Barbarian - The Play Experience B-)

[Starfox]

The player in my group who plays a barbarian for the first time has some sort of funny views about the barbarian class. This led to a number of silly sayings about the barbarian around here.

Barbarians are very lazy warriors - you fight for a while, but are fickle about it and when you are no longer in the mood for fighting, you become a truculent child and just refuse.

How the 15-minute adventuring day came to martial characters

Barbarian rage hit points - knowing when to run away.

Fighters dutifully hold their post until they go down. Barbarians have all the tools to run away and fight another day - a hit point buffer, and extra speed.

Pirate barbarians - the only pirates in history without Profession: Sailor.

 

[Balesir]

This is tagged for "D&D General", but I think it only really applies to 3.X (and maybe earlier, although fights tended to be shorter so the time limit on rage was less an issue). However, my experiences playing a 3.5 Eberron Shifter-Barbarian suggest to me that:

1) The rage time limit meant not so much "fight a bit then stop" as "choose your moment to rage carefully". This was redoubled when trying to phase the rage in with the Shifter shifting...

2) Speed - especially with the Shifter race - was immense. This had knock-on effects on Jumping, too; I remember making infeasibly huge jumps and runs to confront enemies who thought themselves "safe". This could also be useful for escape, but was seldom used that way - you don't have to outrun fast monsters, just the slowest party member...

3) Taking a level of Ranger for the ability to use CLW wands was completely irresistible; it was such a good move you really just couldn't refuse it.

Finally, this:

Barbarian rage hit points - knowing when to run away.

...wasn't fixed by running away - it was fixed by wearing a bracer of potions with a few cure potions loaded (and maybe the odd "special" for a real surprise!)

 

[Starfox]

...wasn't fixed by running away - it was fixed by wearing a bracer of potions with a few cure potions loaded (and maybe the odd "special" for a real surprise!)

Our barbarian claims she'll run anway AND use a potion - but it hasn't actually happened yet.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Mandatory power attack should be a Barbarian class feature. All Barbarians suffer - (Level / 5, round up) "to hit" and apply double the bonus to damage. They are All Power Attack, All The Time (APATT).