D&D 5E Power Gamers and Balance - How to handle

[JacktheRabbit]

Mr. BBEG you should immediately add a secret passage from your bed chamber to the middle of the northwall of your castle so you have a good escape route if necessary. Okay guys lets sneak into the BBEG's bed chamber and kill him.

Certainly, and then like any self respecting BBEG he immediately murders the architect, workers, the players, and anyone else that knows of his secret escape route to guarantee it is a secret.

It is practically an evil villain trope it is so common in fantasy literature. Sure the players will likely survive the attempt on their life but they should feel VERY guilty that they gave said BBEG an idea that resulted in a couple dozen innocent people being murdered.



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[FrogReaver]

Persuasion is just about one of the most breakable aspects of the game.

I handle it two ways, trivial characters can be tricked regularly, does it matter if you don't the innkeeper for something trivial. The only problem long term is people remember and if a character does this regularly they build a reputation.

When it comes to non-trivial NPCs it becomes MUCH harder. I don't care what you roll in persuasion if it contradicts the major goals of the person in question the Player will get shut down or worse, played by an NPC that "acts" like they are agreeing but in fact are planning on screwing the player over.

One thing you MUST do as a DM is hide the NPCs roll and don't make the mistake of saying things like "you succeeded" or "you failed" smart NPCs don't just say yes or no when persuaded. They consider their options and even if they roll poorly they will want to benefit themselves as well. A guard wants to make a bit of money, a guildmaster wants to be owed a favor. Don't be obvious and the sorcerer in question doesn't always know when he failed or succeeded and if he needs to add a Suggestion spell to the mix to get what he wants.

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1. If what I am trying to persuade the person to do contradicts their major goals then I don't get a check since it's an outright fail. Checks are only made when there is uncertainty.
2. Do you give your NPC's a check to avoid being deceived by a PC? If so then you better give the PC a check to avoid the same.

The PHB on skill checks says:
"If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success—the creature overcomes the challenge at hand."

3. In our case, once you have made the persuasion check and succeeded the guard will let you pass. There's nothing else to it. If the guard demands something else to let you pass then you failed and you can give in to his demands or try suggestion. That's pretty simple. If you are running that any other way then it's not how 5e says to handle it. "If you succeed the check you overcome the challenge at hand."

4. Let's look at the other example. Let's say the NPC is trying to trick the PC into a trap. There will be no persuasion check involved there because it's guaranteed success. The NPC despite anything the PC's are doing to persuade him is always going to agree if it furthers his plan of a trap. No check here because auto success.

So basically we are left with a DM that asks for checks that aren't necessary in order to trick the players into thinking they legitimately succeeded at a task so that they don't question the trap. Yea, that's not how 5e is played. That same DM also gives legimately successful checks drawbacks to further confuse the players about whether they actually succeeded. Again, that's not how 5e is meant to be played. But hey, if it works for your table then feel free, just don't come here advocating that's the 5e way to stop such PC's.

 

[Greg K]

When, it comes to Butt-kickers (i.e. those whom are focused heavily upon combat), Power Gamers (whether they are about having a powerful character (which doesn't have to be combat) and/or whom are just about leveling to get bonuses and increasing power), Optimizers whom crunch numbers towards butt-kicking and/power gaming (optimizing is simply a tool that can be used toward different concepts and goals), and min/maxers (whom are an extreme subset of optimizers that try to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses) these are behaviors and/or playstyles that fall on a continuum. As the DM, I set the limits as to what is an appropriate level of each for the game I am up running. I talk with players before character generation, during the process, and have final approval before the character comes into play. It is up to the player to adapt or find another table.

 

[FrogReaver]

Certainly, and then like any self respecting BBEG he immediately murders the architect, workers, the players, and anyone else that knows of his secret escape route to guarantee it is a secret.

It is practically an evil villain trope it is so common in fantasy literature. Sure the players will likely survive the attempt on their life but they should feel VERY guilty that they gave said BBEG an idea that resulted in a couple dozen innocent people being murdered.



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Sorry, persuading someone to do something and being successful at it doesn't result in an immediate attempt on your life. Might be a good option for failure in that situation though. BBEG is going to make the secret passage but tries to kill you.

I think you are getting success and failure that results in progression with a setback mixed up.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

1. If what I am trying to persuade the person to do contradicts their major goals then I don't get a check since it's an outright fail. Checks are only made when there is uncertainty.
2. Do you give your NPC's a check to avoid being deceived by a PC? If so then you better give the PC a check to avoid the same.

The PHB on skill checks says:
"If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success—the creature overcomes the challenge at hand."

3. In our case, once you have made the persuasion check and succeeded the guard will let you pass. There's nothing else to it. If the guard demands something else to let you pass then you failed and you can give in to his demands or try suggestion. That's pretty simple. If you are running that any other way then it's not how 5e says to handle it. "If you succeed the check you overcome the challenge at hand."

