D&D General Has D&D abandoned the "martial barbarian"?

[EzekielRaiden]

One thing I feel D&D is missing or losing is the Warrior of Physicality.

Question: How do you keep the absolutely pure Warrior of Physicality relevant, in a game where you must be supernatural in order to do anything that even remotely deviates from "the laws of physics as they exist on real-world Earth"?

Because that's the fundamental problem, and the fundamental reason why classes that don't do magic keep getting pushed into either "technique" or "spiritualism" or some other "it's not spells (except when it is...) but it is supernatural."

Yes, I grant that the Warrior of Physicality can be a fun trope. The problem is that the D&D system (a) has poorly supported that archetype since its very inception (remember that the 1e Fighter got the best saves against magic--it was supernatural, just in a "supernatural toughness/immunity" way, rather than a "supernatural powers" way), and (b) has repeatedly powered up the supernatural archetypes while repeatedly depowering the pure-physical archetypes. 4e even tried to reverse this trend a little, by letting the Fighter very much focus on pure raw strength (the Brawler Fighter was literally able to chokeslam dragons, it was awesome), and making Rangers one of the best damage-dealing classes in the whole edition with no Primal magic involved at all (until you got Essentials, anyway). Y'know what happened? Edition warriors near-constantly griped about it to no end, talking about how unrealistic and impossible it was, making utterly false claims like that fighters could emit lightning from their hindquarters or fart fireballs or whatever.

D&D has been leaving behind the Warrior of Physicality because the designers almost never make the effort to make it worthwhile, and even when they do, at the very least a vocal minority will beat the drums of edition war to show just how much they hate the Warrior of Physicality getting to contribute on the same level as the Wizard or Druid.

 

[Steampunkette]

Is the Juggernaut official? Even so that's over 50% of babarians in Overt Magictown.


I think D&D uses these as a cop out.

If D&D can add a bunch of subsystems to fighters why not barbarians.

1. Tap into 4e and allow Barbarians to do Rage Strikes by expending rages.
   1. More Damage
   2. Shove opponents dozens of feet
   3. Crumple foes with devastating blows
2. Do the equivalent of the fighter's Samurai and Cavalier and have barbarians of alternate fighting styles and skill foci
   1. Barbarian Chiefs and Thanes
   2. Barbarian Horseman
   3. Wolfcoats as fixed berserkers
3. Focus on the ability scores to display more superhero or action hero levels of athleticism.
   1. Hulks. Powerful axe throws. Monkeygripping.
   2. Speedsters. Increased speed. More attacks with lighter weapons. Bestial dodging.
   3. Tanks. Increased AC. Clublike fists and rocking headbutts. Barehanded swordcatching.

Spending 1 minute of increased durability, extra damage, and other secondary benefits (Like access to subclass abilities) to get 1 really nice hit just feels unfair. I get that you, personally, really like it. But blowing all that potential for one hit? Eugh... Not to mention the game balance issues of it, since Reckless Attack is meant to work against Barbarians getting damage resistance, increasing the number of attacks that land and reducing the damage taken by a similar amount.

Barbarian Chiefs and Thanes requires a boatload of NPCs to act as warriors on their behalf, glutting up the battlefield with additional turns and actions. It's why the Ancestor Barbarian gets ghosts that don't -actually- fight but still kind of provide a similar feeling, y'know?

Barbarian Horseback Riding just isn't very interesting... what are you gonna do? Have the Horse rage when the barbarian does? It's still only got a handful of hit points and a much larger space meaning more attacks on it. Besides which there's not a whole lot of class fantasy there, which is a big part of character design.

Hulks? Hell Yeah! Unreasonably Big Swords is a whole genre.

Speedster? Ehhh... look over at Monk.

Devastating Headbutts... iron-club fists? Again, Monk.

Though, y'know, a Monk Subclass could be cool, I guess? Some extra speed, big unarmed combat, flurry of blows as a belated gain... could work.

