Power Attack Woes :(

S'mon said:
I think it helps fighters compete with arcane casters, who tend to dominate battles at all levels IME with their area-effect attacks. It does overshadow other melee styles though.

3.5 Power Attack does a good job of pulling up one 2-handed weapon fighting into the two 1-handed weapons efficiency range, but shield users are still getting the short end. If they printed them, I put a pile of "sword & board" oriented feats into Five Nations. Breland is just plain too warm to always be running around in heavy plate, so I tried to present them as being much more skillful in their shield use to keep alive :).
 

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Morgenstern said:
3.5 Power Attack does a good job of pulling up one 2-handed weapon fighting into the two 1-handed weapons efficiency range, but shield users are still getting the short end.

Well, D&D's approach for shield-users was to simply make the shield another type of off-hand weapon for two-weapon wielders, and with a few spikes attached it's easily one of the best choices.

And shields are great even just for their defensive value The AC bonus a good shield provides can make a huge difference. But once again, you've got to avoid the low-magic DM"s, because a shield does need some magical bonuses.
 

My own opinions on your problem..

It appears to me that most of the posters here are right. Your probably favoring a type of combatant that your Barbarian is easily able to slaughter, opponents with comparatively low AC or low HP. In general, for any given situations, same inputs will always result in the same outputs.

Now for wild guess work on my part.

Assumption 1: The problem is not with the enemy leaders, its with the enemy front line. The cannon fodder is getting mopped up too quickly by the barbarian to provide an adequate challenge.

Assumption 2: While using different opponents could work, the campaign situation calls for contnued use of this sort of cannon fodder. So if your adventure started with the players going after say, an ogre village, you cannot just switch to hill giants mid stream without breaking stuff. Also, if you, like myself, favor using swarms of lower HD creatures instead of higher HD creatures, upping the difficulty of the cannon fodder is a problem, and hard to do without slaughtering your players outright.

So here are my ideas for getting around your problem, given my incomplete knowledge of the situation.

1) Remove the Weapon. A well placed Sunder, or Shatter spell (if non magical weapon), would put your player in a bad situation. A Disarm from one opponent with another holding is action to pick up the weapon once its disarmed will put yoru barbarian in trouble if he has no adequate backup weapon. Casting command to 'Drop' could work also.

2) Create situational advantages. Set up ambushes where you can attack from the top of a cliff or castle wall. Any situation where he has to do something other then attack you or risk being killed will work. It works even better if your monsters can prevent him from getting close enough to attack.

3) Engage at Range. If the barbarian likes Melee, then dont engage in melee. Sun Tzu, in 'The Art of War' said only a fool attacks strenght with strength. If you cannot stand up toe to toe, then dont try. A two handed weapon is not so fearsome from a few hundred feet out. Even using Spring Attack or Ride By attack is better then staying toe to toe and eating a full attack from the party tank. Better yet, engaging at a distance with missile weapons with archers who attack / move away every turn will keep him busy. You can even extend this with the following tip.

4) Tactical Withdrawl. Also called running away. The best feat for any enemy you want to keep around is Run. When he rages, run the hell away, and return when he settles down and hit him again. If you put your opponents on mounts with mounted archery, you can keep away and keep hitting him. This will also get past those pesky buff spells.

5) Run and Re-enforce. When I am using humanoid opponents, I will make a point of having one opponent keep back, and use the Hide skill to keep out of sight. If his side loses, he runs for help. Keeping a horn handy works as a very good non-magical signal. Adding extra opponents mid fight will catch players off guard.

Things to Avoid if Possible:

1) Dont rely on a single high AC / high HP opponent to neutralize the Barbarian. A single target will get dumped on and destroyed very fast. Even if he has cannon Fodder support, he will be singled out, and the cannon fodder will likley just get mopped.

2) Dont have everyone dog pile the barbarian. If you have all the opponents dog pile the barbarian, your other party members will just nail him. Your not trying to kill the barbarian, you trying to keep him from wiping out your encounters.

3) Dont Nerf the Barbarian / Power Attack. Changing rules mid stream just to counter an overly successful player choice will only piss off your player. He probably knew better then you did that the power attack combo would work, and used his feats accordingly. Given a choice between adapting your players to fit your campaign, or adapting your campaign to fit your players, always adapt your campaign.

