D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?

[damiller]

I don't like "powergaming" I don't want to work that hard to challenge your character in what is most often the biggest part of the game: combat.

However, I won't ban it outright. I'll take a look at the rules and say "we aren't playing with that". For example: In Champions Now there is a way to get a lot of points into powers via powersets (and even moreso in Champions itself*) But the game itself says they are optional. So when putting out a request for players, I will make sure that is clearly noted. This way players know up front, we won't be using those rules.

*Champions Now polices itself in another way by limiting the amount of disadvantages you can attack to any power. So I have to do less work with it to avoid "power" gaming, then with something like Mutants and masterminds.

 

[Faolyn]

I detest power gaming. 5E is already easy mode. There’s no point in making it even easier. I outright ban multiclassing as it’s the biggest offender.

All multiclassing? Because I have a rogue 7/fighter 1--I took it for the Dueling fighting style, since she's a professional duelist--and I have to say, taking that level in fighter really hindered my main rogue abilities. I will eventually raiser her to fighter 2 for the Action Surge, but that won't be until I hit 9th level. Unless I want to delay getting my ASI.

 

[bedir than]

I can only speak to my personal experience, but my experience is that DMs/Storytellers/etc. who say they want to "ban powergaming" or something similarly nebulous and indicating a fear of powerful PCs or players who minmax, aren't typically interested in a constructive conversation, but rather a set of diktats directly from them (or worse, directly from some awful website or youtuber they follow), which are often extremely nebulous and inconsistent, and typically based in very serious misunderstandings/misapprehensions re: the rules of the relevant game system.

If an extreme powergamer walks into my group I know that they aren't there for the enjoyment of the group. They are there for themselves and their power.

I run drop-in sessions regularly. Someone whose only interest is max DPR isn't a team player.

 

[Vaalingrade]

as dm I am pretty ok with most things that don’t trivialize the threats and fun for others. Hell, what are you going to do? Ban wizards in the hands of strategic players?

Although my mind can be changed on the subject...

 

[tetrasodium]

I can only speak to my personal experience, but my experience is that DMs/Storytellers/etc. who say they want to "ban powergaming" or something similarly nebulous and indicating a fear of powerful PCs or players who minmax, aren't typically interested in a constructive conversation, but rather a set of diktats directly from them (or worse, directly from some awful website or youtuber they follow), which are often extremely nebulous and inconsistent, and typically based in very serious misunderstandings/misapprehensions re: the rules of the relevant game system.

This is because they are motivated by fear of the people they're playing with. It is difficult to have constructive conversations with people motivated by fear to start with. To have conversations when they're afraid of you? Not impossible but very hard. Particularly where the fear is irrational bordering on paranoid, as often the case here.

This is why it actually is a warning sign/red flag and that's not just mean "labelling" or whatever.

Now, if a DM I knew well said something like "I'm concerned about too-powerful PCs" or something, that's the start of a conversation, so that can probably be steered to sanity and an understanding of the actual goal. But opening with "I want to ban powergaming" is a red flag, especially from a new DM.

It's a particularly red flag with 5E as 5E is not a game where powergaming is a serious issue. Especially if you just ban multiclassing. As has been discussed many times, if the most powerful single-class PC is a 10/10, the weakest is probably a 7/10. Which is good work by WotC for sure. But some DMs live like it's 2003 and as if their players are all trying to create Pun-Pun. What they need is therapy and a nice cup of tea and maybe to be a player for a while, not to be crudely attempting to ban "powergaming".


I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, honestly. I doubt I'll ever come to that bridge.

No I think that Umbran hits the nail on the head there & 5e is designed in a way that makes it very difficult to "frame [this] point" by lowering the bar for the most munchkiny levels of powerful builds to rarely need more than one step & making that one step blindingly obvious. That makes it difficult to describe a line of what is too much charop or say "well bob uhh. your what?... level 6 or 7? This is a bit much... Lion spirit totem*, cleave+, imp bull rush+, shock trooper☆, EWP: spiked chain+, Valorous Enchantment⍟, Great Cleave+, Leap attack✬

Spoiler: PHB+1 it ain't

+phb
* complete champion
☆Complete warrior
⍟Unapproachable east
✬Complete Adventurer
I'm sure that I could have found a couple more books had I gone from more than memory & kept looking beyond posts like this.

Now you get that kind of spread in effectiveness with one or two choices& it's easy to make the GM look bad if they try to so much as tap the brakes.

