With very little context no-one can really offer any significant reasoning for either choice. What do you want to do with the barbarian? How do you envisage the character? Tall? Short? Male? Female? Rough? Sophisticated? What's the campaign you'll be playing in? What interests you about the totem and storm barbarians?
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
My advice will always be to follow the path that tells the best story of your character. I realize not everyone plays this way and prefer to build just for fun combat mechanics, but I’d prefer anyone playing with me to be able to tell me what in this barb's life sent him down the path he’s on. Looking at both these subclasses, it looks like you may have a backstory that could send him down either way just as easily. Both are good fits for barbs that spent a lot of time around nature magic, but gave into their rage too much to craft it into reliable spellcasting skills.
Totem gives more options for personalization. Maybe he had a horse growing up that he loved and when a gang killed it for sport, you flew into your first rage and killed them all, and now your spirit animal is a horse (elk on the chart). However, the effects of storm heraldry are fun to narrate and are all active when raging, which is what barbs are all about. “So, my eyes start arcing with blue electricity and I go into a rage. And lightning flies at the yeti. He needs to roll a dex save or take...5 lightning damage. Then I follow my lightning with an overhead slam with my greataxe.”
So no vote from me. Just advice to pick the one that tells the best story with your character.
Agree with the above post. Need to pick what compliments your characters story and to add flavour (Needs to be fun to play or what's the point?)
My current character is a totem warrior barbarian and is so fun to play and can definitely hold his own on the battlefield. I took totem warrior of the bear as the resistance bonuses when you are in rage allow you to take shed loads of damage and just keep hitting. Also being able to choose different totem spirits as you level up really open up the options of how you play and how your character deals with situations.
Never played as a storm herald but I love the idea of it and the abilities look great and far different to the other barbarian sub classes so it does really fall on how you want to play and what your characters backstory is.
Storm herald desert and tundra can be a liability as the rage AoE hits all creatures, so your friends are hit, cant heal you with touch spells without wounding themselves, you kill non combatants and hostages. It may mean zealot is better for your subclass.
Totem is resistant to just about everything in a rage which is great to mitigate pervasive spell attacks, poison and weirdly necrotic undead. It has a few specific great choice options - wolf totem granting advantage to all allies your in melee with is great in a weapon attack heavy party.
Currently playing a Storm Herald Barbarian in a campaign. Mostly for story reasons he comes from an island where they essentially worshiped the storm, and thus uses the Sea Storm Aura. But other than zapping people with every bonus action, Storm Herald doesn't add much even at higher levels (currently level 5). Still having fun playing the character and roleplaying the activating of the Storm Aura.
It really is based on how you want to play, whether it is combat focused or roleplay I think Storm Herald would work for both.
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As the title says, first time playing a barbarian and I'd love some advice on which path to follow once I hit level 3! TIA!
With very little context no-one can really offer any significant reasoning for either choice. What do you want to do with the barbarian? How do you envisage the character? Tall? Short? Male? Female? Rough? Sophisticated? What's the campaign you'll be playing in? What interests you about the totem and storm barbarians?
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
I've never played (or considered playing) barbarian, but totem of the bear is popular because of how tanky it is.
My advice will always be to follow the path that tells the best story of your character. I realize not everyone plays this way and prefer to build just for fun combat mechanics, but I’d prefer anyone playing with me to be able to tell me what in this barb's life sent him down the path he’s on. Looking at both these subclasses, it looks like you may have a backstory that could send him down either way just as easily. Both are good fits for barbs that spent a lot of time around nature magic, but gave into their rage too much to craft it into reliable spellcasting skills.
Totem gives more options for personalization. Maybe he had a horse growing up that he loved and when a gang killed it for sport, you flew into your first rage and killed them all, and now your spirit animal is a horse (elk on the chart). However, the effects of storm heraldry are fun to narrate and are all active when raging, which is what barbs are all about. “So, my eyes start arcing with blue electricity and I go into a rage. And lightning flies at the yeti. He needs to roll a dex save or take...5 lightning damage. Then I follow my lightning with an overhead slam with my greataxe.”
So no vote from me. Just advice to pick the one that tells the best story with your character.
Agree with the above post. Need to pick what compliments your characters story and to add flavour (Needs to be fun to play or what's the point?)
My current character is a totem warrior barbarian and is so fun to play and can definitely hold his own on the battlefield. I took totem warrior of the bear as the resistance bonuses when you are in rage allow you to take shed loads of damage and just keep hitting. Also being able to choose different totem spirits as you level up really open up the options of how you play and how your character deals with situations.
Never played as a storm herald but I love the idea of it and the abilities look great and far different to the other barbarian sub classes so it does really fall on how you want to play and what your characters backstory is.
My vote is totem warrior but that is very biased
Storm herald desert and tundra can be a liability as the rage AoE hits all creatures, so your friends are hit, cant heal you with touch spells without wounding themselves, you kill non combatants and hostages. It may mean zealot is better for your subclass.
Totem is resistant to just about everything in a rage which is great to mitigate pervasive spell attacks, poison and weirdly necrotic undead. It has a few specific great choice options - wolf totem granting advantage to all allies your in melee with is great in a weapon attack heavy party.
Whatever you pick, enjoy playing.
Totem Warrior is better mechanically, but to you, which one sounds more fun to play?
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Currently playing a Storm Herald Barbarian in a campaign. Mostly for story reasons he comes from an island where they essentially worshiped the storm, and thus uses the Sea Storm Aura. But other than zapping people with every bonus action, Storm Herald doesn't add much even at higher levels (currently level 5). Still having fun playing the character and roleplaying the activating of the Storm Aura.
It really is based on how you want to play, whether it is combat focused or roleplay I think Storm Herald would work for both.