Most DMs have an instinct to try to thwart lateral maneuvers players make to get around puzzles and other adventuring barriers that have a “correct” solution. Know what’s on the other side of the dungeon wall even if it’s not another room.
Bearbarians 5e how to#
Now let’s talk about how to DM for barbarians in general: Put an AC on the Gordion Knotįigure out the break DCs on your locked doors. Play up the fact that the player’s enemies are having a very hard time keeping a step ahead of a force that’s seemingly unstoppable and untrickable. A large part of the appeal of a Conan character is that their opponents should be intimidated of them not just physically but intellectually. Second, once the Conan’s mental fitness has been established, put your villains very off-kilter. If the Conan looks like a dumb bruiser, have NPCs underestimate the Conan’s faculties and roleplay their surprise when she weighs in on an issue with insight and intelligence. There are only a few ways to lean into a player’s Conanish character concept: First, have the world make assumptions. He’s also faster and smarter and sneakier. Conan the Barbarian’s not just stronger than you. The Conan:Ĭonan, and the archetype he created, are actually at odds with most descendent depictions of barbarians in fantasy literature. And then, offer the opportunity to change things, preferably with an axe. Point out to the barbarian how weirdly oppressive, grimy and repulsive these “advanced” civilizations are. I’m a big fan of playing in worlds with much-less-than-utopian societies anyway, but make it a focus for your campaign and especially for narration at the barbarian. To play into this archetype is simple: Make your civilizations flawed. Personally, I think a player usually walks into this kind of character because they want to learn to empathize better with a more “primitive” mindset, prove that there are merits to less techno-political forms of culture, and experience the familiar central-european fantasy as an outsider. If your barbarian is grim, serious, and heavily critical of “civilized” life, she fits this archetype to a tee. I have a habit of putting an intelligence-enhancing item somewhere in a campaign so that the players can toy with the question of what their Brick would be like if he were smart. The moments that the Brick Barbarian demands the most spotlight will always be when he’s most out of his element: crammed into a fancy suit at an aristocratic party, forced to figure out which of his wizards is the doppleganger, called to testify in court as the sole witness to a crime. And in these situations where the Brick absolutely does not excel, that’s where he actually has the most agency- because he could change the fundamental nature of the scene just by choosing to be himself, or try to play along badly and see where it goes. Ironically, combat isn’t when the Brick Barbarian shines- that’s when he’s at his most predictable. If you can’t find a way to sometimes get the Brick to play along, every session turns into a game of “argue with the fussy toddler” instead of thrilling heroics. The trick to satisfying The Brick player is finding somewhere to channel their stupidity that is amusingly disruptive but doesn’t piss off the other players. The best configuration is probably if the Brick Barbarian trusts another character implicitly and that character is willing to mislead him for the good of the group. If poorly managed, a Brick Barbarian will annoy the rest of the party by smashing relics and starting fights they deeply wanted to avoid. If well-managed, the Brick Barbarian will be a delight, providing an endless source of humor and forcing a lateral-thinking party to face some problems head-on. Some players just want to play a dumby dumb dummo. They want to speak with poor grammar, accidentally eat the oracle's scroll because they thought it was a fruit roll-up, and accidentally attack the good guys because they were too excited to be the cavalry. In my experience, players mostly want to play three kinds of barbarians: The Brick: The first step in DMing for a player who wants to play a barbarian is to figure out what kind of barbarian they’re playing. A lot of what I’m going to be discussing here will be the expectations of players, in any case. I’m going to be covering each of the D&D 5E classes in turn with class-specific DMing tips. These columns will be based on 5E’s mechanical structure… but since 5E is the most “common descendent” of the D&D editions, you can probably apply this advice to any kind of gobliny-talky-dicey-game. This is about how to dungeon master so your barbarian player has the most possible fun. No, this is not about teaching Barbarians to dungeon master.