this is a problme we have discussed before the many many classes issue. Do we need a class for everything. A paladin, becuase someone wants to play galahad, a druid because someone wants to play Talesin, a barbarian becuase someone wants to play Conan.

RPG companies liek this becuase it sells splat, munchkins liek it becuase it enables them to get special Powerz.

2e started to tackle this but bottled it because of the possible rage so they kept rangers, and druids and paladins.

My heartbreaker has 3 classes and an infinite number of archetypes. the GM gets a kit to build archetypes for their setting and he base game includes 10 for each class.
So the players are restricted to archetypes that work in the game world. So say there is a tribe of brusque northerners who like int eh wilderness and come together only for feats and battles, the GM can design a Barbarian archetype, but he can also build a ba5rbarian scout using the Rogue class, and a barbarian Shaman using the Magus class. If there is a wide sea bristling with galeons, he can build a Corsair raider class, but can do the same with a bucaneer or a whatever.
If ther eis an order of holy knights that get boons from God he can build those, maybe a Paladin with the fighter, a Hospitaler etc .

The advantage of this is that there is no proliferation of special rules. There is a list of stuff the GM can use to give the archetypes colour and some mechanical variation, gladiators get d12 HP, Knights start with experience in using plate armour and can fight from horseback, Magi with the Charlatan archetype get access to stealth etc. You don't end up with a hundred special powers each with their own rules and there is much less chance of broken classes emerging.

2e moved to this but as I said bottled out.

My first experience with RPG barbarians was through Chaosium's 2nd edition RuneQuest, so I've always seen them as a cultural background rather than a separate class. I've tried playing them in 3.0E, but I didn't like it, it felt too forced. In the simpler realms of OSR I think fighter works perfectly well - a bit like the Classic D&D monster listings for berserkers, bucaneers and the like, which were all basically NPC fighters in different flavours.

Quote from: Silverlion;648575If I have a berserker, I'm so going to have it shapechange into a bear.

My view of the Berserker is Diablo II Druid + Barbarian/2. I like going with the crazy warrior druid.

The OD&D Barbarian class article I am playing with includes being touched with lycanthropy where at lower levels the Berserker may change in combat unwillingly, just lost in their animal rage.

I don't have anything against a barbarian class (except UA's horrible one), but my preference is to have it a subset of the fighter.  I thought 2e' Complete Barbarian's Guide did this really well.  In fact, now that I just looked it over, it was really well done.  They weren't all just fighting types.  You had fighter kits, cleric kits, etc.

This is how they should be done

I haven't read the UA nor played with it.
My assumption was from what I was reading.
My bad.

So how bad was the UA version? People have said they would not run it as is. Is it that overpowerful?

The UA Barbarian get magic resistance and d12s for hit dice and berserking and a barbarian horde.

Dark Passages has a barbarian culture and class.  Given that it provides better outdoor abilities and restricts armor to chainmail it's really pretty close to the ranger but specializing in melee rather than missile fire.

But then, Dark Passages also has knights and archers which are also pretty close to being fighters.  Though the fighter gets +1 to hit with melee at first level and the archer gets +1 to hit with missile fire.  The big distinction of knights is that they get +1 to riding at first level so they can use their +1 to hit from horseback.

Quote from: David Johansen;648718The UA Barbarian get magic resistance and d12s for hit dice and berserking and a barbarian horde.

Didn't we just go through this? UA barbarians don't get berserking. They get a lot of stuff -- able to detect illusions, hit creatures only hit by magic weapons, hide in natural environments. But no berserking.

Not that I'm against berserking, if it's a more restrained version of the concept and only applies to a specific barbarian culture. The barbarian class I wrote up includes a berserker tribe that has the ability "act as if under a Haste spell in combat and trigger morale checks in normal men." Not that big an exploit.

The funniest part of the UA barbarian is the ten-foot leap. Doesn't specify any difference between standing jump and running jump. My jumping rules are: the scale-inch movement for a man is how far in feet he can jump safely. He can jump twice as far, with a risk of falling. A running jump doubles those distances. That means normal men in my game can outperform UA barbarians in AD&D.

The overpoweredness of the barbarian looks crazy on paper, and at First level is pretty bad.  After that, it plays completely differently.

At 1st level, the barbarian has more HPs then a fighter, and better AC because the fighter doesn't have plate yet.

The thing most people forget about the barbarian is it was difficult to qualify for one and it took 6000xps to get to 2nd.

The barbarian had restrictions on magic use, as well as the minor point that he had restrictions on traveling with clerics and magic-users.  These could lessen due to level.

The bottom line is, the barbarian's abilities are completely based on the restrictions.  You eliminate them, as a lot of people did, the class was overpowered.  If you didn't actually use it, and just looked at it on paper, as a lot of people did, you didn't find out that the benefits were not worth the restrictions at higher level play and that the barbarian gave a whole lot of RP opportunity, and some beef for B2, but after that, the fighters' generalizations were overall better then the barbarian's specific uses, just like the ranger and paladins.

