Path of the Dead King (Barbarian Archetype 5e)

[Lvl45DM!]

Making this for one of my players.


Most barbarians are superstitious, viewing arcane forces with a primal dead. Some embrace the more wild aspects of magic, connections to the elements, or ancestral spirits, or beasts.
You are not most barbarians.
Where others looked upon the cairns of dead chiefs past with reverence and fear, you merely saw a path to power. In those places of the dead, ancient mummified remains of legends and heroes dwell, ready to curse any who defile their remains.
Well, they wouldn't do that if there wasn't something good there. You found the power that lurked in the darkness, and you made it your own. Now you know. Death is not something you cause, it is something you wield. Death is not something to be avoided, but something to be tamed. And if they ever lay you under a cairn of rocks, you shall rise again.

Rage of the Entombed
At 3rd level when you enter your rage you tap into the devastating fury of the defiled dead. While you're raging, once per turn, when you hit a living creature with a weapon attack you gain d12+half your barbarian level in temporary hit points. You can only gain this benefit once from each creature in a 24 hour period. If you hit an undead creature with this necrotic attack, instead of damage it must make a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8+your prof. mod.+your Con mod) or be charmed by you. This charm lasts 1 minute. After an undead has been charmed by you it cannot be charmed again for 24 hours.

Soldier of the Damned
At 6th level your ability to infuse your attacks with darkness increases. Any beast or humanoid you slay with a weapon attack while in a rage will rise as a zombie. The zombie has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage and deals extra damage with its melee attack equal to the damage bonus from your rage. It obeys your verbal commands and lasts until destroyed. You may only have one zombie active at any time. If you wish to create another zombie, the first one crumbles into dust.
You may transform the zombie into a skeleton on a short rest.

Gravetouched
Your long exposure to the darkness has taken root in you, body and soul. From 10th level, while raging you are immune to necrotic damage and the extra necrotic damage from your attacks now applies to every weapon attack you make. You no longer need to eat, drink or sleep, but you gain a new hunger. You may crave the taste of blood, or bone marrow, you might need to hear the last breath of a living creature or perhaps you require gravedirt to sleep upon. You must fulfil this craving once in a period of days equal to your Con Modified (min 1).

King of the Dead
No more simple puppets of meat and bone, your Soldier of the Damned become more potent. From 14th level instead of a zombie, from a humanoid you slay while raging, you may create a mummy, with the same enhancements as the zombie had.


(Optional)
When selecting this class you can no longer be raised from the dead. From level 3-6 when you die you rise as a ghoul 24 hours later. From 7-10 you rise as a wight. From levels 11-14 you rise as a mummy. From level 15 onwards you return as a Mummy Lord, with your Barbarian rage in place of the Spellcasting ability.

[BerzerkerUnit]

Making this for one of my players.


Most barbarians are superstitious, viewing arcane forces with a primal dead. Some embrace the more wild aspects of magic, connections to the elements, or ancestral spirits, or beasts.
You are not most barbarians.
Where others looked upon the cairns of dead chiefs past with reverence and fear, you merely saw a path to power. In those places of the dead, ancient mummified remains of legends and heroes dwell, ready to curse any who defile their remains.
Well, they wouldn't do that if there wasn't something good there. You found the power that lurked in the darkness, and you made it your own. Now you know. Death is not something you cause, it is something you wield. Death is not something to be avoided, but something to be tamed. And if they ever lay you under a cairn of rocks, you shall rise again.

Rage of the Entombed
At 3rd level when you enter your rage you tap into the devastating fury of the defiled dead. While you're raging, once per turn, when you hit a living creature with a weapon attack you gain d12+half your barbarian level in temporary hit points. You can only gain this benefit once from each creature in a 24 hour period. If you hit an undead creature with this necrotic attack, instead of damage it must make a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8+your prof. mod.+your Con mod) or be charmed by you. This charm lasts 1 minute. After an undead has been charmed by you it cannot be charmed again for 24 hours.

Soldier of the Damned
At 6th level your ability to infuse your attacks with darkness increases. Any beast or humanoid you slay with a weapon attack while in a rage will rise as a zombie. The zombie has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage and deals extra damage with its melee attack equal to the damage bonus from your rage. It obeys your verbal commands and lasts until destroyed. You may only have one zombie active at any time. If you wish to create another zombie, the first one crumbles into dust.
You may transform the zombie into a skeleton on a short rest.

