Capping Power By Level

[DulothS]

No matter what books you allow or forbid, your always going to have a munchkin who insists its all perfectly legitimate and proper. Thus, a simple idea; instead of a power cap based on contributions to the end, a power cap based on the end result.

You have this one final stat called "Power", that is derived from the rest of your stats.

Attack: Your strongest attack that can be used against your current enemies is taken into account. Your best possible attack configuration in a round. The attack bonus (or save bonus) is your basic "Attack" rating. Your "Damage" rating is divided by 5; its the maximum damage that the attack can deal. And your "Critical" rating is added on in both ways; 19-20/x2 is +1, 19-20/x4 is +3. Thus, a Fireball 10d6 DC 20 would be rating 22, and a character with 4 club attacks a round at 1d10+20 damage (+15 to-hit) would be 37.
Defense: Your optimal AC is whats used; best possible against the attack your strongest against. Your AC bonus is first, adding on any DR you have, any fast healing is tripled, any miss chances converted to flat bonuses(50% = +10) and added, your highest saving throw, and finally your Hit-points divided by 10.
(Dwarf fighter with a Fort save of +10, A 30 AC, 160 hps, and a DR of 3/-, would have a Defense rating of 49)

Your "Power" is the average between these two stats. Depending on the power level of your campaign, you choose a particular "Power" ranking; perhaps one that scales with level. A player who exceeds his power ranking has his abilities appropriately weakened at DM's discretion; the DM chooses at the begining of each combat which abilities work and which don't. Those whose abilities are below the "Power" ranking get a commensurate bonus that brings them halfway between their actual rank and the assigned score. Fortune favors the underdog?

Regardless; any time the player changes the situation significantly; stacking on a combination of Buff spells to make himself a god; polymorphing himself into a Kraken; his Power is recalculated, and he regrets trying to abuse the system.

A third possible option would be a "Versatility" ranking, based on spells, skills, and noncombat abilities. These would be more level-based; Two per level of most classes, with Fighter possibly being the only one to get a single rank/level; essentially, the less usefull your abilities are outside combat, the more you'd be allowed to invest in combat potential. But that might serve to elimenate the purpose of the endeavor, which is to prevent a single PC from outshining all the rest.

 

[Asmor]

Honestly, I don't think this is such a hot idea... D&D is just way too complicated and there are always going to be ways to game the system. The only way to avoid it (assuming you think it should be avoided, of course!) is to just lay it out there in your social contract. You don't want your players to abuse the system, and there will be consequences if they do.

You might think about taking a look at Mutants & Masterminds, particularly the 2nd edition. The power level explicitly limits things like your attack bonus and damage. A PL 10 character, for example, isn't allowed to have an attack bonus, damage bonus, defense bonus or damage save higher than 10. In addition, the second edition adds a rule that you're allowed to make tradeoffs between attack and damage or between defense and damage save. For example, a character who hits often but doesn't do much damage might have a limit of like 7 on their damage but raise their attack limit to 13.

 

[Crothian]

No matter what books you allow or forbid, your always going to have a munchkin who insists its all perfectly legitimate and proper.

No, you aren't.

But even if what you say is right, what makes them not complain about what you are doing? This won't solve your problem.

 

[Imban]

Psst, no, this doesn't work.

For attacks, why the heck are you considering maximum damage? Rolling 20 dice and getting maximum on all of them might cause massive damage, but it's seriously just not going to happen. Average damage is seriously what's important, because it's what you're actually going to hit for. Also, under this system, you are no more "Powerful" if you're Maximizing your spells, and umm... well. No.

Moreover, for the entire thing, I strenuously disagree with its implementation. "If you're 'too powerful for your level', the DM randomly makes you suck, ha ha ha munchkin suckit." scores no points with me - if you're trying to cut back on characters who deal insane damage, for instance, pick some reasonable to-hit bonuses and/or damage averages for each level (this requires experience - and in my opinion, you shouldn't be "cracking down on the munchkins" until you have experience with what's really overpowered and what's not - too many people crack down on those terrible overpowered Favoured Souls and Warlocks.) and tell your PCs that they should try to be around there and not better than it in every way if possible. Don't be lame and DM Smite them for it after the fact - help them with character creation and leveling, make the caps known in advance, and try to guide them to meeting but not exceeding the caps.