Newer DM needs help with budding power gamer

[Indy_Gator]

I am DM'ing a 4e game with a group of 5 players who haven't played in many years but are coming together monthly for a game. After 4 sessions things are going pretty well, but one of my players is putting the Character Builder through it's paces to max out his character. He's the fighter for the group. Now he's doing the same for his wife's Druid and her best friend's Cleric. The other 2 players, the Ranger (striker) and Paladin haven't yet succumbed and seem to feel good about their characters.

Last session the team went through a series of encounters like a hot knife through butter. Granted they were mostly Level 1 and 2 encounters, but even the level 3 fight was pretty easy for them. I'm using the pre-generated adventures from Dungeon Master Box set right now.

My question is, what is the best way to keep this team in check? How do I keep them challenged? Should I just start upping the difficulty of the encounters by a level or two? Honestly, I don't have a ton of prep time so I don't want to have to do mega tweaking but I have no better ideas.

Any insight is appreciated.

 

[Ferghis]

Generally, optimization is a good thing. It means the players are figuring out the game part of D&D. As a DM, at heroic, I find that a fair encounter is lvl+2. I haven't read them, but I know most of the official adventures have some glaring problems.

As an aside, I encourage you to veto the "improved defenses" feat and houserule the other defense boosting feats to a flat +1 at heroic. Otherwise you do have to up the ante to properly threaten the player characters.

 

[Riastlin]

Hard to say what's going on without knowing more about your group. What are the classes/races/levels? What is it exactly that your group is doing that is causing them to slice through encounters?

There are any number of possible explanations running anywhere from extreme good luck to simply being well designed for the particular encounters, etc. Its just too hard for us to guess how to address the issue without more info.

Welcome to EnWorld and congrats on taking the DM plunge!

 

[Morrus]

Does the power gaming detract from your own enjoyment? If so, it might be worth having a word with him just so you can agree on a gaming style that you both enjoy. If not, then - if that's what he enjoys about D&D - then I'd try to facilitate his fun.

To that end, I'd throw in encounters that he can waltz over and feel heroic and powerful about, as long as that's not taking away from the less-powergamed players' enjoyment. Give him his chance to shine. Find out what the other players really like, and give each of them their chances to shine, too; maybe one of them loves the roleplaying grandstanding; maybe another loves sneaknig around and feeling ninja-y. Let 'em all do what they love doing, as long as it doesn't make it less fun for you.

Then throw in a more difficult challenge every session or two, just to spice things up. But let 'em have their fun! Don't be tempted to try to nullify their attempts to enjoy themselves.

Try to say "yes" as often as possible.

 

[Dice4Hire]

If the fights are too easy, have a couple more copies of whatever monsters are in the room show up a couple of rounds into the fight.

If you do not like the optimizing, restrict the books that can be used. That will help.

I, myself, prefer to up the difficulty a notch or two. Add a monster or two, or add an ability that works well against the optimizers, like a reflex attack for the dwarf or some such.

But do not be vindictive about it, just tell people how you want to play the game, and negotiate with them.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I am DM'ing a 4e game with a group of 5 players who haven't played in many years but are coming together monthly for a game. After 4 sessions things are going pretty well, but one of my players is putting the Character Builder through it's paces to max out his character. He's the fighter for the group. Now he's doing the same for his wife's Druid and her best friend's Cleric. The other 2 players, the Ranger (striker) and Paladin haven't yet succumbed and seem to feel good about their characters.

Last session the team went through a series of encounters like a hot knife through butter. Granted they were mostly Level 1 and 2 encounters, but even the level 3 fight was pretty easy for them. I'm using the pre-generated adventures from Dungeon Master Box set right now.

My question is, what is the best way to keep this team in check? How do I keep them challenged? Should I just start upping the difficulty of the encounters by a level or two? Honestly, I don't have a ton of prep time so I don't want to have to do mega tweaking but I have no better ideas.

Any insight is appreciated.

Are they 1st-level?

Good advice from 3.x was to limit sourcebooks. Splatbooks aren't necessarily overpowered, but more options means more headaches for the DM. (The PH1 generally has OP stuff in it too, but at least the DM will know about them.)

For my current campaign, I spent a lot of time ensuring the players knew what was expected of them, so I wouldn't have cowardly PCs who only wanted to make a buck. I wish I had spent as much time on clarifying limited sources.

For a session or two, one of my players had a Battlerager Vigor fighter as his PC. Ban! Is your player playing one? Ban it, fast!

The Character Builder is particularly bad for this. You can assemble combos of class options, powers, backgrounds, themes, and items to create some horribly OP options. I hear there's some way of limiting sources in it, but apparently it's difficult to figure out. Learn and teach your players about that.

 

[the Jester]

After 4 sessions things are going pretty well, but one of my players is putting the Character Builder through it's paces to max out his character. He's the fighter for the group. Now he's doing the same for his wife's Druid and her best friend's Cleric.

Are you letting them change their characters between sessions or something?

By the RAW, they can retrain one thing per level. Just because a player re-reads a book and finds a cool feat or power that he didn't know about (or, in this case, goes through the CB) doesn't mean he automatically gets to switch it out.

 

[Kzach]

A trap that a lot of DM's, new and old, fall into with 4e is the concept of resources. It can take a bit of getting used to and requires a fairly decent understanding of the underlying mechanics of the system.

So when you say, "...like a hot knife through butter..." in reference to how easy the encounters were, you need to step back and instead of evaluating combat ease or difficulty by the perception of how the combat went, you need to look at what resources were spent in overcoming the challenge.

For instance, if they spent a healing surge or two each and used up all their encounter powers, that's about right for most balanced encounters. It might APPEAR as if they breezed through it, but when you consider that they expended a good deal of their resources to overcome it, it puts the challenge more into perspective.

Now, if they only ever used at-wills, spent no healing surges and made comments like, "Did you see how that kobold exploded when I hit him for six points of damage?!" well, then maybe you've got a point and they really did breeze through it.

As for powergaming, I've never had a problem with it as long as it wasn't the focus. I like to optimise my characters and encourage my players to do the same because... it's fun. It's fun to hit. It's fun to use your cool powers effectively. It's fun to pull off some whacky stunt that you could only do because of how your character is built. As long as there is still roleplaying going on at the table and everyone is having fun, I just don't see a problem with it.

As a counter-point, I sometimes experience the opposite effect. People optimise and then one or two others complain about it and make out like the optimisers are the bad people doing a bad thing. In this situation, I feel it's the odd-man out who's the one that should either conform to the group's expectations, or be quiet.

 

[Indy_Gator]

Thanks for all the great replies. Sorry I left out some details. The players just hit Level 3. I did let them make any changes they wanted after the second session to their characters. They were just get a feeling for the game flow, powers and mechanics so I thought the one free shot made sense. Going forward we'll stuck more to the rules around making changes.

As to Classes/Races

Dwarf Fighter (Defender) -the power gamer
Dragonborn Paladin (Defender)
Deva Cleric (leader)
Half Elf Druid (controller/Striker)
Elf Ranger (Striker)

 

[was]

try letting the monsters use more advanced tactics..ambushes, ranged sniping attacks etc..