If You Give a Mouse a Cookie... Players and Power Creep

GoodKingJayIII

First Post
All right, a hypothetical situation, so bear with me.

**

A player comes to you with his Fighter. He wants to expand on some of his options. He happens to suggest some stuff from Complete Warrior. Now, you own Complete Warrior and happen to approve of everything in it; in your eyes, all its contents are creative gold, and you agree he can use anything in the book so long as he lets you know.

Now, a second player comes to you. Her character just died and she's tired of playing the same old halflings. She wants to try something new, and suggests Races of the Wild. You also happen to own this book, but find some of its contents circumspect. You tell her so, and tentatively allow her to use something from the book as long as she has your approval and understands that you may tweak or remove certain things for balance issues.

A third player wants to tweak his bread-n-butter sorcerer and suggests Complete Arcane. You also happen to own this book, but believe it is the worst piece of garbage WotC has ever produced. It is full of overpowered classes, questionable feats, and cheesey spells. There's no way you'd ever allow this supplement and let the player know as much, though perhaps in a more diplomatic terms.

**

Remember, just an example. I picked the books randomly out of the sky; it could be any non-Core rulebook, really. Now, player 1 has lots of options at their command, player 2 is worried you might tweak her character concept into oblivion, and player 3 is disappointed because his idea was shot out of the sky. How do you compensate 2 and 3?

Obviously you're worried about power creep. A fair thing to worry about. But it's no longer a question of power. Right now, it's possible players 2 and 3 are having less fun. Maybe even no fun. And really, that's what we're all about as DMs: creating fun, for ourselves and our players. At this point, the mouse already has his cookie, so to speak. Now the other mice want their cookies too, or at least better ones. Mouse 2's cookie fell on the floor and has a little bit of hair on it, and Mouse 3's cookie is pretty and moldy.

So, what do you do now? Do you leave things as they are? Do you offer some other kind of compensation? It's a slippery slope. On one hand, you don't want to be overwhelmed monitoring all the players' options. On the other, it's possible you took away some serious enjoyment from some of your players, and that could affect the game as well. How do you respond?
 

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GoodKingJayIII said:
So, what do you do now? Do you leave things as they are? Do you offer some other kind of compensation? It's a slippery slope. On one hand, you don't want to be overwhelmed monitoring all the players' options. On the other, it's possible you took away some serious enjoyment from some of your players, and that could affect the game as well. How do you respond?

I'd leave it as it is. Less work and heartache involved.

My campaigns always start out as Core only, and I have more non-core books than I can read in three lifetimes. I allow options from the other books on a case-by-case basis only. Even though book X might be complete gold, I'd rather have everyone on the same playing field. So I don't allow whole book additions.
 

That's not how I'd handle things, but I'll get back to that later...

In answer to the question you actually asked, I don't compensate the other two players. They're free to suggest other options from other books for their characters, if they wish. In addition, if I feel the need to change an option taken by player 2 at a later stage, I'll offer her the chance to trade out that option for something else at that time.

However, as I said, I wouldn't have handled things like that in the first place. When I'm working up a campaign, I set up a list of available options (which might be as limited as "Core Only", or might include certain options and expansions). Players are free to use anything on the list of options without issue, but cannot use anything not on the list. If a new book is released that would fit the campaign perfectly... well, maybe next time.

The reason for my "fixed list of options" are two-fold. Firstly, it sidesteps the very issue you have raised. Secondly, I generally make use of some House Rules or options from Unearthed Arcana (and those are almost never used precisely as-written; I invariably modify or expand the rules in that book). Using a fixed list of options, I can work through most, if not all, of the knock-on effects before the campaign begins. If I have an open-door policy, I can't do that.

In any case, I only ever allow options from books that I personally own, no matter how cool the option might be. Since I have only rarely played with someone who has more 3.x books than I do, that tends not to be a factor.
 

GoodKingJayIII said:
Now, player 1 has lots of options at their command, player 2 is worried you might tweak her character concept into oblivion, and player 3 is disappointed because his idea was shot out of the sky. How do you compensate 2 and 3?

...

Right now, it's possible players 2 and 3 are having less fun. Maybe even no fun. And really, that's what we're all about as DMs: creating fun, for ourselves and our players.

...

So, what do you do now? Do you leave things as they are? Do you offer some other kind of compensation? It's a slippery slope. On one hand, you don't want to be overwhelmed monitoring all the players' options. On the other, it's possible you took away some serious enjoyment from some of your players, and that could affect the game as well. How do you respond?

I've never given any compensation. If the player has a good attitude, he's not going to have less fun because I didn't allow one book, he's going to find something else and have just as much fun.

A player that has 1 idea only or one pet book he cannot play without sounds a bit arrogant to me...

And by the way, if you cannot have fun with the 3 core books, you're probably a kind of gamer that cannot play with the same rules/options/concepts for a long time, without getting bores. This you're likely to becoming bored of my games which are very traditional in many ways, if you don't become bored of your own pet character and later disrupt the game because you want to change it.
 

I've just done the "all WoTC stuff unless it's really broken" model. It does lead to some folks playing less-powerful-than-others characters, but as the DM I can fix that (an item only that PC can make effective use of or something similar). I think the only thing I have real problems with is the Bo9S, and even that is mostly okay.

So in otherwords, I don't worry about it much. With a group of 4 players, they don't step on each other's toes all that much. And heck, right now I have 2 warlocks, 1 wu-jen and a paladin (archer).

Mark
 

I occasionally have problems with a player being upset about something such as what's illustrated here. I usually give him a dead-pan face that indicates he should grow up and then we move on.

Dave
 

DM is adjudicator of all material allowed, including core.

If a DM says he allows in all CW, some of RoW, and none from CM, that is fine, players just need to plan on that. Mages and clerics will still be fine even though a fighter has a few more feat options to choose from.

So no compensation. And I wouldn't worry about it too much.
 


My preferred method is handling on a case-by-case basis. I'd rather work with the player than to throw all the doors open and let them cherry-pick, because some of those cherries are Cherry Bombs instead.

I recently finished a "all the doors are open" game, and it unnerved the heck out of me, trying to keep up with all the possible combinations available. As careful as WotC is, they're still human, and fallible, and capable as anyone else of creating options that will blow one campaign wide open while leaving another campaign alone.
 

GoodKingJayIII said:
So, what do you do now? <snip> On one hand, you don't want to be overwhelmed monitoring all the players' options.

I am pretty open to allowing any options in my campaign, even if it gives the players an edge. I'll just adjust challenges down the road if it becomes a problem. But I do have the issue you mention of being overwhelmed with player options. I instituted a Stack rule in my recently finished AoW campaign that allowed each character to choose 1 non-core item per character level. For my upcoming STAP campaign I plan to modify this further and limit the number of Stack slots further. Some Stack items will be fixed, like finding a non-core magic item or an organization that can grant access to a prestige class. Some are general and the group will have to divvy them up between each other to gain access to Stack items. This time around anything not in the Players Handbook (except magic items, then outside the DMG) is considered a Stack item (feats, PrC, spells, magic items, etc.).
 

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