Gravetouched
Your long exposure to the darkness has taken root in you, body and soul. From 10th level, while raging you are immune to necrotic damage and the extra necrotic damage from your attacks now applies to every weapon attack you make. You no longer need to eat, drink or sleep, but you gain a new hunger. You may crave the taste of blood, or bone marrow, you might need to hear the last breath of a living creature or perhaps you require gravedirt to sleep upon. You must fulfil this craving once in a period of days equal to your Con Modified (min 1).

King of the Dead
No more simple puppets of meat and bone, your Soldier of the Damned become more potent. From 14th level instead of a zombie, from a humanoid you slay while raging, you may create a mummy, with the same enhancements as the zombie had.


(Optional)
When selecting this class you can no longer be raised from the dead. From level 3-6 when you die you rise as a ghoul 24 hours later. From 7-10 you rise as a wight. From levels 11-14 you rise as a mummy. From level 15 onwards you return as a Mummy Lord, with your Barbarian rage in place of the Spellcasting ability.

Digging this!

Rage of the Entombed isn't what I expected (honestly was kind of hoping for some kind of "hit them with summoned tombstones" effect). It's not bad at all though, you might want to roll it down to "when you reduce a living creep to 0 hp" and just make THP = Barb lvl + Con mod.

For the undead I think "Undead reduced to 1 or fewer hp by your melee attacks remain at 1 hp and are charmed by you until the end of your rage when they crumble to pieces or dust. While charmed by you, you can direct their movement freely, they automatically try to aid you in killing or destroying creatures or objects you attack. Once on each of your turns you can deal an additional 1d8 bludgeoning or slashing damage for each such undead adjacent to your target."

Soldier of the Damned, awesome as is but as I tried to pare down some of the hazard I think I stumbled upon an amazing synergy that evokes the Rage Zombie hordes of World War Z/Left for Dead.

So as is there's a potential hazard in that some creatures get multiattack. Here's some verbiage:

Army of the Damned
From 6th level onward, the necrotic power that flows from your Rage can infect the creatures you fell. At your option, any humanoid or beast you reduce to 0 hit points while Raging will rise as a zombie at the beginning of their next turn with 5 hit points. A zombie you create in this manner is under your control. The creature loses any Multiattack option, Traits (such as Regeneration or Gaze attacks), Resistances, or Immunities they had in life. In exchange they gain the benefits of the Undead type, no longer needing to eat, sleep, or breathe, and become Immune to disease, poison and the poisoned condition and gain the Undead Toughness Trait. This zombie is Charmed by you. You can direct its movement freely and order it to attack or perform any action of which it is capable as a bonus action. Your control over this zombie ends when you die or when you create another zombie in this way.

[spoiler=Mechanics]
So the trick here is the combo of level 3 and level 6 features you inspired me to cook up. Any zombie you reduce to 1 or fewer hp fall under your control. At level 6, every humanoid and beast you drop while raging can rise as a zombie with 5 hp. So now you want to create as many zombies as you can, get as many attacks as you can so you can turn the uncontrolled zombies into 1 minute dice adders, and then direct the zombies to swarm your targets so you can get all that bonus damage on your attacks. They are trivially easy to get off the board, but that requires actions which aren't focused on killing your living friends, they can also block doorways, provide cover, or trigger traps and at the end of the fight you'll have one minion that serves normally.


Gravetouched, very flavorful. It References additional necrotic damage not spoken of elsewhere. I think maybe you mean the healing property of the L3 Feature? So now you can heal with any attack?

King of the Dead... I'm not sure about the scaling. I recall mummy's being super squishy for some reason but also know it's 9th level spell to make a Mummy with Create Undead? If you take up my two recommendations for the L3 and L6 features you might want to make this its own feature rather than an upgrade. Maybe downgrade to Wight or Ghast?

Either way, I'll be using what I've put together here myself, its actually a pretty good fit for my Mistriven campaign setting. Thanks for sharing it!

[BerzerkerUnit]

I'm just going to post my redux here bc I don't want there to be any confusion this was inspired by your work above. Here's a link so there's no dueling banjos. If you'd rather I give it its own thread, pls let me know.

I leaned hard on Zombies and went hard left at 10th with niche utility. the 14th goes for area denial and some extra damage.

The big challenge here is that the subclass is real weak against say any solo fight. Less of an issue at 6 when you can carry a minion into the next fight, but Solo fights are party favoring anyway.