Brawler Fighter Woes

So I have this player in my campaign, level 13, his base ac is 31, but he gets a +2 bonus until he is hit which requires just about a nat 20 with most creatures and on top of that he has makeshift shield. Which means that most creatures do need a nat 20 to hit and those that don't all he has to do is knock prone and grab and then they have that -2. Meaning even the soldiers need a nat 20 to hit him. He just soloed a solo by knocking the solo prone and grabbing him then activating that stupid daily that does auto weapon damage every turn. which doesn't really matter as he finished the solo off by doing 160 points of damage in a single round by stringing together two three hit attacks with an action point. And he wasn't hit even once.

He must be stacking together something I'm missing right? This isn't possible. At this point he is pretty much an unstoppable jaugernaught, once anything gets near him they are stuck, trapped and dead. My only way of doing anything is to sacrifice soldiers to him while artillery and control try to damage the rest of the party. well some of the rest of the party.  There is this one player that manages to teleport three times every round and make herself invisible to everyone.

I have to prepare an action to hit her t that glancing moment she appears at the start of her turn. But its the fighter thats my only real problem. He literally could fight most encounters by himself and survive easily.

I've only koed the fighter like once a level on average and almost always through the actions of a lurker.

I have a question for you...

Why are you throwing such low level monsters against your party? A 13th level monster has a +18 or so to hit. So, if you are needing a Natural 20 to hit, then you are not sending your party up against tough enough monsters. I also have a Brawler Fighter in my Saturday game so I know what to do to challenge them. Also, why attack AC when you can attack, say WILL. Dominate him once or twice and sic him on the rest of the PCs! Reflex attacks are another option. Something that Slows, Immobilizes or restrains can be effective. Now don't do this all of the time, but show this PC that there are other things it has to deal with, too.

GF

Well he rides a mount so slows, immobilizes and restrains aren't effective.


My last encounter was with a level 12 Cobalt Dragon supported b a storm of coins trap, he proned and immobilize the dragon right off and it was dead in two rounds because literally everyone hit it 100% of the time. I got one breath attack off that hit the pixie and nothing else in the first round. I didn't ap as I wasn't aware yet how bad off this dragon was.. By the second round the dragon was marked and prone. I decided to try the terrifying presence thing, but it missed  Ieveryone I aped and with nothing else to do tried do attack the fighter. All three attacks missed, the first would have hit but he makeshift shielded. And the dragon was dead before his third turn, his bloodied breath having no targets to hit but the fighter. The storm of coins proved ineffective.

Before that I had them fight seven level 10 mirror mimic scytheclaw drakes unfortunately, I had misread their jumping power. I thought it would let them jump away from the fight so I had made the area with a large artificial waterfall that i hoped they would jump up to and jump back down. But rereading the power I saw they had to jump straight to other players. The result was whenever they used their jumping power the fighter would use his grabbing basic attack to snatch them out of the air whack them and keep them adjacent to him. And he took no damage.

The encounter before that was against four level 8  Drow spell spinners and six level I forget, rage devils, level 11 I think. In this encounter due to the weird way the party entered, he charged in attacking the spinners and the rage Devils assisted each other in a strength check to block the rest of the party off by sliding a large chunk of ice in their way blocking them in a tunnel. I actually got lucky and hit him, but it was the first round so my hit didn't lower his ac. No more hits for the rest of the encounter.

Before that was against four shadow demons modified into skirmishers and a wall mimic trap (a modified raging fire obstacle) I did actually ko him here, just somehow got lucky I guess. He almost died. Failed his deathsave twice but then someone stabilized him.

Before that was an encounter vs three modified giant mimics and a shadow demon. The Giant mimics were prion cages and would use their tongues to suck anyone around inside the cage and digest them. The Shadow Demon Lurker did nothing, he fighter grabbed the demon, dragged him next to the cage and prevented both from doing any damage. He has feyslaughter gauntlets on so there is no teleportation tricks.

Before that was six Drow Spell Spinners and a Drow Templar. I actually koed everyone but him here as the party was ambushed entering the dungeon and I hit them with a lot of lightning webs.  Paralyzing basically the whole party, but him. I did shave off a good chunk of his health but he still basically soloed it.

In fact he and just about everyone in the party have managed to augment themselves with the perfect gear they want and literally have no more use for any magic items. Maybe thats why he seems to op. His will and reflex all have a lot of magic items that can do circumstantial boosts, he has fey slaughter gauntlets preventing teleportation, he has another item that lets him ignore concealment and invisible on enemies, and he has this mount which means if he is slowed or immobilized the mount can move for him, if the mount is slowed or immobilized he can just jump off and attack anyway. And the mount has this barding that grants it 10 resist to all damage anyway. He also keeps a sword that he draws as a minor to ignore weakness for a turn. For as many turns as he wants. And I believe he has an item just for preventing domination.

Bottom line, start ramping up your encounters. It sounds like the party is Level 13, so make a Level+3 encounter to throw at them. I once put a Level+5 encounter against an 8th level party and even though it pretty much depleted all of their resources and had them all bloodied (and one unconscious), they pulled it out in the end.

Again, you don't want to do this on every encounter, but if your party is not being challenged by the encounters, then make the encounters harder. Add terrain features that hamper their tactics. Use enemies that have auras and other effects that don't require attack rolls. Make sure you are using enemies that can target defenses other than AC.

One thing that I did in an encounter is that was pretty effective was that I had an "endless stream" of minions coming in through a portal. They would rush towards whoever was the closest character and stick there until they were dead. Obviously minions aren't that tough to kill, but they can occupy one character quite a bit (like that defender that is causing issues). And if you make these minions a couple levels higher than the party, they have a reasonable chance to hit and they do a not insignificant amount of damage.

There are plenty of in game ways to challenge the party.

Conversely, you could just talk to your players outside of the game session and let them know that the choices they've made are making the game more difficult for you to run and see if you can come to some agreements on changes to make to the characters. This is always a viable option.