Recently I have been encountering a curious trend in my Mythic Pathfinder game. One that I worry will become problematic without my addressing it.
One player out of the group plays a powerhouse of a barbarian champion who wields a double ended sword to devastating effect when he "fleet charges" across the field, occasionally downing the party's major foes in one or two turns.
He enjoys this. Personally, I enjoy this too: It's part of the reason why I added Mythic Rules, so that my players could enjoy pulling off ridiculous/incredible feats.
At the moment, I believe that the other players find <some> enjoyment from this, and they still have moments to shine as well by doing similarly incredible stunts.
My concern is that this routine will become repetitive, and that as the player characters scale in power, the barbarian player (who creates his characters very intelligently, and tends to have the best grasp of combining different elements of the rules) will dominate combat situations to the point where the other players may feel out-classed or "left behind".
I should point out that my group and I are generally mature, friendly people who are able to give and receive criticism gracefully and tactfully. I don't want to rob anyone of enjoying combat, feeling useful as part of the group, or of feeling that I am punishing them for using the rules effectively, including our barbarian.
That being said, there are some possible changes I'm looking to implement to help balance the scales, and I'd like some feedback.
1. Increasing the MP costs for "Fleet Charge" and other Path Abilities
This is a rule change that Legendary Games suggests in "Mythic Hero's Handbook", essentially adding a scale of increasing cost for certain path abilities and mythic spells rather than simply spending 1 MP for anything and everything. You want to fleet charge as a standard action? 1 MP. As a move action? 2 MP. As a swift action? 3 MP. This would mean the barbarian can still enjoy sprinting across an open field to eviscerate his enemies, but he might not be able to do so quite as often.
2. Banning "Fleet Warrior"
"Fleet Warrior" is a path ability that allows a character to move and make a full attack in the same turn. Essentially a "Fleet Charge" without an MP cost. To keep rule change "1" above relevant, I feel like this is a necessary change to include.
3. Changing up encounter terrains, dynamics and "goals"
Barbarian can't eviscerate an enemy if he can't reach them without help, and adding some additional goals or time constraints serves to add challenge for the entire party. Additionally challenges that don't revolve around combat ability can also help other party members feel useful - if not integral - to the party's success... Though I could use some suggestions on how to implement this.
4. Buffing up the enemies.
Truth be told: I haven't thrown that many mythic foes against the party, though they still have held their own against the ones they have faced.
I want to implement this with the philosophy that Pathfinder is built to favor the players' chances of winning - but victory should not feel trivial, especially in a mythic game.
Important foes, I have thought, should not only have maxed HP, but receive double the recommended hit points from their mythic tiers, possibly more...
They need smaller mooks, to help divide the party's action economy.
Increases to a major foes offenses should be minimal: If the foe can take down one of the players with a single attack, then they are generally too powerful.
I am also considering giving most important foes an additional "true" damage resistance of 10 or 15, depending on how challenging they are meant to be, along with varying levels of fast healing or regeneration, depending on the circumstances.
Over all, I feel that our barbarian hits foes 85% of the time, for massive damage while remaining difficult to hit himself. I want to keep fights interesting for the entire party without punishing anyone.
All of my players are reasonable, and they have so far embraced my suggested changes positively - but now I'd like your opinion, fellow players.
What are your thoughts?
Don't Nerf the Barbarian. Just include more enemies. That way the Barbarian can delete a few every round while still leaving enough of the encounter for everyone else.
Another option is to simply speak to your barbarian and ask him not to let it become to much of an issue.
Voice your concerns to him.
Tell him how epic his character's damage is but show that you are concerned he may be so good he is leaving little for the other players to do.
Ask him to help you make sure everyone gets to have fun.
I would do as J4RH34D suggests. Talk to the player ask him to maybe town it down a little, to not go after the BBEG immediately. Explain that with his level of power it's hard for you to build encounters that challenge the rest of the party but aren't too easy for you.
If your player is mature as you say, then they should be able to self police and pull back some to help you out.
You use different foes, where melee has less meaning. Presenting a barbarian with straight melee mobs is always in the barbarians favor.
