So I've heard that barbarians used to be more than berserkers

>>50261326
Natural born Mage Hunters. Powers through cc spells through sheer rage and willpower.

>>50261326
In older DnD, Barbarians were basically crowd-control in melee form. Not sure it would work so great in something like 5e though, which is more based around smaller-scale encounters than battlefield-simulation.

>>50261568
>>50261728
Ah, I see. How would /tg/ redo barbarians to make them more than ragetanks?

Always wondered about merging them with rangers for the survival/wildman thing.

>>50261326
I've been sort of playing with the idea of a Bard / Barbarian build, which focuses on shoving with a shield. Like, an awesome viking skald, throwing out poetry and blowing a war-horn.

If you take the Shield Master feat, you can "shove" as a bonus action (with a shield).
When you shove, you can choose to knock people prone, which gives you advantage on hitting them, and gives them disadv.
Shoving is Str (athletics) vs. Str(athletics) or Dex(acrobatics)

Now, Bards can choose any skills for proficiency, and you should take Athletics. Once you hit lvl 3 bard, you can take expertise in athletics, and double you prof. bonus.

Beside that, when you are raging, you get adv. on Strenght skill checks.

So, with 16 str, by the time you hit lvl 4 (1 barb / 3 bard) you should be getting a +7 to your athletics checks, +advantage, and shoving as a bonus action.
It'll go up to +9 by lvl 5.

And by lvl 5, you can attack twice, hopefully with advantage from your enemies being prone.

>>50262007
You could still rage, for physical resistance and advantage, but even without rage, you'd be really fucking good at shoving people, and still get both attacks. Reckless attack, and frenzy are not really interesting for this build.

and if you don't rage, you can cast your bard spells.

>>50261568
>CC
>>50261728
>CC
>>50261867
>Op: Ragetank!

Uh-huh...

>>50262052
What?

I asked what they were before they were ragetanks, and they answered crowd control. I then said if you could make the modern barbarian more than a ragetank.

>>50261867
To be honest, I wouldn't, at least not for 5e. The fighter archetype already covers most of what you need for different types of Martial characters, at least without bringing magic into the mix. They're just kind of a redundant class, like 5e Sorcerers.

4e Barbarians are pretty cool on that front.

They really went with 'They are Primal, not Martial'. So a Barbarian isn't just an angry bastard (There is a fighter thing for just being a berserk) he's someone drawing on the power of his ancestors and nature.

A Barbarian can shout with the force of a thundercrack to shatter stone and slow his foes or call on a totem of the thundering hooves to allow him to trample right through enemies like a heavy warhorse. Or he could offer blood to dark spirits too old to name in order to bring death to his foes.

>>50261867
Skill userst like roguesome but for physical skills and intimidation.

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>>50261568
>Mage Hunters
>spells

>>50262108
Although it runs counter to the OP's question, I quite like the 4e Berserker, which actually is(mostly) the "gets angry" type of barbarian, but he also has some benefit when not raging (making it so you don't always want to start every fight by starting to rage), instead of handling rage like some sort of resource.

>>50261326
A guy who wrote a NW2 Barbarian faq put it this way:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/922154-neverwinter-nights-2/faqs/47744

5. Who is Conan?
A. Conan is a fictional character created by in 1932 by Robert E.
Howard as a series of pulp stories known as Weird Tales. He's a
long raven hair or dark-brown muscular man with an anti-hero
personality who wields a bastard sword called the Altantean Sword. He is
very superstitious, yet very materialistic. In the beginning, he was
driven by the need to adventure
and later to rule over his own kingdom. Despite his brutish appearance, Conan
is very cunning, could read & speak in several languages, was strategic &
an outstanding fighter. Most of all, he had a sense of humor.

Conan has appeared in license comic books, video games, an MMORPG and two
movies featuring actors Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Mako, and
Grace Jones. (She appears in the sequel) Since his debut in the 1900s, Conan
has become widely recognized in pop culture and has had many characters imaged
(or parody) after him as well copied theme music. Many of the Dungeons and
Dragon players who play Barbarian played an anti-hero Barbarian in the spirit
of Conan. However, many players have the misconception that Conan was dumb and
very serious one-dimensional character (due to the movies depicting Conan as
just being a brute) so their characters are often betrayed as being big dumb
rage-a-holics who get mad if you crack the slightest joke. To be fair, DnD
also depicts Barbarians as being unintelligent, which only fuels
the dumb angry Barbarian stereotype. Moreover, the stereotypical
Barbarian in the DnD world is an Ogre, Minotaur, Orc or Half-Orc,
all of whom aren't very bright.

Lastly, one of Conan's biggest fans was J.R.R Tolkien of Lord of the Rings fame
knew a lot about the series. In fact, Lord of the Rings came out four years
after Robert published his stories.
So maybe barbarians used to be more than berserkers before D&D.

>>50262108
The totem stuff in 5e kinda does the same thing. It's still mostly rage-based, but with lots of primal druid-ish flavor.

>>50262176

Yeah, it's a defender when not raging.

It wasn't perfect (They didn't print enough martial powers for it and it raged when it used a Primal power. With more support/options it would have been better. Such is the nature of late-4e classes) but it was fun.

