Overpowered Level 2 Barbarian Melee?

[Shivian]

Currently I'm running a Pathfinder campaign with four characters who all have (admittedly) fairly high stats (stupid rolling, ugh!) and usually do okay (character sheets here). We're presently running Rise of the Runelords (currently in the Catacombs of Wrath), and formally ran the Beginner Box's adventure which gifted the team with the +2 Greatsword (+3 against dragons) from it's end-game reward (which the Barbarian now utilizes, though we fudged it and made it "small" sized vs "medium" sized as the Beginner Box had it).

However, as noted in the sheets, the Barbarian can commit some serious melee damage, which often leaves the combat feeling unbalanced for the other players, and me feeling a bit frustrated as a DM when I see a CM 2 or CM 3 enemy get cut in half with a single swing from his sword.

As I'm new to Pathfinder & GMing I was curious what solutions are available for me to help ensure that the Barbarian isn't just wiping the floor with everything, and the rest of the team doesn't just sit back and just wait until he's finished killing everything (or have to deal with appropriately powerful monsters for the Barbarian, but overpowered monsters against the rest of the party).

Any thoughts?

EDIT: updated the post to properly name the Longsword a Greatsword (doh!) and denote how we modified it so that it became a S sized, rather than a M sized, weapon.

[Duiker]

1. Swarms. Barbarian is essentially useless, gets the AoE people involved.

2. Mobs. At 2nd level, he is hitting once per round no matter what. If there are ten other CR1s someone has to do something. Especially if you use intelligent enemies who hit you from both sides at once.

3. Spellcasters: hammer that will save.

4. Ranged: a bunch of CR1's are shooting short bows from the top of a barricaded tower. Barbarian can charge in and try to break the door, get in, etc. But those arrows are going to keep coming in the mean time.

5. Terrain: take away charge lanes.

Don't take away what the barbarian does, or explicitly target him, but there are a lot more challenging things in combat than just putting a pile of melee-fighting hitpoints in front of your party.

[XMorsX]

Low lvl two-handling barbarian is indeed like that. It is supposed to be thought and after some lvls he usefulness will drop. Other than, you can modify the encounters so that there is difficult terrain or a caster with battlefield controling spells, so that the barbarian cannot just charge and smack your baddies.

Also remember that at low lvls PCs are vulnerable too, if your barbarian does not one-shot the enemy he possibly risks death from an (un)lucky critical.

[tkul]

A +2 weapon on a level 2 character is kinda rediculous for starters. That said RotRL starts you with a bunch of goblins as enemies. Those are supposed to go squish when you hit them and even a properly geared barbarian is basically kill or miss against them. I'm curious as to why the halfling barbarian isn't taking oversized weapon penalties for using the bastard sword (you said longsword above but 1d10 19-20/x2 is a bastard sword) which is two handed for a medium sized character or one handed with exotic weapon proficiency. That would curb some of it but honestly I wouldn't sweat it too much the power curve on pathfinder is usually in the hero's favor for the first few levels until you get tons of CR to work with. Try having you intelligent creatures use tactics, flank, dirty tricks (even with the aoo), aid another. They are sentient creatures they can do more than walk up and swing.

[The Rot Grub]

Isn't the sword from the Beginner Box a medium sized +1 dragon bane longsword? So it isn't +2. If you changed it to a medium bastard sword then the halfling should be unable to wield it because it's an oversized two-handed weapon. If you made it a small sword then its damage die should go down.

Oh, and I agree with what everyone said.

For some reason I can't see your character sheets right now, but remember that Paizo designs it's adventure paths with 15 point buy in mind, without any treasure outside what is rewarded in the AP. So you'll want to be adjusting encounters upward anyway.

[dunebugg]

Low level 2H character do that, like XMorsX pointed out. They tend to taper off pretty quick as enemies HP begin to rise. Bruisers are the early game stars, but your Sorc (with proper spell selection) will start to shine at level 6.

Because you're new to both Pathfinder and GMing, I would not recommend modifying encounters. You'll likely end up accidentally killing your party.

Focus more on using good tactics. But also try to play to the enemies tactics, too. If you saw a lightly-armored target swinging a sword chopping all your buddies in half, you would likely try to stay away - use ranged or magic on them instead of engaging in melee.

Runelords can be pretty lethal as is. Here are some tips for the catacombs.

RotRL stuff:

The goblin in there can be a melee beast, but dont forget that he has a breath attack that can nauseate targets in a line. It's reflex and fort to save against it, so it's not like your Barb will fail but theres a chance.

Erylium is where your party might struggle. Have her remain flying the entire time - her fast healing and DR will make her pretty tanky unless your party can get her within melee reach. Use Summon Monster before Hold Person. Ray of Enfeeblement will make your STR characters very sad.

