How is the GM supposed to enforce this?
D&D 5E Barbarian troubles
- Thread starter randrak
- Start date
How is the GM supposed to enforce this?
Reasonable challenges for a high AC barbarian: npc casters - saves ignore ac; Bless/advantage granting tactics - built in game mechanics to address a +hit vs AC disadvantage; kiting/guerilla tactics - nullify rage and other pc buffs by engaging only when advantageous; non-combat based objectives - time limits, puzzles, social encounters.
Barbarians are specifically designed to soak a lot of damage; simply escalating the outgoing damage clearly has party-wide implications. It's important to remember the roleplay aspect of the game. There are ways to challenge the party without the barbarian being reduced to low/no hitpoints.
Barbarians are specifically designed to soak a lot of damage; simply escalating the outgoing damage clearly has party-wide implications. It's important to remember the roleplay aspect of the game. There are ways to challenge the party without the barbarian being reduced to low/no hitpoints.
Azurewraith
Explorer
Asked myself that question alot then I said sod it and made every encounter in the "deadly by dmg definition bracket" combine that me being a Bugger for busting in during short rests(your in a castle full of wizards and there fighter mooks there looking for you want to take a hour sure...) means they blow there novas pretty early as they need to simply survive. Makes them less murder hobo aswell and if I want to challenge them I use a "real" deadly encounter YMMV though
- Patrols and wandering monsters. If you stop to rest in an unsafe area, you're likely to be found and attacked.
- Adventures with a ticking clock. Spend too much time resting and the bad guys win by default.
- Enemies that counterattack. If you bust into the dungeon, kill a few monsters, and then stop to rest, the other monsters will get together and crash your little rest-party.
- Intelligent foes that arrange traps, organize defenses, call in reinforcements, or simply vacate the premises if given time to do so.
- Foes that take the offensive; rather than the PCs invading the monsters' territory, it's the monsters invading the PCs' territory.
Vargtass
Villager
Make sure to telegraph clearly who it is that is out to get him. In your example, it was the boss death cleric, not you. Was this clear to the players when it happened? The boss could scream at the top of his lungs "you killed my minions! Die, die, die!!!" or he could have had wanted posters of the barbarian posted in the dungeon. This could steer the barbarian player's resentmen from you as DM to your boss monster where it belongs.
I once had (in 3.5) a bugbear ranger utter "filthy elves" under his breath to telegraph his favored enemy. He immediatly grew into the personal nemesis of the group, ultimately advancing to right-hand man of the boss. Telegraphing can take the story far, and keep the players focussed on in-story reasons rather than an out-of-story sense of unfairness.
My character is treated unfairly in story - he/she rises to the occasion. I get treated unfairly at the table - of course I don't like it. Don't leave the impression the latter may be true.
I once had (in 3.5) a bugbear ranger utter "filthy elves" under his breath to telegraph his favored enemy. He immediatly grew into the personal nemesis of the group, ultimately advancing to right-hand man of the boss. Telegraphing can take the story far, and keep the players focussed on in-story reasons rather than an out-of-story sense of unfairness.
My character is treated unfairly in story - he/she rises to the occasion. I get treated unfairly at the table - of course I don't like it. Don't leave the impression the latter may be true.
jgsugden
Legend
By creating the adventure and providing the natural breaking points between combats? If your PCs stop to do a long rest between every encounter, put a little time pressure on their missions - they have to rescue the kids before the ceremony to sacrifice them, they need to find their way through the dungeon before it collapses, etc...
pming
Legend
Hiya!
One of my players was like this when I first started playing with him a decade and a half ago. He was notorious for making OP characters...characters that make a DM feel guilty when the character dies because the DM either just sits there and watches him kill everything in sight, or the DM sits there and watches the character get totally steamrolled with virtually no chance of success (re: "Er...ok...make a Wisdom save, DC 18, or you are permanently insane and go screaming off into the night...").
