How to keep power gamer in check

[Reliku]

Hey guys,

So, while this community has already given me some great help on my campaign, I thought I'd ask another question I've been struggling with. Less campaign related, more player related.

In one of my groups I have two entirely new players, one relatively new player and one very experienced player. The party consists of two sorcerers, a bard and a necropolitan dread necromancer. The last one is the very experienced player, and he's very powerful compared to the rest of the group.

OK, I allowed him to take the necropolitan template at the beginning of the campaign, that was a mistake maybe because at this point he's basically a lich without a phylactery. But he knows every trick in the book and he used everything he can. I don't want to disallow it because he's doing nothing against the rules, it's all fair game and I don't want to prohibit things especially for him because he has the exact same resources and rules as the rest of the group.

The problem is, he's so ridiculously powerful at this point. I made the mistake of having the group fight a bunch of skeletons, he almost left the battle with a small army, fortunately I was able to kill most of them off before the fight was over but he still has an undead minion following him around. He successfully disguises it as a servant while in town and there really isn't much I can do about it. He has pumped his charisma stats and is an incredibly powerful caster for his level. He has dumped constitution to 2 but because he's a necropolitan there are no penalties involved. His strength is super low but his minions carry everything for him. He's undead so he's immune to a lot of stuff and has a huge pool of hitpoints compared to his sorcerer and bard party members.

He's more powerful than the rest of the group combined, partially because he has maximized everything he could and partially because the rest of the group doesn't really know how to use their spellcasting power yet. The bard is the second most powerful one in the group but still enormously outclassed by the dread necro powergamer. At this point, if the group didn't have him they would hopelessly lose every encounter I've thrown at them so far. But because they do have him, every encounter has been a cakewalk. I have the enemies deliberately target the dread necro (who's character is actually a frail old man, how unrealistic is that??) because if I hit the sorcerer I might accidentally kill him in one blow. The balance is completely off.

I'm at a loss what to do. I don't want to throw clerics at them to deal with the undead guy all the time because I'd be deliberately targeting him all the time, and that's no fun for him nor is it fun for the rest of the players. I also don't want to switch to encounters that deliberately counter all of his abilities (these undead appear to have a lot of turn resistance!) because I don't want to take his shine away. He's put a lot of time into his character and I don't want to rob him of the reward. But if I want to present him with a challenge, the rest of the group is at mortal danger all the time. If I present the rest of the group with a challenge for them, the dread necro swoops in and ends the encounter in a single turn. I've LITERALLY had that happen because the boss failed a save-or-suck spell. I didn't even roll that bad nor did the boss have poor save bonusses. And that was only at level three!

I'm sure people must have been in similar situations before. How do you handle problems like this? How do I provide a challenge for the entire group? Right now I'm constantly choosing between "the sorcerers can die any moment" and "dread necro cakewalks all over it" :smallfrown:

[Koo Rehtorb]

He's doing nothing wrong. He's just a poor fit for the rest of the group. Ask him if he would mind if his character got removed from the game at a narratively appropriate point and replace it with something that more matches the power level of the rest of the party. Alternatively, play a game where this sort of thing isn't an issue.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I don't want to disallow it because he's doing nothing against the rules, it's all fair game and I don't want to prohibit things especially for him because he has the exact same resources and rules as the rest of the group.
Sure he's doing something against the rules: he's making the game less fun for other people. That's the only rule that matters. Talk to him in private, tell him your concerns and ask him to tone things down, either by rebuilding or making a new character altogether. Perhaps he could try a Marshal or something-- something that's starting from a lower power level, that's not overlapping so much with the less experienced players, and something that benefits the entire group.

[MrSandman]

I imagine that you've been in this forum long enough to know that you'll get two answers:

1- Talk to overpowered dude and ask him to tone it down.

2- Make something even more overpowered and kill his character. Time to make new characters, oh by the way, only core classes are allowed.