4. Let's look at the other example. Let's say the NPC is trying to trick the PC into a trap. There will be no persuasion check involved there because it's guaranteed success. The NPC despite anything the PC's are doing to persuade him is always going to agree if it furthers his plan of a trap. No check here because auto success.

So basically we are left with a DM that asks for checks that aren't necessary in order to trick the players into thinking they legitimately succeeded at a task so that they don't question the trap. Yea, that's not how 5e is played. That same DM also gives legimately successful checks drawbacks to further confuse the players about whether they actually succeeded. Again, that's not how 5e is meant to be played. But hey, if it works for your table then feel free, just don't come here advocating that's the 5e way to stop such PC's.

I am going to only address your first item.

A player always gets the check. They always get to THINK they have a chance. If you make an impossible auto-fail demand you don't get to know that as a player. The NPC in question may play along with the PC for his own goal.

Tell them they don't get a check because it is impossible is way too meta for me.

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[FrogReaver]

I am going to only address your first item.

A player always gets the check. They always get to THINK they have a chance. If you make an impossible auto-fail demand you don't get to know that as a player. The NPC in question may play along with the PC for his own goal.

Tell them they don't get a check because it is impossible is way too meta for me.

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Yet it is the rules of 5e. Maybe give advice on actual 5e?

 

[Krachek]

Succeed a persuasion or deception check don't transform the target into an idiot.
Even a suggestion spell may be investigate back.
Once a pc get the tag "silver tongue" its job will be harder.

 

[Lehrbuch]

I have no problem with someone being a total powergamer, min/maxing their character design etc. I am going to balance it quite simply, the more you min/max your character the more you short thrift yourself in the magic item department...Min/maxers are more likely to build reputations and reputations mean opponents, the important ones, are more likely to know what their schtick is and are more likely to plan around it.

I think it is important to distinguish between degenerate min-maxing and just a player who (deliberately or not) happens to have a PC that is more optimised than the others.

Degenerate min-maxing is where a PC is heavily designed around a small suite of combat tactics (or occasionally money-making schemes) that the PC uses to *successfully* solve every problem. Rarely this is due to a genuine loophole in the RAW or more commonly due to the DM/player introducing a heroically awful house-rule or interpretation of the RAW. This is a problem, but (given that 5e is well designed) is mainly avoided by the DM not introducing house rules, and thinking through how to interpret the RAW.

Another possibility is a PC that is still optimised around some small suite of combat tactics, but nonetheless just doesn't happen to be amazingly successful in play. Usually because the "optimising" is quite fiddly --- which was likely the challenge that the player set herself ("how can I make a viable character that is a halfling with the Tavern Brawler Feat"?) This does not seem a problem.

The third possibility is a PC that just happens to be better, by design or accident, than the others in the party. This doesn't seem to be a problem, especially if the players can recognise why this PC is better and thus begin to adapt their own PCs (either these PCs or subsequent ones). If you penalise "good PCs" you are liable to penalise "the one player who read and understood the goddamn rules", which seems very unfair to her, and counterproductive to the goal of having a good bunch of players.

 

[FrogReaver]

Succeed a persuasion or deception check don't transform the target into an idiot.
Even a suggestion spell may be investigate back.
Once a pc get the tag "silver tongue" its job will be harder.

If you think it's idiotic behavior that would result as part of a successful persuassion check then the check should never have been allowed in the first place. If the only kind of success that can be had is something that includes a major drawback then it's not success at all but failure. If there was no chance of success without that drawback then you don't do an ability check as there is no uncertainty.

I don't think people knowing your very persuasive makes your job automatically harder. There may come a point where certain people that listened to you ended up in enough bad spots that they don't give you the time of day anymore but that's not quite the same thing as increasing a dc check on a persuasion checks to others in town because you have a reputation. That kind of reputation doesn't usually stop those kinds of people from functioning just fine. They just claim the others are liars and move on. Their persuasive enough to make everyone else believe that. But same NPC may be harder to persuade if you screwed him over somehow the first time. That's perfectly legitimate.

A suggestion spell that was cast with metamagic subtle spell cannot be mundanely traced back to you. Any number of people encountered could have cast such a spell. That's part of why subtle spell is so important. It makes it difficult to trace back.

 

[Satyrn]

A player always gets the check. They always get to THINK they have a chance. If you make an impossible auto-fail demand you don't get to know that as a player. The NPC in question may play along with the PC for his own goal.

Tell them they don't get a check because it is impossible is way too meta for me.

This might be backfiring on you.

Since you're giving your players the impression that they have a chance to suceed on even anything they try, and then find they just aren't hitting the DCs reasonably often enough, they may have decided that they need to pump up the numbers higher and higher.

I know I'd be thinking I'd have to pump up my checks if you let me roll but I was never seeming to succeed.