Op characters are boring and miss the whole point of the game. Flavorful characters that have a real chance of dying is what makes DND fun.
Flavorful characters can be quite OP in their specific area of expertise (no pun intended) and bad at other stuff.
Why do we always need to pretend that it’s one or the other?
You can see it in the Stardust Crusaders arc on Jojo. Jotaro is truly OP but most of the fights his raw power isn’t really what’s needed to beat the villain of the week.
I concur with the other poster to make the encounters more like a puzzle. Maybe make the bad guys know how the OP characters operate after a couple of encounters and they set up a trap to incapacitate if the OP character keeps doing what they’re doing.
The possibilities are endless.
This is the stormwind fallacy
Very interesting, now roll a [dump stat] save.
If they’re actually powergaming, the likely answer is: “No, I’m immune.” Or: “okay, with my buffs, I get to add +200 to this.”
Usually, but then you take a closer look and thats a magic item or some frankenstein stack of spells or both. So my encounters feature creatures with anti-magic fields and silences. Unless you allow some homebrew monstrosity (or a wizard if you’re playing 3.5) you should be able to design encounters that manage a challenge. Its my world, Mr Anderson.
Mmm, psionics, Shadow Weave Magic, Initiate of Mystra.
A min-maxed character is one with dumpstates and weaknesses. A powergamed character is one with fewer weaknesses than a ‘normal’ character. Anything that can challange an OP build will wipe the floor with a party of ‘standard’ characters.
It’s pretty difficult to build a 5e powergamed character without homebrew or playtest content. I’ve genuinely never seen a build I’d consider so wildly out of whack from the rest of the party, even concepts people have made, and even then, they require specific magic items.
I’d just give character targeted magic items to the weaker players to bring them to the powergamers par, while rewardinng them with socially interesting magic items then sharpen the teeth to my monsters a little.
Chronurgy Halfling Wizard with Lucky and Silvery Barbs
True, but what encounter are you designing? If I’m allowing a powergamed character in there I plan for it. Intelligent and powerful creatures target them with just as many tricks up their sleeves. These powerful beings aren’t alone, and their posse attacks the rest of the party. In my opinion, it is very doable. Though it might get boring always having a Kaiju fight while the rest of the party is doing normal party stuff. The games I have allowed powergaming, the powergamer has always been the first one bored with the campaign.
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I mean, it’s a bad solution, but it’s not exactly a bad take in response to the post. It’s very true that a DM can easily match what ever OP thing the player wants to pull, so a pompous little shit trying to ruin the game getting a slap is very much not out of line.
Just because there are far better solutions doesn’t make the entire take bad.
Idk the “Shadow Link” solution is pretty great all around. There is nothing more fair than matching someone at their own game and challenging them to think creatively to best it.
Eh, disagree. Unless everyone is power gaming to the same degree (which can be fun!), an OP character being adequately challenged will probably result in all the other players feeling irrelevant.
I mean… personally I’d feel more irrelevant if there was an OP dude in the party while everyone else was just an average player. But overall? If you have a shitty DM, maybe people could feel irrelevant but balancing a game is just part of the job for a DM. There are plenty of situations I can think of off the top of my head where you can actually empower the other players by having threats that they need to overcome to save the “OP character”. Or situations in which the OP character has to hold stuff back while the other PCs are dealing with other stuff.
A challenge should be tailored to the party, true, but the party is made of individuals. You have to play to ALL of their strengths and weaknesses. Focusing on just the OP will fuck over everyone else and ignoring him will fuck over everyone else.
My character is such a moron it’ll break your campaign
I fear no power gamer, but that thing… That thing scares me.
The real question is: how do you make combat balanced for both the OP gun wielding monk that dishes out 70 damage a round at lvl 7, and the two new people at the table that are lucky to get 15 damage in and are starting to feel a bit overshadowed?
Based on a true story
Magic items that are more useful for the beginners. So in this case… magic weapons that aren’t monk weapons, spell scrolls, holy water, armor, etc.
Chronomancer wizards – let me try anyway…
L10 Chronomancer wizard enters the room, winks, and five L4 concentration spells, and one L5 concentration spell happen simultaneously (requires just under an hour of prep, L10 feature, catnap spell, a lot of spell slots (11 L3 or higher), and a bunch of familiars).
DM: dafuq
L15 Chronomancer wizard enters the room, winks, and burns three legendary resistances and forces a failed save, autokilling the BBEG.
DM: ah, but that’ll be four points of exhaustion!
Chronomancer: (shrugs) I magic jarred into this critter who is immune to exhaustion and can now force anyone to fail at any time without recourse.
DM: dafuq?
Ok cool. You accend to godhood and become God of lonewolf badass pedants. See you next week.
Everyone else that actually showed up to play this final game for fun, the “BBEG” was just his main minion, the real BBEG is auto summoned here when he dies. What do you do?
Meow
My struggle is when we level and a player’s weird multi-class build (that was once super situational) suddenly clicks and they’re everywhere on the map all at once and/or doing crazy damage and/or employing super strong crowd control. SuripiseOP can really screw up my planning.
