Fighter vs Barbarian - Can someone educate me?

[Fraktal]

Just curious on the major differences between the two. Seems they overlap quite a bit on their roles?

[IRMcG]

Fighter's typically your heavily armoured sword and shield type, Barbarian's light/no armour rage monster waving his huge weapon around :)

Barbarian gets CON based AC buffs and potentially other mechanics (dep. on subclass) to offset the lack of armour and unique intimidation type dialogues.

[MrHaSu]

They're both martial classes, fighter is supposed to represent the more civilized warrior, tactical combat, where as barbarians are supposed to represent something more primal, raw unbridled rage. Warriors can wear the heaviest of armor, but are quite flexible when it comes to building the character. They can use all forms of weaponry effectively, and they're sub classes support more tactical combat. Barbarians are all about hitting hard and fast, getting in and just wrecking someone., and generally do best with a big meaty two handed weapon. Barbarian sub classes generally just focus on adding more raw combat damage.

Barbarians typically have more HP than a fighter, to combat the lack of heavy armor.

Both classes are solid picks, it just depends what kind of flavor you want to kick ass with.

[SerraShaar]

One stomp Loudly and Charrrrrrrrrrrge! = Barbarian

The other Sweat and make Tin Can Noise *Clang Clang* = Warrior

[FunkyMonkey]

Fighters tend to have more tactical options with either spells (Eldritch knight) or combat maneuvers (Battle master) and Barbarians just rage and smash things with big sticks :D Also, barbarians seem really fun to play in BG3, I'm excited to have Karlach in my team.

[Fraktal]

Lol thanks for the replies!

College of Lore bard will be my first play through.

So I wanted a melee fighter for my 2nd.

[Panic Fire]

Originally posted by The Orange and Blue Ninja:

Just curious on the major differences between the two. Seems they overlap quite a bit on their roles?

With out jumping into subclasses

Fighters = Consistent high dmg output. No other class comes close to this role.

Barbarian = Tank.

That's literally what there base class roles tend to be. Subclasses can change this up dramatically or focus even more into those roles. But at the end of the day, Barbarian is going to soak up a ton of dmg and dish some out, and fighter is going to just going to be an absolute dmg unit.

[SerraShaar]

Originally posted by Panic Fire:

Originally posted by The Orange and Blue Ninja:

Just curious on the major differences between the two. Seems they overlap quite a bit on their roles?

With out jumping into subclasses

Fighters = Consistent high dmg output. No other class comes close to this role.

Barbarian = Tank.

That's literally what there base class roles tend to be. Subclasses can change this up dramatically or focus even more into those roles. But at the end of the day, Barbarian is going to soak up a ton of dmg and dish some out, and fighter is going to just going to be an absolute dmg unit.

Not even Paladin? I always though they kinda do and then some, since they have access to spell too...

[VastGirth]

Originally posted by Panic Fire:

Originally posted by The Orange and Blue Ninja:

Just curious on the major differences between the two. Seems they overlap quite a bit on their roles?

With out jumping into subclasses

Fighters = Consistent high dmg output. No other class comes close to this role.

Barbarian = Tank.

That's literally what there base class roles tend to be. Subclasses can change this up dramatically or focus even more into those roles. But at the end of the day, Barbarian is going to soak up a ton of dmg and dish some out, and fighter is going to just going to be an absolute dmg unit.

Isn't more the other way round? Barbarians are pure damage dealers, but a fighter in heavy armour can take a lot more hits...

[orgonutil]

Fighter is more tatical, push enemies, disarm, get them prone, better armor to avoid atacks and less health

barbarian have less armor, more health, more damage (hulk smash stile) and less control. I had played with both in early acess, barbarian was much fun, specially becouse you can enranged throw weapons for a lot damage and unique fun dialogue options

[Jinkaru]

It is socially acceptable to wear a leather speedo as a barbarian.
It is frowned upon to wear a leather speedo as a fighter.

[A]

Battlemasters under fighters get disarm weapon which ♥♥♥♥♥ an enemy up for the rest of the combat if you steal their primary weapon lmao.

[Brahson]

one is harier than the other

[Luckyleol]

the barbarians main mechanic is the Rage ability, which gives +2 damage(increases as you level up) and resistances to bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, and advantage on strength check and saving throws. they get a benefit of not using armor as their armor class also scales with Con(10+con+dex when unarmored). and you can get advantage on attacks if you are fine with them having advantage on hitting you.

Fighters can use any weapon, they aren't exclusively melee combatants, you can easily have a ranged fighter, but it would be good to have both a melee and ranged weapon as you can swap between them in a fight. though they do focus on one of them via the fighting style which they have access to all of them. than the fighters have access to 3 attacks total, vs 2 from the barbarian(not counting the frenzy extra attack), and than there is the action surge which gives back your action to you. or second wind which heals you back a bit.

[Luckyleol]

Originally posted by VastGirth:

Originally posted by Panic Fire:

With out jumping into subclasses

Fighters = Consistent high dmg output. No other class comes close to this role.

Barbarian = Tank.

That's literally what there base class roles tend to be. Subclasses can change this up dramatically or focus even more into those roles. But at the end of the day, Barbarian is going to soak up a ton of dmg and dish some out, and fighter is going to just going to be an absolute dmg unit.

Isn't more the other way round? Barbarians are pure damage dealers, but a fighter in heavy armour can take a lot more hits...

iirc can depend, as raging does give you a guaranteed +2 to damage on lower levels and does scale up later, the fighter gets one extra attack later on. while the barb doesn't, only the frenzy one does get one as a bonus action which the frenzy would be the more damage one. the rage ability also gives resistance which is half damage off. or with the barbarian ability to get advantage they can risk taking GWM(great weapon master), which gives +10 damage but you take a -5 to hit.

[Panic Fire]

Originally posted by SerraShaar:

Originally posted by Panic Fire:

With out jumping into subclasses

Fighters = Consistent high dmg output. No other class comes close to this role.

Barbarian = Tank.

That's literally what there base class roles tend to be. Subclasses can change this up dramatically or focus even more into those roles. But at the end of the day, Barbarian is going to soak up a ton of dmg and dish some out, and fighter is going to just going to be an absolute dmg unit.

Not even Paladin? I always though they kinda do and then some, since they have access to spell too...

Paladins are nukers in 5e. There main mechanic is dropping giant dmg on an enemy. However Paladins lack the abilitiy to "keep" doing this. So they nuke a big enemy or so but then they become a mid tier dps after that.

Fighters on the other hand consistently do high dmg all the time. That is quite literally there thing.

Originally posted by VastGirth:

Isn't more the other way round? Barbarians are pure damage dealers, but a fighter in heavy armour can take a lot more hits...

Barbarians main mechanic is Rage which adds a bit more dmg per hit, but its main mechanic is that it half's incoming slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning dmg. On top of this Barbarians get the largest HP gain per level. In addition Barbarians and Fighters generally can get close to the same AC in most cases.


Fighters get more attacks per turn than barbarians. Can double up on there attacks per turn. Get more ASI/Feats. And overall just output more dmg than a barbarian. More on that is how the two classes are balanced.

Barbarians main mechanic Rage is refreshed on a longrest. Meaning they have limited resources they manage for all there encounters per day.

Fighters on the other hand in almost all cases regain there class features on a short rest, which means after a 30 min break or so they are again back up to nearly 100% power for the next encounter. Fighters are the masters of outputting dmg consistently