DM's: How do you deal with powergamers?

[LostSoul]

If I was a good powergamer, I probably wouldn't mind if the DM asked me to lower my PC a few levels to balance things out for everyone else. Especially if he said, "You are just so awesome we can't keep up. We need a handicap, like in golf or when you spot the queen to the other guy in chess."

The conflicting playstyles (especially the sorceress' player and the powergamer) could become a bigger issue. Keep an eye on that.

 

[Greg K]

I think you need to have an OOG conversation with him. First, ask if there are things that he has willingly decided not to play because they are too strong. The intent is to figure out if he is a powergamer or a munchkin. A munchkin is a legitimate problem and requires a different tactic.knowledge (nature);

If you have a powergamer, congratulations. You have a player who is willingly investing a large amount of effort to play in your game. This is a good thing! You just need to lay down a few ground rules.\.

I suppose the above would depend on your definition of powergamer. My advice would have been to figure out if he is an optimizer, a powergamer or a munchkin.

 

[Shade]

I encourage and empower them.

 

[Tzarevitch]

I play with powergamers and I am a bit of one myself. There are simple tricks you can use to up the challenge without making the opposition too powerful for the non-powergamer in your group.

1. You can't hit what you can't see: Enemies should make use of spells, effects and terrain that obscure visibility. Alchemical smoke is quite cheap and little other than blindsight/blindsense goes through it very well. Illusions, invisibility, and darkness also work. Use Cover and Concealment as well. Anything you can get that grants a miss chance, blocks sneak attacks and/or improves AC is good. It isn't cheesy or cheap using these because in the real world combattants ALWAYS try to make use of these.

2. If you can't get to it you can't hit it: This is related to #1. Use terrain. It doesn't just grant you miss chances and improved AC, it also prevents your enemy from getting to you quickly. There is a world of a difference between a barbarian moving and hitting you with 1 attack and a barbarian standing next to you and hitting you with 4. Use terrain control spells: web, wall spells, ice storm, sleet storm, solid fog etc.. Your NPCs can control the flow of the battle by preventing players from approaching to attack or support their allies. Sometimes you can prevent characters from targeting anything at all.

3. Don't allow casters to operate unopposed: Dispel liberally. PCs will tend to have a lot of magic on them. Powergamers absolutely will. Dispel often. Also, counterspell when possible. Improved Counterspell and Reactive Conterspell are godsend feats. I can't remember what book they are in but Improved allows you to use any spell of the same school or lower to counterspell. Reactive allows you to counterspell when it isn't your turn and without readying an action to do so. Even without these spells, adding a spare caster who does nothing but counterspell will make powergaming casters' lives difficult.

4 Damage isn't everything: Powergamers can be hard to attack. Don't get too set on physical damage. Special attacks work wonders. Disarm, Bull Rush and Sunder have lots of applications and can make any PCs day pretty rough.

5. Wing it: Just because you don't know everything there is to know about xx doesn't mean your NPC doesn't. If it is a trick that the NPC probably saw before, assume that he has what he needs to block it (within reason) provided it is something that the character could actually have on him. You'd be surprised what simple alchemical equipment can do.

Lastly, just let the PCs (including the powergamer) show off sometimes. Sometimes they SHOULD be able to outclass their opposition. Let them have their time in the sun now and then, so they can remember why they worked so hard.

Tzarevitch

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

He's definately a powergamer. None of his tactics are annoying or lame. Most of them are pretty slick. I am actually very grateful to have him in the group because when the players are in a tight spot, he always comes up with a way to help the group out with a spell. I've been on the opposite end where a cleric player wouldn't even know he could restore someones lost ability points :\ so this is nice.

I actually suggested this to him last weekend. So far I'm doing the right thing

Actually, he's been annoying about this. He already powergamed his wifes PC, but she doesn't know enough about the game to really take advantage of things. She's really effective at archery, but that's about it. I can still thwart her PC without bending over backwards to do so.

Our sorcereress player on the other hand is getting annoyed by his constant "advice". She's a casual gamer and prefers roleplaying. She tries to perform well in combats, but his constant suggestions are getting on her nerves. What's worse is they are all levelling this week and he made several comments last session about the spell she needs to learn. He said it so many times during the game that it's as if he's trying to build her character for her in order to powergame the entire group. The last time she levelled I appreciated his help, but now that I see the impact of powergaming, I'm not thrilled about letting him give her advice. I told her we'll level her up before the game so he won't bother her with spell selection suggestions.

