I’m a huge Wizard lover and have been playing all sorts of arcane casters for the past years — from hard Abjurers to goth Necromancers and classic Diviners. I really like the tactical part of D&D combats and being creative with spells is one of the best way to be good at it.
So in a new campaign I decided to change completely and gave it a try to Barbarians. I saw a lot of people talking how Barbarians were bland and straightforward — huge pool of HP trying to hit hard enemies with big weapons and…
How popular opinion upon this class is wrong!
I’m playing an Ancestral Guardian and having A LOT OF fun. My character doesn’t use big weapons, and he is abusing grapples and shoves. I’m actually using two weapon fighting regularly to ensure Ancestral Protectors will proc and moving to one-handed weapon when grappling. My character is generating more impact in the battlefield than my old Wizards.
barbarians are capable of a lot of versatility, and can lend themselves greatly to multiclassing in interesting ways.
Let me tell you a story: I played in a campaign where my buddy rolled a bear totem barbarian, flavored as a wrestler. He focused entirely on bare-handed combat, shoving, and grappling. A critical part of his strategy was to pick up his opponents, jump up into the air, and drop them. Our DM ruled if you landed ontop of an enemy, no fall damage would be taken except for the enemy. After lvl 5, he multiclassed into rogue and later EK fighter to further improve his main strategy. However, despite multiclassing so much, his core chassis of resisting all damage and having on-demand advantage meant his damage was actually pretty good especially considering his damage came from fall damage, and especially considering we found a belt of hill giant strength flavored as a wrestling champion belt. Sadly, his effectiveness came to an end once huge sized creatures become common place for the boss of a dungeon or the BBEG of the arc. However, it would be just as effective if he just took GWM later on had the campaign not ended sooner.
Anecdotes aside, compared to STR based martials, barbarians are interesting when you consider how beneficial DEX is to them. No matter what, I like to build mine starting 17/15/16/8/8/8, and at lvl 4 I boost both STR and DEX. Now you've got a fairly tanky barbarian with 16 AC and decent initiative, potentially good stealth bonuses, while being strong! Weak mental saves, on the other hand, feel like an opportunity for excitement. It's fun to get charmed! It's fun to turn on your party and whack them hard, remind them that you're a threat and face the whole ordeal of them dealing with you on top of the main threat. That's a type of versatility in story telling.
Reckless and Rage are both interesting mechanics. You can choose to use each one seperately, together, or not at all. Since Rage is a long rest resource, you have to give thought to which combats you'll rage for and which others you won't, and how you'll make up for the lack of rage in the combats you choose not to do so.
Essentially, a lot of what makes a barbarian interesting you could also make the case applies to other martials as well. Sometimes you have to understand when it's beneficial to use your attacks for shoves and grapples, when it's best to dodge, or just rage and attack recklessly with GWM both for offensive purposes like killing everything or defensive purposes like drawing attention and attacks onto yourself and away from the party.
However, I created a Goliath Barbarian not knowing what to expect (Conan archetype in my head) or where to take the character. Even though it's not "normal", I multi-classed at 10th level with 3 levels of Rogue Assassin. It's a silent but deadly badass that begins encounters one way and ends them in another. So versatile, fun, effective, and "different" that gameplay has been lifted a bit.
I'll just point out that most people that say Barbarian is bland. Or say they are very straight forward. They are either people that only have one measurement of how a class is doing (that of damage) or they only really listen to the people that only have one measurement of how that class is doing (again that of damage).
Barbarians are really good at a few different things depending on what your wanting to do and popular perception isn't always right so when your willing to break the mold you can find some interesting things that do work well without having to try to make some kind of off the wall build or strat work to do it. And you can find that many subclasses aren't exactly what they are portrayed as being.
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I’m a huge Wizard lover and have been playing all sorts of arcane casters for the past years — from hard Abjurers to goth Necromancers and classic Diviners. I really like the tactical part of D&D combats and being creative with spells is one of the best way to be good at it.
So in a new campaign I decided to change completely and gave it a try to Barbarians. I saw a lot of people talking how Barbarians were bland and straightforward — huge pool of HP trying to hit hard enemies with big weapons and…
How popular opinion upon this class is wrong!
I’m playing an Ancestral Guardian and having A LOT OF fun. My character doesn’t use big weapons, and he is abusing grapples and shoves. I’m actually using two weapon fighting regularly to ensure Ancestral Protectors will proc and moving to one-handed weapon when grappling. My character is generating more impact in the battlefield than my old Wizards.
What’s your feeling about Barbarian versatility?
barbarians are capable of a lot of versatility, and can lend themselves greatly to multiclassing in interesting ways.
Let me tell you a story: I played in a campaign where my buddy rolled a bear totem barbarian, flavored as a wrestler. He focused entirely on bare-handed combat, shoving, and grappling. A critical part of his strategy was to pick up his opponents, jump up into the air, and drop them. Our DM ruled if you landed ontop of an enemy, no fall damage would be taken except for the enemy. After lvl 5, he multiclassed into rogue and later EK fighter to further improve his main strategy. However, despite multiclassing so much, his core chassis of resisting all damage and having on-demand advantage meant his damage was actually pretty good especially considering his damage came from fall damage, and especially considering we found a belt of hill giant strength flavored as a wrestling champion belt. Sadly, his effectiveness came to an end once huge sized creatures become common place for the boss of a dungeon or the BBEG of the arc. However, it would be just as effective if he just took GWM later on had the campaign not ended sooner.
Anecdotes aside, compared to STR based martials, barbarians are interesting when you consider how beneficial DEX is to them. No matter what, I like to build mine starting 17/15/16/8/8/8, and at lvl 4 I boost both STR and DEX. Now you've got a fairly tanky barbarian with 16 AC and decent initiative, potentially good stealth bonuses, while being strong! Weak mental saves, on the other hand, feel like an opportunity for excitement. It's fun to get charmed! It's fun to turn on your party and whack them hard, remind them that you're a threat and face the whole ordeal of them dealing with you on top of the main threat. That's a type of versatility in story telling.
Reckless and Rage are both interesting mechanics. You can choose to use each one seperately, together, or not at all. Since Rage is a long rest resource, you have to give thought to which combats you'll rage for and which others you won't, and how you'll make up for the lack of rage in the combats you choose not to do so.
Essentially, a lot of what makes a barbarian interesting you could also make the case applies to other martials as well. Sometimes you have to understand when it's beneficial to use your attacks for shoves and grapples, when it's best to dodge, or just rage and attack recklessly with GWM both for offensive purposes like killing everything or defensive purposes like drawing attention and attacks onto yourself and away from the party.
I love that Tasha's gave barbs more proficiencies and the pounce at 7th level...small changes but I think it gave a lot of versatility back to them
Totally agree. Die hard spell caster as well.
However, I created a Goliath Barbarian not knowing what to expect (Conan archetype in my head) or where to take the character. Even though it's not "normal", I multi-classed at 10th level with 3 levels of Rogue Assassin. It's a silent but deadly badass that begins encounters one way and ends them in another. So versatile, fun, effective, and "different" that gameplay has been lifted a bit.
They did a lot of things right with 5e.
Casual part-time D&D adventurer
I'll just point out that most people that say Barbarian is bland. Or say they are very straight forward. They are either people that only have one measurement of how a class is doing (that of damage) or they only really listen to the people that only have one measurement of how that class is doing (again that of damage).
Barbarians are really good at a few different things depending on what your wanting to do and popular perception isn't always right so when your willing to break the mold you can find some interesting things that do work well without having to try to make some kind of off the wall build or strat work to do it. And you can find that many subclasses aren't exactly what they are portrayed as being.