Anyway...after this happened once or twice (or more...who's counting?...), the rest of the players eventually kicked the PC out of the party. The character in question was, oddly enough, a barbarian psychopath with a curse...hmmmm.... So, the PC's barely survive his onslaught and calm him down. They (PC's) basically say something to the effect of "Dude, you're cursed and psychotic. We can't trust you at all. Take your share of the treasure and leave. You're out. The player in question couldn't argue...because he was using the argument of "It's just my character...that's what he would do...", so when the other players used the same thing, he was kinda without any sort of position to argue. IIRC, he probably has had this happen to him...maybe half a dozen times, total, over that 15+ years he's been playing with me. The first one or two times it happened he was "annoyed", but after that he kinda just accepted it.
Personally, I wouldn't. I don't DM with the intent of putting "appropriate challenges" in front of the PC's. I present the world, and let the chips fall where they may. I'd just keep DM'ing as if he was any other 'normal' PC. Eventually, however, the character will encounter his Achilles heel, and then die whimpering, with no hope of survival, like a fly caught on fly-paper. I would, however, make sure that everyone knows that I'm just the DM and don't care one way or the other. I'd point out how powerful his PC is...and I'd point out his weakness and that it's just a matter of time before something shows up that exploits that weakness. When it does, he's as good as dead. I would also, however, make the comment that Well, you guys are still adventuring with him...don't blame him for it. If you go to sleep in front of a rabid wolf, don't be surprise if it eats you during the night! That puts all the cards on the table; the 'problem characters player' knows everyone knows his character is OP and 'a psycho', and you state the thing everybody is thinking. All out in the open. The player can't then try and "hide behind" anything and claim innocence.
Begin with all the horrible, horrible consequences of "loosing" and letting the bad guy win. They "lost", bad guy "won". If there are no campaign consequences for such things, then...why care or even bother adventuring? If the world will "magically fall back to peace and harmony", then maybe future PC's should all just jump off a cliff and kill themselves... Well guys, looks like that evil necromancer has set up shop and is raising an army to kill the surrounding towns. We should all kill ourselves to prevent that.
I'd start with having 'known' bad guys actively avoid and even help the barbarian...I mean, the bad guy couldn't have planned this better! He now has a psychotic nigh-invulnerable damage-dealing-machine running amok killing off heroes... and he doesn't even have to life a finger to do it! He'd probably start spreading rumors of the barbarian "secretly working with him"...this may cause other would-be heroes to try and best him...and die in the process. If townsfolk start to shun him, all it takes is a drunk farmer to slap the barbarian, and then *poof!* ...the barbarian murders everyone in the tavern as well as the guardsmen that showed up to stop him. He'd become a wanted criminal in hours, and this would eventually get around to new PC's ears. When he shows up at the recruitment table, the PC's would be well within their 'rights' to just say "No f'in way! You're a bad guy man, sorry to break it to you. Don't call us, we'll call you..."
Short of it is this: let the other PC's deal with it and make sure to have campaign consequences for his actions! Recently last year, that same player I mentioned? He played a dwarven barbarian (see a pattern?). We weren't even using Feats, but he managed to be quite tough, easily enough to kill just about any other PC in the group in one round, two tops. The character basically ended up becoming Chaotic Evil...and, rather than me put "appropriate challenges" in his way, I put innocent folks in his way...and then I had a CN bad guy "challenge him to do something". That something was worth of CE. I think it was something along the line of "kill the next three people you see in the street tonight" (it was night time), and I'll grant you any boon within my power. He took the offer. He walked outside to the smell of smoke and the glow of a fire from a home just across the street. An old woman and her grandson came out, hacking and coughing, screaming for help. :evilgrin: The look on the players face when he realized that he was going to have to cold-bloodily murder a grandmother and her grandson, in the street, when others were looking out their windows wondering what all the commotion was...well, it was priceless. He did it...killed them...and I think another townsfolk and two or three watch members. Then the player had the psychotic dwarf run off into the woods, never to be screen again. He made a new guy.
So...let the player dig his own grave, basically. If he is the type of person who enjoys watching his friends get pissed off, annoyed and hurt when playing a game with him that is supposed to be fun...well, I'd say you have bigger problems at your table than an OP barbarian...
