Power players

[TheWarBlade]

There is one in every group. We know and hate them. What do you do with your power-players?

[Yuki Akuma]

You first.

[TheAlmightyOne]

Is it power playing if my first choice of action when confronted with anything is to blow it up? I nearly killed our party cos I set fire to our guide through the mountains. Good times.

[horseboy]

Well, that depends on your definition of "power players". I don't consider any of my current players "power players". WotC, of course, would consider (at least) 2 of them "abusive".

[Khantalas]

No, I don't have a power player in my group. Everyone tends to make characters that supplement, no one-up, each other that waste about 30% of their resources when faced with an encounter that has an EL equal to their average level.

Secretly, you want my group.

[lord_khaine]

i dont hate them, i encurage people to take an actual interest in the game, and that kinda include making sure you can fill your role in the party.

[Spiryt]

I ussualy try to convice them that they are playing some, you know, character, person.

So he can't have just pure battle power abilities, composed to make good built not character. Especially if it makes no sense/ is completely climate/atmosphere screwing. Like rope trick or something. Something rather, rt isn't so good example, but i can't imagine something else at the moment.

But i have low charisma so I will probably fail.

[LotharBot]

My group doesn't have any true munchkins, but we do have a player who likes to have a powerful character, and knows just enough to be dangerous (but not enough to realize when he's crossed the line into cheese.) I just tell him "no" a lot.

I established guidelines when I formed this group: whoever is DM'ing gets to select the books that are available, and can veto things from outside books (or veto entire outside books.) The DM can also remove or rework certain spells etc. that are overpowered or just plain cheesy. It's expected that players and the DM will keep each other informed so that if the DM is planning to weaken something the player is planning to use, neither one gets surprised by it.

[Mr. Moogle]

*Gasps* This looks like a job for Jack-George, the Dragon-Bard!!!.
He is a gestalt Bard//Sorcerer who spevializes in Evocation spells, he and his +3 shocking Greatsword have killed many an enemy* and he has Fireballs to spare loced away in his mind

*(no joke, he was our Tank untill our cleric//druid reroled a warblade//dragon-shaman)

[draca]

Depends what you mean really.

One type of "power player" is just trying to maximize their fun by prescribing to the "more the merrier" theory of optimal role-play in regards to what they can do, and what they have.

Another type tries to use an overpowered character in order to monopolize the gaming session into their own personal glory-fest, relegating the rest of the players to side-kicks and groupies.

They both tend to churn out some pretty broken characters, (not always in a bad way) but the latter is a tad more annoying if everyone else in the group isn't having fun because they are taking up all the air int he room, so to speak.

If it's the latter, then I've found the best way to handle it is to tell them "Ok, you do that" whenever they try to take over the game with what their characters actions are. And then, immediately re-focus attention to the rest of the group. Don't go into detail; say that you are sure that Heverile the Babarian is quite capable of wrestling that terrasque all by himself, and let the action happen offstage. Give the other players time to play, and let him bask in his offstage glory.


*** Ok maybe that's a tad rude, but in the right circumstances it's a good compromise. ;)

[Dairun Cates]

It's really quite simple. Power players aren't necessarily bad if they know to keep it in some limits. The bad ones want all the attention on themselves. In this case, I simply choose to keep DM'ing things in a normal fashion and tend to throw in scenarios where they won't be as useful. At this point, they either get bored and leave, or realize that playing that character isn't fun and ask to make some more balanced changes.

The good power gamers, on the other hand, are an excellent tool for uniting a party, driving the plot, and keeping things focused.

[PinkysBrain]

Especially if it makes no sense/ is completely climate/atmosphere screwing. Like rope trick or something.

If you don't like ropetrick, teleportation, resurrection or whatever else usually comes up in these discussions just take it out ... it's really as simple as that.

[Rasumichin]

It's really quite simple. Power players aren't necessarily bad if they know to keep it in some limits. The bad ones want all the attention on themselves. In this case, I simply choose to keep DM'ing things in a normal fashion and tend to throw in scenarios where they won't be as useful. At this point, they either get bored and leave, or realize that playing that character isn't fun and ask to make some more balanced changes.

The good power gamers, on the other hand, are an excellent tool for uniting a party, driving the plot, and keeping things focused.

QFT.

Furthermore, wanting all the attention for yourself does not require an optimized build.
You can do this in a "roleplay-heavy" way, too, and with a character that is stats-wise complete crap.