>>50262192

Yeah, I brought up the 4e one because it was a bit more multifaceted on that front because the 4e one is a subclass on the primal front. 5e has it firmly in rage-tank but 4e Barbarians actually had a very fun secondary Leader build. Inspiring your allies to greater heroism or calling on the spirits of your ancestors to tend the wounds of your friends.

>>50262235

>The 5e one is a subclass on the primal front

Whoops, correction.

>>50262235
It's kinda unfair to compare the 5e barb to the 4e one. It had so many more options because of the whole way classes in 4e were built. Plus, all the rages meant that a barbarian could be good at just about anything he chose to be.

>>50262306

Eh, I think it's a bit of a valid comparison.

The 4e Barbarian was entirely built on 'You are a primal guy, doing primal things' while the 5e one made it a subclass rather than the basis of the entire thing.

Not saying the 5e one is bad, just that the 4e one put a heavier focus on that aspect.

>>50262321
Even if the 4e one was built with "can go primal" as a sub path (kinda like the berserker was) it'd still have more shit to do (unless it was essentials).

>>50262353

Fucking essentials.

But yeah, I didn't intend for this to be a competition between the two. Both are cool.

>>50261867
I would play a 4e barbarian

What would you replace rage with? Or how would you change raging?

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Killing Demi-liches who spam imprisonment magic

I remember them as an AD&D 2e fighter kit.
They could make a first-impression CHA check to alter the hostility of encounters with NPCs. It could be pretty amusing to see the barbarian piss off a chivalrous knight who was willing to help and have to fight him in an honour duel one time, then the bandits scourging the countryside engage him with polite conversation the next.

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>>50262007
i like this, sounds amazing!

also made me think of pic related

What was the name of the barbarian from The Colour of Magic?

That is what barbarians used to be like. You're not just a big tank that soaks sword swings like a sponge, you have reflexes like a tiger and you leap through the air like a panther.


And, to be fair, many systems still have solid emphasis on barbarians being agile, it just seems that most popular depictions nowadays think unstoppable meat wall before they think Conan.

>>50261326
They were magic destroyers. They got 1 xp for each 1 gp worth of magic items they would destroy.

>>50262007
>And by lvl 5, you can attack twice
>by the time you hit lvl 4 (1 barb / 3 bard)
You won't get extra attack with that build until either lvl 7 (barb 1/valor bard 6) or lvl 8 (barb 5/bard 3). If you just want expertise, you're better off going just 1 into rogue and then 5 barbarian for extra attack.

>>50264163
Cohen the Barbarian, He's in the rest of the books too, especially the Rincewind ones. All the way up to The Last Hero ; ;

>>50262184
Hell, 'barbarians' were more than berserks during D&D, or at least during OD&D. I think it pays to remember, both Conan and Fafhrd were listed as inspirations for the Fighting-Man class, and the FM stacks up rather well for portraying that. Proficiency in a wide variety of weapons? Check. Able to command followers, even armies? Check. Preferring to use heavy armor when it was available? Check. The Fighting-Man was modeled on the literary Conan and Fafhrd as much as anything else.

The disconnect came a few years down the line, with pastiches like Kothar and the Marvel Comics version of Conan. Here's where we break from a canon character to an Iconic character. At the time Barbarian was first introduced as a distinct class in AD&D in the 80's, most Conan fans knew him from the Frank Frazetta-illustrated covers of comic books. Comics Flanderized the character, presenting him as an archetype distinct from his canon portrayal, and Robert E. Howard's works were kind of scarce on the ground. The 'new' Barbarian was in demand, distinct from the OCs that spawned the archetype it was supposedly a subversion against. And things just snowballed from there...

>>50264273
Cohen seems like he'd be hilarious to roleplay.
Anyone here played an old, grumpy barbarian?

>>50264253
That's true, it was a brainfart. Its something I may do if and when my current character in our campaign dies.
He is a very squishy rogue/monk, and our DM loves single, big monsters. Our last battle had a breath-weapon attack that thankfully missed him, but ended up dealing nearly enough damage to instantly permakill him, if he had been hit.

>>50261326
Should barbarians have survivalist skills, /tg/?

>>50262128
I think you read that wrong.
Not HAS powers through.
Powers through, as in forces his way through in a physical sense.

>>50270091
Sure. Why wouldn't they? Are you thinking of some kind of urban barbarian, rather than someone from the wilderness?

>>50261326
2e Barbarians moved 15 instead of 12, and could jump really far. They also had a chance to auto-dodge and counter-attack a backstab attempt.

That's actually all that they did that wasn't base fighter.

>they also got 2-weapon fighting
Only with a Dex above 15. Anything below and they got the exact same 2-weapon rules everyone else used, with the exact same penalties.

>>50270254
Nah, I'm thinking good 'ole "from the forests" barbarian. Always found it weird that they had less naturalist skills than rangers.

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>>50261568
>Powers through cc spells
Fuck yeah

>>50262518
It's no longer a resource, you turn it on and can attempt to end it. Blank slate? Something along the line of:
Bonus action to start raging
Resistance to Blug/Pie/Slash
Advantage to hit/get hit
+10 Speed
Any weapon die wich rolls under your Proficiency is equal to prof
Ending it requires a reverse concentration check (DC 10 or half of damage you took last turn)
Something bout exhaustion if used to long

>>50270710
Maybe you have certain conditions that let you enter different rages?

>>50270602
>tfw no fire and ice campaign