Barbarians vs. Angry Fighters

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:19 pm

I'd like to see the Berserk/Barbarian class be able to accommodate things like fanatic dervishes kicking the shit out of people, and was therefore a little more flavor-agnostic.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:23 pm

This could be amply accomplished by just making it a fighter build. Hell, while I'm somewhat adverse to bringing mmo terminology in at all... a lot of martial classes could specs off the fighter base, like, monk. A fanatic dervish could be a fighter with Frenzy (dex based multi attacks) and Monk (unarmed attacks) specs.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:29 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:I'd like to see the Berserk/Barbarian class be able to accommodate things like fanatic dervishes kicking the shit out of people, and was therefore a little more flavor-agnostic.

I agree with you on that. There should be room in the class for ... various designs, thats one of the cool things about the tome really, the rage dice work for to accomodate a dervish.
I realized what bugs me about the why not make it a feat chain, thing. It because by that logic really, any class could be that, infact it was suggested above, and really its not even a "bad" idea set. It just very diffrent from what's been done. Still whenever this comes up thats the inevitable conclusion. Fighter... then take "Rage" "Holy" or "Wild" fighting styles and go with, I'm just not sure what game that is and how one would apply it to casters etc. . .
On some level I'd like some clarifictation from the op as to what he means. Story or Mechanically, I wonder what you mean.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:38 pm

Midnight_v wrote:
JigokuBosatsu wrote:I'd like to see the Berserk/Barbarian class be able to accommodate things like fanatic dervishes kicking the shit out of people, and was therefore a little more flavor-agnostic.
I agree with you on that. There should be room in the class for ... various designs, thats one of the cool things about the tome really, the rage dice work for to accomodate a dervish.
I realized what bugs me about the why not make it a feat chain, thing. It because by that logic really, any class could be that, infact it was suggested above, and really its not even a "bad" idea set. It just very diffrent from what's been done. Still whenever this comes up thats the inevitable conclusion. Fighter... then take "Rage" "Holy" or "Wild" fighting styles and go with, I'm just not sure what game that is and how one would apply it to casters etc. . .
On some level I'd like some clarifictation from the op as to what he means. Story or Mechanically, I wonder what you mean.

Basically you wind up playing with the 4 generic classes variant from Unearthed Arcana which harkens back to the OD&D pamphlet days.

BearsAreBrown · Post by **BearsAreBrown** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:43 pm

I liked the Barbarian Totems over at GitP. Most of them suck and are terrible balanced blah blah but the idea is neat. It's about 100 ACFs for all the different types of barbarians. The topic focuses solely on monster totems but concepts could work too. Things like Midnight's Fire Barbarian on the last page. Those aren't things that Fighters do. Fighters get really good at lots of weapons, fight with more expertise, command men, control the battlefield.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:43 pm

Yeah I don't know that I'd go that far, but it would be nice to have there be more of a focus on the fact that classes (for the most part) represent a function of your character, not some abstract thing. Sure, maybe you could represent the dervish as some weird racist prestige class, but if you think about it, the dervish groups in a realistic fantasy should be: mostly 0 level dudes, with a smattering of clerics and bards, and the option of coming in off the street at 1st level, taking your vow of poverty, then GOING FUCKING APESHIT AND SPINNING LIKE A MURDEROUS TOP.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:01 pm

BearsAreBrown wrote:I liked the Barbarian Totems over at GitP. Most of them suck and are terrible balanced blah blah but the idea is neat. It's about 100 ACFs for all the different types of barbarians. The topic focuses solely on monster totems but concepts could work too. Things like Midnight's Fire Barbarian on the last page. Those aren't things that Fighters do. Fighters get really good at lots of weapons, fight with more expertise, command men, control the battlefield.

link please?
Further, ultimately what were getting at is that barbarians are doing something very different from fighters, especially at higher level. But basically you get some trigger by combat ability bonuses and while you CAN take thinks like hordebreaker, and combat school, you should have more to take than just that, call it totems or whatever, I personally am fond of the idea that there are city barbarians and dervishes are included in the barbarian class as well... its the part where they
"Go apeshit and...." etc. Fighters don't "go apeshit and" they may become really focused but in undefinable way its obviously different, and awesome since we actually have different mechanics for it.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:28 pm

Alright, so here's the question for you guys who don't want barbarian to be a spec of fighter.

What is a fighter?

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:50 pm

Classplosion is an integral part of 3.5e, so I don't see why the fuck everyone's going on and on about rolling it into fighter.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 9:21 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:
What is a fighter?

Them what don't get the nice things, Bert.

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 9:47 pm

Surgo wrote:Classplosion is an integral part of 3.5e, so I don't see why the fuck everyone's going on and on about rolling it into fighter.

I think some of us are speaking generally about flavor, or shooting the breeze about hypothetical future editions. The OP didn't limit the discussion to 3.5 even if that's what he's mostly thinking of.

BearsAreBrown · Post by **BearsAreBrown** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:03 pm

@midnight, here.

@What is a fighter?
In the context of 3.5e, a master of arms, leader of men, controller of the battlefield by means of superior tactics and wit. Fights with expertise, including but not limited to tripping and disarming.

Yes, there is a lot of overlap between classes in 3.5. That's not a bad thing though. The Marshal is a leader of men but mechanically this is represented in a totally different fashion. And thematically it is not identical to the fighter. A similar situation is found with the Knight. And the Barbarian should be the same way, similar but not identical fluff with wildly different mechanical representation.

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:07 pm

It seems like the fighter concept is based on Gimli from Lord of the Rings, maybe Boromir as well--master of a particular weapon and possessing of mostly non-magical talents and skills, physically stronger than most other classes, able to tank (to borrow MMO terminilogy) for other characters like Merry and Pippin.

