How might we reinvent the barbarian class without looking to historical realities for inspiration?

Tribal Humanoids from the frozen north. They are descended from giants and have a natural resistance to the elements, which allows them to walk around in the freezing cold mostly naked and fight without wearing armor.

A fighter is someone who has had substantial martial training. They're a warrior, a knight, a veteran.

A barbarian on the other hand is someone who doesn't have the martial background but takes up arms anyway. Their fighting style is crude, but they make up for it with sheer force of anger and a strong desire to hurt someone else as much as possible.

Merge class with fighter.

Neanderthals with the serial numbers filed off.

Your Barbarian is an impeccably cultured and adroit person who draws on disgust rather than anger.

>Your Barbarian is a Parisian food critic who never hands out less than three stars
>That's because less deserving restaurants never survive his visits

Barbarian - someone who still have a physical body.

Honestly feels too bland between half orcs, goliaths, and humans.

Add to the description: "and are almost exclusively THICC "

The Barbarian is actually from a Nobel family and has a servant who sets up a table and tea set for his master before battle.
The Barbarian drinks the tea and flips the table to activate rage.

>google image search
>the right one is a tranny

>He hasn't seen Ronal the Barbarian

>Stupid berberians
Turk spotted

They would replace half orcs and goliaths.

Barbarian is the basterdised form of what the class uses, barbs and carrion, and they can booby trap corpses to explode and shit

Even for a pissed off one I can only imagine it saying mean things then apologizing for almost swearing telepathically

Welcome to Veeky Forums.

How about a barber who is also a librarian?

If we're not looking to history or reality

Barbarians are a type of crouton commonly served alongside soup.

Very agitated wasps.

I see you Dave the Barbarian.

A sub race of humans who exist purely as a fuck you to all the big monsters in the world.

Simple and stubborn, Barbarians use the hides of their enemies and fashion weapons from the bones of the beasts they slay.

That's literally the Norn from Guild Wars.

Are they in a fake paper mache giant rock ball hive?

Rename the class barb in any 3-5th editions or pathfinder to berserker. Take away the illiteracy. Make barbarian a social status instead.

People that wear -pants-!

>Guild wars invented loincloth wearing barbarians from the frozen north.

That would be based on history. OP specifically said not based on history, so we're going with the Frazetta/Howard style barbarian.

Did Howard ever specifically describe Conan or Cimmerians as not being pants-wearers?

Nope. Conan ends up in a loincloth incidentally but it isn't his like, default clothing

Nope. Cimmeria is icy and cold, in fact. This whole meme is pretty much down to Frank Frazetta saying "Hey! I worked my ass off to be able to draw anatomy this good, and I'll be damned if I'm going to hide it under a bunch of fur pelts!"

IIRC he wears loincloths a lot because he's used to cold weather so everywhere that isn't Cimmeria feels hot to him.

Also because he keeps getting captured and then escaping after they take his shit. He's too badass to need gear, he'll just grab whatever weapon is handy and fight his way out half naked. He wears armor if he is expecting a big fight and has time to prepare, but that's less common.

Also, his dead pirate queen waifu is canonically MORE naked than most people draw her.

I haven't read much Howard, but I've imagined that the Cimmerians would be attired like 5th century (pre-Christian, though conversion didn't effect there dress sense much) Irish and Picts; meaning linen tunics, trousers on cold days, and lots of plaid/checked/striped patterns. Not so much the whole fur-and-loincloths-thing.

that's a picture of a man kissing his child, fyi

Like elves, according to Japan
Source: Oznari Dungeon

A society that thinks technology is evil, and therefore do not use any of it. All weapons and armor must be crafted from dead enemies, all food from slain enemies, all shelter from the hides of slain enemies. In return for their obedience to this divine law, they are gifted with martial magic that makes them a terrifying force in battle.

Kind of a true primitive melee sorcerer.

>Table Top barbarians
>Historical Reality

What stats would said race have?
higher CON? Innate resistance/AC?

I had an idea a while back that the barbarian rage was a blood disease.

I don't know where the idea came from, but I think it has promise. I probably won't use it.

>Neanderthals with the serial numbers filed off.
Short, hairy, smarter than humans and bad at throwing things?

>pasties
Just draw some fucking nipples or a fucking bikini already.
Fucking hell, the day pasties vanish from all fantasy art is the day America ceases to exist.

Rage is instead possession. The class is built around becoming a vessel for spirits, granting them super natural powers to supplement their physical strength. So basically 4e barbarians

Tbh I'd much rather this. It makes more sense.

So, Klingons?

But then I wouldn't be able to post it on a blue board.

Probably natural AC and cold resistance. Maybe a con or str buff. How much can a race have without taking a level adjustment?

