[RPG] do to prevent a player from breaking the game

balancednd-3.5epowergamingproblem-players

Several of my friends are starting a game pretty soon, and one of the players is a great guy, and fun to play with EXCEPT, he plays with the objective of optimization, while everyone else plays much more casually. He knows his stuff, and is always cross referencing books, and sometimes that can be a good thing, but he tries to make his character as overpowered as possible. I haven't played with him in about 4 years, but back then, I was typically the DM, and even when I tried to tell him he couldn't do something, he typically was able to defend it by proving it was within the rules of the game. Of course, being the DM, I could have just told him I wouldn't allow it, or killed off his character or something, but he was usually right. To be fair, if I could find that it broke a rule, or if I really put my foot down, he'd comply, and was good natured, but I always felt that I was treating him unfairly since I never told anyone else that they had to change their character. I'm not DMing this first game, but we usually rotate, so I suspect I will soon (especially since I was the default DM in the past). Not sure if this is relevant, but we are playing online (for geographical reasons), and starting at level 5. He tends towards druids and clerics.

Although I understand that playing the optimization game is perfectly valid, it isn't a good fit for our gaming group, as he tends to overshadow the more casual players and is not driven by the same goal.

That said, what can I do, both as a player and Dungeon Master to keep him from over-optimizing (i.e. overpowered character builds), derailing the plot, and other general mischief?

To be more specific, his goal in the game is typically to see how much he can get away with. His MO is:1) to find ways to make characters that do tons of damage, and are difficult to damage back, and 2) to try to find his way around plot points, which puts the DM in the uncomfortable position of improvising major plot points.

Examples:

  1. He was playing a cleric, and everyone else was expecting him to be support, healing, etc. Instead he built a tank that was doing more damage than the Warblade, or the barbarian, and was using his healing on himself, so he never dropped more than 75% HP.
  2. While the rest of the party was still in combat, he entered a room which I had intended for the entire party to enter at once. The person in this room had valuable information about the quest, but after learning that information, he promptly killed the NPC, leaving him as the only one with this knowledge.

What is a good motivator for a player like this to work well with the party and actually try to achieve the goal of the campaign?

Best Answer

Here're the basics:

  1. Have the player sandbag. Explain to the player that his optimized PC makes DMing too difficult. The problem isn't that the player's winning—the DM, after all, has infinite monsters—but that the player's character is overshadowing the other players' characters. Strongly urge the player to pick a character class 1 to 2 tiers lower than the class of the highest or lowest tier PC.
  2. Have the player optimize other PCs. The player may be expecting other players to design characters of similar stature. However, other players may have different strengths and priorities beyond character optimization. But if he and the other players agree, it's reasonable to have the optimizer make other players' characters for them, putting them all on the same metaphorical level. The DM'll have to adjust challenges appropriately, however.
  3. Avoid conflict and suffer. Steel yourself to spending an inordinate amount of time customizing encounters for a single self-absorbed murder-machine and his party of lickspittles. During play, fudge die rolls to keep alive the lickspittles while still challenging the murder-machine. I advise against this, but it is an option. Good luck.

Now that those're out of the way.

Encourage the player to optimize his character for tasks other than monster-killing

Although this isn't an obvious path for a character to take in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, such a character can be a interesting experiment when played by an experienced, squeeze-every-ounce-from-the-system player.

It's extremely easy to make a 3.5 character who can kill anything. It's much harder, for example, to make a character who can steal anything or heal anything. Explain to the player that everybody knows he can already play a character who can murder the campaign world and that playing that again wastes his talents. Have him turn his eye to little used subsystems, oft-ignored fringe mechanics, and seemingly-hard-to-optimize game elements.

Bear in mind, though, that he will use whatever he specializes in to try to solve every problem. Currently, this isn't that big of a deal—killing monsters solves a lot of problems—, but, if the specialty is extremely obscure, group cohesion and, subsequently, the campaign may suffer.

Tom the Dancing Bug is awesome.

Mandate group cohesion

If the character is forced through mechanics or story to care about his fellow PCs, he should stop charging into rooms alone and murdering information-spouting NPCs.

Have him designate another PC as his brother, sister, childhood friend, lover, confessor, ward, or something, and tell him his character cares about that person deeply. If this a party of random murderhobos who met in a bar and decided to go camping forever, maybe the gods, fate, or prophecy binds them, and breaking that bond means Certain Doom.TM

The player needs a reason for his character to keep associating with these characters who are so obviously beneath him, and the player won't give his character this reason unless there's a mechanic that makes his character better because his character has that reason.1

Developing that reason, then, becomes the DM's job. The player probably won't like this mandate as it makes his character vulnerable in a way that mechanics can't usually minimize, but once the player starts engendering some goodwill from the other players by optimizing his character's ability to keep his friends alive and get along with the group in addition to his character's ability to kill faster (although, admittedly, that, too, can keep his friends alive), the player may have a more enjoyable experience playing that character than playing his typical brooding, uncaring lone wolf who only looks out for himself.

Note

I GMed for the win-at-any-cost player for a decade. It's trying but does improve one's GMing skills. I've GMed the player—the same player—who thought the game would be better as a solo campaign and saw him come around to the idea of group cohesion after mandating it before the campaign began. Since I put forth that mandate in that campaign, I've done the same, to lesser and greater extents, in every campaign after. There's power to be had in saying A character who can't get along with the party isn't in the party and ending the conversation. Does saying…

  • that the three months spent in a life raft created between the characters unbreakable bonds that will last the rest of the characters' lives, or
  • that the characters' shared affection for their homeland despite their differing alignments unites them against common enemies, or
  • that the royal family plucked the characters from obscurity to employ them as troubleshooters therefore the characters owe the royal family their unwavering service

…remove some agency? Sure. But, afterward, you can play the game. Role-playing games are (usually) cooperative affairs, and a player thinking his deliberately obstructionist, shenanigans-pulling character is acceptable makes the game a drag.


1 For this same reason, I strongly suspect all his characters but those needing to be otherwise are that least vulnerable of all the alignments, True Neutral.