The Floodgate Rule: Solution to Munchkining?

[Legoman]

I've noticed a lot of chatter lately about munchkin PC's. I've also started running my first real, full fledged campaign, 4 person gestalt. I'm going to take a horror bend with it later, having the characters feel like they have some cool powers, but be totally and utterly helpless anyway should add to the effect.

Now,

I've been particularly concerned about the possibilities of taking this many class features and sticking them together - I have one character who is a Ranger/Rogue looking to drop sneak attacks all day long, for example, and is talking a lot of **** about it.

So, I've instituted a new rule for my campaign, which might be a good one for yours too. It helps shy characters away from munhkining, without resorting to Rule 0 or 'Rocks fall, die' approach.

The rule is as follows:

"Any material from any Wizards of the Coast source is available to you when building your character, Feats, spells, Prestige Classes, etcetera. However, you must discuss all material not in the SRD first with me.

Any category of material that you use (eg., feats from Complete Mage, PrC from the Complete Arcane) is fair game for me to use as an NPC against you.

Keep in mind that I read the Theoretical Optimization board, and can make a character come into his own at precisely the level he faces you, I don't have to worry about early-on playability. Thus, I can power-game harder than you can."

Discuss.

[Thomas]

What a revolutionary idea! PCs and NPCs have the same resources available, NPCs know how to use tactics and effective tricks, and players must discuss their characters with the GM!

How is this different from how I've run all my games, ever?

[oriong]

Yeah, honestly this doesn't seem to do anything at all...and really if you're worried about munchkinning you shouldn't be playing gestalt.

[Fako]

What a revolutionary idea! PCs and NPCs have the same resources available, NPCs know how to use tactics and effective tricks, and players must discuss their characters with the GM!

How is this different from how I've run all my games, ever?

Because some GMs aren't as smart as you are?

I know a few GMs who simply say "I'll see it when you play it." when I try to get them to ok concepts...

[Fax Celestis]

What a revolutionary idea! PCs and NPCs have the same resources available, NPCs know how to use tactics and effective tricks, and players must discuss their characters with the GM!

How is this different from how I've run all my games, ever?

I was trying to figure out what the point was myself, really. I throw pretty frighteningly optimized bbegs at my PCs all the time.

[Thomas]

I've got the perfect solution to munchkining, though (the term seems to be a bit misapplied): I don't play with munchkins.

As for cheesy builds... I just note to my players that the build is a bit overpowered, and suggest they try something else. My players concede, and we work together to find something that's fun, effective, and has the same flavor or style they wanted.

[Legoman]

I know it's not a shock to a lot of you guys (read: Fax. Homeboy basically shoots homebrew into his veins) but I figured it might help out some of the DM's here that... well.... don't know how to say know.

It's basically just saying yes with a smile on your face.

An evil smile.

[Fax Celestis]

(read: Fax. Homeboy basically shoots homebrew into his veins)

Oh, my day is complete. I have died laughing now.

[NullAshton]

This is why no PC, ever, is stupid enough to use Mage's Disjunction on anything. EVER. Because then the DM is allowed by that unwritten houserule to use Mage's Disjunction on them.

[Bears With Lasers]

Also, because then instead of "tasty, CR-appropriate loot" you get "nothing".

[ampcptlogic]

Oh, my day is complete. I have died laughing now.

But where will the rest of us get out Fax-brew fix?

[ravenkith]

It really is best if you can get your players to be self-policing, but it isn't always possible.

It helps if the DM is the one with the strongest rules-fu, so that if anyone does step over the line, it's relatively easy to come up with something to counteract his abuse.

Bottom line though: anything that can be done can be undone. If you've got a charger build, take to the air.

If he follows with a flying mount, knock it out from under him, and watch him take up to 20d6 damage from the fall. Then he has to go get a new one. Make it a quest. He gets the mount? Rusting grasp his weapon or something. Make him quest for a new one.

If he takes a caster into absurdity, have an adventure occur in a dead magic zone. An entire plot arc. No magic. That spell you researched that was so uber? The Goddess of Magic decided the woorld isn't ready for that one yet, and took it back. Yeah, the whole spell and the research that went with it. From your mind.

If he breaks it with a hulking hurler build, put everything in a dungeon in which the hurler has trouble moving around in, or else put him up against casters with walls of force or otiluke's telekinetic spheres.

Or disintegrate. Which they then cast on his weapon, as opposed to him, who they just dominate.

