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?

[Mohrrunkel]

Origineel geplaatst door 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.

As long as you are able to display your tribal tats, anything goes.

A fighter tends to want to have the best protection, anything other would be just plain stupid from a character perspective. Whether he can afford that or has to make do with what he can find is defined by your own story/imagination.

[terrafu]

Duel classing barbarian as a Dip to just get rage and having fighter as a main class also can prove to be really effective of having the best of both worlds. If you cannot decide between either on first play-through. :)

[Foolswalkin]

Barbarian also ends up with a small subset of crit boosting abilities, although one of them usually arrives at 13, one level after BG3’s cap. But being able to attack with advantage and get an extra die on crits has them want to lean into weapons with more raw damage. It also gives them the most obvious racial choice of all classes in Half-Orc.

Fighters, by default, don’t do much more than attack, but a couple of their subclasses pick up whole new options (battlemaster, Eldritch Knight) that they can use to mix up their combat. Barbarians tend to get better at their existing abilities (damage, durability) via subclass rather than gaining new options (except for Wild Magic, which injects an element of beneficial randomness).

[darth.crevette]

The fighter is cunning but brutal.
The barbarian is brutal but cunning.

... wait, I think I'm in the wrong universe again?

[RakiaTime]

Origineel geplaatst door 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.

i will wear a leather speedo as a fighter....or no, i'll wear the purple twitch underwear and nothing else

[A]

Origineel geplaatst door darth.crevette:

The fighter is cunning but brutal.
The barbarian is brutal but cunning.

... wait, I think I'm in the wrong universe again?

No, no. You got it correct. Barbarians even tend to rage and scream blood for the blood god.

[BigJ]

Origineel geplaatst door darth.crevette:

The fighter is cunning but brutal.
The barbarian is brutal but cunning.

... wait, I think I'm in the wrong universe again?

Multiclass as Gork and Mork, WAAAAGH

[fulf]

They absolutely can fill the same roles and probably will end up doing so in a party of 4.

Fighters are more flexible and less resource-reliant (Action Surge, Second Wind and Battlemaster's Superiority Dice all recharge on short rests, though Eldritch Knights will need to take long rests for their spells)

Fighters get Fighting Styles which make them passively better in whatever aspect of combat they prefer, whereas Barbarians need to actively use Rage and/or Reckless Attack to reach their effectiveness. The former of which is a resource you need to longrest to recover, and the latter of which has a downside to its use. Fighters can also specialize in Dexterity and/or Archery while Barbarians are generally always going to be Strength-based melee (with a bit of throwing on the side)

Class-fantasy wise Barbarians aren't always "uncivilized brutes" but they rely more on their instincts, emotions and rage to excel in battle whereas Fighters are more about perfection through training and martial knowledge. It's almost like the martial equivalent of "Sorcerer vs Wizard" in that regard.

[Dremall]

Origineel geplaatst door VastGirth:

Origineel geplaatst door 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 armor can take a lot more hits...

If CR progresses anything like tabletop AC quickly becomes a cosmetic stat. Sure it helps to take advantage when an enemy rolls poorly, but on average they're going to hit with most of their attacks. That's why action economy is so important. Fighters are good at messing with an opponents' action economy though their maneuvers.

Barbarians though have an ungodly amount of HP, and through rage can reduce by half that guaranteed incoming damage. Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing being very common, and can depending on build spec into more resistances.

Remember as the CR (Challenge Rating) of enemies goes up, so do their bonuses. Just looking at some CR 9-12 monsters you're looking at a +8 to a +10 on those attack rolls, and many of them have multi attacks.

[Faith]

Fighters get more ASIs then any other class in the game. This means higher ability scores and more feats. They usually have higher AC and by lvl 11 will have more attacks then the barbarian. They also benefit more from short rests with action surge, second wind and Battle Master features if you go with the subclass. Fighters can also be Dex focused while Barbarians cannot if you wanna make use of Rage.

