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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Moulin Rogue" data-source="post: 2011724" data-attributes="member: 1192">As written, I haven't been really satisfied with the barbarian as a D&D class. Despite some class-specific features such as rage, the barbarian still feels too often to me like a branch of fighter, with a dash of ranger in the skill list. The class feels too generic in some places, yet simultaneously too specific in others (rage and fast movement doesn't fit my concept of every single barbarian out there). It feels like the 'odd class out' in WotC's class splat books, seeming just kind of wedged into books on other classes and not really getting a whole lot out of them. No, the barbarian is not considered a 'weak' class in D&D from a statistical point of view, but I've thought it could use a little more help in a flavour sense. Sure, many combat feats for fighters are just as viable for barbarians, but there's a lot more to D&D than just fighting, right? …Right? Let's see what Mongoose can do with a full book's worth of material about getting the barbarian a little more character.The Quintessential Barbarian is the fourteenth in the venerable line of Mongoose's Quintessential Series, and is priced at $19.95 for 128 pages. Trivia note: Mike Mearls wrote on his website that he wanted to do this one, before other projects came up. The authorship came into the hands of Robert Schwalb, and they prove to very capable hands indeed as we shall see. This book first hit the shelves in April 2003 and so it's a 3.0 product all the way, with lots of little things like Wilderness Lore instead of Survival, reference to the Intuit Direction skill, and so on. This book also preceded WotC's setting of "decency" guidelines for d20 third-party publishers, so I guess this ended up being Mongoose's last big chance to include lots of drawings of bared female breasts, and there are a number of those. I would rate the artwork's range as fair to good, and I especially liked the clean, dramatically-shadowed stylings of Fred Rawles found mostly in the Feats section. Throughout the book is flavour text telling the ongoing saga of one barbarian Vignar - there's a lot of potential in barbarian-themed flavour text when you think about it, and I thought it did pretty well. Typos are regular but not that bad.This book's go-round of Character Concepts is pretty good this time. A common trade-off is to turn the barbarian's rage ability up or down, and then adjust skill access and/or skill checks in directly opposite proportion. It seems to work pretty well. There are further suggestions for non-human PC races and then regional concepts - in exchange for lower technology (fewer weapon and armour proficiencies) you can get little perks based on what kind of region the barbarian hails from (cold, desert, mountains, etc.) So pretty quickly out of the gate I got a way to give the barbarian some of the flavour I was looking for, and this was the highlight of the book for me. Between this and Chapter 2 of Unearthed Arcana a campaign will have plenty of ways to customize a barbarian.The Prestige Barbarian offers up the expected assortment of  prestige classes,  including the ultimate raging machine (Devolutionary) a Viking raider-type (Sea Wolf) and three you could say are themed around an "aarrghhh, me hate X" theme: there's an anti-wizard (Wizard Slayer), anti-psion (Mind Killer) and anti-religious (Despoiler). There's also one called Runner which includes extra fast movement; but given that a human barbarian with the Run feat can already run as fast as the best Olympic runners today, this one made me feel dizzy thinking about it.Tricks of the Trade is a collection of various rules useful for many characters besides barbarians, such as bartering and predicting weather. It also suggests that the Intimidation skill could be keyed to any of the six abilities, attempting to explain how in a paragraph for each. I was willing to entertain the idea and all, but after reading this section I just wasn't won over by the idea of wowing somebody with your dexterous movement so they'll tell you where the bad guy's hideout is. There's been much discussion about allowing the modifier for Strength instead of Charisma on Intimidate checks, and those are the two I think I'll stick with. There is also a high-level ability called the shape-journey allowing a character to spiritually project as an animal totem. This chapter was a mixed bag for me so I would rank it about average overall.Nine full pages of barbarian-themed feats follow; predictably there are quite a few tied to the rage ability but there's plenty of other stuff as well, feats that pretty much any combat-driven character would find useful. Single-Weapon Mastery has kind of a bland title, but it grants the cinematic ability to catch an incoming blow and accept the damage in exchange for an attack of opportunity against the foe. Tools of the Trade introduces weapon materials from earlier technology, followed by some new weapons and equipment. If you haven't got stats for a d20 broadsword from some other source yet, you'll get one take here. There's also the Zweihander, an enormous sword requiring a Strength of 18 just to wield. Not a bad idea, but if the concept of minimum Strength requirements for weapons is going to be introduced, why would you have just one. Much of the equipment revolves around hunting and there are also some welcome rules for magical woad. The chapter concludes with six steeds (zebra, four horses and a war elk).About two-thirds through the book now, we get to eight pages dealing with Contests where you could hold a kind of "barbarian olympics". I was a bit disappointed with this section, as I thought some of the contests were described in unnecessary detail. This section was heavy on art with only some of it relevant to the topic, as if this section was padding.Survival was my second-favourite part of the book, greatly expanding the possibilities of wilderness adventuring in a way that's useful to any character at home in the outdoors. There are expanded rules for wilderness movement, swimming, climbing and finding food. DCs for hunting and foraging are provided and they're broken down by climate and season. It's not hard to imagine a whole primitive or wilderness adventure revolving around just trying to get something to eat. I did get confused by what's happening in the table at the bottom of p. 100; the lack of shading between sections made it hard to figure out that it's a 3 row, 2 column table where you find your roll result on the left column and follow across to the adjacent column to learn the mechanical effects. But apart from this, the rules weren't hard to follow and they add an extra dimension to adventuring far from civilization.In the home stretch comes a chapter on Hordes with rules for raising a horde, maintaining it and then raiding. They can be used with or without Mongoose's Open Mass Combat System, found in other Mongoose products. It wraps up with a brief look at fortifications and siege engines, finishing with the designer notes, index and character sheet that are all standard in the Quintessentials line.I found Quintessential Barbarian to be a good entry in the "Collector Series" line. It resolved the flavour issue of the class to my liking, and included some wilderness rules with wide utility in a book where one may not even expect to find them. The other expected sections on things like feats and equipment were solid, and the mechanics looked overall better balanced than others in this series have been. I give Quintessential Barbarian a 4 out of 5.</blockquote>

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