Pun-Pun? There is no Pun-Pun. The god of Time watches all times to make sure he's there everytime someone eligible for such power abuses turns into a Sarrukh, and he then steps in and then casts them out of the timestream. You've never heard of him? Of course not! He's far too busy protecting the timestream to bother with things like worshippers.

Why do you think the Sarrukhs disappearred from the face of the earth in the first place? Gods tend to take very short views of anything or anyone who might pose a threat.

Anything can be dealt with, within the context of the game world, from divine intervention to simply selecting the proper tools for the job.

Once your players realise that abusing the rules just paints big targets on their backs, they're not even going to look for loopholes anymore.

[Fax Celestis]

But where will the rest of us get out Fax-brew fix?

From my handy-dandy wiki, of course.

[Bears With Lasers]

...or, ravenkith, one could not create a hostile, adversarial relationship with the players one is engaging in cooperative storytelling with.

[Deepblue706]

No no NO! The solution to munchkining is obviously grudge monsters.

[Neek]

Yeah. You get a munchkiner in your party, you create absurd and well articulated encounters and campaigns simply to either bully them out of the session, or bully them out of their MONSTER KILLER build--either way, you win. Cuz playing with a munchkinner != fun, apparently. :roll:

A very clever way to discourage power players: Increase role-playing situations, decrease dice rolling. Dots and stats and dice rolling do nothing if you're forced to act out a character. It's perfectly plausible that one might create a munchkin or a cheese-build that makes for a good roleplaying experience.

[Deepblue706]

Neek, that is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. No, when someone Munchkins, what you do is say, "Then, the Wizard cast PLANET SMASHING ATOM CRUSHER!" and then you flip the game board.

If game board is not present, rip up the character sheets.

If character sheets are not within reach, you can always just fall back on the contingency plan of roleplaying more with less dice-rolling. Just, not how you said it.

[Olethros]

Maby I'm Wierd. maby it says something about my character, but I have never had a problem with munchkining in my games. I actively encourage my players to create characters as powerfull as they can, or atleast care to, so long as they use the materials presented in the books, no homebrew stuff. I am tentative to allow 3rd party materials in, untill I have playtested it myself.

It's basically been stated before here, it should be uterly impossible for a player to create something more powerfull than the GM can counter. I know all the secrets, and it isn't metagaming for me to use them.

If a single player manages to outdistance the rest of the group, than I talk to the group, find out if they want to have there characters catch up to the power house, or want him brought back down. The various methods for this already being mentioned.

As for advicarial relations because of "attacks" against a powerfull character, thats a personality issue to work out with your buddy in the group. In any fantacy story, the more powerfull the main character the more bad stuff happens to him personally. Thats the downside to being a main character in a story, the plot is out to get you.

[Missing Shoe]

Neek, that is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. No, when someone Munchkins, what you do is say, "Then, the Wizard cast PLANET SMASHING ATOM CRUSHER!" and then you flip the game board.

If game board is not present, rip up the character sheets.

If character sheets are not within reach, you can always just fall back on the contingency plan of roleplaying more with less dice-rolling. Just, not how you said it.

I dont know why, but I had to read this post 3 times and imagine my DM doing that before I knew if you were serious or not.

But on subject, I hardly munchkin anymore, its not worth it. My DM knows to well how to munchkin as well, so he will just make counter munchkins to mine. And since mine cant change from encounter to encounter, he has the advantage.

Its good advice if you werent already doing it. I just hope most were doing it already.

[Arceliar]

There's always some of the classic standby methods for dealing with unreasonable players.

"Lightning strikes, roll reflex saves."
"But we're underground!"
"It caused a massive cave-in. Fort saves too."

[Neek]

Neek, that is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. No, when someone Munchkins, what you do is say, "Then, the Wizard cast PLANET SMASHING ATOM CRUSHER!" and then you flip the game board.

If game board is not present, rip up the character sheets.

If character sheets are not within reach, you can always just fall back on the contingency plan of roleplaying more with less dice-rolling. Just, not how you said it.

*checks the DMG* Oh yeah, you're right. Even the DMG discourages role-playing and shifting the focus from powerbuilding to just playing a game, it simply says "Kill them all" and references to the Tarrasque in the MM. Huh. How silly of me.

[ravenkith]

@Bears:
It is the DMs job to create encounters that challenge the player's characters so that they can get experience to go up levels, while simultaneously telling an interesting story.

If there isn't a very real chance that the encounter will defeat the PCs, then it clearly isn't a challenge. If it isn't a challenge, then people, ranging from the DM to the players, will get bored.

If people get bored, they will want to do something else. I think we can agree that disinterested players is a bad thing.

