The Quintessential Barbarian

[Messageboard Golem]

Without a doubt the toughest of all character classes, the Barbarian gets his spoils in the Quintessential Barbarian. With all new Character Concepts and Prestige Classes permitting any character to be tweaked, to guidelines on how to amass a horde, survive in the wilderness and use rage abilities to an exceptional degree, The Quintessential Barbarian has everything players of this class have been waiting for.

 

[John Cooper]

The Quintessential Barbarian
By Robert J. Schwalb
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 4014
128 pages, $19.95

I enjoyed Robert J. Schwalb's The Quintessential Witch, so when I saw he was the author of The Quintessential Barbarian I thought I'd give it a look. As expected, I enjoyed this book as well. Robert does as well fleshing out existing character classes as he does creating entirely new ones.

The 14th in the "Collector Series," The Quintessential Barbarian is laid out pretty much in the standard fashion for the series:

• Introduction: explaining the "Collector Series"
• Character Concepts: 14 generic concepts for your barbarian PC, each with an advantage and disadvantage, followed by an additional 5 racial concepts and 9 regional concepts
• The Prestige Barbarian: 13 barbarian-based prestige classes
• Tricks of the Trade: bartering, predicting weather, camouflage, long-distance signaling, mimicking animal sounds, expanding the capabilities of the Intimidate skill, and shape-journeys (sending your spirit out in the form of one of five animal totems)
• Barbarian Feats: 59 new feats suitable for barbarians (and others, in some cases)
• Tools of the Trade: new weapon materials (bone, stone, wood, bronze, and iron), peerless weapons, 20 new weapons, a new armor concept (weapon conversion, deflecting certain types and amounts of damage from normal to subdual), new armor materials (bone, wood, bronze, and iron), peerless armor, 13 new types of general equipment, magical woad (face and body paints), and 6 new steeds
• Contests: contests of stamina, war, and physical prowess
• Survival: movement through different terrain, special climbing rules, swimming, temperature, environmental effects on equipment, foraging for food and water, hunting, fishing, and going without rest
• Hordes: leading barbaric hordes, raiding towns, and magic standards and banners
• Fortifications: fortifying a barbarian's encampments
• Designer's Notes: Robert's thoughts on barbarians and why he wrote what he did
• Index: 2-page index, very helpful
• Barbarian Character Sheet: 4-page character sheet, tailor-made for barbarians

As is the case for all of the "Collector Series," the outer and inner covers to The Quintessential Barbarian is made to look like leather. The interior artwork consists of 78 black-and-white illustrations by 14 different artists. Naturally, this provides a wide variety of artistic styles and abilities, but for the most part the artwork ranges from average to above average, with the occasional stand-out work. Being a Mongoose book (and about barbarians, no less!), there are several instances of "nipple art." Besides the three obvious female subjects on pages 85, 87, and 99, there is also quite possibly another instance on page 101, although I'm not certain that the subject in question is female (no dig on the artist, either - the subject is an elf barbarian wearing a fur cape across the shoulders, and you know how androgynous those elves can be...)

I was overall really impressed with how much meat Robert put into this book. It's become a "Collector Series" tradition to include several possible character concepts; Robert delivers not only a total of 19 (five of them specifically tailored for a particular PC race) of them, but also adds 9 regional concepts as well. Furthermore, you can have a regional concept as well as a character/racial concept, so this really makes it easy to make your barbarian PC different from everyone else's. Robert's delivering quality as well as quantity, too: I particularly liked the Abandoned (feral barbarian raised by wolves/bears/monkeys), Stoic Warrior (a non-raging barbarian!), and Raider (Viking-like plunderer of coastal towns). There are some atypical barbarians, too, like the Diplomat (Barbarian Diplomat: there's an oxymoron!) and Thug (an urban barbarian).

As another example of the "meatiness" of The Quintessential Barbarian, I can't recall ever having seen 59 new feats provided in a "Collector Series" book before! Best of all, each of these feats seems right for a barbarian PC. The only downside is that barbarians are not the "feat jockeys" that fighters are, so there's much more worth taking than there are feat slots to fill. (Perhaps that would be a good justification for a fighter/barbarian PC...) Of course, I think there should be a stipulation that "Personal Challenge" should only be usable against intelligent opponents who understand the language you speak, but I would hope that was fairly self-evident even if not specified.

