D&D 5E Are powergamers a problem and do you allow them to play in your games?

GameOgre said:

Your post is troll bait.

It's really a DM who needs more practice(Don't we all) and is coming online to vent.

How about instead of acting like a Bad ol Troll DM you tell us what happened and maybe we can help.

Out and out screaming about a play style and calling BAD and then trying to walk it back to just people with that play style who try to ruin your game is weak and trollish.

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I don't need your help, especially from a troll like you. You can't help me with powergaming, especially after all the years I've had to put up with it. I find it to be a disruptive style of gaming, and there is plenty of evidence to back it up, so I won't have it in my games nor will I play with them.

How old are you again?

Hiya!

Blue said:

Just to help me understand.

1. Your table roll for ability scores.
2. People get upset when someone rolls well and is too powerful.
3. The DM then conspires to kill them off.
4. The player is upset, for the root cause of having rolled well on ability scores and therefore getting targeted.

If I was at this table either as a player or the DM, I would strongly push for point buy or standard array. This way people don't feel put out when others roll better than them, and others don't get targeted for the crime of rolling well. It seems the table doesn't handle random variation in a mature way.

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1. Yes, generally speaking. We used the 4d6 drop 3 'standard' at the beginning. We did have some rather swingy characters in the group (the Goliath was with a...gnome I think?...who had horrible stats. It was amusing, but with 5e's design around stats being so important, once everyone got to around 5th, it really became painfully obvious. I came up with my "Wheel of Pain" method of stat rolling after that. The player in question was "annoyed at having died", sure, but he wasn't "upset at how unfair it was".

2. Nope. Nobody got upset. We're a pretty mature group and if one guy is more "powerful" than another, so be it. Nobody cares from the perspective of "but I want to have awesome stats too!!!!....it's not fair!!....". One thing that I use/enforce at my table and have been for decades, is that when your PC dies, you make a new 1st level one. I did make an exception for 5e; now it's "average party level -2; maximum starting of 3rd".

3. I didn't conspire to kill any PC's off. I design my adventures without much regard for the actual PC's other than the most basic of things; average level. I get a story/idea, draw or get a map, then start "stocking the dungeon". I usually use the basic D&D 'stocking the dungeon' tables where you roll 2d6's. IIRC, the particular dungeon they were in was an old, abandoned dwarven citidel (I think the maps were called that; "Dwarven Stronghold" by 0one Games off of RPGnow.com). I think for it I used a mix of basic D&D stocking tables as well as the random stocking tables found in the 5e DMG. I used the "Monsters by CR" as a base to determine, randomly, what monster was in an actual room. The dungeon is rather large, with several levels, so it had a good range of CRs. The Intellect Devourer wasn't my idea...dice roll what dice roll. And the PC's were on one of the lower (lowest?) level.

4. Nope again. He wasn't "upset" in the manner that you are probably assuming. He was more 'annoyed' that it was bad luck on his part to be the one who rolled the 'target' of the ID. Usually, when there is an equal opportunity for all PC's to be targeted by something particularly 'nasty'...I make the players roll for it ("Dice for Death?" ). The ID was undetected, naturally, and could have targeted any of the PC's. I have them all roll some dice (d6 is common, as well as d8 and d12)...lowest roller is the target. Ties, they roll between themselves with lowest roller being the target. In this case, the Barbarian with an Int 6. I rolled the attack, rolled the 'damage', and that was that. A brain dead goliath barbarian that nobody in the group could carry out, let alone have the damage be 'restored'.

I freely admit to being what would nowadays be considered a "Killer DM". The mountains of dead characters that line my throne room is vast and ever-expanding. But, other than a VERY select few; like, maybe two or three over my nigh-4 decades of RPG'ing. Other than those two or three I mentioned (and yes, they deserved it), I do not "plan" on killing a PC. Running a D&D game 99.8% "neutral"...there will be death of PC's. I don't have to do anything other than do my job as the neutral arbiter of the campaign world.

Hopefully that clears it up a bit.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Corpsetaker said:

I don't need your help, especially from a troll like you. You can't help me with powergaming, especially after all the years I've had to put up with it. I find it to be a disruptive style of gaming, and there is plenty of evidence to back it up, so I won't have it in my games nor will I play with them.

How old are you again?

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Powergamers are indeed allowed in my game and I have NEVER once had a issue with them in the 40+ years I have been playing. Hhahaha I started playing in the mid 70's. I was 8 years old when the older kids got us to play so they could have some warm bodies to hold stuff and act as trap detectors!

I have had plenty issues with Disruptive players, I conceder disruptive players any player who argues even after the DM has given a verdict. Players that do not engage with the game and instead want to crosstalk the night away or text the entire time on their cell phones. Loads of other things can be disruptive but those are the main ones.

As far as players with issues I had had plenty. Murder Hobo's and attention hoggers and Drama Seekers. Players who viewed the game like a video game and players who wanted to lift themselves up by putting others down.

I will work with just about anyone to have a good game. Sometimes it just takes some time and effort and as long as the player stays above a certain point I will work endlessly with them to become better.

