How do you make a Barbarian interesting? :)

[Staccat0]

One of my players had a Warforged Barbarian who was essentially The Iron Giant. He wanted his character to feel conflicted about his relationship to violence and this “mode” he went into.

So after session zero I added Warforged to our setting, but the idea was that they are only known as soldiers from the last Great War. They were all decommissioned.

In his backstory, he’d been brought to life by another PC’s wild magic and felt bound to protect her.

She was a wild magic sorcerer who didn’t like killing living creatures and did her best to avoid it when possible. He was a hulking walking construct that flew into rages to protect her and killed everything around. She was on a journey to figure out how to control her magic. He wanted to figure out where Warforged came from and how to control his rage.

She eventually multi-classed Warlock and took a patron to save the Warforged character’s life while mucking about in an ancient temple. Her new patron was a very obscure god who represented inevitable certainties like gravity, weights, measures and the idea that death is part of life.

The Warforged Barbarian eventually gave himself up to the bad guys (to save the druid’s sister) who wanted him as a weapon. We did a separate session where they used him as a weapon and it was super sad. To my surprise he escaped and ruined the BBEG’s Plan A in the process.

Through this sidequest he came to terms with the difference between being a weapon and using violence to stop Slaad’s bent on bringing chaos. He was one of the most interesting characters we’ve ever had.

A big part of that was thinking about what the mechanics MEAN to him and the other players. This Warforged Barbarian had never played D&D before which I weirdly think helps. He had a character concept in mind and we found a way to make it work within the rules. I'll never forget that character.

 

[Caliban]

Out of all the different classes in D&D I come up with characters for I find the Barbarian is the hardest to avoid tropes with The hardest to do things differently with due to their angry destructive nature and violent tendancies So, anyone got any suggestions?
My only successful Barbarian so far was a Kenku from the tundra who speaks in the tongue of his dead clansman and wants to find a clan called "civilization"

Basically - backstory and personality.

Currently my favorite barbarian character is "Honey of the Badger Clan" - she's a stout halfling barbarian who was raised by badgers, and her totem is the Badger (the big hairless barbarians have a similar totem called the "Bear" but it's clearly inferior).

Her family was killed while traveling through a forest when she was an infant, pixies found her and being to lazy to raise her themselves, convinced a momma badger who had recently had a litter to nurse her. What little civilization she has came via infrequent visits from the pixies when they remembered her. She now travels around with a group of giant furless people (humans, dwarves, elves, etc) and does her best to annihilate anything they point her at. (she uses a quarterstaff with Polearm Master and found Gauntlets of Ogre Power early in her adventuring career (from the Lost Mines of Phandelver).

She frequently urinates on things to mark them as her own, tends to charge in without thinking (Honey Badger don't care), and often curls up for a nap immediately after a battle or a meal, regardless of where she's at. When forced to sleep in an inn she will make a "burrow" under the bed or in a closet using blankets and furs and sleep there.

 

[Vymair]

I have a Barbarian at the top of my list right now. He's devout and view his rage as calling upon divine fury to smite his enemies. His faith is strong and he believes that he is a holy warrior blessed by the gods. He would never call himself a barbarian, he would classify himself as a servant of the gods.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Start with a person, someone with goals and things they want to do. With hobbies and pursuits etc.

Then assume that somehow they become a barbarian.

Work out why the person you started with ended up having the abilities and traits of a barbarian.

Same thing works for basically any class - don't start with a barbarian (or rogue, or whatever) and work from there. Start with a person and add the class to them.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Make him a bit of a jellyhead- give him a trigger word or situation that he reacts to with rage.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Perhaps an anthropomorphic animal with a sword and some gold fever...

 

[Bromjunaar]

I have a Barbarian at the top of my list right now. He's devout and view his rage as calling upon divine fury to smite his enemies. His faith is strong and he believes that he is a holy warrior blessed by the gods. He would never call himself a barbarian, he would classify himself as a servant of the gods.

I have something similar lined up. I'm going to have a Barbarian Zealot from the wilds who is doing his best to become worthy of receiving one of the great and legendary weapons from Gond, the God of Craft himself, who he has only actually heard enough about Gond to get him on the path to getting the prettiest ax he could imagine by impressing the god so much with his devotion to fighting in his name that he agrees to hand him one. I could probably do a bit of work on the background, but it's a start for me to head into the campaign with

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I never got why any version of D&D had barbarian as a class and not a culture. There are whole tribes of barbarians running around in various fantasy settings and maybe only a tiny percent have actual rage/frenzy powers. So a member of one of those tribes who has rage powers would be a barbarian barbarian. I think it should just be folded into the fighter class as a sub-class and given a better name.

 

[Jester David]

Raging grandmother with a large walking stick that functions like a great club.
A person inhabited by a primal spirit of rage that gives them supernatural fury.
A drunken brawler from an urban slum.

 

[CTurbo]

Basically - backstory and personality.

Currently my favorite barbarian character is "Honey of the Badger Clan" - she's a stout halfling barbarian who was raised by badgers, and her totem is the Badger (the big hairless barbarians have a similar totem called the "Bear" but it's clearly inferior).

Her family was killed while traveling through a forest when she was an infant, pixies found her and being to lazy to raise her themselves, convinced a momma badger who had recently had a litter to nurse her. What little civilization she has came via infrequent visits from the pixies when they remembered her. She now travels around with a group of giant furless people (humans, dwarves, elves, etc) and does her best to annihilate anything they point her at. (she uses a quarterstaff with Polearm Master and found Gauntlets of Ogre Power early in her adventuring career (from the Lost Mines of Phandelver).

She frequently urinates on things to mark them as her own, tends to charge in without thinking (Honey Badger don't care), and often curls up for a nap immediately after a battle or a meal, regardless of where she's at. When forced to sleep in an inn she will make a "burrow" under the bed or in a closet using blankets and furs and sleep there.

Just out of curiosity, what was this characters Int score? Because aside from the Badger part, you nearly described my Stout Halfling Frenzy Barb that had a 4 Int. He was basically a wild feral animal who preferred a light hammer to anything else. He was the party pet and was always 3 levels behind the rest of the group. The DM allowed me to use the Frenzy Barb's Retaliation feature at level 3 as long as I stuck to the light hammer. He had the Mobile feat which was awesome. he would run around in between people's legs and hit and run when not raging. He usually didn't rage until he was threatened and then he would freak the *** out and go crazy lol. he did not participate in every combat due to exhaustion but he was just the pet afterall. He would often sleep through combat even if he didn't have any levels of exhaustion. There was some funny moments trying to wake him up at times when we were getting our butts kicked for him to come in and give us a boost. We also had a lot of fun teaching him things like using the hammer and administering a healing potion, and of course doing tricks.

He had more personality than me big dumb Goliath Barbarian who had a 6 Int. He was an absolute beast in combat but I never really got the right feel for him outside of combat. he had ideas, and of course they were always dumb, and I played him as really gullible so he was kind of easy to take advantage of. The greedy party member typically took his cut of the loot and would give him a "shiney" (1gp) and that would make him happy.

My other Barbarian was optimized for flavor over mechanics. He was a Firbolg Hunter Ranger/Eagle Totem Barb(Eagle familiar) with Ritual Caster, Magic Initiate, and Alert. Totally optimized for a solo campaign out in the wild. He had been out alone in the wild for years (Ranger 4) when the group found him and he decided to join them after much of his forest had been burned down. He took Barb levels from there. But his limited spell slots, cantrips, and many rituals made him extremely useful outside of combat which is typically the Barb's biggest problem. I'd like to think he was pretty interesting for a Barb.