Personally I'd favour option one. You may not need to ask him to make a new character. Maybe he agrees not to use his most powerful abilities in normal encounters for a couple of levels while you two help the others make their characters more powerful.

[Anymage]

Related to your other topic, this is exactly why you don't want to assume that any bad guy will survive long enough to bring their schemes to fruition. Welcome to what an even mildly interested player will do.

Anyways, tons of things can throw off the balance of a 3.5 game. I'm sure you've heard of class tiers before. (While sorcerers are technically a higher tier than dread necromancers, there's a difference between power ceiling and power floor.) Access to a wider variety of books and either the time to look through them or the ability to crowdsource that flipping through books (hi internet) can certainly throw balance off. And oftentimes, just thinking that one power sounds cooler than another can skew things. Even within a single book, balance is nowhere near guaranteed.

You can probably get away with asking the player to give up necropolitan, since that's more niche than what the rest of the newbies are familiar with. Beyond that, though, it's a case of different players intrinsically wanting different things. The more experienced guy will want to play with all these options he's familiar with. The newbies will just want to explore what's possible with their characters. (Dread necromancer shouldn't be too much worse than what an undead focused caster can pull off normally. That's an issue with minionmancy in general, not the particular class.) You'll want to tame the frankengame that is 3.5 D&D. Everybody's going to have to put their cards on the table and come to a compromise. The alternative is heavy handed DMing. This is guaranteed to piss people off. And worse, if somebody else knows more rules than you do, trying to be heavy handed from within the rules is just going to backfire on you.

[MoiMagnus]

I agree with the other post, but I will add something:

You have to balance the spotlight. You have a character that have
1) More entities to play every turn during the fight, and probably a character more complex so "longer turns"
2) A higher threat rate, so he will be the "main target" of the ennemies.
3) A high charisma, so he will lead a lot of social encounters.
4) A good knowledge of the game, so he know as much stuff about monsters as a high intelligence character.
The only things he does not seems to do better than everybody else is infiltrations. But when you have an army of deads, discretion is facultative.

If you just says to him "I don't want you to power game", he will feel like you just don't want him to have fun.
You have to be clear that he just take too much space by having a character so powerful, and that it prevent the others from having fun. The goal is that everybody should have fun, and as the most experienced player, he has the responsability to help the DM to make sure it happens.

Finally, it is harsh to say, but some players are incompatible, and trying to make them play together is a lost war. I don't know how the rest of the team feel, so I hope it is not the case for you, but if you do happen to have incompatibilities, remember that one person feeling rejected is still better than a full group feeling frustrated every single session.

[Darth Ultron]

So you want to keep the power gamer in check....but don't want to do anything?

Well, ok, then do nothing.

I guess it will still bother you of how the game is, right? But you don't want to do anything...so just sit back and enjoy.

The ''one'' thing you can do is end the game...quick. Just stop the game. Maybe let someone else GM...maybe switch to another game...whatever.

Just for fun...what I would do...is destroy his character. But that is just me. I'd love to ''optimize'' back at him and (pretend) to be all innocent and just say ''oh, I was just using the rules" as the poor player sat in the corner crying his eyes out as he lost his special snowflake character and had his whole life ruined.

[Mr Beer]

Talk to him if you want him to tone it down. Bear in mind that he hasn't really done anything wrong though, so you need to hash out some kind of compromise.

Also, there are techniques DMs use for games with wide power disparities. I am going to quote someone who addresses this exact issue, except that it's not a problem, it's a feature that he is comfortable with. I would recommend trying something like this if possible. Make time in your game to give other players the spotlight.


I use the "baited-trap chain reaction" method:

First, I present something that's clearly a huge problem, clearly in need of an immediate, this-cannot-wait-five-seconds solution, and clearly impossible to solve . . . without the amazing abilities of our "Superman" character, who's perhaps a little overpowered. I'd say that 99 times in 100, the player of that character will jump on the problem.

