Base Class: Barbarian
Barbarians on the Path of Unity are not mere warriors; they are avatars of unwavering loyalty and protectors of their chosen family. Blessed by the divine, these barbarians draw strength from the bonds they forge, becoming unstoppable forces on the battlefield. Their oath is one of solidarity, and their retribution against those who dare harm their kin is swift and merciless.
As a barbarian of Unity, your strength lies not only in your combat prowess but in the bonds you share with your allies. Your role on the battlefield is to protect, inspire, and avenge. You are the shield against the darkness, the light guiding your allies through the fray. Your path is one of sacrifice, for the safety of your kin is your paramount concern.
Celestial Bond
Upon entering a rage, you can forge a divine bond with one willing creature within 30 feet of yourself, bestowing upon them the benefits of the *warding bond* spell. This bond causes the target to gain a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws, and they have resistance to all damage. Also, each time they take damage, you take the same amount of damage.
You can use a bonus action to transfer this bond to a new target, ending its effects on the previous target. The bond lasts for the duration of your rage and does not require concentration.
This ability reflects your role as a protector, willing to share the burden of pain to shield your allies. It encapsulates the essence of the Path of the Divine Unity, emphasizing the deep connection and sacrificial nature of your protective instincts.
Divine Rites
Your connection to the divine grants you the ability to cast cleric ritual spells. You gain access to a number of cleric spells that can be cast as rituals. You can have one ritual prepared, and the maximum level of this ritual spell equals to your proficiency bonus.
You can prepare cleric ritual spells that are available for you to cast as rituals. Preparing a cleric ritual spell requires a short rest. Casting any of these spells as a ritual doesn’t expend a spell slot and takes an additional 10 minutes longer than the spell’s casting time.
This ability allows you to select and prepare a versatile array of divine rituals, enhancing your utility and support capabilities on and off the battlefield. Your profound bond with the divine enables you to channel powerful rites, offering protection, healing, and guidance to your allies.
Aura of Commeraderie
Your presence on the battlefield inspires unity and resilience. While raging, when your ally fails a saving throw or an ability check, you can use a reaction to grant allies within 30 feet a bonus to their roll equal to your wisdom modifier, a creature can profit from this aura only once each turn. This radius increases to 60 feet at 14th level.
Also due to your unwavering loyalty and indomitable will you gain proficiency in wisdom saving throws.
Avatar of Unity
You become an avatar of divine protection. When you enter a rage, you can choose to become an avatar of unity for 1 minute. For the duration, you gain the following benefits: You and your allies within 30 feet have advantage on all saving throws. Additionally when you hit an enemy with a melee weapon attack, you can invoke divine energy to deal an additional 2d6 radiant damage to the target and heal one ally you can see within 30 feet for the same amount. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
Divine Leader
At 14th level, your mastery of the Path of the Divine Unity reaches its zenith, granting you unparalleled divine protection and might.
Celestial Bond: When you use your Celestial Bond ability, your ally no longer take the halved damage that isn't transferred to you. Your sacrifice now shields your ally even from instant death, as you will die instead, showcasing the pinnacle of your protective prowess.
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Posted Feb 19, 2024Also there is a video from Pack Tactics covering lycanthropy, so if your DM allows it, you could not even need a magic item to get that variant human combo working. Just go Werebear, you get a boost to your strengh equal to 19, you have a 2d10 Bite attack and 2d8 Claw attack, +1 Ac and The Damage Imunity. Your DM might not allow it because of the damage immunity, but just tell the DM that you don't want it, you don't even need it as it overlaps with the rage resistances anyway and isn't useful against magical weapons so it is obsolete at higher levels.
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Posted Feb 4, 2024First reason for Celestial Bond: Barbarians should fill the role of the party tank but more often than not find their allies biting the dust before them, there is a number of reasons for that, mainly that it is just illogical to fight the raging barbarian that you know will probably resist almost all of the damage you deal anyway, it is much smarter to attack the barbarians squishy caster friend that is concentrating on some nasty spell like hypnotic pattern. So to combat this here is the easy and straightforward solution, just tank the damage directly don't let the enemies decide whom they want to focus, do it yourself.
Also please don't forget that damage resistances don't stack and note that this subclass is intentionally stronger. The abilities that are here are mostly designed to be more in-line with optimal abilities of other classes.
Second reason for Divine Rites: Barbarians lack role-playing utility and utility in general, to combat this there was totem warrior with two good ritual spells, and to enhance on this idea I came up with this. Essentially this gives you 13 diffrent rituals that you will gradually uncover as you level up, the great thing about this is that ritual spells don't clash with barbarian abilities as badly as regular spells which makes them easy to implement and use since rage will be long gone before you finish casting the ritual anyway.
Third reason for Aura of Commeraderie:
This is the ability that gives barbarian a hybrid of aura of protection and flash of genius. I'm well aware that aura of protection is a strong and defining feature of palladin hence I didn't copy it and toned it down massively by giving the feature a cost of a reaction. But you will notice that there is an intentional gap in the wording that makes it so the whole group profits from the bonus, but only if they have also failed the save, the intention here is to have the feature work against AOE and multi-target spells. Also about the wisdom save proficiency, there is Samurai and Gloomstalker who get it at level 7 so barbarian needs a subclass that gives it too. Also it sucks very much that most of the skill proficiencies you get from barbarian and primal knowledge are wisdom based and you can't speck into wisdom because you need all strengh, dex and Con to be effective in combat. So this also nudges you towards getting wisdom.
Forth reason for Avatar of Unity:
Nothing much here. Just a once per day nova ability. This is a great buff when you know that this is going to be the toughest fight of the day, but it works only if your allies are close enough. When dnd is played optimally everybody should be at range, but with the features of barbarian it is difficult to be effective at range so this feature is an additional push for the party to get close and personal to recieve this buff. In practice though you might still opt to stay at range since in most situations if you play your cards right you can just auto-win by using range properly. Don't forget that twilight sanctuary exists and it is a short rest recharge which makes you immune to frightened and charmed conditions(the two conditions a party is often very scared of(Hold person, Hypnotic, Monsters Frightening Presence and so on)) and give much better survivability to the party than 4d6 healing every round. In the same party it would be 4d6+40 temp hp at level 10 so this feature isn't as broken but still good.
Lastly Reason for Divine Leader:
This a Barbarian Capstone. It should be good and unique and enable some new mechanic and strategy to the game. Armor of Invulnerability and the Invulnerability spell exists so dealing with Invulnerable players isn't new or that challenging, especially since no matter what the barbarian is still taking damage.
The whole idea of this subclass is to make a barbarian that is integral to the party strategy and composition the same way most other classes are. It just sucks that with the features that Barbarians get their characters are more often than not just an additional hp sack that linearly bonks people.
Also there is a diffrent thing that this subclass solves and it is the ability score deficit of barbarian that needs all strengh, con and dex, since now for an optimized build you can go variant human and pick Resilient for Dexterity to take full advantage of your advantage on dex saves from Danger Sense and dump strengh, if you DM is willing to allow you Items that boost strengh like Gauntlets of Ogre Power(Uncommon) or the various giant belts.
But only if your DM allows such items. If not then you are out of luck since you will most probably have to dump dex and with it your armor class. You can still have 14 Ac with Half-Plate but it is a far cry from the 16 you'd have and having a negative modifier on a save you have advantage on is just brutal and ugly to look at.
Hope you enjoyed the breakdown. Have fun with the subclass and role-playing that one meme with the soldier that takes the hits for the little girl.