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Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Barbarian Class


So I started thinking "what other classes would be like the Fool and the Tourist?" Since I've been getting a few hits lately from people searching for an OD&D barbarian class, that actually seems like a good idea.

Barbarian

Concept: The uncivilized hero, like the early Conan. In my version of the class, barbarians don't have to be dumb, butdumb barbarians are favored.

Alignment: Any, but Chaos and Neutral predominate; they tend to distrust civilization.

XP/HD: As Fighter, but prime ability is Intelligence. Invert the experience bonus for Intelligence: they have an XP penalty for high Int, a bonus for low Int.

Weaponry and Armor: As Fighter. All standard Fighter abilities apply, too.

Limitations: Must start illiterate. If some kind of training rules for learning new abilities are being used, Bsrbarians take twice as long to learn to read. Also, visible magic is more likely to to frighten a barbarian; NPC barbarians are at -2 on moral checks, and PC barbarians must save vs. fear at -2 or be effectively ovrburdened while in the presence of obvious magic (Move 3, always go last in combat.) Movement rate when fleeing magic is normal.

Barbarians get a -1 reaction from cityfolk.

Other Abilities: Barbarians are only afraid of obvious magic; they never check morale or save vs. fear from mundane threats. In combat, they act as if under a Haste spell and trigger morale checks in normal men.

The fearlessness of barbarians is universal, but the Haste effect can be interpreted as being the feature of a specific tribe, the Berserkers. Other tribes can replace that ability with an equivalent one, such as a bonus to a particular natural/athletic ability (mountain climbing, for a mountain tribe, surviving drowning, for a sea-faring tribe.)

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