Barbarian vs Fighter — Comparing the two classic frontliners of Pathfinder 2e

My campaign has a Barbarian and it’s so satisfying hitting those big crits. 50-60 damage at level 5 on two targets with swipe is wild. Cheers around the table.

Played a pre written game from pf2. (The circus one), we had a champion, a barbarian, a bard and a cleric (saranrae). One of the best team we had, as long as the barbarian didn’t run off after monsters! The +1 was key, the champion tanked everyone (he took 2 crits total to level 20) and a saranrae cleric is an outstanding damage dealer! We completely avoided some battles from a well placed sunburst, great fun!

I prefer Fighter over the Barbarian, because I favor accuracy over more damage. Both can deal a ton of damage anyway. I like the consistency the Fighter brings. I do not like that the Barbarian needs to use Rage to be most effective. I am considering the Paladin as free archetype for my Fighter. I expect Retributive Strike to provide more overall dps and damage mitigation in the build. Healing hands seems great too. I hope I will be able to attack two times each round with full accuracy by having both Attack of Opportunity and Retributive Strike.

Barbarians in PF2E tend to sit on the Bruiser to DPS scale. Rage is an awesome mechanic that can shore up damage from a barbarian using a one-handed weapon to dish out combat maneuvers and there's a barbarian feat that gives a circumstance bonus to such maneuvers while raging. Once properly geared, however a Barbarian really wants to pick up Reactive Strike and a two handed weapon to really capitalize on their damage potential. Fighters are the most adaptable and versatile martials in the game and can be anything from tanks, skirmishers, bruisers, DPS, or ranged combatants. With heavy armor and a shield, they can be dramatically tankier than a barb despite boasting fewer hitpoints and their +2 boon over almost all other classes with their favored weapons makes then the most reliable DPS in the game. They're not as 'swingy' as barbarians are and tend to have more options in combat that they can fill pretty effortlessly regardless of build.

I play a Gnome Bard and am forever having to patch up the Barbarian whose a/c drops when she rages... We have a Barbarian, a ranger ( ranged weapon specialist ), a swash buckler and a rogue plus me in the party. At times I wish one of the party was a straight fighter - we just do not have a good "tank" to hide behind. I have had to become a beast master and obtain a riding drake to give me a little more protection. I thought I would be playing a support character but have at times ended up inflicting more magical damage than the martial characters have caused physical damage.

My favorite groups that I'm GMing rn for have: Thaumaturge, Monk, Investigator and Magus and they are really working together well without bard or figther/barb :> It's probably the strongest party I'm running a game now for

I like the barbarian when it fits my concept, like I built Enkidu as an unarmed animal instinct barbarian with Wrestler archetype to help with battle field control and to set up my party members. It just wouldn't have come off as well with a fighter. But I love my fighters builds too!

It's funny, I played Pathfinder 1, then D&D4e, then 5e, and now PF2. When I started out, I mostly defaulted to barbarians, especially in PF1 as my philosophy about the martials was "fighter BOOOORRRINGGG". Many characters later, and at least 1 fighter in every edition along at least 1 barb in each edition after PF1, I can honestly say that I was a dumb fricking noob. It's also taken me longer to try playing a barb in Pathfinder 2 than a fighter, just because of how "restricting" I initially thought the class was compared to Pathfinder 1, but that was when 2 first came out, and I also got infected with the grognard rage from the detractors who sneered at 4e in favor of Pathfinder 1 when 2 came out. TL;DR: Barbs are a little harder to role-play if you actually care about your character beyond "who done hits goodest/hardest". This is a good thing, I think.

From your wordings, you seem to be assuming that you need to be wielding 2 agile weapons for Double Slice, which isn't the case. Great video!

It should be mentioned that Vicious Swing / Power Attack does NOT require you to use a two-handed weapon. You can also use this feat as a sword and board fighter or even as an unarmed fighter.

I don’t think shield-using or dual-wielding are out of scope for the Barbarian class at all. In fact, I think a d8 one-handed weapon and a shield are excellent for the class, as even though you don’t have shield block, being able to raise your AC and offset the Rage penalty is just excellent. From a dual-wielding standpoint, you just don’t use Agile weapons. Swing around that longsword and warhammer, and have a blast. Or… do both! Longsword in one hand, shield with shield boss in the other, and double slice away.

Love the cafe from brasil sack there. I'm from brasil.

I would have waited until Barbarian remaster is released to make compare them.

Some thoughts about Barbarian: • Honestly surprised PF2E kept the name, considering where the word comes from. Fury or Berserker felt like they could have been fair. • Barb also has wildly fewer meaningful options. Fewer maneuvers, kinda no concentration, lacking exploration tools, I dunno hurts a lot of archetype potential (also not even allowing Demoralize unless you invest a Feat SUCKS). • Damage in this game escalates so much, so kinda wish the raging resistance scaled better. • Beast Barb is kinda just awful compared to the others at low level, and “it gets good later” or “it gets good if you get these exact Feats” kinda taints the “PF2E is so well balanced” message. The Superstition and Fury Barbs just ain’t it either. Despite all of these gripes, oh my god Barb is my favorite base book class. It just feels awesome to get those beefy hits in, and I love getting that temp HP and Resistance (so rare for classes to have Resistances baked in, and honestly I want more of this). And so many of my gripes can be remedied in the remaster.

Go fighter, dip into giant barb for the rage and the level 6 basic instinct so you can basically be Guts with the Dragonslayer ;)

What are the benefits and deficits of rage, the key ability of the Barbarian, half of the focus of this video? Not worth bringing up. Smh