The "Gimmick Character" Problem

[Gort]

I have a problem with one of my players - every one of his characters is built around maximising his gimmick - one particular thing he can do, which usually exploits some rule, power, or spell that is very/overly powerful.

For instance, we've had the centaur mounted combat gimmick guy, who was doing enormous damage for his level (but it was against possibly the worst enemy the DM has ever run, a feral minotaur frenzied berserker. Killed 3 players that day, including the gimmick)

Then there were the slew of polymorphing guys, in a campaign where there's no other polymorphers - a wizard who used polymorph to turn himself into things like an annis hag (very powerful melee type, large with lots of natural armour) and used the terrible spell "spikes" on his staff to do tons of damage. Then there was the werebear monk/fighter who usually finished entire fights in one round. (150+ damage a hit at about level 12)

We started playing Eberron, he took a look through the rulebook. What did he want to play? A barbarian using a sharrash. (where the sharrash is a d10 damage 19/x4 critical exotic reach weapon, a wee bit on the broken side in my opinion) Since the sharrash is a halfling weapon, I was like, "Cool, a halfling barbarian from Talenta? That'd rock!" And then he said, "Nah, a human one..." - I grumbled a bit about it being a halfling weapon but let it slide cause he'd already taken ages over just getting this far.

Then there was the wyvern rider guy. I must've done about 4 adventures with this guy, and all I can remember about him is the phrase, "I ride around the dungeon on my wyvern", which sums up how his character would end up separated from the rest of the party cause his mount couldn't go indoors.

Now, all of the above were in the space of one character for me (human fighter/warrior of darkness) - the guy seems to go through a character every 3 sessions or so, it's like he hardly cares what happens to them. And each character is as gimmicky as the last.

He's very reluctant to play anything normal (by that I mean PHB character class, PHB race, no special house rules or items made up just for him) as he thinks they are "not interesting enough".

I feel that if he was to get away from concentrating his characters so that they're as powerful as possible at the level he creates them at without regard to what happens afterwards, he might want to stick with one for more than a level or so, but maybe that's just me.

Am I being overly harsh or sensitive? I just feel that when you make a character, you should be in for the long haul, not just creating mechanical gimmicks which you run from the moment you have a better idea.

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

My initial reaction is that you are not overreacting. Though you didn't speak much of yourself, you seem like a role-player in the immersion sense. You want to get into a character and really feel them (all you people with dirty minds, stop that!). I know the feeling since I'm the same way with a character.

Your friend, however, might like to role-play them, but he seems to put more emphasis on having them be unique. I can understand that too, but he also hops around with his interests seeming to take him all over the place. At least for you and I, that can be very annoying.

Just to let you know, you aren't the only one with such problems out there. As for solving it, thats a bit tougher. I've always just bit my tongue and accepted it. Its only happened (luckily) rarely for me so it hasn't been that big of an issue.

 

[DoctorEvil]

Gort, you're talking about me! I'm a "Gimmick" character guy too!

I've had a long string of "gimmicks" from 1E to 3E.....

* The Elven Eagle Rider (2E Fighter using a kit)
* The Spiked Chain Expert (3E Fighter)
* The Combat Mage (1E Dual Classed Fighter/Wizard)
* The Mobile Rogue/Fighter (3E Fighter/Rogue with Boots of Springing/Striding and the feats to back it up)
* The Orc-Hating Ranger (1E Ranger)
* The All Powerful Bard (1E Dual Classed Bard)

The "Gimmick" player isn't just interesting in being powerful.....He's interested in being UNIQUELY powerful.

The problem with the "Gimmick" player is once he tries out a "Gimmick" he gets bored and is ready to move on to the next gimmick. I've "retired" more characters voluntarily than I can count.

This is a very, very hard cycle to break (I'm still not totally out of it). But you may want to address it with the player and let him know how you feel. Some ideas....

* Have him make a Unique character who is not powerful. By unique I mean try a class/race combo that is out of the ordinary (Half-Orc Paladin, Dwarf Sorcerer, etc....). I did this with a Gnome Druid/Sorcerer named Roondar. Terribly average to below average stats and Druid/Sorcerer is not a very effective combination when you start out at 2nd level. But I can honestly say I had a blast with this character by roleplaying his weaknesses.

* Try and get him to make a standard character (Human Fighter, Elf Wizard, etc...) with a unique background. If you do this and he's interested, then it's up to the DM to take this background and use it as a hook in adventures. Being an ordinary type of character who just happens to have some dark and terrible secret in his past can be fun, especially when adventures start to revolve around you.

* Try creating pre-made characters for your party and have them randomly choose. I did this for one campaign as a DM and one as a player and both times turned out to be fun (although this method does have some drawbacks).

 

[Mouseferatu]

(where the sharrash is a d10 damage 19/x4 critical exotic reach weapon, a wee bit on the broken side in my opinion)

It is broken. It's also a typo, and WotC has already said this is on the list of errata.

I don't know, however, if the intended fix is to make it 20/x4 or 19-20/x2.

 

[Gort]

Gort, you're talking about me!

Bloody hell! You scared the life outta me - I know the guy in question reads ENworld but I don't know his username...

You put it very well in your post about how once a gimmick is created, he's just beginning to get boring - gimmick characters usually aren't much fun once the initial "he did HOW much damage?" factor has worn off.

One of the greatest shames is that the player is very intelligent and often writes up a lot of background - which is then wasted by the fact that the character is never around long enough to have his background fully integrated by the GM. It also means that there're rarely any consequences for his actions, since the player has moved onto a new persona by the time they might roll around.

