Overly creative players (3.5)

[nolispe]

In a recent campaign (3.5) that I have been running recently, a problem has popped up. One player, and one player only, is consistently pulling tricks out of his hat when problems arise, from flour bombs to breathing tubes to deadfalls. This is getting to the point where he is sidelining the other players. Now, this is normally the kind of creativity that I would want to encourage, but it is certainly making the game almost unfun for the other players. What doe sthe playgorund suggest?

[Shinizak]

Wow, that's a first. a player who won't STOP RPing...

a person like that is probably mature enough that he can handle you telling him that he needs to let the others have some fun. Also, after he describes some super amazing plan, pause before it's execution, look to the next player and say "how do you do improve this plan?" Don't let anyone interject until he/she's finished, then go to the next person and so on. Once they've all said how they're going to build off the plan, execute it. In the heat of battle a person who sees their ally doing something only has enough time and information to act instantly trying to help their ally, often with nothing but a few words of instruction.

[Myth]

DMS have a rarely used SLA - Power Word: No. Time to cast it.

[Rasman]

Hi, I'm Rasman and I have a Problem.



There's step one.

lol...all players, especially when they REALLY get into a character, tend to do this at some point. In an effort to try and get other players more into the RP, a Strong, Overbearing, and PC Superstar Hating NPC is sometimes needed. This is a tactic one of my DMs has used, he actually took the party wizard, who is a Munchkin and has been playing since 2nd edition, and made him draw boxes because his brown nosing of the NPC pissed the NPC off, he then started making Origami boxes out of the paper, but that's beside the point. Use creative devices in game, rather than out in order to involve your other players. Traps that involve Silence being cast on the PC in question would force your other players to speak up simply because they can't talk. I was recently forced to remain in a meditative state because I was preparing spells during a new player introduction. Be creative, but don't completely curb creativity of the player in question. Encourage it, but create situations where your other players can shine as well.

[Reluctance]

If his suggestions are overly detailed, implement a table rule. Any combat round that takes more than one minute is spent doing nothing. Any plan that takes longer than a minute or two to explain is tabled until there's significant downtime.

If the player constantly sidelines the other players, you handle it no differently than you would a loud personality in any other group. In combat, encourage people to act quickly and keep quiet when it's not their turn. Out of combat, allow him his exuberance, but encourage other people to pipe up as well. (Ideally, you'll talk with him out of game, and get him to elicit ideas from the other players. It's really cool when you can get the players to engage each other like that.) If he keeps demanding your attention solo, DM as MC is one of the important roles you have to learn.

[Psyx]

Firstly; if a creative player is your biggest problem, then you are a very lucky GM.

Secondly; don't stifle it, but make sure that it fits with the character/rule-set. Is the character 'inventing' things that didn't exist? Does the character have a good Int and enough ranks in disable device (which is a good gauge of mechanical skill), craft (trap) or craft (whatever) to come up with these ideas. If not, then it should be politely pointed out that the player is using OOC knowledge.

Thirdly; Any plan taking longer than 5 seconds to think of, discuss, or implement has no place in combat rounds. Don't let huge plans compromise the action.

[Godless_Paladin]

Wow, that's a first. a player who won't STOP RPing...

a person like that is probably mature enough that he can handle you telling him that he needs to let the others have some fun. Also, after he describes some super amazing plan, pause before it's execution, look to the next player and say "how do you do improve this plan?" Don't let anyone interject until he/she's finished, then go to the next person and so on. Once they've all said how they're going to build off the plan, execute it. In the heat of battle a person who sees their ally doing something only has enough time and information to act instantly trying to help their ally, often with nothing but a few words of instruction.

Encouraging the other players to add and cultivate their own creativity. Good advice, and something that has worked well for me in the past when dealing with less initially capable players. Devise situations that force your less creative players to think outside their little boxes, just like a video game designer can create levels that train players to learn new skills and behaviors (For example, pretty much the entire game of Portal is a training exercise, and that's very intentional, right down to the slogan "start thinking with portals"). Also, encourage the more capable player to coach the others or help them understand the options available to them.