Here are some of the options to vary combat (and you don't use them all the time, of course), some of which you already wrote down:
- flying foes, like a group of sorcerers who area bomb the party
- difficult terrain that prevents charging
- you did not mention the level of the party; if they are high level, consider taking a look at the Epic Level Handbook from 3.5 for appropriate foes; I can assure you from my own experience that those work fine; another nice source for monsters are the D&D Basic Rules (the ancient ruleset from before AD&D which went up to level 36), which contain some unusual monsters
- I generally don't buff up monsters, because it makes spellcasters even more insignificant than they already are; it is fine for a melee to devastate something of his own level imho
- speaking of casters, use more of them as foes; they are too weak in Pathfinder, except for the psionics handbook (which is 3rd party), but they can be used as support; life oracles, sorcerers with nasty buffs (displacement, fly, stoneskin) or straight nukers can be a danger when combined with something else; a group of archers supported by a healer and a sorcerer are way more of a challenge than on their own
- casters can also alter the battlefield with one spell, so that can restrict the barbarian on the fly
- use enemies with abilities that require saving throws that are HD based (those based on spell level are too easy to make), and which will come into play at least once; something that can charm the barbarian to make him kill his partners is not nice but occasionally OK (a well placed illusion may suffice to achieve this)
- use battlefields with hazards on them: hidden pitfalls (it is enough if he falls down, depth does not matter), poisonous plants with thorns, debris blocking straight paths, etc.; your NPCs should place themselves intelligently if they have warning and make use of their surroundings (an illusionist covering up such hazards has already achieved your purpose, even if he is no real danger)
- make use of cover and light levels; those miss chances add up; and I don't believe the PCs have all a lightsource or darkvision - and even if they have, those have short ranges; attacks coming from out of the dark (shooting at the light source works fine) from unknown positions also handicap movement
Anything that allows movement plus fullround actions/attacks is extremely powerful and should probably be banned or restricted. There is a reason why every melee tries to get it in some form. It ruins many assumptions about melee, if you can do that. But I prefer to do banning stuff beforehand, not after someone picks it up, since that often causes bad feelings.
A possible option here is to have your encounters start at longer distances and with more ranged combat from your side. The distance is long enough if it cannot be crossed even with such abilities.
Damage is literally the only thing a martial character can do. Don't punish them for doing their job effectively. ESPECIALLY not in a Mythic campaign, where the Barbarian could, if he wanted to, be using Mythic Vital Strike with a Foe-Biting Legendary Weapon, making it an easy one-shot against literally anything you could throw at him.
Fleet Warrior is thus the least of your concerns, especially since the Barbarian could just as easily gain access to Pounce through his own class. But as long as he's relying on Iterative attacks, he isn't doing nearly as much damage as he could be with the combo I mentioned up above.
Your best case scenario is simply to add more enemies to fight. This is true even in non-Mythic campaigns. Action economy is king in Pathfinder. A single Big Bad Evil Guy doesn't cut it as a boss against multiple party members. Even they need respectably strong minions if they want to be a threat. And the more enemies you throw at the party, the less it matters when one specific person deletes a few.
Make it so each enemy is important too. If there's a BBEG that needs to go down, maybe have one of his subordinates be a Bard/Mythic Marshal, buffing him and his team a significant amount. Then have another one be a debuff-focused spellcaster that can control the battlefield. If your combats aren't linear beat-em-ups, then it's difficult for the Barbarian to get in there and beat them up.
Speaking of which, spellcasters. If you aren't sending many mythic enemies at your group, your spellcasters should be able to easily dominate encounters if they know what they're doing. And as they level up, this will become true even if they don't know what they're doing. A charging Barbarian can be stopped by distance and difficult terrain. Nothing can stop a Wizard/sorcerer with the right spells.
The biggest piece of advice I can give for running a mythic game is to make sure to stretch your adventuring day. My players will often go a full level (or more) without an opportunity to rest, which is important because it means they occasionally run the risk of running out of their mythic power (and other resources). Spending 2 or 3 mythic power in a single round might be ok in high stakes boss fights, but that doesn't leave much for the other 8-15 fights they need to handle before they get a chance to replenish.
As a side note of that, the weak fights (the ones that are CR ~= APL, or even 1 lower), made up of several smaller enemies can become more important. A spell or mythic power used up there is one less available later on during the tougher fights. As the GM, you control the pace of the game, and the pace drives how important resource management is.
Bonus tip:
Try to occasionally add non-standard encounters. Having some encounters where the barbarian can just mow down high power targets is great, but giving an objective beyond just kill all the bad guys can make for fun fights and engage the whole table. As an example, I ran a module once where each round a device spawned a new enemy (with a stacking +1 to all rolls and AC). The party knew that the machine needed to be disabled, but didn't know that the supply of enemies was endless. They spent more than 10 rounds destroying the enemies before their "unhittable" paladin suddenly started getting hit, and they started missing. The whole combat dynamic suddenly shifted as they worked together to shut the thing down before they were overwhelmed. That type of encounter can be really fun and memorable when used sparingly, but remember not to overdo it or it becomes a drag.