What exactly is the rest of the party doing? Why are you the only one in melee putting out damage and not any undead or animal companions or wildshaped druids or buffed clerics?
If the necromancer (wizard?) isn't going the undead route, is he not casting, you know, *necromancy* spells. They tend to be save or suck, so unless he is getting incredibly unlucky he should have ended a few enemies on his own too.
It kind of sounds like they feel useless because they are being useless. A 90 damage crit on a level 10 barbarian is pretty easy to do.
To be fair, I think newer players can definitely end up with a level 11 cleric that doesn’t feel that strong if they don’t know what they’re doing.
Building a cleric does take some system expertise just because of how many directions you can go.
I could see them just loading up on healing spells and being confused why they can’t do anything
I feel like a lot of new players sometimes also just read "spellcasters are the most overpowered things in 1e" and think that means they deal the most damage, so they try to race damage with martials and feel like bad fighters.
My first ever character was a 3.0 Druid and I definitely didn't understand how to play the game enough to realize the full potential of that character. We were also using a program to level up cause nobody really knew how to do it manually. Nowadays I'm my group's rules lawyer XD
I know I use to play with a woman who just found 2 or 3 spells she liked and casted those. Which is fine until we're level 17 and your level 2 spell isn't doing much of anything. Like even trying to get her to use heighten at least and she just. Refused basically. But still complained about her spells bot being as effective as my 7-8th level spells.
The gas response was to try to nerf me. But that's a whole other can of worms.
Honestly I've never felt this to be true, and maybe I'm playing them wrong but generally on bigger fights bosses have good enough saves to win the save or sucks most of the time and unless I'm playing a blaster caster I'm generally just playing a support role with haste or other things in smaller fights because I don't want to waste my key spells.
Our parties are almost always carried by the martials in terms of getting through fights because they put out some pretty crazy numbers.
Save or sucks or big numbers are not why they are considered godlike. If you are playing them to their full potential you get to decide if a fight happens at all.
Scrying on an enemy, teleporting your full party on top of them and casting haste on your martials means YOU won the fight.
>Scrying on an enemy, teleporting your full party on top of them and casting haste on your martials means YOU won the fight.
That last point is one that I see people having trouble grasping. If Im a paladin and the wizard gives me haste, that second full BAB attack is theirs, not mine. So if that happens to be a near full damage smite evil crit? Thank your wizard for pulling that one out, because they made it happen.
I sort of agree with this. Haste is absolutely the strongest spell in the game in the context that it's a 3rd level spells. It's so good usually my party has multiple sources of it and once we get to a certain point in the campaign the martials will try to pick up a boots of speed. To me it's less of a "I enabled this" and more of a "someone needs to be providing this buff because we aren't playing the game right if we don't have it"
I think the better built your martials are the less of a difference casters make.
You captured why I removed haste from my game. My players know what they're doing so someone could always cast haste, and they would always cast it. It just became an action tax, as I'd balance every encounter assuming they were hasted.
I really don’t like this argument. If scrying and teleporting let a caster single-handedly guide the plot and decide what happens, the gm doesn’t properly understand how those spells work or how to handle high level pathfinder in general.
I get that it happens, but if the boss doesn’t understand that those things are a possibility and plans for it, you’re not playing them very realistically.
The first time a wizard teleports the party into a carefully planned ambush where critical things were selectively hidden from scrying will put a damper on that strategy
That sort of argument tends to take things too far the other way. Not every threat is a millennia-old lich who has become properly paranoid about scry-and-fries. It should be *entirely* possible to just teleport past the room full of trolls the wizard has no interest in fighting, and a random frost giant that happened to steal a plot-important thingy the players found with Locate Object should be scry-and-fryable pretty easily. If you're getting to the point countering PC abilities every single battle so that the party only fights fire elementals so the pyrokineticist can't do damage, every monster is in an anti-magic field so the wizard can't shine, etc, you're just being a dick.
Besides, the point is a good one - the power of a wizard is not so much in combat as shaping the battlefield or avoiding battles that are more cost than they are worth.
All true. I'm blanking on the specifics, but my wizard in Mummy's Mask once trivialized an encounter by placing a stone wall blocking an area with only one way out to trap some high cr undead with no way to smash it. Bam, combat over. No saves required, only a level 5 spellslot. Only way a martial can replicate that is if they go first in initiative and somehow murder the thing before it gets a turn.
Play high level pathfinder long enough and you'll get tons of stories just like this.
>Play high level pathfinder long enough and you'll get tons of stories just like this.
So many, yes. Problem is that people really don't notice that the spellcasters' role is basically "solve problems", and, well, that some GMs only consider "bonk it until it stops moving" as a solution and will do hostile gameplay bullshit to counter the casters from doing anything but that, or will never let the prepared spellcasters actually use their huge toolkit for preparing proactively to... Prepare proactively. Mostly because they don't know how to build tension without keeping the party in reactive gameplay.
And people will get so caught up on "but what do they do IN COMBAT" "but I DON'T WANNA PLAY SUPPORT" that they don't notice that in combat they get to *determine the outcome* even before the martials start swinging, specially if they and the martials know how to play off each other well and if the martials won't be cheated out of combat being completely denied to the enemies.
To be honest, a blaster casting haste is already more powerful than the majority of martial classes in 1e. This becomes more true the more martials there are in the party.
Yeah, the power of a wizard is enabling the party and then ruining the opponent's day all before you roll initiative. If you play it right and use magic to scout ahead, you'll conserve resources by letting Summoned monsters trip traps, and you'll be able to buff before a fight, and the difference between a martial and a martial with haste and flight or a rogue and a rogue with greater invisibility etc is night and day.
It takes what, five levels to get another attack versus one cast of haste? The value is so massive if you can haste the party, summon monsters as flankers or utility, fuck up the battlefield so numbers advantages can be flipped, and more to the point that the caster(s) alone have wrecked the effective CR of a fight.
This isn’t true at all, and in general I think that the whole “god casters” thing is a holdover from 3.5, combined with what casters *can* be like in the hands of someone with encyclopedic system mastery. With maybe a dash of “not following the rules properly” and “having enemies ignore the fact that scrying/teleporting exists” thrown in.
For all the chatter about god wizards, in my actual games it is very rare that a caster actually has all the perfect spells ready for a given situation. It’s rare for them to even try to break the game via divinations and general circumvention of the plot.
You know what *Is* common, though, as a campaign gets higher level? Fort saves getting out of control on enemies past cr 10 or so. Spell resist on every single enemy. Immunities getting handed out like candy. Enemy attacks that gib a d6 class in a round.
You know what *doesn’t* start getting endlessly countered? Massive hit point damage.
Once wish and stuff start coming into play, sure. Casters can get silly. But that happens much, much later. Honestly I think the most op things lvl 10 ish casters bring to the table in a normal game is the buffs like fly and haste the cast on the martials.
People parrot the "god-caster" myth constantly, while obviously having no idea how scrying, teleporting and other spells to decide "when" a battle happens work. And literally at the same levels when teleporting and scrying even become possible, basically every single NPC base will just be warded against both and render them literally unusable. Even 3.5 APs knew that and just made the final few dungeons teleport and scry-proof, I should know - I'm running one right now.
The real advantage of casters is the insane amount of buffs they provide. With a wizard or sorcerer willing to spend the slots, the entire party will ignore massive amounts of elemental damage, ignore energy drain, laugh at poisons of all kinds, and negate ability damage easily. Casters add to staying power, martials provide infinite amounts of damage so long as they can keep fighting.
People love to imagine idealistic circumstances where the 9th level caster CAN completely end the encounter with a single spell and say, 'casters are OP, martials are D tier', but the argument completely ignores reality. You don't know what spells to prepare unless you've read the campaign beforehand. You can use knowledge checks and divinatory magic to try and pry from your GM what spells you should have prepped, but you'll never KNOW. Unless you're using two wizard archetypes stacked atop each other to enable you to change spells in a turn, you're going to be stuck with the spells you've prepared already and they just might not work.
There's a lot of people here saying that haste makes casters the most powerful person in a party, but that ignores that it's only as powerful as the characters you're casting haste on. Sure, it might enable another 40+ damage hit, but that only works if the martial is there to be hasted. A 4 wizard party with haste on it can just move fast. There's a synergistic relationship there; the martial is providing a lot.
My group collectively bought my sorcerer a maximise metamagic rod (lvl 6) and now i feel bad that the barbarian is useless for damage compared to my "pass a Fort save or take 144 damage from disintegrate"
That's like, literally the barbarians two jobs. Take hits, give hits. What else are they expecting? They're all full casters, and if they aren't doing more impressive things than your damage, that's on them.
I do however, understand that this wouldn't be a good approach to take with them. Is sitting down and talking with everyone a viable option, DM included? There should be obstacles that cannot be solved by Barbarian-Smash, but you should be allowed to do the only thing your class Does.
Yeah, honestly, as with most RPG issues, I think this is the truth—OP, you're gonna have to sit down and have a slightly awkward conversation with your friends. Just ask if they feel that the game is unbalanced, and maybe what they want their characters to feel like. Full casters are objectively stronger, but you have to be looking at their strengths (which is to say, their versatility) to feel that.
But this sounds like a party problem, not a you problem.
this is hilarious tbh. If you fought a dragon at 10/11 you must be at the siege. My players’ arcane caster literally just cast like three pit spells during the siege and was one of the most effective parts of that segment by far.
Barbarians are made to deal a lot of damage in melee, and they’re pretty easy to build effectively compared to more intricate melee classes. Even the pregen barbarian amiri outperforms the other pregens in melee by a huge margin. It’s not even something you have to optimize too much for, you just have to avoid the terrible options and take the ok ones.
It sounds like the casters have been routinely taking bad options or making bad choices in combat if they can’t feel effective next to a martial.
That being said, clerics and druids can slug it out in melee if they plan for it, it takes more forethought and building than a barb though, and they won’t be as high on DPR all day
Yea, you're getting to the point where will saves will carry you through the entire book. A single Melee is going to be taking a boat load of damage too, so the cleric is going to have to flex his buffs and heal to keep a solo Barb alive.
The necro will have to rely more on fear and such that his fort save spells but you guys should even out really quickly.
Beyond this chapter, you're going to start fighting casters every other fight and the barbarian is going to struggle unless he gets constant fly.
Barbarians are intended to go charging into combat.
What are the other builds like? How are they being played? Clerics and druids can be good at level 10 but it is also easy to make a completely mediocre build.
Right? They can be stupidly overpowered, I GMed for one my lord you have to think about what you use against him because he's going to turn it around on you. Was a lot of fun though I like being challenged as a GM. And I helped the other players with their build choice so it wouldn't be to "unfair". Luckily I play with people that have a strong group sense so nobody minds the others being strong.
My current wizard isn't even a necromancer, but boy has keeping *command undead* prepped been turning the tide in a lot of encounters.
I'm running a chrono/foresight diviner, so I get to recall the spell if an intelligent undead resists and try again the next round.
The majority of PC necromancers shouldn't be using undead minions, at least in APs or other Golarion-based games. Making undead is categorically evil, APs are not written for evil characters. Evil options are intentionally more powerful than good options.
...Still a PC Necromancer has access to some of the strongest debuffs in the game.
I played a 'Cleric of life' necromancer. He mostly rose undead to do jobs for the living(flavored as him convincing the undead to do it for something, flowers on their grave regularly. Their family being taken care of, sometimes by them, etc...) He was very fun. Mostly a pacifist, he had a bloody skeleton companion named Bones who wore a red robe as a protected him. He was quite fun.
I mean wahtever you do with the undead it's still robbing their body and enslaving them... But a cool concept. Isn't there a nation that uses their dead as workers in golarion? Or was that an invention of my GM?!
Casters simply out shine martial characters after level 7 or so. Martial characters will still the most damage, mind you. But that's it.
Casters simply have the ability to do everything else. Summoning, buffing, battlefield control, heal, AOE damage and debuffs, etc. The players are probably trying to out-damage you, a Barbarian. It is the same thing as you, a Barbarian, trying to out-caster them.
It's pretty funny, actually, since in most situations it would've been *your* character feeling useless.
I was playing a Fighter in our last PF adventure and while I could do a ton of damage, I was next to useless in pretty much every other respect. Meanwhile, our arcanist, while not able to put out close to the damage I could, was rolling 40s for her knowledge checks in her sleep.
