An idea for Barbarians

[Scrappa-yeti]

Given the recent discussions about furors, I thought I would throw my two cents in.  I have not played one this chapter, so I dont want to make specific number suggestions, because I am not in a good place to make fair balancing advice.

However I have noticed this chapter that a disproportionate amount of top PvP characters seem to have been pure or multiclass barbs. They also seem really solid in PvE. There is more to this than a few specific furors. The hp change helped them, and the current rage system seems quite forgiving. On a (admittedly long) QA the other day, a fellow barb said he had raged 7 times with his two rages. In vanilla, you would be getting 3 rages without all the bells and whistles. Now you get 7+ with extra stuff.

That being said, I don't mind that barbs are in the ascendancy, what I want to suggest is  some sort of RP requirements or recommendations like some other classes get. With great power comes great roleplaying expectations, to paraphrase! 

There is sort of a totem pole of  class RP restrictions, with paladins and druids at the top, who have the most restrictions on characterisation, and clerics and monks and bards a bit lower still. Below that mostly anything goes.

I would like to see barbarians be noticeably barbaric. The blurb on the wiki talks of "savage warriors" and "primal rage", but many barbarians I have RPed with I am not aware even are barbarians until a fight. 

Some fashionably dressed, well adjusted, politely spoken person, frequently a Peer, suddenly screams and starts hitting you for 30 damage. It breaks my suspension of disbelief every time.

They don't all have to be half orcs with bones through their noses, no more than all paladins have to wear shiny armour and have neatly parted hair, but some sort of restrictions of behaviour or characterisation would be nice. Even just a couple of lines on the wiki that EfU expects Barbarians to roleplay their savage fury outside combat.

One radical idea could be that you can only take barbarian levels if your character is illiterate. It would not change the power level, but it would at least give them some RP limitations to trade for all that PvP and PvE goodness. 

[Poolson]

I feel it'd be a strange request, to expect something in particular of a Barbarian. They can be expressed in a great multitude of ways, not all of them tribal.

I can envision Barbarians on as broad of a scope, starting from Conan the Barbarian, to an informally trained thug that learned by pecking order and not by a master, to even a devoted laysword, screaming in religious zeal as his righteous faith grants him that rush to charge down and defeat his enemies, but may be more orderly in civil living, even if he is quick to act by passion and not by critical thought.

The great, underlying theme that gives the Barbarian their power is passion. An emotional response that causes them to act with reckless abandon and undeterred rage. Hence the names 'Rage' and 'Furor'. It is not a thing of reason.

In the same way that I can see a Fighter, that is traditionally described as a disciplined, academy taught soldier who's been drilled for years in the martial arts, as a wide variety  of things, from the traditional, to primitive tribal warriors, to self-taught crooks (connecting a good bridge between them and the Barbarian theme) and even marksmen.

If it were a Paladin or a Cleric I would agree, in that they are held to a stringent, orderly code that they mustn't ever stray from. Or a Druid, that has very specific oaths that bind them to the natural order.

[Scrappa-yeti]

@Poolson

I don't agree that the great underlying theme of barbarians is passion. Bards are passionate. Any character can be passionate really. I think the great underlying theme of barbarians is that they are wild. To quote from 3rd edition (which I think was the first DnD to include barbarians):
"From the frozen wastes of the north and the hellish jungles of the south come brave, even reckless, warriors. Civilized people call them barbarians or berserkers and suspect them of mayhem, impiety, and atrocities... He is at home in the wild... They may be honorable, but at heart they are wild. This wildness is their strength."

Indeed, the meaning of "barbarian" itself implies a lack of respect or understanding of the trappings of civilisation:
Barbarian - noun
a person in a savage, primitive state; uncivilised person.

In third edition, barbarians were illiterate as a class feature, although there were ways they could learn to read and write later on. This was only an idea, and maybe it is too restrictive, but I still think some focused restrictions would be a good idea.

Would it really significantly narrow the possible character idea pool if barbarians needed to be role played in some way as savage, primitive, wild and/or uncivilised? If you really want to make a character that doesn't fit that mould, would it really hurt that much to roll a fighter? Or app, if you are absolutely sure that "civilised barbarian" is the way to go (for example, I want to play a Peerage retainer who is cursed by Tchun, and I want to progressively role play the decent into insanity and uncontrollable rage).

In considering how to portray a barbarian, there are are nearly endless historical or Faerun cultures to draw on, and it doesn't exclude people who are wild for personal reasons (commons hobos, Drips exiles, Ponds freaks, Ticker gypsies or Peerage gladiators). I just would like to see more actual "savage warriors" with "primal rage", and less tea and crumpets with lords (I ordered my crumpets with marmalade, not blackberry compote! Raaaargghhhh!!!  *Backhands servant at plus four strength*).

[SergeantWombat]

While I do agree some barbarians are certainly less than barbaric—often, even—it's a slippery slope.

Bards, for example, are frequently played in a manner a lot of people don't find particularly "bardic."

I agree on both points, to an extent. You should roleplay what you've chosen as your class, however you interpret that and with room to put your own unique spin on bringing your concept to life, without completely overwriting the foundations of your class; you also shouldn't need DM oversight or strict guidelines to do so.

[Nazey]

Big +1.  I generally don't like to critique the way people play their characters or classes, since there is a lot of room for interpretation, but the number of barbarians I can actually identify as barbarians outside of the combat log are disproportionately lower than the number of barbs and barb multi-classes out there.  There's obviously nuance to every character that people don't see on surface-level interactions, but playing it exactly like a fighter with some wishy-washy "they sometimes get angry" always felt like a cop-out to me. 

It's a very thematically cool class and I want to see more shirtless savages.  Maybe instead of some rule or expectation, we can move barbarians along this route by empowering some of their wilder aspects, maybe?  Like adding some new solid item sets and armors that encourage tracking, survival, medium/light armor, multi-classing with thematically more naturey classes such as ranger and druid, etc.

[Damien]

Informing people how to RP their class is a trait of a bygone era of roleplaying on neverwinter night servers.

Let people roleplay as they desire, and let the people who make interesting and notable characters be rewarded and the rest not.

On a side note, I must admit I find this whole post highly ironic, given the original poster's history of abusing classes, while at the same time making intriguing and interesting characters.

[Electrohydra]

While I agree with the observation that there seems to be a non-negligible number of people make barbarians that feel more like fighters but who want to be better at PvP, I don't think some kind of vague RP requirememt would fix it. What a barbarian is, as has been pointed out, is more vague then a paladin or a druid. It's not really something you can enforce, and in trying you would shut down some good pc ideas.

What this says to me however, if people are taking barbarian for their fighters and not fighter, is that either barbarian is over-tunned, fighter is under-powered or both. Fix this power issue with buffs or nerfs and the temptation, and thus most of the problem, will go away on it's own.

[Disorder]

Just my two cents. To tell or attempt to put roleplaying in some sort of brackets is to be stepping on a thin ice.

Though there's a thing I'd like to mention about barbarians and one of their stereotypes. I am talking about half-orc barb.
I am well aware that h-orc is perhaps the worst race in nwn, neither it shines on EFU. Considering recent changes which do not allow you to use charisma augmentations to buff your rage bonuses h-orc barb, which I find to be canonical way for this race, seems just too bad.
I know that in previous chapter there was specific kit/perk (I don't know how you name it) aimed to make h-orc barbarian competitive.
Could dev/DM team consider adding some specific furrors for half-orc barbarians?