Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General DnD question - Barbarians.. I don't understand

To add on to what others have mentioned, I'd also like to put forward that for our various martial and martial-adjacent classes, the core thing that really differentiates them, immutably, is the manner in which they are effective; A Monk, a Fighter and a Barbarian are all, at their very base, people who make their adventuring life by hitting things, usually with weapons, sometimes without, but effectively enough to make them stop being a problem.

They're different classes not because of their individual backgrounds, which can vary, but because of the manner in which they approach the task of "hit the problem until it stops being a problem". Monks, for example, take a spiritual bent, and make themselves most effective by supplementing their physical capabilities with a certain understanding and control over energy flows, both as they affect the monk, and their targets. Not all monks are acetics, of course, but this is the core element of how they operate that makes them distinct from others.

A fighter may scoff at all that wishy-washy, spiritual, energy flow, dragon pulse, balance in all things, mumbo-jumbo... though they cannot claim it isn't effective... nevertheless, for a fighter, despite how extremely broad and wide-reaching the elements of the class are, the core of their effectiveness lies in skill and training; no matter the path a fighter takes, what defines them is that they are the effective users of tools, and it is through their skill and training with those tools that they are effective.

A Barbarian may be spiritual, and they may use tools, but the element of a barbarian that defines them is a focus on body and the primal self; they are a living weapon and a living shield, and it is this raw physicality of self is what they use to be effective. Barbarians also come in a variety of different flavours - as many as there are players to play them, even - and even the manner in which their rage manifests, and what it means to them will be different from one barbarian to another. At the very base of it though, it is the focus on physicality of self, and the means of pushing that towards super-human levels that makes them what they are.

So, you could have a Barbarian who was born and raised in a city, but who has always felt drawn to pushing their physical self to excellence, far beyond anything that their city life would make necessary; when it reaches a point that they perhaps grow frustrated at the limits civilised life and civilised settings puts upon them, and that well of limit-exceeding power they can draw on when they're truly in 'the zone' can't really be safely contained by any inner-city training hall... that's probably a good sign that that gym-junkie jock might well be tapping in to what means to be a barbarian.

Worth mentioning also... BG3 has a portion of the fault here, since it forcefully assigns you the Baldurian background tag, and you have absolutely zero say in this and no capability of choosing otherwise, or even suggesting that you might not be from that city. It really shouldn't do that.