D&D General Naming the Barbarian? [added battlerager]

[Don Durito]

So Conan is a Fighter?

 

[CleverNickName]

I've always preferred "Berserker." It's not political, I just like it better.

 

[Eltab]

Male barbarians are named Conan; females are named Barb.
Nobody knows why, it's a just-so story.

 

[Tonguez]

I like the term Barbarian, and all its heap of negative connotations. Maybe I want to play that kind of character, crude, brutish, uncivilized, primitive.

Oh yeah, and Conan the Barbarian was a great movie!

If you want to divorce culture from the class (background), you're left with the iconic berserker fighting style. Though if we go back to the Conan movie, his fighting style was highly weapon trained, with a penchant for stealth kills and decapitation.

Conan wasnt a Barbarian though, he was a Fighter/Rogue.
The Rage ability is derived from fantasy image of Beserkers and should be named as such.

in one of my prehistoric homebrews wherein everyone is a barbarian I renamed the class Savage and rationalised Rage as “cannibal frenzy/bloodlust”

 

[Minigiant]

I'd vote for merging the Barbarian and the Ranger in one bundle to represent the far-wanderer warriors living on the fringe, relying on themselves to oppose wild creatures, being used to rare resources and un-regular tactics in combat.

1: Survivor's Will (aka Rage), Unimpeded Resilience (aka Con to AC), Deft Explorer (UA)
2: Reckless Assault, Danger Sense
3: Archetype
4: ASI
5: Extra attack, Fast Movement
6: Archetype feature, Deft Explorer Improvement
7: Instinct
8: ASI
9: Great Critical
10: Archetype feature, Deft Explorer Improvement
11: Relentless Will
etc

it would pad a little the lack of crunchy feature of the ranger, while reinforcing the theme of both classes.

I still see the barbarian and the ranger as two separate things.The outlander aspect is a background.
The classes are a warrior of talent and a defender of the border. 2 different skill sets.

The Barbarian to me would be a warrior who bludgens obstacles with their STR/DEX/CON score or combines 2 ability scores into one check.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

It probably should be Berserker, even if that comes from the old Norse word for "Bear Shirt", it fits what the class does better.

And while rare for the class concept, "Berserker" would be better fit a warrior filled with rage from an Urban environment with the Noble background than "Barbarian" would.

 

[Older Beholder]

I was a big fan of Savage sword of Conan and Conan Saga comics in high school
so I voted for Barbarian out of the given choices, but it’s been an interesting discussion.

Some other ideas:
Nomad
Wilding

(these both sound like Barbarian combined with Ranger now that I think about it)

 

[Azzy]

Since 3e, the barbarian's shctick has centered aroung "rage". Coming in from earlier editions, this always seemed an odd choice (as the 1e OG barbariian didn't "rage" in a class ability sense). I had hoped that 5e would have taken the rage bit out of the class and instead place it in a subclass (that way, non-beserker-nspired barbarians wouldn't have to trip over a non-thematic class ability. However, 5e failed this city me in this regard. So, if the class is essentially a baked-in beserker, why not call it a beserker?

 

[Azzy]

The name "Barbarian" tells you that this is the class you pick if you want to play a character like "Conan the barbarian".

Unfortunately, the class is a let own if you want to play a character like Conan, though. The class fails at emulating Conan.

 

[Don Durito]

Since 3e, the barbarian's shctick has centered aroung "rage". Coming in from earlier editions, this always seemed an odd choice (as the 1e OG barbariian didn't "rage" in a class ability sense). I had hoped that 5e would have taken the rage bit out of the class and instead place it in a subclass (that way, non-beserker-nspired barbarians wouldn't have to trip over a non-thematic class ability. However, 5e failed this city me in this regard. So, if the class is essentially a baked-in beserker, why not call it a beserker?

Tradition?

That's one reason. The other is probably that Barbarian is thematically wider - it gives more room for concepts like the Ancestral Spirits and Totems and the like. You could do a lot of that with Berserker too, but you'd expect all these things to really be tied into the berserk rage.