| holdenjn |
So I’m running my friends through the Kingmaker campaign and we’ve advanced into the second book. The characters have all reached 5th level and things are going reasonably well. We have a Ranger, Druid, Sorcerer, Cleric/Monk and a Barbarian. Recently however, the Dwarf Barbarian is starting to cause problems.
This character is so tough and puts out so much damage that it’s difficult to stage meaningful combat encounters. He’s swiping at enemies with over a +15 to hit and inflicting 10-30 damage with each hit (or more if he's got Bull Strength on him). In addition he gets an Animal Fury bite attack that can deal out significant damage also. Thanks to his damage reduction and pool of 70+ hit points he can absorb damage all day. Worst of all is that he has the Diehard feat so that he stays in the fight until he dies. Before he could be knocked out of the fight and revived later so it wasn’t so bad. But now in order to stop him I have to kill him.
The nature of the Kingmaker campaign is that the PC’s may experience only one or two encounters on any given day. This means that the characters are less concerned with carefully managing their resources (such as rounds of rage per day) and are mostly “all in” with their best spells and abilities in every encounter.
Some of the things I’ve tried in the past to curtail this characters effectiveness: swarm attackers, attacking with mostly ranged enemies, grappling monsters and of course magic. I’m running out of tricks though.
Does anyone have any advice for dealing with this character?