I think you guys didn't go deep enough into the concept of a monk/barbarian multiclass character; Something tells me an Open Hand or Kensei monk would REALLY benefit from a barbarian's rage, as it'd augment their unarmed/armed (Kensei) attacks.
I'm laughing so hard mentally at the idea for zealots of: Random Cleric: "Oh no, the armies of our enemies are approaching. REVIVE THE ZEALOTS!" ~5 priests run into a casket filled mausoleum, placing a hand on each coffin lid, casting whatever revive spell is needed. 30 seconds later ~15 casket lids shatter as they're punched open, then the zealots get up, walk to the doorway, get handed ornate greataxes, and charge out, slaughtering hundreds mere seconds.
I had a friend who mentioned that his DM had a house rule for Barbarians. When raging, the DM tracks your hitpoints. You have no idea how much damage you've taken. This helped support the concept that a truly raging barbarian fights just a ferociously at 1HP as he does at full HP. I thought it was a really cool idea.
A good barbarian that wouldn't be an outlander (that they didn't mention) was Guts from Berserk. He gets pissed, fights like an animal, and doesn't give in. He takes hits like a boss
"Y'know, Barbarians have a ton of raw talent.... I wonder if we applied some discipline...." *Barbarian army begins a nigh unstoppable warpath* "Oh... that's why we never tried training Barbarians before..."
I actually played a Half-Orc Barb/Warlock in with a group running Out of The Abyss. The DM thought it was a really dumb idea, but I insisted on making it. He eventually got on board with the idea and by sheer luck (and a bit of fun on the DM's end) I ended up being able to Hex while raging. Basically what had happened was we were riding across a massive lake in the underdark on the back of a dragon-turtle and the Wizard and I had the bright idea to cast the light spell under the water just to see what was down there... What occurred after that was simply beautiful. The DM made us both make wisdom saving throws and of course we both failed. The Wizard and I went insane and he immediately starting attacking the party and I had to beat the Wizard unconscious to end his rampage. The result of the insanity caused me to get multiple personality disorder. So we had my usual brutish orc self and a super intelligent classy orc. This led to me being able to focus on hex while raging, so our mistake led to me being borderline broken. Good stuff. Though I was forced to roleplay two different people for the rest of the campaign...
You do you Jim, but if I'm ringing up one of those evil witches from the plane of eternal darkness to come save my ass, _I'm calling her whatever she wants to be called._
I made a rip-off of the wolfman who had noble background. He was cursed with fits of uncontrollable anger and had learned to channel and unleash it. Really fun. People never thought of a barbarian as anything other than a loincloth with no shirt.
As Barbarians are described as having multiple sources of rage you could, technically, be a pampered noble who just gets /realllllllly/ mad sometimes. So you could just do that without the curse. But wheres the fun in that.
Great vid guys. I think I prefer the post vid stuff to the actual video content awesome stuff. Yea Conan is kind of the ultimate Mary Sue character. Really enjoyed the take on the zealot barbarian that gets wheeled out every couple of years to wage war. Nerdarchist Dave
The Middle finger of Vecna has some great homebrew for sub-classes and one of my favorites is the Rage Mage. It converts the eldritch knight to a barbarian where they can only cast while raging and some other fun flavor. I wanted to find a way to make a priest of Gork and Mork that made sense and he is a blast (literally at times). He loves to preach the virtue of freedom and orkiness even though he is bad at talking to people and usually just ends up punching people that don't agree with him. Super flavorful character. XD
Great video, barbs need the love that generally isn't given due to their apparent "Simplicity". Now all I ask is: when can we expect the glorious, cunning, and best class: the Bard?
I made a half elf fiendish bladelock totem barbarian up until level 11 (barb 6 warlock 5). It was surprisingly solid and fun. I was dual-wielding longswords with the dual wielding feat. The extra temp HP from the fiend isn't much, but it does work with your resistances. Some good low level invocations helped me do ranged attacks or area attacks that I otherwise couldn't do. Mostly had lightning lure, green flame blade, hex, armor of agathys, arms of hadar, and eldritch blast were all good options for useful spells. Only issue is I'd go two-handed instead for easier spellcasting.
When you were talking about Conan, it made me remember how many characters in Classic Fantasy had very rogue like elements. Most hero's are stealthy and cunning because of what they are up against!
11:30 I played a first tier barbarian tiefling named Achievement that fought with no armor. The d12 hit die and resistances makes it extremely playable even with only a 14 AC. Couple that with dual wielding hand axes (with Dual Wielder feat, of course), and that character was unstoppable.