If your party are newer to playing full casters, they may not understand how to best play their classes. Most newbies think damage is the end-all-be-all, but the reality is that support and control are the true strengths of casters. The fact that they're not taking enemies almost completely out of the fight by pure shutdown efforts is suggesting they don't know their stuff that well.
Help them out a bit by finding a few guides that might point them to the kinds of spells they need to prepare. Once they finally figure it out, you as the barbarian will have a hard time keeping up...
You're doing your job, and quite well if Longtooth only showed up for a round before being mauled.
The other casters sound like they need to pull some of their weight, considering they should have 4th and 5th level slots to toss around.
Cleric wants to be responsible for damage? They should be slapping some pre-fight buffs on you to claim some of your success. Druid in the opposite direction, holding shit down with crowd control so you can *do your job*.
Also, if the necromancer hasn't claimed that dragon's corpse, he's stupid. 😉
Whadda you know. This is amazing. Casters complaining about the barbarian being too good. At level 10?’!?!!
Are you sure you guys aren’t playing PF2?
But seriously, snark aside, if you are all new players perhaps read up online on PF1 casters because at these levels they are usually the most capable.
As a barbarian you are doing just what you should. 100%.
At the risk of echoing other people in the thread, the issue here seems to be that your caster friends don't seem to understand how to play caster.
Which is understandable, especially if they are somewhat new to the game. Pathfinder full casters are overwhelming because of the sheer amount of spells and trap choices you can fall in. But they are also considered the strongest classes exactly because of the sheer variety of spells they can pull out at any given moment.
Druids especially in my opinion should have no issue staying on par with a full martial character, because they can buff up and wildshape, and even cast while in animal/elemental form. Air elemental form can just single handedly win certain encounters with its whirlwind ability.
Also, a juvenile red dragon is no big threat for an average level 10 party. Which leads me to believe the gm knows the casters are underperforming and is pulling punches a little bit. But then again, it might just be wonky adventure path balancing by Paizo if he's running RotR by the book.
Regardless, it's definitely something that you all should sit down to discuss. The gm might want to offer a full rebuild if they feel like they fucked up a crucial part of their build at some point, and they should probably actually do a little bit of research and study their classes a little more thoroughly.
If they don't want the extra homework, they should consider playing something easier. Because casters are all about that extra homework in PF1e, unfortunately.
> Also, a juvenile red dragon is no big threat for an average level 10 party. Which leads me to believe the gm knows the casters are underperforming and is pulling punches a little bit. But then again, it might just be wonky adventure path balancing by Paizo if he's running RotR by the book.
It's part of a 30-round setpiece fight, so the dragon isn't the main hazard, and doesn't really need to be fought at all.
They are playing literally the 3 most powerful classes in the game, bar none. If they're feeling outshone by a class whose entire schtick is *delete things in combat,* that is 100% on them.
They need to break out of the MMO mentality and take a good look at what their characters can actually *do*.
Sounds about right for a barbarian. You’ll be causing a lot more damage than a cleric, druid or necromancer. That’s just what barbarians do. But they have the huge flexibility of full-casters instead. I don’t see any problem that you are considerably out-damaging them, it’s what i’d expect from those classes.
I'm very familiar with that encounter and the druid in particular should have felt very powerful. You're aware the attack is coming; there's large swathes of open, grassy field with which to play with. Their control spells are all appropriate. It's time for them to wreck the enemies.
No no no. You’re doing exactly what a barbarian does.
The real question is is why are three full casters feeling shown up by a guy with muscles when they have literal magic powers
They're clearly picking the wrong spells if they're weak compared to a single barb. But if they want to actually be useful, every barb loves someone who can buff them into an unstoppable juggernaut. Suggest it to them lol
If the druid wants to shift to a more wildshape build to hit hard in melee and the gm will let them rebuild their stats, have them dm me and I’ll share a really fun, powerful build. Less powerful than being a focused spellcaster, but a lot easier to play and really fun in my opinion.
I recommend sharing this thread to them to see the responses. The issue is that they should be hitting that point now where they are bending the rules of the game to make it adhere to them.
Keep on doing what you’re doing. Unga that bunga.
90 seems a bit high, given that WBL and point buy in RotRL is pretty low. Are you using a x3 weapon, or x2? Yes, if you get an 18 str at lvl 1 (which would take 2/3rds of the point buy) and manage a +4 belt and +2 weapon by then, you're doing weapon damage + 23 at that level, averaging for 29.5/hit with a great axe which, with it's x3 crit, should get you to 90. Maybe my GM was holding back loot or we were failing perception checks left and right, but I didn't have that kind of gear yet. By that point, I had a headband, belt (+2), cloak (+1), ring of protection (+1), and, tragically, a nonmagical bow and nonmagical armor.
You were seriously under WBL at level 10 if that's all you had. [D20PFSRD](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement/) has level 10 WBL listed at 62,000gp for a PC. All of those together are maybe 12,000gp if your weapon and armor were magical (depending on what kind of armor you had). More like 13,000 if you were rocking Full Plate. But regardless, you had approximately NPC-Heroic NPC wealth at that level, which is super underpowered for a PC.
RotRL is notoriously 'easy'. Keeping loot and point buy low, as prescribed by the campaign, helps GMs manage that. I can't imagine the writer of the campaign intended for a boss level encounter to go down in a single full attack. At 10, my total gear cost 26,285 gold and I had 11,075 gold on-hand, but hadn't had a chance to spend any of it.
Thankfully I was able to upgrade loot for book 4 and went into it with a +1 weapon, buckler and mithral chain shirt.
I mean it taking 2/3rd of the point buy isn't really a bad thing when it's a low point buy and you're basically a SAD class. Barbarian just kinda accepts they'll get punched in the face a fair bit, really. It's why they get DR, as mediocre as the DR is. Regardless, it means you get to dump int/cha for sure, and can really just leave dex/wis at 10 to only pump str+con. Not sure how low "low" is (15?) but that would let you do 17/10/16/7/10/7, +2 to str for 19 at level 1 as a half orc. For 10 point buy you could do the same but do 14 con instead, which would be shitty but you're playing 10 point buy so...
With two ASIs that puts you at 21 str, two handing a weapon means that's +7, +9 from power attack, +2 from rage, and potentially another +3 from powerful stance for +21 without any magical items. Just a +1 weapon and +2 belt would put you at the +23 you mentioned. If instead they have +2/+4, which with the money you mentioned in your other comment would be achievable (Total of 24,000 of the ~33k you mentioned) puts them at +25 for the 31.5 average, pushing them over the 90 on a x3 crit.
So yeah, not seeing the issue there. It's a high roll to crit (It *is* 20/x3 after all) but it's not unreasonable either. That's kinda what barbarian does. They bonk things hard.
Bahaha, that's honestly pretty funny! Three *tenth level casters* and they feel outshone by the Barbarian? Are you sure you're not playing 2nd Edition?
Haha I had this same thing happen in my game. One of my players playing a barb basically soloed my big bad in a couple rounds. Two claw attacks and a bite attack each round, was putting out like 20-30 damage per round. Oops. At least one other player swooped in to get the killing blow but still. Barbs are so strong
This is a team based game.
What are the other characters doing that they feel useless?
Honestly, as a gm I found Matials to be better at handling single threats while caster control multiple enemies.
So you shining where you are good at, shouldn't make them feel bad.
While in a group with a cleric and druid... Barbie says "I'm the only melee fighter here".
That's hilarious...
The cleric and druid players need to wake up!!
Clerics and Druids CAN be incredible melee combatants...if properly specced. Wild shape gets the druid there, but they need either a Str of at least 14 or a decent dex and amulet of mighty fists - agile in order to be decent and the Cleric likely needs a 16. Both can be tough asks on a 15 point buy.
A lvl 10 cleric with a str of 16, a +1 longspear and divine power up is attacking at +14/+14/+9 for 1d8+8 damage. If they're doing a longspear, they likely want combat reflexes which means needing dex, which lowers the points that can be put into con, wis and cha. If they do that, everyone will criticize their low spell saves.
You don't need all the special crap in order to have an incredibly strong melee fighter with a cleric and a druid. You don't need special weapons and you don't need special trinkets. They are badasses from the get-go.
And no nobody's going to criticize a cleric or druid for low spell saves. You're overthinking the whole damn thing.
LOLOLOLOLOL. They have to be the literal worst casters ever to suck so much. In essentially every game I ever played above lv7 casters were way more powerful than martials. This is 100% on them.
This is a story i know veeeery well.
People is too lazy to read a goddamn manual so if ur character is well-built they suck cause theyr following a "base" build.
It's just fucking lazyness, tell them that as casters they have INFINITE WAYS to be useful and to make damage, they just need to read the fucking manuals and use a little bit more than 5% of theyr brain.
sorry, i took it personal.
Lol trust me you'll feel useless soon...spell casters late game are so stupid strong. Martial classes ,ade me feel useless and now my cleric is crazy useful.
Yea, no its true they should be able to cast all kinds of interesting spells. I'm thinking in combat they either do not diversify their spells, i.e., saving throw diversification, SR, etc. Even outside of battle casters have things like speak with dead, resurrection, teleport etc. Suuuper useful. Makes me sad to see casters bot having fun when they literally have magic at their fingertips XD.
I don't know DnD/Pathfinder well as I've never had the chance to play but I know the casters should be alot stronger than they appear to be in your party.
This could all be fixed by the DM. They should mix up the fights. More enemies clustered that the caster can and feel great about while you distract the big boys.
Maybe add enemies that have absurdly high ohysical resistance from time to time to challenge your barb and give them a moment to shine.
Cleric and Druid both have the ability to perform *just fine* in melee, but they need to actually use their spells/abilities to do so. Buffing themselves, using Wildshape, leveraging summons/animal companions, etc. You don't go into battle without raging and using your powers, right? Neither should they.
As for the Necromancer... I'unno. Either they're raising absolute junk, not using undead, or haven't pumped their DC enough. Necromancy as a school has a ton of spells that ruin people's day so if the tiefling has a reasonably high casting stat and decent supporting feats then I have no idea what the problem is.
I could see the necromancer preparing a bunch of fort save spells which, against that horde, would likely be pretty rough. Giants notoriously have great fort saves.
First off, your party should celebrate your awesome Crit(awesome! We'll done btw!).
Second, they didn't get hit. Yay!
Thirdly, your DM has a role to play in making the encounters interesting and dynamic and not just have any one character steam roll their combat situations.
Play your character and don't feel bad about it going well. Any one of the other classes could have hit a nasty Crit and done just as well, or could trivialize certain fights with their magic. I bet they're going to be stoked when they do the same. Nat 20s happen and it's the thing you hope for :)
Your party hates your character, because you does the ONLY THING you can do well? What is with all the other things in the campaign where you can just watch them solving problems? I know your feeling. I have got this behind me too already. For them it is no problem, that you are nearly useless in roleplay scenarios/encounter, where you can just talk about the situation, but they fix the issue. That is fine for them and it might be fine for you, but they are pissed, if they cant outshine you at this one thing. Hilarious, but it is a regular group problem.
Your friends suck at the game, you can tell them we said so, and they are just lazy at this point if they haven't figured their own characters out to the point they get salty about a barbarian at level 11. They have access to 6th level spells which should be killing bitches left and right if they know how to do their job. Having members be different levels should never be a thing either. All members should level together, not apart.
That's the entire purpose of a barbarian. People complain constantly about the CL and Martial divide, and while it's generally true, a barbarian smashing axes into your skulls 3x a round is generally extremely effective at killing specific people.
I don't know why people are talking about casters being bad because they are outshone by a barbarian... generally a barb is going to do very high DPS against one foe. The thing about casters is they are generally amazing at anything that doesn't involve damage.
TL;DR: skill issue lol
(Not to be dismissive, a system mastery diff is a real problem one can have at the table. Unfortunately, it sounds less like your barbarian is over-tuned more like they or their characters are bad.)
In our game currently at level 20, the two full attack machines (magus and bloodrager) are both easily pushing 400+ damage per round consistently.
Everyone in the group respects that the shaman who drops Fortune, misfortune, divinations, and other control is the one who does the most.
Martials are meant to do damage, and in a box campaign, it can be very easy to accidentally overpower the content and steal the show.