It is not a PC's power that matters, it's wether his player is a socially incompetent jerk who does not understand that roleplaying is a group activity, not a one-man show.

Oh, and please spare the "i want characters, not builds" rhethoric, it's just plain wrong.
Stormwind fallacy and all that.

[Tellah]

There is one in every group. We know and hate them. What do you do with your power-players?

Maybe you hate them, but as a DM, I sure don't. I enjoy the process of optimizing characters, defining a character and building the strongest character I can within the limitations of his core concept. In fact, I do my best to encourage my players to use effective builds, because that means I can have fun building interesting and well-constructed NPCs.

What's so bad about enjoying the numerical, rules-intensive aspects of a game?

[Dr. Jones]

From the campaign I play in:

All of us are, to some degree or another, power players. We work together and roll up builds that complement each other, so that the party is very well rounded, and during character generation try to help each other maximize the potential of the characters we're working on. Certainly, no "real" (in the roleplay sense) party would just happen to form with a fighter, a cleric, a wizard, a rogue, and a ranger - and there was no recruiting done in the story, we just all "happened" to encounter one another. However, we (and our characters) accepted this occurrence as fiat, and our DM did his best to work these "chance encounters" into his story so as to avoid the clichéd tavern gathering.

However, this combination of characters indubitably leads to a challenge for our DM... even moreso since this is a gestalt campaign... as he has to throw increasingly difficult encounters and challenges at us to keep us from mowing down the opposition, without coming up with something so overpowered it simply mows us down in the process. As of yet though, none of us has escaped a battle unscathed, but thus far we've only had one party member die. This death was retconned out as we decided Save or Die sucks whether used by the DM or by players (the load-bearing boss used phantasmal killer and killed a perfectly healthy dwarven fighter in one shot, and then our wizard returned the favor, leaving nothing for the rest of us to fight).

I think the moral of my story is that if the DM understands how the players like to play, and the players are all mutually compatible, there isn't much of a problem, assuming the DM has the competence to adjust his campaign accordingly. We all have fun, and look forward to the next session, especially now that we don't have SoD spells to face - of course, this makes our combat all the more challenging, since we don't have SoD spells to whack bosses in a single shot either. It also helps that we all know it's just a game, and can laugh when the DM rolls three or four 1's in a row (such as "disposable enemies" trying to make the reflex save against a fatal fireball), or the gnome with the abnormally high reflex saves rolls a 1 on hers too.

[Miles Invictus]

There's nothing inherently wrong with powergaming. It's just another style of play, every bit as valid as roleplaying.

There is no problem until your particular style of play is disruptive to the game, and that problem is not exclusive to powergaming. Munchkins who build PCs that completely overshadow the party need to be reigned in, but so do the dramatists whose refusal to make effective characters screws the party over.

Players and DMs alike are responsible for making the game fun for everyone.

[LotharBot]

Just to be extra clear:

The issue is not with "power players". The issue is with players who are significantly more power-focused than the others in the group... the guys who, in a group with a healbot cleric, a blaster sorcerer, a TWF ranger, and a rogue/fighter, decide to play an IotSV from an off-race with a big INT bonus but they use LA buyoff and take irrelevant flaws to gain useful feats. Oh, and they own 3x more books than the rest of the players combined, and they're using all the best equipment from those books, and they have Leadership and their cohort is a master craftsman so everything costs half as much, but their cohort is also a cleric who uses divine metamagic persist and such.

If the whole group powergames to the same degree, there's no problem. The DM can adjust the game accordingly. But if one player's (expected or actual) power level is way out of line with the others, the DM has to be willing to step in and say "no, not allowed".

EDIT: Miles Invictus makes a great point: in a group with a divine metacheese user, an IotSV, a diplomancer bard, and a super-reach spiked chain tripmonkey, the guy who comes in and insists on playing an emo rogue who describes the color of his bootlaces in excruciating detail and took a bunch of ineffective feats and multiclassed and took cross-class skills "for flavor reasons" is just as much of a problem.

[horseboy]

There's nothing inherently wrong with powergaming. It's just another style of play, every bit as valid as roleplaying.

There is no problem until your particular style of play is disruptive to the game, and that problem is not exclusive to powergaming. Munchkins who build PCs that completely overshadow the party need to be reigned in, but so do the dramatists whose refusal to make effective characters screws the party over.