In game or out of game abuse of myself or other players and my person pet peeve, cheating are about the only two things I will kick a player for.

Some of my BEST players started off some of the worst! Murder Hobo's who never once cared for a npc(NPC's GOT NO SOULS!) and sought to attack everything that moved or had loot eventually after years of work and effort and gaming turned into great well rounded players.

I have played with deep role players and power gamers and everything in between. At one time or another I have probably been everything in between! The game evolves, players evolve and the fun keeps rolling on.

so yeah as long as you can behave yourself and not outright abuse anyone else and for gods sake don't cheat! Then you are welcome at my table for some fun!

Blue said:

Just to help me understand.

1. Your table roll for ability scores.
2. People get upset when someone rolls well and is too powerful.
3. The DM then conspires to kill them off.
4. The player is upset, for the root cause of having rolled well on ability scores and therefore getting targeted.

If I was at this table either as a player or the DM, I would strongly push for point buy or standard array. This way people don't feel put out when others roll better than them, and others don't get targeted for the crime of rolling well. It seems the table doesn't handle random variation in a mature way.

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On rolling really good stats: To me, if you have amazeballs stats, that's the time to take those sub-optimal choices. Like that champion fighter with ritual magic and magic initiate. It won't matter because your amazing stats will pull you through. When you roll mediocre, that's when you need to powergame to make up for it.

What is offensive though is when someone rolls super well and then proceeds to make "Mr Happy, Destroyer of Worlds!!" type of PC on top of that...

Corpsetaker said:

I don't need your help, especially from a troll like you. You can't help me with powergaming, especially after all the years I've had to put up with it. I find it to be a disruptive style of gaming, and there is plenty of evidence to back it up, so I won't have it in my games nor will I play with them.

How old are you again?

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This post/thread brought to you by "Exemplars of things that put you on peoples' ignore lists".

Be well
KB

Corpsetaker said:

To me powergaming is just another form of disruptive behaviour and I will not allow it in my games anymore.

Anyone else have this kind of problem?

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I think powergamers are indeed disruptive mainly because they play for themselves and not for the group, and as a result they strongly steer the game towards what their PC does best (normally combat, but it could sometimes be stealth or social skills) and then trivialize the challenge, with little regard to the rest of the gaming group.

The only way a powergamer can be non-disruptive, is to play in a group where everyone is a powergamer.

I wasn't at first, years ago, but I came to find I am grateful to "powergamers" for their contributions.

As a player, they made our team more successful in adventures. They also taught me to build more solid characters or to use less solid characters in more effective ways. Many of them also showed me that you can have both an optimized character and be a great roleplayer.

As a DM, they forced me to get better at designing challenges so that I can make them more robust, complex, and capable of involving characters of multiple levels, build effectiveness, and player skill. They encouraged me to think differently about what I thought the outcome of a given scene should be. They demonstrated that intra-party mechanical balance isn't nearly as important as spotlight sharing and the DM has a lot of control over the latter.

So, thanks, powergamers. Not everybody hates you. Just don't be a jerk about your skills and maybe others will come around.

The real funny thing here is that the OP is a POWERGAMER. See without defining Power gaming its left open to interpretation.

There will ALWAYS be people who disagree with you. To some people being a POWERGAMER is anything other than rolling 3D6 in order for stats. What??? You decide where your stats go? POWERGAMER! YOU RUIN EVERYTHING! YOU ARE WHATS WRONG!

The line is set in a different place for everyone and not one person in this thread defined Powergaming and what point it starts so every last one of them IS A POWERGAMER to someone else.

To one guy it's not rolling in order for stats. To another guy it's the use of feats. To another girl it's multiclassing to gain extra abilities. To another person it might just be a aggressiveness towards other players and how much more damage the powergamer does.

It's always easy to point fingers at other people and find fault and make sweeping negative generalizations about others play styles. We can often detect the unfairness when it's leveled at ourselves but it's harder to see when we level it at other people.

*Deleted by user*

Li Shenron said:

I think powergamers are indeed disruptive mainly because they play for themselves and not for the group, and as a result they strongly steer the game towards what their PC does best (normally combat, but it could sometimes be stealth or social skills) and then trivialize the challenge, with little regard to the rest of the gaming group.

The only way a powergamer can be non-disruptive, is to play in a group where everyone is a powergamer.

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Then the issue is "they play for themselves and not for the group", not that they're playing an optimized character. This is a classic "Attention Hog" type character. Not all powergamers are attention hogs, not all attention hogs are powergamers.

In addition if your player(s) always trivialize every encounter, then that's a DM issue, not a player issue. I expect the players to stomp on my encounters now and then, but I've also always been able to switch up encounters to provide a challenge, no matter what the group.

I can't give specific advise on how to do that because no one will give a specific example of a problem build. It's all vague "powergamers break the game" BS.

P.S. I'm not picking on you or this post in particular, but it seems to be a common theme. "Power gamers broke my game!" With no examples, no specifics, or pointing out disruptive behavior that has nothing to do with building optimized characters.