Once the player of "Superman" has committed their character to action – when it would be fair to say, "Sorry, but you're somewhere else and you're very busy" – I spring a second problem. This one is no smaller or less urgent, but it calls for the extensive expertise of our "Batman" character. And the player of that character will just about always take charge at once.

This works in any genre. In dungeon fantasy, for instance, if a caster with a spell for everything and just about unlimited power tends to dominate battles, you tie that person up with a spectral foe only magic can touch. You make sure that the warriors, rogues, etc. really don't stand a chance. And once the caster is busy . . . that's when the army of very physical undead show up, giving the warriors a chance to show off their ability to take on and defeat multiple foes apiece. If all that upstages the poor rogue, you mention to the rogue's player, "Nobody is guarding the altar/loot/door/whatever," or, "You notice a shadowy figure taking advantage of the chaos to flank you." This gives the rogue the chance to pull off a coup of treasure-hunting or day-saving.

Of course, this does require ad-lib GMing. It will annoy the sort of player who wants everything graven in stone ahead of time, and who hates it when the universe responds in real time to make the story more interesting and the game more fun for all. If your group dislikes such character-centric gaming – if they prefer cut-and-dried adventures that work more like printed modules in the Days of Yore – you're out of luck. But with gamers like that, everything is going to be a calculation anyway, so you're probably better off being a super-strict GM regarding character creation and development.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Just for fun...what I would do...is destroy his character. But that is just me. I'd love to ''optimize'' back at him and (pretend) to be all innocent and just say ''oh, I was just using the rules" as the poor player sat in the corner crying his eyes out as he lost his special snowflake character and had his whole life ruined.

Yeah but presumably he's asking for advice that would be helpful to someone that isn't a pile of garbage.

[Darth Ultron]

Yeah but presumably he's asking for advice that would be helpful to someone that isn't a pile of garbage.

My advise is not only helpful, but it's will work.

Chances are this jerk monster of a non-friend will go away and never be seen again...that is a win win all around.

Otherwise they might see the error of their ways an rejoin the group, as a normal player. This is not too likely, but it could happen.

[Reversefigure4]

I don't want to disallow it because he's doing nothing against the rules, it's all fair game and I don't want to prohibit things especially for him because he has the exact same resources and rules as the rest of the group.

It's not a matter of rules being violated, it's a matter of the relative power level of the group. If all the PCs are equally powerful - regardless of whether that's a party of characters optimised from 18 different books or a party of Con-dumped Barbarians wielding daggers - and the GM is playing to their level appropriately, the game is fine.

Once you break that paradigm with a group that is too disparate in power level, it gets a lot harder to balance encounters. It's not necessarily a **** move on the part of the offending player, but it creates problems regardless of intention.

There's three ways to provide a challenge for a disparate group:

1. Equalise their power levels. This is by far, far and away the easiest method. Whether it's bringing the necromancer down in power to match the rest, or rebuilding the rest to equal his power, it allows challenges to affect the whole group simultaneously. If you're unwilling to rebuild the necromancer (to do this, you simply speak to the player, point out the balance disparity, and ask to rebuild the character appropriately), then you'll need to rebuild the rest of the party.

2. Specifically run against the over-optimised character. Clerics, turn-resistant undead, magical light walls that destroy undead that pass through them, etc. As you've pointed out, that's very 'gotcha', and is likely to just annoy the player.

3. Run the game narratively, and power-up the other characters with narrative rewards. The necromancer stomps the combat challenges, but the Sorceror is the Duke of the City and can command substantive resources and political capital. The Bard is Oath-Choosen of the Golden Wood, a friend of the fay, and thus his spotlight time is when the game is about the Fay banquet scenes. Note that you need change the nature of challenges in the game (and perhaps the game system entirely), so this method is a lot of work.

If you're not prepared to do any of those, the little-used option 4 is probably to nuke the campaign and start again, banning any builds that are outside of a certain power level.

[JNAProductions]

I'll echo those saying "Just talk to your powergamer."

