DND 5E Powergaming – How to Deal with an Overpowered Player with High Stats

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I've recently started a new D&D 5e campaign that is mainly roleplaying focused. One of my players is playing a barbarian gnome, and rolled all of their stats… and got a 25 for strength (and 18's and 19's for all other stats). The party is level one. When I asked if they could reroll/balance their character, they said it "didn't work" without it. I want to make the fights balanced, and I can't give any of my players loot at the moment.

The table was using Standard Array stats; problem player used 4d6 stats + racial modifications (according to them). Don't know how they got the 18, 19, etc. though.

Best Answer

They misunderstood the rules for score generation.

Step 3 of the rules for step-by-step character creation tell you how to determine your ability scores:

Roll four 6-sided dice and record the total of the highest three dice on a piece of scratch paper.

To get numbers like you describe in the question, they must have missed the bit about dropping the lowest value die from each 4d6 roll.

So just ask them to reroll their stats using the correct method. Those are the rules. If their build "doesn't work" without horribly overpowered ability scores, that's tough, but they will get over it. Everyone else at the table will have more fun because everyone will be playing by the same rules.

Alternatively, you might consider allowing everyone else at the table to reroll their ability scores without dropping the lowest die from each 4d6. I generally would not recommend this solution to most DMs, as it can make balancing combat even more difficult and eliminates Challenge Rating as a useful tool for balancing encounters, but if you are an experienced DM who has run some tier 3 and higher games (party level 11+) where primary and secondary ability scores tend closer to 20 anyway, you might consider it.

Either way, the important thing here is that everyone builds their characters using the same rules. That is the only way to keep things even close to fair and balanced.