Leap across the battlefield, blasting your enemies with furious lightning.
Created by the scions, these barbarians were experimented on as children. Galvanised rods were implanted into their spines and they were subjected to shock therapy. The result was a few lucky souls imbued with the powers of lightning and a large number of cripples.
With this power though, these warriors can launch themselves into battle, summoning forth mighty bursts of lightning to slay their foes. If you imagine Thor in Infinity War when he arrives in Wakanda then you’ll have a fairly good idea of what the path of the lightning vessel is like.
Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt is a 3rd party book released for D&D 5e and 5.5e. A part of the book was recently launched on D&D Beyond as a player pack. You can also grab the full supplement from MonkeyDM’s website. This guide tackles the 5.5e version of the lightning vessel barbarian.
At a glance
- Highly resilient melee specialist
- Supplements melee strikes with a variety of lightning powers
- Very fast and can leap huge distances into combat.
5/5 – A quick and high damage subclass that can leap great distances to ensure they’re in the midst of the action as quickly as possible. A strong option, especially with AoE damage available, and one that properly embodies the fantasy of playing as Thor in D&D.
Lightning vessel features
Galvanic heart (Lv3) – 3/5
Lightning resistance is alright for some resilience, but lightning damage isn’t hugely common. Having said that, it will be useful for protecting yourself a little from your own self-inflicted lightning damage. Boosted lightning resistance is nice if you already have resistance and worth double dipping for if you think you’ll be taking damage from inbound storm regularly.
Unbound storm (Lv3) – 4/5
I have some mixed feelings on these options. Lightning step is a solid option. Bonus damage and speed with a bonus action is good. However, keep in mind that these options are being activated in round 2 or later as you’ll need to activate your rage with your bonus action in round 1. At this point you’ve probably closed down the distance between you and enemies. You may need a burst of speed again, but maybe not loads.
With electrified chains, this has the potential to stop a creature moving and double the vessel damage you deal. However, you actually have to provoke the creature to move. That probably means getting out of melee range of them which means hit and run tactics. You can build this into your character, but it’s not normally where barbarians invest. Even then, most creatures will likely make a ranged attack if they’re stuck like this. I’m just not sure this is the best fit for a barbarian.
Fulgurant strike seems great with it’s little AoE, but keep in mind that you’re in danger of this too. You will have advantage on the saving throw, a high dexterity and resistance if you do take damage, so maybe this is your most commonly useful option, but it’s only worth doing if you can get 2+ creatures affected.
Regardless, this is still a damage boost, even if other effects aren’t always impactful and there’s some damage scaling and no limits on how many times this can be used. It will limit your bonus action though, but this wasn’t in loads of demand to begin with.
Roaring crash (Lv6) – 5/5
Your first turn movement in combat becomes huge with this alone, but at level 7, you also get instinctive pounce. I think these stack which kind of seems like you end up triple jumping into combat which is an amusing mental picture.
Add to this the increased distances at levels 10 and 14 and this is an incredibly rapid first round barbarian (and they’re fairly quick on other rounds too).
That emanation damage is decent too. You double the range and damage of fulgurant strike and run no risk of self harm. It’s almost always worth using this when you rage, but it’s obviously especially good in the middle of crowds of enemies. But you will only be using it once per encounter. That’s still a decent amount for this kind of effect and importantly, ensures your barbarian is exactly where they need to be, dealing maximum damage in the midst of enemies.
It’s maybe not that impactful in terms of gameplay, but the idea of pushing massive creatures with this leap like a dragon or even a tarrasque (at later levels) just feels really fun too.
Lightning reflexes (Lv10) – 5/5
The dexterity check increase is big and means that this barbarian could make an excellent scout or rogue. You may want to grab proficiency in things like sleight of hand, stealth and acrobatics. The even better thing here is the initiative boost as that’s a dexterity check. It means you can go early in combat, use your roaring crash to batter some foes early and even fulgurant strike too and hope some enemies never get a turn.
The one issue here is getting in the way of AoE spells like fireball your spellcasters might cast. If that’s going to be an issue, consider grabbing the alert origin feat, you can always roll high for initiative then swap initiative scores so you’re not in the way for that first round.