Done right, soon enough simple concepts like flour bombs, deadfalls, and breathing tubes will be the baseline for player creativity in your games, not an unmanageable height.

DMS have a rarely used SLA - Power Word: No. Time to cast it.

Arbitrarily punishing a player for being creative. This is very bad advice.

[FelixG]

DMS have a rarely used SLA - Power Word: No. Time to cast it.

This is probably the worst advise here.

Clever players are good...but how exactly is he side lining the other players?

Come up with clever ways to negate non combat spells? THere are tons of things casters can do thats non combat that cant be solved with an invention.

Making the rogue feel useless? most people can do that with rocks or a 10 foot poll.

Need more info on whats being done :D

One thing might to be to encourage the rest of the group to put their thinking caps on.

[DragonOfUndeath]

Making the rogue feel useless? most people can do that with rocks or a 10 foot poll.

now i want too got my DM to let me take weapon specialization: 10-Foot Poles to annoy the party rogue

@V: but hitting things with 10 foot poles is fun

[khylis]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with clever plans, however; you as a DM should also have back-up clever plans to counter those, even if you invent them on the spur of the moment - don't punish him too hard for roleplaying, but if it's ridiculous, make sure that there are consequences, after all, there isn't a character that is universally suited to deal with all situations.

Advice? make varied encounters, make intelligent, conniving villains to go along with the brutish bashers

(just make sure you don't ostracise him for thinking and plotting, a smart PC who thinks things through and roleplays is worth much more than a couple of slayers that solve every single problem by smacking it repeatedly with a 10 foot pole)

[AslanCross]

Firstly; if a creative player is your biggest problem, then you are a very lucky GM.

Secondly; don't stifle it, but make sure that it fits with the character/rule-set. Is the character 'inventing' things that didn't exist? Does the character have a good Int and enough ranks in disable device (which is a good gauge of mechanical skill), craft (trap) or craft (whatever) to come up with these ideas. If not, then it should be politely pointed out that the player is using OOC knowledge.

Thirdly; Any plan taking longer than 5 seconds to think of, discuss, or implement has no place in combat rounds. Don't let huge plans compromise the action.

I echo every single idea here. I often find it rather frustrating that my players automatically default to "kill them all and figure it out from there." :P

I once had the dwarf crusader in my party use a propped-up hobgoblin corpse and a bluff check in Goblin (spoken in a thick Dwarven accent) to wave off suspicious guards. It worked. For a while.

Just because the things players do work doesn't mean they'll work all the time, or work flawlessly. Rewarding creativity doesn't mean your well-laid plans get blown into smithereens.

[Tyndmyr]

DMS have a rarely used SLA - Power Word: No. Time to cast it.

Yeah, don't do this.

I've actually used all of these in the past. Deadfalls, breathing tubes? These date back to ridiculously early times, and are entirely appropriate for any era. Flour bombs are viable any time in or after the roman era, as that's when it became rather well known that flour can do such things. There's also precedent for all these things in fantasy novels.

Creativity is an excellent trait in players, and rather than stifling whoever uses it, reward and encourage it. Make sure others feel like they are welcome to give input, and limit in combat communication to a reasonable amount, it enhances realism and prevents instructions from getting too detailed. Ideally, you want to encourage more players to be like this one.

[kestrel404]

My advice: Cultivate them. They'll probably make a decent GM sometime soon. Talk to them about involving the other players in their plans, get them to plot and scheme with the other PCs, get them thinking about ways to involve the entire party in their creativity.

At the moment, I've got a very creative, resourceful, and outspoken character in a game I'm playing. He also has a magic item that gives him the ability to polymorph into any creature he's killed at will (for an XP cost). I can use this power to solve ANY PROBLEM the GM throws at me. I did this for two game sessions (usually going out of my way to get INTO dangerous situations, often alone), and then stopped. Because I realized that I was hogging the game and it wasn't nearly as fun for everyone else. Since then I've been involving the other PCs in the stuff I'm pulling.