If you did go into the higher level game, with castles, and politics and what not, then the barbarian could be fun extorting danegeld out of kingdoms for fear of the horde, but even that wasn't as detailed and interesting as running a castle or church.

If you just played the damn thing RAW instead of being butthurt at how your 1st level fighter wasn't the toughest (finding out later you're always going to be double the barbarian's level), instead of declaring it anathema due to it being the "Thing Gygax Was Forced To Write" and instead of ignoring all the massively inconvenient restrictions, you'd see it's nowhere near the monster it's supposed to be.

Quote from: CRKrueger;648849The overpoweredness of the barbarian looks crazy on paper, and at First level is pretty bad.  After that, it plays completely differently..

As far as the "actual play" thing happened, the biggest problem with barbarians that I had was the constant bickering between them and the rest of the part re: magic, especially with Magic users themselves.

It always ended up being a problem when magic was going to be used to get past whatever was happening and the barbarian player flipping out over it.  Inevitably it turned into the A-Team, with the barbarian playing Mr. T when it came to flying.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;648853As far as the "actual play" thing happened, the biggest problem with barbarians that I had was the constant bickering between them and the rest of the part re: magic, especially with Magic users themselves.

It always ended up being a problem when magic was going to be used to get past whatever was happening and the barbarian player flipping out over it.  Inevitably it turned into the A-Team, with the barbarian playing Mr. T when it came to flying.

"I pity the fool who doesn't make his saving throw."

Quote from: Sacrosanct;648853As far as the "actual play" thing happened, the biggest problem with barbarians that I had was the constant bickering between them and the rest of the part re: magic, especially with Magic users themselves.

It always ended up being a problem when magic was going to be used to get past whatever was happening and the barbarian player flipping out over it.  Inevitably it turned into the A-Team, with the barbarian playing Mr. T when it came to flying.

So in other words, the mechanics weren't the problem, your group wasn't up to the role-playing challenges?

Quote from: CRKrueger;648856So in other words, the mechanics weren't the problem, your group wasn't up to the role-playing challenges?

I'm all for RP challenges, but sometimes it becomes more of a hassle than it's worth.  It would be like a party of thieves and one player wanting to play a paladin.  The distraction(s) are problematic.  You never realize just how many things in a typical D&D session involve magic until someone plays an UA barbarian.

I believe that according to errata in Dragon, that the barbarian is supposed to use d10 for hit points.

I don't allow it now; when I did allow barbs nobody who wanted one rolled high enough stats.

Quote from: CRKrueger;648849The bottom line is, the barbarian's abilities are completely based on the restrictions.  You eliminate them, as a lot of people did, the class was overpowered.  If you didn't actually use it, and just looked at it on paper, as a lot of people did, you didn't find out that the benefits were not worth the restrictions at higher level play and that the barbarian gave a whole lot of RP opportunity, and some beef for B2, but after that, the fighters' generalizations were overall better then the barbarian's specific uses, just like the ranger and paladins.

If you did go into the higher level game, with castles, and politics and what not, then the barbarian could be fun extorting danegeld out of kingdoms for fear of the horde, but even that wasn't as detailed and interesting as running a castle or church.

If you just played the damn thing RAW instead of being butthurt at how your 1st level fighter wasn't the toughest (finding out later you're always going to be double the barbarian's level), instead of declaring it anathema due to it being the "Thing Gygax Was Forced To Write" and instead of ignoring all the massively inconvenient restrictions, you'd see it's nowhere near the monster it's supposed to be.

It's not the overpowered-ness of the barbarian that's a problem for me. It's that damned nickel-and-dime approach to skills and abilities that first showed up in Blackmoor, became common in AD&D, and got worse with every new class and edition. That, and the fact that the restrictions are poorly designed. "Start illiterate": Good. "Can't play with other PCs who are magical": Bad.

In my OD&D barbarian, there's not a whole lot of powers. It's just an illiterate fighter from a less-sophisticated culture that's afraid of magic, but fearless about mundane dangers, with one tribal ability (the simplified "berserk" I mentioned earlier, or special horse training/riding ability, or double surprise in jungles... stuff like that.) I stuck to restrictions that were interesting without inhibiting, and kept the power-mongering in check. Most of the skills from UA are possible, but I just subsume that under the rule "you can do stuff that fits your background". The barbarian horde thing is something anyone could try, but barbarians would be better at; it doesn't need special rules.

The d12 HD concerns me. It's not tremendously overpowered, but it's another one of those obsessions ("I want more hit points at first level!") that gets worse with every rules expansion or new edition. And it's a waste of time, because the monsters get their hit points and hit dice bumped every edition, too. But aside from that minor quibble, the barbarian isn't really overpowered, it's just a waste of effort for something that could have been defined in half a page, as a minor variant of the fighter class.

Quote from: talysman;648891The d12 HD concerns me. It's not tremendously overpowered, but it's another one of those obsessions ("I want more hit points at first level!") that gets worse with every rules expansion or new edition. And it's a waste of time, because the monsters get their hit points and hit dice bumped every edition, too. .

Oh, I hate that fucking hit point/monster inflation.