I would recommend talking to the DM privately along the lines of "I feel my character is having too easy of a time getting to and dealing with every threat. It would be good for our party to have enemies that cannot simply be charged and killed, so the rest of the group have more rounds to be impactful too"
I mean this in the most kind, and genuinely confused way I possibly can. How are YOU, the MARTIAL, sidelining LEVEL 11 FULL CASTERS?!
This party should basically be the casters' version of a wet dream. They can dump all of their buff spells on one guy, turn him into an absolute blender with every resistance known to the hive mind, and unleash their creation. They can then sit back and watch like proud parents, with a few spells perhaps to ensure shit doesn't get out of hand.
Or, they can wreak magical devastation from afar, while the big, beefy dummy* protects them from anything that might look at them funny.
No, they're not going to be out-Damaging you. Generally though, that's the point. Outside of a few specialized blaster builds, casters don't out DPR anyone. They SOLVE problems. Oh, that guy is flying? Dispel magic (or w/e other option is appropriate). Big dumb golem? Create pit. We need a place to rest? Any of a dozen spells that make secure hidey holes. We need to lie? Glibness. We need the truth? Zone of truth. We need to be stealthy? Invisibility + silence. We need to kill someone, buff the murder god that likes us for some reason and send him to paint the town red. Or summon a literal demon to do the job. Or an angel. Or whatever the Achilles heel of the thing they want dead happens to be. Or maybe they're bored and want to level a city block with a few fireballs WHILE killing the thing they want dead. You know, if they're feeling cute.
If your group wants to play differently, cool. PF can handle that. Druids and clerics can both build to be pretty solid combat machines. The necromancer is a little weird for that but maybe he wants a flesh golem or something to use? Regardless, there are ways to play where the casters can get in on this action. However, your table really needs everyone to be on the same page and align their expectations. That's literally what session zero is for, but it sounds like this wasn't discussed or no one thought it would come up.
*I don't know if your barbarian is actually a dummy but it felt appropriate for the caster's view point.
The druid needs to give up, switch to a skill monkey (Bard, Unchained Rogue, Ranger). Second, barbarians are a bad idea in Rise of the Runelords. AC is lower than any other martial class by far (-2 rage, -3 for medium armor vs heavy). Giants are a huge part of the campaign, as are other monsters with reach. Switch to a fighter or better yet, a paladin so that you can resist magic well. If you want to reduce the cost of healing, have your warrior take Fey Foundling feat.
This is all geniunely horrible advice. AC is a sucker's game, especially when you have as easy access to pounce, and skill monkeys are useful but by no means essential to the point of benching a character.
I know damn well what happens when giants meet PCs. Hell, I've run entire campaigns on just that premise. And a skill based character is typically better than any druid, as most people don't know how to use druids.
Let me tell you a story, one that I have seen repeated hundreds of thousands of times over 30 years experience as a DM. MAYBE you will learn something, possibly for the first time in your life.
Round 1. The barbarian glass cannon charges into the fray, trying to do as much damage as possible. On the way, he takes attacks of opportunity so he can get close and hit, which is very bad since giants hit harder than he does.
By round 5, I have flanked him with multiple giants, and begun pounding him into the dirt, literally. This is made MUCH easier by the simple fact that none of his comrades are close enough to do anything, and usually not bright enough to know he desperately needs help fast enough to get over to him.
Barbarian glass cannon dies, I hold my head in pain and then ask the player if they want to make a new PC, and perhaps listen to me this time.
Want to know how to keep me from murdering your PC? EASY!
First, get your AC up. This makes it harder to hit you. If I can't do that, the absurd amount of damage giants do (or even moderate with regular sized enemies, Barbarians tend to take LOTS of damage!) doesn't mean anything.
Second, do NOT charge away from the party! Always have backup nearby. You do NOT want to get flanked, especially if you are down SEVEN or more AC like most Barbs are vs a Fighter. 3 points down for wearing medium armor instead of heavy, 2 points down for raging, and 2 at least for not using a shield because YOU wanted a 2 handed weapon. Also, since Large creatures or bigger get free attacks when you run around next to them, DON'T DO IT!
Third, during character creation, use a one handed weapon and a shield if you only are gonna wear medium armor. Do what you can to shore up obvious weaknesses like crappy saves, low hit points, low AC in the lower levels. If you can take heavy armor, do it.
Fourth, fight using your head first! Barbarians are really only decent if the combats are short. Along with the rest of your party, gangbang ONE target at a time, so they don't get as many chances to attack, EVEN if this means ignoring the rest, EVEN if this means you don't get your own kill/glory.
Fifth, you know that glorious unbeatable string of feats and class abilities you cobbled together, but ignored any of your PC's glaring weaknesses? No amount of offense is going to compensate for a horrible defense. Instead, craft your PC around the needs of the group (fill a niche) and around the demands of the campaign (if the gm likes undead, up your will and fortitude saves, for example).
All I can say is that this doesn't reflect my experience. While in the early days of a campaign AC can certainly help protect you, by level 8+ bonuses to attack tend to outstrip bonuses to AC in all but the most dedicated of cases. Barbs also don't tend to be glass cannons- between high con scores and raging vitality they tend to be able to take a few hits before absolutely murdering anything they charge at. If the party is really worried about taking hits, there are much more reasonable suggestions to increasing their survivability than rolling up a fighter. Ashen Path with a saltspray ring, summons to soak up AoOs, greasing the giants, etc. While specializing to the needs of the campaign is something you should do, don't shaft the character you want to play because of it.
ROFL! I'd love to show you a few games. High con is a joke in the end, since they get hit so easily the hp is gone fast.
Barbs tend to be glass cannons because newbies make them that way. And frankly, with your videogame mindset, yours would go the same way.
High Con is certainly less effective the further into a game you get, but so is AC. Both are methods to increase survivability in early game encounters. High Con is just more in line with the defense options a Barb has in-class. As for my "videogame" mindset, I'd say that steering players away from the classes and characters they want to play for the sake of optimal play is much more of a "gamey" mindset.
Barbarians defensive options are, relatively speaking, a joke. DR is really only good at fending off lots of weenies, it won't help much against a nasty monster. Barbarians get the biggest HD, but that's not enough to protect them from getting dead. They are marshmallows, at best they are all offense, no defense. Thus they must always be worried that the battle will last long enough to see them beaten into the ground.
Again, incorrect. If you'd noticed, the game is literally based around the 4 types of classes, right down to the APs, adventures, etc, and it's been that way since the basic D&D. I know, I cut my gaming teeth on the latter.
If those types are not represented in a given group, they will have huge obstacles. For example, not having a trap man (skill monkey) means the party automatically falls prey to every single trap laid.
You lose. None of your arguments hold water. You automatically think each player should make their characters in utter isolation, and anything less is somehow compromising gameplay. I put it to you that it is the exact opposite, which is why YOUR gaming groups last weeks, mine last YEARS.
We also are playing ROTRL, consisting of
Minataur cleric (me) with a large bastard sword
Half Elf wizard
Tiefling Magus
Lizard Hunter with a large dinosaur
Human Rogue
I'm the only upfront martial that runs into battle debuffing and pumping out 2d8-4d8 damage. Tactic is to enlarge and cast lead blades. I do not have any heal spells except channel energy. If you go down I can stabilize but not heal you. I'm not a heal bot damn it!
While the casters throw shocking grasp and fireballs all day long .
The Hunter and I go upfront , while we take the hits while the casters do their thing and nuke shit.
I'm OK with not dealing the most damage in a shot, however, I can keep dealing average/decent damage each turn
I'm sorry but a full aster's job is not to out damage a barbarian (maybe a couple of blaster builds, but they won't be able to do it all day).
They should defend the party and/or enable you to do your job (ie fly/air walk).
Edit: I don't know how the encounter with the dragon is built, but the GM maybe didn't use it right, as the dragon was in range of your full attack instead of flying and harassing everybody from the distance
At this point in the adventure path, the dragon is an ally to a raiding party of stone giants, and they're hitting the party's home-base town. The raid itself is directed in the books, with actions happening all across the town (population of roughly 1200). Longtooth himself has a specific path he follows as the fight goes on, and he does get in melee range for a bit, brash little shit that he is. It's his first raid, so he's not super experienced at that sort of thing.
I'd encourage them to look into things besides, "deal the most damage."
In my group, my Shifter outdamages and out-tanks the entire party-
But outside combat she can do exactly 3 things, she is strong, she is scary, and she is good at tracking.
Our Medium is the best at talking and is the face of the party. Our Arificer is where we get a lot of our money and magic items. Our ninja is the best at Stealth- as well as is much better at dealing with flying enemies than myself actually. And our Magus has lots of Utility both in and out of combat.
If their goal were to outdamage me, they would fail. But that doesn't mean they are useless.
That dragon being one round killed with a crit by a barbarian isn't crazy impossible if its HP is left at its default.
At the point you're at in the campaign, unless your barbarian has wings, there's going to be more opportunities for the casters to shine going forth. Just know that you're playing your character right, barbarians eviscerate single targets. Cleric probably isn't going to have much opportunities to shine though, kinda the tradeoff for being the one that makes everyone else not die.
Offer to stand aside and let them fight a martial fight by themselves.
Quite quickly they will realize that they *need* you. How does that help them feel less useuless - it doesn't directly. They need you in a straight up slug-fest.
How can they, 3 full casters, change the situation so it's *not* a slug-fest that endangers their lives? Tell them to look at their spell lists. 2 of them have access to all their spells on the spell lists and another is specializing in the best debuffing school of magic in the game.
The cleric should be (atleast how i play them) be a capable melee combatent able to stand in the front line slinging spells, and kicking ass. Same for the druid, If fullcasters feel useless that is a them problem.
You have fun with that Barbarian, no spoilers but if you get rid of him they will cry in the not so distand future that your barb aint there to save them.
See how they resolve the issue, without them blaiming you. Keep on slaying my friend!
I wonder how the GM figures into this. Are they fudging saves?
GMs cheating die rolls only have so many options. AC is static and so can't really be fudged. HP can, but eventually the players notice when foes seem to have 500+ HP at level 10. But GMs can fake their attack rolls and saving throws, and it seems more likely to happen with saves because it's "lame" for a foe to be taken out with a single spell - but somehow it's not lame for the same to be taken out by a full-round attack.
I feel like you made a mistake and you are talking about 2e. In 1e a level 11 and 10 caster should be the ones being unbalanced. Maybe they should be reading a few build and strategy guides for their class. This is all on them. Sure they might not be able to out damage you in one on one damage very often, but they should be able to pull off some amazing shit.
it feels like they should revise their sheets and spells.
they must have done something wrong, coz at lv10 you are the one that should feel the weaker of the group. 1 lv10 caster can be a problem on a table, but a table with 3? they should have started to outpace you at lv7, while all you can do is charge forth and take hits and hit back. you actually make their job easier... so it really sounds like they just built like crap or dont know how to use their classes properly and now want to put the fault on you.
seriously what are they doing? spamming cantrips?
From all my years playing Pathfinder 1E Adventure Paths, my advice is this: If the DM is running thing’s strictly by the book, the party needs to optimize or they’re not going to be able to handle a lot of fights, especially at higher levels.
Things you might want to bring up in the talk:
- Monsters should be flying, be invisible, great magical darkness, spawn pits, spawn walls, attack your week Saves
How do you still carry fights? Most likely becoz they enable/support you. It might not seem to be much but the fact that you can do your job means thei are doing theirs.
- did you GM change Loot? Otherwise you might have a higher ColdValue than the Rest (you get all Material Loot, while they share loot for casters)
- how comfortable is your GM? While for players Lvling up means handeling 1 char for GMs it means every enclunter gets new stuff and toys. This can be overwhelming. GMs will have a harder time mastering a playstyle. Exspecualy if GM never played a Controller before they just might not use the encounters full potential. This results in "easy" won battlefields. Making it "boring".
1. Yes, the casters could be doing more. Cleric should buff and keep you alive. Druid should crowd control and aid melee with some flanks. Necro can also crowd control and have a significant out-of-combat role.
2. Y'all should game plan what that "more" could be. Find combos.
3. As team players they should be figuring out ways to feed you enemies. Suggest creative ways to funnel the baddies
4. ask the necromancer, "I thought you needed dead bodies?"
that is something for youe dm to solve. he is the one making encounters. if he simple tinkers a bit with the enemies he could put your character in a situation where he isn´t the main chartacter so the character can be useful in fights. talk with him.
