D&D 5E PC Exceptionalism

[Stalker0]

Have more interactions and/or combats against lower CR creatures.

Yep, its easy for DMs to get in the mindset of "challenging" the players. But sometimes the players really do just want to show off and kick butt.

In my first campaign, the players got "house arrest" and had to stay in the city because of some issues. Aka they couldn't go adventuring. So they decided to enjoy their "vacation" and help out around the city. These 11th level characters took down a low level smuggling ring in an hour, just knocking heads and completely dominating everyone they encountered. The players had a blast, they still talk about it 9 campaigns later.

 

[overgeeked]

Or lets take it a step further, Superman.

Now a character can always have their side plots and personal goals, there is always a way to make things interesting. But if we are talking about the main plot....power imbalance can absolutely skew the spotlight towards a single character if unchecked. I used to love the Justice League cartoons, and there are lot of fun fights where the whole league is beating up the bad guys. But....realistically if only superman was present....the result would be exactly the same. It would take maybe a few more seconds to finish the job. The rest of the league could literally just grab a chair and hang out, and the result would be 100% the exact same.

Only in those rare cases where someone throws out the red sun or kryptonite is another leaguer really necessary, or if the plot is such that multiple leaguers are needed at the same time (and normally this requires you to nerf super speed to make it plausible).

This actually happened in a 3.5 game I played it. My friend played a dread necromancer, and "won the game". His army of undead was superior to everything the rest of us had, and he could heal them at-will. Every enemy we killed just added to his collection, the strongest the monster we faced, the better the undead he got. Eventually one player just flat out said in game "I think my character would just quit at this moment, I honestly don't think I matter to the campaign". And in that game....he was right.

Now I don't think most games get to the level, and I think 5e's balance is such that's its very difficult to get to that level of imbalance, but yeah if that imbalance occurs....it does suck to be the guy next to superman narratively speaking.

It does suck. But that’s the fault if the DM. If they’re letting that imbalance happen in the first place, bad form. If they’re not addressing it, bad form. If they’re not presenting threats that give everyone spotlight time, bad form.

You can easily tell stories with power imbalances, you just need to focus on something other than the power imbalance to keep everyone engaged and meaningful to the story. If the only thing that matters to your stories is how hard someone can hit, then no one but Supes and Wonder Woman matter. But that’s incredibly bad storytelling.

In good Justice League stories Supes and Wonder Woman are going toe-to-toe with gods while the rest of the team does other stuff. Batman investigates and looks for weaknesses, which is often the key to winning and stopping the threat. Flash clears the field of civilians, then joins in the fight. Green Lantern protects bystanders and contains the fight. Etc.

Everyone has a role to play and the focus isn’t only on who hits the hardest. It’s really not that hard to do in games. Find out what everyone likes to do, what they want their characters to do and be good at, then give it to them in fun and interesting ways that challenge their characters and make the players think.

 

[ph0rk]

It does suck. But that’s the fault if the DM. If they’re letting that imbalance happen in the first place, bad form. If they’re not addressing it, bad form. If they’re not presenting threats that give everyone spotlight time, bad form.

Generally, yes, but I have seen scenarios where a relatively inexperienced DM gets railroaded into something like this by an utter munchkin.

I'm not quite sure what the solution is there, but the munchkin altering their behavior is probably a part of it.

Burning out a new DM early just to prove how good a munchkin one happens to be isn't a net good.

 

[Stalker0]

In good Justice League stories Supes and Wonder Woman are going toe-to-toe with gods while the rest of the team does other stuff. Batman investigates and looks for weaknesses, which is often the key to winning and stopping the threat. Flash clears the field of civilians, then joins in the fight. Green Lantern protects bystanders and contains the fight. Etc.

