D&D 5E Barbarian troubles

[randrak]

I'm having some trouble with one of my players in particular recently. I've been DMing my friends (some longer than others) for a couple of years now and I know some munchkin tendencies that some of them tend to have. When we started playing 5e I thought the overpowered characters would be more toned down, but I was wrong. My first mistake was letting them pick feats, from then on it was 3.5 and pathfinder all over again, with the game-breaking combos.
One of my players just up and decided to make the tankiest tank in the land, a bear totem barbarian with a shield and Sentinel feat at level 7. He has 21 AC with a shield (most creatures almost can't hit unless they crit or close) and even when they do hit, he has a tone of HP and resistances. None of the battles feel right with that thing there, he never gets bellow half HP and if I want to make something that will put him in danger, it would be a monster that would obliterate the rest of the party. Mind you, I don't aim to kill him, I just want to have encounters that don't feel like he's just immortal.
Plus now, the whole party wiped (except for him) because of some cursed item shenanigans and they drop a level so they will be 3 level 5s and him almost at level 8. This barbarian can solo stuff the 3 level 5s would have trouble with. I am at wits end with what to do, encounters are either too lethal or too easy, there's no middle ground.
It gets complicated in that, this guy is my best friend and he's technically just following the rules...he knows I don't like his OP build yet if I throw something too hard at him, I get the feeling he'll just think I'm actively trying to kill him...

 

[bganon]

A barbarian in heavy armor? Or 20 CON/18 DEX? That seems like a problem right there.

Anyway, Hold Person. Or anything else that just ignores AC & HP.

In general, encounters can be more than "beat all the monsters". If the barbarian for some reason really needs to keep the other party members alive, then that itself makes things interesting.

 

[S'mon]

How does he have AC 21? Magic? The shield-using Barbarian IMC has AC 19 at level 10 and I thought that was high (+5 CON +2 DEX +2 shield).

I guess my main advice if you want to hurt him would be to use lots of foes with +5 to hit (+3 stat, +2 prof); if they can get a Leadership die and/or Advantage on top then that's gravy. The game is designed to cope with mid level PCs having AC 21 without breaking, though usually it's the heavy armour tanks (+2 shield,
+8 plate, +1 from magic etc).

I also see other PCs get squashed while the Barbarian stays up, but it's not been disruptive. Foes should avoid him until his Rage ends. My main advice is: don't keep escalating threat level to challenge him; make a fair challenge for the 5th level PCs, and let him emerge unscathed if that's his priority. If he thinks he's invincible & does stupid stuff like charge the army, feel free to kill him.

 

[randrak]

We rolled for stats, 4d6 drop 1, he got extremely lucky with his rolls. His AC comes from +5 Con and +4 Dex, +2 Shield. He also has high Strength, meaning he still does great damage. He's a tank both in taking damage and dishing it out. He does has low Wis...

Currently his AC is 19 because he came into possession of the Berserker Greatsword (a variation of the Greataxe) and he immediately attuned to it and in the next encounter, killed his whole party. This is also why he is now almost at three levels above everyone else. The others tend to die a lot.

I might just be a bad DM, I mean...my players tend to die a lot (aside from the barbarian player's characters). I don't try to kill them...but characters don't tend to last too long.

 

[dmnqwk]

I don't mean to be harsh but you seem to have dug yourself into a hole. Rather than digging yourself out, remember you are DM and simply pretend the hole wasn't there in the first place.

Talk to your friend and explain the situation, suggest that you made a mistake and he is simply too powerful for everyone else to have fun. Don't try to bribe him, because as your friend he should be willing to make sacrifices to ensure everyone has fun. Remove the feats, change his stats to a point buy system (I assume you let him roll and he got something like a Str 16 Dex 18 Con 20, or you accidently gave him a magical shield) and understand that 5th edition can have issues, but is balanced for the most part itself.

Your other option is to exploit his low mental attributes (assuming he doesnt have high int/wis/cha) and get him in danger from traps, a place where he is unlikely to be raging. Or use a Ghost who forces a ghost in there to possess him, making him wipe out the rest of the party so he understands how stupid his character's power level is because of your mistakes.

 

[Waterbizkit]

The rolled stats are one problem. That's not to say it's a bad method of stat generation, it's a legacy method and one I still let my players use if they want, but it needs to be recognized that the game is more or less balanced these days based around the standard array or point-buy system. So anything that deviates greatly from those has potential to cause trouble. I could be completely wrong of course, and I'll freely concede the point if that's the case, but it's just my quick observation.

Additionally, if this particular character is able to absorb so much physical punishment, perhaps you need to look at creating encounters that bypass that to some degree. Enemies with spells that target his lower defenses, battlefields or traps that likewise lock him down a bit, etc. You don't want to necessarily tailor encounters entirely around combating one character, but perhaps spend a bit more time thinking about things you could add that would challenge him and yet still fit organically into the story/ecounter you're trying to create. Not everything needs to be a battle of fisticuffs where you're pulling out tougher and tougher monsters that are par with him but annihilate the other party members, there are other angles to come at this from.

Finally, with regards to him slaying the entire party because he attuned to a berserkers weapon, this sort of thing can cause problems in and out of game if it becomes commonplace and both the player and his character don't care. From an out of game perspective I know most of my players would start getting annoyed if one guy at the table kept killing their characters off and didn't give a damn. From an in game perspective, I'm not sure who exactly would want to join up with a mad man who's known to have killed his own traveling companions on possibly more than one occasion.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Hit them harder. It's not hard to make challenges for PCs in D&D if the DM does their job. There's always a tougher monster on the block. Don't fret CR, you're the DM and you create the challenges for your party. Remember, they players are SUPPOSED to be powerful heroes. Give them powerful challenges.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Well, the greatsword is on you, sorry. Did they roll stats in front of you? I always get wary of players who always seem to beat the odds, and by a large amount by always having really high stats but never roll low stats to go along with it. Did some analysis on that a while back, and statistically the total sum of rolls was between 72 and 73, which is pretty much the same as array. So odds are that he probably has some 6s or 7s there too.

But that's after the fact anyway. Really, the bane against tanky barbarians are WIS saves. And there are a lot of things that force WIS saves. Curses, charm person, command, compulsion, confusion, dominate person, fear, etc. And send a horde of shadows at him. Very low CR, but doesn't take long for that strength to get reduced by a bunch.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yes. 4d6 with lucky rolls and feats don't work well together.
You don't need to increase stats so you don't have the hard choice between feats or ASI. Also don't have your other players lose lwvels constantly. At some point the barbarian should have a bad reputation about losing party members or even killing them.
So next time let everyone including the barbarian make new characters and have him retire until ithers keep up.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Yeah, grab at that low wisdom and cha. Possess him with a ghost and walk him off a cliff or into lava. Pepper him with ranged that he can't hit. Throw a legendary monster at him and let the rest of the group deal with his minions.

Or tell him, "Congrats. You win the game. Roll a new character." He is the one that has unbalanced the party. He should retire into NPC status and roll up with the rest of the group.