Tips on playing a Barbarian for the first time

As Warrior Poet pointed out above, I'm playing a dwarven ranger-barbarian in his campaign. If you can convince your DM (as I did) to multi with a Monte Cook ranger, I recommend it. You get some more bonus feats, and can go in a direction other than TWF/Ambi.

Gwar, my dwarf, has Ambidexterity, Power Attack, and Shield Expert. He normally fights with a large spiked shield and a warhammer, but when he really wants to do some damage (or just gets really honked off), he drops them and pulls his greatsword. I sometimes use Power Attack to simplfy math, e.g., Power Attack at +2 when raging, so the melee attack modifier doesn't change.

Rage early, Power Attack all the time, and make frequent Spot and Listen checks. In other words: crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.
 

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I like the Ranger class myself, and it seems like a "natural" was to go when (if) the Barbarian character starts becoming civilized.

What do you think of adding a level or two of Bard? I can picture a raging barbarian inspiring allies by singing a war song.
 

I perfer multiclassing barbarian with fighter, as those two classes compliment each other astonishingly well. The Barbarian levels give you power, speed, and uncanny dodge. The Fighter levels give you cool combat feats and abilities.

Fighter and Barbarian are like peanut butter and chocolate; two great tastes that go great together. :D
 

Well, seeing as I'll either be a Half-Orc or Human, Barbarian will be the favored class.

I could always take 1-2 levels each of Bard, Ranger, and Fighter, with the rest going into Barbarian.

Incidentally, I'd like to take Ranger rather early, the Track Feat really fits this character.
 

There's always the apprentice rules from the DMG - be a first level ranger/barbarian. I'm a big fan of those rules in general - they allo you to justify multiclassing fairly easily - you've always been that way.
 


ha!

In other words: crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

HA!:D

I laughed out loud.

Conan is THE barbarian.

BTW, my group often plays to the soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian. I find it makes them do reckless things. If you are going to play a barbarian, go buy this album and play it. Its a soundtrack for cutting off orc heads if there ever was one.
 

What do you think of adding a level or two of Bard?

If you're thinking of going this route, I suggest you look into Monte Cook's bard (www.montecook.com). In the game where Dingleberry (q.v.) plays the barbarian/ranger we use Monte's ranger variant, and we also have a player with a bard character, and we use Monte's bard. It's really quite cool, and the whole Spell Notes/Chords/Rhythms/Arias/Operettas/Symphonies/Concept Albums thing is handled very well. The bard can fire off two healing (minor) spells in a round, in effect. But it's done well -- not unbalanced.

Check out Cook's variant of the ranger as well. Good stuff.

Warrior Poet
 

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