Classics: Barbarian

Classics is a series where I take a look at every Paizo-based Pathfinder class and the most notable third party material I have in my collection that enhances it specifically.  This will continue until I run out of Paizo base classes and will go on in order of appearance.


The Barbarian. Pathfinder's berserker is quite a popular class. It smashes face by hulking out, but unfortunatley I rarely see it go much past that. With only a few popular archetypes and rage powers I feel like I see the same barbarian each time. So what can we do to put some hot sauce in it's engine?

The Talented Barbarian

Given that Barbarian isn't considered as weak as the Monk or Rogue I didn't feel that it really NEEDED a talented book. Usually the talented series from Rogue Genius games lends more power through the ability to skip over bad or unsynergetic class features. So I was skeptical, but The Talented Barbarian really does look at what the Barbarian is and manages to divorce it a bit from being a feat starved fighter with anger problems. You get some real flavor with the new options inside and the options themselves aren't bad at all. All in all it gives you some real flexibility to make whatever kind of barbarian you want without gimping yourself.

The Masquerade Reveler

Although this archetype doesn't change the class like the Talented Barbarian but it might as well. It takes the rage class feature and turns it from boring numbers to a collection of totems that give it more to do than just slap things around. I did a review noting this archetype as the most best archetype of anything I've seen.

And that's it. That's as far as my Barbarian folder goes. Anything else I either haven't seen, wouldn't recommend,   or off in some book that's not about Barbarians specifically. But in all honesty the two products above is more than enough. Between the two you have a lot of abilities to select from so you really could go on for years without seeing two similar barbarians.