Path of the Harbinger

The Path of the Harbinger presents Barbarians with abilities in spellcasting and control over the energies of life as a means to aid them in destroying creatures who would attempt to avoid their destinies or the will of the fates.

Spellcasting

Level 3
Spellcasting
Your connection with the forces that govern life and death have taught you to focus the explosive rage that builds inside you and as a result you have gained the ability to cast spells. To observers, you don’t appear to be casting spells in a conventional way; you look as if the spell itself were erupting from you.

See Spells Rules for the general rules of spellcasting and the Spells Listing for the cleric spell list.

(Unnatural connections- The inability to cast or concentrate on spells while raging is a severe limitation that prevents most barbarians from ever pursuing such arcane or divine abilities. When describing your spellcasting, think about how you’re channeling your inner rage to perform the spell effect. If you cast toll the dead, perhaps you're beating the holy symbol on your shield to announce the arrival of your enemies death or you could be chanting an ancient dirge used in the funerals of your people. When you cast shield of faith, you might shout a battle cry at one of your allies that bolsters their resolve in combat, granting them supernatural courage to endure. The effect of the spell is the same as for a spellcaster of any other class, but your method of spellcasting is special.

The same principle applies when you learn new spells. As a barbarian, you don’t study a spellbook or pray to a God to learn your spells. Instead, you urge terrifying forces to imbue you with the knowledge of life altering magics to aid you in putting to rest those avoiding death. If you replace inflict wounds with detect evil and good, it may be too help you track down a creature that is running from their fate.

Such details don’t limit you in any way or provide you with any benefit beyond the spell’s effects. You don’t have to justify how you’re learning or casting your spells. But describing your spellcasting creatively is a fun way to distinguish yourself from other spellcasters)

Cantrips

You learn two cantrips of your choice from the cleric spell list. You learn an additional cleric cantrip of your choice at 10th level.

Spell Slots

The Path of the Harbinger Spellcasting table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your cleric spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

For example, if you know the 1st-level spell inflict wounds and have a 1st-level and a 2nd-level spell slot available, you can cast inflict wounds using either slot.

Spells Known of 1st-Level and Higher

You know three 1st-level Cleric spells of your choice. Two of which you must choose from the abjuration and necromancy spells on the cleric spell list.

The Spells Known column of the Path of the Harbinger Spellcasting table shows when you learn more cleric spells of 1st level or higher. Each of these spells must be an abjuration or necromancy spell of your choice, and must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 7th level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level.

The spells you learn at 8th, 14th, and 20th level can come from any school of magic.

Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one of the Cleric spells you know with another spell of your choice from the Cleric spell list. The new spell must be of a level for which you have spell slots, and it must be an abjuration or necromancy spell unless you’re replacing the spell you gained at 3rd, 8th, 14th, or 20th level from any school of magic.

Spellcasting Ability

Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your cleric spells. The power of your spells comes from focusing your rage. You use your wisdom whenever a cleric spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a cleric spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier

Spellcasting Focus
You can use a holy symbol (see the Adventuring Gear section) as a spellcasting focus for your cleric spells.

Death mark

At 3rd level, you gain the ability to mark someone for death. When you enter a rage, as part of the same bonus action, choose one creature you can see within 30 feet of you. The target is marked for 1 minute. The death mark ends early if your rage ends, you die, or you become incapacitated. Until the death mark ends, the following effects take place.

Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 Necrotic damage to the death marked creature when you hit it with a melee weapon attack.

If the target dies, you can death mark a different creature you can see within 30 feet on your next turn, no action required.

This features extra damage increases when you reach certain levels in this class: to 1d8 at 6th level, 1d10 at 10th level and 1d12 at 14th level.

Harbinger's servant

Starting at 6th level, your connection to the life force that flows through creatures deepens and you learn how to raise an undead servant. As an action, you can expend one use of your rage and touch a pile of bones or the corpse of a medium or small creature. You feed your rage into the target, granting it a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature under your control. The target becomes a skeleton if you touch bones or a zombie if you touch a corpse. (The creature's game statistics can be found in the Monster Manual)

The undead creature is under your control for 24 hours, as if under the effect of the Animate Dead spell. After 24 hours, it stops obeying any commands you've given it and becomes hostile towards you. The magic of this ability is powerful but unstable, therefore you cannot use this ability or any other (such as the animate dead spell) to reassert control over the undead creature.

 

Death is not the end

At 10th level, you gain the ability to converse with those you've introduced to death by casting the speak with dead spell. You do so without using a spell slot or material components. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability. When you cast speak with dead in this way, the corpse treats you as an ally in regards to its answers.

After you cast the spell in this way, you can't use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Harbinger's will

Starting at 14th level, while your raging, any undead creatures under your control gain the following benefits-

The undead creatures have advantage on weapon attack rolls they make against a creature you have death marked.

The undead creatures gain a bonus to their damage rolls equal to your rage damage bonus.

The undead creature's hit point maximum is increased by an amount equal to half your barbarian level.