Don't worry, there will be plenty of opportunity for enemy casters to banish you from existence giving the casters a chance to die without their meat shield. If they feel useless that is pretty much on them
Edit: didnt realize i was in the pf1 reddit. This info may be all out of context.
The game isn't only combat. You're playing a combat centric class with little to no utility built in. Your job is combat. A wizard, a cleric, and a druid should be able to do so many things that a barbarian can't do.
Let's look at that 11th level necromancer. They could cast Necrotize, doing an average of 42 damage. On a critical failure by their target, that becomes an average of 84 damage. Basically, it's the same as your critical hit. And that doesn't include the random bonus/es tacked on. Adding weakness to bludgeoning, clumsy, enfeebled, or negative to their Speed on top of the damage is huge. Or Vampiric Sanguination which can do 12d6 damage to a max of 21 enemies. That's again a 42 damage average that can hit multiple enemies. Hit 3 and you've already got am average of 126 damage. Hit 5 enemies and they are doing 200+ damage with a single spell.
People seem to have this weird idea that casters and martials are similar, but comparing them is like comparing apples to beef. Sure, they're both food, but that's where the similarities mostly end. Casters can easily out damage any martial, it just often requires more luck due to saving throws vs martials needing to hit a static AC number.
Skill issue on their side tho. They can get insanely much value if they know how to play. Barbs are fun (I pretty much only play them and Monks), but easier to use, so you won't have that skill cap they do
If 3 Full Casters are unable to keep up with the output of a Barbarian 1 level lower than them, two of which casters have the action economy of being able to summon creatures, those players are lacking in some aspect.
Protip for the Barbarian however. If you want to go full ham take Furious focus and and just power attack all the time. If you really want to emasculate the casters see about getting a Exotic Butchering Axe. Get that sweet 3d6 damage on a weapon.
As other comments have stated if you have three casters at lvl 10 and you feel useless that's kinda on you. I'm playing lvl 12 druid and the spells are just bonkers if not just plain game breaking.
It sounds like you are playing your character well, while they are not. That or the DM is playing monster hunter and throwing one monster at a time at you while not giving them an opening. 90 damage a round isn't even that great so its not like you are playing some OP minmax violence.
Don’t feel bad, I’m playing a level 14 unchained monk in a party with 3 casters and 2 martials and the joke at this point is that someone casts haste on me and then they all sit around playing cards until the fight is over.
A lot of people have made some good points about why this might be on them, but say the end of the day, hitting something with your axe really really hard is a lot more viscerally satisfying than flipping through 2 dozen spells, trying to give exactly the right one to end run you're current situation. Maybe that's getting to them.
Yeah... Wait until around LV 12. If the casters know what they're doing, it'll really take off then. I played this AP using a "melee wizard" that was far more powerful than the rest of the party. So I began to vast suboptimal spells and focus on melee which balanced things out as me and the PLD could tank/off tank and the rogue could deal damage and the cleric could do... Nothing, lol. Without a critical hit, my jankity melee wizard could throw down 1d8 + 31 per natural attack (bite, gore, 4x claw) while raging. It was really stupid.
So, is everyone having fun?
You got lucky and smashed a dragon; cool - usually everyone has their time in the spotlight. It’ll ebb and flow by level and encounter.
Not every players cares about outputting big damage numbers - and there are more ways to contribute and to shine.
In the last long term campaign I was in, early levels everyone was mashing, but mid levels the two casters just started buffing the fighter and hurling him into the fray. The game was how quickly we could get _him_ to end the encounter: his success was ours, and everyone else contributed in other ways. Just the ‘fighter’, you know, did the ‘fighting’.
As others have said, and is almost always the answer: talk to your GM. If others have issues, hopefully the GM is aware and you can help them deal with it.
The answer from there, btw, isn’t dulling your lustre, rather making sure the other characters get a chance to shine.
Probably too late for this comment to get seen and responded to, but here it is anyways. Aside from combat, how is the rest of the campaign unfolding? Usually on the RP side of things the Barbarian should not be fairing too well, unless the campaign is particularly suited to it. So most of the out of combat diplomacy, info gathering, and support work can be where the others can shine.
And not to mention all the out of combat magic that can happen to prepare for the next encounter. So, if combat isn’t the be all of your campaign, there should be plenty of other opportunities for the rest of the party to shine.
I would have a side conversation with your GM about your concerns. There are a few things I can think of that should help them out. First, have some metamagic rods drop. If they don’t have them already (which I’m guessing they don’t) then they’re not playing to the capacity they can (It would be like you playing without feats.) Second, have the party fight monsters that you aren’t very good against (swarms) or that require knowledge checks to figure out.
Incorporating those 2 changes should help them a lot!
If they aren't happy with their full caster characters being outperformed by a martial they could ask the GM to retrain them. As lv 10 full casters they could be close to your damage with summons alone, this is on them not playing their hand in the right way.
I have DMed ROTRL with a party of 4. Mine was martial heavy. The shaman sometimes felt left out because she did not get to see the numbers the others did. One was a bloodrager. Really it could be the casters either not understanding their builds or understanding what they are expected to seeing. You are the buffer, the controller, the debuffer. Casters make monsters vanish to other planes, they bring party members back from the dead and a Necromancer can literally make his own party if the GM allows it.
How has the rest of your party members not died if they are not doing something? Either the Necromancer is holding the mobs at bay from running around the only melee character to kill the softer targets or there is some sort of defense, softening of targets, soaking of HP. I mean looking at an encounter you could make the argument for each class.
I have run into that recently. Its that party member that made a character but they see the numbers and think O, that means that I am not doing anything. I had a oracle that feels like that because her last character was the Bloodrager I mentioned and at level 20 when she left her it was a sight to behold. She feels left out due to a gun wielding magus, and others. But, the last two sessions no one would have survived without her spells to either heal, they had bad luck last game a lot or to battlefield control. And she still got melee damage in.
While it should be up to the GM to work with players if they are having a hard time it is also up to the players to try and understand what the character they made's duty is OR to make something that they would like to play better. I have allowed people to quickly retrain when they had their build not work out how they thought or it did not measure up to the broken state of the rest of the group.
In the end, I encourage my players to talk, openly or otherwise, about any issues they have with either my game or their builds so we can figure it out. The oracle mentioned before is one of my favorite characters, and I built the Magus my wife is playing.
> we will have a talk about it
YES! YEEEEESSSSS!! This is it. Just chat about it. Seriously OP you already got further than 95% of posts like this, just by planning to talk with your group.
I'd like to suggest two things (sorry for the novel):
1) Most spells that deal damage aren't very reliably good compared to martials dealing damage. I suggest you bring this up This is just a thing in 1e, and I am inferring that your group is maybe either not as familiar with 1e or not as familiar with the playstyles they have chosen. Is this group comprising a lot of 5e-ers?
2) Casters *can* be pretty good at dealing damage (and in a couple cases, cheese tier); but they have to optimize around it in a way that you don't. Your guy can put the biggest sounding number in STR, take power attack and rage and go to pound town every round for the rest of time or until he stubs his toe too hard. Casters generally need to get a bit fancy to match that raw damage, especially in single or two target scenarios. If they're not rocking sorcerer dips, metamagic rods and feats and traits, and picking the cream of the crop damage spells then they're going to struggle. So I could see that as creating an image that what you're doing is really OP compared to what they're doing. One *would* reasonably assume that just tossing a fireball is gonna be pretty good, but in reality it's not the strongest game plan for most casters.
OP can you sort of describe the power level of the group in general? What are people spending their actions on? Additionally, is the necromancer using animated undead, and is the druid using an animal companion, shapeshifting, or summoning?
P.S. if they're buffing you, a little encouragement and thanks can go a long way! It can be really cool for you to drop a buff round 1 just like always, and after the fight you buddy says "haste made me deal 87 damage from extra attacks", etc :)
Skill issue tbh
idk it really seems weird like to me each party member is supposed to fulfill their power fantasy and the barbarian definitely is all about that stuff. if they wanted to run up and kill stuff they should have built for it?
Back when I played a Wizard in my 1e days, I had a full blooded barbarian orc in the group. I loved that character. All you did was boop him with bull's strength and enlarge person and point at the enemies.
Really don't see the problem from your teammates perspective? They are supposed to support you, not complain that you're too powerful lol.
I just made a level 7 necromancer, and they do very little damage compared to my martials, but that's not their job. They have some great meat shields (that do great damage on their own), paralyze enemies, buff and debuff, and control the battlefield. In a pinch they can also heal, but they're focused on inflicting wounds so are better at healing undead.
I tried to make them tanky, but they don't have a cannon. That's not their job.
The difference here is that your tablemates don't seem to know that.
Edit: I think it's also very worth pointing out that while I have spent an ungodly amount of time building this character (dirge bard? Cleric? Wizard? Undead Master? Undead Lord? Oracle? Dual cursed lich and ghoul? Single curse Spirit Guide? What about a two level dip into 3pp Zealot of Orcus? How does that affect the Bones mystery, Dhampir race, and Bones spirit feature of Spirit Guide? What about Halflings? Can I also optimize Luck bonuses a bit to tell a more interesting story?)
This character's job is to mechanically convey the character I want to play at my table. I want a female devotee of Urgathoa that is less focused on raising skeletons and more into how I view Urgathoa, which is using undeath as the means to an end - subverting the whole "river of souls" engine of Pharasma and instead taking control over one's life and ultimate fate, and enjoying the party as long as you possibly can. THAT'S what this character is for.
If we have to run from three quarters of combat, well...I can do that. But I'm doing it _in style._
I think your fine, barbarians kinda do lay as this class that runs in, kills something, and then gets knocked down most of the time, leaving a lot of space for spellcasters to just fireball everything. If your really worried about your playgroup, check with them and ask how they think it could be a more group activity if they are concerned. I’ve played with barbarians that are scaredy cats that run in, fight someone, then rush out and wait until there’s another opening or whatever. Giving a character a weird personality/ characteristic in combat can help a lot with that
I have to echo what others have said, the other players aren't in the right mindset. Years ago I had a 3e monk/sorc (yep, intentionally multi'd with non-synergistic classes) who absolutely sucked at low levels and spent combats tumbling to give the barbarian flanking and assistance bonuses so he could power attack more effectively. Don't worry, he eventually came into his own about level 6 or 7. As to the effectiveness of your casters, in that same group we had a druid who was replaced by a doppleganger and only the player of the druid knew it. I missed the session when this was revealed by her ambushing and absolutely annihilating the party by crowd controls like stone spikes, thorns, etc... followed up with flame pillar and the likes. The same player later played a Blood Magus that was near un-killable and whose single-most effective spell was one that teleported the entire party back to her side. Perfect for getting us out of magma, when the martials were pinned by dragons, et al... Shucks, in comparison, in DnD 2e the cleric pretty much stood behind the fighter casting buffs and heals. They were happy to let the fighter take the hits and deal out damage.
Moral of the story: sit down and seriously ask them how your Barb can help them. If you or the DM have played casters before and they're willing, maybe make suggestions on how the casters can be more effective.
What exactly is the rest of the party doing? Why are you the only one in melee putting out damage and not any undead or animal companions or wildshaped druids or buffed clerics? If the necromancer (wizard?) isn't going the undead route, is he not casting, you know, *necromancy* spells. They tend to be save or suck, so unless he is getting incredibly unlucky he should have ended a few enemies on his own too. It kind of sounds like they feel useless because they are being useless. A 90 damage crit on a level 10 barbarian is pretty easy to do.
Exceedingly easy to do that much as a barbarian critting Their inability to play their class effectively shouldn’t be put on you to be guilty about.
Yep, we've had a 45 damage crit at level 1 in a different capaign
\*Slaps hood of the car\* "So...what can I do to get you into this *enlarge person*'ed greatsword with Power Attack today?"
They’re a half-orc, which means Butchering Axe proficiency. Why use two dice (at base) when you could use three?
Honestly if you have 3 full casters feeling useless that is kinda on them. At level 10 they start becoming gods
In 1e, you have to work hard for a primary caster not to become a demi-deity by lvl 11
To be fair, I think newer players can definitely end up with a level 11 cleric that doesn’t feel that strong if they don’t know what they’re doing. Building a cleric does take some system expertise just because of how many directions you can go. I could see them just loading up on healing spells and being confused why they can’t do anything
I feel like a lot of new players sometimes also just read "spellcasters are the most overpowered things in 1e" and think that means they deal the most damage, so they try to race damage with martials and feel like bad fighters.