Then there are the 13 prestige classes (all of them having 5 levels): again, much more than you'd expect, and all of them seem pretty well-balanced. (Of course, it helps that the barbarian is not a spellcasting class, as it seems much more difficult balancing spellcasting prestige classes.) Of particular interest to me were the Despoiler (a gods-hating barbarian who becomes capable of shrugging off the effects of divine spells), the Devolutionary (kind of like the "Mr. Hyde" of barbarians: more brutal, more vicious, more animalistic, less intelligent, eventually becoming a Beast - note this is a 3.0 book rather than a 3.5 one; you might want to change that to "Monstrous Humanoid" in a 3.5 game), Fetish Warrior (an evil barbarian who gains powers from eating the hearts of his slain enemies), and the Wizard Slayer (remember how 1E barbarians hated wizards? - that sort of thing).

Of course, I had some problems with some of the prestige classes. Besides some nitpicky stuff (like the Dervish's "Distracting Litany" being called "Dedicated Litany" on the chart, probably due to a name change that wasn't caught everywhere it appeared), I found it difficult to justify the Despoiler's "Atheistic Resolve" special ability, which expands his personal resistance to divine magic into a 10-foot radius all around him. I can understand the personal protection being based on the barbarian's hatred of deities, but I don't see it expanding out in a circle and protecting the barbarian's comrades as well. I'm protected from divine spells just because I happen to be standing next to a guy who hates gods? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Also, while I love the Devolutionary (although I think it would make for much better NPCs than PCs), and I agree with the Skill points going away as the Devolutionary loses Intelligence, I don't understand why it has no class skills. Certainly Climb, Hide, Jump, Listen, Spot, and Survival seem logical even for a humanoid becoming more and more like a beast (although I suppose the Climb skills are taken care of by the "Supreme Climber" special ability the Devolutionary gets at 3rd level).

Also, having a "Master of the Hunt" prestige class was probably not a good idea, since there's a Druid "Master of the Hunt" prestige class in The Quintessential Druid - at the very least, it should have been renamed. (Of course, I'm sure The Quintessential Barbarian was written before The Quintessential Druid was released, so this is something the editors should have caught.) This Master of the Hunt gains control of a number of dire wolves equal to "5 + Cha modifier, or the size of the original pack, whichever is higher." Surely this is supposed to be "whichever is lower," since (according to the Monster Manual) dire wolf packs have 5-8 members; as written, a Master of the Hunt with an 18 Charisma (+4 bonus) could challenge a 5-member dire wolf pack, defeat the current leader, and gain control of 9 dire wolves! (Despite the fact there were only 5 to start with.) I also find it odd that the Master of the Hunt becomes a lycanthrope just by hanging out with dire wolves - there's no other contact with werewolves involved. And I also don't understand the "aura of foxfire" special ability the Master of the Hunt gains at 2nd level: again, why would hanging out with dire wolves allow you to cause your body to glow in the dark? Furthermore, the Scent ability gained at 3rd level is useless if you were raised by wolves (as an Abandoned, one of the Character Concepts in the second chapter), as you'd have already gained that ability as a 1st-level barbarian - and face it, wouldn't a barbarian raised by wolves be the most likely candidate to take over leadership of a dire wolf pack? All in all, Master of the Hunt was my least favorite prestige class in the bunch. (Although I think I'd also have to include the Planar Savage out of sheer overpoweredness - if that's even a word - since this 5-level prestige class grants a barbarian Elemental Resistance 10 against two different energy types, darkvision, low-light vision, ethereal vision, and dimensional door and dimensional anchor-like abilities!)

Editing throughout is at about the Mongoose average, meaning there are numerous spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes seeded throughout the book. Fortunately, in each instance they're minor enough that they do not make the section unreadable.