Tell them the truth. You're honestly at a loss how to challenge the rest of the party without them curbstomping it, and if you challenge them, you risk killing everyone else and rendering them useless. Ask him to tone his character down, or optimize a weaker concept/class, or find a good middle ground.

[Hooligan]

an all-important question suggests itself: are the other players and you having fun despite his munchkinry?

If yes, no problem, proceed.

If not, 2 solutions suggest themselves:
1. Have a talk with him about attenuating/retiring the character.
2. Use your power as a DM to mulch the necromunchkin and place constraints on creation of his next character.

[LudicSavant]

Sure he's doing something against the rules: he's making the game less fun for other people. That's the only rule that matters.

This goes both ways. You should respect what's fun for him, too. Talk to him and see if you can come to a solution that makes everyone at the table have fun. If he's an experienced player, he might even have some ideas of his own for how to help accomplish that.

[Hooligan]

This goes both ways. You should respect what's fun for him, too.

Agreed but (and again I ask the OP whether or not this is the case) not at the expense of the DM and other players.

[LudicSavant]

Puts on game designer hat

The issue of challenging players of disparate skill levels is an age-old challenge in game design. It's also an issue that some people like to deny exist, because there's parts of the gaming subculture that will not readily admit that disparities in skill exist (the person who succeeds is just "cheap" or "a munchkin" or "has no life") and this often leads to tabletop players going to war with each other, demonizing "powergamers" and the like as if it's their personal mission to ruin the game. The reality is usually that they want to have fun just like the people puffing out their chest and claiming "I play to have fun, unlike those elitists." While it's unfortunately true that there are some people who specifically find joy in ruining things for others, more often the case is simply a result of this age-old conundrum:

http://fancyfishgames.com/img/difficulty_curve.png
Source: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidMaletz/20120913/177683/Four_Tricks_to_Improve_Game_Balance.php

Quite simply, a challenge that might be frustrating for one player can be so trivially easy as to be boring for another. But this is often a solvable problem, which game designers throughout history have tackled in a wide variety of ways.

There are a few ways one can tackle this in the context of D&D. None of them are a silver bullet, though, and any solution must be implemented with care for the specific context of the group and game in question. Here are a few things that have been historically used to tackle this issue, and some of their limitations and caveats:

1) Handicaps. In other words, the high skill player takes on a disadvantage in order to make the game more challenging for them. Handicaps can be voluntary (such as a player adjusting a handicap slider in some competitive videogames) or involuntary (such as the DM implementing rules that limit the power of a player). In tabletop RPGs, usually this comes in the form of them intentionally building a character less powerful than they are capable of building. The limitation of self-handicapping is that a self-imposed challenge has a certain artificiality to it, whereas a more natural challenge forces you to rise to the level of something outside of yourself and your own comfort level (a thrill that many hardcore gamers deeply value, and why thinks like Dark Souls are described as so personally rewarding). However the impact of this is limited in the aforementioned case because it only impacts the "character building" minigame and not the larger "playing the character" game. It's worth noting that in 3.5e D&D, self-handicapping is pretty much necessary for high skill character builders, since any experienced optimizer worth their salt can build Pun-Pun-tier stuff. As such it's often a go-to solution for 3.5e, since experienced players are already used to doing it out of necessity. Ironically, many of the people I've seen accused of being "powergamers who just are trying to break the game as hard as they can" were already intentionally nerfing themselves.

2) Buffs. This is the flip-side of handicaps: Giving advantages to other players. This is when the underperforming Fighter gets a crazy magic plot sword. The limitations of this is that it's pretty much all in the hands of the DM and thus is more likely to feel unfair than getting the player to agree to tone themselves down. However it's still possible for this to be done well, and be fun for everyone involved.

3) Teamwork. The more skilled player aids the less skilled players. The limitation of this solution is that the players may still not rise to the other player's level. And some people have fragile egos that won't accept help. Or on the flip side, a player might get so much help that they feel like the one helping them is overcoming the challenge, rather than accomplishing it themselves.

