D&D 5E Barbarian troubles

[AverageCitizen]

I'll try encounters that exploit his weaknesses more, though I fear he'll just start claiming I'm actively trying to kill him. Last time his character died he got really down and nearly quit playing, which prompted the whole "Let me make an unkillable barbarian". I love this group, we're all close friends and we play several times a week even...I really wouldn't want to break it apart.

He needs to understand that making the game challenging is part of your job, and that means trying to kill them sometimes. Sit him down and talk to him, and tell him things are going to have to get tougher because of how strong he is. If he won't listen to that, you don't have to play with him.

I know a guy who hacks all his video games so he can't die and he kills everything in one hit, and that is fine for him, even though I do not understand it. The difference between him and your friend is nobody has to play the hapless npcs in the video game, and his freinds don't have to sit around and get teamkilled.

 

[Saeviomagy]

First up, if killing his character is going to make him quit D&D, then he's playing the wrong game. Hand out some pre-gens and then run some of the more deadly dungeons that previous editions have to offer, bringing in replacement PCs with paper-thin stories to cover it until everyone gets used to characters dying. I think that mines of madness is probably downloadable for free, and covers this sort of thing fairly well.

Next up, don't penalize people with levels for dying. It's stupid, and you've seen precisely why. Bring back characters as the same level as the remaining party members.

Finally, I find it hard to believe that unless your other players are complete noobs, or there is something else going on, the barbarian managed to chew through the entire party. Did they just all stand still and get hit repeatedly until they died?

 

[NotActuallyTim]

SKELETON ARCHERS ON UNDEAD HORSES YOU FOOL!

Ahem.

May we know your process for designing challenges? It may be more helpful for informed criticism if we're informed.

 

[randrak]

I didn't used to penalize people with levels, just that they went back to the start of the XP for that level. But they just kept discarding characters without a care, switching between characters or just getting killed with reckless moves that I tried using this dying rule as an incentive to keep the characters alive. I suppose it wasn't a good idea on the long run as things barely changed and it ended up with a party with a level 8 and four level 5s.

The whole cursed item disaster happened while they were fighting a group of zombies. After getting the sword, there was a room with 18 zombies but while it was a large group it also had one tunnel they could funnel the zombies into. Fighting them was easy despite their number and even became repetitive since the zombies couldn't pass the barbarian to get to the casters at the back and needed a 21 to hit the barbarian that also had resistance. In the end, 18 zombies did 6 damage to the barbarian. Meanwhile he got hit and the curse activated, the Warlock was right behind him and got attacked (random rolled for next target as per the description) and he was soon down. The monk barely got away alive by running away. The druid had the brilliant idea of trying to steal the sword in hopes it would work but Sentinel made it so he could never got away after failing the disarm and was chopped down (all this after the zombies were killed and nobody took damage aside from the barb).

For designing challenges, I look at the CR as a base guideline, then check the abilities and see if they are capable of facing such an enemy. Afterward I throw the enemy at them. Sometimes I throw really easy fights they win without even taking damage, other times I give them harder fights. Once or twice I made encounters that are damn near impossible to beat, but there's always an escape route they can use. If there is no escape, the encounter will always be beatable.