Maybe the zelot barbarian body parts aren't who you says it is but actually the Arch Lich Venca who placed the mythology in the hand of gullible priests.
That is who he is found out to be in the end. However, I read greek myths and Percy Jackson so in my head I distinguish them by referring to that particular incarnation of the character as berserker.
I've never had a chance to play D&D, but the idea of like a samurai/Ronin culture barbarian, who has never been able to control their rage and maybe went so far as to have killed their last master, with a big Nodachi, always seemed like it would be cool to play.
One of the campaigns that i had the most fun with was a barbarian theme campaign. Started at 2nd levl. 5 players. 3 guys playing brothers, one ranger/barb human, one rogue/barb human, and a barbarian half orc. Cleric/barbarian and a warlock/barb. Entire thing was so fun. DM said it was the first campaign he had ever run where rail roading was entirely unnecessary because we laugh and charge.
Just started, and I have to comment about exhaustion levels; I fully agreed with your thinking, in that exhaustion doesn't get terrible until 3rd level, where it effects attacks/saves. Then, in an Adventure's League module, 3 out of the 5 of us got 1 lvl at the very start and it completely wreaked us, since we could never take a long rest to get rid of it. This was 6-8 encounters with RP in between, that we sucked at because of the disadvantage. One guy almost plummeted hundreds of feet due to failing the DC 5 acrobatics check.
Right Nerd would never do coke, but he WOULD slam like 12 mountain dews and huff some pixie sticks if you dared him. Left nerd would never let that happen though.
YES! I'd love to hear you guys talk about solo, small, medium, large, low fantasy, high fantasy, steam punk, cyber punk, si-fi, mystery, crime, epic, war, dark and all the other good campaign stuff I cant remember off the top of my head.
Per the zealot barbarian, there was a book called the Forever Brigade. The military figured out a way to cryogenically freeze soldiers for future combat. And at some point hundred to thousand of years into the future the bodies were no longer even needed, they were able to 3-D print bodies and download their prior experience into them. Just a really dystopian view of the life and death of never being able to truly die.
I know from watching the Fey video that you are both Dresden fans. It was that series that inspired me to create a character that I have had the most fun playing in years. Sanya, always refers to Murphy as "Tiny, but fierce." So I created a halfling barbarian named Murphy. It was 3rd ed and I found a few amazing prestige classes one was called the pit fighter and the other was an improvised weapon master. The pit fighter was designed for the smaller races( you could use it as a med size character but most of the benefits only work if your opponent is at least one size cat larger than you.) I also took a few lvls in rogue and dumped most of my skill pts into use disable device(in our campaign the skill was expanded as a kind of engineering skill because there was a lot of steampunk influence in it, lots of tinkered equipment around.) It became a group running joke that if you wanted something broken point Murph at it.
Kercpa Barbarian... a 1 and a half foot tall Elven Squirrel wielding a smithy hammer as a small Maul rushing in, foaming at the mouth. Nearly impossible to hit, and nearly impossible to hurt, climbing around on opponents and basically creating massive chaos
LOL! "Real fictional inspiration" Sorry it struck me that way..... for inspiration read up on Cu'Chullain the Celtic hero. His rage physically changed him and he called it a "Warp Spasm".
My current path of the beast barbarian is a shifter/lycanthrope hybrid who was abandoned in a city due to his family being hunted down. So he’s very familiar with cities and navigation overall and has sped up the journey of the party significantly in city regions (he turned a week long journey into a single day. Rolled nat 20 surv and had the urchin background) but despite his overall familiarity with the cities he does have to contest with his lineage and his very animalistic nature quite frequently.
Once I did a urban barbarian, who was just a drunk mercenary that had no actual combat trainning, but was a genius in battle. He was pretty sociable, and loves woman, mead, and a good fight. Money buys the first two, and fighting is a fun way to make some gold. Pretty fun to play.
I am slightly obsessed with playing or running an assassins/thieves guild campaign, so you guys should definitely do an ep. on that. You guys are awesome, thanks for doing these vids!
You know, I actually really love how Conan, THE BARBARIAN, is a fighter/rogue type character. I think it's a perfect example of how the rules are an imperfect translation of your idea of a character into the actual game.
You guys are the best! We got a Monk video for Christmas and now we get a stellar Barbarian video just before New Years. Can't wait for what next year brings. Happy Holidays guys!