4) Different tasks have different difficulties. If players are given different responsibilities or roles, then you can make one pillar harder to scale than another. For example, if you're on an Ocean's 11 heist and the most skilled player is the locksmith, the most challenging thing isn't going to be the guards but the door of the vault. The limitation of this is that you often don't get clear cut separate tasks for players to take on.

5) Counterplay. The enemy regards the most skilled player as a particular threat and takes specific measures to counter them, personally. This is actually something that real opponents will do in competitive sports and e-sports, and of course in war. If done well, this can actually feel rewarding to the player getting targeted more ("Even though my nemesis was gloating about how he took all of these extra steps to counter what he saw me do to foil him last time, I still overcame him!"). If done poorly, it can feel like the DM is cheating them ("Okay, so these random encounter monsters all mysteriously happen to have the exact ability needed to counter me? Hmm"). The trick is to make it feel natural and rewarding for the player taking on the extra challenge.

6) Appeal to different kinds of fun for different players. For example, pick a challenge level where some are having hardcore fun and others are having casual fun. Recognize what they're getting out of your game and capitalize on that. Your game might not be able to be all things to all people, but maybe it can be something fun for everyone, in different ways.

[Incorrect]

Personal anecdote,
I once made a character that was way to powerful for the campaign. After some battles where my character dominated all enemies, and I had a ton of fun, the GM came to me.
He told me that I had won. He couldn't beat my character with the enemies in the adventure, fair and square.
Then he asked me to change some feats and dial the power back, as a favor to him and the campaign.

For me it was never about winning, but the fact that he told me that there was nothing he could do, did open my eyes to the fact.

So my advice would be to talk to him. Tell him straight up that he is super good at making strong characters, but you dont have the time/knowledge/energy/motivation to challenge him. Then ask him what he thinks could be done to dial him back to the power level of the party.

[CharonsHelper]

I'll just +1 the "talk to him".

Frankly - he didn't take the most OP class to start (though as you admitted - you shouldn't let him play a necropolitan - nor allow him to dump CON that far) so it could be that he largely enjoys the challenge & building game of 3.x. I know that I do.

I'm an unabashed optimizer. I enjoy the character building mini-game and the tactical play. However, I don't want to be "that guy" that this sort of thread is written about - so I choose sub-par and/or support character concepts, pretty much always picking my class last to avoid stepping on toes. That way I can optimize to my heart's content without the risk of making anyone grumpy. Plus - it lets me keep enjoying the tactical mini-game as a challenge rather than brute-forcing everything with an OP combo.

There's a decent chance that this player is the same way and will be more than happy to start power-gaming the heck out of something like a monk character and enjoy the challenge of keeping up with the casters in the party.

[Jay R]

First, you keep low-level minions in check with area effect attacks or incidents.

Second, low Constitution should have three effects on the character.

1. All his hit dice have a -4.
2. Concentration is a CON-based skill, and necessary for keeping spells going.
3, There are Fortitude checks that do affect him. Poison doesn't, but rockslides do.

[There is a very important rule in Champions. A Disadvantage that doesn't cause difficulties is not a Disadvantage, and isn't worth anydoesn't get you extra points. I would have told the player, early on, that either he has to tell me exactly how the low CON can hurt his character, or he gets no more points for other stats than he would if it were CON 10.]

[Pleh]

Remember that D&D is essentially a war of attrition.

He's using spells and minions, so attack the resources he's managing.

Keep using the fights he trivializes, but increase the number he has to work through before spells reset. Eventually, he'll be tight on slots and the other PCs who haven't had to do anything all day will have to lend support (and have their full resources to do so).

When you throw the big encounters to challenge him, make sure to incentivize him sacrificing skeletal minions rather than losing party members.

Then get the party out of humanoid civilization. Take them to a gelatenous cube dungeon to limit his access to creating more undead minions (not shutting him completely out, just putting access to zombies and skeletons back under your control).

