Editing Barbarian (section)

===1st Edition===
A lot like 3.5 barbarians, with the loss of illiteracy (unless your archetype forbids reading), the addition of more trap sense (pfffffff), a "rounds of rage per day" mechanic that went up with level and constitution modifier (good thing, unless you were dipping barbarian) and, the major new feature and draw, ''rage powers''.

That's right, every two levels your barbarian bro learns a new way that getting ''really fucking angry'' can give him superpowers. These powers range from the useful (making combat maneuvers in place of regular attacks) to the impractically awesome (beating an opponent with another opponent) to the outright supernatural (sprouting claws and horns before gaining a pounce attack) to the ''hilarious'' (gaining big bonuses on swim checks)... That last one makes sense ''mechanically'' (rage buff strength, after all, and strength is the stat used in swim tests), but the mental image is never not funny.  ("''FUCK YOU WATER! WRAAAAAAAAGH!''")

The most powerful of those abilities can be used once per rage only, which usually means you can either use them once per combat, or have to cancel out your rage and fight without almost all of your abilities while also being fatigued. But, if you manage to somehow get immune to fatigue, you can "rage-cycle" every turn and use those powerful abilities once per round. In practice, it means going berserk, calming down for a few moments after a couple of seconds, and then turning nuts again, which looks ridiculous, stupid and outright cheesy. This usually involves some multiclassing, but then Paizo released this belt called Cord of Stubborn Resolve, which makes you take a tiny bit of non-lethal damage instead of getting fatigued, which both lets you rage-cycle, saves your rounds of rage when you can't smash stuff in combat, and protects you from getting powered down by enforced fatigue. It's still pretty cheesy, but also not even close to some stuff casters are able to do.

It's not necessarily top-tier, though it may be the best among its fellow beatstick classes, and it's certainly fun as hell and much more customizable than before. It's still tier 4, but the skill compression and rage powers make them more versatile. Lost a lot of its draw in 2014 when the [[Bloodrager]] class was released. Why play a guy who fights by getting angry when you can play a guy who fights by getting angry, grows claws, wings, and fangs when he gets angry, and can cast spells like a weak sorcerer?  Shoot, with the "this really shouldn't exist" Primalist archetype, you can even get enough rage powers to make it practically obsolete (though practically everyone knows this to be utterly fucking cheese and thus refrain from using it). The only draws left are basically the few archetypes that can do things it can't, like the Invulnerable Rager for Damage Reduction shenanigans. Also the Bloodrager's rage is classed as a supernatural(Su) ability and so is affected by anti-magic. Whether it some how stops him being angry all together or just cancels the magical effects is down the GM. The PF Barbarian is also the foundation for [[Wrassle Baba]], the D&D equivalent of Brock Lesnar.

'''Pathfinder Unchained''' offered a revision to the barbarian, introducing a rage that wasn't so dependent on stats (so now you get +2 to melee attack/melee damage/thrown damage/Will and +2 THP/HD to prevent death once rage runs out and your HP drops with your Constitution) and a few reworded rage powers. Most of the "once per rage" powers and some of the others were reworked into the new "stance" powers that are active until the end of the rage, but require a move action to start working. The problem is - those do not stack with each other, and the most fun and badass high-level rage power, Come and Get Me (which gives your enemy a huge bonus to hit and damage, but lets you make your own attacks before your enemy), got turned into a stance too instead of an at-will rage power. Some of the other rage powers were reworked or outright removed, which even broke some of those still available (for example, some unchained rage powers require you to take those that are not available for the unchained barbarian). It was largely considered a sidegrade at best and a mild downgrade at worst since it lost out on all archetypes RAW and killed the rage cycling (which was intended, to be fair).  But it at least made it harder for you to instantly drop dead the second your rage ends at higher levels, and made the class more fun to play if you don't want to bother with rage-cycling shenanigans.

{{Pathfinder-1st-Edition-Classes}}