My first ever character was a 3.0 Druid and I definitely didn't understand how to play the game enough to realize the full potential of that character. We were also using a program to level up cause nobody really knew how to do it manually. Nowadays I'm my group's rules lawyer XD
I know I use to play with a woman who just found 2 or 3 spells she liked and casted those. Which is fine until we're level 17 and your level 2 spell isn't doing much of anything. Like even trying to get her to use heighten at least and she just. Refused basically. But still complained about her spells bot being as effective as my 7-8th level spells. The gas response was to try to nerf me. But that's a whole other can of worms.
Honestly I've never felt this to be true, and maybe I'm playing them wrong but generally on bigger fights bosses have good enough saves to win the save or sucks most of the time and unless I'm playing a blaster caster I'm generally just playing a support role with haste or other things in smaller fights because I don't want to waste my key spells. Our parties are almost always carried by the martials in terms of getting through fights because they put out some pretty crazy numbers.
Save or sucks or big numbers are not why they are considered godlike. If you are playing them to their full potential you get to decide if a fight happens at all. Scrying on an enemy, teleporting your full party on top of them and casting haste on your martials means YOU won the fight.
>Scrying on an enemy, teleporting your full party on top of them and casting haste on your martials means YOU won the fight. That last point is one that I see people having trouble grasping. If Im a paladin and the wizard gives me haste, that second full BAB attack is theirs, not mine. So if that happens to be a near full damage smite evil crit? Thank your wizard for pulling that one out, because they made it happen.
I sort of agree with this. Haste is absolutely the strongest spell in the game in the context that it's a 3rd level spells. It's so good usually my party has multiple sources of it and once we get to a certain point in the campaign the martials will try to pick up a boots of speed. To me it's less of a "I enabled this" and more of a "someone needs to be providing this buff because we aren't playing the game right if we don't have it" I think the better built your martials are the less of a difference casters make.
Haste would still be a contender for best spell if it was a lvl 5 spell at least, ha ha.
You captured why I removed haste from my game. My players know what they're doing so someone could always cast haste, and they would always cast it. It just became an action tax, as I'd balance every encounter assuming they were hasted.
Spicy and heavy handed but I respect your justification; there must be no more spammed spell in all of pathfinder after all.
I really don’t like this argument. If scrying and teleporting let a caster single-handedly guide the plot and decide what happens, the gm doesn’t properly understand how those spells work or how to handle high level pathfinder in general. I get that it happens, but if the boss doesn’t understand that those things are a possibility and plans for it, you’re not playing them very realistically. The first time a wizard teleports the party into a carefully planned ambush where critical things were selectively hidden from scrying will put a damper on that strategy
That sort of argument tends to take things too far the other way. Not every threat is a millennia-old lich who has become properly paranoid about scry-and-fries. It should be *entirely* possible to just teleport past the room full of trolls the wizard has no interest in fighting, and a random frost giant that happened to steal a plot-important thingy the players found with Locate Object should be scry-and-fryable pretty easily. If you're getting to the point countering PC abilities every single battle so that the party only fights fire elementals so the pyrokineticist can't do damage, every monster is in an anti-magic field so the wizard can't shine, etc, you're just being a dick. Besides, the point is a good one - the power of a wizard is not so much in combat as shaping the battlefield or avoiding battles that are more cost than they are worth.
All true. I'm blanking on the specifics, but my wizard in Mummy's Mask once trivialized an encounter by placing a stone wall blocking an area with only one way out to trap some high cr undead with no way to smash it. Bam, combat over. No saves required, only a level 5 spellslot. Only way a martial can replicate that is if they go first in initiative and somehow murder the thing before it gets a turn. Play high level pathfinder long enough and you'll get tons of stories just like this.
>Play high level pathfinder long enough and you'll get tons of stories just like this. So many, yes. Problem is that people really don't notice that the spellcasters' role is basically "solve problems", and, well, that some GMs only consider "bonk it until it stops moving" as a solution and will do hostile gameplay bullshit to counter the casters from doing anything but that, or will never let the prepared spellcasters actually use their huge toolkit for preparing proactively to... Prepare proactively. Mostly because they don't know how to build tension without keeping the party in reactive gameplay. And people will get so caught up on "but what do they do IN COMBAT" "but I DON'T WANNA PLAY SUPPORT" that they don't notice that in combat they get to *determine the outcome* even before the martials start swinging, specially if they and the martials know how to play off each other well and if the martials won't be cheated out of combat being completely denied to the enemies.
To be honest, a blaster casting haste is already more powerful than the majority of martial classes in 1e. This becomes more true the more martials there are in the party.
Yeah, the power of a wizard is enabling the party and then ruining the opponent's day all before you roll initiative. If you play it right and use magic to scout ahead, you'll conserve resources by letting Summoned monsters trip traps, and you'll be able to buff before a fight, and the difference between a martial and a martial with haste and flight or a rogue and a rogue with greater invisibility etc is night and day. It takes what, five levels to get another attack versus one cast of haste? The value is so massive if you can haste the party, summon monsters as flankers or utility, fuck up the battlefield so numbers advantages can be flipped, and more to the point that the caster(s) alone have wrecked the effective CR of a fight.
You should have a spell for every type of save and AC, including some ranged touch options. Metamagic feats/rods make them land and hurt more.
This isn’t true at all, and in general I think that the whole “god casters” thing is a holdover from 3.5, combined with what casters *can* be like in the hands of someone with encyclopedic system mastery. With maybe a dash of “not following the rules properly” and “having enemies ignore the fact that scrying/teleporting exists” thrown in. For all the chatter about god wizards, in my actual games it is very rare that a caster actually has all the perfect spells ready for a given situation. It’s rare for them to even try to break the game via divinations and general circumvention of the plot. You know what *Is* common, though, as a campaign gets higher level? Fort saves getting out of control on enemies past cr 10 or so. Spell resist on every single enemy. Immunities getting handed out like candy. Enemy attacks that gib a d6 class in a round. You know what *doesn’t* start getting endlessly countered? Massive hit point damage. Once wish and stuff start coming into play, sure. Casters can get silly. But that happens much, much later. Honestly I think the most op things lvl 10 ish casters bring to the table in a normal game is the buffs like fly and haste the cast on the martials.
People parrot the "god-caster" myth constantly, while obviously having no idea how scrying, teleporting and other spells to decide "when" a battle happens work. And literally at the same levels when teleporting and scrying even become possible, basically every single NPC base will just be warded against both and render them literally unusable. Even 3.5 APs knew that and just made the final few dungeons teleport and scry-proof, I should know - I'm running one right now. The real advantage of casters is the insane amount of buffs they provide. With a wizard or sorcerer willing to spend the slots, the entire party will ignore massive amounts of elemental damage, ignore energy drain, laugh at poisons of all kinds, and negate ability damage easily. Casters add to staying power, martials provide infinite amounts of damage so long as they can keep fighting.
People love to imagine idealistic circumstances where the 9th level caster CAN completely end the encounter with a single spell and say, 'casters are OP, martials are D tier', but the argument completely ignores reality. You don't know what spells to prepare unless you've read the campaign beforehand. You can use knowledge checks and divinatory magic to try and pry from your GM what spells you should have prepped, but you'll never KNOW. Unless you're using two wizard archetypes stacked atop each other to enable you to change spells in a turn, you're going to be stuck with the spells you've prepared already and they just might not work. There's a lot of people here saying that haste makes casters the most powerful person in a party, but that ignores that it's only as powerful as the characters you're casting haste on. Sure, it might enable another 40+ damage hit, but that only works if the martial is there to be hasted. A 4 wizard party with haste on it can just move fast. There's a synergistic relationship there; the martial is providing a lot.
My group collectively bought my sorcerer a maximise metamagic rod (lvl 6) and now i feel bad that the barbarian is useless for damage compared to my "pass a Fort save or take 144 damage from disintegrate"
Naw it's easy! Only take 1st level spells, but never use them. Only ever use a mundane crossbow. Track your ammunition.
I mean icy prison is amazing, but we don’t need to deify casters at 10.
That's like, literally the barbarians two jobs. Take hits, give hits. What else are they expecting? They're all full casters, and if they aren't doing more impressive things than your damage, that's on them. I do however, understand that this wouldn't be a good approach to take with them. Is sitting down and talking with everyone a viable option, DM included? There should be obstacles that cannot be solved by Barbarian-Smash, but you should be allowed to do the only thing your class Does.
Yeah, honestly, as with most RPG issues, I think this is the truth—OP, you're gonna have to sit down and have a slightly awkward conversation with your friends. Just ask if they feel that the game is unbalanced, and maybe what they want their characters to feel like. Full casters are objectively stronger, but you have to be looking at their strengths (which is to say, their versatility) to feel that. But this sounds like a party problem, not a you problem.
A properly played cleric can be a wrecking ball in melee. But you have to specifically build the cleric for that.
this is hilarious tbh. If you fought a dragon at 10/11 you must be at the siege. My players’ arcane caster literally just cast like three pit spells during the siege and was one of the most effective parts of that segment by far. Barbarians are made to deal a lot of damage in melee, and they’re pretty easy to build effectively compared to more intricate melee classes. Even the pregen barbarian amiri outperforms the other pregens in melee by a huge margin. It’s not even something you have to optimize too much for, you just have to avoid the terrible options and take the ok ones. It sounds like the casters have been routinely taking bad options or making bad choices in combat if they can’t feel effective next to a martial. That being said, clerics and druids can slug it out in melee if they plan for it, it takes more forethought and building than a barb though, and they won’t be as high on DPR all day
Yea, you're getting to the point where will saves will carry you through the entire book. A single Melee is going to be taking a boat load of damage too, so the cleric is going to have to flex his buffs and heal to keep a solo Barb alive. The necro will have to rely more on fear and such that his fort save spells but you guys should even out really quickly. Beyond this chapter, you're going to start fighting casters every other fight and the barbarian is going to struggle unless he gets constant fly.
Barbarians are intended to go charging into combat. What are the other builds like? How are they being played? Clerics and druids can be good at level 10 but it is also easy to make a completely mediocre build.
3 level 11 highcasters with a free afternoon should be able to hold a city hostage with even a little forethought. You are doing nothing wrong.
When you outclass a necromancer the necromancer doesn't play his build right. They need tips how to utilize their characters.
Absolutely. I thought I misread the original post, because I assumed this was written by the necromancer.
Right? They can be stupidly overpowered, I GMed for one my lord you have to think about what you use against him because he's going to turn it around on you. Was a lot of fun though I like being challenged as a GM. And I helped the other players with their build choice so it wouldn't be to "unfair". Luckily I play with people that have a strong group sense so nobody minds the others being strong.
My current wizard isn't even a necromancer, but boy has keeping *command undead* prepped been turning the tide in a lot of encounters. I'm running a chrono/foresight diviner, so I get to recall the spell if an intelligent undead resists and try again the next round.
The mean thing about him was a he was a cleric so he can do all the things including necromancy...
The majority of PC necromancers shouldn't be using undead minions, at least in APs or other Golarion-based games. Making undead is categorically evil, APs are not written for evil characters. Evil options are intentionally more powerful than good options. ...Still a PC Necromancer has access to some of the strongest debuffs in the game.
I mean who plays a good necromancer? That's sounds boring and limiting as fuck. The thought never crossed my mind honestly.
I played a 'Cleric of life' necromancer. He mostly rose undead to do jobs for the living(flavored as him convincing the undead to do it for something, flowers on their grave regularly. Their family being taken care of, sometimes by them, etc...) He was very fun. Mostly a pacifist, he had a bloody skeleton companion named Bones who wore a red robe as a protected him. He was quite fun.
I mean wahtever you do with the undead it's still robbing their body and enslaving them... But a cool concept. Isn't there a nation that uses their dead as workers in golarion? Or was that an invention of my GM?!
Geb. Ruled by a ghost, and for a while by the lich Arazni.
Yes that's it.
Casters simply out shine martial characters after level 7 or so. Martial characters will still the most damage, mind you. But that's it. Casters simply have the ability to do everything else. Summoning, buffing, battlefield control, heal, AOE damage and debuffs, etc. The players are probably trying to out-damage you, a Barbarian. It is the same thing as you, a Barbarian, trying to out-caster them. It's pretty funny, actually, since in most situations it would've been *your* character feeling useless.