You have to start thinking of every corpse he can animate and control like a magic item: it's magic loot now and there's no changing that. Keep the party away from graveyards and don't use undead with low HD against them.

Finally, invest in old school Traps. Throw them around every corner, because often the Dread Necro's best tool against them is marching his minions through. Avoid poison and negative energy traps, use slashing traps against zombies and crushing traps against skeletons.

Use pit traps deeper than you'd want for PCs that could make the undead too much trouble to retrieve.

Make the Dread Necro expend these resources, then reduce access to renewing them.

[KnightOfV]

You gotta talk to the player, ask him politely to roll something else. Everyone saying this is right on.

If the player is a reasonable, decent person they will say, 'yea ok,' and do it because they (hopefully) like playing DnD with friends more than a solo power tripping fantasy. I would make everyone stick to Player's Handbook classes/ feats/ races only as well so you can better keep track of their abilities and make sure they are playing legit. Also maybe stick to a standard point buy so they can't minmax stats in ridiculous ways. If you gotta take an hour so everyone can rebuild their characters, that's fine, because in the long run you will make a better game. Again, if the players are all reasonable people, they will have no problems going along with your rules, since you are running a game for them. Remember, "but I need this obscure feat/class/item for my roleplay!" is code for "i wanna see if i can break this game."

If the player refuses to reroll, then, honestly, you're probably better off continuing the game without him.

If you try to 'beat him at his own game' it will get personal, it will be you vs player and the game will be ruined. I've seen players like this turn to rules lawyering, arguing with the DM, or even cheating to keep 'winning' when the DM ups their firepower. If you try to 'balance the game' targeting his weaknesses, and tracking closely all his resources, it will take up a lot of energy on your side, add to your frustration, and eventually still end up you vs him. Tried both, doesn't end well.

This kind of player really can wreck a game, or even friendships... so if he refuses to reroll, either let him DM or I would stop gaming with him. Learn from the forum's mistakes! And good luck..:smallwink:

[Telonius]

Just to echo most of the people here, he probably doesn't realize that he's being a disruption. Talk to him about it, you should be able to work something out.

If the player continues to be a disruption, introduce the character to a Mace of Disruption.

[Quertus]

So, I will agree with everyone saying "talk to him". However, that is probably only one of several things that you should try to take away from this thread.

Don't try and take away his class features, like Animate Dead. Instead, give him as many corpses as he wants. Let him come across an old, abandoned graveyard, or an ancient battlesite. Let him animate to his full, and carry around spare corpses. From this, you can accurately gauge his power level.

Once you actually have a proper handle on just how powerful his character is, then you can have a proper, informed conversation with him. Ask him how he'd like the problem to be solved. Nerfing his character, buffing the other characters, starting over, etc. He may even have some encounter building ideas to share with you, being experienced and all.

Also, from what you've said, his character isn't "ridiculously powerful". The other characters may be ridiculously weak, and his character may be much stronger than them, but calling his character "ridiculously powerful" is very much the wrong mindset to have.


I imagine that you've been in this forum long enough to know that you'll get two answers:

1- Talk to overpowered dude and ask him to tone it down.

2- Make something even more overpowered and kill his character. Time to make new characters, oh by the way, only core classes are allowed.

Personally I'd favour option one. You may not need to ask him to make a new character. Maybe he agrees not to use his most powerful abilities in normal encounters for a couple of levels while you two help the others make their characters more powerful.

Hey, now, "make something ridiculously more powerful and trivialize the capabilities of his character" is an incredibly effective technique for another player to take to introduce unintentional power gamers to the concept of "play to the group's power level".

But, yeah, what you listed as #2 is terrible. :smallwink:

[Reliku]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, there's some helpful tips here. I really do not want to kick him out of the group because we're good friends outside of the game, so I'll try talking to him and see how we can buff the rest of the party a little.

