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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 5665977" data-attributes="member: 92239">From the perspective of a DM of 3.x that had everything under the sun in his 12 player group (Trumpet Archon as a template, Succubi as a template, Fairie, Werewolf, other bizarre crap) and had to make a way for it all to work together. If everyone likes each other than in my opinion it doesn't matter what people play or how out of balance it is because I can always kill it or put the group in a perspective where that one powerful character is challenged and has to save people while those people need to use their skills to keep him or her upright and get the real objective handled. If people don't like each other then the lack of balance is a problem, not because of the power differential, but because the group doesn't want to tolerate the munchkin to begin with and the game becomes negatively adversarial. Same with any situation where a host dislikes the player because then everything eventually gets blown out of proportion. (I'll leave this up to any reader's own interpretation). I have two roads of advice, inclusive and exclusive:  Inclusive:  1. Let him play whatever he wants. Let whatever he wants have consequences that he has to role-play through and make sure he agrees to that in front of the group. 2. Make sure that you advise the group at the same time that the consequences will affect the greater group and for the benefit of having that powerful thing in the group that occasionally the group will have to work together well to get through things. 3. If either side disagrees, then the character is null and void. My point is that this doesn't have to be a DM vs. Player situation, it can be group pressure. Eventually if the guy really is a douche on top of munchkin, then he'll leave because the group makes his enjoyable play style impossible. Exclusive:  1. Have a sit down with the player away from the table with the DM and yourself. Get dinner and chat through the issues. Whatever you do, don't have an exclusive conversation in front of the group. It creates too much angst. 2. If the player agrees to conform, problem solved. If not, you're in the right to ask him not to join your group in a controlled way. But be very certain that you and the DM are on the same page before the conversation. 3. Advise the rest of the group at the next game or whatever method of communication you're comfortable with as soon as politely possible. You want to get out in front of the excluded player's story before he tells it to people IF he's likely to be a douche and start problems. If he isn't, you're just being on top of things.  Thankfully, most groups have bodies of really good friends and much of this is probably unnecessary or over the top. I'm used to being the DM of a group of people where I'm really good friends with up to three players and the rest of the group is put together by some mix of friends of those three, so I'm constantly dealing with people who know me well and those that don't. Generally I go with the inclusive approach because it builds friendships while ridding me of the problem.  In the few cases where I've had to go exclusive I've always felt like a bigger douche than the other guy and ended up dealing with a lot of email and phone conversations I could have done without.  The cost of the faster way to the solution.</blockquote>

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