Barrow Guard Fighter: Crooked Moon D&D 5e Optimisation Guide

Embrace deathly powers with skeletal steeds and necrotic powers.

At a glance

Barrow guard features

Death knight – Level 3

A steed can be handy and this may be a good subclass for the mounted combatant feat.

As a frontline warrior, grave guard will always be useful to reduce incoming damage. I’d save this for attacks where your score won’t exceed the incoming damage so you’re not wasting a draugr dice or a reaction.

I feel like soul reaper is slightly better than both of these options though. You can make a grapple while your hands are occupied and deal damage. This should typically be better than you even get from the grappler feat. But all these options are good.

Obviously a high constitution is going to enhance what you can do here.

Siphoning souls – Level 7

Recovering draugr dice is really easy at this point as death should be fairly common around you. At this point, it means finding ways to regularly use your draugr dice is recommended, using reactions to recover them.

Whisper of the dead is a really good option for enhancing ability checks. This makes barrow guards a good option for a skill focused character. Pick your background carefully for this reason. You might consider a dexterity build (as there are better skill options here), the skilled feat or even multiclass as a bard for expertise and jack of all trades.

Tomb castellan – Level 10

Enhanced death knight options make them even better and the use of the draugr dice even better. With phantom charger, I’d be tempted to take the dodge action in most cases for your steed so you can teleport and be hard to hit (especially as you may want to do this into a throng of enemies). Disengage is pointless to combine as teleporting prevents attacks of opportunity anyway.

Death knell is generous on your draugr dice as it requires no extra expenditure, though the damage is only half the protection you receive.

Conversely, spectral shrieking adds a little less to your draugr die impact than other features by only adding damage equal to the die roll since you already cause damage equal to your proficiency bonus without expending a draugr die. It’s not enough to mean you shouldn’t use it, but it’s worth being aware of the slightly diminished impact here.

Grave lord – Level 15

Now you and an ally can travel through walls while on your steed. This weirdly could be quite useful in dungeons for bypassing walls, but can be very useful in encounters with lots of terrain. Remember that movement can be split up between attacks and because your steed will work on the same turn as you, there’s an interesting opportunity for hit and run tactics here where you pop in and out of cover.

Resistance to triggering damage should usually mean resistance to that creature’s other attacks and potentially those of other nearby enemies making you even more resilient. There’s a case to be made here that using this soon after your turn will mean resistance against more attacks before the resistance ends on your next turn, but contriving this often isn’t possible, but should be a consideration.

Restrained is a lot better than grappled and this just makes soul reaper a great way to nullify and deal damage more easily to a single target.

Might of the necropolis – Level 18

Nothing phenomenal here, a lack of aging will affect little in terms of gameplay and not needing air is usually only useful in aquatic situations.

A minimum of 3 draugr dice is decent. They tend to be easy to come by, but also very easy to use, but if you fight enough minions, you should be able to replenish them. Note that the Dungeon Master’s Guide essentially squashed any efforts of using a bag of rats to replenish something like draugr dice so that should not be allowable at your table.

How good is the barrow guard subclass?

This largely comes down to how much you can get out of your draugr dice. At low levels, you may struggle to have a steady enough supply of them, but by level 5 and especially level 7, you should find that you have an almost constant supply of them, especially if you’re using your reaction to replenish them when enemies die. This will eat into your ability to make opportunity attacks, but this can often be worthwhile.

Easy grappling, steed use, the ability to teleport around the battlefield and some really solid resilience options make this quite a strong option Just be aware that once those draugr dice run out, you’re basically just a vanilla fighter.

4/5

---

Building a barrow guard fighter

Largely, a barrow guard can be optimised in the same ways as other fighters. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my fighter optimisation guide.

As this is a Crooked Moon subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in the Crooked Moon book and given advice on which work well for a barrow guard fighter.

Species/race

I’d consider the following species from Crooked Moon for a barrow guard:

• Bogborn: A kind of weaker hunter’s mark is great on a high attack class, with fighters being one of the best options. You also get self healing and both of these are activated using your bonus action which isn’t under heavy use unless you’re dual wielding. You’ll likely be a frontline warrior so that extra resilience will be useful.
• Curseborn: I’d probably only use the unarmed strike for cursing enemies, but this is quite good against high damage enemies that you need to nullify a bit. Otherwise, attacks with a two-handed weapon or dual wielding are going to be more potent. Survive nasty saving throws (like fireball or banishment) with grey balance. You’ll have disadvantage on attacks rolls for a turn, but passing a saving throw against something nasty will be more important than worse attacks. Perception is always a great skill and I’d probably pick that for a fighter.
• Gnarlborn: You’re mainly here for the bonus action restraining. This will largely nullify an enemy and give you advantage on attack rolls against them. With a high constitution, you should be pretty good at this too. A free skill, being better at resisting being moved or knocked prone, tremorsense and advantage at ending the grappled condition are all pretty decent too.
• Graveborn: Being able to bypass resistances is really beneficial for a class not really blessed with magical prowess as you’re quite reliant on physical damage. Cold resistance is fine for some extra resilience, but not a common damage type. Extra healing after combat outside of short rests is decent, but quite icky!
• Harvestborn: A decent option for this with your d10 hit dice. Means you can easily revive allies on 0HP. Extra damage on some attacks is handy too.
• Plagueborn: Resilience against the poisoned condition, stealth proficiency and the ability to infect others all work nicely for a dexterity build fighter that focuses on constitution too. Barrow guards should have a high constitution which will make you good at spreading your contagion which is great at nullifying enemies a bit.

Backgrounds

Unlike the Player’s Handbook, Crooked Moon backgrounds give you a choice of any ability scores to increase. Based primarily on the origin feats and proficiencies, I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a barrow guard:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Crossroads gambler	Any	Fate gambler	Deception, insight	One kind of gambling set
Druskenvald dweller	Any	Any	Survival and one other	Choose one
Night stalker	Any	Hunter of hunters	Stealth and one of arcana, history, religion or nature	Leather worker’s tool

Not many of these combine great origin feats and skills for a fighter, but I’d probably lean towards night stalker as hunter of hunters and stealth are both great on a fighter (especially a dexterity build).

Feats

I’d consider the following feats for a barrow guard:

• Fate gambler: You should be reducing enemies to 0HP often enough to give a steady supply of heroic inspiration. Temporary hit points will also benefit you nicely as the defacto frontline warrior.
• Hunter of hunters: Bypassing resistances is the main appeal for a fighter here, especially as you don’t have many ways to deal non-physical damage outside of magic weapons.
• Death defier: You’re the tank of the party, so more resilience is only going to be beneficial, especially when you’re harder to keep down or kill.

More from Crooked Moon

Interested in what else is available from The Crooked Moon? Why not check out some of our other guides?