Now I have a little problem in that the barbarian now thinks I'm trying to kill him. I do NOT want to kill my players, there is no fun in that...but after this last session he told me he thinks I'm trying to kill him.
To sum it all up, the start of the camp came with a mission to kill some orcs. Turns out the orcs were the siblings of an orc warchief that has been working for Tiamat. I pretty much based the setting somewhat on the original Dragonlance series. The warchief sent several group of orcs to avenge his brothers, nothing ever life threatening, but in turn they were killing the group's staff and putting others in danger. In the end, they learned the guy had a bounty on his head and decided to nit it in the bud by hunting him down themselves to end the harassment. They found out along the way that the warchief had gathered a small army and kidnapped several villagers in the area. They found a secret way into the fortress and along the way found the cursed sword. Right after that I placed a room with zombies in case they had the idea of attuning to the sword so that they would discover the sword was cursed before entering the fortress. The whole cursed party kill debacle happened and we ended the session.
This next session we had today, the barbarian went back to town and after some incentive from the new characters he got the curse removed. They went on to sneak back into the fortress and went all the way to the boss, a character I made since the beginning based on the main antagonist of the Dragonlance first book, a Cleric of Death (the class from the DMG). Now, clerics of death have an ability to bypass resistances when dealing necrotic damage and after dying he would come back as an undead with a smaller HP pool. The barbarian was the only original party member and the one that killed the boss' brothers so the boss held a grudge and focused mainly him, yet he still attacked the other party members a bit. The fight was rather anticlimatic and when it entered the second stage the barbarian was at low HP...the rest were at either full or half. When the zombie came back I had him be dumb and only there to settle the grudge so he attacked the barbarian and dropped him to 0 for the first time in the campaign. The zombie died in a single turn as everyone rolled well on their damage and he didn't have much HP. The barbarian was stabilized after his first roll by another party member and they were fine.

Now, the barbarian is all pissy at me (passive aggressive style) claiming that I am actively trying to kill him. He says that I gave him the cursed sword which required a Wis saving throw and made an enemy that can ignore resistances all to kill him, as if I had especially designed the villain to just kill him and nobody else. Frankly...I felt insulted...

 

[Azurewraith]

He thinks your trying to kill him throw a Mindflayer at him have it stun him with mindblast then kill him and simply tell him that if the DM wants a character dead IT IS DEAD no intervention from any player npc god etc can stop it.
or if thats to much send 100000000000000000000000000 kobolds at him or heck even a similar number of house cats.

As others have said target his weak saves and if he complains about targeting him explain he to him how he made the tank or even give the ingame reason that word about him has gotten round and people have figured out drop him and dominos

 

[Celtavian]

The first question to ask is are people having fun? If the answer is no, then you need to do something about it. If the answer is yes, then roll with it. If you're all having fun whether the challenges are easy or hard, that's all that matters.

Is the rest of the group unhappy this guy made such a powerful character?

 

[NotActuallyTim]

Don't get mad. Don't get 'even' either.

Players can get upset by a lot of stuff. Ignore him and play on normally.

On the social/exploration front, you might want to think about dropping some hints on getting that item uncursed. It's practically a free sidequest in terms of game content, since you can just use some easy fights and rely on the weapon to provide difficulty.

In addition, Barbarians are consistently terrible at ranged combat. Almost none of their features apply to it. If you really want the other members of the party to have a greater effect in combat, consider using raised terrain, like a cliff, and some orcs with spears, rocks, etc. No circumventing Barb features with magic, just use big rocks. Rocks solve everything.

 

[S'mon]

Is the rest of the group unhappy this guy made such a powerful character?

I definitely think you should be talking to the other players. You seem to be putting too much priority on this one player's desires.

 

[n00b f00]

Sounds like you handled it pretty well, and the guy s a bit of a problem child. I can't give you better advice to handle your friend than you can. Only that I'd talk to him headsup. You don't want to kill characters for a number of reasons, it basically sucks. But you also don'tant the game to be a cakewalk either, you want some threat of harm to keep them excited. Part of that is designing encounters that can challenge different party members. If every fight featured hard counters for him, that would be a bit crappy. Characters should be given ample shots to excel at what they were built to do, in this case not die. On the other hand a boss that can counter him is totally fair.

Just set boundaries and expectations. Sometimes his character will be at risk of death, not as often as the rest of the party, but sometimes even he will be in mortal danger. Easier said than done, gl man he's your friend, so I hope it all works out.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Hmmm my suggestion is... try playing OSR! (not very helpful, on the face of it, but in fact potentially the best DnD advice you will ever get ;D )