Blood Throne in Depth: The Barbarian

Hey everyone, Reecius here to dive into our second article in the Blood Throne in Depth series. Last time we covered the Fighter class, which you can read here.

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This time we will take a deep dive into the Barbarian class. The Barbarian is the melee DPS king (or in the case of Kijo, queen) of the core box heroes. The Barbarian is designed primarily to level monsters in combat, both wading through low level mobs and able to deal with single, high level mini-boss and boss monsters.

The Barbarian is also quite tanky, not as much as the Fighter but second only to that class in regards to durability. If you spec them for it, they can serve as an excellent secondary tank or off-tank in video game parlance. With melee DPS and tankiness as the primary and secondary skill trees respectively, the Barbarian has mobility as their tertiary skill tree which allows them to move around the table to smash what you want smashed.

From a design perspective where the Fighter is meant to be a solid anchor for the party, able to stand and bang with any monsters or opposing heroes, keeping the enemy locked on them, the Barbarian is meant to be the knockout artist, moving around the table and just leveling things. This makes them very fun to play but bear in mind, despite their high HP they can and do get bonked quite often simply due to the nature of how they play. However, the sheer carnage they can dish out is an absolute joy to witness!

Equipment Restrictions

In the first article in this series I had mentioned Fighters must take a shield and can take heavy armor (damage reduction 3) but I didn’t specifically outline their equipment restrictions, which I will do going forward as it is useful information. The Barbarian like the Fighter may not take ranged weapons. The Barbarian may take up to medium armor (damage reduction 2). Outside of that, the world is your oyster.

The main question you will be asking yourself when creating a Barbarian is how tanky vs. DPS oriented you want them to be. Kijo, the Barbarian in the Core Box is built to be able to be spec’d into offense or defense but if you really wanted to lean into defense you could take a Barbarian with a Shield and a one handed weapon with medium armor and then take the defensive oriented feats. 

Designer’s Note: The shield eats one of your two hand slots, or pieces of equipment you use actively in game play. It not only gives you a passive boost to Evasion making you harder to hit, but also allows you to actively block which roughly halves the damage you take from eligible attacks which typically means attacks that originate in your line of sight, or front arc. The shield is the only option for reducing ranged damage (which includes magical attacks that don’t deal Raw Damage) where parrying with a weapon only works against other melee attacks. The trade off with the shield is you lose the offensive output of dual wielding or using a two handed weapon. We wanted to avoid any “obvious” choices and make each equipment loadout feel viable for a build. We even included a one handed build strategy where a Hero opts to only use a one handed weapon and nothing in the off-hand–such as a duelist with a rapier or a samurai with a katana–for players that wanted that aesthetic without feeling like it was a strictly worse option from a rules perspective. 

Or, you could build a Barbarian with light armor (medium and heavy armor lower your movement and also cause you to go later in the Initiative lineup) and a two-handed weapon or a Dual Wielding Barbarian to maximize speed and hitting power and take all the offensive Feats. 

Of course you can go for a middle ground and pick and choose between offensive and defensive options as well!

In testing we have tried all the combos and really it just comes down to your playstyle. A sword and board Barbarian loses some of the raw offensive output but has more staying power, and the all out offensive Barbarian is a fearsome hero but will go down faster.

Primary Skill Tree

As stated, the Barbarian’s Primary Skill Tree is melee DPS, so the majority of their Class Skills focus on achieving this end. 

Their Class Ability, which as a reminder is an ability the class always has and does not take up one of their Class Skill choices, is Cleave. Cleave allows you to once per turn, hit a second opponent you are engaging after successfully hitting a fist target. This means the Barbarian can, if positioned well, potentially hit 2 opponents with one action (as Cleave is a free attack)! This is the core of what allows the Barbarian to dish out the DPS, but as you can see with the Bloody Slaughterer upgrade available at level 8 you can use Cleave a second time which cranks the carnage up to an 11!

