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

[5ekyu]

I don't know... I've seen a lot of similar behavior with non-optimized characters as well, where clearly they pick a fight that's way over their head. "But that's what my character does!!!".. and then the party gets drawn in due to being associated with the aggressor.
I've also seen a lot of optimizers able to hold their tongue and keep their cool.
At lot of the time I think a lot of it can be avoided by banning choatic/netural evil behaviors. Also clarify to the players that personality defects are not mental disorders.

I agree in so far as the focus should be on disruptive behavior not playstyle.

 

[Jester David]

first - once you apply presumption of an almost mindless blind obsession to a player type - the argument loses any significance at all. What about the roleplayer who only ever thinks of the romance angles and never even tries to take up any combat skills? What about the rogue who only ever wants to steal and never fights and so does not adventure with the... etc etc etc boring boring boring extremist dichotomies.

That *can* be disruptive! Especially if it's coming at the expense of other people's fun at the table.
Disruptive behaviour is disruptive behaviour.

Power gaming is the only one that gets a pass. It's the one people try and justify and make excuses for. It's the one that keeps coming up and people debate. I've NEVER seen a thread on a DM having problems with someone power roleplaying and overacting to the detriment of the party.
Because we all already know how to handle the guy that does something stupid and declares "But it's what my character would do." The DM just rolls their eyes and says "Rocks fall. Your character dies. Now roll one that isn't an assclown." No debate is needed.

But when the detrimental player is doing so via RAW, suddenly there's a question….

"It's not fun for the other people at the table if everything is dead before they get a turn. " that is a sign of a GM problem, not a player problem. the Gm creates and devises the adversaries and challenges and if he puts "fights" that are over that quickly often enough in play to be a problem for the enjoyment of others he needs to rethink his design and approach. i won't say i have never seen a one shot kill, because obviously it has happened but it was not as much a case of awesome powergamer fu as a lucky hit and a very weak adversary that was not intended to be a challenge anyway.

Kinda. To some extent.
The DM does need to account for their party. And a *good* DM will know all the strengths and weaknesses of their party and be able to devise tactics to counter and challenge them.
But that's advanced DMing. That takes system mastery not every DM possesses.
You're effectively blaming the DM for not being as good a power gamer as their players. And, of course, there are always more players than the DM with a much higher collective intelligence. To say nothing of online builds and the like. The DM will seldomwin that particular arm's race.


Example: I have a five man table. Average party level 8.
I need an encounter that will challenge them. Go!

But that's an unfair challenge. You can't. There's too many variables.
But even knowing the classes and races and magic items it is tricky. Because how many are power gamers? 1? 2? All 5?
Even as their DM I don't always know. Because the players are better optimizers than I am. They keep their bag of tricks close to their chest until needed.


A power gamer only has to worry about one thing: their character. The DM has to worry about multiple characters, multiple encounters, the overall plot, NPCs, and so much more. There's only so much time.

As for having one or more optimizers making it harder for the Gm to balance encounters - not in my experience. I have never found it to be that case that i did not have to put some work into balancing encounters and challenges - again - i see balance in play as the intersection of capability and need (key and lock) and so i factor in the character's capabilities most all the time.

Not having personally encountered a problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist for others.

The problem is power gaming increases the workload. It changes the balance of the encounter from the default presented in the rules and the default assumed by adventures. Suddenly, running a published adventure is harder because you need to reevaluate every single encounter to account for that one person.

To say nothing of having to "cheat" by increasing monster hit points and the like.
Using higher CR monsters is problematic because their damage output and special abilities are more deadly. A solution is to throw more monsters at the players. But then that also gives out more experience, increasing the rate players gain levels.
So the DM has to potentially "cheat' twice, increasing the challenge of fights and reducing the rewards just to "balance" things with one player.

As for your linkage of player performance vs GM favoritism... a GM intentionally and consistently giving one player more/better/cooler rewards than the others to the detriment of the game experience for the others that would be unfair **regardless** of whether or not it made them better in combat. its not that the rewards made them better but that the Gm was not treating each player as equally as they expect. it wouldn't be Ok if the "supper cool more than you" was all cash and titles and interactions.

