Play Your Class: Barbarian

February 19, 2019 Mark

The first class we’re tackling in this series is the Barbarian.

Barbarians have been a part of D&D since an article by Gary Gygax in issue #63 of Dragon Magazine where they were introduced as a subclass for the 1e AD&D Fighter.

Since then, they’ve grown and developed from their origins as a stand-in for Conan or Lieber’s Fafhrd, into much more dynamic characters who have a lot of great options available to them.

Nathan Pullan has a great article giving the basics of Barbarians over at Geek & Sundry. The primary focus there is on stats and primal path options. At the end of this article, I’ll be linking to all the usual YouTube channels I watch who have their overall general “how to” for making a Barbarian.

This video, by How to be a Great Game Master, talks about playing a Barbarian from a storytelling side of things.

Many Barbarians may be animists, a belief in which everything, from animals, to plants and rocks have unique spirits. Shamanism and totemism tie into animism as well, so this particular belief works well for characters who follow the Path of the Totem. Shintoism has elements of animism as well. A good video explaining the concept of animism is below. You can use a more detailed knowledge of this to better play your character.

One of my favorite YouTube historians, Lindybeige, has a great video here, talking about the reality of a barbarian’s rage.

If you’re looking for a video of a Russian standing out in the snow with his shirt off, teaching you how to fight with an axe, check out this video. You could definitely use this technique to describe how your character is fighting.

This video gives a brief rundown of Boudica, a fierce warrior queen who led her celtic tribes into battle against the invading Roman armies, who is a great example of a barbarian leader.