Take You With Me! is a Class Skill you don’t want to have to use but when you do it is amazing. It allows you upon being Knocked Out (reduced to 0 HP) to attack one more time before being removed. This so frequently catches people off guard and allows you to play the Barbarian like a berserker, which obviously is what we wanted when designing the class! Throwing them headlong into the fray knowing they can do so much damage is a ton of fun. In PvP games it also keeps your opponent wary of the Barbarian as even if they take them out they may lose the model that did it!

Barbaric Battlecry is available at level 1 and comes in two parts (assuming you take the feat upgrade at level 4). This ferocious war cry targets all models engaging the Barbarian and gives them the Dazzled status effect which halves their Evasion making them much easier to hit. The upgrade also gives the Barbarian immunity to flanking and the Panoptic status effect which gives him 360 degree line of sight while the active model (meaning it is the Barbarian’s turn)! This is huge as it makes using things like Cleave much easier as the Barbarian can hit models behind them and allows the Barbarian to get stuck into lots of models and not worry about getting his as much as he otherwise would. Also, as a Simple action you can use this Class Skill without feeling like you are missing out on your damage output.

Barbaric Blow is a bread and butter Class Skill you get at level 2. It is very simple: you make a Melee Attack Action that does an additional +2 Power Damage, which is a lot. It means your Barbarian will consistently be throwing handfuls of damage dice at whatever they target and be a wrecking ball on the table.

Whirlwind of Death is available at level 6 and increases your offensive output even more. It allows you to attack every model in weapon range, even those in your rear arc. The Barbarian becomes a blender! If you can pull this off and Cleave with another attack action, the amount of damage you can output is through the roof.

Opportunistic Retaliation comes at level 8 and is a very useful Class Skill as it gives you another opportunity for free attacks. When you take an Attack of Opportunity, you can hit the attacking model back as a reactive action, meaning you do it for free. This pairs extremely well with Reckless Charge which we will cover later in the article, but essentially it gives you another tool to hit your opponent out of the normal turn sequence. 

Berserker Fury is the Barbarian ultimate ability at level 10! This card is a doozy. It is played when the Barbarian would be Knocked Out. Instead you become invulnerable for a turn and all actions gain +1 Advantage! At the beginning of the Barbarian’s next turn they get knocked out, no matter what. So it gives you one super charged turn when your opponent thought they had the Barbarian taken care of!

Secondary Skill Tree

The Barbarian focuses on defense for their secondary skill tree.

Defiance is a great class skill available at level 4. It allows the Barbarian to heal themself with a mighty cry of defiance! Yes, the Barbarian yells so hard he heals, it’s metal as hell! Jokes aside, they are drawing on their own internal reserves or Zenithae to heal by channeling it through a mighty roar. This helps to increase their tankiness and keep them in the game longer!

Tertiary Skill Tree

The Barbarian emphasizes mobility in their tertiary skill tree, which allows them to move around the battlefield, but with a very Barbarian flair to it!

Reckless Charge is available at level 1. This Class Skill allows the Barbarian to declare a charge action even if they are being engaged which normally you cannot do. Now, the Barbarian still takes the free strike for breaking engagement but the Barbarian doesn’t mind the weak blows of their enemies. This ability pairs very well with Opportunistic Retaliation at higher levels as it allows you to essentially free strike an enemy or intimidate them into not free striking you for fear of the mighty reprisal! 

Class Feats

The Barbarian has some very fun Feats to select. As a reminder, all classes have unique Feats available to their class at levels 2, 4, 6, and 8. General Feats which all classes may draw on come at levels 3, 5, 7, and 9. All feats are permanent when chosen and only one may be chosen at each level.

The Barbarian’s options emphasize more offense or defense at each juncture and you can select from both as you go or focus on one set of Feats to maximize whichever aspect of the Barbarian you enjoy most!

At level 2 you can choose between two very good feats. The first option is more HP via Hardened by Life to make your Barbarian stay in the fight longer. Due to the nature of how the Barbarian plays, wading into battle and often taking hits on purpose they do tend to get knocked out more frequently than other classes so that extra boost is quite useful. 

