Dealing with powergamers

[Lord Zardoz]

The two options you seem to be considering are to either let him continue as is or to nerf his characters.

You dont want the present situation to continue because its breaking your sense of verisimilitude. He is also able to pretty much destroy your combat encounters. You dont want to nerf him because you prefer not to be the DM that took away gaming options. There is no way to 'win' this situation.

And nerfing never works. Just read any video game forum after a patch that nerfs something players used to win / kill stuff.

If your getting your arse kicked in Poker, its time to change to Roulette.

So if you cannot change the player, change the game. Your best option is to start a new campaign with a strict limit on available sources for feats and spells. Core books only plus other feats / spells / classes on a case by case basis. Never permit an entire book at a time. And make the player explain in detail what he intends to do with a given spell or power.

And now the short term solution.

Throw the players through long dungeons where a combat optimized PC is not an asset. Heavy roleplay, lots of traps and skill checks. Bust out every puzzle and riddle you can. If you cannot stand up to him in combat, run away or surrender. Dont make them defeat the BBEG, make them stop his evil plot for which the survival of the bad guy is not important to stopping it. Make the player pay for his over focus on combat.

Also, to correct an earlier statement made in this thread, any Dm can win any arms race. A Tarrasque able to cast time stop at will with unlimited uses will win pretty much every fight. The problem is that your not trying to play "Lets TPK the party".

Just be aware that if you nerf or reset, you need to explain why your doing it. Tell him flat out that you are not able to create balanced encounters with the kinds of character builds he uses without doing some cheesy things in game. Let him either generate a new character or accept a nerfing.

Or go for plan C. Tell the powergamer to DM and check out the view from the other side of the DM screen for a while.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Oryan77]

Carrying 120 arrows and using a bow as a primary weapon all the time seems to be "incredible"? Maybe you do need to lighten up?

No, I'm meaning "overall" the PC is incredible. Due to the options the powergamer chose for his wifes PC, the archer is an above average archer for that level. Multiple attacks a round, easily hit NPC's of a harder CR, does lots of damage, & all at a safe distance. Then, if an NPC does manage to get up close, it doesn't matter because the archer has a great AC, doesn't take AoO's from using a bow, & can still get a full attack. So usually, the downfall to being able to do this would be small things like, running out of arrows, or having AoO's on you, ect. But they've worked it out so there are no downfalls to being an above average archer of the same level as other archers.

Anyway, we can nitpick & make assumptions all day about whether or not things are "incredible" in the game. You'll just have to take my word for it that I feel it's above the powerlevel of an average moderate player.

 

[thedungeondelver]

SILENCE!

Just repeat after me: There is no situation that the characters can create that I cannot throw enough kobolds at to solve.

 

[Oryan77]

Could you clarify a bit? Do you mean that she should get by 1 encounter, or 1 day or 1 adventure with 60 arrows? What's keeping her from restocking the quiver from her backpack between encounters?

Honestly, I even told her when we discussed it that she probably has nothing to worry about. Seeing as how it holds 60 arrows, and arrows are a common item for a party to loot while adventuring, she'll probably never even need to make any. But they want to be on the safe side (that's understanding). I'd say, she uses 2-3 arrows per round, fights last on average about 3 or 4 rounds, and I have about 1-3 encounters per day. So 60 arrows could last her about 2 days on average. And that's not counting looted arrows, or recovering her missed arrows with the 50% chance.

I think she's just tripping now that she's keeping track of her arrow usage. They've encountered tons of dead enemies with arrows. I didn't realize the reason she never looted arrows was because she wasn't keeping up with hers. So she's just unaware of her chances of restocking spent arrows. It's just that it would be nice if she had it in the back of her mind that, "I chose a build that uses a crapload more arrows than normal, so I might need to be selective with what I attack with my bow to conserve my arrow usage just in case" rather than "I'll fix this problem to become even better", like the powergamer does with his PC.

I have no sympathy for you Oryan. Learn to play. Your powergamer is better at this than you are, and the only way to deal with him is to hone your skills to his level or better.

Learn to play? Haha, ok, but what game...yours or mine? Maybe he needs to learn to play. Maybe he should hone his roleplaying skills to my level so he doesn't get himself killed? Last session we played he wanted to storm a Sahuagin city because he doesn't roleplay well, so he doesn't think about the fact it's a Sahuagin City. Luckily, the other players do roleplay well and told him if they follow his plan, they'll all die....and they would have. D&D may be exactly like playing chess at your table...but please don't try coming off all snooty as if that's how I'm supposed to play.

 

[IcyCool]

...but please don't try coming off all snooty as if that's how I'm supposed to play.

Physician, heal thyself.

