Beef up the rest of the party and let them start at the same level as the Barbarian and even consider being generous with how new characters roll their attributes. You should also grant an equivalent amount of magic items. Then you are set to play an epic campaign and throw as many challenges and mobs as possible at the party. Let them experience the power of the barbarian but through their own characters. Just adapt, versus maintaining the obvious power gap and then blame it on the one player.
D&D 5E Barbarian troubles
- Thread starter randrak
- Start date
Flamestrike
Legend
Only possible at that level with rolled stats - your first mistake. Rolled stats creates unbalanced characters.
Secondly, I have no idea how your monsters are struggling so much?
Im looking at some CR 6-7 monsters (flicking through the MM):
Chimera, CR 6, +7 to hit (3 attacks, including breath weapon)
Cyclops, CR 6, +9 to hit, two attacks
Vrock CR 6 +6 to hit, two attacks
Young Black dragon, CR 7, 3 x attacks at +7, breath weapon
Elemental, CR 5, +8 to hit, two slams
Flesh golem, CR 5, 2 slams at +7
Grick Alpha, three attacks at +7
All those beasties hit on around a 14+, and all get multiple chances to hit (likely with advantage if your barbarian is using reckless attack).
I'm sorry mate I am not seeing it.
Your second mistake. Youre not giving the party enough encounters per day. Accordingly he is free to rage nova every single encounter.
Your party should be averaging 6-8 medium to hard encounters per day, with about 2 short rests scattered in there (after every 2nd encounter or so).
He should only be able to rage every second encounter at best at his level.
I can help you mate. First question: How many encounters are you throwing at the party in between long rests, and how are you calculating the encounter budget for each encounter?
Secondly, can you give me the parties composition (level and class)?
CapnZapp
Legend
Ignore the people saying "make it more difficult" and similar.
The truth is that that character is much more powerful than the other characters and that simply is a problem the game isn't designed to handle.
Talk to the player. Explain how and why he needs to retire that character.
The truth is that that character is much more powerful than the other characters and that simply is a problem the game isn't designed to handle.
Talk to the player. Explain how and why he needs to retire that character.
Hmm. You've got mechanical issues here, being aggravated by personal issues. Obviously, it would have been better to use standard array or point buy, but that ship has sailed. However, I think it can be solved without requiring the barbarian player to give up his beloved PC.
The first thing you need to do IMO is get the rest of the party up to the barbarian's level. No matter what else is going on, an 8th-level character adventuring with a bunch of 5th-level companions is going to stand out. Imposing level penalties for dying was clearly a mistake in this group. You could just level them up by fiat, or adopt a policy that if you're lower than the highest-level member of the party, you get accelerated XP awards until you catch up.
After that, however... the guy's got Sentinel, so I presume he designed his character to be "sticky" and keep big monsters occupied. So why not let him succeed? I suggest you design encounters with a "barbarian component" (a huge, high-damage melee monster that's easily stuck-down with Sentinel) and a "non-barbarian component" (evasive ranged monsters and spellcasters that the barbarian can't get to, but the other PCs can). If the evasive monsters are the actual bosses of the encounter (e.g., mind flayers), then the other players won't feel like a sideshow, and the barbarian gets to revel in soaking absurd amounts of punishment and taking down enormous foes.
Of course, this depends on what the other PCs are. If the other PCs are also melee specialists, that's another problem.
The first thing you need to do IMO is get the rest of the party up to the barbarian's level. No matter what else is going on, an 8th-level character adventuring with a bunch of 5th-level companions is going to stand out. Imposing level penalties for dying was clearly a mistake in this group. You could just level them up by fiat, or adopt a policy that if you're lower than the highest-level member of the party, you get accelerated XP awards until you catch up.
After that, however... the guy's got Sentinel, so I presume he designed his character to be "sticky" and keep big monsters occupied. So why not let him succeed? I suggest you design encounters with a "barbarian component" (a huge, high-damage melee monster that's easily stuck-down with Sentinel) and a "non-barbarian component" (evasive ranged monsters and spellcasters that the barbarian can't get to, but the other PCs can). If the evasive monsters are the actual bosses of the encounter (e.g., mind flayers), then the other players won't feel like a sideshow, and the barbarian gets to revel in soaking absurd amounts of punishment and taking down enormous foes.