That has nothing at all to do with what the players themselves choose to do with their options as given and the benefits they reap. there is no promise of "equal outcomes" implied anywhere by a GM - though there is a strong goal of equality of opportunities. Again that notion of balance being capability-meet-challenge applies just as well to capability-meets-opportunity. Gm hopefully runs a game where the choices and capabilities the PCs have get "equal enough" opportunities and challenges so that everyone feels engaged and useful. its not particularly hard if the Gm pays attention at chargen and backstory and just simply keeps at it.

If one player is simply better than the others, why does it matter what the source is?
If DM favourtism is bad, then so is the same result at the table from one player finding a broken combination or min/maxing a character.

 

[Oofta]

My moon druid feels, like, way overpowered right now. I optimized him like crazy - put his high stats into Wisdom and Constitution, dressed him in the best armor possible, and chose the absolute best beasts for wildshape. And now I'm crushing it in battle . . .

. . . spamming the wand of lightning bolt the DM handed out.

So the question is - are you having fun? Is the group having fun? Is the DM adjusting their encounters to still provide a challenge? If yes, then I don't see a problem.

In my last campaign that I ran, my wife ran a half-orc barbarian. She was a terror - recklessly attacking while taking half damage and still having a decent AC while wearing no armor. Just tearing through monsters left and right. I couldn't really complain too much because her choices had all made sense for the character she was playing.

So I adjusted the game. Sometimes I threw high AC bad guys she still had a hard time hitting, sometime big buckets o'hit points where I actually appreciate someone that could do triple digit damage on a regular basis so it didn't become a slog. Other times I hit her with spells (the party hated it when her barbarian failed her domination save) or did fire, acid or lightning damage and so on. Sometimes I just shook my head when she leaped onto the back of that dragon and then proceeded to do multiple crits and destroyed the encounter.

I adjusted the game to fit the characters I had, not the characters that fit my vision of what a party "should" be like. Which is something I've always done.

 

[5ekyu]

jester david

"Power gaming is the only one that gets a pass. "

Honestly, even on this thread i do not see folks lining up to give DISRUPTIVE power gaming a pass. See plenty of responses even mine that say disruptive behavior of any sort is a problem.

"Because we all already know how to handle the guy that does something stupid and declares "But it's what my character would do." The DM just rolls their eyes and says "Rocks fall. Your character dies. Now roll one that isn't an assclown." No debate is needed. "
If some Gm fiat works for you in handling disruptive players, OK, so why dont you use that for power gaming?

Me, i do not deal with disruptive behavior IN GAME. behavior is a player issue not a character issue so i deal with problems at the player level. i do not have to warp the in-game world to try and reach the player. usually talking is enough - even if that reach is to decidce we are not on the same page and not looking for the same thing.

I think the big disagreement is that for some people they want to throw a larger amount of powergaming under the disruptive behavior bus than is broadly accepted.

"The DM does need to account for their party. And a *good* DM will know all the strengths and weaknesses of their party and be able to devise tactics to counter and challenge them.
But that's advanced DMing. That takes system mastery not every DM possesses.
You're effectively blaming the DM for not being as good a power gamer as their players. And, of course, there are always more players than the DM with a much higher collective intelligence. To say nothing of online builds and the like. The DM will seldomwin that particular arm's race."

Actually i am not blaming the Gm. its part of the GMs job, we both seem to agree on that. Whether or not the Gm is able to do that job has no bearing on whether the player is at fault. Whether a player is judged to be "disruptive" or not should not be dependent on whether or not trhe GM can handle the situation well. You cannot get to a slope where if the Gm does not account for ABC we judge abc to be disruptive when a player does it and maintain any coherent dialog.

Just because a Gm has not figured out how to "adjust for" 5th level wizards and sorcs having fireballs does not mean those players throwing fireballs and killing a kobold swarm is *disruptive* and deserving of the jester-sack-of-rocks new character solution. It just means the Gm has yet to evaluate the difference between tier-1 and tier-2 and is likely going to have a lot of problems as many challenges will be now beaten. those climbing challenges - fly spell. Dang that disruptive wizard sorcerer. PC gets a curse - dang that disruptive PC and their remove curse.