 

[Seramus]

DM Note: The next time you see a powerful combo of classes and feats, stop and ask yourself if the player has ever done that before. As a DM, it can get boring seeing the same builds over and over again, but it's often the very first time for a player.

Consider letting them have fun with it, as long as they are not making things unpleasant for the other players. Lots of fun and powerful builds are completely avoided or given the stink eye because they are powerful, and nobody at your table ever gets to try them out.

 

[Dausuul]

All multiclassing? Because I have a rogue 7/fighter 1--I took it for the Dueling fighting style, since she's a professional duelist--and I have to say, taking that level in fighter really hindered my main rogue abilities. I will eventually raiser her to fighter 2 for the Action Surge, but that won't be until I hit 9th level. Unless I want to delay getting my ASI.

If one is trying to create clear, simple house rules to limit powergaming, "no multiclassing" is much more straightforward -- both for the DM and the players -- than trying to identify and zap every possible abuse of the multiclass rules.

(Although, to be fair, you could hit about two-thirds of them with a few judicious changes to the warlock.)

Any simple banlist aimed at limiting powergaming is going to have the knock-on effect of banning plenty of unobjectionable builds. The Great Weapon Master feat, for example, is perfectly fine on its own. It only becomes a problem in combination with features like Reckless Attack that let you easily boost your accuracy, and stuff like Polearm Master that gives you extra attacks per round.

 

[Lidgar]

Don’t want “powergaming”? Play OSE or DCC instead.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

While I do understand, and to some point sympathize with the DM's who get upset with this sort of thing, saying just "no powergaming" is too vague to really to really tell anything to the player, and vague enough that the DM can throw out just about anything. I did come up with two rules that, I think anyway, would cover the same ground as "No Powergaming", while also telling both players and GM's what is and isn't allowed.

The main one is "No making other PC's superfluous". I think it's fairly easy to read, but I'm basically trying to say to not take the jobs of the other PC's. Like don't summon monster that make the Fighter basically dead weight or something similar to that. Just, y'know, be aware of what the other players are trying to do, and don't step on their toes, even if what you would do is better.

The other one, and I admit this is kinda nebulous in it's own right, is "No stinky cheese." What I specifically mean by this is stuff like Coffeelocks, Hexadins, Soradins, or people going Fighter 1/Spellcaster X just for the heavy armor proficiency. Stuff like that almost always reads to me as "I'm doing this purely to make an already fairly easy game even easier." Which is just lame, IMO.

I also try to actively make Warlock Patrons into a thing that actually exist, in that if you don't do what they want you to do, they get mad at you and take your Warlock levels away. I also try to do this with Clerics and Paladins, but in my experience, it's always Warlocks who get snippy with me when I do this stuff.

 

[James Gasik]

One man's powergaming is another man's base competency level. What you really need to say to your players is to not optimize all the fun out of the game (which is what humans tend to do by their very nature).

But even then, "fun" is a nebulous concept in of itself.

The fact that not all the building blocks you can use to create your character are of the same shape or size. Some races are better at others at certain tasks. Some classes are better than others at certain tasks. Ditto with subclasses, feats, and spells.

Is taking a race that's obviously meant to be good at fighting, with a class that's good at fighting, with the best subclass available for being a combat character, along with the best feats overpowered? Is it powergaming to choose these things?

That's like saying you're powergaming when you go to the store and buy the generic brand that is basically the same as the name brand, but 2/3 the price!

And is the best fighting character on the same level as the best spellcasting character? So what level of optimization is ok for warriors when even an average Wizard player can select a spell at random from the PHB, and there's a decent chance that there is a situation it's the best spell for?

If you want to keep your game at a set power level, there is a very long list of things you have to exclude, and most players will chafe at those restrictions. A DM I knew once was starting a game and decided to say that there were only three non-human races allowed, and there could only be one of each of them in the party, and they also banned a few classes.

One of the other players took one look at the list and said "well gee, why don't you just make our characters for us, then?"

Needless to say, that game didn't happen, because not enough players were interested with so many constraints on what they were allowed to play.

I once ran a game where I banned Paladins, and despite the fact that nobody even came to me with a Paladin character concept, I was constantly having to defend my position!

The ultimate problem with trying to figure out how to balance the game, of course, is the fact that Wizards of the Coast hasn't bothered to do it themselves. They're always making changes, but it really feels like which things get buffed and which things get nerfed are decided not by feedback or playtesting, but throwing darts at a board.