One last, very specific suggestion, assuming your party is about 7th level, and you are determined to dog pile your barbarian.

Set up an ambush encounter with a good number of Trolls. (Good number meaning enough to challenge the party). Get into melee before your magic users cook them. Make certain that a troll grapples the Barbarian. With regeneration, it can afford to eat the AoO. Once grappled, your barb cannot use his two handed weapon, and the troll grappling can still gnaw on him. And another troll can simply whale on him with his reduced AC. You will probably easily put the barbarian to 0 Hp, and the party mage cannot fireball the troll to prevent regeneration without cooking the Barbarian.

And if your really evil, do this near a cliff and have the grappling troll carry the barb to the cliff edge and leap so they both take falling damage. Trolls heal.

END COMMUNICATION
 

S'mon said:
I think it helps fighters compete with arcane casters, who tend to dominate battles at all levels IME with their area-effect attacks.

I don't know about that. I think it is a distinction: Against few enemies, the fighter types can very well outclass the arcanists, but said arcanists don't care about numbers. They do their d6/level on one enemy or a dozen.

In our first 3e Campaign, I played the fighter type, and I regularly did much more damage than our wizard against single opponents. And I was playing a bladesinger, so one handed longsword only, and 3.0 haste was there so that wizard could use two spells per round (and he was very much into evocation). He used to complain about it very much.
 

anything I think may be lowly AC's gets a PA 3. If I hit, I bump it to a PA4. If you are throwing tons of low armored creatures at the half-orc barbie, of COURSE he will kill them in one shot.
 

Felon said:
And shields are great even just for their defensive value The AC bonus a good shield provides can make a huge difference. But once again, you've got to avoid the low-magic DM"s, because a shield does need some magical bonuses.


I run a lowish-magic game, but even at standard magic levels PCs have maybe +1 shield per 3 or 4 points of BAB - which is +6 dmg 2h, so 2h PA is still better IMO.

eg: An 8th level PC has maybe a +2 shield, 4 points higher AC. With 2h weapon he can do +16 damage, 1h only +8.
 

another factor is the glass jaw of he barbarian, IMC they tend to having a very low AC and they go down like a house of cards. Of course I am a low magic DM and while this makes the barbarian do more damage than others, but it limits the mithril fullplate that is avalible.
The barbarian needs lots more healing and tend to get trashed in frontline combat.
 

Playing the low magic game tends to limit the ACs of opponents, which helps the power-attack barbarian, it's true. However, the low magic game also really hurts thse same characters in comparison with the spellcasters in the group (and also NPC casters, of course). Without the availability of Cloaks of Resistance, Rings of Energy Resistance, and the like, there is essentially nothing the barbarian can do to protect himself from the effects of incoming spells.

If it really bugs you that the power attack barbarian is wading through foes, have the NPC cleric hit him with a Heightened Hold Person, or Command, or similar spell. At 7th level, he only has a +2 Will save (+4 in rage), and probably doesn't have a very high Wisdom. So, he's in for a world of hurt when targetted with those spells.

It's very unfortunate, but decoupling the components from the rules from one another does wierd things to the balance of the game. Straying too far from the recommended wealth level by character level guidelines can play havoc, especially at high levels.
 

Felon said:
Oh how the worm turns. There was a time during 3.0 that folks regularly whinged about the "uberness" of two-weapon fighting, stating that the math bore out how the wielder of a two-handed weapon just couldn't keep up.

This confuses the #@!!# out of me.

I've never ever heard anyone at any time claim 2-weapon fighting was "uber" in 3.0. Never, not once, never.

3.5 did a lot to make 2-weapon fighting less feat-intensive (i.e. power it up), and it still is clearly and lamely sub-par to vanilla greatsword users. It was far worse in 3.0, when it was a low-damage dealing feat-sink.

Seriously, I think you must have confused something here.
 

There is definitely a shock value to watching a character like that tear up the opposition, but like others have said, it's not as scary as it might look. A good answer might be a skilled fighter with a bunch of single combat feats - disarms/trips and the weapons to use them... could prove rather frustrating for mr ragey.


However, I feel a lot of these answers are trying to fight fire with petrol...

Could give the character a really tough challenge:

Like walking through town in a dress. Without killing anyone.

Or a crossword.

Or even writing their name out.
 

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