I'm sorry, your character is too good

[amerigoV]

If someone comes to the table with a max prime score and 8's everywhere else, you should be SALIVATING as the GM. That PC will have huge weaknesses elsewhere. Say they make a killer melee guy. Nothing like Charm/Dominate against that pathetic Will save. Once the party gets their butt whooped by the charmed PC, then the its the players problem, not yours.

 

[Celebrim]

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.

I would point out to him that RAW is not legal in my game and ask him to potentially break the rules we actually use. Many things in RAW are simply not allowed at my table because I don't want to deal with this headache. The good DM in my opinion preemptedly bans everything he doesn't want to deal with. What exactly is on this list depends on the DMs preferences. For me, it's a pretty long list.

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.

So far, no one has found a way to do this. Potentially, a good rules optimizer could probably do it using a spellcasting class sometime after 10th level, but that would be because well, in RAW, nothing is more broken than straight full spellcaster. If that happened, I would apologize to the character for being shortsighted, thank him for finding the problems, and begin systematically nerfing the offending high level spells. I have done this with low level spells before, but in the one case I had to do it, when the character took the spell I told him it would be on the watch list for dialing down and the problem mechanics I would use to do it.

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."

No, but like many of my powerful magic items, it would turn out to have significant drawbacks which would be uncovered after certain triggering conditions were met. Really powerful magic items seldom reveal themselves fully until after you've had them for a certain length of time, used them a certain number of times, or successfully used one to kill a certain sort of creature. I believe that this has precedent both in the inspirational source material and in the games history.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

For me, I'll look things over and if I don't see any serious problems, I'll allow whatever it is. I simply say "If you take Option X, that becomes an option for the bad guys as well." If they still take it, I don't hold back with it.

I had a player in my Pathfinder group who bordered on powergamer status. We play with only the Core Rulebook. He asked if he could take gravity bow (from the APG), putting his bow damage up to 2d6 and some other spell (not enlarge person but something like that) to double his size to increase his Strength. I said, 'Sure. But some of the bad guys might have figured that out, too.' He took it anyway.

He used it the next fight, wiping out a couple of guys in combat. A couple got away. The combat after that? A couple of the bad guy's archers pulled the same trick. The rest of the party was pissed because they were getting their asses handed to them thanks to the same trick one of their own party members pulled. Especially because said party member had used most of his spells for the day and couldn't use the same trick in return.

As for powerful magic items, meh. Unless you're really high level, it'll balance out eventually. Ultimately, if it becomes a real problem, Boccob, God of Magic (or his local equivalent) can show up and demand the item as being too powerful, because the Warlord Taco Spamison is coming after it. That gets rid of the item and gives the party a focus, as the start leveling to meet the Warlord.

 

[pauljathome]

I will absolutely try and balance the games that I run.

Sometimes this will involve my asking a player to tone things down, sometimes it will involve my giving some free stuff to the other characters, sometimes it will involve my changing my tactics or the bad guys power level.

It doesn't matter very much WHY things got out of balance. Sometimes I screwed up, sometimes the player power gamed, sometimes the rules are broken.

But I absolutely (unlike some posters above) do NOT believe that an unbalanced character necessarily means that the player mini/maxed or power gamed. I've got one player who builds characters to a concept. Generally they are, if anything, underpowered. Occasionally they end up significantly overpowered.

 

[Dykstrav]

First off, I reserve the right to veto or take back anything going on at the table when I GM. Gaming has to be fun for all the players, GM included. I don't believe that the GM should be "punished" for making mistakes any more than a player. The narrative and conduct of the game is not a democracy, it's a benevolent dictatorship.

I used to dislike min/maxed PCs until I learned how to best address them.

I believe that the best method of addressing power-gaming is to sit down and discuss the character, preferably in front of the rest of the group. Usually, if you call out someone for min/maxing in front of the entire group (or any other undesirable behavior, for that matter), they either realize that it's not the sort of game for them or they choose to change their behavior. Specifically, I recognize that they are superior in one are, and then run them through a few scenarios where their carefully optimized character is going to suck and suck hard.

