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

[Morrus]

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

Yep, that’s a strong point.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

On a serious note, the fundamental issue is that the "Barbarian" is similar to the "Paladin" and the "Ranger," - these are grandfathered in class archetypes.

Barbarian is, of course, Conan.
Paladin is from Three Hearts and Three Lions.
Ranger is Strider (Aragorn) from LoTR.

Each of these class names has acquired different connotations (for example, the Ranger class often suffers from certain difficulties in defining it because "Like Strider" isn't really a class; so the issue of whether it's an archer, a survivalist, a dual-wielder, a commando, a petmaster etc. always pops up) over time, but occasionally suffers from the identity crisis of what it means.

Essentially, the Barbarian is "more tanky" than the fighter (more hit points, more resilient) with occasional outsider/wilderness overtones (as in the berserker/totem base subclasses). There's not a good name for that.

Which means you either stick with Barbarian, which people know as an archetype from D&D (and from other D&D-inspired games and CRPGs) or give it a name no one is very familiar with. Neither seems particularly satisfying, IMO.

 

[Cadence]

My barbarians? I'm just talking about the PHB.

Doh! I just assumed it was tagged A5E and didn't even look :-/

 

[Bedrockgames]

My feeling is it is a trope, and in terms of being derogatory....does it really apply to any living group anymore? I mean it refers mostly to cultures that no longer would be described as uncivilized. And it kind of swings both ways (Conan the Barbarian is almost a commentary against civilized or urban living). It was also a way many cultures in the past did think of people outside their own more settled or more culturally advanced societies. It is a bit hard to understand Rome for example without at least entertaining the concept of barbarians. I am not sure we need to wring our hands over concepts that really apply to peoples from hundreds and thousands of years ago. Sure the term may occasionally get evoked today but it isn't usually meant literally. It pretty specifically refers to less civilized people in the distant past.

 

[MGibster]

Conan was an explorer, a polyglot, literate in several of those languages including a few ancient ones, a general of armies, had a strong chivalric streak, is a thief, and later a ruler. I don't know if any single class in D&D can really do the character justice.

 

[Shardstone]

No it doesn’t.

WotC - Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's

WotC released some figures this week. I thought it would be fun to compare them to the demographics of our own little community here on EN World for the same period (2019). WotC uses a metric it refers to as 40,000,000 'D&D Fans', but that's not defined. For the purposes of this, I assume a fan...

www.enworld.org

I'm not sure if news viewing and article viewing has any crossover with the very vocal and much more niche active forum-going community here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Everyone says that we have to with Barbarian because of Conan.

....how quickly we forget that he was the Destroyer, as well.

That's a pretty old movie. I think we've plenty of time to forget.

 

[Minigiant]

I prefer Barbarian.

The Fighter is the formally trained warrior.
The Barbarian is the warrior fighting on athleticism and emotion.

 

[MGibster]

That's a pretty old movie. I think we've plenty of time to forget.

Those of us who witnessed it can never forget. In truth, Conan the Destroyer isn't the worst fantasy movie to come out of the 1980s. Its biggest sin is being such a let down compared to the first movie.

 

[jgsugden]

I think this veers into the realm of looking for trouble. You're applying a bias to a word that does not need to have that bias. If we did that for other terms, we'd soon run out of options in this game.

Fighters? All they're there to do is fight? Violence is the only answer - is that the message we want to send?

Clerics and paladins? How offensive can we be to people that actually have their own faith? Shoving false idols at them is irresponsible and inconsiderate.

Wizards. Really - wizards? Have you heard of the KKK? It sounds like you have if you're using their titles.

You can poke holes at anything.

The words have the meaning we give them. Barbarian is only offensive if we make it offensive. In my campaigns, the barbarian tribes are sometimes dangerous wanderers that plunder and take, but there are also wandering tribes that live as one with nature and fend off evil forces when they rise up.