When did the Barbarian class get introduced to D&D?

Question

In D&D 5e, Barbarians are a core class for the game, and Conan the Barbarian has been cited by E. Gary Gygax as one of the major literary influcences on the game, and is also listed in Appendix N, "Inspirational and Educational Reading" of the 1st Edition DMG.

With this backround, the Barbarian class is peculiarily absent from the first edition of the OD&D and AD&D games that Gygax authored; when he set out to represent Conan as a character in Dragon magazine, it was a mix of the Fighter and Thief classes. The first time I can find it in a core rulebook is in D&D 3.0.

Does anyone know when the Barbarian class (that seems to include inspirations from the Conan stories, such as the danger sense ability) was first published in an official source for the game, and who the author was?

(This Q&A about when Rage was first introduced points to Unearthed Arcana as the first supplement for AD&D 1e to have the class, but many materials in that book, as I understand it, came from a compilation of articles in Dragon and similar sources, so it may not be the first appearance of the class).

Answer 1

Dragon Magazine #63 established the AD&D 1e UA Barbarian

Your question touches on an assumption in terms of "what was an official source" for OD&D or AD&D material? The 1982 article by Gary Gygax (Dragon #63, pages 8-11) laid out the Barbarian (a sub class of Fighter) more or less as we ended up finding it in the Unearthed Arcana book for AD&D 1e. The linkage is explicit.

With that considered, White Dwarf was a publication from which numerous monsters were introduced that ended up in published books like the Fiend Folio, so you can argue that it was sufficiently "official" that it introduced the Barbarian to the game in a playable form, which means that ...

White Dwarf was probably "official" enough to be first for D&D

That would make @John Dallman's answer correct in terms of who got 'first' if that matters. But the Barbarian therein is different from than the one in Dragon #63 and UA. It is argued on the ad&d redit that the Original Barbarian in White Dwarf #4 was written for Original D&D, not AD&D, and I agree based on the evidence and presentation.

In 1977 people are still writing content & classes for OD&D. This would be one of them. The AD&D Player's Handbook wouldn't even be released for another year. Having a d6+1 HD progression would either A) give them a slight edge on the Fighting-Man (if using LBB 1d6 HD only) or B) Slightly better than Cleric, but still less than Fighting-Man (if using Greyhawk HD).

It's likely "B", and done to preserve the importance of Fighting-Men being a central class, seeing how Barbarian gains a number of extra abilities like the thief. Making their HD also superior would be pretty unbalancing along with double Dex AC and Con bonus.

FWIW, the RPG.net index also associates the Barbarian from White Dwarf #4 and #12 with Original D&D, not AD&D. (index.rpg.net entry on White Dwarf #12).

It began as a sub class, not a class, in TSR material

In AD&D 1e it was a sub class of Fighter in the TSR Unearthed Arcana version. In AD&D 2e it was a kit for the Warrior Class (Complete Fighter's Handbook, 1994) as were the Amazon, Samurai, Cavalier, etc. In Asbury's original White Dwarf article, Barbarian was explicitly introduced as a separate class, not a sub class of anything, which makes the White Dwarf case considerably stronger in terms of introducing the Barbarian as a Class.

Answer 2

The first published Barbarian class was in White Dwarf #4, in 1977. The author, Brian Ashbury, modified it a bit in another article in #12, in 1979.

The Unearthed Arcana barbarian has significant differences from the White Dwarf version, although it's clearly inspired by it. Quite a lot of the material in UA was regarded as overpowered by the groups I played in in the 1980s, and that definitely included the Barbarian.

Answer 3

As a frame challenge, the 1st Ed. Fighting Man was more like Conan than you might think, and early Barbarian classes mostly had non-Conan stuff in them. Part of the confusion may be that Conan from the books is a lot different than people's idea of Conan "the Barbarian". Some ways fighters were based on Conan:

• Early AD&D gave fighters a 1-in-5,000 chance to have Conan-level strength. If you got super-lucky and rolled an 18 strength on 3d6, you rolled 1-100 for bonus strength. There was an extra table where 100, nothing lower, was an astounding bonus of +3 to-hit and +6 damage. That's, pre-barbarian, a special rule to make Conan.

• Conan famously leapt into crowds and hacked left-and-right faster than humanly possible, Well, early AD&D gave fighters 1 attack per level vs. less than 1HD opponents -- normal humans, goblins and so on. It was basically a "do that thing in Conan books" rule.

• As he grew older in the stories, Conan was often a leader -- a pirate captain, leading a large bandit group, captain of the guard, a general, finally a king. Early on, AD&D had rules for high-level players to just get followers, with fighters by far getting the most. Very Conany.

Onto Barbarians being less like Conan: Conan liked heavy armour. He wore chainmail (the heaviest armour in his world) whenever he could. The no-wearing-armour stuff in Barbarians isn't Conan. He also didn't Rage. Sure, he fought like a tiger and jumped in with no hesitation when he had to, but that's how he always fought. You won't read about him going into an extra-ragey mood, or coming down from a frenzy. Conan also wasn't very good at summoning a barbarian horde -- he was much better at inspiring regular fighters to join him. Conan didn't hate magic (early AD&D barbarians couldn't use it and got EXP for breaking items). Most magic in his world was either traps, undead, or super-powerful evil wizards, but the few times there was friendly magic, Conan was cool with it. To make up for not using +1 swords, AD&D barbarians could hit magic creatures, something which Conan couldn't do -- several stories involved stuff his sword couldn't hurt; the fun part was him figuring out a way around. Conan also wasn't good at curing poison (another early D&D ability).