 

[Steampunkette]

"Path of the Brutal Pugilist".

Okay... I'm on board with the Unarmed Fighter/Monk subclass for Barbarian. Might make one for Project Chronicle...

 

[mrpopstar]

So, that opens a question - what is "generic fantasy"?

"It doesn't model the specific abilities I care about of a specific character who is seminal in a specific sub-genre." means, "not generic"?

I think I want to push back that that. In other places, "generic" does not mean, "adequately mimics all specifics." Generic rather means "not terribly specific itself".

I also think there's an over-focus on mechanics when folks think about "generic". If we consider it from the sense of the general themes and styles and forms of the fictional genres, is D&D generic? Can you tell a story like Conan, and similar to Fafhrd & Grey Mouser, and in the general vein of Tolkien? Well, yeah. The system has few specifics to support any one of them, but can kinda do them all.

That makes it pretty generic. As in, not being specific enough to exclude many story types.

Dungeons & Dragons is branded fantasy, but it's accommodating enough to cover the generics of the fantasy genre and its character tropes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Though they have the option of doing some shamanistic magic rituals outside of combat if they -want-.

"Ignore the class features that are magical in nature" is generally seen as a non-starter argument for people who are looking for the archetype described in the OP. And I can't say that I blame them. A "Martial Wizard" works, if you just pretend spells and spell slots don't exist, or refluff them to be as minimally magical as possible. Or people trying to pass off the Bard as a Warlord, just by only choosing spells that can be re-fluffed as not actually spells somehow.

But I could absolutely be on board for a Path of the Brutal Pugilist. Drop ki (since it is explicitly magical), let rage manifest in punchy-punchy ways...it'd work for me.

 

[le Redoutable]

arrêtez de vous limiter à trois classes pour définir un perso !

Ranger ( c'est les Indiens d'Amérique mais Ranger c'est déjà un mix de Guerrier/Druide )
THief ( la Tour de l'Eléphant )
Ruler ( King Conan )
Demonologist ( le Fils de Satan from Marvel )
Fighter
Druid

 

[Steampunkette]

"Ignore the class features that are magical in nature" is generally seen as a non-starter argument for people who are looking for the archetype described in the OP. And I can't say that I blame them. A "Martial Wizard" works, if you just pretend spells and spell slots don't exist, or refluff them to be as minimally magical as possible. Or people trying to pass off the Bard as a Warlord, just by only choosing spells that can be re-fluffed as not actually spells somehow.

But I could absolutely be on board for a Path of the Brutal Pugilist. Drop ki (since it is explicitly magical), let rage manifest in punchy-punchy ways...it'd work for me.

The archetype in the OP -punches- people without using magic. He -fights- without using magic. You don't have to RP the class like Vixen from DC, you can just fight real good in animalistic styles.

Which was the fuller, and later, point I was making in that post.

That said... yeah. Brutal Pugilist is gonna be a thing. I'd work on it fully, but I'm at work right now...

 

[Umbran]

Some people want their martial characters to be able to do cool things without having to multiclass into a caster class.

With respect, this isn't about being able to do cool things, in general - it is about one very specific cool thing.
And the, some people seem to want the majority of barbarian subclasses to not to overtly magical. Some people want X. Some people want Y. Some people want Z.

How many things do we want to try to make a single class do?

 

[le Redoutable]

par exemple, les Ninjas c'est une multiclasse : un mix de Moine, de Voleur, d'Acrobate et d'Espion
mais les Moines, ce serait pas une multiclasse ? un mix d'acrobate et de sage ;

 

[Charlaquin]

With respect, this isn't about being able to do cool things, in general - it is about one very specific cool thing.
And the, some people seem to want the majority of barbarian subclasses to not to overtly magical. Some people want X. Some people want Y. Some people want Z.

How many things do we want to try to make a single class do?

I just think a Barbarian subclass with the ability to turn into an animal would be cool. More Barbarian subclasses that do lack supernatural abilities would also be cool. There’s room for both.