I don't want to actively limit his power, I want to allow him to use the character he's built because he's put a lot of time in it (even though I probably shouldn't have let him play necropolitan), I just don't want every encounter being him against the world with the rest of the party watching :P

[SirGraystone]

Reading the Libris Mortis where the necropolitan is from, I was mistaken at first thinking it was some prestige class, but the template is mean to be added to a monster or NPC, it was never mean for a player.

So he have all the power and abilities of his real race and class, with the template just added on top of it? I would guess you didn't know much about the necropolitan before he created that character. I my opinion he's abusing the rules specially with the 2 of constitution, a character need to survive long enough to become necropolitan, with a constitution of 2, some children disease would have kill him before he get old enough. I'm also curious if he's a level lower then the rest, because you do lose a level and 1,000 xp when you become a necropolitan as describe in the ritual.

So if not done already, I would remove 1 level and 1,000 xp from the character, and remove points somewhere to put at least 8 in constitution.

[Quertus]

I just don't want every encounter being him against the world with the rest of the party watching :P

2 Bards and a Sorcerer? Welcome to the horror that is low-OP low-level casters. These characters have a horribly low floor - especially at low level. At higher levels of player skill, they'd be completely overpowering the poor Necromancer, but, in the hands of new players, they're a waste of space. He should complain that they're breathing his air - if he weren't undead, that is.


So if not done already, I would remove 1 level and 1,000 xp from the character, and remove points somewhere to put at least 8 in constitution.

He built intelligently lowering his con, and you'd advocate punishing him for it?

The XP loss is... questionable. If you make him lower level, it's more work for the GM, having to calculate XP for two different levels of characters. If you go this route, the fair answer is to go back and recalculate all his XP from the time of the ritual to the present. At which point, it's technically possible (if unlikely) for him to have more XP than the rest of the party!

But, as long as we're following the rules, by RAW slaves can be purchased for CR squared times 100 gold. The CR of a (human) skeleton is, what, 1/3? So, for around 11gp, he should be able to purchase a skeleton in any town that sells anything else for 11+ gp (ie, pretty much anywhere).

In other words, I'd advocate not going super RAW-lawyer on him, as it isn't the core of the problem, may alternate him as an ally in solving this problem, will cause the GM more work, and may not help with balance (especially if they are already 1000+ XP past their current level).

[SirGraystone]

The level lost is in the description of the template in the Libris Mortis.

"Level Adjustment: Same as the base creature. (Becoming a necropolitan involves losing a level—see Ritual of Crucimigration, below—so the advantages of the undead type cancel out what would other wise be a larger adjustment.)"

Game Effect: Immediately upon opening its undead eyes, a new necropolitan loses a level as if the spell raise dead had been used on it and it was alive instead of animate. (If the subject has no levels to lose, it is simply destroyed.) It then also loses an additional 1,000 XP. If the loss of this much XP forces the necropolitan to lose another level, then it loses another level. No spell, not even restoration, can restore this lost XP. Petitioners may not spend experience points they don’t have—if the level loss and the 1,000 XP cost drains a creature to 0 XP or less, it is destroyed, turned to dust, and can never be raised or revived again using any means. If the ritual is interrupted before it is completed, the petitioner is merely dead.

[Friv]

First, you keep low-level minions in check with area effect attacks or incidents.

Second, low Constitution should have three effects on the character.

1. All his hit dice have a -4.
2. Concentration is a CON-based skill, and necessary for keeping spells going.
3, There are Fortitude checks that do affect him. Poison doesn't, but rockslides do.

[There is a very important rule in Champions. A Disadvantage that doesn't cause difficulties is not a Disadvantage, and isn't worth any doesn't get you extra points. I would have told the player, early on, that either he has to tell me exactly how the low CON can hurt his character, or he gets no more points for other stats than he would if it were CON 10.]