Designer’s Note: If you spec your custom Barbarian for maximum HP you can get more than any other class! You can go with a Mountain Dwarf Heritage as they get +2 HP and the awesome Heritage Ability Tenacious which lets you ignore the first time you get Knocked Out, go with the Tough level 1 General Feat for +3 HP to start and an additional +1 HP per odd level and max your Constitution at 4 (which increases your starting and progressive HP). Further you can opt to go with the no armor option called Natural Vigor which also gives you +4 HP (yes you get something even if you opt not to take armor as we wanted the bare chested Conan style look to also be viable!) and you have an absolute bullet sponge! Heroes gain more HP at odd levels and you always get +1 but you add your Constitution as well plus any modifiers, such as Tough in this case. Despite having no armor you would have so much HP that you can just take the hits. I made a Barbarian like this in testing and it was loads of fun, slap two axes on them and it is a bit like a Dwarf Slayer from the Warhammer setting for anyone familiar with it. This just gives you an idea of the levels of customization available to you in Hero creation allowing you to spec out a build limited only by your imagination.

Alternatively you can take Blood Lust which is likewise amazing. When you knock out an opponent, which the Barbarian tends to do a lot of, you get a free move towards the nearest enemy. Free movement is always extremely good.

At level 2 you get the choice between Berserker and One Stands Alone.  The former gives you the Berserk status effect any time you take damage as the result of an action (so not from a DoT tick for example). Berserk is a double edged sword. It significantly boosts your offense with +1 Power and +1 Advantage but you must charge the nearest enemy and you take 2 Raw Damage dice at the end of your activation. This rewards balls to the wall style Barbarian builds but you need to be able to keep healing them or they will go down quickly. 

One Stands Alone boosts Barbaric Battlecry as we explained above, making an already solid Class Skill even better. Obviously between the two it is up to you but if you use the Battlecry often this is a great choice.

At level 6 you get a very simple but very strong pair of options. Either Increase Power which boosts damage or increase your Damage Reduction which lowers the amount of damage dice used against you any time you are attacked.

Finally at level 8 you can either Cleave a second time per Activation with Bloody Slaughterer or increase your Will defense with Resist the Witch. At first glance this may not seem like much of a choice but Cleave cannot hit the same target as other attacks so what we found in practice was instances where you were able to cleave twice in one activation didn’t come up more than once or twice in a game. However, when they do it is glorious bloodshed for the Barbarian! On the other hand, melee classes generally have very weak Will defense, making them vulnerable to mind or spirit attacks. Having a passive +2 boost to Will really helps shore up that weakness for the defensive minded Barbarian.

Playing Kijo

Kijo is built with a mix of offense and defense. The first thing you will notice is the whopping 7 damage dice base she has on her main-hand weapon, by far the highest of all the Heroes! This comes from the fact that she has a heavy two handed melee weapon, her Tetsubo. Two handed weapons are the most powerful base weapons in the game with 6 damage to compensate for the fact they take up both hand slots. You can take a backup weapon if you choose, but that eats up more of your encumbrance allotment. Instead of this option, Kijo was given the Great Weapon Training level 1 Martial Archetype feat. This increases the base damage or her two handed by 1 up to 7 which is massive, but it also gives the weapon the Defensive Keyword which allows the bearer to get a free Parry action once per activation. Combined with her Accuracy of 4 she is a very reliable damage dealer.

Designers Note: The Defensive keyword was added as a part of the Great Weapon Training feat to give the hero some damage reduction without sacrificing their ability to swing their weapon in their turn. Normally when you parry with a weapon you cannot use it in your next activation which for a Hero with a two-handed weapon can be crippling. We built this option in to make the choice between a great weapon and dual wielding an actual choice as in testing before this change players kept gravitating towards dual wielding over a two handed weapon as dual wielding gave you two chances to hit and you could parry with one weapon but still attack with the other if you needed to reduce incoming damage. With this upgrade to the two handed weapons via the feat it brings greater parity between the two weapon loadouts for a DPS build. The other benefit the two handed weapon has over dual wielding is that it is much better against targets with high armor. As armor reduces damage dice for each successful hit roll, you apply it twice vs. dual wielding and only once against a two-handed weapon meaning more dice get through the armor. Lastly, with reach range for a two handed choice you can hit more squares than with dual wielding generally so we feel it really is a tough choice to go dual wield or two handed which means you as the player can opt to go with what you think looks cooler!

