yesh I had a concept about an elf or other lonelifed race, that was cronical ill and couldn't move on their own. Then patron come and ask you, if you would like to walk. And now you are a barbarian warlock with a patron who has control over your ability to walk, and might use it to get what they want
A few weeks ago my wife and I were talking about reinterpreting the Wizard of Oz as a D&D game. I suggested the Cowardly Lion be a Leonin, and she suggested the brilliant idea of making him a barbarian who PANICS instead of raging.
In the game I DM, one of my player's backup characters is a barbarian whose rage manifests as them quickly putting on makeup, a wig a dress and stepping into the battle as a drag queen. They are a quasi-bardlike, in that their performance is battle. But they are pure Wild Magic barbarian. They explained that every weapon attack will be described as something like a fan or other prop.
Technically, any kind of temporary physical powerup in fiction could be flavored through Rage. You mentioned the Power Rangers, but how about a classic Magical Girl?
Personally, I think there should be a non-raging barbarian subclass option. Perhaps with it, instead of using the power of their rage for battle they channel it into a single-use special ability. And perhaps on the completed use of such a rage ability they gain something like a 'Sated' or 'Serenity' state where they gain temporary bonuses.
I have a few barbarians that I play as in one of my game groups. One of them is my teifling zealot barbarian, who I admit was inspired by playing as like a sorcerer in her rage origins. Her mother was a warrior of light, like a paladin, whereas her father made a deal with a fiend, and now she's a mix of both and trying to figure herself out. My other barb is a dhamphir that uses a Path of the Depths (it's a sea fairing campaign), and he's got a bit of a shark and sea sort of theme to him.
I’m playing a Barbarian who does the opposite of a typical rage, she actually loses her emotions turning into a warrior bent only to battle and fight with precision, unhindered by empathy and pity.
The path of the beast barbarian is a great way to flavor stuff: Since they get altered attributes, that would mean you could go with anything as long as it has either claws, sharp teeths, or a spiked tail. You could go for a barbarian infected with the mushroom disease from the Last Of Us, but way more controlled, and his rage would actually be him giving in to the cordyceps for a moment of time. The Moissebarb could even fit the "Legion" theme or even be teaming up with druids.
I’m running an earthbreaker barbarian in a Bloodborne-esque campaign and I’ve decided on the approach of “quadruple down on the rage, and all the positive and negative effects of it”. Essentially, his rage state is a bit harder to activate, but once he does he’s basically Broly from the movie of the same name (obviously without the flying and ki blasts). He’s unable to use weapons because they kinda crumble beneath his strength, and he goes literally feral when enraged (can’t speak, can barely understand people, and is prone to friendly fire). It’s been a blast! His character arc so far is basically him straddling the line between keeping his humanity or going full blown pissing himself in the woods and frothing at the mouth 24/7 like a grizzly bear with rabies
I've got a one shot coming up this week and I was seesawing on what class to bring to the table-- gotta say this has made me want to find new ways to reflavor rage! It's always been a mechanic I've wanted to play around with, so I love all these ideas that aren't just anger related! Thanks for the ideas!
Barbarian who’s a magical girl and goes through a magical transformation when they rage. Fits best for wild magic, zealot, or storm barbarian with magical auras and sparkly radiant damage.
I have 2. 1. In the Pathfinder campaign I'm playing my warforged barbarian has a turbo that turns on when battle starts. 2. In another system playing the barbarian is a race. They take everything farther than appropriate, not just anger. Just all around extra.
Posted this concept in your fighter vid. An Intelligence barbarian that uses the absence of emotion. They "rage" the same way Robert Downing Jr. fought in Sherlock Holmes. Time slows as they purge their body of emotions, distancing themselves this way they use their high intelligence to anticipate the opponents actions before combat has even started. The barbarians damage resistances become them seeing the blow before it comes and partly blocking or dodging the solid blow, turning it into a glancing blow or minor flesh wound. This doesn't have to be an intelligence build either. Do the exact same thing but say you have the wisdom to know how people will act and see subtle details in your opponents and battle ground useing your perception to analyze the scene rather than Intelligence.
I personally use rage to be a Kamen rider in my game. I am planning on taking path of the beast and reflavoring the animals as different forms such as beetle or mantis or grasshopper. Rage is just one of my favorite abilities.
