Do you like playing them? Do you like people playing them in your campaigns?
Yes, many or even most of my D&D PCs are Barbarian-class, especially when it's a well designed class as in 5e D&D (I didn't like the 4e or 3e Barbarians much, and in 1e I'd rather play a Fighter from a barbaric culture). The role-playing tropes as the outsider make it a particularly good class for players new to the setting.
GMing 5e I find the Barbarian tends to be overpowered using the rules as written, because the system as written does not lead to the expected 6-8 fights before a long rest, so Barbs get to Rage every fight. I went over to having long rest take a week, this went a long way towards class balance since a low level barbarian might now only Rage in a third of battles.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1009214Do you like playing them? Do you like people playing them in your campaigns?
Define Barbarian, please. Do you mean the D&D style tribal warrior with anger management issues? Or someone from what the 'civilized' world considers uncivilized (In D&D 5e terms, anyone with the Outlander Background)?
The 5e barbarian is a beast that is nearly impossible to kill. Players really like it.
ACKS flavors barbarians as primitive warriors, but 5e doesn't really have that requirement - there's one in my currentish 5e campaign who started life off as a perfectly normal merchant's guard who is overly fond of wine, women, and getting so hyped up before combat that he starts chewing on his shield, loses control, breaks formation, charges into the foe - and is tough and ornery enough to survive doing so (thus far).
In Labyrinth Lord that character would have been just fine as a fighter with some RP flavor, but in 5e choosing barbarian + path of the berserker makes some mechanical sense and seems to work. It still encourages him to wear no armor, which is a bit of a mis-fit.
My most memorable D&D Barbarian is a AD&D 2e Fighter, with the Kit. They guy played an amazing 'Conan'-esque hero.
In 5e, I've had three, none of them were the class. They were all Outlander backgrounds. One fighter, a ranger and wizard.
I had one for a AL game a few adventures back, who I never got to play. He was a taller than average Mountain Dwarf with actual anger issues. He hated being underground, and left his clan before he hurt his family and friends there. Once topside, everything changed. The sky calmed him in a way he never understood, although he still used his rage in a fight, he could actually control it now.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1009214Do you like playing them? Do you like people playing them in your campaigns?
Tend to punish hard anytime I get Barb chars. You wanna Rage? Cool. Now everyone gon' aim for 'yo ass!
Why wouldn't they? You're the scary, out-of-control asshole who's rampaging across the battlefield just asking for bolt-based perforation.
As a result, they're not popular at my table unless the player specializes in them and is smart about their use. They're vikings and vikings were crap at fighting any enemy that was even remotely organised and/or in any proper using the classic combo of archers, spearmen, swords/macemen and maybe even cavalry. And most of my enemies do fight with some modicum of tactical insight (at least start positioned decent), even if I do roll generate with my custom app.
i love barbaric, tribal, raging type barbs, the movie/dnd kind, i guess.
Yea to the class either playing them or running a game with one being played by another player. Nay to the player bullshit of being able to only play one with a Chaotic Neutral and only that. If anything is a good indicator that a player should not be playing a Barbarian or CN as a alignment it's that imo.
I love playing as Barbarians. It's my favorite class in Pathfinder/3.5 and 5e as well.
Conan what is best?
Depends on the setting and the players. Sometimes a barbarian is just a fighter type really. Sometimes the player has some odd ideas what a barbarian should be. Other times a players is just trying to game the system. So its a case by case thing Yes, or No.
In 5e I initially didnt think much of the Barbarian. But Kefra has played one well and later I took a try at one and had alot of fun with it.
I like playing barbarians, but for some reason only in games that don't have 'barbarian' as a class or package, but simply provide a system where this is one of many kinds of characters you can sort out. TFT and Runequest are probably my fave's
Love it, the dungeon world barbarian even has a magic loincloth (equivalent). Mighty thews, mighty appeite for life. Hah!
For some reason I always get the urge crush the jeweled thrones of earth under my sandaled feet. Crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me and the lamentations of the women are great too.
I don't tend to play them - I prefer Wizards - but they are popular. The recent D&D poll placed them ahead of Clerics in popularity, and just behind Fighters, Rogues and Wizards. Players like playing big bruisers, who can soak up damage and dish it out. It's also good that they don't have to wear armour which gives it a clear distinction to fighters, and helps provide an archetype for that type of warrior. There isn't any complication with spells, and the subclasses provide a decent variety. I like to contrast them to Monks in a way, as almost the Chaotic counterpoint to the self-discipline of Monks.
