Path of the Storm Herald 5e: Barbarian Subclass Review

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobld

Storm Heralds are the “aura” barbarians with their entire identity centering around creating space around them that threatens enemies. They have some modality, work great for delivering a variety of elemental or environmental based character fantasies, and offer the player a unique pool of tools to you out of combat. Want to feel like a raging inferno or a harbinger of an arctic god? Storm Herald is the pick for you.

3rd Level: Storm Aura

Storm Aura is the entirety of this path. It has some odd little quirks, but usually will feel pretty potent. You pick between Desert, Sean, and Tundra when you get this, and have the ability to switch whenever you gain a level making them a bit finicky to play with from a flexibility perspective. All three are good enough on their own that you’re not particularly bummed out if you get stuck on one for a few sessions and want to swap, but I just really do wish you could swap them on long rest, or even just when you rage.

Another pain point is the Con based save DC; barbarians really, really, REALLY want high Strength and Dexterity scores for their hit and AC. Con is normally the second or third ability score you’re improving. This makes me lean more towards the auras that don’t force saves so I don’t have to sink ability score improvements into improving my save DCs, but it isn’t the worst thing ever to get a 16-18 Con on your average barbarian anyway, just not where I want to be, especially in the early to mid tiers.

Still, getting a reusable, solid bonus action every turn can be great. It definitely encourages you to not seek out other bonus action options like off-hand attacks or racial dashes on goblins.

The three auras each scale with your barbarian level, making this a lot more compelling to stick with.

Desert deals flat damage to all other creatures (indiscriminately) that almost equals your proficiency bonus with just a few levels where it's off.

Sea gives you a save or 1d6 lightning damage, easily the worst of these options, especially given that it scales less frequently, up to just 4d6 at 20th level which isn’t all that impressive. Still, a bonus action for half of a d6 damage isn’t the end of the world, and when it scales up it’ll feel like a bonus action attack roll that can’t really miss.

Tundra is the coolest option of the bunch to me, as it gives creatures of your choice (which can include you) bonus Temporary hit points that scale like Desert does. Getting to just bump up everyone’s survivability every round is pretty sweet, and flexible enough that you can work in some other bonus action options that will clearly have circumstances where you’ll use it over this. This one really cares about your team composition, and also needs you to hang out in Fireball formation, but it can be a pretty satisfying bonus action to get and just shrug off 12-24 damage every fight.

6th Level: Storm Soul

Storm Soul is three passive effects that relate to whichever Storm Aura you picked.

Desert lets you ignite things you touch, gives you resistance to fire damage, and makes you immune to the effects of extreme heat, all fairly niche abilities. Sea, too, is niche in that it offers you resistance to lightning damage, a swim speed, and the ability to breathe underwater.

Tundra stands head and shoulders over the others to me, giving you resistance to cold damage, immunity to the effects of extreme cold, but most importantly, the ability to transform 5 foot cubes of water into ice for a minute (if there are no creature's in the space). This actually gives you a kind of interesting tool to engage the world with. Giant cubes of ice have a myriad of nifty applications, and while water in this size isn’t always given, it's far more likely to come up than being in environments where you’ll care about extreme heat, igniting objects (which a tinderbox can do), or a swim speed and water breathing.

This benefits the most from being able to swap Storm Auras on level up, as you can aim your current aura at whatever environment you’re about to delve into. Going to fight merrow below the waves? Storm works great! Heading to the plane of fire or the nine hells? Desert it is!

10th Level: Shielding Storm

Shielding Storm is nearly a non-feature. Your resistance to the chosen damage type won’t come up all that often, even when aimed at specific adventuring environments. Granting that to allies that want to stay within 10 feet of you seems incredibly suspect in usefulness. Tundra Storm Heralds will probably get the most out of this, as they’re the option that actually wants allies near them, but Shielding Storm doesn’t mitigate all of the fire damage desert is going to be dealing to your buddies for free, and lightning damage is so uncommon that I can’t fathom this regularly coming up in the average adventuring day.

14th Level: Raging Storm

While I’m pretty lukewarm on Storm Soul and pretty down on Shielding Storm, Raging Storm is the real deal. This feature is crazy good.

Desert gives you a reaction that can nug something that hits you for damage equal to your level. Every round. No resources consumed. That’s crazy good. Reactions are typically quite hard to find, and finding one that deals more damage than a lot of regular weapon attacks will deal is superb.

Sea, too, gives you a new reaction that lets you knock enemies prone on your turn, which is a bit counterintuitive, but still leverages your reaction that otherwise can remain unused. I struggle with this because you can’t get super advantage for attacking prone creatures, meaning if you recklessly attacked to get advantage in the first place, you’re not benefitting from the prone condition this turn, but maybe an ally does. If you’re playing a sea storm herald with other frontline allies I can see this being fine, but fickle and dependent on initiative order and party composition to actually be meaningful.

Tundra has a nifty little effect- when you grant allies temporary hit points, you can force an enemy to save or be frozen in place for a turn. This pushes against a lot of the expected play patterns Tundra Storm Herald’s tend to want, as it really rewards you for engaging a target that wants to be nowhere near you or wants to engage another ally. In either of those cases, you’re likely not getting a lot out of the temporary hit points, meaning this will often feel like an alternate way to use the Tundra aura. This doesn’t stack the effectiveness provided in the subclass, but instead gives you a bit more flexibility in how you want to engage a fight.

All Together

Storm Herald ultimately feels just a bit too clunky to really speak to me. It feels unbelievably cautious when it comes to its power.

Want raw damage? Pick desert!

Want support and lockdown? Pick tundra!

Want more targeted, less consistent damage? Pick sea!

A lot of the basic elements are difficult for me to conceptualize playing with regularly and finding I’m getting exactly what I want when I want it. I feel like I’ll often wish I could just pick whatever mode I’d want based on the fight instead of needing to commit to one aura every level. Being able to switch at all is a pretty big boon, and while Sea is probably the worst overall, the other two are genuinely great and scale throughout the game. If you just want to pick one and run with it until the late game, you can probably get exactly what you want out of this option, but it's a bit lacking for my tastes when compared to Totem Warrior or Beast for me.

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Barbarian 5e