Path of the Ancestral Guardian 5e: Barbarian Subclass Review

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobld

The fantasy Path of the Ancestral Guardian presents is engaging. You’re a warrior deeply connected to your lineage, a tribal force empowered by your ancestors to protect others and fight in glorious battle. Mechanically, this option can really struggle to perform outside of specific tables, and doesn’t offer much even at said tables that you can’t get from other options.

3rd Level: Ancestral Protectors

Ancestral Protectors reads well enough. Path of the Totem Warrior’s 14th level feature for Bear is nearly this exact text, but it automatically affects everything within 5 feet of you, where Ancestral Protectors only affects the first creature you hit on your turn, meaning if you miss, this does nothing. The only penalty it receives then is on attacks against another creature other than you, meaning it’s simply incentivized to attack you instead. This is kind of like a tank’s “Taunt” ability from an MMO, but not only is it not guaranteed to function even if you’re in the right composition, if you’re one of two or fewer frontline characters, this can simply have no effect at all. If you’re the only melee fighter, or with another skirmisher style frontline character who isn’t planning on getting attacked anyway, this can feel impossible to get any use out of. It does work with thrown weapons, making it a way to goad creatures further away from you, which is neat. That’s not enough to make this feel at all like you’re leveraging Ancestral Protectors. They’re 100% fluff, with little spiritual magic actually happening. This feels like a taunt, and not much else.

6th Level: Spirit Shield

Spirit Shield does start to feel more like a spiritual guardian, offering a great reusable reaction against anything with 30 feet of you. Reducing 2d6 damage that scales with your subclass levels is genuinely great, and actually starts to deliver on the fantasy the subclass sells you on when you pick it up. It has unlimited uses, so long as you’re raging, and easily fits at a lot more tables than Protectors tends to. I think Spirit Shield is the primary reason to consider this path.

10th Level: Consult the Spirits

Consult the Spirits gives you a short rest cast of either Augury or Clairvoyance that share a “spell slot”. Of the two, Clairvoyance seems like the standout option as it creates an invisible sensor within a mile of you that nicely meets the theme of consulting ancestral spirits by literally having them snoop and provide you a connection to them to observe through their eyes. As far as flavor goes, this is a home run.

Augury can be fine, but it isn’t going to necessarily be that reliable, nor that helpful. It basically acts as a way to ask the DM if the plan is a good or bad idea, which will range in actual utility table to table.

It also helps that any additional spell options for martial characters tend to feel like a massive bump. The short rest Clairvoyance casts sets you up to be a major element of surveillance and scouting, which can feel nice. The only real problem is it comes a bit too late, as Clairvoyance is available on four full-casters that can do this five levels earlier. If you have a character in the party with a familiar, Clairvoyance can feel incredibly lackluster. If not, though, adding this tool to the party can be majorly beneficial.

14th Level: Vengeful Ancestors

Vengeful Ancestors reflects damage absorbed with Spirit Shield, which is a pretty massive upgrade. You’ll regularly be getting a free 8d6 damage swing every turn in team hit points with this. Not particularly complicated. It does tend to continue to funnel enemies to attack you, though, and outside the base class, this option provides you zero additional self-survival tools. Still, in fights where the DM is willing to hit multiple allies alongside you, Vengeful Ancestors can hit like a bus.

All Together

Ancestral Guardian has a bit of an identity crisis that can lead to it feeling feast or famine. If you’re against several or fewer large entities that prioritize killing you while stunning out or using other status effects on your allies, Ancestral Protectors, Spirit Shield, and Vengeful Ancestors all do nothing. If you’re further than 30 feet away from your party, all three of these features have no text. If you do stick to your party, the enemies are highly encouraged to attack you, and only more so encouraged as you get more levels in this class, making it more and more likely that your features won’t actually get to protect anybody because they’ve already moved their attack to you.

Tactical DMs looking to push your party to its hardest get to make some fun decisions between threatening allied concentration effects at the cost of suffering the consequences of your abilities, but that’s entirely out of your hands. You aren’t getting to make interesting decisions, but instead offer more interesting decisions to the DM. In situations where you have some full-caster allies doing some busted nonsense with concentration effects, this supports them in a way that doesn’t really feel like a full character and more like an extra layer of protection for some other character’s spells. A lot of the time, if this option is working as it's intended, you’re not going to get to use most of your abilities most rounds, as you’ll successfully funnel enemy fire to you.

Many fights still will give you a bit of both; some enemies will strike out at nearby allies, giving you opportunities to use Spirit Shield, Ancestral Protectors, and Vengeful Ancestors. Getting to choose what creature you’re putting your Protectors against is somewhat of an interesting decision, and highly encourages thrown weapon options alongside your main means of melee combat. It might play better than it looks, but I can imagine a lot of players running into some frustrations when the DM begins to prioritize throwing all their abilities at them to avoid their penalties before going after their allies, which leaves your abilities sitting on the shelf, not doing anything. It can be rewarding and fun to play, but your mileage is definitely going to vary.

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