"Example: I have a five man table. Average party level 8.
I need an encounter that will challenge them. Go! "

A gm has players and they have characters... if all the Gm knows when trying to design an 8th level adventure is their levels - the Gm is at fault.

"A power gamer only has to worry about one thing: their character. The DM has to worry about multiple characters, multiple encounters, the overall plot, NPCs, and so much more. There's only so much time. "

yes and the more that time is spent focusing on the players' characters the better i find the results turn out.
As for the time thing - the PCs are set week after week while the encounters vary quite a bit, so the Gm actually has the "planning" advantage. I almost always know my PCs much longer than they know their adversaries.

"The problem is power gaming increases the workload. It changes the balance of the encounter from the default presented in the rules and the default assumed by adventures. Suddenly, running a published adventure is harder because you need to reevaluate every single encounter to account for that one person. "

The default balance assumed by adventures is just a default, nothing more. there is NO expectation that it will match up well for any given party. That is where the Gm comes into play. As i have said, every single encounter and challenge (whether boxed or not) A Gm needs to evaluate based on his players' characters. this can be as important, **well likely even more important** for sub-par characters than for over-par characters. After all, having an easier time of a fight because a character or two or all are overpar is one thing, but having the party blown away and possibly TPK because they are sub-par is usually seen as a much worse outcome.

A Gm who does not recognize the need to evaluate canned encounters based on their specific party and capabilities will have a lot more bigger problems than a powergamer wiping things up easily.

"To say nothing of having to "cheat" by increasing monster hit points and the like.
Using higher CR monsters is problematic because their damage output and special abilities are more deadly. A solution is to throw more monsters at the players. But then that also gives out more experience, increasing the rate players gain levels.
So the DM has to potentially "cheat' twice, increasing the challenge of fights and reducing the rewards just to "balance" things with one player. "

Adjusting monsters, encounters, rewards to make them appropriate for his campaign and players' character is not by any means cheating for a GM. That is just a non-starter.

"If one player is simply better than the others, why does it matter what the source is?
If DM favourtism is bad, then so is the same result at the table from one player finding a broken combination or min/maxing a character."

Gm favoritism is bad when it is not treating players equally **in violation of the campaign guidelines they agreed to**, not because it lets one character be more powerful than another in actual play. in actually play it is common for characters to be more powerful in one thing than another and back and forth. Sometimes though, even if the characters are "equal" on paper or in system the players may not be as skilled/focused/devoted and even then the characters may "play" at different power levels.

it is not "the same result" at the table... one's result is an breech of the trust and agreement of the participants... the other is people just doing what was agreed they could do.

But it does look like you have your own particular definitions and axes to grind so i think we will just have to agree to disagree on how much different the Gm handing the cool stuff to one player and a player playing well are even if they end up resulting in similar damage outputs per round.

 

[GameOgre]

Powergaming isnt the issue EVER.

Disruptive Behavior is.

If I bellied up to your table to play with rolled stats put in the order that would best benefit my characters mechanical power with the right feats I could for sure build a character that was more capable than if I just randomly rolled. My roll playing wouldn't be lacking in any regard(unless I once again tried to have a in character English accent, damn it, in my head it doesn't sound that bad". I also know how to play well with others.
That means I don't hog the spotlight(too much).
I don't step on the other players toes to often.
I don't play my character like a jerk because "that's what my character would do" (Shudder)
I would form attachments to NPC's and rivalries with them to and probably make a few enemies(dang it if I don't have a habit of pissing off Lords and Underworld boss's alike.
I would treat my fellow party members like my family(even the ones my character is unsure about..though them I might treat like my cousin I try not to make eye contact with or I have to hear about his latest mmo addiction for three solid hours.

The point is just because I made my character in a optimized way doesn't make me a bad player or unfun. Just because I use the rules to make my combat oriented character capable in combat doesn't mean He will not also be a 7th level Half Orc Barbaqueian! Cooking Utensils for the win! You aint lived till you tasted my Barbecued Dragon Ribs!

What this all boils down to is you are taking a type of player that has nothing to do with role playing and assigning it negative role playing as well as negative game playing. That's just not right.

