Path of the Zealot 5e: Barbarian Subclass Review

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobld

Where paladins and clerics represent holy knights devoted to an ideal or deity, Path of Zealot barbarians stand in for the truly madly devoted, those who seek to be taken over by their lord to deliver wrath upon the non-believers. Zealots truly feel like actual factual zealots in the game, delivering on a fantasy that otherwise was a bit challenging to find. This payoff happens when you get it at 3rd level, which is great, but then not really again until 14th level.

Mechanically, a good amount of their options feel generic or like fluff, which ultimately is a bit of disappointment to me. They’re still fine, getting decent damage upgrades and an easy way back to life should death befall them, but I do wish they had a bit more flexibility or choices to make. Its capstone is excellent, and will deliver on the person chosen by a deity and literally not allowed to die to enact their vengeance, but most other features feel like you could stick them to basically any fighter or barbarian option as “person fights good, this feature shows that”.

3rd Level: Divine Fury and Warrior of the Gods

Divine Fury isn’t a complicated ability- you get a bonus d6 plus half your barbarian level once on your turn, meaning you can’t do anything tricky with opportunity or other reaction attacks to get more out of this, which is a bummer. Still, a free d6+ 1 to 10 damage is nothing to sneeze at. Not particularly interesting, but a fine improvement.

Warrior of the Gods is the namesake ability of the subclass, removing the gold cost components from resurrection magic. Basically, if you’re playing a zealot, you really want a cleric alongside you so you can run in, be angry, hit things, die, and come right back. I find this ability is basically 90% fluff that will never come up, and 10% just a mechanic to save you 1,300 gold over the course of a campaign. Flavorful? Absolutely. An actual ability that I’m excited to play with? Nope!

6th Level: Fanatical Focus

Fanatical Focus is Indomitable once per rage, which sure, that’s fine. Who doesn’t want a free advantage on a save once a fight? But… is it worth a subclass feature? You don’t really get to make any interesting decisions here, especially as the barbarian class starts granting you immunity to conditions you’d consider using this against, meaning you’ll probably just use this on the first impactful save a fight.

10th Level: Zealous Presence

Zealous Presence is so unbelievably boring. There’s no divine magic happening here, you just have a once per long rest everyone gets advantage on all their attacks and saves for a round. There can be a few moments where you use this to stifle a breath weapon or just unleash utter fury on an enemy team, but there are a ton of other ways to get advantage on attack rolls. You have reckless attack, which gives you advantage at will, your rogue can hide, knocking creatures prone is becoming more and more readily available, and all of these elements are going to be regularly coming up in most fights.

Devoting an entire feature for everyone to just get advantage once a long rest is kind of powerful, but it’s powerful in a way that doesn’t ask you that interesting of a question, nor reward you for any particular play pattern. You just give everyone advantage. Boring, powerful features bum me out, and this one is no exception. It doesn’t move forward with the zealot fantasy, will sometimes utterly smash a difficult fight, and tells everyone not to worry about trying to get advantage some other way, just let me use this feature and get it for free.

14th Level: Rage Beyond Death

Rage Beyond Death is the reason I’d consider playing zealot, and actually something that feels zealous to me. Your god literally won’t let you die while you rage for them. You can take endless hits while at 0 hit points, failing save after save after save, but you can not die until your rage ends. If you’ve got that cleric buddy I mentioned earlier, they can just make sure to top you off with a Healing Word before the rage ends and you’re good to go!

All Together

Divine Fury does a ton of heavy lifting for this option, and in a way I’m not super excited to play with. It just rewards making attacks, which is your whole thing as a barbarian, and the reward is just more damage. It doesn’t reward building towards it, as it's gated heavily. Basically you just take a Sentinel or Great Weapon Fighter build, staple this subclass to it, and wait around until Rage Beyond Death shows up with otherwise bland, yet solid, abilities.

If you find Fanatical Focus and Zealous Presence exciting, I can’t recommend this option enough. I don’t. It lacks options for diverse play. When I pick a subclass, I want it to work towards a specific line of play, a reward for building in a direction. I want my features and choices to synergize. Being unable to die is definitely a payoff for taunts and trying to take damage, as well as forgoing any amount of defense for raw offense, but waiting 14 levels for that payoff is just too long for me. This option is powerful, undoubtedly, but not for me.

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