I'm currently playing a Fire Genasi Barbarian that has a phoenix totem. She's gaining homebrew abilities like levitate while raging. Eventually as she levels up, she's going to start showing fire wings - might not fly, but she'll be able to do the fighting style like in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon :D
Oh, sweet. I have a few oddballs for this one. One is Ishtar Llewellyn, a shy bookish Scourge Aasimar Zealot Barbarian Acolyte. She's trying to be more along the lines of a cleric, healing the harmed, exorcizing unwelcome spirits and the like. But her spirit guide can infuse her with a divine fury to smite undead and evil (combining Radiant Consumption with Rage). She was fun, especially with how self-conscious she got about her antler (her celestial predecessor was a Kirin), filing it down like Hellboy. Then there's Coqui, a Grung Beast Barbarian I made for a gladiatorial campaign my brother ran. His rages are the result of him jury-rigging the tonics and unguents needed for the Grung promotion ceremony to try and artificially inflate his status in the tribe. As a result, when he rages, his skin takes on an iridescent glossy black like an oil slick, he grows needle-like fangs like an anglerfish, chitinous talons, and a muscular tail with a scorpion-like barb. As fun as he was to play in combat, jumping 45ft from a dead stop to latch onto the opponent and maul them, he was hilarious to play outside of combat. I played him as an incompetent lawful evil, kinda a mix of Invader Zim and Stewie Griffin. Plus, I took the Adept Linguist feature in his custom background, so he could understand the gist of what everyone was saying, but he only spoke in Grung, which none of the party understood. And finally one I built but haven't found a DM that would let me play it was a Centaur Ancestral Guardian Barbarian archer, named Pancho Sanza. Aesthetically she's a goat centaur with heavy inspiration from Andean Sherpas. And as far as her Rage goes, she believes in a sort of zoophagous animism approach, where she takes on the life force of those she kills/eats. She accesses that power through a meditative battle trance, summoning those she felled as her spirits. I built her in tandem with my brother's Gnome Cavalier Fighter in homage to Don Quixote. Unfortunately we haven't found someone we think would tolerate the shenanigans those two mounted together could pull off in combat, yet. Disadvantage and Resistance on attacks against the whole party is bad enough, but then add a 20 AC barbarian that can attack from 600ft away, and it gets kinda silly.
The kalashtar race from Eberron: Rising from the Last War would go along excellently with some ideals here, especially the Disassociated or the Legion. The subclasses that would best be suitable IMO would either be the Totem Warrior and the Ancestral Guardian. Both deal with spirits and the kalashtar is a descendant of a human that has bounded to a risen quori (basically a dream demon).
An idea that I have thought about, and is on my list of ideas for a Barbarian, based on your style of naming, is 'The Child' or 'Joyfull'. Think Baby Huey (The cartoon) or Bob Sapp: Switowski from three Adam Sandler 'The Longest Yard' where they don't really know what they are doing.
I’m planning a Jekyll and Hyde/Pop Fizz ( skylanders ) Alchemist/Barbarian character that has a mansion full of small/tiny sized homunculus helping him with experiments and research. potions, mutations, Frankenstein esc creations are his thing. He has a riffle that uses potions as ammo, a lot of syringes, and a lot of potions. When he rages he drinks a beast potion and turns into a insane beast.
Playing a Wild Magic Barbarian with the Sailor Background. She's often doing impressive forms of exercise, playing her up like an Athlete who gets pumped during a fight instead of raging. It's been fun playing a Giant Goliath Woman who intimidates people with her sheer size. Even though she's quite calm most of the time.
Also on the Blood magic barbarian, you could carve blood runes or markings on your character and it'd create a state of what I call 'Wild Blood'. It'd put you in a state fiercer than a berserk rage, but be tied to your health. So you could be in this state longer, but once it ends, you'd be at extremely low health. And you'd have to pull back and let your party do the rest of the work while you recover.
Toying with the concept of a half-orc barbarian raised by a monastary of samurai-like elven monks who taught him focus and training to counter his violent nature. When he engages the enemy he would go into a hyperfocused fugue state that allows him to channel his natural ferocity under complete control.
I kinda wanna homebrew a passion barbarian where their rage takes diffences form/ other abilty from diffences emotion. Like anger might give you fire damage. where happyness might let you attack faster, sadness might make it so you take less damage and deal more, but you make less attack.
I'd love to play a Barbarian based on the psychos from Borderlands, specifically Krieg. He's surprisingly smart, but was driven to literal insanity through experimentation. But given Krieg's words and actions, this Barbarian would have to dump Charisma or Wisdom instead of Intelligence.
I'm working on a fighter/barbarian and have flavored the rage as a battle trance instead. Shutting off your conscious mind and reacting solely on instinct
Currently playing in a Runeterra campaign. Have a Shimmer techno Barbarian. A card slinging Bard and a wild magic sorcerer from ionia. So far it's a blast 🤟
I would suggest a barbarian path that allows you to have a beast companion. When you rage, you merge with that beast and gain benefits per that beast. If you have a tiger, you can pounce on enemies. Wolf, you can maybe call other wolves in battle. If you want to get twisted, get a giant spider and freak out your other party members.
