The only way you avoid this is by (A) making all PC build tools extraordinarily limited and/or shallow, (B) making all PC build tools utterly discrete and non-stackable such that the siloing removes all possibility for 2nd and 3rd order synergies, (C) canvassing it clearly that you are playing a socially cooperative game and thematic archetype is paramount (and utterly power-gamed monstrosities, eg movement rate of 200 and a trail of 5 OG fire at your feet, are forbidden).
I agree and came to the same conclusion myself. Which is why I liked 4e so much. It attempted a bit of A and a lot of B to solve the problems I had with 3.5e and create a system where I didn't have to micromanage character creation to have what I considered an interesting game while having Jim around.
However, over time, Jim got frustrated by his character being relatively equal to everyone else in the group and started poking at the edges of the rules. He'd look for ANY feats or powers that gave untyped bonuses to try to stack them. As books came out they printed more and more of these. Add to that Hybrid characters and weird interactions because you are a member of two(or three classes) and therefore qualify for feats that weren't designed for your class and you have the makings of rather broken things.
I remember one of my biggest arguments with Jim was over a feat that let you knock down enemies when you hit them with a polearm. He decided to be a Wizard who multiclassed into fighter to qualify for the feat. Then he made a polearm into an arcane implement. He then wanted to knock everyone in an AOE prone when he "hit them with his polearm". It should be noted that he had some other feat that let him do extra damage to enemies whenever he knocked them prone. I suggested that although the letter of the feat said "Whenever to hit someone with a polearm" that it was never meant to be applied to spells that were channeled through a polearm. Plus, the feat that does extra damage to people you knock prone appeared to be, fiction wise, about you throwing them to the ground roughly and stepping on their face, doing more damage. It didn't specifically say that it wasn't supposed to be used with spells that knocked people prone...but the flavor of it didn't appear to be compatible. I agreed to allow the prone feat but that I was officially errataing the polearm feat to only apply to weapon attacks.
He got rather mad at me, telling me that I was trying to change the rules simply because I didn't like them. That he had found a perfectly legitimate character and I was trying to prevent him from playing it.
Which is why we started resorting to option C instead. I explained to him that from now on, we were going to only allow characters that I considered balanced for the fun of everyone and that he should try to build within that philosophy. He agreed that it was for the best. Then proceeded to create a string of characters that were "perfectly balanced, like you asked me to" but were clearly more powerful than everyone else in the group by far. I kept disallowing them over and over again. Each time he insisted they weren't overpowered. We jointly agreed that while the rules allowed him to create broken characters, he would continue to do so.
That's when I had to rule that no one could take Hybrid as an option and that you ONLY qualified for feats with your primary class. Being multiclassed into another class didn't make you considered that class for purposes of acquiring feats. That seemed to allow him to make normal characters(though, still very powerful). The only problem is another one of our friends(Ryan) managed to work within my new rules and still create a character who hit on a 2 90% of the time and needed 18s to hit by most monsters of his level.
It got me so frustrated that when the D&D Next playtest came out, I suggested we play that instead. So far it's working pretty well. The system doesn't have enough options to allow super power gaming. Which suits me fine. However, both Jim and Ryan have been complaining about their lack of options an inability to make the characters they want since our playtest started. They keep playing but they point out that if things don't change by the time the game is released, they don't want to play D&D Next. Each playtest that comes out they scour it for new options and powergaming potential. At the moment they've both decided that Druid is overpowered and they are fine playing it. Ryan was also invited to another group(without the rest of us) who plays Pathfinder and he thinks it's pretty awesome since it gives him so many options.
Anyone doing so is willfully working against the system to break it and would be willfully working against an explicit, social compact to not do so (which should be implicit...don't willfully work hard to "break stuff" or "don't ruin everyone's fun" is something that should be learned early on or you're going to have some problems normalizing to societal standards). If they grumble and work to sow misery at the table thereafter (because they can't play their willful, destructive Calvinball in a cooperative RPG game), the decision to excise them is one that should not come as a surprise to them.
The problem is, that it appears to be so ingrained in their mindset that this is the "proper" way to play the game that they are incapable of knowing when it is causing problems. Jim made a series of characters in my games that we was CONVINCED were not broken or abusive. Then, they proceeded to be broken and abusive. A couple of them he actually decided to retire himself after once session because he "had no idea it was going to be that powerful when he created it."
He tries to work with me...but, he doesn't seem to understand what broken means.
And we move onto the Encounter building "guidelines". There is nowhere in any rulebook that says you must adhere to some specific format. There is advice on what perturbing the system may create for pacing and expectant difficulty. That is it.
That's correct. Jim considers all guidelines to be rules that should only be broken with absolute system mastery and extenuating circumstances. Basically, if the DM doesn't know the rules as well as he does, then they can't be trusted to go beyond guidelines. Plus, even if they do know the rules as well as he does, they should know that those guidelines exist for a reason...to make the game the most fun. Going beyond them means you are purposefully making the game no fun and are being vindictive to your players.
I don't know where these ideas that 4e advocates bounded, Delve (3 encounters or progressive difficulty only) format play only and forbids all other adventuring day formats and/or the introduction of deadly encounters meant to be dealt with outside of the scope of the combat mechanics...but this garbage needs to die. Its flat out not true and its used only as a weapon in edition warring nonsense. Allowing it to proliferate only serves those edition war ends.
I can tell you where my ideas come from. It's from when I sat in a room with Mike Mearls and...crap, forgetting the name of the manager of R&D at the time. Since I volunteered to be an admin for Living Forgotten Realms, I got a session for about 10 of us who were available to teach us about 4e(this was before it came out). We were running the 4e preview at D&D Experience and they wanted us to get a good handle on how to run 4e properly and proper adventure design for when we'd eventually have to write LFR adventures.
Basically, were told that 4e was designed to have 3 or 4 encounters in a day. It wasn't recommended to write any adventure where the PCs fought less than that during a day(and was actually a rule for LFR adventure writing. No less than 2 combat encounters, preferably on the same day or there would be no challenge) since there wouldn't be enough damage to cause the attrition necessary to threaten the PCs. You could use more powerful encounters but since level directly affected the enemies defenses, bonuses to hit, damage, and hitpoints at the same time that adding levels added exponential difficulty. After about 5-7 levels you will slaughter the PCs. Though, they were surprised at just how many levels you could add without killing the entire party but were still testing internally to see how high you could go safely. You also couldn't have too many more encounters in a day because healing surges would limit the PCs survivability.
The idea was that each adventuring day consisted of 3-4 encounters with a number of monsters equal to the number of players whose levels were within 5 of the PCs. And after each encounter they got a short rest. This was absolutely vital to playing 4e and making it fun. They pointed out that the preview adventure that we were running didn't have logical points for short rests and the monsters were in rooms that were 30 feet away from the other monsters but we were absolutely not supposed to have 2 encounters attack the PCs at once, because it would be a TPK for sure. We were also supposed to give the PCs five minutes of time to rest between encounters even though it made sense that the next encounter might attack them while they were resting because the game was designed assuming encounter powers were available every encounter.
