[RPG] How to deal with a player that HAS to play niche, difficult, homebrew classes

dnd-5ehomebrewproblem-players

I'm a new DM, with a group of new players. I am the most experienced of the group, but mostly from watching Critical Role. There is a player in my group who multi-classed two homebrew classes; Witch Hunter and Dragon Slayer. Adding insult to injury he didn't prepare at all, and what he did know was overpowered stuff. So we said, look, find a different, simpler class and now he's a half-devil (specifically not a tiefling however) hellblazer.

It's mostly a difficulty of familiarity. When he played the dragon slayer class, he reeled off spells that were overpowered and because they are technically in the list I suppose he could very well use them but I think the difficulty there is obvious. Essentially he is asking a new DM to work without any real rule guides; he wants to be a half-devil but there's no race information for me or him to look over, not to mention how difficult it's going to be for him in cities and stuff.

What should I do to control this situation before I kill either him or myself?

Best Answer

Your world, your rules

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, the DM is the one deciding which home-brew rules, if any, the group is going to use. The DM always has final say. So if you feel that you cannot properly handle his home-brew classes, you need to tell him so. Especially if you are new at this. Tell him he can't do it.

Which brings me to my next point

Talk to your players

You can't solve any problem with your players if you don't communicate. Talk to this guy, tell him you're not going to allow him to play home-brewed classes. And tell him why. Let him know that you're new at this and you don't have time to research all of these strange classes. Tell him that you'd rather play vanilla classes so you can get the hang of DMing. Limit him to the PHB, it's got everything he needs. He should be able to find something fun out of the original classes.

Finally, he seems like the type of player that likes to be creative in his builds. This is fine, but you need to let him know where the line is and both of you need to understand that there are going to be some disagreements on some of the rules. The best thing for him to do is to just do as you say. Sessions are always 10 times more fun if people aren't arguing all the time, even if someone has to bite their tongue. The best thing for you to do is remain firm, but fair. Remember, this player isn't doing this to spite you (hopefully), he is just trying to have fun. Remind him that you're a player too, and you're trying to have fun creating and running a world for the players and you can't do that with all these extra rules. I would also let him know that maybe down the road, you might be experienced enough to deal with home-brew classes, but right now you'd prefer things to be vanilla.