When you have a munchkin player or even two of them, in a group of 4-6, it becomes very disruptive for the munchkin to continue unchecked. You either have to scale encounters to his power level, leaving the other characters feeling impotent and helpless, or else scale them to the level of the rest of the party, and watch them steamroller right over the opposition, leaving the other players disatisfied, as their characters may as well not even be along on the adventure if munchkin-boy can kill everything single-handedly.

If you want to avoid such problems, you can either ban such things from the outset, which works great.

But if you have a game in which you allowed something you shouldn't have, banning something after someones been working towards getting it for 5-10 levels is kinda like kicking a baby and taking it's candy: It leaves the munchkin unhappy, full of resentment and possibly feeling persecuted.

In those cases, it is far better to deal with the munchkin in-game: you created the monster, and you can create a way to bring him back to normal power levels, usually by taking the strong points of his build and turning them into weaknesses.

Every single example I've given has taken a specific instance of munchkinism and offered one or two ways of blunting said munchkinism in game.

Keep in mind that a lot of NPCs are going to have at least average intelligence: any of them should be capable of figuring out how to combat a particular tactic in short order, ESPECIALLY if they are a recurring villain, or the PCs are starting to get famous.

Word gets around. Competent bad guys in the area start thinking about what they'd do if they had to face the heroes in combat...logical choices are made, based on the tactics displayed by the heroes in previous encounters.

The thing about munchkin builds is that they tend to be very good at one thing and one thing only. Once the enemy knows about that thing, it makes sense for them to plan to counteract it.

This has the fortunate side effect of rendering the munchkin back to the level of a normal PC for the duration of said encounter. He no longer has the unfair advantage that he chose to try and exploit, because you've planned for it and taken it into account.

It at no time involves an argument/confrontation/etc. between the player and the DM.

It's strictly between the NPCs and and the PCs, and basically just involves nothing more than what the DM is supposed to be doing: creating encounters which are challenges.

In the case of the hulking hurler for example, all of his amazing uber, incredible power derives from his massive strength and his oversized weapon. Boulders, etc. like that have to be sculpted out of solid stone, as they rarely exist naturally (basically, they are not easily obtained). So: the source of the power is the oversized weapon: get rid of the weapon, and he has to pick up something 'normal' to fight with, or at least less 'broken'.

There are two ways to do that: counteract the weapon's presence by installing walls of force or otiluke's spheres (which ignore physical damage) or destroy it.

The walls of force allow you to leave his character some level of dignity and usefulness. Instead of being able to walk over the NPCs, he'll have to wait for someone to successfully dispel the spells in question before he can try to clobber the caster into next week with his big stone.

It also has the nice side effect of inspiring teamwork among the PCs.

The destruction option allows you to make a point. It says: "We all know how you get your power. Your power can be taken away quite easily. You have your power because the DM lets you. Behave."

This is less constructive, and skirts that line of confrontation you are talking about, so it shouldn't be done often, but would be a useful tool for bringing up short a player who is busy running roughsod over the campaign because he is indulging in a power trip.

It has the side effect of requiring the party to come to his aid and bail him out of trouble, making them feel important again, and restoring the damage to their ego the munchkin has done.

It's as simple as this: there are 5 people playing the game. One is a munchkin. He's having a great time. The rest of the players are unhappy -OR- there are five players in a game. One is a munchkin. He is unhappy. The other four are having a ball.

Mind you, as a munchkin, having a whole quest for the party centered around going and replacing whatever widget you had to destroy will probably make him feel much better...since for munchkins, the game is all about ego anyway.

Please note, I draw a fine line between powergaming (building the best character you can without abusing the rules) and munkinism (building the best possible character come hell or high water, and indulging in behaviour harmful or disruptive to the enjoyment of others at the game table).

[Neek]

The tone of your initial post made it sound like you'd just randomly create scenarios that would destroy the character's build, that's why there was any opposition at all to your suggestion, Ravenkith.

Ultimately, you shouldn't create scenarios to prey on the 'kins weakness alone, but create situations in which everyone has to pull an equal share of the weight--that includes having one pull less than he's used to--I get that now, but that wasn't exactly conveyed in your first post there.

[Kantolin]

I just note to my players that the build is a bit overpowered, and suggest they try something else.

This... this is such genius.

I've never... I don't know what to say. Wow. So there are other people that utilize this option? Wow...

^_^ Honestly people, from the sounds of it, you people frequently have players who are going out of their way to ensure that things aren't fun for people. Which could, admittedly, be the case... for me it's usually more like 'Hey, it'd fit my character if she could have [this]" "Well, that seems reasonable"... or possibly, "Gee, I just noticed at this level that I can cast this PHB spell. That's really cool!"