I never had a player play an barbarian until recently and she multi classed into war cleric I recently moved to a different state and I am starting up a new in person group and one of the guys is planning on a barbarian Zealot war cleric as my old player did lol Obviously its a good combo
My personal favorite barbarian is what I call the Apex. Barbarians as a rule almost have primarily survival based skills, with nature, animal handling, athletics, and acrobatics being things they can easily enough gain, while typically a barbarian is near infamous for having intelligence as a dump stat. they're often portrayed as these savage people not really understanding societal norms, so why not lean into the other side? So I tend to think of a barbarian not unlike that of an ambush predator, conserving vast amounts of killing power until its needed. A tiger will only really expend energy when it really needs it during the day, why isn't your barbarian the same? In this case, your barbarian now has this predatory (or prey) mindset, expending this vast amounts of energy and adrenaline in order to survive and kill that thing and spending the rest of the day resting or tending to its wounds. This gives you a reason for your barbarian to have some interesting skill not typically seen on barbs, like stealth, as they're now this coiled mass of muscle bursting out of hiding to rain death on the target, or gives the character flavor to having certain skills like the animal handling skill, as it's symbolic of how they understand the pack tactics of wolf when they themselves behave like one. Bonus points if you're playing a race that comes from a predatory ancestor, like the tabaxi, the leonin, or the lizardfolk (just think of a crocodile or komodo barbarian behaving like this).
The reclaimed barbarian reminded me of revenant which is basically like ghouls part skeleton part zombie which usually come back from the dead when they receive something injustice that lead to their demise and out of rage come back from dead to exact revenge and finished unfinished business involving a wrongful death and receiving a improper burial because of that dead and they're known to turn other people who are live into revenant despite never killing just seeing them and being in their presence is enough to turn into a undead revenant leading to them trying to killed their own family members and friends to end their state of being undead.
So my upcoming barbarian is from Theros and is a Reborn Zealot of Iroas (God of Victory), and very much has the "Undead" and "Passionate" barbarian flavor as a Former Gladiator who is looking for a worthy opponent, but his resiliency is equal parts Undeath and "My God Won't Let Me Die"
The Reclaimed barbarian reminds me of Draugr. Perhaps you committed a crime in life, and you're punished by a deity with unlife. You must go on a quest from whatever that deity may be to go into an afterlife. Or another idea is where a deity chooses you upon death as an avatar for their ideals and gift you unlife to accomplish that(yes similar to MoonKnight, but it has parallels in folklore around the world genuinely too).
I don't know if you 've done one about rogues or not, but I always imagined the sneak attack damage being some version of "power of friendship", since they can only do it when their friends are close. (Bonus points if that can also be used to explain why the mastermind and the swashbuckler are assholes who insist on working alone, looking at you Sherlock and Jack Sparrow)
Disassociated Barbarian Paladin Redemption You want to be pure and help people, but sometimes you aren't you, almost as if you're controlled by another entity as you are left to watch your body You're already focusing on strength, you can wear breastplate (14 + 2 ac from dex; +2 from shield, +1 for defense or take protection to help your friends) (everything needs decent con, so it won't be as necessary as armored barb) meaning you could focus on charisma as well Homebrew Path when?
Different ideas for Barbarians: Here goes. The Cursed: You are afflicted with some kind of curse. You transform into some hideous creature when raging. Beast Barbarian works with this. The Emotional: Rage and Reckless Attack Features don't have to be anger themed. Maybe you are so frightened that you are spurred into action. Perhaps you have a powerful devotion to your party such that you would fight tooth and nail to defend them. Maybe your sadness is what fuels those features. Perhaps you are a happy excitable person who loves combat a little bit too much. It does not always have to be anger. Any subclass works for this. The Fortified: For this Barbarian you need a spell caster in your party. The Rage feature is flavored as a spell caster fortifying your body to withstand great punishment. I recommend Bear Totem Barbarian for the best resistance. The downside of this re-flavoring is that you'll need to be within at most 60 feet of the spell caster. The OUCH!!!!: This is a super-risky flavoring. You have to be in extreme physical pain to activate your rage. The pain has to be so intense that you fly into a full-blown rage! The Mutagenist: Grab proficiency in medicine, alchemist supplies, and herbalism kit. You have crafted a potion that causes you to rage. It only works with you though. The Spiritualist: You are not angry. Rather you enter a trance. To "Rage" you must spend long hours of meditation beforehand each day. You must learn to let go of all emotions and then you reach a state of calmness where you can reach your full potential. The only trouble is, you can only pull this off a handful of times a day since it is so tiring to do. The Ultimate: This is your ultimate form. The powerup to end all powerups. This is more of an animé option because some people like to play D&D that way. When you rage, a corona of energy surrounds you. A colorful transformation takes place where you start to glow yellow, your hair becomes extra spiky and your attacks become more over the top. Lots of yelling and screaming takes place as your hits cause magical shockwaves all over the place. Wild Magic Barbarian could fit this since your Ultimate Form could have some unpredictable effects.
