Spellcasters taking the spotlight

[Luna_Mayflower]

I'm sure I can't be the first person to talk about this, but there is a bit of a problem with my adventuring party. The player who plays a Barbarian/Beloved of Valarian seems to often be only scraping the top of the monster's hp, before the spellcasters come in with Prismatic Sprays, Disintegrates and others.

My question is this: What can be done help a Barbarian combatant aid as much to the fight as the artillery of 15th level casters?

Thanks for any help.

[JDL]

Welcome to the endgame, where spellcasters have enough daily spells and spell selections to make most melee based combat meaningless.

In the early game your barbarian would likely shine, with his high BAB, oodles of hit points and the ability to deal damage every round. The spellcasters on the other hand had a limited range of spells and few spells per day. The early game favors the melee.

Once you reach the double digit caster levels though, the game changes. Spellcasters get some very nice save or die spells, and enough daily spells to spam the lower level utility spells with abandon.

If you're looking to get your barbarian into the action, try to convince the spellcasters to spend some of their daily spells on enhancing your combat abilities. A barbarian with Enlarge Person, Heroism, Protection from Evil, Blur, Fly, etc. is going to deal a lot of damage and doesn't cost more than a few low level spells.

But at the end of the day, accept that your time to shine has passed, and you can't expect to keep up with Tier 1 classes in the end game. So try not to take it personally and enjoy the roleplaying.

[Rebel7284]

Unless the spellcaster is willing to change their playstyle to buff/debuff or alternatively take out SOME enemies in a multi-enemy encounter while letting the barbarian take care of the others, there isn't much that can be done... this is why a wizard is tier 1, they can do everyone's job with the right spell selection.

[VeggieWombat]

Which edition ? 3.5 barb are purely beatsticks, while PF ones gains some versatility with Rage powers.
Anyway : optimizing the **** out of him.
Look at "uber charger"

[Kesnit]

From the context, I am guessing you are the DM.

Spread battles out. Rather than have all the enemies near each other (and vulnerable to 1 AoE spell), separate them. (This also gives the casters a reason to use battlefield control rather than SoL.)

As others have said, encourage the casters to buff the BARB, or debuff enemies, rather than always use SoL.

[killem2]

If you are the DM, unless you can actually tell the barbarian is feeling left out then don't worry about it.

[Segev]

It doesn't sound like your casters are fully exploiting the Tier 1 advantages they have, so this advice might work:

Have more encounters in a given "day." The D&D expectation is 4 per day, so casters should be running out of high-level effects by the 3rd and 4th. You can push it to 5 or 6 to really let the barbarian, who doesn't have to expend resources beyond hp, shine. ...okay, he expends rages, but by now he should have a lot of those.

The advice about spreading the encounters out physically is also good; don't let the casters have a nice clumped encounter to AoE to death.

And yes, if the sole concern is "in combat," look up the build known as the "ubercharger" and see if any of it can be adapted to your barbarian. If you're the DM, you should be able to do some custom magic item dropping to shore up areas where the barbarian doesn't have the build resources to do it, if you want to.

Don't be shy about dropping things of disproportionate WBL that are keyed to bring the barbarian up to snuff, either; WBL assumes that all classes are created equal, when they're really not. So in real game play, I have found that having nicer things drop for the weaker characters can make up for a lot in play...as long as it doesn't start making up for "bad" decisions (as opposed to "for fun" ones). i.e., if one player is weaker because he's squandered his wealth on one-shots that made him uber several times over, but now he's feeling the pinch, don't reward him with more loot; that makes the frugal players feel they are being punished for their frugality. But if it's "this build is just plain better and overshadowing that one," it's a good way for the DM to tweak it.

