The barbarian is a playable character class in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The class was introduced in 1985 and went through a number of evolutions in subsequent editions of the game.
Publication history[]
Creative origins[]
The barbarian is based on Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, Gardner Fox's Kothar and to a lesser extent Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd.[1]
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition[]
The first official barbarian character class was introduced by Gary Gygax in Dragon #63 (July 1982), as a sub-class of fighter.[2] The barbarian later appears in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons manual, Unearthed Arcana in 1985.[3] The barbarian, along with the cavalier, received a revision in Dragon magazine #148 (August 1989), as the author David Howery felt that the class as described in Unearthed Arcana was "too powerful and too vaguely defined."[4]
Another version of the barbarian appeared as a character class in the original Oriental Adventures in 1985.[5] According to a reviewer for White Dwarf, the barbarian was "altered to fit into an Eastern pattern", and was "primarily a steppes warrior, or a forest and jungle dweller".[5]
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition[]
Barbarians appear in The Complete Fighter's Handbook as a character kit,[6] and later receive full attention as a stand-alone class in The Complete Barbarian's Handbook.
Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition[]
Barbarian is one of the base character classes presented in the Player's Handbook. The barbarian is seen as the archetypal warrior who uses brute strength and raw fury to excel in combat, instead of the honed skills of the Fighter or measured strength of the Monk. Of all the classes, only the barbarian begins the game illiterate and is forced to expend extra skill points or multiclass in order to read and write. Half-Orcs have Barbarian as a favored class.
Barbarians can tap their inner fury to fly into a berserker-like rage. Once the rage is expended, the barbarian becomes fatigued for the remainder of the encounter. Rage provides bonuses to Strength, Constitution, and Will saving throws (which can make barbarians surprisingly resistant to harmful magic), and a glut of additional hit points which expire along with their rage. Rage also reduces armour class and interferes with any skill requiring patience or concentration. As barbarians gain in power, their rage can be used more often and provides even larger Strength and Constitution bonuses, while taking less of a toll on their bodies.
The Iconic barbarian is Krusk, a male half-orc.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition[]
The barbarian appears in the 4th edition as a player character class in Player's Handbook 2 (2009).[7]
As strikers, barbarians are focused on single target damage. Some defender or leader capabilities are also available to the class. Barbarians are proficient in melee weapons and light armor. Barbarians use the primal power source.
Two barbarian builds have been detailed, the Rageblood Barbarian, which focuses on the Rageblood Vigor form of Feral Might, Strength and Constitution and leans towards the defender role, and the Thaneborn Barbarian, which focuses on Strength, Charisma and a different form of Feral Might, and leans towards the leader role. Barbarians' powers are called Evocations.
The Rageblood Berserker paragon path was first presented in the 2008 preview for Player's Handbook 2.[8] The Player's Handbook 2 has several barbarian paragon paths, including the Bear Warrior, Fearbringer Thane, Frenzied Berserker and Wildrunner.[7]
Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition[]
The barbarian is as a character class in the Player's Handbook. It encompasses two subclasses, known as primal paths: the Path of the Berserker and the path of the Totem Warrior. The Path of the Berserker archetype heightens a barbarians rage allowing for more savage attacks, while the Totem Warrior imbues them with some animal attributes.[9]
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide included the Battlerager, exclusive to dwarves and allowing them to wear and utilise damaging spiked armor.[10]
Xanathar's Guide to Everything added three more paths: Ancestral Guardian, Storm Herald, and Zealot. The Ancestral Guardian provides supernatural defensive protection to allied creatures, the Storm Herald emits storm-themed auras that damage foes and shield allies when the barbarian's Rage feature is activated, and the Zealot empowers their attacks with divine energy and can be easily brought back from death.[11]
Barbarians focus on defensive power. They have the highest average hit points of any class, and they gain access to a powerful unarmored defense feature. In combat, their rage feature grants them resilience against common damage types, and can be extended by taking or dealing damage.[9]
Barbarians in specific campaign settings[]
Eberron[]
In most Dungeons & Dragons games, the barbarian is represented as a savage, tribal warrior. However, in the Eberron campaign setting, barbarians are more like nomads — while they may not be civilized, they are certainly not savages.
Forgotten Realms[]
Barbarians in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting are similar in presentation as the class presented in the core rulebook. Barbarians can be of any race in the Realms, though some are more uncommon than others. Barbarians are described as being confused by the cosmopolitan nature of certain regions of Faerûn.
Reception[]
Screen Rant rated the barbarian class as the 8th most powerful class of the base 12 character classes in the 5th edition.[12]
The Gamer rated the 5th edition barbarian subclass Path Of The Zealot as the 2nd most awesome subclass out of the 32 new character options in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.[13]
Gus Wezerek, for FiveThirtyEight, reported that of the 5th edition "class and race combinations per 100,000 characters that players created on D&D Beyond from" August 15 to September 15, 2017, barbarians were the fourth most created at 9,063 total. Goliath (1,729) were the most common racial combination followed by half-orc (1,709) and then human (1,435).[14]
References[]
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- ↑ DeVarque, Aardy. Literary Sources of D&D. Archived from the original on December 9, 2007. Retrieved on February 23, 2007.
- ↑ Gygax, Gary (July 1982). "The Big, Bad Barbarian". Dragon. TSR (63): 8–10.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto module").
- ↑ Later AD&D Manuals. Retrieved on January 21, 2018.
- ↑ Howery, David (1989). "Revision". Dragon Magazine. 148: 18–23.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto module").
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Shepherd, Ashley (February 1986). "Open Box: Dungeon Modules". White Dwarf. Games Workshop (74): 9–10. ISSN 0265-8712.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto module").
- ↑ Schick, Lawrence (1991). Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games. Prometheus Books.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 February and Beyond. Archived from the original on November 10, 2014.
- ↑ Heinsoo, Rob (October 2008). Playtest: The Barbarian (PDF). Dragon Magazine. Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved on October 6, 2008. [dead link]
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Keeping it Classy. (July 28, 2014). Retrieved on September 21, 2014.
- ↑ Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide – Review. Tribality. (November 9, 2015). Retrieved on September 17, 2018.
- ↑ Extra life 2017, Xanathar's Guide to Everything table of contents. Wizards of the Coast. (2017). Retrieved on September 17, 2018.
- ↑ Dungeons And Dragons: Ranking All Of The Base Classes, From Least To Most Powerful (in en-US). (2019-02-14).
- ↑ 10 Awesome Subclasses From Xanathar’s Guide To Everything (D&D Expansion) (in en-US). (2019-08-07).
- ↑ Wezerek, Gus (2017-10-12). Is Your D&D Character Rare? (in en-US).