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Message: <blockquote data-quote="maggot" data-source="post: 2755510" data-attributes="member: 1005">The specific situation was with huge giants that have 15' reach.  The initiative went wizard, cleric, archer, barbarian, giants.  Not unusual except the cleric usually goes last.  The wizard casts an empowered fireball and a quickened fireball (thanks to a metamagic rod).  The cleric casts a empowered flame strike.  The giants don't have that good of reflex saves, and can't hold up to the pounding so at least one died.  The archer picks off another.  The barbarian moves forward.  He doesn't have quick draw so he doesn't want to draw his bow and then switch later to axe, so he readies to attack.  The remaining giants charge.  But the barbarian is 15' away from the giants, so the readied action is useless.  The wizard flies and casts, the cleric stays on the ground and pound the giants with more area of effect spells, the archer snipes away taking out wounded giants.  The barbarian moves up to attack and gets an attack of opportunity for the trouble.  One giant uses awesome blow to send the barbarian 10' away, another pounds the prone barbarian.  Giants try to grap the cleric but without improved grab, fail due to the attack of opportunity.  The wizard is flying to far overhead, so a giant readies a bolder against a spell.  Wizard goes, bolder misses (giants have bad ranged attack rolls), spells kill more giants.  Cleric casts on defensive, more giants die.  Archer stays in back and picks off more giants.  Barbarian gets up and moves up to giant.  Giants go: awesome blow, barbarian saves, another awesome blow, barbarian sent sailing no full attack next round either.  Wizard, cleric, and archer finish off the giants.Pretty typical for a fight lately in my game.  The barbarian is an after thought or a speed bump.  SR makes the combat longer because it makes about half the spells fail, so it kind of doubles the hit points of creatures against spells.  Energy resistance is also an issue for spellcaster, but it penalizes flaming weapons and the like.  But creatures with SR and Energy resistance tend to be demons and devils that also have annoying DR to slow down the melee guy (at least to change weapons), and have spell like abilities that outright stop the melee guy.All total, I think the melee barbarian guy is a victim of a combination of poor personal tactics (readying against 15' reach), poor group tactics (the cleric and wizard almost never cast spells on him), suboptimal feat selection (should have quick draw at least), and maybe a situation problem (the current set of opponents).  I'll have to check his equipment level.Thanks for all the replies.</blockquote>

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