage and call upon the spirits of the past to arise and protect the tribe.

It's very much based on this idea that you think generationally when you have kids, you want to protect your kids and grandparents want to protect their children and their grandchildren. And so, this is the idea in a world of magic like D&D, the spirits of those ancestors can transcend the boundary of death and return to the world and protect the tribe, protect their descendants, their children.

So that's really what this barbarian's about. It's about protecting others. It's about controlling the enemy, keeping them at bay, forcing them to face the elemental fury of the barbarian. And that's where I really think the barbarian as nature paladin comes in. That it's nature's raw fury. It's just strength. It's power. It's the storm and you'll see when we talk about some of the other paladin, I'm sorry, barbarian options, they tie into that idea of elemental fury. Elemental, like little "e" elemental, not like air of elemental, but aspects of nature that you can't control.

As a Blue Oyster Cult saying in the sun Godzilla. Right? That nature makes a mockery of man's plans. Right? I'm not going to sing the song. You don't want to hear me sing. But, that's always been a favorite song of mine in part because as a kid I loved Godzilla, but in part also because I thought it's kind of a cool concept of nature ... I'm not going to sing the song, right? So, I keep almost singing it, but you don't want to hear me sing.

But, nature points out the folly of men. And that was the idea behind some of the abilities, which aim more toward abilities that have to do with divination, which normally you would not think a barbarian being someone who can use divination style magic. But, if you can have this idea that you have these ancestral spirits that are guarding you, you know, protecting you, that might be something they do, is they can look beyond the horizon and say, "Here's what's coming. There's trouble coming. We see it. Call upon us to look upon it." The giants are coming. Well, how do you know? Well, the spirits told me, I communed with the spirits and they saw the Hill Giants are coming down and moving through the forest to attack us. We nee to flee or whatever it is. We need to be ready to fight.

So, to me I really love that mechanic because it's just not something you'd expect a barbarian to do. But when you put it in the context and to me that's a sign of a good subclass option within a class. Where it's doing something you would never expect that class to do, but when you look at it from the context of the subclass, it makes sense and that subclass is a natural outgrowth of that class's core concept.

Todd Kenreck: You can find the Barbarian Path of the Ancestral Guardian in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. That book is available for purchase on D&D Beyond.com and if you click in the link in this video description, you can earn pre-order bonuses as well. I'm Todd Kenreck. Thanks for watching.