In which they result in being overpowered.

...so I just go chat with the person and fix this problem. We're friends, after all. Maybe if I'd like to debate over it, I'll mention it on Giants.

[LotharBot]

Be up front at the start of your game. I told all of my players "this is a team game. If you can't play within the team, I don't want you at my gaming table. That means don't go playing a chaotic evil backstabbing character unless the rest of the group is OK with it. Don't play an uber munchkin cheeze build unless the rest of the group is OK with it. And don't play a worthless character unless everyone is OK with it." Everyone agreed to this.

If munchkining starts to get out of control, remind that player of the agreement you all made at the start. Rely on them to keep themselves in check.

[Person_Man]

If you play gestalt, you're basically inviting power gaming. If you find that your players are too munchkinlike, try playing a normal campaign for a while.

[pestilenceawaits]

I play this way as well but one problem I have encountered is when you have one munchkin in the group and the rest are there to have fun and play cool builds you have to have a munchkin npc that can stand up to the PC munchkin but at the same time not get a tpk every time.

[Jack Mann]

You have a problem player? Identify the problem. Discuss it with them, and have them change the problematic aspects of their character. This fixes the problem.

If they refuse, then you don't want to play with them. Don't pull out a grudgemonster, don't arrange adventures just to spite them, just kick them out of the game. If you keep them in your game, it will make the game worse for everyone else. And once again, bad gaming is worse than no gaming.

[Ramza00]

I take this rule for granted. Additionally I believe in talking to the player. (though sometimes swift action is needed if talking doesn't work, if neccessary you act like a DM kill his player, and force him to restart)

Remember D&D is a cooperative game, it is only as fun for the group as it is for the person who is having the least amount of fun. Communicate and that will fix 90% of problems, for the other 10% a swift kick in the pants (figuratively), followed by you talking with him asking him are you going to act stupid again is usually enough to start most bad players on the path of learning how to be a good player.

[ravenkith]

Ok let's put it to you this way:

In a campaign I was playing in a short while back, the DM gave everybody hero points.

You could spend one per round, and they could only be used to affect your own dice.

The hero points, once spent, were gone forever.

But in spending them, when you were supposed to roll any die, you could instead set it to whatever number you desired.

Including natural 20s.

About midway through the adventure, we picked up a weapon that was supposed to be one of the original 'balor swords'. This weapon was essentially, for all intents and purposes, a vorpal sword, with a couple of other bonii. It wasn't sentient. Wasn't really anything way out of the ordinary, other than the prestige attached to it.

It was made clear that demons etc. would fight over it to possess it and that it could theoretically be used to start a war in hell, but that had nothing to do with the central plot.

Can you see the exploit?

Snicker-snack, indeed!

So, I figured it out. Then I told my friend, the party soulknife. The two of us hung on to that sword for two or three games, before we learned that a fang dragon happened to live nearby.

The two of us snuck off in the night (I was the party mystic theurge) to go and see the fang dragon, and kill it, we told the DM. He looked at us boggle-eyed, and said, "It's a great wyrm, y'know, I said that right? I was basically throwing it in for flavor,".

I said "Great". The DM looked puzzled. So we rolled up on the cave. I cast Truestrike and flew, silented, inside, while I sent a summoned dog ahead of us to catch the dragon's attention.

The dragon (being a fang) wasn't very bright and tried to eat the dog. It killed it almost instantly, but it bought us enough time to get into melee. I swung the sword, set the die to 20, and rolled to confirm with the true strike active.

The dm's jaw hit the flaw. He looked at the rules, his own as well as the books, and conceded, yes it worked that way. We killed a dragon. Easy.

We took the loot back to the rest of the party and split it and the experience with all of them. I put the sword away, and we spent the next 4 or 5 games coming up against all sorts of groups as opposed to single monsters. I never used the sword. I guess I was saving it for the right time.

Then I went to the DM, and volunteered to get rid of the sword for him, since it was obviously causing him to have to work harder by creating multiple monsters. I said, since it was technically evil, and thus, dangerous, I would put it in the care of the greatest cleric of my Goddess, Mystra, so it could be destroyed. He smiled, and agreed, we said that's what we were going to do, and erased it from my sheet.

It is possible to figure out, and possess, a game breaking combo without (ab)using it.

But most people who spend their time plotting and planning to find such combos will very rarely give them up voluntarily or easily.

If, on the other hand, I had sought out multiple dragons repeatedly and used that trick - I'd deserve everything I got.