D&D 5E Barbarian troubles

[GameOgre]

I'll second the 15 min combat encounters. If it's the BIG BADDY of the entire adventure I could see it clocking all the way up to 30 min but kinda doubt it.

Hours and hours for a 5E encounter? Crazy!

I seriously can't think of one fight from any of the adventure paths or my homemade stuff that lasted even close to a hour.

If I use miniatures it adds a little time. If I have new players or new characters that the guys are not familiar with it would add a little. If I use my homemade 3D dungeon tiles it might add a few minutes but all together on a day the group is feeling real cross talkie and it's the perfect stop of slow, I just don't see a hour long combat.

 

[S'mon]

Your DM is reacting to the players in setting the pacing of his adventures. It should be happening the other way around.

If the DM instead planned out 6-8 [medium to hard] encounters with 2 short rests [and a hard 24 hour time limit imposed - save the princess by midnight or the BBEG wins, you dont get paid, and he attacks the town with his powers doubled, riding a dragon, as a triple deadly encounter] then the players tactics will change to reflect this.

If I was going to plan out a linear string of encounters and run the PCs through them, I'd
rather* do that in 4e D&D, which is built around the Encounter. To me this takes away the
freedom of choice that 5e offers the players, and the opportunity it gives the GM to run a
living world. Likewise telling the players "plot says you can't rest now".

*In fact I do run a 4e campaign, and the encounters are fun, but I look to 5e to do things 4e
doesn't do.

 

[S'mon]

PCs can try to take a rest whenever they want to. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. The DM should never tell them yes or no based on reasons that don't have a game world impact. I.e., a DM should never say yes or no unless there's something happening in that area that would allow or prevent a rest from happening. Just giving them a rest, or denying them a rest because you don't personally like how it flows or whatever is a bad reason. PCs need to weigh the risk vs reward. If a party of PCs are dungeon delving and they ran out of resources and declare they're taking a short rest, that's all well and good for them, but are there still monsters around that could reasonably find them in an hour? The game world should never go on pause just because the party wants a rest.

That's how I run my 5e campaigns, yes. You don't have to do it that way - you can discard the Simulation element and run a game based purely on Drama and Gamist considerations - but I prefer my 5e to have a strong Sim pillar much like old school Gygaxian D&D.

 

[CapnZapp]

At least for some players, having a string of average encounters would be the most boring way of playing.

Nobody is addressing the elephant in the room: the 6-8 encounter expectation does not work, not in the slightest.

Each of you saying "just follow the 6-8 encounters suggestion, and everything will be fine" conveniently fails to mention how trivial each encounter must then be, or the xp rate goes out the window.

That in addition to what I've already brought up; that having the story limit the party's resting option starts to feel awfully artificial and forced very quickly if you do it often.

One poster said he does it 50%, again without acknowledging how this immediately means that the Barbarian can rage twice as often as "expected".

I say "expected" within quotation marks, because in reality, a Barbarian can expect that two rages a day will be sufficient for ALL encounters surprisingly often.

Until you embrace this fact, there cannot be any real progress on the class analysis.

Until you embrace this fact, I understand why some of you are so dismissive of my suggestion: the hard day-rest coupling is the root cause of all your problems.

 

[randrak]

Update on the session's progress:

To sum it up, the barbarian and the rest of his new party went back to the Big Bad's fortress and managed to infiltrate it. For the first time I saw my players just sit down and plan out what to do next in-depth. I'll be honest, I could not have been more proud of my players...it was the first time this crew in particular planned things instead of rushing in blindly, though I did make it clear that they were infiltrating a base full of enemies and the boss was in "control" of two dragons. It makes sense that they were worried about (one of them was terrified and all jumpy, he couldn't stay sitting).
They managed to sneak up to the Big Bad's room and the boss battle began. This was the boss battle against the Cleric of Death with a grudge against the barbarian, the same fight that knocked out the barbarian for the first time in the campaign and the same fight the barbarian accused me of trying to kill him. In this fight they pretty much burned most of their novas.
After that, they snuck back down to free the captured villagers and had another battle with the cell guards and one of the army's captains. This was a medium encounter and since after the boss battle they used up all their healing items, they were left without any healing (aside from a 1st level cure wounds the druid was keeping as an emergency). They took moderate damage and used up more abilities.
Finally they led the villagers out as a big battle ensued and managed to escape into the mountain's cave system and close the entrance to delay the orc army. They were then tasked to scout the cave ahead of the large group of villagers to clear any threats. They estimated that they had around one hour, maybe two before the orcs caught up. The party opted to have a short rest (I DM the short rests to be 30 minutes) which allowed the monk, fighter and druid to recover their abilities and got some HP back.
Then came the big troll battle, as gory as it was hilarious. Along the way they found a troll feasting on a poor orc patrol. Battle ensued and they failed their knowledge rolls horribly, the best they could get out of it was that it was indeed a troll and it healed super fast. The players knew they needed fire or acid, but they know how much I hate metagaming and since the druid was out of spells, there was no way of "accidentally" using fire to find out. The group spent around 14 rounds hacking the troll apart. When they noticed the troll would just not stay dead, they started planning to hack it to pieces but even then they were having trouble doing it properly. The barbarian used his last two rages, the monk used all his ki, the druid his beast forms and the fighter his action surge and second wind eventhough they were unable to drop him even further down in HP. Finally the tiefling monk remembered that she had Hellish Rebuke and after the troll KOed the fighter and monk, it got burned down by hellish rebuke. End of the fight, they burned all their novas again and were horrified that there was still at least one more encounter to go. The troll was an easy encounter CR wise, but the lack of knowledge and fire made it harder (though not lethal by any means).
Standing by the exit of the cave was an orc group, in charge of guarding the area. With half the party at 1 or 2 HP, the barbarian out of rage and the druid out of both spells and beast forms, they were positively stressed. The barbarian was quite irked by the fact that I was making them fight again in those conditions while the rest seemed incredibly nervous. Again, the were forced to plan things out carefully, which again...I enjoy seeing. The orc party was a simple medium difficulty encounter, yet they stressed about it much more than they did the fight against the Boss, which they destroyed. Everyone but the druid was knocked out at least once, some even twice, but luckily the druid saved his cure wounds and had the Healer feat, allowing him to get the rest of the party up every time. In the end, they managed to do it.