I was overjoyed to see the expansion of the Intimidate skill, allowing for 6 different types of Intimidation (one each for Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma). This was a welcome and much-needed rule, one I'm sure had already been "Rule Zeroed" in many campaigns. I also liked the "peerless" concept for weapons and armor; basically, it's an advanced form of "masterwork," providing an additional point to hit and an extra point of damage. While it's probably not needed in a standard fantasy campaign, it would play an important part in low-magic worlds. I also enjoyed the concept of the "shape-journey," where a barbarian's souls leaves his body and manifests as a Large of Huge totem animal. It seems like a very primitive kind of personal magic, perfectly suited for the barbarian. Of the five animal totems provided, I was surprised to see the eagle only having 8 Hit Dice when the others (including the raven) had 12 Hit Dice. I would have thought a Huge eagle would have more Hit Dice than a Huge raven, but who knows?
The "Hordes" section was interesting. Much of it was based on the Open Mass Combat System from The Quintessential Fighter which I don't have, but for those of you with that book using the OMCS, this information should fit right in. I did find it an interesting concept to treat a town as an entity with an Armor Class, hit points, and Attack and Damage values, and this seems like a pretty cool way to go about it. I've never had such mass-scale battles in my own games and it's doubtful I'll ever use the Hordes rules, but it was a good read nonetheless and I was glad to see somebody updating some of the barbarian rules from the AD&D First Edition.

Much of the rest of The Quintessential Barbarian didn't particularly excite me, but they're probably good rules to have on hand should the need ever arise. Personally, I don't know that I'd ever have need for smoke signal rules or fishing, but again, it's nice to know they're there should I be wrong. The rules for new weapon and armor materials was okay: nicely written up, probably very realistic, but not over exciting. (Although I did rather like the adraga/adarga - take your pick, it was spelled one way in the weapon description and another in the accompanying diagram - which is something like a spiked buckler on the end of a long spear. Rather unique, and it reminded me of a weapon you'd probably find in Dark Sun for some reason.) I guess if I had one major complaint, it was the general lack of new magic items. Granted, barbarians can't make their own (unless they multiclass), but that doesn't mean that barbarian tribes wouldn't include members capable of crafting magic items. And sure, there were the magical woads and the war banners, but they were few and far between. Maybe Robert could do up a "Barbarian Magic Items" for Mongoose's Signs & Portents magazine? (Hint, hint)

All in all, The Quintessential Barbarian was a pleasant addition to the "Collector Series," one which delivers on its promise to make barbarian PCs much less standardized and "cookie cutter." With all of the possibilities in the book, you could easily have an entire barbarian party without anyone infringing on another's specific character concept focus. I rank The Quintessential Barbarian as a mid-to-high "4 (Good)."

 

[Moulin Rogue]

As written, I haven't been really satisfied with the barbarian as a D&D class. Despite some class-specific features such as rage, the barbarian still feels too often to me like a branch of fighter, with a dash of ranger in the skill list. The class feels too generic in some places, yet simultaneously too specific in others (rage and fast movement doesn't fit my concept of every single barbarian out there). It feels like the 'odd class out' in WotC's class splat books, seeming just kind of wedged into books on other classes and not really getting a whole lot out of them. No, the barbarian is not considered a 'weak' class in D&D from a statistical point of view, but I've thought it could use a little more help in a flavour sense. Sure, many combat feats for fighters are just as viable for barbarians, but there's a lot more to D&D than just fighting, right? …Right? Let's see what Mongoose can do with a full book's worth of material about getting the barbarian a little more character.

The Quintessential Barbarian is the fourteenth in the venerable line of Mongoose's Quintessential Series, and is priced at $19.95 for 128 pages. Trivia note: Mike Mearls wrote on his website that he wanted to do this one, before other projects came up. The authorship came into the hands of Robert Schwalb, and they prove to very capable hands indeed as we shall see. This book first hit the shelves in April 2003 and so it's a 3.0 product all the way, with lots of little things like Wilderness Lore instead of Survival, reference to the Intuit Direction skill, and so on. This book also preceded WotC's setting of "decency" guidelines for d20 third-party publishers, so I guess this ended up being Mongoose's last big chance to include lots of drawings of bared female breasts, and there are a number of those. I would rate the artwork's range as fair to good, and I especially liked the clean, dramatically-shadowed stylings of Fred Rawles found mostly in the Feats section. Throughout the book is flavour text telling the ongoing saga of one barbarian Vignar - there's a lot of potential in barbarian-themed flavour text when you think about it, and I thought it did pretty well. Typos are regular but not that bad.