...if I seem overly quick to use literature to describe DnD concepts, please feel free to blame my English degree.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:39 pm

Oh, God, not the existential pondering of the nature of fighters...again.

Nobody knows what a fighter is. Ostensibly, the fighter is a dude with a sword who can sword really hard, and you can, in theory, make him do whatever you want. This, of course, doesn't really work in a heavily class-based game when you have it next to classes that are narrowly defined (such as the rogue, ranger, barbarian, and so forth).

What is a rogue? Sneaky stabby guy who disarms traps. What is a ranger? Woodsy nature dude who fights with a bow or two weapons. What is a barbarian? Angry wilderness savage with a sword. What is a fighter? NOBODY KNOWS. He's a knight in shining armor--except he might not use a shield or ride a mount. He's a heavy-hitting blademaster--except he might use a bow. He's a lightly-armored duelist--except he can wear heavy armor.

The fighter is what happens when you put a "generic" option in a game with clearly-defined classes. Nobody knows what the fuck the fighter is because he can be anything. Except he can't be anything because if he could be a sneaky stabby guy who disarms traps, the rogue would feel left out. And he has feats as his class feature, and everyone can use feats, so we can't introduce anything too powerful or else someone else will take it and put it to better use, which means that the fighter won't be unique anymore.

In short, the fighter is everything and nothing: everything shitty about D&D and nothing worth keeping.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:02 am

Pretty much the same as wizard, if you think about it. What the fighter is to swords, the wizard is to magic.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:54 am

@PR: that's my point. That's why I invoked the existential pondering as to the nature of the fighter. There is no reason not to either do away with the fighter, or collapse martial classes into fighter specs.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 2:10 am

Classes (in your classic D&D) are primarily about separation of mechanics. Fighters with the super-swords, Wizards with the uber-spells, and no swapsies.

So the Fighter is the class which uses the combat chapter, uses it well, all of it, all the options, all the tricks (some of them in 3.0 or one of them in 3.5, and swords are no longer special, so ... not good). If the combat chapter becomes worthless in actual combat as compared to the spell chapter over time, so the class which uses spells dominates the class which uses combat.

To make the Barbarian mechanically different they started with double stat mods and such, fast movement, pet hordes, but limited magic and team-spell access. That got removed in the bland that was 2e, then 3e gave them the Rage like Bearsarks and Ulfwerners, only without the "stupid kid given shrooms and thrown over the shieldwall with an axe" flavour.

The Barb should be a psi-warrior, channelling Danu or the great wolf-spirit or the inherent magic of big chins in order to cheat: autohit, autocrit, max damage, extra actions, alt stats, alt movement, and "no you didn't" kinda powers.
Eventually they can be Slaine and fire leysers out their swords.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 4:27 am

Could there be levels of rage.

Take physical damage - hulk out.

Take elemental damage - elemental out.

It isn't well-defined concept.

ANother thing that could work is do it by amt of damage taken. This does raise the problems of bookkeeping which is the suck.

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 4:30 am

Honestly, in general, I think 4E has essentially solved the Fighter problem. Even if you don't like 4E for other reasons, you can still take the fundamental idea: fighters have their own 'powers' or 'techniques' or 'exploits'. I've been thinking that perhaps Fighter powers should be built as at-wills that sacrifice something in exchange for their usefulness, like Sure Strike sacrifice damage for increased To Hit. It gives the player agency and allows them to make decisions that effect the course of battle.

BearsAreBrown · Post by **BearsAreBrown** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 5:07 am

@Cynic, reactive abilities blow. What if you don't get hit? What do you do on the first round of combat? Even at low levels expecting more then 5 rounds of combat is laughable. Most end in three. The concept is neat and works for things with long combats(MMOs) but the mechanics ruin it.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 5:46 am

As I said, it isn't the most defined or (didn't say this yet) even a good concept. I just felt like throwing an idea out there that might morph into something else.

Edit: The tomes have the Knight as a a reactive-ability user. I mean it's the opposite of get hit, do damage. But something based on the knight mechanic could work.

An ability to draw someone to fight you or gain movement bonuses or somesuch could work. I see that more as a Marshall/bard class though. But flavor text can be worked up if we use the whole "rage is a conduit of the primordial chaos" bit.

Molochio · Post by **Molochio** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:02 pm

I will answer this in terms that make sense to you.

What is the difference between a cleric of the god battle and a fighter who also worships and prays to the god of battle for victory?
The cleric has a better connection to the god of battle and may thus draw upon it for results that manifest in various ways.

What is the difference between a barbarian and an angry fighter?
Much the same dynamic in that a barbarian has a stronger connection to rage and may draw upon it for results that manifest in his physical form.

The fighter, who knows there is a god of battle, and prays for blessings before combat can not receive the benefits of faith because there is no connection.
He is indeed angry, like the barbarian, but likewise is unable to use this anger in any way that would drastically alter his combat prowess.

Therein lies the difference.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:21 pm

I don't think you answered in terms that make sense to me.

I understand what it is that you have written. But that is just one flavor interpretation of this.

Now tell me why the barbarian's connection to rage doesn't manifest as fire on his body or touhou torrential water blasts?

Falgund · Post by **Falgund** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 1:30 pm

Cynic wrote:Now tell me why the barbarian's connection to rage doesn't manifest as fire on his body or touhou torrential water blasts?

Because non-casters can't have nice things ?

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 1:39 pm

Cynic wrote:I don't think you answered in terms that make sense to me.

I understand what it is that you have written. But that is just one flavor interpretation of this.

Now tell me why the barbarian's connection to rage doesn't manifest as fire on his body or touhou torrential water blasts?

Yeah he's not saying they can't. What he's saying is that they totally can and thats cool, but fighters don't have those things under anyone definition of being a fighter "Just by getting angry" etc...