There is some issue with Barbarians being a culture, with a pejorative association, rather than a Class per se. If I were to play a more culturally sensitive game, it wouldn't refer to Class in any case, though.
In short, they have a role to play in D&D.
I can enjoy playing a barbarian type. I'm not a huge fan of the Barbarian D&D classes, due to "rage" being a core feature. The previously mentioned ACKS take is way more to my liking on the "Barbarian as a Class" side.
If by "Barbarian" you mean Gauls, Celts, Norse, some Anglo-Saxons, Mongols, Scythians, etc, etc, etc, sure.
Arnie in a fur diaper, not so much.
If you are talking about D&D Barbarians, I spent my formative D&D years with B/X and AD&D 1E, so it's never been a "real" class to me. Sure, it showed up in Unearthed Arcana, but even as teens, we could tell that book was not worth using.
I don't really mind them being used, but they've always seemed a little gamey to me. Playing a fighter that is willing to throw himself at the enemy with no care for his own life is kind of interesting concept, but the character class provides mechanical benefits for that take cushion the edges of the risky choices the character makes. Letting them climb as well as Thieves didn't seem fair. Climbing was the one thing AD&D Thieves were uniquely competent at during low levels. Having another class that could do that and be a combat monster as well was kind of a fuck you.
Looking back at the Dragon Magazine they first showed up in, it is interesting that they don't rather the cover which touts an AD&D module, the Bandit NPC class, and Official Monsters.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1009214Do you like playing them? Do you like people playing them in your campaigns?
Yes, but I play a lot of RuneQuest, where a barbaraian is a culture not a class. We have barbarian healers, barbarians priests, barbarian traders and barbarian warriors.
Nope. As presented it's the Conan-is-Hulk, battle-rager type class.
A Viking, a Visigoth Cavalryman, a Hun archer, an Iroquois hunter, a Papuan headhunter are all "barbarians" yet the class doesn't represent them at all.
You're better off just having a berserker. Which can just be a fighter with a kit.
I've no problems with people playing the archetype.
Doing point-buy, happily, I don't have to fret about anyone thinking there's a mechanical advantage to going into battle bare chested that they don't purchase like anyone else might.
I only know the ones from Unearthed Arcana, to which I vote thumbs down as a ridiculous class. Barbarian for me would just be your character's background, not his class.
Yes, but since most class-based games equate "barbarian" with "rage fighter" I refer to them as berserkers in-game since it sounds cool and less insulting.
Quote from: Dumarest;1009335I only know the ones from Unearthed Arcana, to which I vote thumbs down as a ridiculous class. Barbarian for me would just be your character's background, not his class.
Despite playing D&D I'm with Dumarest.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1009294If by "Barbarian" you mean Gauls, Celts, Norse, some Anglo-Saxons, Mongols, Scythians, etc, etc, etc, sure.
Arnie in a fur diaper, not so much.
I had a lot of fun playing leather speedo barbarian for a while. I was pleasantly surprised how long he lived. And yes, I used my best Ahnuld impression.
I played a Celtic-styled Barbarian in 5e, who was also a Half-Elf bishonen as well.
He looked like Itachi Uchiha and acted like Groundskeeper Willie, and yes I did speak in a Scottish accent.
Not when they become any excuse for acting Chaotic Stupid. Berserker fighters, people from beyond the pale of civilized lands, sure. I agree that "barbarian" should be a background not a class.
If I ever get to play 5e again (Instead of running it) I'm thinking of trying out a full faux Celtic-'style' Barbarian, who runs around with a big sword and wears nothing but strategically placed blue paint.
Quote from: Christopher Brady;1009221Define Barbarian, please. Do you mean the D&D style tribal warrior with anger management issues? Or someone from what the 'civilized' world considers uncivilized (In D&D 5e terms, anyone with the Outlander Background)?
No, I was thinking about Barbarians as some kind of separate class, as opposed to just playing human fighters who are uncivilized, etc.
I enjoy having someone play the "barbarian" class in 5E games that I run. It's a fun class to play and be around.
However, I've never been much to attach archetype or in-game things based merely on the name of a class. As far as I'm concerned, you could rename the 5E classes using random letters as a mechanical package. "Class A" has rage and lots of hit points. The character in the game world may be any number of things. We had a dwarven "barbarian" that was flavored as very civilized but incredibly tough and stubborn in battle.