Powergamers can be awesome! They can also suck arse! Just like every other type of player.

It's like if you played D&D with several sucks players who happened to be left handed and so came here and said" Left handed rpg guys stay away from my table! Left handed people suck at rpg's! I do not let left handed people play in my games!

 

[hejtmane]

jester david

"Power gaming is the only one that gets a pass. "

Honestly, even on this thread i do not see folks lining up to give DISRUPTIVE power gaming a pass. See plenty of responses even mine that say disruptive behavior of any sort is a problem.

"Because we all already know how to handle the guy that does something stupid and declares "But it's what my character would do." The DM just rolls their eyes and says "Rocks fall. Your character dies. Now roll one that isn't an assclown." No debate is needed. "
If some Gm fiat works for you in handling disruptive players, OK, so why dont you use that for power gaming?

Me, i do not deal with disruptive behavior IN GAME. behavior is a player issue not a character issue so i deal with problems at the player level. i do not have to warp the in-game world to try and reach the player. usually talking is enough - even if that reach is to decidce we are not on the same page and not looking for the same thing.

I think the big disagreement is that for some people they want to throw a larger amount of powergaming under the disruptive behavior bus than is broadly accepted.

"The DM does need to account for their party. And a *good* DM will know all the strengths and weaknesses of their party and be able to devise tactics to counter and challenge them.
But that's advanced DMing. That takes system mastery not every DM possesses.
You're effectively blaming the DM for not being as good a power gamer as their players. And, of course, there are always more players than the DM with a much higher collective intelligence. To say nothing of online builds and the like. The DM will seldomwin that particular arm's race."

Actually i am not blaming the Gm. its part of the GMs job, we both seem to agree on that. Whether or not the Gm is able to do that job has no bearing on whether the player is at fault. Whether a player is judged to be "disruptive" or not should not be dependent on whether or not trhe GM can handle the situation well. You cannot get to a slope where if the Gm does not account for ABC we judge abc to be disruptive when a player does it and maintain any coherent dialog.

Just because a Gm has not figured out how to "adjust for" 5th level wizards and sorcs having fireballs does not mean those players throwing fireballs and killing a kobold swarm is *disruptive* and deserving of the jester-sack-of-rocks new character solution. It just means the Gm has yet to evaluate the difference between tier-1 and tier-2 and is likely going to have a lot of problems as many challenges will be now beaten. those climbing challenges - fly spell. Dang that disruptive wizard sorcerer. PC gets a curse - dang that disruptive PC and their remove curse.

"Example: I have a five man table. Average party level 8.
I need an encounter that will challenge them. Go! "

A gm has players and they have characters... if all the Gm knows when trying to design an 8th level adventure is their levels - the Gm is at fault.

"A power gamer only has to worry about one thing: their character. The DM has to worry about multiple characters, multiple encounters, the overall plot, NPCs, and so much more. There's only so much time. "

yes and the more that time is spent focusing on the players' characters the better i find the results turn out.
As for the time thing - the PCs are set week after week while the encounters vary quite a bit, so the Gm actually has the "planning" advantage. I almost always know my PCs much longer than they know their adversaries.

"The problem is power gaming increases the workload. It changes the balance of the encounter from the default presented in the rules and the default assumed by adventures. Suddenly, running a published adventure is harder because you need to reevaluate every single encounter to account for that one person. "

The default balance assumed by adventures is just a default, nothing more. there is NO expectation that it will match up well for any given party. That is where the Gm comes into play. As i have said, every single encounter and challenge (whether boxed or not) A Gm needs to evaluate based on his players' characters. this can be as important, **well likely even more important** for sub-par characters than for over-par characters. After all, having an easier time of a fight because a character or two or all are overpar is one thing, but having the party blown away and possibly TPK because they are sub-par is usually seen as a much worse outcome.

A Gm who does not recognize the need to evaluate canned encounters based on their specific party and capabilities will have a lot more bigger problems than a powergamer wiping things up easily.

