DrunkonDuty
he/him
Power gaming is in the eye of the beholder.
I run a game of Pathfinder 1e for my wife. (It's our little home game for when we want to game with just the two of us.)
She runs 3 PCs. Every battle starts with: the bard drops a Haste spell and a Bardic Song, (at their level bard song is just a move equivalent action) the cleric casts Prayer, and then the barbarian Rages. EVERY battle. And it's fine. As others have said, there's ways to mitigate the barbarian's damage output. And then there's the times the bugger rolls a crit and does 230-ish damage to my BBEG and I cry "Dammit!" Such is life and gaming, there's ups and downs. It's all good.
BTW. @Greenfield, I think you've miscalculated the damage in your example in the OP. I'm pretty sure (haven't looked at 3.5 in a loooonnnnnggg time) that the power attack bonus for a 2-h weapon is 3x the attack penalty. I only mention because I hate for your player to miss out on some good damage.
I run a game of Pathfinder 1e for my wife. (It's our little home game for when we want to game with just the two of us.)
She runs 3 PCs. Every battle starts with: the bard drops a Haste spell and a Bardic Song, (at their level bard song is just a move equivalent action) the cleric casts Prayer, and then the barbarian Rages. EVERY battle. And it's fine. As others have said, there's ways to mitigate the barbarian's damage output. And then there's the times the bugger rolls a crit and does 230-ish damage to my BBEG and I cry "Dammit!" Such is life and gaming, there's ups and downs. It's all good.
BTW. @Greenfield, I think you've miscalculated the damage in your example in the OP. I'm pretty sure (haven't looked at 3.5 in a loooonnnnnggg time) that the power attack bonus for a 2-h weapon is 3x the attack penalty. I only mention because I hate for your player to miss out on some good damage.