Your party will begin to feel the lack of real healing right away. Make sure your druid is only casting as many Cures as they have prepared.

Something to remember as well: know the limitations of magic that your party can cast. Color Spray works out to 15ft with certain HD thresholds. And important to remember is that Charm Person effectively can't be used in combat.

If you're still having trouble past level 3-4 with the party, post in the Runelords section for some advice (or browse it for ideas).

[Cyrad]

Remember that the entire point of the barbarian is to end combats quickly. If he doesn't end the combat quickly, the barbarian will burn out and could potentially die. Deal with the barbarian by presenting foes that don't fight directly in melee. Use ranged fighters or sneaky little guys that use terrain to their advantage. Let the enemies be elusive, which will make them all the more satisfying when the barbarian finally gets to cleave them in two.

[Shivian]

Once again you guys are INSANELY AMAZING!!! the passion and swiftness to which you help other Pathfinder'ers makes me so insanely happy to be playing this game. Thank you all so much for your advice!

EDIT: updated the original post to properly name the Longsword a Greatsword (doh!) and denote how we modified it so that it became a S sized, rather than a M sized, weapon.

[Umbranus]

The ranger would deal the same (more or less) amount of damage with a +2 greatsword. Perhaps even more.
Let the martials shine while they can. The times when magic breaks the world come early enough.

[tkul]

Cyrad wrote:

Remember that the entire point of the barbarian is to end combats quickly. If he doesn't end the combat quickly, the barbarian will burn out and could potentially die. Deal with the barbarian by presenting foes that don't fight directly in melee. Use ranged fighters or sneaky little guys that use terrain to their advantage. Let the enemies be elusive, which will make them all the more satisfying when the barbarian finally gets to cleave them in two.

Yeah the fighting retreat is the bane of nova parties that jus thrown down everything they have at once. String your encounters out. Have your creatures fall back from disadventagous fights to prepared defensive positions and let your barbarians/spellcasters that just rage/nuke the first thing they see into ground blow their load before the counter attacknlands. If the setup would have the party fight 5,small to medium sized battles and they're just going hog wild let something warn the other encounters so they can group up and counter attack. Flipping junk into the hallways gives you difficult terrain and cover that the defenders can use to wear down the party.

As for modifying the sword, that's the problem. 2d6 down sized is 1d8 not 1d10, 2d8 goes to 1d10. A medium longsword is already a small great sword basically.

[I3igAl]

Umbranus wrote:

The ranger would deal the same (more or less) amount of damage with a +2 greatsword. Perhaps even more.

Let the martials shine while they can. The times when magic breaks the world come early enough.

Jep your Ranger would hit harder than that angry halfling with that stats, if he was a Two-Handed Weapon Wielder. The halfling could be much stronger. Barbarians are strong at low levels. This one shouldn't be overpowered though.

I also agree: Use bigger groups of low monsters. This way if everything will get one shot, it won't make much of a difference. If you go for his Will save don't do so too often. It's not fun for the player to be taken out of an entire battle.

[Zerbe]

Hi,
I'm playing a greatsword paladin in our RotRL campaign and we just finished the catacombs of wrath

Usually if I hit something it dies and our other members feel quite weak when it comes to damage.

catacombs of wrath spoiler:

We just finished the fight against the quasit and cleared the catacombs. Our DM let us roll will saves which might get problematic for the barbarian , I don't know what a fail would do so. another thing is his AC in comparison to our Group (rolled stats) it is quite low and we used a lot of resources to clear the catacombs (my LoH, druid heal, potion).
I think the quasit fight will be a challenge in our encounter that little thing was super sneaky and annoying and it's summons were a challenge as well.
I would use the spells which target the will save against the barbarian (maybe someone else can tell you which spells they are , I am just a Player)

Another thing is that we played the beginner box as well , but we remade our characters so that we didn't keep any loot from it, and I am not sad about it. We don't have a lot of cash or any real Magic items yet. So we try to get equipment with diplomacy and roleplay (thanks father Zantus for our holy water). Maybe the longsword (which my paladin had as well in the beginner adventure) makes things a bit unbalanced ESPECIALLY if they are going to sell it, if I remember the value it was quite high , so that you could purchase many useful stuff.

As others already suggested I would target the barbarian with some arrows and sneaky stuff or difficult terrain. My paladin had the same problem as well.

[bfobar]

My best advice for a gm is to go on here and read some of the advice threads on tactics. You can get a lot more mileage out of your monsters if you run them intelligently, setting up flanks, grappling the hard hitters, falling back and regrouping, etc.

If you try to start customizing the monsters to make them tougher, you may accidentally build a party wiping hand grenade.

Also, look up tucker's kobolds for inspiration.