I'm actually super excited for your Bard and Warlock episodes! Especially for Bard, since that has always been my favorite class, but also because I want to hear your ideas about Warlocks in general. Also, can't wait for the new types of videos you are going to make. The Campaign videos sound cool, and would love for you to do another one that further covers Spelljammer. Keep up the good work guys!
The zealot path of eternal warriors just makes me think of the order from The Last Witch Hunter where you have an eternal warrior followed around by a collection of clerics to help them exact their god's will.
Another great video. I like the idea at the end of making videos for specific campaign types. Those would definitely be helpful for DMs, and I know you guys would make them super cool and interesting like you always do. 👍🏼
My first Barbarian is a demon possessed college archeologist. Charming British Man in social encounters and snarling joyously evil demon in the rage states. I love it so much. Also as a Frenzy Barb my character hasn't been dinged by exhaustion. It's a, manageable affliction
I think a great example of "real-world fictional" inspiration is Achilles from the Iliad, which is basically all about how Achilles is an amazing soldier because of his rage. The first lines introduce it well: Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage, Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls Of heroes into Hades’ dark, And left their bodies to rot as feasts For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done.
I know that it'd be hard with how quickly they're being released now but, I wouldn't mind listening to you guys review each of the new Unearthed Arcana classes as they came out.
I would be interested in seeing your guys D&D sessions. You ever planned on recording them and putting them on a secondary channel or something like that?
15th level Zealot Barbarian is only killable by power word kill and disintegrate. Nothing else has the ability to kill it until its rage is over, not even psychic scream, which requires the creature to be killed by the spell for its head to explode, but the barb does not die when they reach zero HP or fail all their death saves with the 14th level Zealot ability., which is 10 entire rounds of combat (Rage lasts for the whole minute if you want, even if you don't take damage once you reach 15th level. If you have even a healing word from a bard or cleric that's staying 30 feet away consistently, they can't die, and just keep going and going and going. And that's if you even get them down to zero in the first place. I think it's the second most overpowered thing in the game, only being beat by 20th level moon druid, because unlimited wild shapes. edit: I know that the rage expiring before being healed can kill them, and that taking massive damage to be outright killed (HP going from current, lets say 0 if we're already at that stage, to negative your max HP) will kill you. So time is a factor if the barb is alone. But let's look at why massive damage can be ruled out completely in 5e as a possible way of death for a 15th level Zealot Barb. If you have 20 Con, and you take the 7 instead of rolling a d12 for hit points every single level, you will have 190 hit points at level 15. There is almost nothing in the game that can inflict 190 points of damage at once (within a single turn of combat, not from multiple enemies). The value increases to 380 for bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, because you have resistance to them whilst raging. So, unless you fall from a height that would inflict 380 points of damage, you can't be killed outright by massive damage. So there are three things that can kill you. Power word kill, disintegrate, and your rage ending with all failed death saves.
For my first non-premade character in 5e I rolled really high on my stats, so decided to make a Wood Elf Outlander Barbarian. He was found by the Fab Wolves of the Faeweald and learned the ways of glam. Say hello to Fabio the Barbarian, who snaps spears with his pecs and flexes arrows aside while passively collecting food for the whole party and more. Fabio will provide. Also nearly defeated Langdedrosa Cyanwrath in single combat during his second encounter in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Was Lv 4. If only I'd been Lv 5... Oh well. Single combat is for those without a pack anyway.
Polearm Master is basically Frenzy without the exhaustion using a 1d4 damage die. Combined with the Divine Fury feature from the Zealot subclass, you can come close to the raw damage output from an equivalent Fighter. The survivability from that subclass is also great. I think Zealot Barbarian is the new Totem Barbarian in terms of not dieing (or in the case of the Zealot, not caring because Revivify is free!).
The x-campaign series is a really cool idea! Always nice to have a place to get inspiration. I also get a lot of inspiration from movies and books but it would be interesting to see you guys translating that into a setting for a campaign!
In regards to the bear totem resistances, there is a bearbearian, as I like to call them, and they have gotten drunk on the power of their resistance and think they are invincible. Then I put them up against Mind Flayers and they immediately snapped out of it as soon as they got hit by a big boom of psychic damage that took them out. They were all like: "but I resist all damage!" Then I pointed them to the entry and they just accepted it. They are still raging on, but with a little more mistrust of psionics.