"I've noticed that all you concentrated on was melee. What's your melee-optimized fighter going to do against a swarm? What about enemies at range, like a band of orc archers on the other side of a chasm?"

"Your AC is awesome--what's your plan to deal with touch attacks or area effects?"

"Your caster is really focused on fire spells. What are they going to do if an enemy spellcaster summons gobs of fire elementals?"

Fortunately, there's no such thing as a character that you can't challenge. They'll have some sort of weakness. Let 'em have their moment in the sunshine every once in a while, but don't make it a cakewalk either. Just like you do for every other player, make some things that will be a pushover for them and make some things a challenge. Over time, the min/maxer gets bored. They discover that their carefully optimized character has weaknesses, and things you tailor for them are a pushover. They expect to fail at certain things and succeed at others, and most of the time, they're right. Since there's no meaningful chance of either success or failure, things get boring quickly.

Also, don't underestimate the power of apathy. If the min/maxer gets thrilled about a huge bonus, don't give them any sort of reinforcement with your reaction (which is likely what they're after in the first place). Just nod politely and act disinterested. "Yeah, Thavius kills another orc with a mighty blow. Tom, what's your character doing?" If they see that you're not interested in their min/maxing prowess, they'll either lose interest in it or move to another group.

 

[JoeGKushner]

It's always okay to ask and try to work things out with the player.

Those things may not always succeed mind you but communication is always a good place to start.

 

[Lwaxy]

I do not allow more than 1 stat at 8 so no min maxing here.

The rest is usually fixed once we see something is amiss.

 

[Thagdal]

I prefer to handle it out of game. I have no problems with broaching game issues as a group in a friendly manner.

I feel handling that sort of stuff by secret in game means players ultimately distrust you as DM, as you're bending world design to fit an out of game objection you may of may not of told them about but they probably know you don't like.
That's different to the game world handling it (eg the goblins are getting very tired of having their home oiled and burnt and have learnt to build with some flame retardant material.)

My games tend to be collaborative things, with as little as possible of needing to enforce rule 0. If one person is ruining the fun for others, they'll stop when they realise (or if so to realise when told the effect).

Sometimes, I've had to tell a player, 'I made a mistake by giving you x item/power/spell, can we discuss fixing it'.

Games at the LFGS or Cons are different, if DMing one I'm more likely to have firmer rules on what's allowed, but am more tolerant to people whose enjoyment of the game involves min/maxing. If a player, I'll watch, roll my eyes a bit and concentrate on better and more humorous role play.

 

[pemerton]

I have GMed for some very tactically-minded players (two of my players have been Australasian M:TG championship players), who enjoy building PCs that are mechanically strong, but they aren't looking for exploits that trade on sheer designer error or oversight.

The first time I ever dialled back a class ability was a few months after one of these guys started playing in my Rolemaster game. He was the one who made the call that the ability (from the original Rolemaster Elemental Companion) was overpowered, and we worked together on a more balanced variant. Since then, I've found that I can generally rely on my players to anticipate potentially overpowered options and draw them to my attention. Nor do I hesitate to make my own views clear. And often, solutions can easily be found via consensus.

I also prefer to do it out of game rather than in game - if it was done in game, then the only way my players could be part of it would be if they were helping work out the details of the antagonism for their PCs, and this isn't an approach that I'm personally a big fan of.

 

[Hautamaki]

One option that nobody has mentioned is to just make the game so challenging that players absolutely must make the mechanically optimal choices in character creation, and play those characters to the hilt in game, in order to survive. I realize this style of play probably doesn't appeal to most but I for one enjoy the challenge both as a player and as a DM. In my current game the players have suffered over 20 deaths combined just getting to level 3. Every time one of the players discovers something extremely powerful, either an item or a character option or whatever, the party rejoices because they are long past trying to compete with each other to see who can slaughter the most goblins. They are just trying to survive at this point and anyone who can figure out a way to increase the odds of survival for the party by increasing their own character's power is much appreciated. It's an interesting experiment--instead of the norm, it's now the players that make sub-optimal choices, either in character creation or in character action in game, that get tsk'd at.