My current barbarian is more instinct based then anything. He’s so far on the animalistic side that these instincts will take over in his rages. If an enemy runs he chases not out of anger, but more a game of fetch and predatory instinct. If an ally hits him in his rage and there is no opponent to fight he will go after them in an animalistic manner where he can’t speak and can’t be reasoned with. He is just an animal when he rages, when he’s not raging he’s perfectly reasonable, can write, read and speak 3 different languages, and is not particularly prone to violence as anything but a last resort, though intimidation is something he doesn’t mind, but hey, he’s a street urchin who’s big, strong, carry’s a great sword around and has fangs. He’s a scary dude lol.
just thinking about the reclaimed, and wanting an undead barbarian subclass, path of the draugr ? I currently have an npc in a game who is noble and ally to the party and is a beast barbarian (with a more draconic flair) whereshe is cursed to slowly become a dragon and her rages are her becoming more draconic
Konstantin Brayko from Alpha Protocol would pause mid-fight to snort a bunch of cocaine off his knife before lunging at you in a mad rage. He was a fun boss fight with 80's music blaring through the whole thing. Especially fun with the right shotgun skills but that's not terribly relevant to barbarians. 😅 I've argued with my friends for a long time about the barbarian rage not being required to be actual rage. It could be an intense focus where you ignore pain or perhaps a state of pure instinct where you flavor the damage resistance to be like the rogue's uncanny dodge where you twist your body to turn solid hits into glancing ones. And that's just a couple of nonmagical ideas. Since Wizards keeps cramming magic into the barbarian class a magical explanation is just as reasonable. Fun fact, Conan the Barbarian who is arguably the archetypal D&D barbarian actually wasn't much like the barbarian class in the original stories. Sure he was strong, ran around without a shirt, and hit things with his sword, but je was actually an intelligent and crafty adventurer often relying on stealth. So really he was more of a rogue.
I had an idea for a path of the wild magic barbarian. Bugbear with a maul and the mage slayer feat A great wizard researching the idea of “mind transference" spends years experimenting by trying to transfer his mind to a gorilla. Every time he tried an experiment he would put his body in a state outside of time so that his body could not age or be hurt or effected by the outside world while his body was vacant and vulnerable. One experiment was successful. But, the gorillas brain wasn’t smart enough to let the wizards mind understand or remember how to transfer the mind back to their original body. So now the wizard in the body of a gorilla (a reskinned bugbear) searches for a way to get back to their body. The gorilla carries his original body for save keeping, but when violence is needed the wizards mind steps back out the drivers seat and let’s the gorilla take over. The gorilla swings the wizards magically impervious body as a weapon (a reskinned maul) and magical effects start to randomly effect the battle field because the wizards magical powers are let loose (wild surge from wild magic barbarian). Mage slayer feat, because they are familiar with most magic, they just don’t remember how to cast it intentionally.
I’m definitely not a barbarian type of person, but I tried out a new character in a shorter campaign. They’re essentially like the beast/the hulk, where they’re this really knowledgeable/scholarly character who can occasionally snap or is sort of cursed
I have always disliked barbarians because of the root of the word. It originates from a term made by Romans to describe everyone who was not Roman. Everyone who was not Roman was stupid uncivilized and only survived because they were really strong and hard to kill but lack any form of Technology. In other words it was nationalist bulshit. Because of that one of my go-to ways to handle any Barbarian culture or character is to try and figure out why everyone is misinterpreting this person. Sometimes this leads to very Druid like barbarians who live off nature and preach that that is the natural way and how things should be done. Sometimes this means people witnessing a brutal innocent killing was two men killing a man who had escaped after murdering hundreds. I find the big dumb stupid Barbarian to be overdone trope that I just do not enjoy anymore. I find it much more interesting when while he's a logic isn't one hundred percent scientifical the Barbarian is right in his thought process. I like it when the Barbarian is empathetic when he isn't this man whose whole personality is big dumb and angry. Because yeah sure they're funny the first few times the joke is told and they are such really for roleplay because of how simple they are. But for everyone else I assure you the joke has gotten old and your character is not interesting.
