D&D's Barbarian Path of the Storm Herald in Xanathar's Guide to Everything

D&D's Barbarian Path of the Storm Herald in Xanathar's Guide to Everything

Todd Kenreck: The Barbarian Storm Herald gets their power from whatever storm they want to, depending on the situation. I talked to Mike Mearls about this new subclass in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

 

 

Mike Mearls: The Storm Herald represents the idea that you have a barbarian who's more in tune to the primal world, the natural world, that when they rage it's not just that the barbarian's transforming, the barbarian's transforming in the world around them. The idea being that you would tune to a type of environment, the type of storm you exhibit and when you rage the storm erupts around you and it creates an effect around you. The ancestral guardian has an effect around the barbarian but it's more defensive. The Storm Herald is more offensive. The Storm Herald uses it to mess up his enemies. The idea behind it is something that's a bit more overtly magical and more overtly primal. It's also got a bit of the flavor of the warden character class in fourth edition. Was always one of my favorite classes. I like the transformative element of it. This is taking this little bit of an idea that this idea that you're affecting the environment around and transforming it a bit but without actually transforming yourself.

That's one thing where the didn't want to go so far to actually have the barbarian physically transforming because felt unnecessary, you're already raging so you already have these benefits. Most of them are like, oh, you're going to transform to this elemental creature that's stronger and tougher, okay, you already get that when you rage. Then the idea was, what if you're more affecting the environment around you? It's a bit more supernatural and again, this is something you'll see, I brought up with all the barbarians we've talked about so far, this idea that at least with this book and I'm sure the next time when we expand the barbarian, we'll want to use a different viewpoint because we don't want to get boring and keep doing the same thing. But hitting that tone of barbarian as the opposite of the paladin conceptually.

In terms of thinking about how they are, they're more primal, they're more ferocious, they're more I don't have a set of beliefs, I just have a set of instincts. Really saying, here's a barbarian who's really one with the land and then carries the land with them wherever they go and uses it against their enemies. I could really picture this barbarian being someone who might work at being almost like tightly in league with druids. The idea of the druids with being in the connection to the land and these might be the warriors. If you had a faction in your campaign that was very druidic in nature that was the idea. Okay, there are elite warrior rather than being a knight or you could play a paladin, the nature paladin but this being something that's a bit more primal, a bit more barbaric, obviously it's barbarian class. Getting that idea of the champion of nature, the storm rests with them and goes with them and they turn nature against their enemies.

If you like playing a barbarian and you like that idea of the rage and that burst but you also like the idea of having something that's a little castery, you have a bit more finesse to it, you have a bit more area control. That's again, that's the other idea of if you've played a barbarians, the barbarians we've offered in the past, this gives you that feeling of a barbarian but it feels distinct mechanically. You are still transforming yourself, you're improving your defenses and all that and your attack but you're also getting something that's a bit more controlled in terms of affecting the people around you.

Todd Kenreck: The barbarian path of the Storm Herald is in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. You can purchase that book on dndbeyond.com by clicking on the link in this video description and earn yourself pre-order bonuses as well. I'm Todd Kenreck, thank you for watching.

 

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