^_^
Paul L. Ming
One of my players was like this when I first started playing with him a decade and a half ago. He was notorious for making OP characters...characters that make a DM feel guilty when the character dies because the DM either just sits there and watches him kill everything in sight, or the DM sits there and watches the character get totally steamrolled with virtually no chance of success (re: "Er...ok...make a Wisdom save, DC 18, or you are permanently insane and go screaming off into the night...").
Anyway...after this happened once or twice (or more...who's counting?...), the rest of the players eventually kicked the PC out of the party. The character in question was, oddly enough, a barbarian psychopath with a curse...hmmmm.... So, the PC's barely survive his onslaught and calm him down. They (PC's) basically say something to the effect of "Dude, you're cursed and psychotic. We can't trust you at all. Take your share of the treasure and leave. You're out. The player in question couldn't argue...because he was using the argument of "It's just my character...that's what he would do...", so when the other players used the same thing, he was kinda without any sort of position to argue. IIRC, he probably has had this happen to him...maybe half a dozen times, total, over that 15+ years he's been playing with me. The first one or two times it happened he was "annoyed", but after that he kinda just accepted it.
Personally, I wouldn't. I don't DM with the intent of putting "appropriate challenges" in front of the PC's. I present the world, and let the chips fall where they may. I'd just keep DM'ing as if he was any other 'normal' PC. Eventually, however, the character will encounter his Achilles heel, and then die whimpering, with no hope of survival, like a fly caught on fly-paper. I would, however, make sure that everyone knows that I'm just the DM and don't care one way or the other. I'd point out how powerful his PC is...and I'd point out his weakness and that it's just a matter of time before something shows up that exploits that weakness. When it does, he's as good as dead. I would also, however, make the comment that Well, you guys are still adventuring with him...don't blame him for it. If you go to sleep in front of a rabid wolf, don't be surprise if it eats you during the night! That puts all the cards on the table; the 'problem characters player' knows everyone knows his character is OP and 'a psycho', and you state the thing everybody is thinking. All out in the open. The player can't then try and "hide behind" anything and claim innocence.
Begin with all the horrible, horrible consequences of "loosing" and letting the bad guy win. They "lost", bad guy "won". If there are no campaign consequences for such things, then...why care or even bother adventuring? If the world will "magically fall back to peace and harmony", then maybe future PC's should all just jump off a cliff and kill themselves... Well guys, looks like that evil necromancer has set up shop and is raising an army to kill the surrounding towns. We should all kill ourselves to prevent that.
I'd start with having 'known' bad guys actively avoid and even help the barbarian...I mean, the bad guy couldn't have planned this better! He now has a psychotic nigh-invulnerable damage-dealing-machine running amok killing off heroes... and he doesn't even have to life a finger to do it! He'd probably start spreading rumors of the barbarian "secretly working with him"...this may cause other would-be heroes to try and best him...and die in the process. If townsfolk start to shun him, all it takes is a drunk farmer to slap the barbarian, and then *poof!* ...the barbarian murders everyone in the tavern as well as the guardsmen that showed up to stop him. He'd become a wanted criminal in hours, and this would eventually get around to new PC's ears. When he shows up at the recruitment table, the PC's would be well within their 'rights' to just say "No f'in way! You're a bad guy man, sorry to break it to you. Don't call us, we'll call you..."Short of it is this: let the other PC's deal with it and make sure to have campaign consequences for his actions! Recently last year, that same player I mentioned? He played a dwarven barbarian (see a pattern?). We weren't even using Feats, but he managed to be quite tough, easily enough to kill just about any other PC in the group in one round, two tops. The character basically ended up becoming Chaotic Evil...and, rather than me put "appropriate challenges" in his way, I put innocent folks in his way...and then I had a CN bad guy "challenge him to do something". That something was worth of CE. I think it was something along the line of "kill the next three people you see in the street tonight" (it was night time), and I'll grant you any boon within my power. He took the offer. He walked outside to the smell of smoke and the glow of a fire from a home just across the street. An old woman and her grandson came out, hacking and coughing, screaming for help. :evilgrin: The look on the players face when he realized that he was going to have to cold-bloodily murder a grandmother and her grandson, in the street, when others were looking out their windows wondering what all the commotion was...well, it was priceless. He did it...killed them...and I think another townsfolk and two or three watch members. Then the player had the psychotic dwarf run off into the woods, never to be screen again. He made a new guy.
