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<blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 7762737" data-attributes="member: 6879661">I’m sorry to say some of the comments about enabling player choices are a bit naive. When I remove or alter something in the game for balance reasons it is almost never because of a DM vs Player balance issue. Rather it’s because one player seeks to become substantially stronger than the rest of the party.I’ve played in games when one player dominates the game: either deals more damage than the rest of the party combined, or elevates a stat (AC for example) to levels beyond all belief, or uses one spell as nauseum to shut down encounters (tiny hut). It isn’t fun to me watching this happen and when I DM I believe I have a social contract with the players to referee the game to keep balance. It’s why I don’t allow lucky, some key spells, dipping for 1 or 2 levels etc.The naïveté is to think that the player with the 38 AC started with the character concept and built around that rather than starting with gimmick and reverse engineering the character concept to attempt to justify the excess.this imbalance is exemplified by the “last mage” trope that a previous poster used to justify breaking the campaign’s guidelines. It can easily make the game great for one player... and slightly annoying for the others</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TheSword, post: 7762737, member: 6879661"] I’m sorry to say some of the comments about enabling player choices are a bit naive. When I remove or alter something in the game for balance reasons it is almost never because of a DM vs Player balance issue. Rather it’s because one player seeks to become substantially stronger than the rest of the party. I’ve played in games when one player dominates the game: either deals more damage than the rest of the party combined, or elevates a stat (AC for example) to levels beyond all belief, or uses one spell as nauseum to shut down encounters (tiny hut). It isn’t fun to me watching this happen and when I DM I believe I have a social contract with the players to referee the game to keep balance. It’s why I don’t allow lucky, some key spells, dipping for 1 or 2 levels etc. The naïveté is to think that the player with the 38 AC started with the character concept and built around that rather than starting with gimmick and reverse engineering the character concept to attempt to justify the excess. this imbalance is exemplified by the “last mage” trope that a previous poster used to justify breaking the campaign’s guidelines. It can easily make the game great for one player... and slightly annoying for the others [/QUOTE]

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