For example, I'm currently buying training from an NPC. Since we're in the middle of a long journey together, he offered to let me pay in trade (since I can't exactly go out and get currency to pay him while in the middle of the forest). So I considder my friends - one of the PCs is really good at jewelry craft, and another one is a part time enchanter. I happen to have the raw materials handy for them to craft some really nice equipment, and I pay them with the stuff that's left over after the crafting.

So now, my character may have spent a bit more of his personal wealth than absolutely necessary (not like I payed for it, I'm the party rogue) but I also involved the other PCs, and I empowered a friendly NPC with a fairly powerful magic doohickey (the GM is still figuring out what it should do, as the crafting rules in Earthdawn are more story based than crunch based).

So yeah, talk to the player. See if he's willing to come up with creative solutions that involves the other PCs. If you can teach the PCs to regularly rely on each other strengths while doing things other than combat and dungeon crawling you'll be making the game a whole lot more fun and engrossing for everyone!

[Valameer]

kestrel404 just basically swordsage'd me, so... just go back up and read what he had to say again

Good advice!

[Zeofar]

I can't believe this is looking like a bad thing to you; all of the “tricks” described are pretty standard and, at the very least, are probably making the game a bit more fun in other ways. If the other players really can't come up with anything and feel overshadowed, leave easy-to-miss holes in your situations that your players are in and assign them DC's based on their efficacy and obviousness. The other players can make Int checks or Wis checks to “discover” these solutions. Rule that the clever player can't usually do this, because he doesn't need any help being awesome.

If you can't think of anything and he has a solution, and/or the uber-player comes up with something incredibly better, roll a d(# of players -1) and assign everyone except him a numeric value. The winner(s, if you feel like stacking the odds against him) does an opposed Int or Wis check against him. Whoever wins comes up with the idea first. If the clever guy usually wins, he deserved it IC and it is really rather fair that his character comes up with everything first.

Now, you would probably only have to do the second part if things are really, really bad. If they aren't, you should follow the other advice that is in this thread. Encourage your players to think smarter, and have the guy help you while you're at it. Pointing out solutions with checks like that may indeed help shock your players out of linear thinking, and eventually they'll be relying on themselves as much as on those checks. Do away with it once they other players are consistently coming up with better ideas without the checks. He'll probably enjoy the fact that other people also have ideas, anyways.

[Christopher K.]

My vote is to give them a new car for their efforts.

Also, you really just want to keep encouraging the other players to add on to his plans. I suggest doing that by providing THEM with extra tools to go about the problem that they can suggest uses of to this creative player, and then everybody gets a certain amount of contribution towards the plan as a whole.

[arrowhen]

Instead of smacking down the one player who contributes the most, why not encourage the others to step up their game?

[Skaven]

Introduce challenged designed for the other party members class abilities to encourage them to take the forefront.

[Zeofar]

Introduce challenged designed for the other party members class abilities to encourage them to take the forefront.

...and then he comes up with a plan that not only uses their class abilities, but makes them far, far better for it. This isn't an issue of "character does everything," but "player beats everything."

Alternatively, he still eclipses them by using his own character and ideas.

[ericgrau]

Dunno how to fix this or if you even should, but 3 rules on creative solutions:

1. If it's simple and mild it probably works. Flour bombs are a classic way to stop invisibility.
2. If it's "scientific" or complicated it probably doesn't work. Meta-gaming aside, most people IRL don't actually know how these things work and 99% of such ideas I see posted would in fact be a spectacular failure. Even if you don't know why it's doomed to failure, you can simply say "You don't know how to do that correctly."
3. Even if it does work there are often ways around it. For example allow a high DC spot check to see the breathing tubes (and no it isn't opposed by hide, that's another check for a person with cover or concealment*). As a rule of thumb DC 20-30 is "very difficult" as it is virtually impossible for a commoner or you and me. DC 20 if we have a minuscule chance, more if not. But anyone with special training may have a much easier time and, hurrah, the clever idea now has a chance of failure.

