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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6090784" data-attributes="member: 1165">That was really the least relevant part of the character. With a +2 item, his save DC bonus would have been 1 DC less. My own PC (and several others) had +4 items already.I've only been in one campaign that tracked encumbrance like that, with a computer program, and ... it wasn't fun. Spellbooks aren't that heavy, especially when you consider the wizard wasn't really carrying anything else. A headband doesn't weight much, neither do robes or scrolls.1) I'm not the DM of the campaign. I gave up running 3.5 in 2006 and will never run 3.x again. Among other things, I never have to put up with this nonsense. You literally cannot pull this kind of cheese in 4e. (Players want high stats, and 4e pretty much requires your high stat to be an 18. You can't really have less than a 16 or more than a 20, which are only 5% off the curve either way. Said player always plays a 20 stat character in my campaigns.)2) The player showed up with a character sheet right at the beginning of the session. The DM couldn't prepare encounters, combat and non, for challenging a completely new PC. (He was running an adventure path, and like many DMs, does not have the time to create 3.x/PF-style encounters.)3) A low Charisma just doesn't matter. Our party already has a face. We also have some low Cha characters (my druid, the barbarian) and that hasn't hurt us at all. If all of a sudden the DM starts punishing low Charisma PCs, it's going to be obvious who the real target is.4) One of the necromancer abilities lets you "Turn Undead" and that requires a high Charisma to be useful. We even faced a bunch of undead. It didn't matter though. There's plenty of ways for a wizard to deal with undead without using Turn Undead. (We used such measures in 3.x, when necromancers didn't get such an ability anyway.) So I guess there was a cost, but an extremely minor one.5) I don't think such tactics work well. The DM has to put a lot more effort into challenging this one PC than anyone else. That tells me the problem is the rules.6) And of course, the player's bad behavior (showing up with an unvetted character sheet) played a role. At least for one session, there was little the DM could do but tell him to get lost. And since we have a multiple-DM group, we don't have a group leader, so nothing like that was going to happen. (We don't game at that DM's house either.)With his high Int, he'll understand anything about magic. (He's better at that than, say, our witch.) Spell components aren't rare, at least not the ones that don't cost anything within the rules. Also, it's Kingmaker, we can just order lower-ranking NPCs to buy us stuff, although we have to pony up the cash. At least we're supposed to! (We keep up our WBL that way, since it's nearly impossible within the rules to actually keep that up, given we have to sell most loot we find, and aren't motivated to adventure for loot rather than plot reasons. Our face is also very good -- both in and out of game -- at the kingdom management aspect.)Hasn't happened yet, but since he can cast Hideous Laughter he didn't give up Enchantment.That was exactly a solution I proposed. However, that requires lot of work. (Note that NPCs usually get less gear than PCs, at the very least.) I thought having NPCs not constantly be surprised to be a better solution though. Sometimes we ambush NPCs but not always. I don't recall ever being ambushed by NPCs.There was a wide gap. That's to be expected to some extent; it doesn't matter that our barbarian can literally put out over 100 damage per round (when fully buffed with his alchemist abilities and Hasted) if his wizard friend can simply tie up multiple people with Black Tentacles and put someone out of the fight with a single action ... while invisible no less.</blockquote>

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