Barbarians have an iconic place in fantasy literature and role-playing games, and Realm of Runes could not consider itself complete without including these powerful, angry warriors. More than any other class, barbarians like to be right up in the middle of the action, giving and taking enormous amounts of damage to bring enemies to their knees and to prove just how hard they are to kill. Barbarians come from many backgrounds, and while not two are quite alike, they all share the same core mechanic: an intense battle rage that boosts their physical power and endurance for a limited time. How limited? That's up to the barbarian.
ENTERING & MAINTAINING RAGE
Barbarians can use an action any time to Enter Rage, and once started they keep raging until they choose to stop, or are forced to. Entering Rage gives a barbarian a lot of power and durability benefits, such as adding their Fortitude modifier to Strength-based damage, making them additionally devastating with melee attacks, thrown weapons, and propulsive ranged weapons like slings and composite bows. They also gain their Fortitude modifier as temporary Hit Points until the start of their next turn, allowing them to shrug off some of the damage they take each round. This is important for barbarians, because the frenzied state of rage also reduces their armor class, making them more likely to take damage. They also gain a small bonus to all saving throws, giving them some needed resilience to just about everything. You can't chip away at a raging barbarian, you need to focus fire and bring it down before it can do the same to you.
Once in rage, a barbarian has to Maintain Rage every turn. This state is emotionally draining, and if you drop out it leaves you tired - a nasty penalty to just about everything you do. You can choose to drop out of rage any time by not attempting to Maintain Rage, and you can be forced out of it by failing the check to Maintain Rage, or by something causing you to be tired during your rage. If you choose to stop, this condition wears off after a minute of rest. If you are forced out, it's effectively permanent until you take some time to rest it away or are cured of it through magic.
Maintain Rage is a flat check, a special kind of check that doesn't use any modifiers at all, it's just a straight roll of the d20. It seems easy enough to keep your rage going. The DC starts at 1, but you can't get worse than success the DC is less than your Endurance bonus and if you beat the DC by enough the DC doesn't even increase. Successfully Maintaining Rage lets your benefits keep rolling, but also refreshes your temporary Hit Points for another round allowing you to keep shrugging off chip damage. Better still, Maintain Rage is a free action, so it doesn't keep taking up valuable time on your turn once you Enter Rage.
POWER VS LONGEVITY
The core conflict within the barbarian class is between power and longevity. It can be trivially easy to keep raging for a whole battle, but rage is not just a core mechanic to the barbarian, it's also a key, expendable class resource that the barbarian must manage.
Many class feats and features provide the barbarian with cool things it can do while raging, but at the cost of increasing its rage DC. If a barbarian wants to, or needs to, they can utilize huge power spikes by burning through their rage, making it more difficult to hang onto, and thus more likely to run out and leave them tired. There are also some abilities that a barbarian can use to reduce its rage DC under certain conditions, like taking damage that isn't absorbed by their Temporary Hit Points. In any combat where a barbarian rages, they'll constantly be manipulating their rage DC, increasing it to do powerful attacks and reducing it to keep the punishment going longer.
BARBARIAN CLANS
Barbarians in media are often from tribal cultures, and Realm of Runes pays homage to this tradition through clans, groups of similarly-minded barbarians that have a strong tradition of abilities. This can be a literal tribal or family unit, or a metaphorical heritage taught rather than inherited. There are six different clans to choose from, plus an option for barbarians that either never had a strong tradition or rejected one. Each clan provides a special ability immediately, but also requires a dedicated barbarian to avoid certain behaviors disrespectful to the clan's focus. Each clan grants a unique combination of damage types that the barbarian grows to resist, and many barbarian class feats are exclusive to a specific clan and are only available to barbarians that have chosen that path.
DRAGON CLAN
The dragon clan models itself after some of the most fearsome and dangerous creatures known to exist: dragons. When choosing the dragon clan, a barbarian also chooses which color of dragon the clan emulates. The color of dragon has a major influence on how clan abilities function, not least of which by determining the damage type of many abilities. A dragon clan barbarian can make its bonus damage from rage be its dragon's energy type instead of the same type as its weapon. Dragon clan feats deepen a barbarian's connection to its chosen dragon, granting it additional resistances and access to iconic dragon abilities like flight and a devastating breath weapon that fills an area with energy. A focused dragon barbarian is close to being an actual dragon, and should be feared as one.
