How to stop a Warden?

[Miio]

FWIW, painting the warden's behavior in the best light I can (and bearing in mind that that doesn't hit him taking credit for shared kills), I have to wonder if he's trying to be more "defendery" as a reaction to your claims here that (effectively) he was a glory hound who didn't care about defending.

The two stage beholder/trap encounter sounds like a lot of fun--combined skill challenge/combat encounters are (when used as bossfights and other uncommon encounters) some of the more fun encounters in this game, and this one sounds like it worked well [although...did warlock end up being effective? Not sure whether his disabling the ward ended up ultimately contributing to the fight).

How many players do you have? Between Warlord, Warlock, and Warden, that's a lot of W's!

The Warlock's efforts kept the Warden and Paladin from dying. I reworked the Ward to hit at the start of a players turn if they were within three of the Ward. The Beholder was part of the placed around the artifact, and was not affected by the Ward. On a hit, the ward does 2d8 and throws the player to the ceiling and back down to the ground. The are supposed to take 210 for the falling and slamming. The player is then prone.

Edit: I have 4 players. The lineup is now as follows: Warden, Paladin, Warlock, Ranger. However, my Ranger is switching to Seeker tonight.

 

[Miio]

Here's a question for you as the DM: IS the Warden more powerful than the other characters? If this player is an optimizer and the others aren't, it's quite possible that the Warden is on a higher power curve than the rest of the party.

This is a problem for a group that's going to have fun together for the long term. I talked about that in this blog post. If you have one character that's far more powerful or far less powerful than the rest of the group, it hurts the group's fun. Either the overpowered character is never challenged (it sounds like this is where you've been in the past), or the rest of the party is getting destroyed. Either way, it's a problem.

If I run into this in my groups, I talk to the outlier players and try to bring things in line. Combat should be fun for the whole table (it's not everything, but it's certainly part of the fun), and that's hard to have happen if one character is out of line with the power level of the party.

Now, maybe I'm reading your situation wrong and it's not that the Warden is legitimately more powerful than the rest of the party - he just THINKS he is - but if he really is above their level, you might want to consider talking to him to see if he can rejigger things to bring his character in line.

My theory on the Warden is that my low rolls for most of the campaign so far has gone to his head. He IS a tough character, but he is not unkillable. Nor is he actually more powerful than anyone else. His massive HP pool is pretty much a class feature. He isn't OP, he is a Defender that I can't seem to hit, mostly due to my poor luck. He watches my rolls, too. SO, I can't fudge to at least hit him once an encounter.

 

[eriktheguy]

Well that sucks. If you're lucky, you can talk to the other players and they can support you in convincing him to smarten up, or giving him the boot. Having to do that on your own sucks.

 

[Iron Sky]

Attention Miio's Player!

• Get a Hammer Shield and a hammer! It will give you +1 AC each round you hit something!
• Don't neglect your NADs! Your fort should be pretty good, but if you can do anything to raise your Ref and Will then do so!
• If you are human, get some feats to increase your saving throws.
• Second Wind every fight. If you are not a dwarf, save your action points for second wind!
• Form of Winter's Herald -> Inspiring Fortitude -> Bear's Endurance
• At Paragon, retrain a feat to a fighter multiclass, then take the fighter paragon path Dreadnought (+10 max hp, burn 10hp to automatically end save end effect, lots of damage resistance)
• Congrats you are now hilariously unkillable.

As the DM of the warden this post is based off of, I can verify Sanzuo's final statement. I knew it was a hard fight in paragon when his Warden went bloodied.*

*Caveat: MM3 and related damage expressions came out after that campaign went on hiatus.

 

[darkwing]

The defenders are easier to take down once you've eliminated the strikers and the leaders have used up their healing powers.

 

[Iron Sky]

It's hard to get to the leaders and strikers when your defender has an aura-2 of difficult terrain around him, a pile of powers the prone and/or slow, and the strikers are an assassin that just teleports behind the warden at the first hint of danger and a barbarian that's almost as tough to take down as the warden...

 

[Mort]

My own take, which may just sum up prior posts:

In game solutions for in game problems: If the character is tough to kill and you want to provide a bigger challenge, plenty of good advise upthread.

Out of game solutions for out of game problems: If the player is being difficult and/or a jerk talk to the player. An in game solution here will not work and will likely just frustrate the other players.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Kudos to Miio for the Beholder encounter... sounds like that was a lot of fun.

I agree with all those who have stated that it sounds like a player problem, not a character problem, and that communication between the various parties is the only way to deal with it. Ultimately, if things don't improve, you may have to ask him to leave your group.

I would also recommend that you get the other players to explain to this guy themselves how his behaviour robs their fun. Its one thing coming from the DM, and another to find out that the DMs concerns are actually held by all the other players. I would have the DM talk to the guy first, though...