I tend not to like character classes. Especially when I don't believe in them, and/or they seem artificial and/or silly to me.
The Conan-esque Barbarian as a class seems a bit silly to me.
I don't mind playing them in, say, a Rogue-like computer game.
I have enjoyed playing (and GMing for) Conan himself in GURPS Conan adventures.
I don't mind characters with their own actual background who happen to be Conan-like, for reasons.
I find the idea of entire villages of Conan-types to be a bit silly. For example, even in the 80'd Conan the Barbarian fillm, Conan has a backstory of having been raised in fighting pits and pushing the (silly) Wheel of Pain, and though his village were Crom-worshipping fantasy warrior types, they weren't all muscle-men - I find them ok and not too silly, but if the world has wizards, knights, foresters, and a bunch of Conan-like "barbarians" as a common type of person, that seems a bit silly to me.
I finally opened my copy of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, by the way, and one thing I find embarrassing is the Barbarian template there, particularly that it starts with a base Strength of 17+, which just seems embarrassingly silly to me, even as a template suggestion.
Quote from: DavetheLost;1009736Not when they become any excuse for acting Chaotic Stupid. Berserker fighters, people from beyond the pale of civilized lands, sure. I agree that "barbarian" should be a background not a class.
Yeah, I'm in with this common view.
I think there's room for the mechanical class as a raging fighter, but too often it makes for stupid backgrounds where there is a dull and stereotyped divide between civilized and barbaric lands.
Classes should be what you can do, not where you are from or what you do professionally. On a related note, I dislike the tendency where criminals are all one class because "Thief" is a class. There should be some thieves who are fighters, some thieves who are bards, some thieves who are rogues, etc.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1010437I enjoy having someone play the "barbarian" class in 5E games that I run. It's a fun class to play and be around.
However, I've never been much to attach archetype or in-game things based merely on the name of a class. As far as I'm concerned, you could rename the 5E classes using random letters as a mechanical package. "Class A" has rage and lots of hit points. The character in the game world may be any number of things. We had a dwarven "barbarian" that was flavored as very civilized but incredibly tough and stubborn in battle.
Yeah, I realised too late that the 'noble princess knight' PC I wanted to play, I should have made her a 5e Barbarian not Fighter.
(not my art but was inspired by this mini)
(http://forum.reapermini.com/uploads/monthly_01_2008/post-2071-1201381682.jpg)
Quote from: Skarg;1010443I find the idea of entire villages of Conan-types to be a bit silly.
I love my Wilderlands campaign set in Barbarian Altanis, the Altanians are a whole culture of mighty-thewed Conan types (and psychic witches for the women). But I'm aware it's not entirely serious and I'm influenced heavily by stuff like the campy (but brilliant) Flash Gordon movie and early '80s Hollywood barbarian flicks. If I was GMing Harn it'd be different.
I am totally fine with barbarians (both the class and people playing Arnold).
Quote from: RPGPundit;1010181No, I was thinking about Barbarians as some kind of separate class, as opposed to just playing human fighters who are uncivilized, etc.
So the Tribal Warrior with anger management issues. Not a fan of. It's nice that they've tried to make different types within it's archetype, but... It's too focused compared to most of the other classes in D&D.
Quote from: Christopher Brady;1010504So the Tribal Warrior with anger management issues. Not a fan of. It's nice that they've tried to make different types within it's archetype, but... It's too focused compared to most of the other classes in D&D.
Barbarians are a class in Rolemaster, but they're essentially fighters with improved outdoor skills. They're no more or less battle-ragers than any other class.
I have one in my upcoming game, who is likely to be the primary front-line fighter, as well as the group tracker and outdoor survival expert.
Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1010576Barbarians are a class in Rolemaster, but they're essentially fighters with improved outdoor skills. They're no more or less battle-ragers than any other class.
I have one in my upcoming game, who is likely to be the primary front-line fighter, as well as the group tracker and outdoor survival expert.
There are other games in which Barbarian is just a social standing too. But Pundit's thing is D&D and it's derivatives, so that's what I'm falling back on.
Yeah, I never quite liked the Barbarian Class as presented in any of the D&D editions. Granted, in Lion & Dragon, my "Scots Man" class is how I would do the Barbarian if I have to, but even then there's no reason that one couldn't just use a fighter.