And if your players want to play a game where a few of them do all the combats while everyone else focuses on skill checks and skill challenge like activity....than absolutely that's perfectly fine. It also means that the choices of a few characters will impact the entire story (aka if Superman loses its game over) vs their choices impacting a few people (if Green Lantern messes up, some civilians die). But if you want a game where people are all in the big fight....that's just not going to really work. Also if you want the party to "stay together" that makes such gameplay also worse.

This power imbalance forces a certain narrative construct. If that narrative construct is something your players and the DM enjoys than your great. If they don't, then your swimming upstream.

Now to reiterate, I think 5e does a good job of curbing most of the big imbalances. You can still make characters more powerful than others, but the degree has been toned down significantly. I haven't seen the real crazy imbalances since 3.5/PF1.

 

[Shiroiken]

First of all, I'm 100% sure I understand the question, as the proposed question seems to relate to the world, while the comic seems to relate to the party.

When dealing with the world, I've found the easiest way to remind the players that their characters are exception is to STOP making them roll for everything! When the town drunk irritates the 5th level barbarian, don't roll initiative or require athletics checks, just ask the player to describe what they're doing (modify it as needed). Higher level characters are exceptional, but forcing them to make trivial rolls takes this away with a fickle d20. Dice should only be used if the outcome is in question.

Interparty is trickier, depending on player personalities. While the verbiage might have been unacceptable, there are players with something that drives them to "prove" how much better their character is at everything. I've seen entire campaigns collapse because of it, with one happening during session 0 (one player rolled extraordinarily well for ability scores, offending another player who rolled subpar). My solution to this has been to not play with these types anymore, which is my recommendation to others.

There are times when a player might feel inferior without cause, such as in the monk example. Monk abilities tend to not be flashy, making them less noticeable and less exciting. If a player feels this way, the DM can try to offer challenges that allow their abilities to shine (such has having Daredevil hearing the villain several blocks away and verifying the prisoner is lying, none of which Captain Marvel can do). Sometime though, a character isn't a good fit for the party/campaign, such as an enchantment bard in a campaign dedicated to fighting undead, in which case the DM should suggest the character retire, replaced by a better fitting one.

 

[Stalker0]

Generally, yes, but I have seen scenarios where a relatively inexperienced DM gets railroaded into something like this by an utter munchkin.

I'm not quite sure what the solution is there, but the munchkin altering their behavior is probably a part of it.

At the end of the day, the new DM has to do the hardest thing there is for some people.....say No. They have to have a talk with the munchkin and say "hey, your character...you've done nothing wrong, but your character is so much better than everyone else, its skewing the game and detracting from the experience both from them but also from me. So we are going to need to make some changes. Now if that doesn't work from this character and you would rather bring in a new one, that is completely fair, but we need to find a way to bring your person more in line with the rest of the group".

That is so very hard for some people to do, have that kind of "confrontation", but it can be 100% necessary for the good of some games. As a long standing DM I've come to learn....if every time I am making an encounter I have to change what I want to do because of ability X....then ability X needs to go. No issue with X messing with me some of the time, that's what abilities are for. But if I literally feel like I'm shaping everything around X, then that's too much.

That's ultimately why I banned counterspell in my game. Some DMs are perfectly fine with counterspell, but I was tired of having to make every spellcasting encounter "far enough away to not get counterspelled" or "use counterspell themselves to try to protect themselves", etc. For me it was controlling too much of my encounter design....so I banned it. Haven't looked back since, and now I get to run the casters I want to run. Same reason I nerfed Leomund's Tiny Hut. Sure I could mess with the barrier all the time, or do the classic "the enemies just gather around the barrier and dispel it and kill the party"....once or twice that's fine. Day in and day out, no I just got tired of the party being able to rest with nigh invincibility....so I toned it down. Now its still useful, and I don't have headaches about it.

The DM should never feel like the player abilities are controlling their narrative all the time, and its okay to push back if you feel they do. Some people get in the mindset of "well if its in the book the DM just has to deal with it".....and nope, Its my universe, I get to decide what I as a DM want to work against and what I don't. No shame in that, Dming is hard work, no reason to make it harder for yourself.

