D&D 5E Barbarian troubles

[Bawylie]

I agree that if the game is broken, it's time to shut it down.

But it IS worth looking at the structure of your game overall.

You've got 3 pillars, and your combat character utterly dominates the combat pillar. That's okay, if that's only a third of your game. Less ok if combat is half or more of your game.

So what's going on in your other 2 pillars? What kinds of exploration and social interaction are going on?

Let's look at the combat pillar itself. This edition has a difficulty scale based on challenge rating and also on attrition. It rewards efficiency and taxes waste. Your barbarian may walk through each fight, but it's no good if the rest of the party isn't alive by the final encounter of the day. If the barbarian has more than half of his resources while the rest of the party has to retreat, he's basically wasting those resources. Of course, the other PCs should know when they're spent.

The encounter building guidelines offer a fairly easy baseline for a competent party. So what pings as "officially" medium challenge is not necessarily medium for your group. Also the discrepancy between PC levels makes "taking the average" to determine CR skews a little too tough, per individual monster.

If I were building encounters for 5 PCs of levels 5, 5, 5, 5, & 8, I would stick with CR 5 as the toughest monster. I would use my XP budget on groups of monsters and try to include Artillery, Skirmishers, and Brutes among my hordes.

After that, I would design encounter spaces with blocking terrain and plenty of space. Even disparate height levels (considering 5th level PCs can reasonably expect to have flight/decent ranged combat).

In planning combats,I'm looking for ways to hold down the barbarian in one position (whaling on a brute or a brute and a Skirmisher two) while the other skirmishers and artillery go after the other PCs. Considering the number of enemy combatants, id also make use of the Help Action, particularly when fighting the barbarian.

So in 3 round fight, my plan is to grab and hold the barbarian for 2 rounds (perhaps even focus firing on him with artillery - no need to hold back on him) while knocking on the other PCs a bit.

After 3 or 4 fights like that, i feel I'm in a good place for a nice set piece, sub-boss, or boss fight.

 

[Phantarch]

Just trying to think outside the box here, but why are you married to the idea of the other PCs losing a level? Are they being brought back to life or making new characters?

IME, things like this happen because of disparity in power between PCs, not directly because of powerful PCs. If you are regularly killing all of your PCs with the exception of the barbarian, I'd have the other players create characters that were of a comparable power level to the barbarian.

I'd have them each create a level 8 character. Furthermore, I'd figure out a point buy amount based on the barbarian's stats. That should put everybody at approximately the same power level.

Even if you are somehow resurrecting the old characters rather than creating new ones, you could hand wave a lot of this. Say the berserk barbarian went nuts and wondered in the wilderness for several months or years. Off screen, the other PCs were searching out their old companion to rein him in, and in the process gained experience. Level them up to 8, give them stat boosts to make them comparable to the barbarian, continue on again.

As a final thought, I liked [MENTION=6798775]Ath-kethin[/MENTION]'s idea of linking the berserk sword to the story line, like some sort of prophecy. If this is the case, this can be the motivation for a group to join his party (either the leveled up, resurrected former characters or new characters). If this is the sole motivation for this group to join this barbarian character, it would also make sense for these characters to have team tactics in place to take down the barbarian. There are any number of spells and abilities that should be able to take the barbarian out of combat, ideally knocking him out rather than killing him.

 

[S'mon]

Let the new PCs vote if they want this barbarian in their group.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Have the new PCs that replace the slain ones come with the express purpose of ridding the barbarian of this curse.

Have the previous owner of the sword show up, or someone who knew the previous owner. Make it their mission to retrieve the sword. Make it so that they've prepped to take on this mad barbarian and have hired folks to assist.

Even simpler, have a high powered cleric show up and remove the curse. Say he heard about it and came to help. Then the sword is laying there and the Barbarian can be free of it...OR he can choose to pick it back up and embrace the curse. At that point, I think he's an unrepentant villain, and you can declare him as an NPC or have the cleric and the other PCs battle him.

These are all more story based options for dealing with it. Just a few options....but that's how I'd approach the topic. Address it in world. The PCs don't live in a vacuum....have folks react to this madman.

 

[Unwise]

If all but one PC dies, isn't the natural thing to do to say that that campaign is over? Even if you want to try and tie the new adventurers into the campaign, they are still a new group. I would think the barbarian has to role up a new character too.

He has nothing to complain about, he just forced all the other players to roll new ones, he can't complain that new friends don't magically appear and join him.

 

[devincutler]

I am confused.

How is a 21 AC at all game breaking? I can toss a crapload of lower level creatures out of the Monster Manual with +5 to +7 to hit. They hit between 25% and 40% of the time!

Also, every class is designed to have holes in its "armour". You mentioned one...a low Wisdom save. OK...so any spell or effect that requires a Wisdom save is going to hurt his day.

 

[Curmudjinn]

Getting depressed or threatening to quit(or harm a friendship) because of an unwillingness to make it fun for everyone is a worrying sign. I've seen this plenty and played with alongside it before. Do not approach these type of players by yourself. Talk to them about it as a group before the next game and have everyone voice their opinions on the matter. Guilt and understanding is a deterrent to anger and resentment if handled in a friendly environment.

If he still flips out, you're going to have to be the adult and ask him to step away from the game. Real friends don't lose it on friends for things like this.

 

[abirdcall]

We rolled for stats

That's the problem.

5e doesn't work well with rolled stats.

Maybe you can suggest starting over with point buy instead?

 

[Unwise]

That's the problem.
5e doesn't work well with rolled stats.
Maybe you can suggest starting over with point buy instead?

In my experience so far, 5th works pretty well with rolled stats for the most part. Rolled stats generally make a +1/-1 to hit difference if they are high/low, or maybe some secondary saves are better. That is just not a big deal, for most classes. Rolled stats also can make MAD classes work better, as you tend to only choose that class when you have rolled stats appropriate for it.

The issue comes in that good stats make some classes more workable, but great stats break a few classes. Monks, Barbarians and Bladesingers can all become pretty nuts with very high stats. They are designed around having their secondary/tertiary stats not being that high.

To iterate a comment above, 21AC is not particularly insane, I have a Paladin and Fighter in two of my games that have that at about level 5 once they could afford platemail. The barbarians defensive features do seem to be based around the assumption that that will not be the case though. At least he is not going for MC Rogue 5, that is an annoying combo with Uncanny Reactions or whatever it is called.

 

[abirdcall]

In my experience so far, 5th works pretty well with rolled stats for the most part. Rolled stats generally make a +1/-1 to hit difference if they are high/low, or maybe some secondary saves are better. That is just not a big deal, for most classes. Rolled stats also can make MAD classes work better, as you tend to only choose that class when you have rolled stats appropriate for it.

The issue comes in that good stats make some classes more workable, but great stats break a few classes. Monks, Barbarians and Bladesingers can all become pretty nuts with very high stats. They are designed around having their secondary/tertiary stats not being that high.

To iterate a comment above, 21AC is not particularly insane, I have a Paladin and Fighter in two of my games that have that at about level 5 once they could afford platemail. The barbarians defensive features do seem to be based around the assumption that that will not be the case though. At least he is not going for MC Rogue 5, that is an annoying combo with Uncanny Reactions or whatever it is called.

I should say that feats and rolled stats don't work.

It removes the drawback from choosing a feat since you are maxing out your main stats anyway.

I would also prefer not to use rolled stats without feats because gaining stats is fun.