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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bawylie" data-source="post: 6775485" data-attributes="member: 6776133">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.</blockquote>

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