An extra lightning step also means more damage (one unbound storm option for one attack and lightning step for the other). You might also appreciate the extra movement, though you are probably fast enough already on most turns.
Electric beast (Lv14) – 5/5
Boosted vessel damage means something like an extra 8-10 damage per turn now. The improvements to inbound storm are quite good too. Electrified chains will stop reactions allowing you to eventually flit in and out of range and forcing the saving throw and damage more often.
Fulgurant strike has a bigger emanation for more targets and won’t harm you or allies making it much easier to land and could well become your go to option.
Lightning step increases in distance (remember, barbarians probably have 40ft movement too). You also teleport so won’t invoke opportunity attacks. Because you get one of these for free each turn, you can combine this with electrified chains to chain a target then teleport away to a new target leaving the previous target to attempt to move and potentially get damaged.
How good is the lightning vessel subclass?
Embodying the mighty Thor in a rage-filled barbarian form, the lightning vessel is kind of a human lightning-ball. They hurl themselves into the midst of enemies, blast them with a surge of lightning and leap to the next target. When it comes to speed and AoE damage, they perform highly. It’s fast and does well at spreading extra damage around, but some of the unbound storm options don’t quite hit their stride until level 14.
Thor may or may not be the strongest avenger, but the lightning vessel is one of the stronger barbarian subclasses out there.
5/5
Building a lightning vessel barbarian
Lightning vessels remain very much like other barbarians in how you build them. They’re built to absorb damage and cause maximum damage in melee.
As this is a Steinhardt’s Guide subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt book in my build advice below and shared which work well for this barbarian subclass. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my barbarian optimisation guide.
Species/race
Largely you’ll want a species that enhances your resilience and ability to deal damage with the following your best options from Steinhardt’s Guide:
- Manikin: The lightning resistance is handy as it can combine with galvanic heart to make you even hardier to lightning damage, especially your own. The integrated gold plating is of no use for you (but just isn’t great for most classes really) but service model is great if you take the custodian model. That reaction to jump in the way of attacks can be really helpful, especially when you’re only taking half damage.
- Scourgebourne: Great for an unarmed, evil barbarian. Boosted dexterity saving throws is great and d8 unarmed strikes is strong on an unarmed build. If you take the cervus lineage, you’ll also be even faster and be able to knock prone in the same turn you make an unarmed strike which might be a grapple. One attack to grapple and knock prone and maybe even deal damage if you have the grappler feat too!
Backgrounds
For a lightning vessel barbarian, you’ll want to prioritise ability score increases for strength, dexterity and constitution. The following are your best options for strong ability scores and feats.
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beast hunter | Strength, dexterity, wisdom | Grizzled | Athletics and survival | Herbalism kit |
| Marked for death | Strength, dexterity, constitution | Grizzled | Arcana and survival | None |
| Scion | Strength, dexterity, intelligence | Curious | Arcana and investigation | Tinker’s tools and one kind of artisan’s tools |
Feats
The following are all good feats for a lightning vessel:
- Curious: Can temporarily gain proficiency in a skill you don’t already have this for. Nice if you need to fill in as a scout. This becomes even better later on when you gain a boost to dexterity checks. Handily, you can do this reactively when a skill check comes up. Learning resistances and vulnerabilities can be useful too, especially as you have changeable damage types that you can inflict.
- Faithful: Charmed and frightened resilience plus you get heroic inspiration when you roll a 1 on a d20 test. You should be making a fair few attacks which means more d20 tests to potentially get heroic inspiration on so you’re a decent choice for this.
- Grizzled: Advantage on frightened saving throws is decent for resilience. You’re also likely to get bloodied a decent bit with all the damage you’ll be taking so heroic inspiration is a nice bonus when that happens. Survive is likely inconsequential, but can be handy for campaigns that use survival rules.
- Focused hunter: Some extra effects you can use once every short rest. The arts are quite good for a melee build, especially defensive arts.
Weapons
If you want a weapon you can use two handed for maximum damage, but then switch to being one handed while you grapple for instance, then a cleaver could be a good idea. Otherwise, you’re best off using the other weapons barbarians usually like to wield from the Player’s Handbook.
More from Steinhardt’s Guide
Interested in what else is available from Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt? Why not check out some of our other guides?