Players and DMs alike are responsible for making the game fun for everyone.

OMG! Like those bards that take puppetry for their performance and flap their hands like a sock puppet constantly in your face so they can keep their song bonus going. Those guy REALLY aggravate me.

[Gygaxphobia]

Frankly I always feel that characters disadvantages are more interesting than abilities and far better role-play hooks.
I very rarely want to game with super-heroes, but at least 'realistic' if not 'normal' people (and yes for this purpose my definition of realistic does include elves and wizards etc.).
I subscribe to the notion that role-playing is about putting yourself at a disadvantage to gain a character's perspective. But hey, whatever floats your airship.

[nerulean]

We have two different kinds of power player in our group, both differently annoying.

One is a min-maxer. Now, I have nothing whatsoever wrong with that in and of itself, and in fact occasionally claim the title myself, but this chap apparently defines his own personal worth on how good his character is and stomps and whines and complains when he isn't the most powerful character in the group. He often is far more powerful than anyone else, which leads to the DM throwing something into every encounter deliberately to stop him wasting everything by himself, which causes him to stomp and whine and complain because he isn't waltzing through everything as quickly as his broken build ought to let him.

He makes the game less pleasant for everything else mechanically, because he isn't happy unless he's statistically the best. No one likes being consistently outshone in every single situation, but he doesn't like being outshone ever by anyone at anything. Clearly, either he's happy or everyone else is, and in a group of six players it's fairly easy to guess which of those two options the DM will go for.

Our other power player fits the description without ever having a better-than-average character. Heck, she's played a pacifist in a battle-heavy game before. What she needs to be happy is to always be the centre of attention, which naturally doesn't gel well with everyone else. When faced with a plot, a plan or a puzzle that is clearly meant to challenge the whole group, she goes away and comes up with a scheme involving only herself that might just lead to success if she was the sole important character in an anime aimed at nine year old girls, but that any amount of common sense can obliterate into tiny shreds.

She causes problems by ruining everyone else's good ideas through sheer force of stupidity. If stealth is called for, she'll show herself and make a song and dance about it. If careful planning is the order of the day, she'll rush right into something. I've seen her characters die more than anyone else's, because eventually even our kind DMs couldn't come up with any more excuses to save her rear.

[Matthew]

Lack of definition making no sense. Um, some 'Power Players' are good and some are bad. The bad ones are generally the ones who sacrifice established facts about their Character for more pluses for no reason other than the Player wants more pluses. They are the sort who view D&D as a competition between them and everybody else and are in it to win it. Chances are they are bordering on being a Munchkin (cheating). Good 'Power Players' seek to make the game more fun for everyone by understanding the capabilities of their Character (and other Characters) and using them to create a good play experience agreeable to the play style of the group.

What do I do about them? Well, the first kind of person is usually spotable from a mile away, so I don't invite them to the game (usually they are not the sort of people I want to be friends with anyway). The second kind of person I welcome to the game.

[Damionte]

There's nothing inherently wrong with powergaming. It's just another style of play, every bit as valid as roleplaying.

There is no problem until your particular style of play is disruptive to the game, and that problem is not exclusive to powergaming. Munchkins who build PCs that completely overshadow the party need to be reigned in, but so do the dramatists whose refusal to make effective characters screws the party over.

Players and DMs alike are responsible for making the game fun for everyone.

Bravo !

I am the 'power gamer" in our group. Or at least as far as our group is concerned. That being I am an optimizer. I am just as annoyed.. hell I am even more annoyed with the "character actor" in our group. Who has a ton of fun playing fatally flawed characters.

Where we come into conflict is that he doesn't think i can roleplay because I like to be effective. He feels the only way to do it is to be the suffering hero. The problem he has with me is that I am much more effective than he is. to the point that many times he doesn't really need to be there.

At the same time my problem is that he makes his characters so hero challenged that they're a detriment to the group.

He wants to play the challenged everyman hero, who despite the odds overcomes challenges anyway. Unfortunately he can't always do that with me there overcoming my half of the challenge as well as taking up his side of the slack. He ends up being my sidekick. Which really isn't fun for him.

I like super heroic heroes. The herculean forgotten realms type heroes. The ones who take on world shattering baddies before breakfast.

We sometimes have trouble meeting in the middle. I tend to win out simply because we're not the only ones in the party. It's a 7 man party, so even those who are not pimped out are still out shining him. He's just lost in the background.

