Barbarian | Tyrrapedia: Encyclopedia of Tyrra

Barbarians, on average, have a comparable lifespan to humans. In many cases, the barbarians’ earth-centric way of life tends to grant them increased longevity due to their focus on natural medicines and curative magic, as well as usually having healthier diets and engaging in more physical exercise than their civilized counterparts. However, barbarians have a much more prominent tendency to engage in wars and individual physical conflicts, making death by violence more common than in a human society and thus lowering the average lifespan. Honor combats between individuals and groups of barbarians are a frequent and accepted occurrence in their culture, though not as common or socially important as those in Half-Ogre societies. Violence is seen as a justifiable recourse to mostly any offense, and does not carry the sense of impropriety and vulgarity that it does amongst the more civilized, peaceful races such as humans, elves and hoblings.

With their strong tendency towards a militaristic lifestyle, barbarians usually have a greater warrior-to-civilian ratio than civilized races. This makes them able to engage and defeat civilized peoples with a greater total population, as those groups produce less warriors to defend their land with.

The barbarian’s greatest disadvantage stems from their cultural mistrust of Celestial Magic, making them unable to take advantage of that school’s ability to create protective eldritch barriers or its more versatile and effective battle spells. While able to stockpile magical potions and alchemical elixirs to preserve their warriors, they are unable to scribe battle scrolls to hurl bolts of elemental energy at their opponents, forcing them to rely on the far less effective archery, or the more expensive poison gas globes for a ranged attack. Because of this most barbarians favor a straight- forward rush across the battlefield to engage in hand-to-hand combat as quickly as possible, which puts them in more direct personal danger. This is often the cause of very high casualties at the onset of an engagement, as the barbarian warriors are exposed to their enemies’ ranged spells while closing into melee without having scrolls or celestial casters of their own to counterattack with.

Their social weakness is their difficulty in learning scholarly skills, due to their mostly oral culture. The civilized kingdoms of the humans, elves and dwarves are firmly based in the institution of written records and communication, which puts barbarians and other less literate races at a disadvantage when attempting trade or diplomacy with them. This also makes efforts towards unifying barbaric peoples