I have a funny memory of the Barbarian "Summon the barbarian horde" ability.

I was running  ADnD many years ago, the party was in a dungeon getting on with dungeonbashing.

Things got a bit sticky and the player controlling the barbarian stated loudly.  "I summon the barbarian horde"  expecting  a Horde of barbarians to immediately appear on the spot.   He got quite annoyed when I didn't allow it.
He accepted it when I showed him the rules for it that it can take months to go to whenever your clan etc is and actually stir them up enough to be a Barbarian horde etc..


Good times..  lol

Whether or not you need a barbarian "class" depends on what a class is.  The AD&D Barbarian was a very Howardian design.  Sure with the different skills and weapons you could pick it could be used for Native Americans, Vikings, Mongols or whatever, but the Barbarian class assumes that primitive man is closer to his animal origins and as a result is tougher, stronger, faster and possessed of animal senses and instincts that civilized man has forgotten - pure Howard.

If you postulate that a civilized human who sneaks and steals is different enough from a civilized human who fights, who is different enough from a civilized human who tracks in order to define a class, it's kind of hard to deny the primitive warrior who really needs to do all of those things, almost every day, or else he dies.

If your game has the granularity to allow it, you could have Attributes determined by Race/Species, base Skill Packages or abilities determined by Culture, and then Class tacked on top.

In more basic race-as-class games you could have a barbarian, sure.  In fact, in a race-as-class game, there's actually more case for "race/classes" of all types.

In a few games I played where somebody was thinking of playing a 1E AD&D + UA barbarian, the DM usually insisted everybody had to roll their stats via 3d6 in order.  In the end, I only played in two campaigns where somebody was able to randomly roll a UA barbarian.

It just happens in one campaign, there was no magic user.  So it was relatively easy to deal with the barbarian.  In the other campaign, the magic user and barbarian were at each others throats with the other player characters trying to split up the in-fighting between them.

I like the aproach that any character class can be a barbarian and that it is down to how that character is acted/played rather than the number crunchiness.  There was a great article talking about that for T&T somewhere, but I'm feeling too lazy to go find it for you just at the moment.

Like I've said elsewhere:

Quote from: The Butcher;616549(...) I have the weirdest love/hate relationship with character classes.

On one hand, I like broadly-encompassing, archetypal character classes because they make my life as a GM easier. Barbaric berserker? Fighter. High-and-mighty knight? Fighter. Scruffy mercenary? Fighter. Disciplined legionnaire? You get the idea.

On the other hand, having a smorgasbord of character classes to choose from appeals to me on a visceral, fat-kid-in-a-candy-store level, because even as a GM I vicariously enjoy my players' excitement at the new toys; and on another level, as a GM who's into building and running worlds that behave reasonably like our own, because broadly defined classes inevitably require some handwaving; one recurring issue back in the day, playing TSR-era D&D was the Fighter in light armor – while it could be situationally useful (e.g. when stealth is called for, when you're at sea, or when the climate is very hot), in most situations the system didn't reward you for playing a nimble, lightly-armored melee combatant. And don't get me started on Clerics and polytheism!

Having specific classes for certain "corner cases" that exist in fiction but I feel aren't adequately covered by D&D's usual archetypes can be very appealing.

Yes. Reasonable home-brewed Conan types such as this:
http://theosrlibrary.blogspot.com/2012/01/archer-barbarian-my-osr-versions.html

Nay. I don't use classes from Unearthed Arcana.

If there was a class for the specific primal, raging combatant in the game, I'd name it a Berserker, rather than a "Barbarian".

Quote from: Benoist;648513If there was a class for the specific primal, raging combatant in the game, I'd name it a Berserker, rather than a "Barbarian".

I concur.

Damn Unearthed Arcana. It seems to have permanently welded the concept of barbarian to raging berserker.

That's crap. Fantasy barbarians to me are lightly armored (but can put on the platemail for major battles), tactically smart, sneaky bastards such as Picts, thieving Cimmerian adventurers, etc.

UA has seemed to upsurp that image with morons who charge into combat and kill til they drop over dead.

For the people who claim that "barbarian" is culture, not class, I have a question: do you accept "paladin" as a character class?

Umm, Unearthed Arcana had absolutely nothing to do with the Barbarian berserking.  Rage was a 3e thing.

Quote from: baran_i_kanu;648520Damn Unearthed Arcana. It seems to have permanently welded the concept of barbarian to raging berserker.

That's crap. Fantasy barbarians to me are lightly armored (but can put on the platemail for major battles), tactically smart, sneaky bastards such as Picts, thieving Cimmerian adventurers, etc.

UA has seemed to upsurp that image with morons who charge into combat and kill til they drop over dead.

You must have a different UA than I do.  In mine, barbarians are not raging berserkers, but lightly armored (sometimes) warriors who are adept at hiding in natural surroundings, very aware of their environment, and who have a deep cultural fear and hatred of magic.  In fact, I don't see the words rage or berserker anywhere.

If I have a berserker, I'm so going to have it shapechange into a bear.

I tend to favor "the barbarian is a Fighter."  That said, if playing AD&D, I could see a berserker subclass.  

As seems to be pretty common, I dislike the UA Barbarian.

I dislike the barbarian as beserker type (having experimented with it myself).

The only barbarian option I have really been happy with is the Mazes & Minotaurs one, which works equally well for Hyborian pseudo-celts or khopesh sword wielding pseudo-Nubians in the M&M setting.

Castles & Crusades also had quite good version, from memory. The highlight being a Primal Fury or something which allowed a once-per-session +4 bonus to any barbarianish thing, so long as the player did it impulsively. So with that you could ignore the wizards mind control (save) through sheer rage, leap the gorge, wrestle the gorilla aside etc in a Conany way without being superhuman in stats most of the time, so long as you acted like an instinctive barbarian.