I love the barbarian class, I usually multi-class fighter barbarian together for a feat raging monster. I had a dwarf were-bear that wielded a Huge scyth ( Yes the size huge). He was able to do massive damage prior to transforming in rage, in rage he basically was easily doing 100 a swing if not more ( Don't get me started on a 3d6 x4 crit with this weapon). Not only that my Attack bonus was so high I had to roll a 7 or below to miss epic enemies. Mind you with proper lvl adjustment I was only lvl 9 at the time.
I really like mix and matching backgrounds with unorthodox classes. Like im gonna play a Barbarian that is a criminal so he can sneak up on people and then bring the pain
I like that they are using some of the 4e concepts for barbarians...they were unique and interesting. Both the totem path and ancestral guardian path were cool options for barbarians in 4e, and I think they remain interesting for 5e.
one of the players in my game is playing a Warforged Barbarian, and his character is flavored as a golem who's master put his controller amulet inside of him and his dying command was to live as a free man. his "programing" is fritzing because of a cognitive dissonance with his final command and that is his rage mode.
I currently have a high elf dex-based Berserker. I'm glad you touched on how barbs don't have to be the typical meatheads. Mine is smart and trained but has an anger issue
ajsee790 I know this comment is kind of old.. But! I literally just helped a friend build his first D&D character, and it just so happens to have almost that exact build. I'm really excited to see how it plays out
Bheur is Scottish In Gaelic mythology (Irish, Scottish and Manx) the Cailleach (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkalʲəx], Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [ˈkaʎəx]) is a divine hag, a creator deity and weather deity, and an ancestor deity. She is also commonly known as the Cailleach Bhéara(ch) or Bheur(ach). The word cailleach means "hag" in modern Scottish Gaelic, and has been applied to numerous mythological figures in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cailleach
Ha! I've had a barbarian/lock in one of my games after discussing the idea with another player :) Pretty effective but we didn't get to the levels where it would really kick off. When you do get to discussing Warlocks, I really feel Hex is a big trap beyond level 5 unless you MC into a spell casting class for additional first level slots, so easy to get a level or two in bard or sorcerer. I did a big post on reddit a couple of years ago about MC warlocks and Hexblades, it's definitely the way to go if you are playing this character archetype.
On the "collect all the pieces to bring back Zealot" thing, maybe It's not turned to stone, but some powerful curse was placed on them, turning them to, I dunno, obsidian, and the only way to reverse the curse is to get the pieces, which can then be rezzed.
I had an idea for the barbarian: instead of rage being anger, I imagined it as a sort of battle trance that the warrior goes into. Seperation of mind and body, really monk like. The specific character concept was a half orc battlemaster that started as a barbarian for the first 3 levels then got trained in actual combat.
For the tempest barbarian, I'm less that it's them being that angry, but rather them channeling the power of the storm. They always have a whisper in the back of their head of the spirits, but when they rage, they give their body to them, letting go of control. Also, you should see the dragonborn grappler barb I love. His style is grabbing a bitch, restraining them, and then breathing fire in their damn face
I'm not sure how long after the class videos you'd do this. but I'd love to see an in depth look at the player races (probably excluding most of Volo's) probably the mains ones like elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, dragonborn, tieflings, and maybe even throw in aasimar (probably not humans, but if you wanted to add in something a little extra in there I wouldn't mind). just thought I'd throw the idea out there, love your guys videos, keep being awesome :)
Chad-Solomon Dixon Clearly this Video was shot a couple of days after the Barbarian UA was released. So, an enterprising nerd could pinpoint the weekend we shot this series of vids, if ones Investigation Skill was high enough...
Did people really forget about Rage Mages from 3.5 Edition? I mean, the prerequisites are 2 levels Barbarian, 2 levels mage, and have a high enough wisdom and intellect to become the class, and be able to at least cast a fireball, then you can use Rage to empower spells lol. I remember reading about that anyway, never been fond of playing any kind of casting class. My favorite character that I ever played was my Barbarian / Fighter / Frenzied Berserker / Warforged Juggernaut / Legendary Dreadnought build that started as a level 1 human, died around level level 20, then had his soul forced into a large-scale Warforged with an Adamantine body, then he just became an unstoppable, unkillable, uncontrollable killing machine once he got his 10th level of Warforged Juggernaut that always had the party and the DM shitting themselves when the enemies were all dead and worried he might not get himself out of frenzy, since you have to make a wisdom saving throw of at least 10 to break out of frenzy, and my character had a -8 modifier for wisdom lol.
