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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1035400" data-attributes="member: 3146">My previous post notwithstanding, I would like to propose a reason why barbarians often seem to outshine fighters in game play:They're shinier. Not better in combat but often better at dealing out damage quickly (especially multiclass barbarian/templars etc). And what tends to make characters shine in combat is killing the bad guys. So in a party with the defensive fighter and the barbarian I detailed above, the barbarian will usually account for a lot more dead bad guys than the fighter. He'll account for a lot more of the cleric's healing capacity too but that doesn't generally dull his shine.Also, there are a lot of creatures that are relatively weak in melee but have lots of special abilities. If they survive long enough to get going, they're very tough but if they only last a couple rounds, they can seem easy. (Mind flayers, 3.0e Ossyluths, and wizards fall into this category). The barbarian is a lot better at keeping them from getting going than the fighter. So, if the campaign features many more battles against critters like Ossyluths than against trolls (who will shred the barbarians listed above but whom the fighter listed above will handily defeat or at least hold off for dozens of rounds) the barbarian will seem more effective because the battles are tailored more to offense (his strength) than to defense (the fighter's strength).Plus it's shinier to kill a troll in 3 rounds and be at 2 hp (-8 when the rage winds down) than to hold off a troll for 20 rounds, slowly whittling down his hit points.That's why barbarians often seem to outshine fighters.</blockquote>

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