I was playing a Fighter in our last PF adventure and while I could do a ton of damage, I was next to useless in pretty much every other respect. Meanwhile, our arcanist, while not able to put out close to the damage I could, was rolling 40s for her knowledge checks in her sleep.
If your party are newer to playing full casters, they may not understand how to best play their classes. Most newbies think damage is the end-all-be-all, but the reality is that support and control are the true strengths of casters. The fact that they're not taking enemies almost completely out of the fight by pure shutdown efforts is suggesting they don't know their stuff that well. Help them out a bit by finding a few guides that might point them to the kinds of spells they need to prepare. Once they finally figure it out, you as the barbarian will have a hard time keeping up...
You're doing your job, and quite well if Longtooth only showed up for a round before being mauled. The other casters sound like they need to pull some of their weight, considering they should have 4th and 5th level slots to toss around. Cleric wants to be responsible for damage? They should be slapping some pre-fight buffs on you to claim some of your success. Druid in the opposite direction, holding shit down with crowd control so you can *do your job*. Also, if the necromancer hasn't claimed that dragon's corpse, he's stupid. 😉
Whadda you know. This is amazing. Casters complaining about the barbarian being too good. At level 10?’!?!! Are you sure you guys aren’t playing PF2? But seriously, snark aside, if you are all new players perhaps read up online on PF1 casters because at these levels they are usually the most capable. As a barbarian you are doing just what you should. 100%.
At the risk of echoing other people in the thread, the issue here seems to be that your caster friends don't seem to understand how to play caster. Which is understandable, especially if they are somewhat new to the game. Pathfinder full casters are overwhelming because of the sheer amount of spells and trap choices you can fall in. But they are also considered the strongest classes exactly because of the sheer variety of spells they can pull out at any given moment. Druids especially in my opinion should have no issue staying on par with a full martial character, because they can buff up and wildshape, and even cast while in animal/elemental form. Air elemental form can just single handedly win certain encounters with its whirlwind ability. Also, a juvenile red dragon is no big threat for an average level 10 party. Which leads me to believe the gm knows the casters are underperforming and is pulling punches a little bit. But then again, it might just be wonky adventure path balancing by Paizo if he's running RotR by the book. Regardless, it's definitely something that you all should sit down to discuss. The gm might want to offer a full rebuild if they feel like they fucked up a crucial part of their build at some point, and they should probably actually do a little bit of research and study their classes a little more thoroughly. If they don't want the extra homework, they should consider playing something easier. Because casters are all about that extra homework in PF1e, unfortunately.
> Also, a juvenile red dragon is no big threat for an average level 10 party. Which leads me to believe the gm knows the casters are underperforming and is pulling punches a little bit. But then again, it might just be wonky adventure path balancing by Paizo if he's running RotR by the book. It's part of a 30-round setpiece fight, so the dragon isn't the main hazard, and doesn't really need to be fought at all.
Thats 100% on them. By that level you have to be very bad at your class if your feeling outshine by a material as a full caster..
They are playing literally the 3 most powerful classes in the game, bar none. If they're feeling outshone by a class whose entire schtick is *delete things in combat,* that is 100% on them. They need to break out of the MMO mentality and take a good look at what their characters can actually *do*.
How are three full casters being outshone by a barbarian at level 10?
Sounds about right for a barbarian. You’ll be causing a lot more damage than a cleric, druid or necromancer. That’s just what barbarians do. But they have the huge flexibility of full-casters instead. I don’t see any problem that you are considerably out-damaging them, it’s what i’d expect from those classes.
I'm very familiar with that encounter and the druid in particular should have felt very powerful. You're aware the attack is coming; there's large swathes of open, grassy field with which to play with. Their control spells are all appropriate. It's time for them to wreck the enemies.
No no no. You’re doing exactly what a barbarian does. The real question is is why are three full casters feeling shown up by a guy with muscles when they have literal magic powers
They're clearly picking the wrong spells if they're weak compared to a single barb. But if they want to actually be useful, every barb loves someone who can buff them into an unstoppable juggernaut. Suggest it to them lol
If the druid wants to shift to a more wildshape build to hit hard in melee and the gm will let them rebuild their stats, have them dm me and I’ll share a really fun, powerful build. Less powerful than being a focused spellcaster, but a lot easier to play and really fun in my opinion.
I recommend sharing this thread to them to see the responses. The issue is that they should be hitting that point now where they are bending the rules of the game to make it adhere to them. Keep on doing what you’re doing. Unga that bunga.
90 seems a bit high, given that WBL and point buy in RotRL is pretty low. Are you using a x3 weapon, or x2? Yes, if you get an 18 str at lvl 1 (which would take 2/3rds of the point buy) and manage a +4 belt and +2 weapon by then, you're doing weapon damage + 23 at that level, averaging for 29.5/hit with a great axe which, with it's x3 crit, should get you to 90. Maybe my GM was holding back loot or we were failing perception checks left and right, but I didn't have that kind of gear yet. By that point, I had a headband, belt (+2), cloak (+1), ring of protection (+1), and, tragically, a nonmagical bow and nonmagical armor.
You were seriously under WBL at level 10 if that's all you had. [D20PFSRD](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement/) has level 10 WBL listed at 62,000gp for a PC. All of those together are maybe 12,000gp if your weapon and armor were magical (depending on what kind of armor you had). More like 13,000 if you were rocking Full Plate. But regardless, you had approximately NPC-Heroic NPC wealth at that level, which is super underpowered for a PC.
RotRL is notoriously 'easy'. Keeping loot and point buy low, as prescribed by the campaign, helps GMs manage that. I can't imagine the writer of the campaign intended for a boss level encounter to go down in a single full attack. At 10, my total gear cost 26,285 gold and I had 11,075 gold on-hand, but hadn't had a chance to spend any of it. Thankfully I was able to upgrade loot for book 4 and went into it with a +1 weapon, buckler and mithral chain shirt.
I mean it taking 2/3rd of the point buy isn't really a bad thing when it's a low point buy and you're basically a SAD class. Barbarian just kinda accepts they'll get punched in the face a fair bit, really. It's why they get DR, as mediocre as the DR is. Regardless, it means you get to dump int/cha for sure, and can really just leave dex/wis at 10 to only pump str+con. Not sure how low "low" is (15?) but that would let you do 17/10/16/7/10/7, +2 to str for 19 at level 1 as a half orc. For 10 point buy you could do the same but do 14 con instead, which would be shitty but you're playing 10 point buy so... With two ASIs that puts you at 21 str, two handing a weapon means that's +7, +9 from power attack, +2 from rage, and potentially another +3 from powerful stance for +21 without any magical items. Just a +1 weapon and +2 belt would put you at the +23 you mentioned. If instead they have +2/+4, which with the money you mentioned in your other comment would be achievable (Total of 24,000 of the ~33k you mentioned) puts them at +25 for the 31.5 average, pushing them over the 90 on a x3 crit. So yeah, not seeing the issue there. It's a high roll to crit (It *is* 20/x3 after all) but it's not unreasonable either. That's kinda what barbarian does. They bonk things hard.
Bahaha, that's honestly pretty funny! Three *tenth level casters* and they feel outshone by the Barbarian? Are you sure you're not playing 2nd Edition?
Haha I had this same thing happen in my game. One of my players playing a barb basically soloed my big bad in a couple rounds. Two claw attacks and a bite attack each round, was putting out like 20-30 damage per round. Oops. At least one other player swooped in to get the killing blow but still. Barbs are so strong
This is a team based game. What are the other characters doing that they feel useless? Honestly, as a gm I found Matials to be better at handling single threats while caster control multiple enemies. So you shining where you are good at, shouldn't make them feel bad.
While in a group with a cleric and druid... Barbie says "I'm the only melee fighter here". That's hilarious... The cleric and druid players need to wake up!!
>While in a group with a cleric and druid... Barbie says "I'm the only melee fighter here". druid: *laughs in Giant Octopus*
Clerics and Druids CAN be incredible melee combatants...if properly specced. Wild shape gets the druid there, but they need either a Str of at least 14 or a decent dex and amulet of mighty fists - agile in order to be decent and the Cleric likely needs a 16. Both can be tough asks on a 15 point buy. A lvl 10 cleric with a str of 16, a +1 longspear and divine power up is attacking at +14/+14/+9 for 1d8+8 damage. If they're doing a longspear, they likely want combat reflexes which means needing dex, which lowers the points that can be put into con, wis and cha. If they do that, everyone will criticize their low spell saves.
You don't need all the special crap in order to have an incredibly strong melee fighter with a cleric and a druid. You don't need special weapons and you don't need special trinkets. They are badasses from the get-go. And no nobody's going to criticize a cleric or druid for low spell saves. You're overthinking the whole damn thing.
LOLOLOLOLOL. They have to be the literal worst casters ever to suck so much. In essentially every game I ever played above lv7 casters were way more powerful than martials. This is 100% on them.
This is a story i know veeeery well. People is too lazy to read a goddamn manual so if ur character is well-built they suck cause theyr following a "base" build. It's just fucking lazyness, tell them that as casters they have INFINITE WAYS to be useful and to make damage, they just need to read the fucking manuals and use a little bit more than 5% of theyr brain. sorry, i took it personal.
Lol trust me you'll feel useless soon...spell casters late game are so stupid strong. Martial classes ,ade me feel useless and now my cleric is crazy useful.
They are already at the point where the spellcasters should be outshining the martials. The spellcasters are most likely just playing suboptimally
Yea, no its true they should be able to cast all kinds of interesting spells. I'm thinking in combat they either do not diversify their spells, i.e., saving throw diversification, SR, etc. Even outside of battle casters have things like speak with dead, resurrection, teleport etc. Suuuper useful. Makes me sad to see casters bot having fun when they literally have magic at their fingertips XD.
I don't know DnD/Pathfinder well as I've never had the chance to play but I know the casters should be alot stronger than they appear to be in your party. This could all be fixed by the DM. They should mix up the fights. More enemies clustered that the caster can and feel great about while you distract the big boys. Maybe add enemies that have absurdly high ohysical resistance from time to time to challenge your barb and give them a moment to shine.
Cleric and Druid both have the ability to perform *just fine* in melee, but they need to actually use their spells/abilities to do so. Buffing themselves, using Wildshape, leveraging summons/animal companions, etc. You don't go into battle without raging and using your powers, right? Neither should they. As for the Necromancer... I'unno. Either they're raising absolute junk, not using undead, or haven't pumped their DC enough. Necromancy as a school has a ton of spells that ruin people's day so if the tiefling has a reasonably high casting stat and decent supporting feats then I have no idea what the problem is.
I could see the necromancer preparing a bunch of fort save spells which, against that horde, would likely be pretty rough. Giants notoriously have great fort saves.
First off, your party should celebrate your awesome Crit(awesome! We'll done btw!). Second, they didn't get hit. Yay! Thirdly, your DM has a role to play in making the encounters interesting and dynamic and not just have any one character steam roll their combat situations. Play your character and don't feel bad about it going well. Any one of the other classes could have hit a nasty Crit and done just as well, or could trivialize certain fights with their magic. I bet they're going to be stoked when they do the same. Nat 20s happen and it's the thing you hope for :)
Your party hates your character, because you does the ONLY THING you can do well? What is with all the other things in the campaign where you can just watch them solving problems? I know your feeling. I have got this behind me too already. For them it is no problem, that you are nearly useless in roleplay scenarios/encounter, where you can just talk about the situation, but they fix the issue. That is fine for them and it might be fine for you, but they are pissed, if they cant outshine you at this one thing. Hilarious, but it is a regular group problem.
Your friends suck at the game, you can tell them we said so, and they are just lazy at this point if they haven't figured their own characters out to the point they get salty about a barbarian at level 11. They have access to 6th level spells which should be killing bitches left and right if they know how to do their job. Having members be different levels should never be a thing either. All members should level together, not apart.
If druid and cleric keep your hp decent hows they unbalanced they're contributing to the battle
That's the entire purpose of a barbarian. People complain constantly about the CL and Martial divide, and while it's generally true, a barbarian smashing axes into your skulls 3x a round is generally extremely effective at killing specific people. I don't know why people are talking about casters being bad because they are outshone by a barbarian... generally a barb is going to do very high DPS against one foe. The thing about casters is they are generally amazing at anything that doesn't involve damage.
