Path of the Guiding Spirit

While all barbarians harness an innate rage, some have been taught to temper and focus that fury by spirits of the past. A barbarian's mentor in these endeavors is their spirit guide, an ephemeral being summoned in physical form with the sole purpose of helping the barbarian reach their full potential.

Guiding spirits can be the ghosts of ancestors, souls of nature, or any number of things, but regardless of their origin and appearance they all aid their bonded companion in and out of battle.

Ephemeral Lessons

Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can harness your guiding spirit's power and wisdom to help others as well as yourself. You learn the guidance cantrip, and whenever you make an ability check with a skill with which you are proficient, roll a d4, and add the number rolled to the check’s total.

Additionally, you gain the ability to cast the enhance ability spell, without using a spell slot or material components. After you cast it in this way, you can’t use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest. 

Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells. 

 

Invoke Guiding Spirit

At 3rd level, you learn how to manifest your guiding spirit in physical form. The spirit is friendly to you and your companions and obeys your commands. See this creature’s game statistics in the Guiding Spirit stat block, which uses your proficiency bonus (PB) in several places. You determine the spirit’s appearance. It may appear as the phantom of your barbarian's ancestor, an ethereal beast, or a ghostly force of nature.

In combat, the spirit shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but the only action it takes on its turn is the Dodge action, unless you take a bonus action on your turn to command it to take another action. That action can be one in its stat block or some other action. If you are incapacitated, the spirit can take any action of its choice, not just Dodge. You can command the spirit as part of the same bonus action used to enter a rage; when you do so, the spirit can attack twice if it takes the attack action before the end of its next turn.

If the spirit dies, you can summon a new one after a long rest or by expending one of your rages as an action. When you summon your spirit, it appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you. If you already have a spirit from this feature, it vanishes when the new spirit appears. The spirit also vanishes if you die. 

 

 

Tandem Soul

When you reach 6th level, your guiding spirit has grown strong enough to manifest new powers: the spirit gains a flying speed equal to its walking speed and can hover. It also gains blindsight out to a range of 10 feet, allowing it to effectively see anything that isn't behind total cover, even if the spirit is blinded or in darkness. The spirit can see an invisible creature within that range, unless the creature successfully hides.

Additionally, as an action while you are within 1 mile of the spirit, you can see through the spirit's eyes and hear what it hears, gaining the benefits of any special senses that the spirit has. While perceiving through the spirit’s senses, you can communicate telepathically with it, and you are blinded and deafened to your own surroundings. This effect lasts for 1 hour or until you lose concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell).

 

Spirit of Rage

By 10th level, your connection with your guiding spirit has reached new depths, with each of you able to draw strength from the other. Your guiding spirit's attacks now deal additional damage equal to your bonus rage damage.

Additionally, if a creature reduces your guiding spirit to 0 hit points, you have advantage on all attacks against that creature for the next 24 hours. Once per turn, when you make a melee weapon attack using Strength against that creature, you gain a bonus to the damage roll equal to your proficiency bonus.

 

Guided Fury

When you reach 14th level, you and your guiding spirit have become two parts of a greater force, working in tandem to tear down your enemies. As a bonus action when you and your guiding spirit are both within 5 feet of a creature, you can direct the spirit in a coordinated strike. When you do so, the spirit helps you overwhelm that creature while also imbuing your strikes with a supernatural power. Until the end of your turn, your weapon attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20 and deal an additional 2d8 force damage on a hit. Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.