How many chumps can a Lvl 20 Barb take?

[FreeTheSlaves]

Regardless of circumstances we keep on coming up with pitiful numbers ranging from 800 to 30000, which is simply not enough to affect the forces that a 20th level character will face.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Well, I think you are looking at it all wrong.


The thousands of 1st level warriors hire a 20th level Artificer, who takes the field in round one and cast an Extended, Maxiumized and Empowered Timestop (he can do this cause he has many items that raise his spell craft to over 100 and Artificers can add feats to scrolls), then he proceeds to cast two minds on himself and then with the rest of his timestopped turns, he casts two empowered and maxiumized delayed blast fireballs a turn for 6 turns to be released when the time stop ends, this will do 75 hit points per ball, (assuming he makes his saving throw and a Artificer can make his DC saves too high for him to make but I'll give you the benifet of the doubt) doing 900 hit points of damage. Even if his concealment stops half the you take 450 (but I don't think the concealment would save you). Time stop ends and you die. You might get a few, but if the Artificer wins Initative (which he can also do easily cause he can get his DEX over 100, giving him the Initative all the time, but let's keep it simple) you don't kill anyting.

So there you have it, the pen is mightier than the sword, er, bow.

 

[der_kluge]

By my summation, the Barbarian kills 0 archers, or at best a half a dozen.

Why?

Round 1, 800 longbowman each shoot a sheaf arrow at a single man. Of those, only 20 miraculously hit, and those arrows which do hit, seem to not phase him at all. This guy is still smiling *and* has 20 arrows sticking out his chest, shoulders, and possibly head.

Round 2, The barbarian moves and manages to cleave and kill several individuals.

Round 3, the longbowman, at their full movement rate, drop their bows and head for the hills.

End of combat.

 

[azmodean]

Two minor problems with the original post. One, the avg HP would be 395. I think you did (max first die + con bonus + 20*(6.5 + con bonus)) instead of (max first die + con bonus + 19*(6.5 + con bonus)) not a big deal.
More importantly, if the barbarian rages right before he drops, he'll have 16 rounds of rage before it runs out, at which point my calculations say he drops to -40HP and dies. So the number in the original post is slightly too high. Also even if the number of attackers is adjusted to where he can finish them all off before he dies, he will still die when his rage wears off without serious healing (about 80HP worth).

Taking these into account, he can take on 627 enemy archers, and have one round of rage left afterwards. After the rage he is at about -4 hp, so he will most likely drop and then it's up to fate as to wether he stabilizes or not

I'd be wary of adding in fast healing, as it is none to easy to get ahold of for PC types. Having said that though, it does increase the amount of killing the barbarian can manage greatly
Even witout that though, the barbarian could just drink some ccw potions instead of raging and get the same effect. Once the number of enemy archers gets to be less than 100 or so they aren't doing that much damage to him anyway, so he can afford to take a quick break and drink a potion

 

[azmodean]

By my summation, the Barbarian kills 0 archers, or at best a half a dozen.

Why?

Round 1, 800 longbowman each shoot a sheaf arrow at a single man. Of those, only 20 miraculously hit, and those arrows which do hit, seem to not phase him at all. This guy is still smiling *and* has 20 arrows sticking out his chest, shoulders, and possibly head.

Round 2, The barbarian moves and manages to cleave and kill several individuals.

Round 3, the longbowman, at their full movement rate, drop their bows and head for the hills.

End of combat.

The original post was just looking a pure mechanics, but if you want to get into more resonable cause and effect, the barbarian has still "defeated" a force of 1,800 longbowmen by forcing them to scatter. (if they retreat together he can chase them down and eventually kill a large number of them, if they scatter they have become useless as a fighting force unless they have an elite ability to regroup, which I wouldn't attribute to lvl 1 warriors)

Regardless of circumstances we keep on coming up with pitiful numbers ranging from 800 to 30000, which is simply not enough to affect the forces that a 20th level character will face.

Actually if you disregard the rule that limits gaining xp from low-level sources, just 512 lvl 1 warriors is a cr19 encounter. 1024 warriors would be a cr21. 768 warriors would be cr20, which is about what the original post projects.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Actually if you disregard the rule that limits gaining xp from low-level sources, just 512 lvl 1 warriors is a cr19 encounter. 1024 warriors would be a cr21. 768 warriors would be cr20, which is about what the original post projects.

Well I wouldn't ignore the +/-8 CR vs average character level for awarding XP, as that is the default core rule but that is not in contention.

What you are alluding to I think is the doubling of # increases the EL by 2, but for CR <=1 this is explicitly excluded from the equation because doubling such numbers increase EL by 1 not 2. Further more the DMG states that at some point sheer numbers do not offset the low quality and even this subsystem breaks down.

Here is quick # breakdown.
EL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
# CR1 foes 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 etc...

The key to CR is the challenge using up resources, the magical 20% being the baseline. Given that CR is based upon a 4 person party & a barbarian would not reach 20th level without healing, can this be considered even a mild challenge if the barbarian get healed everytime he drops below 1/2 hps?

I'm inclined to believe that the only way a 20th level barbarian would be challenged by the above scenario was if the enemy numbers were infinite.

 

[RandomPrecision]

By my summation, the Barbarian kills 0 archers, or at best a half a dozen.

Why?

Round 1, 800 longbowman each shoot a sheaf arrow at a single man. Of those, only 20 miraculously hit, and those arrows which do hit, seem to not phase him at all. This guy is still smiling *and* has 20 arrows sticking out his chest, shoulders, and possibly head.

Round 2, The barbarian moves and manages to cleave and kill several individuals.

Round 3, the longbowman, at their full movement rate, drop their bows and head for the hills.

End of combat.

That's funny. And I'm not sure if it's more or less funny that barbarians get fast movement. Of course, if it's a dwarven barbarian, that puts us at normal human speed, but still...

 

[S'mon]

With this, I calculate a 20th level barb can completely take out an army of 714 guys. Um...yeah that's pretty epic

Your setup seems heavily biased in favour of the Barbarian though. In fact it reminds me of a real life case in WW2 where a single US machine-gunner wiped out an entire battalion of Japanese infantry attacking his position. Impressive, but only possible due to optimal circumstances.

You have the Barbarian equipped with at least PC-level gear - he's certainly better equipped than the 18th level PCs IMC - while the mooks have nothing. Why wouldn't mook War-1 archers have point blank shot + rapid shot, immediately doubling their fire rate? IMC high level PCs go to great lengths to avoid getting into missile duels with regiments of archers, I can easily do hundreds of hp damage/round using the RAW.

 

[S'mon]

BTW I have never seen a character anything like this IMC, he seems designed specifically for this scenario. A typical "archer" PC will not be a barbarian and will not likely be wearing heavy fortification plate. It's the combination of heavy fort plate, DR and Displacement (NB greater displacement only lasts a few rounds in 3.5) that gives this result.
If I were the archers' commander in this scenario I'd order them to build some pits and then maneuver around the barbarian, luring him into a pit if he followed. A dwarf barb in plate moves 20' so he's slower than my men; and if he moves his fire rate is greatly reduced. If he were blocking a critical point (eg bridge) I'd attack him with catapults & ballistae from beyond arrow range.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I think it'd be interesting if the barbarian is forced to use unarmed attacks... can they knock all the archers out before the first ones start recovering from the subdual damage?

What's the largest force they could 'supress'?

Think der_kluge's scenario is the way I'd play it.