So...let the player dig his own grave, basically. If he is the type of person who enjoys watching his friends get pissed off, annoyed and hurt when playing a game with him that is supposed to be fun...well, I'd say you have bigger problems at your table than an OP barbarian...
^_^
Paul L. Ming
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Thank you for the advice guys, I'll be taking everything about the encounters and other advices into account. I already started concidering losing the losing a level penalty and even considered bumping the level 5s to level 6 or even 7 now that the barbarian will be level 8 by the soon to come end of the plotline. I've also informed them that from now on, it will be standard point array and feats, no more rolling.
The other players do seem to all have fun though, even with the deaths. They get really into the plots, compliment me on them (even the recent one) and get really nervous during stressful parts (such as when they infiltrated the boss' base). They rarely ever complain.
I have a feeling that after I'm done with this plotline I'll be taking a break from DMing anyway...it has drained me a bit and I haven't been a player in months (I miss it), it's just a shame that none of my players want/say they have time to DM. Guess a break from DnD in general it is.
I could not have made the grudge more clear actually. After they killed the Death Cleric's little brothers, he began harassing the whole party.
- When they came back home from an adventure, they found one of their maids had been killed and another beaten, both their left ears cut off (which was what they did to the Death Cleric's brothers as tokens of victory).
- Over the course of a few days, they found the severed ears of the maids, one on their front porch and the other inside their empty safe (after they came back from a day out of town, the safe was already empty).
- There were rumors about a group of orcs roaming around the area but they were said to vanish after the party came back to town.
- A package was found on their dinning room table, inside was the head of the surviving maid (who had quit her job) and a magical bomb that did not have enough power to kill any of the party members but destroyed the dinning room. It also had a note "Hello, killers."
- As they searched for the stalkers, an orc cast dominate person on the barbarian, forcing him to attack the warlock but intentionally stopped before dealing lethal damage (no intent to actually kill).
- They had to leave for an urgent mission and hired a group of adventurers to look after a pair of kids they had taken under their wing. I gave them a few choices of adventurer parties to hire and they picked a moderately strong one. When they came back, the orcs and the bodyguards were in battle, with two of the orcs dead, one of the adventurers dead and another KOed. The remaining orc and adventurer were in a hostage situation as the orc held the children at knife point. They solved it and captured the orc who they interrogated and discovered had been sent by the Death Cleric (first time they heard about him specifically) to torment them before he would arrive and kill them.
- They finally decided to take the fight to the Death Cleric, but the whole cursed sword thing happened. After dealing with the cursed sword, as they slept an assassin tried to kill the barbarian (ONLY surviving member of the original orc slaying party). The assassin would have never done enough damage to kill him, in one go, dropping him to little under half HP with the initial sneak attack. Plus he is a dwarf with advantage on saves vs poison. Once the sneak attack failed, the assassin took massive damage in just one round and retreated (what I already expected would happen).
- When they finally arrived at the boss, they found that he had dismissed his personal guard and that he had a divination caster keep an eye on them the whole time (reason why the boss always knew where they were). He explicitly told them that he dismissed the guards because he wanted to kill his brother's killers himself and make him a sacrifice to his God.
- After the boss was killed, he came back as revenant, continuing the fight. They rolled knowledge on his new undead form and with a good roll realized the undead of this kind came back to "life" with the sole purpose of killing someone...and he focused the barbarian. They quickly killed him as well, even if the barbarian was knocked unconscious for the first time in the campaign with no real risk of death seeing as the others had potions, healing spells and high initiative.
I could not had made it more clear that the Cleric of Death had a grudge against the barbarian and the rest of the original party members. This all happened over the course of a few weeks in-game. Yet the only thing he sees is that I was just gunning for his head and acted smug online about I tried to kill him with an assassin but he totally foiled me with his awesome.
The other players do seem to all have fun though, even with the deaths. They get really into the plots, compliment me on them (even the recent one) and get really nervous during stressful parts (such as when they infiltrated the boss' base). They rarely ever complain.