She also wears medium armor giving her a very respectable damage reduction of 2, meaning she removes two damage dice each time she is attacked. This combined with her having the highest starting HP of 24 means she can take a lot of damage before being knocked out. Now, she cannot tank as well as Ajax due to him having armor 3 and a shield which means he just inherently takes less damage from each attack, but she is quite durable. Kijo is also very easy to hit with an Evasion of 1 which is, obviously, very low. Don’t expect monsters to miss her very often!

The best way to play Kijo is to get her stuck into as many opponents as possible. With reach range on her weapon she threatens more squares than other heroes and this increases the odds she will get to use her Cleave ability to take out multiple monsters at a time. She is also the best equipped hero to attack high armor monsters for the reasons outlined above. Her Tetsubo also has the Armor Piercing keyword which means she automatically activates Black Explosions into crits on hit rolls to help her punch through armor. In order to make the best use of this you want to do anything you can to increase her Accuracy with support from Heroes like the Bard, and to lower the Evasion of her target which can be done with abilities like her Barbaric Battlecry which applies the Dazzled affliction as explained in the Class Skills section of this article. Halving Evasion usually makes hitting a target trivial and the more offensive modifier dice you throw when you attack the more chances you have to get crits.

While tough, Kijo can and will get Knocked Out due to being stuck in the middle of things. Take You With Me is a great skill to turn this into a potential advantage, but you want to be sure to keep the ability to heal her in your repertoire. Skills that apply HoT to the Barbarian are great such as the Alchemist’s Rejuvenate Potion or Priest’s Healing Ward spell. Also any magical items that apply continuous healing such as the Trollhide Belt which heals the bearer two Red Dice of HP every time the Activate, go a long way on a high HP model that will be taking a lot of damage like Kijo.

Be wary or anything that can lower your Accuracy such as the Blind affliction. Reducing Kijo to Accuracy 0 is brutal and really takes the wind out of her sails. Disarm is also a status effect you want to avoid as it means she can only use her backup weapon, in this case her fist. Kijo’s got a mean haymaker but if she’s engaging in fisticuffs you are not getting maximum carnage out of her! Lastly, remember to use her Onkin Heritage Ability, the On’s Kiss which is a mighty headbutt that deals raw damage and is a free action! It can only be used once per game, as all heritage abilities, but when you need to deal that last few points of damage to take out a Monster it is a life saver!

Kijo has a modest 2 Class Skill sections at level 1. Unlike Ajax who took the Extended Training level 1 general Feat which gives you +2 Class Skill choices, Kijo opted for the Tough general Feat which gives you more HP. You can get more Class Skills as you level up from a variety of options such as gear and feats. For example, at level 3, all classes have the option to take the Journeyman Training general Feat which gives you another Class Skill choice. Regardless, make sure to select the Class Skills you want for her wisely as she has a limited amount of selections. 

Kijo is by far one of the most fun heroes to play and the model is absolutely awesome. She feels extremely powerful and players that prefer an aggressive playstyle will really enjoy using her. In testing she often felt like the hero of the match. When she goes on a tear she will literally take out over half of the monsters by herself. She can also deal the most damage to boss monsters. The only downside, as I had stated, is you have to keep in mind that she does not have much ability to reduce incoming damage so if you get her stuck into a situation where she is overwhelmed, she will get KO’d quickly. 

In PvP the Barbarian is your bruiser and if played well can really put your opponent on their backfoot. In more than one test game my business partner, who loved this class, knocked out 2-3 of my heroes with his Barbarian in a single activation which is extremely uncommon. I would deal with this by trying to crowd control the Barbarian until I could deal with other threats. Martial classes typically have very low Will as stated above, so hitting them with Fear or similar abilities to control their movement and buy you some time can make all the difference in these mighty warriors.

Thanks for reading. Which class would you like to learn about next?