Powergaming

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1. Talk to the player. That's the most direct, "robust" thing you can do, and it's hardly worth suggesting anything else. Tell him your concerns, and if he's a reasonable person, he will either amend himself or will listen to other possible solutions. If not, you are dealing with a person who will be a problem beyond powergaming, and you're better without them.

2. Make their character yourself. Ask them for general ideas, but handle the detaiIs yourself. If your player doesn't trust you enough to make a character with their best interests in mind, then there's going to be problems further down the road.

3. Get over the idea of "shooting down everything that seems too 'powerful' takes the fun out of the game for both myself and my players", because you can't simultaneously entertain the idea that powergaming is bad and that the fun of the game is inherently tied to how powerful your character is. Just have him make his character, and be direct about what you think is too powerful in the game, and remind everyone that just because its in the printed rules does not mean its absolutely balanced.

Honestly if you have to be pressured into running a game, don't run games. DMs need to run games because they want to, you'll already be a problem enough without power gamers.

>>52199678
Give him worse magic items depending on just how much more powerful he gets compared to other players.

>>52199678
>>52199890
As this anon said, just talk to him. Discuss expectations for the game and your concerns. If he's intending to optimize or try to break the game to a level that would negatively impact the enjoyment of both the other players and you, then clearly that's not good. Either he chooses to take it a bit easier, or he finds another game.

Also, don't run a game if you don't want to. These things require love.

5e is pretty much impossible to break if you disallow multiclass, feats and variant humans (all explicitly optional rules).

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>>52199678
Just a suggestion, maybe you could also challenge him to play the party support character? I'm not saying to tell him to healslut, but there's a way of playing a wizard where you don't take any blasting spells (fireball and the like) and instead focus on enabling the other players and controlling the battlefield. The guy who wrote a guide called it the "God wizard" for its similarity to the hands off attitude of mythological deities. It's a play style that involves a great deal more strategy than just pointing at the enemy and saying they die, and also lets the other players think they're relevant.

>>52199678
I have a solution similar to what >>52201178 is suggesting.

Issue a challenge to the player. Now, the gentleman quoted above is referring to casters and is certainly correct in his statement.

However, the power gamer in question could potentially be pushed further. There are classes that are considered weak and low tier. I suggest you challenge the power gamer to play as one of those classes and push it to its absolute limit.

Encourage the power gamer to do his thing, but challenge him to do it with what amounts to a handicap.

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I've got the same problem in my game. Or I should say "problem" because I kinda really like where it's going, but basically I'm running my first game as a DM in the Dark Sun setting using a pretty good homebrew players handbook someone made for it, and using a lot of material from 3.5 and 4E.

Basically one of my players is a huge Dune fan which is why we got into the setting in the first time. He's rolling an Elf Psion and ever since I mentioned the Orwellian-like city to the north which is run by giant obsidion constructs, he's decide he wants to become an all-powerful obsidion orb himself. This of course is a long way away yet if he actually pursues this path, but I've already introduced the Orbs of Kalid-Ma into the story. https://dark-sun-games.obsidianportal.com/wikis/orb-of-kalid-ma

They came across a Minotaur weilding one of the orbs when they were investigating the cause of consistent nightmares in a nearby town. The thing is, the Minotaur was meant to be able to absolutely decimate the party if they tried to fight, but with a bit of craftiness they managed to obtain the orb and mortally wound the Minotaur. Now I'm wondering how the orbs should actually be used. The orb they have is the orb of protection so I had the idea that our low-level psion with a proficiency in medicine could make a psionics check to control the orb, then a medicine check the direct the orb over an area of injury. It would then heal 1D6 health on the target but subtract the same amount from the caster. When they become more proficient with the orb they may be able to use it to boost their psionics in battle, but I'm not sure how to utilize it so our psion isn't too OP when it scales, at least compared to the rest of the party.

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Absolutely disallow Green Flame Blade, hard ban, no negotiating.

>>52199678
Use a better system.

>>52199678
Tell him it's going to be all about combat and dungeon crawling and then BAM diplomacy campaign.

>>52199678
Sometimes it's fun to make the most out of what you've got, but it's pretty boring to just run with all the obviously most powerful options. That puts the game on easy mode. So when I want to powergame, I tend to choose a weak option (two-weapon fighting in a game where that's generally an inferior way to go) but then try to get the most out of it I can. Maybe you could convince the guy to do something like that, then at least the effect of his powergaming would be counterbalanced somewhat.

>>52199678
Not going to be a huge problem in 5e unless he uses obscure homebrew shit. All he's going to do is metagame when he can and play a style that will feel exciting to him but be boring as shit to all of the other players.

>>52199678

Run RAW and you won't have to worry about it. The closest thing that 5e has to "powergaming" are bullshit builds that don't actually work and the company/designers will happily explain why.

>>52203548
If the dude is a powergamer he's not going to be clever enough to talk and negotiate around the rules anyway. If you're really worried about someone exploiting a 5e game you need to watch out for the fuckers who beef CHA and go all out Bard or Rogue/Mastermind.

>>52201617
One way would be to look at various magic items, and then let the psion "unlock" similar powers in the orb whenever it'd be power level suitable for him to obtain such magical items. Even better if there's a number of items with a suitable effect of increasing potency, in which case the orb would just go from being a re-skinned "minor belt of mindrape" to "belt of mindrape" to "major belt of mindrape" and so on when suitable.

Don't play D&D.

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>>52199890
>If your player doesn't trust you enough to make a character with their best interests in mind, then there's going to be problems further down the road.