I have a feeling that after I'm done with this plotline I'll be taking a break from DMing anyway...it has drained me a bit and I haven't been a player in months (I miss it), it's just a shame that none of my players want/say they have time to DM. Guess a break from DnD in general it is.
I could not have made the grudge more clear actually. After they killed the Death Cleric's little brothers, he began harassing the whole party.
- When they came back home from an adventure, they found one of their maids had been killed and another beaten, both their left ears cut off (which was what they did to the Death Cleric's brothers as tokens of victory).
- Over the course of a few days, they found the severed ears of the maids, one on their front porch and the other inside their empty safe (after they came back from a day out of town, the safe was already empty).
- There were rumors about a group of orcs roaming around the area but they were said to vanish after the party came back to town.
- A package was found on their dinning room table, inside was the head of the surviving maid (who had quit her job) and a magical bomb that did not have enough power to kill any of the party members but destroyed the dinning room. It also had a note "Hello, killers."
- As they searched for the stalkers, an orc cast dominate person on the barbarian, forcing him to attack the warlock but intentionally stopped before dealing lethal damage (no intent to actually kill).
- They had to leave for an urgent mission and hired a group of adventurers to look after a pair of kids they had taken under their wing. I gave them a few choices of adventurer parties to hire and they picked a moderately strong one. When they came back, the orcs and the bodyguards were in battle, with two of the orcs dead, one of the adventurers dead and another KOed. The remaining orc and adventurer were in a hostage situation as the orc held the children at knife point. They solved it and captured the orc who they interrogated and discovered had been sent by the Death Cleric (first time they heard about him specifically) to torment them before he would arrive and kill them.
- They finally decided to take the fight to the Death Cleric, but the whole cursed sword thing happened. After dealing with the cursed sword, as they slept an assassin tried to kill the barbarian (ONLY surviving member of the original orc slaying party). The assassin would have never done enough damage to kill him, in one go, dropping him to little under half HP with the initial sneak attack. Plus he is a dwarf with advantage on saves vs poison. Once the sneak attack failed, the assassin took massive damage in just one round and retreated (what I already expected would happen).
- When they finally arrived at the boss, they found that he had dismissed his personal guard and that he had a divination caster keep an eye on them the whole time (reason why the boss always knew where they were). He explicitly told them that he dismissed the guards because he wanted to kill his brother's killers himself and make him a sacrifice to his God.
- After the boss was killed, he came back as revenant, continuing the fight. They rolled knowledge on his new undead form and with a good roll realized the undead of this kind came back to "life" with the sole purpose of killing someone...and he focused the barbarian. They quickly killed him as well, even if the barbarian was knocked unconscious for the first time in the campaign with no real risk of death seeing as the others had potions, healing spells and high initiative.
I could not had made it more clear that the Cleric of Death had a grudge against the barbarian and the rest of the original party members. This all happened over the course of a few weeks in-game. Yet the only thing he sees is that I was just gunning for his head and acted smug online about I tried to kill him with an assassin but he totally foiled me with his awesome.
I can see this working occasionally, but as a player, if I am not confident that the GM is going to fudge to keep me alive, I am going to be looking to retreat & take a long rest as soon as it seems that party resources are noticeably depleted. IME that is usually after 3 combat encounters at most. I'd rather be alive with a failed mission than dead and the mission failed anyway. I'm not at all confident that 6-8 combat encounters each and every day is consistent with an organic-feeling world. It also seems like potentially very sloggy.
Re wandering monsters - if these are weak they do encourage having several encounters before retreating, but rarely 6-8 IME. And there has to be somewhere to retreat to where no checks are rolled or the party never gets a long rest.
Intelligent enemies - not generally a reason for 6-8 encounters IMO. Usually intelligent enemies will want to mass all forces and attack at the same time (possibly in waves to soak up area-effect attacks), as this gives the best chance of victory.
mellored
Legend
Just make sure to toss the monk and warlock a bone if you do that. They are balanced around 2 short rests, if they don't get it, they suffer.
Also, you generally make casters more potent if you have fewer bigger battles.
But you generally stop short rests the same way you stop long rests.