From what I've seen of your responses in this thread, it seems like the problem is that your powergamer doesn't play the way you think he should (i.e. he should roleplay more, and powergame less).

And there is no fix for that. Unless he wants to change, or you want to change, it will never resolve properly (I learned this the hard way, I'd never met anyone who wasn't in the game for the role-playing aspect before I met this person).

Maybe I'm wrong (interpreting meaning over the internet is nigh-impossible), but you should really examine what it is that bothers you about this player. Limiting options and gimping his character isn't going to turn him into a roleplayer.

If it isn't his lack of roleplaying that bothers you, then it is a mechanical thing, which can be fixed (by eliciting ideas from EnWorld and doing more work on your NPCs).

 

[Oryan77]

If it isn't his lack of roleplaying that bothers you, then it is a mechanical thing, which can be fixed (by eliciting ideas from EnWorld and doing more work on your NPCs).

His lack of roleplaying doesn't bother me at all. His wife & all of the other players make up for it with excellent roleplaying. And I actually get a kick out of watching him try to roleplay...he makes the perfect Half-Orc Cleric (to his credit, I do see him improving with his roleplaying the more he's playing with us)

can be fixed (by eliciting ideas from EnWorld and doing more work on your NPCs).

This is one reason for this thread. I was trying to get advice for fixing my annoyance without me having to do "more work". I've tried doing more work and that's not what I want to do, nor do I have time to keep doing it. Creating a world, creating plotlines, & reading adventures that I will run is what I enjoy about DM'ing. Stating up NPC's is my least favorite thing about DM'ing. I love having NPC's included in the adventures I buy more than I like making them. I do enjoy making them, I just don't care to min-max them as others do.

I've gone as far as to ask people to create efficiently built NPC's for me, but people have their own stuff they want to do so you don't get much help there. I've had a lot of good advice in this thread, so I'll take what I've learned and hopefully be able to arrange things so I'm less annoyed and I don't have to keep coming to Enworld for tactical advice on challenging a powergamer. I'd rather be asking advice about how to work in a side quest so the powergamer can fulfill his PrC requirements (since I was unaware of the requirement before he sprang it on me last session)

 

[Greg K]

I have no sympathy for you Oryan. Learn to play. Your powergamer is better at this than you are, and the only way to deal with him is to hone your skills to his level or better.

Sorry, I disagree with you telling Oryan to learn to play. The two are apparently approaching the game from different styles of play and, therefore have different assumptions as to how the game should be played. That does not make the powergamer better at the game.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Tactical solutions

If you need a tactical solution to a power archer, there are a few reasonable things to try.

Spells:
- Silent image for illusionary walls for concealment
- Fog spells and Darkness to kill visibility
- Invisible flying targets
- Entangling and Grappling spells to impair attack ability
- Windwall / Protection from arrows
- Magically destroy the bow (warp wood, disintegrate)
- Wall spells to isolate the archer

Non Spells:
- Grapple the opponent
- Superior rate of fire by way of many archers
- Sunder or Disarm the bow

Monsters:
- Burrowing creatures (Hard to shoot a burrowing Ankheg or whatever)
- Underwater combat
- Non corporeal creatures
- Regeneration capable opponents (Shoot that troll all you want with normal arrows)

Other:
- Dungeons with small rooms and short corridors
- Severe weather
- Mirrors of Opposition to create clones of the power gamers to use against them
- Mirrors of Giant Opposition (as normal mirror, except change race to Cloud Giant)
- Low visibility conditions (great range increments dont help in total darkness)

Still, tactical fixes are band-aids, and usually cannot fix the problem effectively in the long term.

 

[Crust]

Many posters are touching on the idea that either the player or the DM must change his/her way of thinking in order for the game to work, and I agree.

In my own case, I changed. In fact, I embrace powergaming anymore. With my current group, we all work together and discuss how the PCs could be tweaked to not only ensure highly efficient PCs, but to render the entire party highly efficient as a unit. We do this now because I have a ruthless powergamer in the group. I often joke that his PCs are built in order to take out the entire party if need be, so now I try to make sure that all PCs are powergamed.

I even things out by giving enemies near-max hp and beefing up the number of opponents. I'm also very stingy with magical items. At level 9, only two of eight PCs have a magical weapon. Most other magical items only boost AC and the rare ability score.

I changed. What choice did I have? It's either adapt to the players (the majority), or I don't get to run game. I can't have that.

 

[Warren Okuma]

My suggestion? Beef up the non-power gamers with magic items. Subtlety. If your rogue sucks, use a rogue loaded with magic items to attack, etc... If your cleric sucks, have an evil cleric attack loaded with magic items. When he complains say it's a rogue, that's what he was carrying. If you give me a copy of your character sheet I can have something like that attack...