Barbarians are overall more tanky with good damage but lack the feats and high scores of fighters but are easier for newer players to understand. Fighters will often out damage a barbarian thanks to great weapon fighting that they can get earlier as well as action surge. It does depend on subclass but Barbarians usually end up being tanks while fighters end up being single target strikers. While fighters is not the highest damage dealer and doesn't compare to a Paladin and Warlock, Fighters can do with short rests where Paladins are nukers that will need a long rest after a big fight. If you want more damage from a Barbarian you should go with Berserker if you want more tanking you should go with Wild Heart of the Bear. For fighter battle master is the standard go to. Champion as of now is very bad and Eldritch Knights viability will depend on if Booming Blade and Shield are added but Eldritch Knights often are there to help with tanking thanks to shield, absorb elements, silvery barbs, blur etc.

It comes down to flexibility and damage of the fighter vs the tanky and resilient nature of the Barbarian. Barbarian also has a better time with Dex save spells like fireball due to Danger Sense where a non Dex fighter would maybe consider Shield Master to help with that. Overall, both have their roles and don't really replace each other but they can overlap like a lot of classes do

[Foolswalkin]

At 6th level the Wild Magic barbarian gets some solid party support options (including helping each allied spellcaster recharge a spell slot of 1d3rd level once per long rest). Given the level cap of the game this is a fairly strong ability to have, and it can be done outside of combat.

It will fade in value in act 3, but you can still use bolstering Magic’s other function (+1d3 to attack rolls for 10 minutes) and you’ll get Unstable Backlash at level 10, which can be quite strong.

http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/barbarian:wild-magic

[Dragon Master]

Origineel geplaatst door The Orange and Blue Ninja:

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

Yes and no.

Barbarians can wear up to medium armor if they choose not to use their unarmored defense which adds constitution and dexterity together, but their main thing is their rage and hitting things in melee.

They are excellent tanks because of rage and taking half damage from most damage while also having the biggest health pool in the game, but they are really only most effective in melee because melee is where the rage bonus is applied.

Fighters are just the best at fighting, no matter what the fighting style is or the type of weapon. With every armor and weapon proficiency in the game, players can pick and choose how they want to fight. Sword and Shield, two handed, at ranged with bows or crowssbows and so on.

Fighters also can heal themselves with second wind or use action surge to give themselves another action, they get the most attacks per round out of all the martial classes, which means at higher levels with action surge they can get up to 12 attacks in a single round. In BG3 the level cap is 12 so a pure fighter would have 3 attacks with a single action, which means 6 attacks with action surge, 7 attacks while hasted and 8 attacks if you are using two-weapon fighting.

Fighters fight. It's what they do and no one beats them at it. They are very adaptable because of it and players can make whatever type of fighter they want and be the best at it.

[Foolswalkin]

I don’t think fighters can be the best at melee, because Vengeance Paladins and Smite exist. But they don’t have to deal with the Oath, and Battlemasters have interesting options and have the easiest time being PAM Sentinels with GWF without losing stats, which is still pretty damn good.

[Indure]

Fighters are masters of all when it comes to martial combat. Whether they are sword & board, polearm, bow, duelist, or have a great weapon, they can excel at all of them due to action surge, quicker access to feats (which most weapons need to excel) and a subclass like battlemaster that gives such wide benefits to almost every martial playstyle.

Barbarians on the other hand are more regulated to specific playstyles due to their reliance on rage which makes them primarily melee and reliant on strength. While barbarians might have less AC than their fighter counterpart, they have more health and resistance (50% damage reduction) making them potentially very hard to kill.

It seems like a lot of the responses were based of tabletop and not BG3 specifically regarding the barbarian. The berserker subclass (damage focused subclass) is coequal to a fighter at outputting damage.

At level 3 it outputs 2 attacks per turn (with reckless attacks giving advantage to both) vs the fighter's 1 attack. At level 5 barbarian has 3 attacks vs the fighters 2 (although at this point the fighter might have created a way to weaponize their bonus action to coequal a barbarians). It's not until level 11 (level cap is 12) when fighters get 3-4 attacks which out-damages berserker.

[Dragon Master]

Origineel geplaatst door Foolswalkin:

I don’t think fighters can be the best at melee, because Vengeance Paladins and Smite exist. But they don’t have to deal with the Oath, and Battlemasters have interesting options and have the easiest time being PAM Sentinels with GWF without losing stats, which is still pretty damn good.

Fighter can still outdamage a paladin with smite by virtue of making so many more attacks in a single round than a paladin will ever be able to do.