[fortebraccio]

You should not judge a player by the numbers written on his character's sheet.

[Quietus]

For those of you who consider yourselves "Power gamers", but in the good way - have any of you considered sitting down with these "Method gamers" who insist on playing a gimped version of something in a game where that clearly isn't going to pass? If their problem is in covering their end of the shtick, then maybe if you speak to them privately and work with them to make their fluff and crunch both compatible AND usable, it might turn out a better game overall?

Just my 2 coppers.

[0oo0]

Lothabot, what does IotSV stand for?
There should be a dictionary for all the acronyms and the like that get thrown around these boards

[Just Alex]

I do it simply. I ban the uber-cheese like Planar Shepard wish tricks, the infinity gate, celerity/timestop, Pun-Pun, etc. Then let the game start flying. I can fairly easily set up situations that let any player shine, regardless of other players skills. Drama queens (or another, less pc word) can take a hike, as far as I'm concerned. If someone intends to disrupt the game, then rocks fall, they die. If someone insists on pulling celerity/timestop tricks, fine, all monsters start showing up with Ride Along Timestops, Plane Shifts, and Greater Teleports. There's a line in the BS, and I don't put up with players that feel some sort of indignant right to cross.

[Raum]

what does IotSV stand for?
There should be a dictionary for all the acronyms and the like that get thrown around these boards

Initiate of the Seven Veils. There is a Common Acronyms thread...have no idea if the PrCs are listed in it though.

[Arbitrarity]

I'm our resisdent powergamer. I may not have as many books as is usable, but I make do with excerpts, borrowing, and other methods.

Sometimes I need it, sometimes I don't. In one adventure I ran a 1'st level warforged artificer with adamantine body. I tried for flaws, but couldn't get them past. 21 AC at level one is t3h funny. Then we did something involving a homebrewed railgun, large quantities of metal bolts, and Bane: Humanoid (human). The railgun disappeared due to quantumn mechanics.

Another game (longer), I'm playing a bard. Going into the 3.0 Virtuoso, as none of use have CAdv, and the excerpt is on the WoTC site. My bard is actually handy, as this game involves quite a bit of social interaction. While a beguiler would be better, it doesn't fit very well. Clerics are totally out, as all the clerics in town died early on. After negotiating with a major enemy, actually using countersong and fascinate, and a few skills (no cheesed out diplomacy here ), the bard's been pretty good, although so-so in combat. He's using a dagger-whip . I tried to go for Sublime Chord, but it was disallowed . This game, the DM mixed in some IH aspects. Everyone gets to use skill groups, as related to class (as a bard, I'm using Thief groups. I could try to argue for a few more, but that's silly). One of the players is using a Hunter.

Now, on relative cheese, a new DM tried to run a 16'th level arcane caster only campaign. Bad things happened. (What!?! That's CR 21! How'd you...?!).

Actually, what's annoying is probably the most optimized non full caster I played was a fighter. But I have ToB now . Karmic strike, combat reflexes, leap attack, shock trooper.... spiked chain. That fighter.

For the most part, we're pretty moderate in power terms. At one point, I got banned from using books outside core (No. Your lvl 8 fighter is NOT supposed to defeat a CR 15 sorceress. Even if her CON is low, and you got a surprise round.)

[MeklorIlavator]

Well, if you asked my group, they would most-likely say that i am the "power player", because I often give optimizing advise, and my characters are generally effective, and can be more effective than anyone of the other character. For instance, I dealt more average damage than the Primary tank. I was a Warlock/Cleric/Theruge, and my attack was dealing 3d6 normally, but with eldrich glaive it rose to 6d6(I could attack twice using the essence), and I could heal with the Healing blast(a special ability of the class). This is without a good choice of feats(Imp. Initiative, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Practiced Spellcater, Weapon Finess), or use of items. Yet, I shown because of the sub-optimal builds( the primary tank, an Incarnate, had a d6 HD and 1/2 BAB), which were chosen largely for what I like to call the "Ohh!!! Shiney" factor. It like when someone is given a choice between 2 things and choses one over the other based on a prominent, but largely irrelevant feature. I'm not saying flavor doesn't matter, as I count that among the relavant features, more like the monks immunity to disease.

[0oo0]

Initiate of the Seven Veils. There is a Common Acronyms thread...have no idea if the PrCs are listed in it though.

Why so there is, I should look harder (in an obvious spot too) before I say anything. Thanks though