Barbarian vs. Thief
Barbarians and thieves have distinctly different ways of dealing with traps. Case in point. What’s more surprising is the amount of conceptual space that the two fantasy archetypes share. Folks tend to forget that Conan started out as a thief, planning a museum heist in “The God in the Bowl” and stealing jewels from the thief city of Arenjun in “The Tower of the Elephant.” You can see some of that reflected in the Pathfinder barbarian‘s trap sense ability, not to mention its uncanny dodge. Both are abilities that the class shares with rogues.
Despite these similarities, thieves and rogues tend to get pigeonholed as “the skill guy.” They’re good at opening locks, disabling traps, and providing a little light skirmishing support. That makes Bard the logical choice for Thief’s counterpart in the anti-party. However, I can’t picture this guy willingly putting himself on the wrong side of Fighter. Moreover, what makes a really good anti-party is contrast. Just check out the Thog vs. Roy battle for comparison. Your opposite number on Team Anti-Party exists to highlight something about your own character. They’re a sort of warped mirror, reflecting and distorting.
In the case of Thief vs. Barbarian, it’s all about personality. Both are capable of filling the “point man” position in the party, and both characters can disable/tank traps or rob/mug a bar patron. If Thief is duplicitous and reserved, however, Barbarian is direct and vivacious. Both ladies provide their teams with a little sex appeal as well, and we know how well Thief deals with that.
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I choose to believe Barbarian is so tough that two of those arrows were actually stopped by her hair.
There was an additional arrow, but when our roommate looked at it and shouted “Boob arrow!” Laurel decided to take it out.
Tyler: ” You rolled a critical hit with your crossbow, describe your kill.”
Shannon: “I shoot her right in the tit!!”
*deflating sound effect*
I’m laughing at that far more than I should be.
Also, I really like Barbarian’s design. The hair, eye shadow and blush really pretty her up while her stature and patchwork leather armor portray her class almost as well as her casual smile while being pumped full of arrows.
Like Barbarian herself, that hair is defined by its huge body.
It was great fun watching Laurel doodle the new character designs. There are notebooks full of big angry ladies committing various acts of violence.
Looking forward to seeing Barbarian lose her cool and go all ragemode on some poor soul.
Presumably at a moment that has nothing to do with combat.
My Barbarian in a GURPS Dungein Fantasy game is our party trap specialist. If they think it’s a trap they her in to spring it and crush it. And she opens every locked, stuck, trapped, or just suspicious door as well. Her lockpick is a 12 pound axe/mace…
Heh. Reminds me of this one: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/very-secret-doors
Sounds familiar… some years back in 3.5e, my high-level barbarian wielded a “+5 adamantine lockpick”… a Large and heavily enchanted maul. In all in all, he averaged about 30 points of damage on a hit, so it definitely opened doors a lot more quickly than the rogue could manage.
You ever read The Princess Bride? I’m imagining the bit where Fezzik beats the spider.
“And the lucky– four! Four types of heros! And the invisible– five! Five types…”
I continue to hold out hope for finding a game were a high-Dex, super resilient, luck-themed Mr. Magoo can work.
“Why do you bring this guy with you?”
“Trust me, man. He gets the job done.”
*runs into lamp post*
I think this link:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0795.html
is a better example of thog vs roy. But it has other stuff at the top so fair enough.
It was weird going into this one thinking about the barbarian class being someone’s equivalent. I was surprised that the side-by-side class features pointed towards the common Conan ancestor, but here we are.