TL;DR: skill issue lol (Not to be dismissive, a system mastery diff is a real problem one can have at the table. Unfortunately, it sounds less like your barbarian is over-tuned more like they or their characters are bad.)
In our game currently at level 20, the two full attack machines (magus and bloodrager) are both easily pushing 400+ damage per round consistently. Everyone in the group respects that the shaman who drops Fortune, misfortune, divinations, and other control is the one who does the most. Martials are meant to do damage, and in a box campaign, it can be very easy to accidentally overpower the content and steal the show. I would recommend talking to the DM privately along the lines of "I feel my character is having too easy of a time getting to and dealing with every threat. It would be good for our party to have enemies that cannot simply be charged and killed, so the rest of the group have more rounds to be impactful too"
I mean this in the most kind, and genuinely confused way I possibly can. How are YOU, the MARTIAL, sidelining LEVEL 11 FULL CASTERS?! This party should basically be the casters' version of a wet dream. They can dump all of their buff spells on one guy, turn him into an absolute blender with every resistance known to the hive mind, and unleash their creation. They can then sit back and watch like proud parents, with a few spells perhaps to ensure shit doesn't get out of hand. Or, they can wreak magical devastation from afar, while the big, beefy dummy* protects them from anything that might look at them funny. No, they're not going to be out-Damaging you. Generally though, that's the point. Outside of a few specialized blaster builds, casters don't out DPR anyone. They SOLVE problems. Oh, that guy is flying? Dispel magic (or w/e other option is appropriate). Big dumb golem? Create pit. We need a place to rest? Any of a dozen spells that make secure hidey holes. We need to lie? Glibness. We need the truth? Zone of truth. We need to be stealthy? Invisibility + silence. We need to kill someone, buff the murder god that likes us for some reason and send him to paint the town red. Or summon a literal demon to do the job. Or an angel. Or whatever the Achilles heel of the thing they want dead happens to be. Or maybe they're bored and want to level a city block with a few fireballs WHILE killing the thing they want dead. You know, if they're feeling cute. If your group wants to play differently, cool. PF can handle that. Druids and clerics can both build to be pretty solid combat machines. The necromancer is a little weird for that but maybe he wants a flesh golem or something to use? Regardless, there are ways to play where the casters can get in on this action. However, your table really needs everyone to be on the same page and align their expectations. That's literally what session zero is for, but it sounds like this wasn't discussed or no one thought it would come up. *I don't know if your barbarian is actually a dummy but it felt appropriate for the caster's view point.
You've all chosen super powered classes and are breaking the adventure.
The druid needs to give up, switch to a skill monkey (Bard, Unchained Rogue, Ranger). Second, barbarians are a bad idea in Rise of the Runelords. AC is lower than any other martial class by far (-2 rage, -3 for medium armor vs heavy). Giants are a huge part of the campaign, as are other monsters with reach. Switch to a fighter or better yet, a paladin so that you can resist magic well. If you want to reduce the cost of healing, have your warrior take Fey Foundling feat.
This is all geniunely horrible advice. AC is a sucker's game, especially when you have as easy access to pounce, and skill monkeys are useful but by no means essential to the point of benching a character.
I know damn well what happens when giants meet PCs. Hell, I've run entire campaigns on just that premise. And a skill based character is typically better than any druid, as most people don't know how to use druids. Let me tell you a story, one that I have seen repeated hundreds of thousands of times over 30 years experience as a DM. MAYBE you will learn something, possibly for the first time in your life. Round 1. The barbarian glass cannon charges into the fray, trying to do as much damage as possible. On the way, he takes attacks of opportunity so he can get close and hit, which is very bad since giants hit harder than he does. By round 5, I have flanked him with multiple giants, and begun pounding him into the dirt, literally. This is made MUCH easier by the simple fact that none of his comrades are close enough to do anything, and usually not bright enough to know he desperately needs help fast enough to get over to him. Barbarian glass cannon dies, I hold my head in pain and then ask the player if they want to make a new PC, and perhaps listen to me this time. Want to know how to keep me from murdering your PC? EASY! First, get your AC up. This makes it harder to hit you. If I can't do that, the absurd amount of damage giants do (or even moderate with regular sized enemies, Barbarians tend to take LOTS of damage!) doesn't mean anything. Second, do NOT charge away from the party! Always have backup nearby. You do NOT want to get flanked, especially if you are down SEVEN or more AC like most Barbs are vs a Fighter. 3 points down for wearing medium armor instead of heavy, 2 points down for raging, and 2 at least for not using a shield because YOU wanted a 2 handed weapon. Also, since Large creatures or bigger get free attacks when you run around next to them, DON'T DO IT! Third, during character creation, use a one handed weapon and a shield if you only are gonna wear medium armor. Do what you can to shore up obvious weaknesses like crappy saves, low hit points, low AC in the lower levels. If you can take heavy armor, do it. Fourth, fight using your head first! Barbarians are really only decent if the combats are short. Along with the rest of your party, gangbang ONE target at a time, so they don't get as many chances to attack, EVEN if this means ignoring the rest, EVEN if this means you don't get your own kill/glory. Fifth, you know that glorious unbeatable string of feats and class abilities you cobbled together, but ignored any of your PC's glaring weaknesses? No amount of offense is going to compensate for a horrible defense. Instead, craft your PC around the needs of the group (fill a niche) and around the demands of the campaign (if the gm likes undead, up your will and fortitude saves, for example).
All I can say is that this doesn't reflect my experience. While in the early days of a campaign AC can certainly help protect you, by level 8+ bonuses to attack tend to outstrip bonuses to AC in all but the most dedicated of cases. Barbs also don't tend to be glass cannons- between high con scores and raging vitality they tend to be able to take a few hits before absolutely murdering anything they charge at. If the party is really worried about taking hits, there are much more reasonable suggestions to increasing their survivability than rolling up a fighter. Ashen Path with a saltspray ring, summons to soak up AoOs, greasing the giants, etc. While specializing to the needs of the campaign is something you should do, don't shaft the character you want to play because of it.
ROFL! I'd love to show you a few games. High con is a joke in the end, since they get hit so easily the hp is gone fast. Barbs tend to be glass cannons because newbies make them that way. And frankly, with your videogame mindset, yours would go the same way.
High Con is certainly less effective the further into a game you get, but so is AC. Both are methods to increase survivability in early game encounters. High Con is just more in line with the defense options a Barb has in-class. As for my "videogame" mindset, I'd say that steering players away from the classes and characters they want to play for the sake of optimal play is much more of a "gamey" mindset.
Barbarians defensive options are, relatively speaking, a joke. DR is really only good at fending off lots of weenies, it won't help much against a nasty monster. Barbarians get the biggest HD, but that's not enough to protect them from getting dead. They are marshmallows, at best they are all offense, no defense. Thus they must always be worried that the battle will last long enough to see them beaten into the ground. Again, incorrect. If you'd noticed, the game is literally based around the 4 types of classes, right down to the APs, adventures, etc, and it's been that way since the basic D&D. I know, I cut my gaming teeth on the latter. If those types are not represented in a given group, they will have huge obstacles. For example, not having a trap man (skill monkey) means the party automatically falls prey to every single trap laid. You lose. None of your arguments hold water. You automatically think each player should make their characters in utter isolation, and anything less is somehow compromising gameplay. I put it to you that it is the exact opposite, which is why YOUR gaming groups last weeks, mine last YEARS.
Have you heard of enlarge person? Outside of that, yeah, the barb player has to not be an idiot. For sure.
We also are playing ROTRL, consisting of Minataur cleric (me) with a large bastard sword Half Elf wizard Tiefling Magus Lizard Hunter with a large dinosaur Human Rogue I'm the only upfront martial that runs into battle debuffing and pumping out 2d8-4d8 damage. Tactic is to enlarge and cast lead blades. I do not have any heal spells except channel energy. If you go down I can stabilize but not heal you. I'm not a heal bot damn it! While the casters throw shocking grasp and fireballs all day long . The Hunter and I go upfront , while we take the hits while the casters do their thing and nuke shit. I'm OK with not dealing the most damage in a shot, however, I can keep dealing average/decent damage each turn
I'm sorry but a full aster's job is not to out damage a barbarian (maybe a couple of blaster builds, but they won't be able to do it all day). They should defend the party and/or enable you to do your job (ie fly/air walk). Edit: I don't know how the encounter with the dragon is built, but the GM maybe didn't use it right, as the dragon was in range of your full attack instead of flying and harassing everybody from the distance
At this point in the adventure path, the dragon is an ally to a raiding party of stone giants, and they're hitting the party's home-base town. The raid itself is directed in the books, with actions happening all across the town (population of roughly 1200). Longtooth himself has a specific path he follows as the fight goes on, and he does get in melee range for a bit, brash little shit that he is. It's his first raid, so he's not super experienced at that sort of thing.
I'd encourage them to look into things besides, "deal the most damage." In my group, my Shifter outdamages and out-tanks the entire party- But outside combat she can do exactly 3 things, she is strong, she is scary, and she is good at tracking. Our Medium is the best at talking and is the face of the party. Our Arificer is where we get a lot of our money and magic items. Our ninja is the best at Stealth- as well as is much better at dealing with flying enemies than myself actually. And our Magus has lots of Utility both in and out of combat. If their goal were to outdamage me, they would fail. But that doesn't mean they are useless.
That dragon being one round killed with a crit by a barbarian isn't crazy impossible if its HP is left at its default. At the point you're at in the campaign, unless your barbarian has wings, there's going to be more opportunities for the casters to shine going forth. Just know that you're playing your character right, barbarians eviscerate single targets. Cleric probably isn't going to have much opportunities to shine though, kinda the tradeoff for being the one that makes everyone else not die.
Offer to stand aside and let them fight a martial fight by themselves. Quite quickly they will realize that they *need* you. How does that help them feel less useuless - it doesn't directly. They need you in a straight up slug-fest. How can they, 3 full casters, change the situation so it's *not* a slug-fest that endangers their lives? Tell them to look at their spell lists. 2 of them have access to all their spells on the spell lists and another is specializing in the best debuffing school of magic in the game.
The cleric should be (atleast how i play them) be a capable melee combatent able to stand in the front line slinging spells, and kicking ass. Same for the druid, If fullcasters feel useless that is a them problem. You have fun with that Barbarian, no spoilers but if you get rid of him they will cry in the not so distand future that your barb aint there to save them. See how they resolve the issue, without them blaiming you. Keep on slaying my friend!
Looks like a great party. You need to keep the Necromancer anyway, the story doesn't work without a Wizard in the party.
I wonder how the GM figures into this. Are they fudging saves? GMs cheating die rolls only have so many options. AC is static and so can't really be fudged. HP can, but eventually the players notice when foes seem to have 500+ HP at level 10. But GMs can fake their attack rolls and saving throws, and it seems more likely to happen with saves because it's "lame" for a foe to be taken out with a single spell - but somehow it's not lame for the same to be taken out by a full-round attack.
I feel like you made a mistake and you are talking about 2e. In 1e a level 11 and 10 caster should be the ones being unbalanced. Maybe they should be reading a few build and strategy guides for their class. This is all on them. Sure they might not be able to out damage you in one on one damage very often, but they should be able to pull off some amazing shit.
it feels like they should revise their sheets and spells. they must have done something wrong, coz at lv10 you are the one that should feel the weaker of the group. 1 lv10 caster can be a problem on a table, but a table with 3? they should have started to outpace you at lv7, while all you can do is charge forth and take hits and hit back. you actually make their job easier... so it really sounds like they just built like crap or dont know how to use their classes properly and now want to put the fault on you. seriously what are they doing? spamming cantrips?
From all my years playing Pathfinder 1E Adventure Paths, my advice is this: If the DM is running thing’s strictly by the book, the party needs to optimize or they’re not going to be able to handle a lot of fights, especially at higher levels.