"To say nothing of having to "cheat" by increasing monster hit points and the like.
Using higher CR monsters is problematic because their damage output and special abilities are more deadly. A solution is to throw more monsters at the players. But then that also gives out more experience, increasing the rate players gain levels.
So the DM has to potentially "cheat' twice, increasing the challenge of fights and reducing the rewards just to "balance" things with one player. "

Adjusting monsters, encounters, rewards to make them appropriate for his campaign and players' character is not by any means cheating for a GM. That is just a non-starter.

"If one player is simply better than the others, why does it matter what the source is?
If DM favourtism is bad, then so is the same result at the table from one player finding a broken combination or min/maxing a character."

Gm favoritism is bad when it is not treating players equally **in violation of the campaign guidelines they agreed to**, not because it lets one character be more powerful than another in actual play. in actually play it is common for characters to be more powerful in one thing than another and back and forth. Sometimes though, even if the characters are "equal" on paper or in system the players may not be as skilled/focused/devoted and even then the characters may "play" at different power levels.

it is not "the same result" at the table... one's result is an breech of the trust and agreement of the participants... the other is people just doing what was agreed they could do.

But it does look like you have your own particular definitions and axes to grind so i think we will just have to agree to disagree on how much different the Gm handing the cool stuff to one player and a player playing well are even if they end up resulting in similar damage outputs per round.

Increasing HP or armor class is not cheating for a DM I hate when people use those words because why does an oger only ever have this many HP and this armor why can some ogres advanced and have them in plate mail. The job of the DM is to make adjustments for the group from more HP to higher ac and sometimes we can have fun and custom build magic items or monsters

 

[5ekyu]

Increasing HP or armor class is not cheating for a DM I hate when people use those words because why does an oger only ever have this many HP and this armor why can some ogres advanced and have them in plate mail. The job of the DM is to make adjustments for the group from more HP to higher ac and sometimes we can have fun and custom build magic items or monsters

Yup all this and more.

Sent from my [device_name] using EN World mobile app

 

[transtemporal]

I've NEVER seen a thread on a DM having problems with someone power roleplaying and overacting to the detriment of the party.

No? You've never had a principled paladin decide to kill the party thief? Or attack an important NPC because they detected evil? Because I think there are a few paladin-hate threads along these lines...

Also, with respect, it seems like you're overanalysing encounters. They don't have to prescribed and balanced to the nth degree. Just whatever seems fun. Whats the worst thats gonna happen?

 

[Li Shenron]

Once again, optimizing is not the same as powergaming. Powergaming is literally gaming for power, it is striving to dominate the game at all costs, not necessarily in competition against other players, in fact many powergamers probably complain with the group that the other players aren't keeping up and powergaming too. It's more about wanting to dominate and trivialize the challenges of the game instead of enjoying them. It's the equivalent of looking for tricks or bugs (or "cheat legally") in a computer game in order to cruise through it with ease.

If you are optimizing your character you are not necessarily powergaming, but on the other hand a powergamer is always also an optimizer. I know, because I've been there during the 3e era. I was good at understanding the rules and thus at optimizing my characters. The problem was that sometimes I could feel that my PC was too much better than the others played by more casual gamers, and I did not like it. So I started to purposefully create characters in a different way, not necessarily purposefully making them bad (although sometimes I actually did), but for example focus more on horizontal than vertical growth, or to try out new things instead of picking a character choice that I had already verified it worked. I often purposefully picked an apparently sub-par spell or feat in order to set myself the new challenge of making it worth.

System Mastery -based design sounded a good idea back then, what could be wrong in rewarding someone for wanting to play well? Unfortunately it creates the conditions for confusing playing well with dominating the game. The results are you are actually playing worse from the point of view of everyone else enjoying the game. And some powergamers themselves don't enjoy the game either but merely enjoy their sense of being better than everyone else.

Let me tell you a partially-related story...

A long time ago, me and my closest group of friends started the habit of playing chess during our long evenings together. We had fun for a few months. Then one of us decided to take a step further and bought a book on chess tactics, and shared it with his brother. In a month or so they studied the book and became unbeatable by the rest of us, and matches became a pushover. How could you blame them for wanting to learn to play better? But the ultimate problem was that suddenly the group was split, we just could not play all together anymore, those 2 could only play against each other and the rest by themselves. Final result, we never played chess together again. What seemed to be a good idea turned out to be distruptive.