Of course, this depends on what the other PCs are. If the other PCs are also melee specialists, that's another problem.
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The game isn't designed to handle a barbarian with good stats and the Sentinel feat? It's that easy to break?
CapnZapp
Legend
You've been sniping against 5E for far too long for me to respond. If you don't like it, don't play it.
Or, you could do what I advise the OP of this thread: play using characters that the game works well with.
For a non-optimized non-combat heavy game that means nearly nothing needs to go away.
For games like the ones you and I play: don't use the +10 damage part of GWM/SS feats, the damage reduction feature of bear barbarians, don't allow anyone's AC to get much higher than 18, and don't allow anyone to start with a higher score in your primary stats than 15 if you include feats in your game. The "Sane Magic Item" pricelist provides pretty neat advice on what magic items you probably should never give to any minmaxing players.
Whether you houserule away these features, change them or merely agree as gentlepersons not to combine them, is up to you.
But "just do it", and then spend your time being happy and playing, rather than voicing dissatisfaction in such a passiveagressive and unproductive way.
If it makes you feel better, Celtavian, feel free to consider the game directed towards carebears that can't optimize. Anything as long as you accept the game handles minmaxing attempts poorly, and that you have to give up the notion that WotC will fix the optimization pot holes for you.
Again I say: for "regular" heroes, the game works well. In my opinion, it's the best, funniest and fastest edition of D&D - so generate a couple of less-than-best-in-class PCs and everything starts to work swimmingly!
Cheers,
Zapp
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
As much as I love old-school play and rolling for stats, I switched to the Standard Array method and haven’t looked back. I totally agree with you on the feat vs. ability increase balance. Also, unless I’m going to watch every single stat roll, I’ve found that there will always be someone that has suspiciously better stats than everyone else.
Shendorion
First Post
Oh, hey, I missed the campaign update on pg. 2! My bad.
Docking your players levels for dying creates a death spiral. It's bad juju for a variety of other reasons, and shouldn't be done in a campaign where there's any mistrust between the characters (or worse, the players) or where you're struggling with a power disparity already. The strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker.
So the curse is off the barbarian, and the new party has already taken him in, and the problem is that he feels like you're gunning for him? Why wouldn't you be gunning for him? He's a tank, he's the biggest threat on the battlefield by a large margin and the bad guys have a special grudge against him. The bad guys are rationally and emotionally motivated to kill him first. Being the best means having to be the best, right?
Is there any way you could get him to be proud of the fact that everybody's gunning for him, rather than resentful? Changing up the sort of monsters you throw at them so that their AC, HP and resistances are less decisive to the outcome is only half the problem, because doing so is likely to keep him thinking that you're building encounters specifically to neutralize his character's strengths (which will be true). I think the trick to getting this campaign on track is going to be to give them a solid, standup fight he can dominate every now and then, and get him happy with his status as the prime target.
Docking your players levels for dying creates a death spiral. It's bad juju for a variety of other reasons, and shouldn't be done in a campaign where there's any mistrust between the characters (or worse, the players) or where you're struggling with a power disparity already. The strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker.
So the curse is off the barbarian, and the new party has already taken him in, and the problem is that he feels like you're gunning for him? Why wouldn't you be gunning for him? He's a tank, he's the biggest threat on the battlefield by a large margin and the bad guys have a special grudge against him. The bad guys are rationally and emotionally motivated to kill him first. Being the best means having to be the best, right?
Is there any way you could get him to be proud of the fact that everybody's gunning for him, rather than resentful? Changing up the sort of monsters you throw at them so that their AC, HP and resistances are less decisive to the outcome is only half the problem, because doing so is likely to keep him thinking that you're building encounters specifically to neutralize his character's strengths (which will be true). I think the trick to getting this campaign on track is going to be to give them a solid, standup fight he can dominate every now and then, and get him happy with his status as the prime target.
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Azurewraith
Explorer
Could allways have the char op talk in the vein of look if that's your jams cool but its trashing the game for everyone else happened to me... didn't know I was doing it now I optimize a concept as opposed to min-max must admit its more fun
