Simple: Barbarian v. Fighter

[the_mighty_agrippa]

I've been looking at a throwgame concept and the more I look, the barbarian is the superior warrior. Sure, the fighter ends up with more feats and better armour but the barbarian trumps nearly every advantage whenever he rages.

If you've played a mid-level fighter against a mid-level (or high-level) barbarian, how do you take him down?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I've been looking at a throwgame concept and the more I look, the barbarian is the superior warrior. Sure, the fighter ends up with more feats and better armour but the barbarian trumps nearly every advantage whenever he rages.

If you've played a mid-level fighter against a mid-level (or high-level) barbarian, how do you take him down?

Your main disadvantage is probably to-hit and damage capacity as a Fighter. Your Armor Class is good, but it might be unable to avoid getting hit. (But you might be able to avoid getting "power-attacked".)

You must use your feats for full advantage, preferably without reducing your (relative) damage potential.

1) Power Attack: You will probably benefit more than the Barbarian from it, because he is really an easy target.

2) Trip: If you succeed at a trip, you will essentially get an attack at +4 bonus (that can be 4 to 8 points of extra damage per hit). In 3.5, even two extra attacks (one from the succesful trip, one from the attack of oppertunity if the Barbarian wants to stand up)

3) Disarm/Sunder: This will reduce the Barbarians damage potential, since he usually has to take a weaker weapon (less base damage and probably less enhancend), and without quickdraw, he can´t take full attacks.
Sunder might be preferable sometimes, since the Barbarian won´t be able to get the weapon back. (And even if you can´t take it for later use - a dead fighter needs no weapons...)

For 2) and 3): these maneuvers are hard to pull off, since you´re enemy will have an boosted strength, that might compensate your "feat" bonus to the rolls, so it can become a 50/50 chance. Trip attacks work well as "last effort" attack(, as with your lower secondary or tertiary attacks, so you´re primary attacks still deal damage).

But remember:
Usually, it´s not your job to fight a Barbarian. You have to work with your party against a wide array of monsters and creatures. Sometimes the right feat can allow you to help your allies and yourself a lot more than simply raging and damaging an opponent could do.

 

[daTim]

A mounted Fighter with all the mounted combat feats should destroy a Barbarian. A Barbarian will not have enough feats to properly pull it off at any level.

I generally only multiclass into Fighter, or only play until 12th level. Past that I dont have much reason due to lack of high level fighter feats.

 

[francisca]

One-on-one comparisons are all well and good. However, they mean jack-squat in the dungeon. The fighter proves his worth in the long-haul, being effective fight after fight, whereas the Barbarian is better in a given instance, when his rage can be brought to bear, but a bit less effective than the fighter in non-rage combats. In the end, over the long-haul, I think it equals out.

 

[Corlon]

I think they're about equal. The fighter generally has more versitility (or the harder to get into but fairly powerful prestige classes earlier), whereas the barbarian is good at raging and beating things to a pulp with a melee weapon.

Fighters can make excellent archers, and I guess you could do that with a barbarian, but it'd be a waste of your abilities.

If your enemies are watching you, they can make sure to teleport in right after the barbarian finishes raging and is all screwed, the fighter has no chance of this happening.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

While the barbarian is quite powerful a fighter who selects his feats well and uses good tactics will probably win.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

As others have indicated, it depends on what you want to do.

Archery: barbarians don't hold a candle to fighters. They don't have enough feats and rage doesn't do them much good. Weapon Specialization does fighters a lot of good.

Cavalry: barbarians make passable cavalry, but fighters are better since they have the ability not only to have all of the mounted combat feats, but also to have a variety of other feats.

Heavy infantry: multiclass barbarians make good heavy infantry, but straight-up barbarians have the deck stacked against them if they want to absorb attacks with a high AC. They don't have heavy armor proficiency, they don't have tower shield proficiency, their AC goes down when raging, and they can't use combat expertise.

Damage trading: barbarians excel at dealing large amounts of damage in a short time. Give a barbarian a two handed weapon and his straightforward damage potential is simply better than a fighter's while he's raging. Of course, he can only rage a limited number of times per day, but he can live with that.

In a one on one matchup, the fighter will lose if he plays the barbarian's game: stand in one place and trade damage. On the other hand, if the fighter uses combat expertise and a tower shield, he can probably outlast the barbarian's rage and then clean up. Or the fighter can use trip. disarm, sunder, spring attack (with a reach weapon--preferably one with tripping capability), and stands a better than 50% chance of defeating the barbarian. The barbarian can use some of those manuevers himself (mostly sunder, spring attack, and reach), but lacks the feats to be equipped for a variety of situations. A tripping fighter can carry a bunch of flails, etc and quickdraw a new one after losing the strength check and being forced to drop one. A barbarian with improved trip probably doesn't have the feats for Quickdraw.

Barbarian is a better class if that is the role you want to play (and if you have enough clerics/wands of CLW to heal you up after every fight since a barbarian usually takes more damage than a fighter). Fighter is the better class if you want to be an archer or want to have a bunch of different tricks. However, at high levels, there's little reason not to take both. Two or four levels of barbarian is a good addition to nearly any fighter and two or four levels of fighter complements nearly any barbarian.

 

[shilsen]

One-on-one comparisons are all well and good. However, they mean jack-squat in the dungeon. The fighter proves his worth in the long-haul, being effective fight after fight, whereas the Barbarian is better in a given instance, when his rage can be brought to bear, but a bit less effective than the fighter in non-rage combats. In the end, over the long-haul, I think it equals out.

What she said.

That being said, if you really do want to consider a one-on-one matchup, my money is on the fighter. The barbarian only has one option to take the fighter down - do lots of damage fast. A fighter, depending on the feats has a lot of options - disarm, trip, raise your AC so that his iterative attacks miss (the fighter will probably still hit more often due to the barbarian's lousy AC) and outlast him, etc.

 

[Shallown]

The best way to test this, I think, Is to do 4-5 builds of each class at say 8th level or so. Make the initial range of seperation and terrain a variable then do some arena style matches with the matches lasting 4 + 2d6 rounds. And having 2-5 matches a day. Randomize who fights who. Give them full equipment and see who last.

This may put things a little closer to real world (For a fantasy game anyways ) circumstances. On all the variables have a third part handle those so the two contestants don't know how long a match is or how many there are going to be. You could do it to the last man standing or develop some point scoring system.

You could do this for a pregame fun thing to do. I know we sometimes get started late on our game nights so you could run this for funsie some times.

Later

 

[francisca]

I think the most lethal combatant is a barbarian/fighter.

We did some "cage match" stuff one night when a few players didn't show. I found that a dwarven barbarian/fighter (equal levels) with a dwarven waraxe mauls a fighter of the same level, almost everytime. Heck, even a barb 1 / fighter 1 beat a level 4 fighter 2/5 fights.

The caveat to this is that we didn't use any prestige classes.