Fortunately D&D has a huge advantage: you don't have to feel stupid if you know how to dominate the game but choose not to. Once those friends learned chess tactics, the only way to restore balance to the group would have been for everyone else to read the same book (but apparently, we weren't interested enough in investing our time like that), they just could not purposefully play dumb once they knew better. But D&D offers so much character diversity that if you ever figure out one "combo" to break the game, you can easily just play something else that makes the game more healthy challenging. The problem is powergamers still feel stupid if they don't pick that combo. If that's the case, they should just play together in a group of sole powergamers, and don't bring detriment to other players.

 

[GameOgre]

Once again, optimizing is not the same as powergaming. Powergaming is literally gaming for power, it is striving to dominate the game at all costs, not necessarily in competition against other players, in fact many powergamers probably complain with the group that the other players aren't keeping up and powergaming too. It's more about wanting to dominate and trivialize the challenges of the game instead of enjoying them. It's the equivalent of looking for tricks or bugs (or "cheat legally") in a computer game in order to cruise through it with ease.

If you are optimizing your character you are not necessarily powergaming, but on the other hand a powergamer is always also an optimizer. I know, because I've been there during the 3e era. I was good at understanding the rules and thus at optimizing my characters. The problem was that sometimes I could feel that my PC was too much better than the others played by more casual gamers, and I did not like it. So I started to purposefully create characters in a different way, not necessarily purposefully making them bad (although sometimes I actually did), but for example focus more on horizontal than vertical growth, or to try out new things instead of picking a character choice that I had already verified it worked. I often purposefully picked an apparently sub-par spell or feat in order to set myself the new challenge of making it worth.

System Mastery -based design sounded a good idea back then, what could be wrong in rewarding someone for wanting to play well? Unfortunately it creates the conditions for confusing playing well with dominating the game. The results are you are actually playing worse from the point of view of everyone else enjoying the game. And some powergamers themselves don't enjoy the game either but merely enjoy their sense of being better than everyone else.

Let me tell you a partially-related story...

A long time ago, me and my closest group of friends started the habit of playing chess during our long evenings together. We had fun for a few months. Then one of us decided to take a step further and bought a book on chess tactics, and shared it with his brother. In a month or so they studied the book and became unbeatable by the rest of us, and matches became a pushover. How could you blame them for wanting to learn to play better? But the ultimate problem was that suddenly the group was split, we just could not play all together anymore, those 2 could only play against each other and the rest by themselves. Final result, we never played chess together again. What seemed to be a good idea turned out to be distruptive.

Fortunately D&D has a huge advantage: you don't have to feel stupid if you know how to dominate the game but choose not to. Once those friends learned chess tactics, the only way to restore balance to the group would have been for everyone else to read the same book (but apparently, we weren't interested enough in investing our time like that), they just could not purposefully play dumb once they knew better. But D&D offers so much character diversity that if you ever figure out one "combo" to break the game, you can easily just play something else that makes the game more healthy challenging. The problem is powergamers still feel stupid if they don't pick that combo. If that's the case, they should just play together in a group of sole powergamers, and don't bring detriment to other players.

Sorry.
You are right. I was using the wrong definition of Powergaming. By definition it is negative.

Powergaming (or power gaming) is a style of interacting with games or game-like systems, particularly video games, boardgames, and role-playing games, with the aim of maximising progress towards a specific goal, to the exclusion of other considerations such as storytelling, atmosphere and camaraderie.

So what I was defining it as was not it's actual definition.

I guess I was using optimized in it's place.

I think that might also be part of the issue with others as well but I can't be sure.

So I retract my defense of this negative behavior and plead for mercy on grounds that my actual stats were rolled 3d6 in order and I got a lot of 1's.

next time I will try to google a friggin definition BEFORE fighting about it for 16 pages.

Edited to add two of my players just told me also that they considered themselves Powergamers but when I read three different definitions of it to them they said well ok no, that was not the definition they were comfortable using. they would probably be optimizer but I can't be sure as that definition isn't really clear.
I think rpg definitions are all over the place and part of the issue is that we all use different ones.