 

[overgeeked]

Generally, yes, but I have seen scenarios where a relatively inexperienced DM gets railroaded into something like this by an utter munchkin.

I'm not quite sure what the solution is there, but the munchkin altering their behavior is probably a part of it.

Burning out a new DM early just to prove how good a munchkin one happens to be isn't a net good.

Or the DM realizes what’s happening and says no. It’s infinitely more likely, in my experience, that the munchkin will need to be booted as they don’t tend to change their behavior.

And if your players want to play a game where a few of them do all the combats while everyone else focuses on skill checks and skill challenge like activity....than absolutely that's perfectly fine. It also means that the choices of a few characters will impact the entire story (aka if Superman loses its game over) vs their choices impacting a few people (if Green Lantern messes up, some civilians die). But if you want a game where people are all in the big fight....that's just not going to really work. Also if you want the party to "stay together" that makes such gameplay also worse.

So forcing a certain narrative construct. Everyone’s equally involved in combat. The solution is simple. Give different characters different monsters to fight. Supes is not going to be challenged by the Joker. But Batman is. Likewise Mongul is so far beyond Batman that it would be a one-hit kill, so Supes squares off against Batman. I know this is harder with 5E because of its terrible assumption of four PCs vs one monster. But it can be done.

This power imbalance forces a certain narrative construct. If that narrative construct is something your players and the DM enjoys than your great. If they don't, then your swimming upstream.

Now to reiterate, I think 5e does a good job of curbing most of the big imbalances. You can still make characters more powerful than others, but the degree has been toned down significantly. I haven't seen the real crazy imbalances since 3.5/PF1.

Yeah, it’s not as bad as the old days. But it’s still there.

 

[Stalker0]

So forcing a certain narrative construct. Everyone’s equally involved in combat. The solution is simple. Give different characters different monsters to fight. Supes is not going to be challenged by the Joker. But Batman is. Likewise Mongul is so far beyond Batman that it would be a one-hit kill, so Supes squares off against Batman. I know this is harder with 5E because of its terrible assumption of four PCs vs one monster. But it can be done.

That only works in the comics because of the narrative framing. To us externally, its cool to see these individual fights. But in a dnd game....what's to stop Supes from beating Mongul and then super speeding over to the Joker, slapping him a few times and auto winning while Bats takes a coffee break?

So the DM could conjure up some narrative that "the joker is doing XYZ at the same time and must be engaged right at the same time as Mongul or terrible ABC will happen". And so yes you get the fight you described.....and once in a while that can be a lot of fun. Now do it again, and the next fight, and the next fight, and the next..... because as soon as you take your foot off that narrative gas.....Superman will just win all the fights, and the Bats player will realize that he simply is not needed.

That is the DM problem with power imbalance....they have to narratively force balance through encounter design, but they never get to stop, they have to keep framing things a certain way to keep the players happy, and that is exhausting for a DM to maintain all the time, and not very fun.

 

[jasper]

what can a GM or other players do to help one another remember that their characters actually are special? How do you maintain that basic power fantasy when it seems the whole world is already in your league?

PC are Exceptional due to having pc classes.You are not jasper the cultist. You are Jasper a Monk. As to how many pcs exist in your world it varies with your world. But you need an idea. You are a fresh faced millionaire. Enjoy rubbing elbows with the other people in your company but mine your peas and queues when Bill Gates ask you a question.

 

[ph0rk]

That is the DM problem with power imbalance....they have to narratively force balance through encounter design, but they never get to stop, they have to keep framing things a certain way to keep the players happy, and that is exhausting for a DM to maintain all the time, and not very fun.

And it isn't just combat. A Bard with expertise in persuasion and deception and a handful of charm-assist spells can run rings around the Samurai at court. There isn't really a contest, unless it is a sub-plot specifically crafted for the Samurai and related to their family, background, former teacher, whatever.

Those hand-crafted subplots grow stale.