* Side note: a water surface gives improved cover: +8 AC, +4 to reflex saves, +10 to hide. There are also special rules for fire spells.

[Tyndmyr]

[*]If it's "scientific" or complicated it probably doesn't work. Meta-gaming aside, most people IRL don't actually know how these things work and 99% of such ideas I see posted would in fact be a spectacular failure. Even if you don't know why it's doomed to failure, you can simply say "You don't know how to do that correctly."

This answer usually results in me conducting an impromptu demonstration. Flour bombs? Easy. Impromptu magnetic linear accelerator? Done it. Our last game had us playing with swords, magnets and LEDs. I heartily endorse having your players demonstrate these wild and creative plans.

[BRC]

Encourage them to make plans that have room for the rest of the party. Are we talking about the player having a few good tricks they use over and over again, or are we talking about some sort of tabletop macguyver who is simply brilliant at using whatever they have, though I'm personally having trouble seeing how they can solo encounters with flour bombs and breathing tubes. Those sound like good ways to counter specific parts of encounters (Like an enemy's invisibility), but those hardly win the encounter by themselves.

If the first, have a few encounters their regular tricks won't work on. Get him used to needing to include the rest of the party in his plans, then when you go back to regular encounters, he will already be thinking in terms of using the entire group rather than handling things himself.

Challenge him at every turn. Make his character roll checks for anything that he could possibly fail at, even if he makes every check, the fact that you are rolling them means that there are lots of places for his plans to go wrong.

It's hard to give advice when all we know he's used are Flour Bombs (Useless except against invisibility), breathing tubes (Situational), and Deadfalls (Take significant preparation)

[ericgrau]

This answer usually results in me conducting an impromptu demonstration. Flour bombs? Easy. Impromptu magnetic linear accelerator? Done it. Our last game had us playing with swords, magnets and LEDs. I heartily endorse having your players demonstrate these wild and creative plans.

I'd be curious to hear an example or two, like the magnetic linear accelerator. Though that one in particular sounds like meta-gaming knowledge even if it works. Flour bombs are a-ok like I said already.

[Arbane]

Well, there's two obvious approaches.

1: Dungeonmaster CRUSH puny player!
This is the BAD approach.

2: Up your game.
A better approach: Make more encounters that are big and tough enough that this guy's clever tricks will be helpful in solving them, but not _sufficient_. The other PCs will still have to show their stuff.

[BoutsofInsanity]

This is a great thread.
My friend had a player who is a nurse in real life and would ask for a bunch of mundane items and plants at the start of the game. Later a situation would come up and the player would say "i combine x with y with z" and presto knockout gas or somthing. Just follow the advice above and give a chance of failure.

[WarKitty]

To be fair I've gamed with this type of player. It really is no fun. There is such a thing as "too much roleplaying." In my experience one really great roleplayer can discourage everyone else from roleplaying, because he's solved things/moved things along before they can think up a reply. Ask him to step aside and let the other players solve things for a bit, or put in encounters that he can't solve completely.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

I'll just say it.

Demand he stop RPing and without LA or BL be a single-classed sorc with VoP. Now he can optimize all he wants and you know what his tricks are. Oh, and he'll still be more useful than all the non-casters.

[WarKitty]

I'll just say it.

Demand he stop RPing and without LA or BL be a single-classed sorc with VoP. Now he can optimize all he wants and you know what his tricks are. Oh, and he'll still be more useful than all the non-casters.

I didn't see any mention of optimization in the op?

[Godless_Paladin]

I didn't see any mention of optimization in the op?

Yes you did. The only part where the previous poster got confused is the lack of build optimization mentioned.

Tactics and creativity is a very large part of optimization. Arguably, the most important component.

[WarKitty]

Yes you did. The only part where the previous poster got confused is the lack of build optimization mentioned.

Tactics and creativity is a very large part of optimization. Arguably, the most important component.

Ok not the type PlzBreakMyCmpAn was referring to.

In all seriousness - it's the same rule, don't out-optimize your friends as a player.