This book's go-round of Character Concepts is pretty good this time. A common trade-off is to turn the barbarian's rage ability up or down, and then adjust skill access and/or skill checks in directly opposite proportion. It seems to work pretty well. There are further suggestions for non-human PC races and then regional concepts - in exchange for lower technology (fewer weapon and armour proficiencies) you can get little perks based on what kind of region the barbarian hails from (cold, desert, mountains, etc.) So pretty quickly out of the gate I got a way to give the barbarian some of the flavour I was looking for, and this was the highlight of the book for me. Between this and Chapter 2 of Unearthed Arcana a campaign will have plenty of ways to customize a barbarian.

The Prestige Barbarian offers up the expected assortment of prestige classes, including the ultimate raging machine (Devolutionary) a Viking raider-type (Sea Wolf) and three you could say are themed around an "aarrghhh, me hate X" theme: there's an anti-wizard (Wizard Slayer), anti-psion (Mind Killer) and anti-religious (Despoiler). There's also one called Runner which includes extra fast movement; but given that a human barbarian with the Run feat can already run as fast as the best Olympic runners today, this one made me feel dizzy thinking about it.

Tricks of the Trade is a collection of various rules useful for many characters besides barbarians, such as bartering and predicting weather. It also suggests that the Intimidation skill could be keyed to any of the six abilities, attempting to explain how in a paragraph for each. I was willing to entertain the idea and all, but after reading this section I just wasn't won over by the idea of wowing somebody with your dexterous movement so they'll tell you where the bad guy's hideout is. There's been much discussion about allowing the modifier for Strength instead of Charisma on Intimidate checks, and those are the two I think I'll stick with. There is also a high-level ability called the shape-journey allowing a character to spiritually project as an animal totem. This chapter was a mixed bag for me so I would rank it about average overall.

Nine full pages of barbarian-themed feats follow; predictably there are quite a few tied to the rage ability but there's plenty of other stuff as well, feats that pretty much any combat-driven character would find useful. Single-Weapon Mastery has kind of a bland title, but it grants the cinematic ability to catch an incoming blow and accept the damage in exchange for an attack of opportunity against the foe.

Tools of the Trade introduces weapon materials from earlier technology, followed by some new weapons and equipment. If you haven't got stats for a d20 broadsword from some other source yet, you'll get one take here. There's also the Zweihander, an enormous sword requiring a Strength of 18 just to wield. Not a bad idea, but if the concept of minimum Strength requirements for weapons is going to be introduced, why would you have just one. Much of the equipment revolves around hunting and there are also some welcome rules for magical woad. The chapter concludes with six steeds (zebra, four horses and a war elk).

About two-thirds through the book now, we get to eight pages dealing with Contests where you could hold a kind of "barbarian olympics". I was a bit disappointed with this section, as I thought some of the contests were described in unnecessary detail. This section was heavy on art with only some of it relevant to the topic, as if this section was padding.

Survival was my second-favourite part of the book, greatly expanding the possibilities of wilderness adventuring in a way that's useful to any character at home in the outdoors. There are expanded rules for wilderness movement, swimming, climbing and finding food. DCs for hunting and foraging are provided and they're broken down by climate and season. It's not hard to imagine a whole primitive or wilderness adventure revolving around just trying to get something to eat. I did get confused by what's happening in the table at the bottom of p. 100; the lack of shading between sections made it hard to figure out that it's a 3 row, 2 column table where you find your roll result on the left column and follow across to the adjacent column to learn the mechanical effects. But apart from this, the rules weren't hard to follow and they add an extra dimension to adventuring far from civilization.

In the home stretch comes a chapter on Hordes with rules for raising a horde, maintaining it and then raiding. They can be used with or without Mongoose's Open Mass Combat System, found in other Mongoose products. It wraps up with a brief look at fortifications and siege engines, finishing with the designer notes, index and character sheet that are all standard in the Quintessentials line.

I found Quintessential Barbarian to be a good entry in the "Collector Series" line. It resolved the flavour issue of the class to my liking, and included some wilderness rules with wide utility in a book where one may not even expect to find them. The other expected sections on things like feats and equipment were solid, and the mechanics looked overall better balanced than others in this series have been. I give Quintessential Barbarian a 4 out of 5.