I'm sorry, your character is too good

[Jhaelen]

Let's say that a player comes in, drops a character sheet in front of you, the DM. You look it over, and the sheet is min/maxed to the hilt. We're talking the guy has 8s in all his other ability scores. He's contorted and twisted the system to 1) be above and beyond the other PCs in capability, or 2) potentially breaking anything you can legitimately throw at him. But it's all legal by RAW.

That wouldn't happen in my games since I only allow standard arrays.
Besides, I consider RAW to be meaningless, it's RAI all the way. I've never had a problem to convince a player to get rid of a broken option should I have been unaware of it.

A player has been playing a character, and it becomes clear that his character is overpowered. Due to whatever combination of choices he's made while leveling up, or whatever, it's just far too lopsided in one direction.

Is it OK for you to say to him, "Change your character" or "Dial back your rules choices"?

This situation might theoretically come up, but I never had to, yet.
Since I like to challenge my players, if one character is significantly more powerful than the rest of the party it could lead to problems designing encounters in a way that challenges his pc but doesn't automatically doom the others.

It's still unlikely to come up, since I've ditched tracking xp, so everyone's always at the same level and in 4e encounters aren't _that_ swingy. in my experience pcs that seem to be more powerful aren't actually; it's just the player's superior tactical understanding.

You have handed a player out a magical item. After a session of play, it's clear that it's over-powered, you didn't forsee the significant consequences, or it's being abused.

Is it OK for you to say, "I made a mistake handing that item out, I'm going to have to take it back."

That may have already happened: The party has a "standard of healing" (or whatever it's called) and it's so broken powerful in actual play that I'm really baffled no one here has reported similar findings. It makes it all but impossible to ever kill a pc and everyone agrees, we've had encounters that were won by the pcs only because they had that thing.

Still, I don't feel (yet) it's something I need to take away from them. If it allows them to survive impossible odds, more power to them. Should I ever find that they rely on it too much, there will be ways to make using it unattractive by in-game measures.

Basically, what rights does a DM have in addressing the level of optimization at his table? I not speaking of "well you've made a competent character, and everyone else couldn't build a strong PC if they had help, so sucks to be you" but the char-oppers out there.

I wouldn't have any problem to kick out a CO player if he started to annoy me and everyone else with a single-minded focus on power-gaming and rules-lawyering. But again, so far I've never had a problem to get players to change their ways if the alternative was leaving the game.

 

[billd91]

Just to clarify, because I think you misread the OP. The character has 8, not 18, in multiple abilities. I.e. it was a point buy system and the player took 8 in four abilities, in order to maximize the two remaining abilities.

As I read it, the player is not cheating at all, merely optimizing to a greater degree than the other players.

And that's probably one of the reasons that DMs like me and Li Shenron have our players roll their stats all together in a character gen session. We don't end up with players dumping characteristics to pump others.

 

[Mallus]

Is it OK for you to say to him, "No" or "Dial back the optimization"?

Yes.

Is it OK for you to say to him, "Change your character" or "Dial back your rules choices"?

Yes -- this is my group's preferred option. We like to deal with problems as they actually occur.

Is it OK for you to say, "I made a mistake handing that item out, I'm going to have to take it back."

Yes -- see above.

Basically, what rights does a DM have in addressing the level of optimization at his table?

This question shouldn't be framed in terms of rights. That way lies madness and ridiculous claims of victimhood and hurt feelings/egos.

The question should be: "Who is responsible for the campaign running smoothly?"

The answer is: "Everyone playing".

This means if a PC is giving the DM trouble --for whatever reason-- then it's up to the group to fix it. These fixes can include nerfing the PC, player's suggesting ways to challenge the PC without changing their abilities, to another player stepping up and offering to DM.

I find there's no need to vet rules/options prior to play (there are a lot of rules in contemporary D&D!). I won't know what I'll problems with we're playing. Fortunately, my group's agreed to fix problems as they arise, so things go fairly swimmingly -- and I don't need to pour over supplemental materials like an overworked contract lawyer!

It's not about rights. It's about the campaign running well (and what player really wants to make DM's job more difficult? Wait... don't answer that ). When necessary, repeat that like a mantra.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Since we typically have campaign discussions several months before we start a new campaign, and it addresses this issue, there is no need to say "No" or ask to dial back. It is already explicit.

We'll have these discussions several months before a new campaign starts, at first shooting the breeze and then more detailed later. We try to make things as open as possible--within the otherwise sharp limits of the campaign--including the spirit of the campaign. So anything that is way out of balance with those assumptions is not staying with the spirit of the campaign, and has already been rejected not only by me, but by the group. My job as DM here is not to make the judgment but to enforce it.

I should say though that very rarely do I need to rein anything in, and when I do, it is always a misunderstanding of the mechanics or such. Much more common is that someone has tried so hard to stay with that spirit that they've gone too far the other way and screwed their character. So we'll usually have several conversations where we make sure each player has considered such potential screw ups.

With items, we like wacky and strange. So if an item gets out of hand with the spirit of the campaign, the group will usually have no trouble finding a plausible way to limit that item, due to its nature. For example, an intelligent sword with a bad personality and a lot of power got progressively much worse in the personality department as the game went on, to balance the power. They only thing that kept in check was that the whole party kept threatening to chunk it in the ocean if it didn't keep its mouth shut.

 

[Li Shenron]

Just to clarify, because I think you misread the OP. The character has 8, not 18, in multiple abilities. I.e. it was a point buy system and the player took 8 in four abilities, in order to maximize the two remaining abilities.

As I read it, the player is not cheating at all, merely optimizing to a greater degree than the other players.

Yep... I read "8" but since I didn't get it, I thought that it was a typo and that the OP meant "18"

Well in this case there really is no reason to be offended. If you allow point-buy and point-buy allows such character, then why complain if a player makes a character by the rules? If such character offends the DM, the DM should choose a point-buy (or whatever) ruleset that cannot result in this.