KAPA HAKA CLAN
The kapa haka clan focuses its rage through traditional dances, called Hakas. Each Haka alters the effects of the barbarian's rage, granting special abilities that the kapa haka barbarian can change by beginning a new dance. While these Hakas can be performed alone, each one gains additional power for each additional ally that also performs the Haka. Kapa haka clan feats improve the power and versatility of the Haka, by making it easier for allies to join in, adding new variations of the Haka, and even allowing the barbarian to use more than one Haka at once. A focused kapa haka barbarian turns a whole party into an incredible force to be reckoned with as they dance their way through encounters.
LYCAN CLAN
The lycan clan is subdivided into one of several animals often revered by tribal cultures or common were-creatures. When raging, the barbarian gains the use of special unarmed attacks typical for the clan animal, from the powerful fists of an ape, to the massive horns of a bull, to the rows of serrated teeth of a shark. Lycan clan feats deepen a barbarian's connection to its chosen animal, improving its unarmed attacks, granting it additional resistances, and causing it to transform more fully while enraged. A focused lycan barbarian blurs the line between person and beast, much like the lycanthropes they emulate.
MAMMOTH CLAN
Giants are really big and incredibly strong, so it's only natural that paragons of muscle like barbarians would try to emulate them. Where most combatants wield weapons properly sized for them, mammoth clan barbarians frequently choose weapons crafted for those bigger than they are. These weapons are clumsy, and so most abilities of the mammoth clan are designed around pulling off one titanic blow that channels the force of an entire round of combat at once. Mammoth clan feats can even cause a barbarian, and its weapons, to grow in size when entering rage, increasing not just their already enormous power, but also their reach. Even giving these barbarians space won't save you from them.
SPELLBREAKER CLAN
Some barbarians have an aversion to magic and magicians. They don't hold with such metaphysical nonsense, and go out of their way to put a stop to it. Spellbreaker clan barbarians eschew spells entirely, and their rage provides them extra bonuses against magic. They can, and do, still use magic items but are never a willing target for spells, even helpful ones. Spellbreaker clan feats make a barbarian even more hostile to magic, granting them the ability to cut through magic with weapons, dispelling it, and increasing their fury when others insist on casting spells in their presence, reducing their rage DC. Spellbreaker barbarians are not great company for every adventuring group, but if traveling with a party that also tends to eschew magic they can be devastate enemy magic without disrupting the party dynamic.
SPIRIT CLAN
The Spirit clan embraces the shamanic, ancestor worship traditions often associated with many tribal cultures. When raging, they can deal life or death energy with their bonus damage from rage instead of using the same damage type of their weapons, and their fury enables them to fully affect incorporeal creatures with their attacks. Where others might be unprepared to deal with terrifying nuisances like ghosts without planning and equipment, a spirit clan barbarian can beat that specter with its bare hands if it wants or needs to. Spirit clan feats focus on deepening the barbarian's connection with the other side of the veil, summoning spectral allies to assist in battle and provide answers from beyond the grave. Spirit barbarians are never truly alone, and the lifetimes of experience they can call on make them truly formidable to the living and dead alike.
UNFETTERED
Unfettered is the choice for characters that don't have a clan tradition, or reject one, and are simply furious and devastating combatants on their own steam. Rather than getting special abilities, they get bonus feats which they can use to enhance their combat prowess. They also don't have any restrictions on behavior. What they might lack in tradition, they make up for in flexibility.
Barbarians are a very combat-focused class, with a distinct preference for offense over defense. Their clans inject the class with a great deal of variety, allowing for very different styles. It's for classes like this one, with a clear internal focus on one aspect of play, that makes the way Realm of Runes handles skills as independent to class so important. Just because barbarian feats tend to make you better at fighting doesn't stop you from being a well-rounded character, and barbarians can even be excellent users of the subject of the next blog if they want. Check back next time when we discuss the Charisma skills.
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