Ways to stop a powergamer

[Thanee]

From what you described, I think Oscar's character is really fine and the problem lies with the other characters being ineffective in comparison.

As others have pointed out, his performance is hardly awesome, characters several levels below can do the same. THAT's powergaming, not what he is doing. His character is merely appropriate for his level, I suppose.

A solution might be, unless your group is very competetive towards each other, to have them actually help each other out with character creation. Could also make them better as a team that way as a side benefit.

Now one thing about ingame tactics... his character is obviously a spellcaster to some degree. Many of the spells he will be using have short durations in 3.5, so he has to cast them shortly before entering combat, which takes time. Surprise encounters might catch him off-guard without having a plethora of spells running and will make things harder for him. A greater dispel magic can make most of his buff spells go away in an eyeblink, because of his low caster level, which comes with the above class choices. Also many difficult encounters during a single day means, that he has to divide his resources better, instead of going for full power everytime.

I wonder why the cleric 23 isn't causing any troubles.. now that's a tough character, he could easily outperform the eldritch knight, if he just made proper use of all the spells at his disposal.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Epametheus]

His Str is a 16 with the belt or without the belt?

Anyways, with his caster level of 12 or 13, a single greater dispelling at those levels would shut him down on the spot.

Edit: if anything I'd say his character is neat, not a twink. He's completely relying upon his spells for his damage output. If he ever gets trapped in an anti-magic field, he's toast.

 

[Thanee]

His Str is a 16 with the belt or without the belt?

Without, obviously, as 16+6=22 which is the (+6) modifier.
The stats must be natural (+inherent ~ Cha at least), the modifier including augmentation.

Bye
Thanee

 

[dead_radish]

I think the key problem (and one my group often deals with) is when one character is a powergamer (which isn't a dirty word, despite the general consensus - just a style) and the others aren't is that to challenge the PG, you over match the other players. So it becomes, in essence, a one character party.

I do have to say that a 20th level character doing 200 damage is really fairly average to me. You're 20th freakin' level - you are epic. You are a legend among your own people. People write 1000 pages of poetry about your greatness. You should be a badasprin. Are you comfortable with this powerlevel? Do you know what you can do to challenge them? I don't play epic games, mainly for that reason - you're just throwing bigger and bigger things at players.

If you need to, invoke Gods, great world spanning puzzles, natural disasters, things like that - don't just throw min/max'ed monsters that will kill other players....

And yeah, talk to him - tell him he's disrupting the game, and see if he cares.

 

[wujenta]

OK, the rest of the characters are like this:

Klagga: female dwarven cleric of Haela Brightaxe level 23. She has only wis 20, as she wasnt meant to be the primary cleric, but other cleric died and she had to continue as cleric. She wanted to be a fighter wiith levels in some holy prestige class. She wields a greatsword made by her or dragonhammer, the artifact that appears in Bastion of broken souls and has 26 strenght. When she enter combat with all his buffs, she is easily a match for the powergamer, but time was short and she charged to combat with only divine favor.
Olaff: human male rogue level 21. I think he has dexterity 26 and a +4 weapon that Klagga made him, because at the end of rappan athuk he lost all his objects because of a mordenkainen disjunction cast by orcus. He also have other magic items, but not many. You could say that he is not well equipped for his level.
Ikkyu: Human male Monk 22. He´s fast, he´s hard to hit, and he has spell resistance and excellent saving throws, but he dont do a lot of damage, but the player likes to play with monks.
Nogli: Male Dwarven fighter 8 / rogue 12. He wields 2 handaxes and makes 7 attacks per round (or 8 if hasted and he has a boots of speed ) He deals moderate damage to people inmune to sneak, but when sneak is posible, he and olaff can kill a BBG in 2 round if he´s not cautios.
Rotor: Male dwarf fighter 8 / cleric of Reorx 12. He wields a dwarven waraxe made by him, and a shield. He is hard to hit and has nearly 270 hit points, and deal serious damage (he likes to use the shield, so no 2-handed weapon)

At the moment of the encounter, Rotor didnt have any buff spell (he had to use them before) and Klagga have used his divine might and his divine power in previous encounters and expend nearly all 3,4,and 6 level spells healing the party.

 

[wujenta]

His Str is a 16 with the belt or without the belt?

Anyways, with his caster level of 12 or 13, a single greater dispelling at those levels would shut him down on the spot.

Edit: if anything I'd say his character is neat, not a twink. He's completely relying upon his spells for his damage output. If he ever gets trapped in an anti-magic field, he's toast.

I thinked about, but the dragon was a young adult force dragon with 3 sorcerer levels (CR 24). That gives him level caster 12, not so much to dispel his buffs. If the dragon have been a red dragon wyrm (same cr) but with a caster level 17 he wouldn´t had all his spells up

 

[Philip]

Such powergaming problem can stem from two sources: a big difference in effectiveness of character builds between the powergamer and the other players, and a big difference between the tactics they use during combat.

Having some ability as powergamer myself (and playing a Paladin/Sorcerer/Spellsword in once campaign as well) I sometimes find myself 'shining' more during combat as other players. This creates tension and animosity, and the DM is getting tendencies to single out my PC especially for 'retribution'. Just his way of attempting to balance the scales.

I have attempted to solve this by taking more suboptimal (but flavorfull) choices in feats, magic items and spells for the character. I have not taken Polymorph and/or Arcane Strike because it would take away the Fighter's and Monk's time in the spotlight. Its difficult, but I try to find a niche in the party where I don't step on other PCs toes.

I am also trying to help the other players by suggesting feats and magical items and suggesting (out-of-game) more effective tactics for their characters.

By reducing my own PCs abilities somewhat and increasing the prowess of my fellow PCs I am trying to make it possible to go all-out during a combat and fight at my most effective without making the others feel like bystanders.

Considering the stats you have shown, the character does not seem over-the-top, so just invite him to work with you to make his character a bit less effective and enlist his aid to increase the effectiveness of the PCs of the other players.

On the other hand, if the other players don't desire to put energy into better character builds and tactics, they shouldn't be surprised that his PC is vastly more effective in combat.

 

[wujenta]

Also note that Klagga, Nogli, Olaff and Ikkyu started playing together in Rappan Athuk. They survived were others (many others in fact) died. After that, they played Bastion of Broken Souls, and now that they are epic, the eldritch knight came (he is a pregenerated character).

Oscar made this character to the adventure, because we are trying to raise the characters that died during the final encounter with Orcus (one of them was played by Oscar) when hit by his mace (in theory, nothing sort of divine intervention could revive that characters, but they are trying to put together the Rod of Seven Parts because they were told that an artifact could resurrect them)

That way I have a link for various adventures with nothing in common but with a purpose in the end.

 

[Thanee]

wujenta, how long have your players played those characters (i.e. starting level)?

Also, was this event with the dragon just a single experience, or is this the same everytime. What you write above, that some of the characters had many of their spells already used up, seems to indicate, that they can do better, if they are not so drained on resources.

I really fail to see the huge discrepancy you are talking about so far. At least, when it comes to the characters (the one guy without items surely has it rough, but I guess the group works towards getting him back up again?).

Bye
Thanee

 

[wujenta]

wujenta, how long have your players played those characters (i.e. starting level)?

From what you describe I really fail to see the huge discrepancy you are talking about. At least, when it comes to the characters (the one guy without items surely has it rough, but I guess the group works towards getting him back up again?).

Bye
Thanee

I think that they started Rappan athuk at level 5 or 6, I dont recall exactly now.

Now that I think, perhaps is the fact that the character is pregenerated that make him so "min/max" to my eyes. He is the character he wanted to be, not what life has made others to be...