Fresh DM needs some help with a vet player.

[Kiwi the Bard]

My current DM, who has no previous experience, has been dealing with a pesky player who keeps attemtping to create min/max characters full of cheese that ruin the play experience for our group of mostly first timers. Anyone have any tips for the DM to keep this players from creating ridiculous characters, solo-ing dungeons and other possibly game ruining shenanigans? Thanks a bunch!

[lycantrope]

Ask them nicely to stop. This is pretty much the only recourse.

[nedz]

What he should be doing is mentoring the newbies, maybe you could sell him on this idea ?

[Trunamer]

1. Ask the player to reign it in.

2. Ask the player to help everyone (including the DM) optimize.

3. Boot the player.

4. Run 4e instead.

[Kiwi the Bard]

It sucks, but the guy is an integral part of our groups interest in DnD However, since his knowledge of the game is far more in depth than ours, he always tries to find ways to cheese characters and actions that we wont know about unless we delve deeply into game rules. Apparently the DM caught him cheating with his gnome druid by taking a heavy horse as a druid familiar, and then saying in his backstory he trained it to be a war horse with the "trick" charge.

[A_S]

You can also occasionally get some traction letting them do their high-op thing, but requesting that they optimize a character concept that allows the rest of the party to shine (e.g., Bard-based buffers). This is what I try to do to satisfy my high-op cravings when I'm in a party with less experienced players.

But really, talking to the player, and getting him to understand that the game isn't fun for anybody if one character completely overshadows the others, is the best solution.

[Kiwi the Bard]

Thanks for your responses guys =)