I think you missed a step. Necropolitan is a template that gets added to existing creatures. It's not normally that powerful a template. You usually gain the following:
Your hit dice become d12s, which boosts your HP pretty solidly.
Your CON becomes --, so if it was negative before that's a boost. If it was positive before, that's another penalty.
You become immune to mind-affecting powers that don't specifically target the undead.
You become immune to a lot of the GM's bag of tricks: poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain, energy drain, damage to physical ability scores, fatigue and exhaustion effects, Fortitude saves that don't work on objects, and starvation or suffocation.
You get to use Charisma for Concentration
A +2 bonus against turning and undead control.

And you lose:

A Level, and all the benefits thereof (some skill points, some HP, a save, a level of spells)
Another 1000 XP
The ability to be healed by positive energy spells like the ones your bards and clerics usually have on them
You can be turned or controlled by clerics, although you have a bonus (see above).


Under normal circumstances, it's a nice template but not an overwhelming one.

But in this case, the player in question started with a character with a CON of 2, and then took advantage of the fact that they weren't actually playing out their lower levels to immediately apply the Necropolitan template so that they wouldn't have to try and survive with 1 HP per level. It's rules-legal, with DM approval, but kind of dubious. It would have been totally fair to have said at the start, "No way, if you want to start the game with this template I'm requiring a Con of 10."

We are well past that point, though. I concur with the majority that a chat with the player about why this is a problem is a better choice than trying to fix it through arbitrary removal of powers or GM spite.

[Spore]

I'm sure people must have been in similar situations before. How do you handle problems like this? How do I provide a challenge for the entire group? Right now I'm constantly choosing between "the sorcerers can die any moment" and "dread necro cakewalks all over it"

Please talk it over with your group. My Pathfinder group slowly (and painfully I might add) died from these problems.

We had a widely varying power level:

1) Dual Wielding Revolver Gunslinger/Paladin: T4 at its core. Competent in niche as monster hunter (smite evil) and party face (diplomacy).
2) Archer Ranger: Archetypically but effective. Undead hunter (though the campaign featured devils more than undead). T4 again.
3) Protean Gnome Sorcerer (basically chaos, the spell list): firmly T5 because of the spell choices (Magic Missile, Sleep vs. the first encounter on undead) and the player (never read a spell description past damage dice). Later on played a Flames Oracle (basically favored soul with blasts) but just used Fireball and NOTHING ELSE.
4) Dwarven Fighter: Oh boy the back end of T5. Capable warrior that was too slow to ever enter melee. (constantly distracted)
5) Myself, Tiefling Spawn Alchemist: T3, though barred sharing its potions until 4th level because class design. Melee brute, I built Cha 6 (to allow others to diplomance), low AC/Con (to let the Dwarf shine) and chose a class notorious for sharing buffs. But to no avail.

What happened: The fighter never realized D&D/PF was more than a tabletop fighting sim. The group used much time socializing, so she relegated her character to the sidelines. She was a dungeon crawler type of player and the first gal who left. Then the sorcerer got frustrated by her character, only to replace her character with another difficult one with basically the same mechanics. Loved melodrama (soap opera style a thing I hate). Meanwhile my character dealt with a devil (she got us presents and we have a common enemy). The paladin hated that, as did the ranger. I RP'ed my charisma of - reclusive and frightful not!Asian troll - which resulted in frustration with the ranger (backstory dictates we are besties). We had a few more months of fun adventure and social encounters. But then happened the 'bonding' evening. Oracle had rescued a small orphan boy, ranger RPed with her foster parents and the paladin RP'ed her love interest. I basically said at the beginning of the evening that I go into my lab and research my formula book and write down new potion recipes. What followed were 6 hours of boredom.


You need to talk about it. OOC, sooner better than later. It ruins the fun of the power gamer too. Always remember that rebuilding the others character into a bit stronger variants is a thing too. I always felt that D&D was best played with a competent group of heroes. Casters pick a few flavorful choices with their spells prepared and known. Martials/mundanes pick a few mundane items that help them immensely but their builds should be solid to compete.