[prufock]

My question is this: What can be done help a Barbarian combatant aid as much to the fight as the artillery of 15th level casters?
The sad truth: nothing. That doesn't mean the barbarian can contribute, but he's not going to contribute to the same degree as the spellcasters. If he can rebuild or retrain, there are probably some better class/feat choices he could make to improve his utility (ie ubercharger). To compete with casters, though, you really need to BE a caster. I would look into something like a Druidic Avenger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druidVariantDruidicAve nger), perhaps the spontaneous version (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm) for simplicity. Shapeshift, Hunter (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druid), or Aspect of Nature (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/classFeatureVariants.htm#wildShapeVariantAspectOfN ature) wildshape variants would work if he's not interested in being a bearbearian. You'd still get rage, but you're now a full caster as well.

If you're the DM, I'd let him take an adaptation of Rage Mage for divine spells, even if just for 1 level so he can cast in a rage.

There are some classes like Champion of Gwynharwyf or Runescarred Berserker that progress rage and give some minor spellcasting, but aren't going to keep up with full casters.

[OzymandiasX]

Segev brings up the best way to deal with this, imo... Acknowledge that spellcasters are going to be more badass when they have their spells, but that when they start running out of spells, the melee classes finally begin to shine. Have the players be relentlessly pursued. Have them be woken up, interrupting rest.

Another good idea is to remember to have opponents do things like cast Silence and grapple casters.

There are good ways to shut down casters. :)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Change it up a bit. Use opponents that get the drop on the party and target softer targets (i.e. spellcasters) first. This advice I gave (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322346#2), particularly the Obsidian Oozes, is more or less designed to put spellcasters on the defensive and make them feel challenged without wiping out the party, while making mundane abilities (high BAB) feel more useful.

Include a 20 ft. wide corridor with two (advanced) Arcane Oozes (MM3) hiding in alcoves and/or cracks in the ceiling/walls/floor, which will sap the casters' highest level spells as they pass through. An ooze gets +1 CR per +4 HD, which also gives it +2 DC to its abilities, so advance them to 30 HD for CR 12 each. Be sure to make the whole room coated in goo/ecotplasm from the oozes so it's difficult to notice that they're present, plus it will be slick and they'll have to proceed slowly. The party won't even know what's going on unless they can make a Kn: Dungeoneering roll in the neighborhood of DC 30 (10 + HD + 5 to reveal what it is and one of its abilities). Have them take a surprise round to creep out of their hiding places and surround the party, and the one in the front should trigger a trap that places an Energy Substituted (Acid) Wall of Fire against each wall, extending the length of the corridor. Every square of the hall will take 3d4 acid damage per round, and it heals the oozes by just as much. This counts as persistent damage so it forces Concentration checks when casting.

[eggynack]

There are good ways to shut down casters. :)
Not really. There are good ways to shut down casters of low levels of competence , which is what Segev was saying. At high levels of competence, these plans don't work all that well. Barbarians don't have built in ways to hide from pursuing opponents in a way that's nearly fool proof, or ways to escape from a grapple without ever rolling a die. Tier one casters of every flavor have ways to do both of those things, and many more besides.

[maniacalmojo]

If you are the Dm involve a lot of things that weaken or make wizards less effective. A lot of people think that wizards are perfect at high levels and nothing can stop them because they can just cast a spell to solve all the worlds problems but there is a plethora of feats/abilities and monsters that all are pretty good at fighting mage like charecters. Have a few spellthieves jump out and stab the Spell users (take one of their spellbooks). Give a bunch of monsters the spellwarped template to **** with them. Make them go through a dungeon with anti magic zones. Involve the spell plague. Make them use spell craft checks to cast spells. have the enemy's use spellshields but are vulnerable to the barbarians axe. Actually enforce the god damn rules on how wizards and spellcasters do things.

[tricktroller]

You can always add things that are immune to magic but not to a barbarian beating the crap out of it. Or things with absurdly high SR so the wizards still have a chance and don't feel like they are useless as well. This gives you the reason you need to have the casters buff the beat stick and allow him to feel like a badass.

[Eldest]

You can always add things that are immune to magic but not to a barbarian beating the crap out of it. Or things with absurdly high SR so the wizards still have a chance and don't feel like they are useless as well. This gives you the reason you need to have the casters buff the beat stick and allow him to feel like a badass.

