Is the barbarian too powerful in your campaign?

[Wasteland Knight]

Short answer to the original question - no. I've seen several barbarian builds in the past few campaigns, and none of them have ever dominated. Good at dishing out some damage, sure. But dominate, nope. As for the question about the -2 AC compared to armor boosting magic items, the same items that boost the barbarian can apply to most any other fighter type character. Most barbarians I've seen go the two-handed weapon route, but the AC penalty for raging plus the lack of a shield usually means at higher levels it not a question if they'll be hit, but how much power attack the monster's going to use

 

[Nyaricus]

Most barbarians I've seen go the two-handed weapon route, but the AC penalty for raging plus the lack of a shield usually means at higher levels it not a question if they'll be hit, but how much power attack the monster's going to use

QFT

The barbarian is *definitly* too frontloaded (really nice first levl class, with average SkP and good HP) but it's possibly one of the better balanced IMO.

 

[Hairy Minotaur]

Not in my campaigns, I've seen enough of the rage-charge-beatdown barbarians to know that traps work great at stopping that kind of attack mode and if they don't rage first, they're really susceptable to hold person and charm person

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Yep...what with the -2 AC penalty for rage, plus their lack of heavy armor, plus a propensity to dispose of shield use, their AC isn't going to be high. So they can go down pretty disturbingly quickly.

Brad

 

[Sejs]

Nope, I've got no problems with the barbarian. Dealt with them from both sides of the screen.

They're just a fighter that favors raw numbers over finesse/options.

 

[Nightfall]

Em,

Try seeing what a barbarian does in my games. Which is to say little to nothing unless it's an NPC.

 

[Drowbane]

Blasphemy

Barbarians are pretty far from borken.

 

[Storyteller01]

We play a 3rd party future based game, so they tend to be outclassed by everyone else.

 

[Lazybones]

A barbarian with low hit points in a rage is often in very serious trouble. Especially for higher-level barbarians, coming out of a rage during a battle can mean instant death. Ditto for a barbarian that falls unconscious during a battle. The barbarian better be real friendly with the party cleric.

As others have noted, they can dish it out, but they usually cannot take it. In my experience your average barbarian has only 1 extra hp/level than the party fighter, or thereabouts (more when raging, of course, but there's that down side noted above), while the fighter often has 2-10 more points of AC (comparing the best medium armor with the best heavy, and depending on level and whether he uses a shield) than Mr. Damage Sponge, even if the barbarian put a few extra points into Dex. When facing monsters with multiple attacks and the Power Attack feat, even a tough barbarian will go down pretty fast. And heaven help him if the party goes up against giants.

In my games, I've noticed that encounters with single-classed barbarians (on either side) tend to go pretty quick. It's often a race for the barbarian to put his foe down with a few insane-damage attacks before he is turned into barba-chow.

 

[Victim]

No. As mentioned above, the class is fairly frontloaded, but on the whole, it's a pretty balanced class. Barbarians are supposed to dish out lots of melee damage; if they couldn't then they'd be unbalanced.