>Probably natural AC and cold resistance. Maybe a con or str buff. How much can a race have without taking a level adjustment?
Not much I don't think, if you take a look at dwarves or elves they don't get all that much
Unless you want to go by racial class levels they're going to have an LA of +1 or +2 I'd think

At any rate, it should be good enough to let them go without armor, and it should not stack with armor.

I suppose this might be weird if they took a class that also provided free AC like monk, but whatever.

I may need sauce on that image for science.

Also you might make barbarianism a religion: an asceticism of rejecting clothing and tapping into the primal wheel of a sort of darwinian instinct.

Barbarians are by definition "uncivilized", but only stereotypically savage. Since as a concept they exist only as a comparative to "civilization", no matter what flavor of barbarian, they have to have a " normal" to be different than. Just make up a civilization and come up with a cool counter-civilization with rude (in comparison to normal) folkways.

mongols, hunns, aztecs, zulu, roid rage vikings

Holy shit no no please no i'm already afraid fuck

Feminists.

define what is a barbarian, op. what must be kept?

to be fair, Conan spends a fair amount of time down south

...

>should not stack with armor.
Natural armor always does though

North north north, why is it always fucking north?

Why can't it be tribal humanoids from the sweltering south? Descended from titans, natural resistance to heat or poison, and rely on speed and endurance more than armor.

A well read archivist with a side-job as a beautician in order to fund their clerical education. I like it.

Better still if they carry a big weapon around with them. Not because it's culturally sound or important, but because they're a goddamn mall ninja in their spare time or just regularly have to beat animals away on their path home.

Because north=vikings, and berzerkrs were (according to the stories) basically barbarians as Veeky Forums understands them to be, with the possible addition of drug use.

inb4 "addition?"

>How might we reinvent the barbarian class without looking to historical realities for inspiration?

Your barbarian is Hunter Hearst Helmsley

Because amazonians and aztecs actually had armies, ranks and standarized military equipment unlike barbarians. And that is part of their charm.
Cossaks and Huns aren't fantasy barbarians either, despite being considerd barbarians in real life, because they're just that much more organized and worth a different category.

Hackmaster does a p. swell job of it. They're rough and tumble survivalist types, who come from relatively harsh and demanding environments and have skills appurtenant to this. Hackmaster's Barbarian is a tribal warrior, who could come from sweeping plains, cold forests, frigid mountains, arid desert, or steaming jungles.

They're hearty, and adept at surviving the wild, though their skills tend towards those that are reserved for men in their tribe - eschewing "women's work" and struggling with advanced literacy. They are distrustful of mages and strange gods, but have a resistance to poison and magic.

High-level Barbarians may create a fortress that attracts their tribesmen, hearing of his great feats and the fortunes of foreign lands. Alternatively, he may rally a barbarian horde.

user Never said they did, but the starting post did describe the Norn pretty much to a tee, just missing the shapeshifting.

The Norn are literally a race of Giants, who roam around icy wastes wearing practically nothing and bouncing blades off their iron thews.

In my group's setting there are Barbarian tribes at all four cardinal points.
Vikings and Nordic Giants to the north west.
Gauls to the west.
Pacific Islander and Australian Aboriginal kitchen sink Mermaids to the south oceans.
Leopard people and sunkissed Drow to the east and we haven't met those to the north yet, but we're predicting Sami Dragonborn.

We suspect that the outer edges of the world are nothing but Barbarian tribes with intricate cliffside cities overlooking the endless sky.

...

replace smart with autistic and you have /r9k/ barbarians.

Keep the current version of barbarian.

Well if it stacks, then people will just wear armor and enjoy ridiculously high AC.

I need an option that replaces the need for armor rather than supplements it.

you are talking about berserker not barbarian.

Strong swimmers with seemingly unnatural resistance to cold temperatures. While ordinary men put on their warmest coats and pelts in the middle of winter these hardy barbarians go for a swim in the nude followed up by a snowball fight.

I would actually like something akin to the Vorcha from mass effect. Short lived, violent, highly adaptive, capable of limited regeneration.

Basic rules for 5e off the top of my head would be

Battle nerds, they avoid encumbrance to use add all their strength to damage.They hate chess, but love chests.

Use them to replace paladins.

>Your barbarian is a floran from space bound

Neanderthals actually weren't any more clever than Homo Sapiens Sapiens of the time, since there brains had less cortexes and stuff despite being larger. And they were less sociable, so autism?

>Just missing the shape-shifting.
Yeah, what a tiny detail.

They're more like the Vrykul from WoW. Or any of a number of similar creatures.

>Ctrl + F
>"niggers"
>0 matches
present-day is not historical, you know

In-between of fighter and druid

That's a ranger, but I do sorta agree with you actually