To speak of myself, yes, I'm an immersion kind of roleplayer - I like to stick with my characters as long as possible. The fighter/warrior of darkness in question I have been playing for three years now, taking him from his lowly level 3 fighter beginnings to his current Fighter 8/Warrior of Darkness 10 (other achievements include being King of the Darklands and assembling all 3 pieces of the Regalia of Evil, the latter of which took about a year and a half real time to do) glory. He's had hundreds of crazy things happen to him, including almost being turned into a chaos beast, (god bless my charisma) being impregnated by a slaad despite being a guy (he didn't even buy me a drink first) and falling in love with the (female half-dragon) cleric briefly due to serious mind-altering magic. (we were also lucky enough to have a fairly talented cartoonist in the group, she's drawn a fair bit of stuff about him here: http://www.drunkduck.com/Darken But enough about my love of my characters, and back to my problems with The Guy.

The three things you mention at the end there, Doc, are the things he'd never do of his own accord - his race and class always have to line up perfectly for greatest mechanical advantage. For instance, the druid he made with a wildshape gimmick (he'd talked a newbie DM into allowing him to use elemental wildshape at really early levels) was a dwarf, because the natural +2 con they get raises your hitpoints when you wildshape.

However, your third suggestion has got a plan forming in my head - my group is sometimes disorganised, and several of us run campaigns (Eberron, Shadowrun, a homebrew D&D world and a D20 modern/spycraft hybrid) every now and then. However, sometimes this leads to times when we all sit down and then say, "Hey, I thought YOU were DMing today!" At this point, I'll whip out four character sheets, say, "Hey, I had an idea, let's play a cool adventure I was just thinking of - don't worry, we can get started right away, I've got your characters right here!" And then whip out some coolness with pre-written backgrounds and stuff like that. Who knows, the players may even like it enough to play it a second time.

 

[Gort]

It is broken. It's also a typo, and WotC has already said this is on the list of errata.

I don't know, however, if the intended fix is to make it 20/x4 or 19-20/x2.

Well, the latter just makes it a glaive with a swords critical - I think they were going for a "reach scythe" kind of feel, so I think the first is more likely. This would mean that for the exotic weapon proficiency, you get reach and +0.5 average damage, which seems reasonable.

 

[DoctorEvil]

One of the greatest shames is that the player is very intelligent and often writes up a lot of background - which is then wasted by the fact that the character is never around long enough to have his background fully integrated by the GM.

Again...this is ME! LOL......Some of the guys I play with had never written up character backgrounds until they started playing with me. I'd write a 10 page character history, play the character for a few months and then retire him.

Part of the issue with me is that my cool character ideas are always influenced by the books I read. Unfortunately, my characters never seem to play out quite the way I imagine they would, so I get bored.

The only bad thing I have to say about the pre-generated character idea is that you can sometimes run into issues with the whole idea on ownership. If the player doesn't feel like he owns the PC because the DM created him, it can lead to the player playing the PC in a carefree (or careless) manner, that can sometimes take away from the game.

 

[Berandor]

I disagree with Dr. Evil - you're talking about me, not him

I like writing backgrounds, I like creating characters, I don't really mind when they die, because I will have probably thought of another cool gimmick. I think a small part of blame lies with our meeting schedule (1/month, usually), which gives me too much time to think about such things.

Still, I try to be better, but it's hard. I manage to create characters whose gimmick is not mechanically advantageous for me, like a wizard with one hand and one eye and full penalties for it (-2 on spellcraft? Come on! ). He had Int 20, on the other hand (and spellcasting prodigy though I also took Spell Mastery).

I am also someone who doesn't like overshadowing the other players. That's a problem with my current character, and elven archer with Str. 18 (doing 1d8+7 damage with his bow). We were lacking a fighter, now we have a druid, a barbarian (Str 20) and me - and I'm still the powerhouse because of rapid shot and ranged attacks I feel uncomfortable with that... but the rest of the group doesn't allow me to switch (as it would be my 8th? character in 9 levels of play)

To be fair, some characters really died, and one I tried (an elven druid) but found I couldn't have fun playing. However, I also don't like resurrection magicks, partly because I have another character close by, but partly for other reasons.

(Still, Kylearan - a great save with the animated hand! Cool and great!)

 

[Piratecat]

You know, I think I tend to have this problem too (with the exception that I don't cycle through characters quickly.) I like to make characters that are memorable. Usually I can do this with personality, but sometime I get fixated on game mechanics -- and then I turn into a rabid little rules weasel as I try to justify my one-dimensional PC. I've recognized the problem, though, and I'm getting better. Part of my strategy is to make PCs who I know might suck in combat, but who are good in other ways.

For instance, I'm making a character for MojoGM's Deadlands game. I had originally wanted to play a gunslinger, but hearing that the other four PCs are gunslinger-types, I went the opposite direction entirely. Now I've got a crazy old prospector who I expect will make good comic relief. He's about as far from a combat monkey as you can imagine -- I expect that I'll be hidin' during most gunfights - but he's got enough other skills (and a lot of dynamite to throw) that he should still be useful to the party. We'll see if he's fun to play.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Well, you play this game long enough, it's easy to get jaded on the PHB races, classes and such, even with the degree of customization they provide these days.

That's from a tactician's perspective, anyway. Obviously you can write distinctive characters 'til the cows come home. Sounds like your friend feels the need for both. But tactically novel characters don't have to be one-trick ponies, either.

(I've gone both ways, myself. If I hit on a good personality, I usually don't need to tinker mechanics so much. I tend to go a lot more freakish for one-shot or role-playing-light games.)