Again, there are ways around this. Summon a beatstick or change the environment or such.

[eggynack]

Actually enforce the god damn rules on how wizards and spellcasters do things.
A couple of those things, like arbitrary spellcraft rolls and "spellshields", don't really qualify as enforcing the rules, as the former definitely doesn't exist, and I'm pretty sure the latter doesn't exist either (I found a spell called spell shield, but it seems both narrow in the quantity of characters who would have access, and weak). I don't think the spellplague is a game object in 3.5, though I may be mistaken. If it isn't, then these things can all be filed under house rules and homebrew, which is reasonable, but I wouldn't call it rule enforcement.

As for your other solutions, they don't work all that well. Spellthieves would have to manage to sneak attack a caster, which can often be an impossible proposition, and there's pretty much no reason to steal a spell book unless you're just after GP value, because it has no immediate impact on the caster's competence. The SR provided by the spellwarped template, and AMF's to a lesser extent, have a reasonable quantity of powerful spells that can bypass them. Basically, what is true here is what has always been true. It is very difficult to construct an enemy who will be easily defeated by a warrior, but that will kill a caster. You can create challenges that narrow the gap a little, and that's nice, but these things won't eliminate it completely. At least not for a competent caster.

[tricktroller]

yeah but unless your caster player is a total **** he should be easily convinced to buff up the current beatstick as opposed to taking the situation and wrecking the encounter on his own.

[tricktroller]

Personally I find the easiest way to deal with wizards is to reduce their available spells in the world. If you also don;t allow the variant rule feat Collegiate wizard he should only be getting two spells per level which will vastly reduce his utility and thus give your other members plenty to do.

[eggynack]

yeah but unless your caster player is a total **** he should be easily convinced to buff up the current beatstick as opposed to taking the situation and wrecking the encounter on his own.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. If you were casting buff spells before, and have some prepared, obviously this is a good time to cast them. If you were casting a lot of summoning spells and BFC's before, and have those prepared instead, well, those will work too. I don't really see this altering caster behavior all that much, in other words. If the caster, facing a high SR enemy that it wasn't prepared to fight, tosses down a buff spell, well, that was in that character's general behavior already, and there's no change.

If the wizard does know about the high SR enemy, then he'll just prepare, y'know, the same kinds of spells he was preparing before. If that was buffs, then buffs, if it was blasts, then blasts, if it was BFC's, then BFCs, and if there was some combination, probably some combination. What you say of this wizard's behavior in this particular fight, you could equally say of his behavior in any fight. Why should he be more convinced to buff the beatstick here more than anywhere else, and why do you expect this player to pick up on your subtle tactical signals that don't need to be heeded for success to be found? If you want to enforce some particular behavior, just tell the player that it'd be nice if he threw out some more buffs. You don't need to use the arbitrary Morse code of encounter types to solve an out of game problem.

[tricktroller]

Well I can completely agree with you on simply talking to your player about it, but I had assumed he already had simply taken the player to the side to discuss it and that he continued to do as he had before.

[eggynack]

The thing is, I don't think there actually is a not-talking solution here. The imbalance between wizards and barbarians, especially at high levels, isn't one that can be solved all that well by molded encounters. The game could be house rule'd into oblivion, such that casters and barbarians would be equal, but that sort of fix would necessarily be massive and complex. If the DM has actively said, "Hey, could you prepare haste once in awhile?" and the wizard's player just said, "Naw, disintegrate forever," then nothing involving a golem army is going to change that. Well, maybe that specifically, because disintegrate is SR: yes, but he would be pretty likely to shift to another blasting spell that is SR: no.

[tricktroller]

I suppose that is true but I think the fixes for tier one shifted down to tier 2-3 is easier than most people think. I am working on doing just that currently, whenever I complete it I will post it on here.

However, your point is correct. No matter how much you change it the wizard can find a way around it unless you simply change the rules, at which point it should just go to talking like adults out of game.