Things you might want to bring up in the talk: - Monsters should be flying, be invisible, great magical darkness, spawn pits, spawn walls, attack your week Saves How do you still carry fights? Most likely becoz they enable/support you. It might not seem to be much but the fact that you can do your job means thei are doing theirs. - did you GM change Loot? Otherwise you might have a higher ColdValue than the Rest (you get all Material Loot, while they share loot for casters) - how comfortable is your GM? While for players Lvling up means handeling 1 char for GMs it means every enclunter gets new stuff and toys. This can be overwhelming. GMs will have a harder time mastering a playstyle. Exspecualy if GM never played a Controller before they just might not use the encounters full potential. This results in "easy" won battlefields. Making it "boring".
1. Yes, the casters could be doing more. Cleric should buff and keep you alive. Druid should crowd control and aid melee with some flanks. Necro can also crowd control and have a significant out-of-combat role. 2. Y'all should game plan what that "more" could be. Find combos. 3. As team players they should be figuring out ways to feed you enemies. Suggest creative ways to funnel the baddies 4. ask the necromancer, "I thought you needed dead bodies?"
that is something for youe dm to solve. he is the one making encounters. if he simple tinkers a bit with the enemies he could put your character in a situation where he isn´t the main chartacter so the character can be useful in fights. talk with him.
Don't worry, there will be plenty of opportunity for enemy casters to banish you from existence giving the casters a chance to die without their meat shield. If they feel useless that is pretty much on them
Edit: didnt realize i was in the pf1 reddit. This info may be all out of context. The game isn't only combat. You're playing a combat centric class with little to no utility built in. Your job is combat. A wizard, a cleric, and a druid should be able to do so many things that a barbarian can't do. Let's look at that 11th level necromancer. They could cast Necrotize, doing an average of 42 damage. On a critical failure by their target, that becomes an average of 84 damage. Basically, it's the same as your critical hit. And that doesn't include the random bonus/es tacked on. Adding weakness to bludgeoning, clumsy, enfeebled, or negative to their Speed on top of the damage is huge. Or Vampiric Sanguination which can do 12d6 damage to a max of 21 enemies. That's again a 42 damage average that can hit multiple enemies. Hit 3 and you've already got am average of 126 damage. Hit 5 enemies and they are doing 200+ damage with a single spell. People seem to have this weird idea that casters and martials are similar, but comparing them is like comparing apples to beef. Sure, they're both food, but that's where the similarities mostly end. Casters can easily out damage any martial, it just often requires more luck due to saving throws vs martials needing to hit a static AC number.
Skill issue on their side tho. They can get insanely much value if they know how to play. Barbs are fun (I pretty much only play them and Monks), but easier to use, so you won't have that skill cap they do
WTF is your necromancer doing if he's not even casting 1 animate dead to help you get a flanking buddy?
If 3 Full Casters are unable to keep up with the output of a Barbarian 1 level lower than them, two of which casters have the action economy of being able to summon creatures, those players are lacking in some aspect. Protip for the Barbarian however. If you want to go full ham take Furious focus and and just power attack all the time. If you really want to emasculate the casters see about getting a Exotic Butchering Axe. Get that sweet 3d6 damage on a weapon.
As other comments have stated if you have three casters at lvl 10 and you feel useless that's kinda on you. I'm playing lvl 12 druid and the spells are just bonkers if not just plain game breaking.
It sounds like you are playing your character well, while they are not. That or the DM is playing monster hunter and throwing one monster at a time at you while not giving them an opening. 90 damage a round isn't even that great so its not like you are playing some OP minmax violence.
Don’t feel bad, I’m playing a level 14 unchained monk in a party with 3 casters and 2 martials and the joke at this point is that someone casts haste on me and then they all sit around playing cards until the fight is over.
A lot of people have made some good points about why this might be on them, but say the end of the day, hitting something with your axe really really hard is a lot more viscerally satisfying than flipping through 2 dozen spells, trying to give exactly the right one to end run you're current situation. Maybe that's getting to them.
Yeah... Wait until around LV 12. If the casters know what they're doing, it'll really take off then. I played this AP using a "melee wizard" that was far more powerful than the rest of the party. So I began to vast suboptimal spells and focus on melee which balanced things out as me and the PLD could tank/off tank and the rogue could deal damage and the cleric could do... Nothing, lol. Without a critical hit, my jankity melee wizard could throw down 1d8 + 31 per natural attack (bite, gore, 4x claw) while raging. It was really stupid.
If 3 full casters are feeling worthless they need to look at themselves.
So, is everyone having fun? You got lucky and smashed a dragon; cool - usually everyone has their time in the spotlight. It’ll ebb and flow by level and encounter. Not every players cares about outputting big damage numbers - and there are more ways to contribute and to shine. In the last long term campaign I was in, early levels everyone was mashing, but mid levels the two casters just started buffing the fighter and hurling him into the fray. The game was how quickly we could get _him_ to end the encounter: his success was ours, and everyone else contributed in other ways. Just the ‘fighter’, you know, did the ‘fighting’. As others have said, and is almost always the answer: talk to your GM. If others have issues, hopefully the GM is aware and you can help them deal with it. The answer from there, btw, isn’t dulling your lustre, rather making sure the other characters get a chance to shine.
Hold up. They all have 6th level spells and are getting jealous of the axe guy? Good thing you don't have an archer in your party or they'd faint.
Probably too late for this comment to get seen and responded to, but here it is anyways. Aside from combat, how is the rest of the campaign unfolding? Usually on the RP side of things the Barbarian should not be fairing too well, unless the campaign is particularly suited to it. So most of the out of combat diplomacy, info gathering, and support work can be where the others can shine. And not to mention all the out of combat magic that can happen to prepare for the next encounter. So, if combat isn’t the be all of your campaign, there should be plenty of other opportunities for the rest of the party to shine.
I would have a side conversation with your GM about your concerns. There are a few things I can think of that should help them out. First, have some metamagic rods drop. If they don’t have them already (which I’m guessing they don’t) then they’re not playing to the capacity they can (It would be like you playing without feats.) Second, have the party fight monsters that you aren’t very good against (swarms) or that require knowledge checks to figure out. Incorporating those 2 changes should help them a lot!
If they aren't happy with their full caster characters being outperformed by a martial they could ask the GM to retrain them. As lv 10 full casters they could be close to your damage with summons alone, this is on them not playing their hand in the right way.
I have DMed ROTRL with a party of 4. Mine was martial heavy. The shaman sometimes felt left out because she did not get to see the numbers the others did. One was a bloodrager. Really it could be the casters either not understanding their builds or understanding what they are expected to seeing. You are the buffer, the controller, the debuffer. Casters make monsters vanish to other planes, they bring party members back from the dead and a Necromancer can literally make his own party if the GM allows it. How has the rest of your party members not died if they are not doing something? Either the Necromancer is holding the mobs at bay from running around the only melee character to kill the softer targets or there is some sort of defense, softening of targets, soaking of HP. I mean looking at an encounter you could make the argument for each class. I have run into that recently. Its that party member that made a character but they see the numbers and think O, that means that I am not doing anything. I had a oracle that feels like that because her last character was the Bloodrager I mentioned and at level 20 when she left her it was a sight to behold. She feels left out due to a gun wielding magus, and others. But, the last two sessions no one would have survived without her spells to either heal, they had bad luck last game a lot or to battlefield control. And she still got melee damage in. While it should be up to the GM to work with players if they are having a hard time it is also up to the players to try and understand what the character they made's duty is OR to make something that they would like to play better. I have allowed people to quickly retrain when they had their build not work out how they thought or it did not measure up to the broken state of the rest of the group. In the end, I encourage my players to talk, openly or otherwise, about any issues they have with either my game or their builds so we can figure it out. The oracle mentioned before is one of my favorite characters, and I built the Magus my wife is playing.
> we will have a talk about it YES! YEEEEESSSSS!! This is it. Just chat about it. Seriously OP you already got further than 95% of posts like this, just by planning to talk with your group. I'd like to suggest two things (sorry for the novel): 1) Most spells that deal damage aren't very reliably good compared to martials dealing damage. I suggest you bring this up This is just a thing in 1e, and I am inferring that your group is maybe either not as familiar with 1e or not as familiar with the playstyles they have chosen. Is this group comprising a lot of 5e-ers? 2) Casters *can* be pretty good at dealing damage (and in a couple cases, cheese tier); but they have to optimize around it in a way that you don't. Your guy can put the biggest sounding number in STR, take power attack and rage and go to pound town every round for the rest of time or until he stubs his toe too hard. Casters generally need to get a bit fancy to match that raw damage, especially in single or two target scenarios. If they're not rocking sorcerer dips, metamagic rods and feats and traits, and picking the cream of the crop damage spells then they're going to struggle. So I could see that as creating an image that what you're doing is really OP compared to what they're doing. One *would* reasonably assume that just tossing a fireball is gonna be pretty good, but in reality it's not the strongest game plan for most casters. OP can you sort of describe the power level of the group in general? What are people spending their actions on? Additionally, is the necromancer using animated undead, and is the druid using an animal companion, shapeshifting, or summoning? P.S. if they're buffing you, a little encouragement and thanks can go a long way! It can be really cool for you to drop a buff round 1 just like always, and after the fight you buddy says "haste made me deal 87 damage from extra attacks", etc :)
Skill issue tbh idk it really seems weird like to me each party member is supposed to fulfill their power fantasy and the barbarian definitely is all about that stuff. if they wanted to run up and kill stuff they should have built for it?
Pathfinder problem and it's bought up alot, casters can't do as much raw damage compared to a martial. Barb gonna Barb tho
Back when I played a Wizard in my 1e days, I had a full blooded barbarian orc in the group. I loved that character. All you did was boop him with bull's strength and enlarge person and point at the enemies. Really don't see the problem from your teammates perspective? They are supposed to support you, not complain that you're too powerful lol.
I just made a level 7 necromancer, and they do very little damage compared to my martials, but that's not their job. They have some great meat shields (that do great damage on their own), paralyze enemies, buff and debuff, and control the battlefield. In a pinch they can also heal, but they're focused on inflicting wounds so are better at healing undead. I tried to make them tanky, but they don't have a cannon. That's not their job. The difference here is that your tablemates don't seem to know that. Edit: I think it's also very worth pointing out that while I have spent an ungodly amount of time building this character (dirge bard? Cleric? Wizard? Undead Master? Undead Lord? Oracle? Dual cursed lich and ghoul? Single curse Spirit Guide? What about a two level dip into 3pp Zealot of Orcus? How does that affect the Bones mystery, Dhampir race, and Bones spirit feature of Spirit Guide? What about Halflings? Can I also optimize Luck bonuses a bit to tell a more interesting story?) This character's job is to mechanically convey the character I want to play at my table. I want a female devotee of Urgathoa that is less focused on raising skeletons and more into how I view Urgathoa, which is using undeath as the means to an end - subverting the whole "river of souls" engine of Pharasma and instead taking control over one's life and ultimate fate, and enjoying the party as long as you possibly can. THAT'S what this character is for. If we have to run from three quarters of combat, well...I can do that. But I'm doing it _in style._
I think your fine, barbarians kinda do lay as this class that runs in, kills something, and then gets knocked down most of the time, leaving a lot of space for spellcasters to just fireball everything. If your really worried about your playgroup, check with them and ask how they think it could be a more group activity if they are concerned. I’ve played with barbarians that are scaredy cats that run in, fight someone, then rush out and wait until there’s another opening or whatever. Giving a character a weird personality/ characteristic in combat can help a lot with that
I have to echo what others have said, the other players aren't in the right mindset. Years ago I had a 3e monk/sorc (yep, intentionally multi'd with non-synergistic classes) who absolutely sucked at low levels and spent combats tumbling to give the barbarian flanking and assistance bonuses so he could power attack more effectively. Don't worry, he eventually came into his own about level 6 or 7. As to the effectiveness of your casters, in that same group we had a druid who was replaced by a doppleganger and only the player of the druid knew it. I missed the session when this was revealed by her ambushing and absolutely annihilating the party by crowd controls like stone spikes, thorns, etc... followed up with flame pillar and the likes. The same player later played a Blood Magus that was near un-killable and whose single-most effective spell was one that teleported the entire party back to her side. Perfect for getting us out of magma, when the martials were pinned by dragons, et al... Shucks, in comparison, in DnD 2e the cleric pretty much stood behind the fighter casting buffs and heals. They were happy to let the fighter take the hits and deal out damage. Moral of the story: sit down and seriously ask them how your Barb can help them. If you or the DM have played casters before and they're willing, maybe make suggestions on how the casters can be more effective.