The Barbarian is our first template because they’re listed in alphabetical order. Like the D&D Barbarian, this one is a beefy raider from some far-off region whose culture the campaign’s dominant society finds a bit strange. Unlike that other barbarian, however the Dungeon Fantasy Barbarian is not necessarily “the angry one”.

Barbarians are big beefy fighters with big personalities, and have wilderness survival skills compatible with their home region. These skills make them very valuable party members in wilderness-focused adventures and campaigns, and their combat skills are useful everywhere.

Basic Stats

Barbarians start with ST 17, DX 13, IQ 10, and HT 13. They also start with HP increased to 22, Perception increased to 12, and Basic Speed decreased to 6.00.

Their starting strength and HP makes them by far the strongest and toughest delvers in our lineup. Due to a rule we’ll see in the Campaigns book, that 22 HP also means any healing applied to the barbarian counts double. They’re not just hard to kill, they’re also easy to heal.

High HP should never be your only defense, and the Barbarian does have others. However, there are things out there that can bypass everything else, so it’s still nice to have.

Advantages

All barbarians have High Pain Threshold {10} and Outdoorsman 2 {20}. The first helps a lot with reducing pain-based penalties, particularly when you take damage. The other is a Talent, an advantage that directly increases the level of a set of skills; in this case, outdoorsy survival ones.

They can also spend 40 points on buying more advantages from a list displayed here. I won’t go over them one by one, but they fall into a few categories beyond the standard “increased stats plus Luck”:

  • Stuff that makes you tougher, both against HP damage and against the sort of Bad Stuff that demands resistance rolls.

  • Stuff that lets you fight better, an ironically small category for barbarians. Most of their combat effectiveness comes from their raw strength and high weapon skill, not from special powers.

  • Stuff that makes them even better at outdoor survival. Of note is further increasing Outdoorsman up to the maximum level of 6, letting them improve survival skills as if they had IQ 16, Per 18, or DX 19. Improving this talent is always a better deal in terms of points than improving the individual skills.

Disadvantages

All barbarians have Social Stigma (Minority Group) {-10}. This gives them a penalty to reactions from others in social situations and is due to the differences between the barbarian’s culture and the one where the campaign takes place. If the campaign is in the Barbarian’s homeland, of course, you can remove this and replace it with -10 points in other disadvantages from the template’s customization tables.

There are two here: a small one with further traits for more accentuated cultural differences (such as Gullible, a fear of machinery, or reduced starting wealth). And a large one of stereotypical barbarian personality traits, for those who want to have gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth.

Skills

Barbarians start with either skill 18 in a two-handed weapon, or skill 16 in a one-handed weapon and in shields. This is pretty high by core GURPS standards, and it’s what you need if you want to attack every turn with little in the way of setup. It also gives you a pretty decent Parry defense in melee.

They also get one ranged weapon skill, which could be the ability to throw their melee weapon depending on that choice. Like every delver, they also get some emergency unarmed combat skills.

After that you have a selection of outdoor survival skills, many of which are covered by the Outdoorsman talent.

Special Barbarian Traits

Barbarians can buy strength up to 25 and HP up until 1/2 of their ST (not just 1/3). Other Barbarian-only traits include:

  • Discriminatory Smell lets you have Wolverine’s nose. You can memorize scents and recognize them later, get a big bonus to both smell-based Perception rolls and the Tracking skill.

  • Lifting ST: You can lift even more than your already impressive strength indicates. Add this to ST to determine your Basic Lift and general feats of strength, but not your damage or HP.

  • Temperature Tolerance: In Cold and Heat versions, this gives a bonus to resist temperature related effects. This is how Conan can walk shirtless in the snow. You can have up to three levels of both.

  • Tough Skin: Adds to your damage resistance as if it was armor! It’s still flesh, though, so it doesn’t protect the eyes and doesn’t work against attacks that just require skin contact or a small scratch to take effect. Barbarians can have up to 3 levels. It does stack with worn armor.

Customization Notes

The book has some example archetypes here to guide players who don’t quite know which traits to pick from the template.

The angry one might pair Berserk and Bloodlust with the traits that make them tougher. Note that Berserk is a major disadvantage, not a superpower. A survivalist has more Perception and Outdoorsman, traits like Discriminatory Smell, and disadvantages like reduced Wealth and illiteracy. A wilderness guardian might be Fearless and an Animal Friend, but also Overconfident and burdened with a Sense of Duty to Nature.

Weapon and survival skills should match the feel of barbarian’s origin culture. A viking could have Spear and Shield, plus Survival (Arctic), Seamanship, and Skiing, for example.

ST 17 or more means any weapon is effective in the hands of a barbarian, so they can save some money by taking something big and relatively cheap like a spear, axe or mace. Swords are expensive!

Example Barbarian

Way back in 2017 when the DFRPG had just come out, I wrote up most of the Pathfinder iconics as DFRPG starting characters. You can look at Amiri the Barbarian here.

Coming up Next

Bards!