D&D 5E How to balance combat when 2 characters are average and one is extremely overpowered?

[FormerlyHemlock]

I still don't understand how he gets two attacks.

He can use his action for the attack action. That's one attack.

He's left using his bonus action either for an extra hand crossbow attack thanks to the crossbow master feat OR using that bonus action to take the Hide action via cunning action (presuming the Dungeon Master uses a liberal interpretation of the stealth rules and allows him to attempt to hide every single round).

Yes, we have covered that exhaustively back on page 4 of the thread. The player was doing it wrong (using his bonus action to attack w/ Crossbow Expert and and also using Cunning Action to attack (presumably a Fast Hands Thief)) and the DM didn't know better but does now. No need to beat a dead horse. Moving on...

 

[guachi]

Stat generation prefence will not prevent situations like we see here.
Reading & applying the actual rules will though.

A player who doesn't have a 20 in his main stat has a greater than zero chance of putting his ASI in his main stat and not into a feat that can enable an over-powered build. If you have a 20 in your main stat because of rolling for stats you can't possibly put your ASI into your main stat and, therefore, are more likely to pick a feat that can unbalance your game.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think we've done most of the "clean up" here, and the rogue's power has been brought back to what it should have been all along.

I think though there is still a GM-ing challenge left: Managing the player *after* this adjustment. Depending on the personality of the player, it could go quite well, but it may also be challenging - he may be feeling bored or weak after this adjustment, compared to how his character used to perform.

If the feeling is quite negative, he may in fact want to make a new character to distance himself from the negative experience. I think that's reasonable... as long as the new one is done properly, of course!

 

[Tony Vargas]

I have 2 of my players that built their own characters from scratch and are around the same power level, then I had one player look up "How to break rogue in 5e" and just built his character so it would be the most OP. So I have a mediocre Paladin and Cleric, then I have a super OP crossbow wielding rogue that can attack 3 times in one turn, has +13 to hit, and gets sneak attacks if he stands behind allies. If I balance the enemies for the rogue, the two other characters struggle to survive, and if I balance the enemies for the other two, the rogue just slices through them with zero effort.

Classic problem. Not that difficult to solve. The question is the approach you want to take. You have several options. Of course, first and most briefly, you could do the responsible grown-up thing and talk to the problem player and have him exercise some restraint. If you want to take a mechanical approach, you can ban or nerf the broken bits of his build to bring it in line - it's a bit like the old 'closing the barn door after the L'borean Riding Snakes have slithered out - but sometimes it works without too many hard feelings. The optimizer feels like he's demonstrated his chops and counts you 'needing to nerf him' as a victory. OK, sometimes it doesn't work out, and he just whines and 'pouts. Or, you can really embrace the DM Empowerment and let him have it. OK, so you let a player put out a lot of DPR, but monsters can absorb a lot of DPR, too, in a lot of different ways. Immunity to non-magical weapons. Resistance to piercing (it's not like there are a lot of bludgeoning and slashing options with a crossbow). Resistance to weapon attacks (swarms, for instance). It doesn't have to be every combat, but it can quickly become every meaningful combat, especially if you start just hand-waving combats where the build works. "OK, you shoot 'em all down, no point rolling through it all."

Then there's non-combat, depending on what the players are like, he may or may not continue to hog the spotlight during interactions. While a Rogue is a great skill-monkey, it still doesn't cover all skills, and you could turn the storyline and challenges towards his blind-spots and give the devout Cleric & Paladin more time in the sun.

I guess my question is how can I balance fights so that they are challenging and feel dangerous for all of my players when their power levels are so different? Also, how can I do so without so obviously seeming that I am trying to shut down my rogue.

It doesn't always hurt to be obvious.

I'm struggling to give them a challenge without feeling like I'm deliberately targeting my rogue player.

Deliberately targeting the guy murdering your buddies from behind the tenuous cover of a pair of allies is certainly something many enemies would deliberately do, and do as hard as they possibly could.

 

[Undrhil]

Not sure if anyone pointed it out, but from the sheet, it looks like he *does* have both the Crossbow Expert and Skulker feats listed on the sheet. A level 6 Rogue can only have one feat, variant human excepted.

 

[ProphetSword]

Not sure if anyone pointed it out, but from the sheet, it looks like he *does* have both the Crossbow Expert and Skulker feats listed on the sheet. A level 6 Rogue can only have one feat, variant human excepted.

It has been pointed out multiple times and resolved.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Not sure if anyone pointed it out, but from the sheet, it looks like he *does* have both the Crossbow Expert and Skulker feats listed on the sheet. A level 6 Rogue can only have one feat, variant human excepted.

Most likely, Crossbow Expert is not referring to a feat but rather is a red herring brought about by nomenclature. We know that the "Light Armor Expert" on his sheet was the player mistakenly thinking he could apply the rogue's Expertise feature to his armor proficiency. We also know he was similarly applying double his proficiency bonus to his attacks. Therefore, it stems to reason that the "Crossbow Expert" on his sheet is not referring to the feat but rather was intended to mean "Expertise: Crossbow". Obviously, of course, you cannot legally apply Expertise to weapon or armor proficiency, and this has been pointed out and corrected.

Skulker is the only feat he has (this is further reinforced by the player's notation, where he lists the benefits for Skulker under the feat but neglects to do so for either Light Armor Expert or Crossbow Expert). It's just a coincidence that the shorthand he chose to denote "Expertise: Crossbow" corresponds to the name of a feat (Crossbow Expert).

Also his 20 Dexterity is best explained by him rolling an 18 and then applying the +2 racial ability score increase from halfling, hence he (presumably) did not use his ASI to increase his ability scores (he used it to get the Skulker feat).

 

[Scary]

Hello, I am interested in looking at his sheet, please if u can get him to post it. At 6th lvl, I am curious how he is getting +13 to hit.


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[Fanaelialae]

If so, then why did he think he had three attacks?

Hard to say.

If I had to guess, I would say it might be because of the three different crossbow attacks he has listed on his sheet (Light Crossbow, Hand Crossbow, and Eagle Crossbow). He may have mistakenly believed that he gets one attack with each crossbow, rather than one attack with one crossbow.

I don't think it had anything to do with Fast Hands (which someone mentioned upthread) because he has Cantrips/Spellcasting listed under his features, leading me to surmise that he is most likely an Arcane Trickster. It is alternately possible that he thought he could dual wield crossbows and use mage hand to get a third attack. Of course, it is not legal to dual wield crossbows since they are not light melee weapons, and you definitely can't use mage hand to attack since the spell description says you can't attack with it.

Not sure why the OP said that the player could still make two attacks legally a little earlier in the thread. It could be a house rule.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Hello, I am interested in looking at his sheet, please if u can get him to post it. At 6th lvl, I am curious how he is getting +13 to hit.


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He posted it on page 3.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-overpowered&p=7022894&viewfull=1#post7022894

EDIT:
However, we've already established that it was due to a misunderstanding about how the rogue's Expertise class feature works. The player thought he could apply it to weapon and armor proficiency (which, of course, you can't).