End of the day, they had 1 Deadly Encounter and 3 Medium-Hard encounters with one short rest, due to it being a race against time. Everyone, even the barbarian, seemed quite pleased with their achievement, likely because it being so stressing made the victory much sweeter (Dark Souls style I guess). It helped that they saved around 200 people's lives, were considered heroes and handsomely rewarded with money and a keep.

Thank you guys for all the advice, it really and genuinely helped.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The weird things was, a few years ago I threw a pair of trolls at my regular gaming group, and none of them knew that they needed to use fire or acid on them. Not avoiding metagaming, just honestly not knowing, which I thought was next to impossible for people that have all been gaming for some time.

Glad to hear that the adventure went well! It is awesome to see PCs actually use strategy.

Then came the big troll battle, as gory as it was hilarious. Along the way they found a troll feasting on a poor orc patrol. Battle ensued and they failed their knowledge rolls horribly, the best they could get out of it was that it was indeed a troll and it healed super fast. The players knew they needed fire or acid, but they know how much I hate metagaming and since the druid was out of spells, there was no way of "accidentally" using fire to find out.

 

[lordwolfy]

You mentioned feats?

A few things here, to all you who says rolled stats is bad: According to the phb it's the preferred method. Sometimes you are just to lucky! I had a monk that has 20 in dex and 19 in AC at first level. He was a bitch to hit, but it hurt him baad when I did.

randrak: Well, there you have it you can bring the bear barbarian to his knees, but how many feats does he have? By all accounts he should have only two, and if so, which? Except the Sentinel and that he should have acquired at 4th level ditching the stat increase. the second feat he must have picked up at 8th level, again ditching the stat increase.

If he has anymore then that, he should do a rebuild. So should the rest of the party.

 

[shadowoflameth]

As Skip Williams once said, paraphrased, 'it isn't against the rules for a character to be really good at something.' He wants to be a tank, then so be it, but there are things that a tank isn't that great at.

My suggestions:

1. I always use the point buy, not rolling. It's not life, it's a game and unlike life, games should be fair.
2. Consider an enemy that does what he does, i.e make one kobold or whatever a barbarian with high dex and con and with a shield.
3. Rust monster - There are several potential foes with abilities that mess with tanks.
4. Sabotage an item as part of the encounter. Example, let him find the ancestral greataxe of the barbarian lord Krusk. Made from the bones of the dragon Ilaxijandr. Let him enjoy it, let him wipe some weaklings with it. Then in the temple of Tiamat have the priest recognize it, and cast a spell on the weapon. The weapon vanishes, and the dragon is resurrected.

I could go on but you get the idea. And when the party gets over their curse, consider a bonus that brings them to the same level as the barbarian. Consider it a reward for succeeding with the curse as a handicap.

 

[Tony Vargas]

At least for some players, having a string of average encounters would be the most boring way of playing.

I'm sure you could say that for any style of play, so not very meaningful.

Nobody is addressing the elephant in the room: the 6-8 encounter expectation does not work, not in the slightest.
.. having the story limit the party's resting option starts to feel awfully artificial and forced very quickly if you do it often.

Sure it works. Admittedly, there are other ways you might want to pace a story, but, if you're willing to be flexible about what constitutes a long or short rest, you can adapt the 6-8 encounter 2-3 short-rest 'day' to any pacing. You won't also get to be consistent about how long a rest is in hrs, but you'll be able to keep the game functional (and that's part of your job as the DM).

Each of you saying "just follow the 6-8 encounters suggestion, and everything will be fine" conveniently fails to mention how trivial each encounter must then be, or the xp rate goes out the window.

If you want more challenge without a lot more exp, you can change the conditions of the combat, outnumber the party rather than out-level them, or, well, just give less exp.

Until you embrace this fact, there cannot be any real progress on the class analysis.

Until you embrace this fact, I understand why some of you are so dismissive of my suggestion: the hard day-rest coupling is the root cause of all your problems.

5e is designed around the classic-D&D attrition model of challenge, /and/ it's class designs give different classes very different resource mixes. Between the two, you simply can't deviate too much or too consistently from the prescribed pattern of encounters and rests, without 'disrupting balance' (if you credit 5e with any to disrupt) - but, you can, of course, be flexible (even arbitrary) about what constitutes either. You can also use that DM flexibility to enforce balance, either encounter or amongst the party, for instance, by spotlight manipulation, adding magic-item-based resources, etc, etc...

For the first time I saw my players just sit down and plan out what to do next in-depth. I'll be honest, I could not have been more proud of my players...it was the first time this crew in particular planned things instead of rushing in blindly... Again, the were forced to plan things out carefully, which again...I enjoy seeing.

See? Players are trainable.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

...they were positively stressed.

Good. Victory is much sweeter when you really have to work for it and the risks are high.

As a GM, you should be tasking the players with making hard choices. Fight on, and possibly die because we are tapped out, or rest, and possibly let the pursuers catch up and kill the escapees.