Thanks for the advice, it was great!

You should certainly talk about it, and recommend him to help those that want his help, and try to let others play the game their way. If the Sorceress is happy with role playing, she won't feel bad with suboptimal character, and the other characters should be able to outweigh her "shortcomings" power gaming wise, so it shouldn't hurt the power gamers fun. Maybe you should put it as a different kind of challenge: How do you make the character good at role playing - beyond maximizing Diplomacy, naturally, like picking spells that fit a theme. That's essentially not that different from power gaming. In both cases, you have to look how different spells and abilities interact - for power, you need to look how they interact to give you more "damage per 10 seconds", for role playing, the spells and abilities must interact to represent the characters personality best.

If it's necessary, remind everyone that D&D is their hobby and it should be fun for them - if it isn't, they should tell you and/or the others.

I don't know much besides this. It will always be difficult if different play styles collide. The first step is to make everyone aware of such problems...

 

[Crothian]

Not all powergamers are equal. I have a powergamer in my group and it works fine because he's frankly not all that good at it.

 

[Pbartender]

You come to a gentlemen's agreement...

In effect, you provide this player with occasional encounters and situations* that are obviously included to highlight what ever aspect of his character he's powergaming, and in exchange he holds back a bit in other situations to allow the other characters to step into the spotlight and be challenged without his character dominating and lays off the advice to other players, unless asked for it.

In other words, let him have his fun, but make certain he understands that the players, and you the DM too, need a chance to have their fun too.


*Now remember, this doesn't mean to necessarily need to "challenge" the character or even provide encounters that have a chance of defeating him... It just needs to be an encounter that allows the player to stretch his powergaming muscles now and again, so he can scratch that itch. For example, if he's a two-weapon fighting ranger with combat reflexes and great cleave, send him a horde of mooks to slaughter now and again -- you get the idea.

 

[Oryan77]

if he uses a lot of magic items (hehe...).

This brings up another issue that I'm not comfortable with in our game. As a type of handicap as was suggested, I don't give this player the type of magical gear that gets him excited. It's actually pretty hard for me to figure out what kind of magic items to throw his way. So compared to everyone else, he really doesn't have the cool stuff like other players. I feel bad about that.

He puts me in a bind here. I don't want to give him the items that I would normally give a warrior cleric, because that will just boost up his power even more. But when I give him fun/interesting magic items, he doesn't care about them because they don't improve the areas he's working to powergame.

When he created the PC, he dumped all his starting gold into +2 full plate & +2 shield & other AC boosting items and selected a nonmagical weapon. He did this assuming it would be easier to find a good magical weapon than it would to find +2 full plate. So I take that as a player trying to get the DM to powergame his PC for him without realizing it.

Overall, it's so hard to give him any magical item because no matter what I give him that benefits a cleric, it means that's one less area that he needs to worry about powergaming. So his focus goes towards improving the other areas more. He hasn't openly complained about other player's getting cool items and he hasn't...I just don't want him to feel like I favor other players sooner or later.

 

[DaveMage]

I encourage and empower them.

Ditto.

Of course, if I got rid of the powergamers in my group - I wouldn't have a group.

 

[delericho]

1) Encourage the rest of the players to likewise powergame their characters. This is necessary, or step 2 will backfire badly.

2) Increase the average EL you throw at the characters.

3) Make sure you keep the challenges many and varied, and don't allow the players to 'dodge' their PCs weak spots. Most power-builds are constructed to be super-optimised. They're good at one thing, at the expense of everything else. So, if you keep the challenges varied, that should negate the power-gaming. He'll excel in his area, and others will shine in other areas. (By not letting them dodge weaknesses, what do I mean? Well, the classic example is the player who assigns a 6 to Cha, and then expects to role-play his way out of any situation what Cha would apply.)

4) Make sure you read up on his character's powers, and be sure to enforce the limitations of them. A lot of 'power-gamers' are actually cheats, in that they 'accidentally' forget that you can't stack two enhancement bonuses, or whatever. The game is generally reasonably good at balancing itself... provided you apply the limits. (You should do the same for all the characters, of course.)