My group has a 3.5e homebrew campaign running where the DMing rotates and I'm about to take my first attempt.
One of the other players is very experienced and has just said to me: "kill off my PC, he's power-gamed to the hilt and I haven't even bothered levelling up recently since he's so over powered...the party needs a cleric anyway".
Can anyone suggest anything I can do to challenge my player e.g. give him a specific (rubbish!) class to play, or make his life hard in some way. I think he'd like a challenge and I would collaborate with the player on it.
He was/is a level 10 psion/lurk wood elf, and the rest of the party is: a weretiger/some psionic class with a split personality, a pixie, a celestial trumpet archon,, some sort of fighter, and a ranger I think (it's been a long time since we played - I've ad a baby and real life intruded....)
So, any ideas on how to keep my player interested and challenged?
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There's this monster...called the Tarrasque....
Just kidding.
Seriously though, if your looking for something challenging, you could maybe try to do an adventure from one of the APs. Those were all very well done, and there are long lists of dead PC's on some of the threads. Just find an segment that is appropriate to their level and do some mods to make it stand alone.
There are also plenty other adventures in Dungeon that are really great. I think the last issue had a nice list of each adventure, the appropriate rules setting, the campaign setting, and the PC level.
My surgestion would be to speak to the other players. Were-Tiger? Pixie? Celestial? LA races are usally onl worth it if the player knows what he/she is doing, and I think it's unlikely -all- these players are using the LA races to their full potential. If the party were on more equal footing throwing higher CR monsters would make for a better challenge (but not one that will kill all the other PC's).
Also, one thing I noticed with Psionics, if you include most of the psionic infomation and have it as a main feature of the campaign the psionic stuff works better (Since many psionic powers, abilities, enchantments etc gain drain power points, harm other psionic creatures, and in general, provide a downside to being a psionic character). An NPC with a Psibane weapon, for instance, will likely tear that character in two. Or even throw a Psi-killer at them.
Also, in which areas does this player tend to dominate? If it's mostly in combat then up the level of non-combat situations where the other party members can contribute a little more. One thing to remember is that no matter how well built a character is, it always has flaws. Min-Maxing is just as it says, Maxing out some aspects but minimising others.
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Then tell this player who wants a challange to limit himself to the Player's Handbook, modified as your homebrew is. This means the main player races and classes. If you're feeling you need to restrict things more then you should remove Barbarian, Monk, and Sorcerer from the mix. Paladin, too, if you don't enforce that class' alignment rules strictly.
If he's wanting to be the team's healer, offer him this option; play a Druid without an Animal Companion and Spontaneous Summoning, replaced with the Healing Domain and Spontaneous Cure spells as a Cleric. Also require this character to revere a deity with the Healing domain instead of nature itself.
That's all I can think of at this moment, things are starting to get a little hectic and I have just this short span to post.
Suggest a (non-broken!) race or template with a high LA. That should keep him on his toes. Or 6ft. under, more likely. ;)
Or yeah, what Nero said.
I'm not sure how exactly you want to challenge the player and the group mix is kinda different as well, but how about a human cleric with the Vow of Non-violence who follows the god of love and is trying to teach others that there are other ways to resolve conflict.
Have the character encounter someone from his past. Not an old enemy, but a relative or such who wants revenge. Say said person has spent their life preparing to destroy the character.
Do you remember the 'Deck of Many Things' result 'fight a duplicate of your character'? If you prepare by asking the character to do the level advances he skipped, you can have the revenge be 'fight a higher level version of yourself'. A cursed card or token passed to the character could trigger the effect.
Advantages:
Clone with levels should take out original character and other players aren't involved in the battle (by the nature of the curse).
Other players can help in the fight by choosing the clones actions. Old character goes out in a big battle, proving just how badass he was.
Ties in with existing story line of campaign.
Also, new cleric can be encountered when party looks for explanation of the curse.
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and abunch of these posters want to
A. restrict his available material
B. start him in some strange race/class combo
C. Seeminly punish him for both being a powergamer, and dumb enough to be willing to give that up and do something that's good for the group
I don't think we're looking to punish this player or anything, he's stated point blank to the OP that he does not find his powergamed character as fun any more, as he doesn't even need to level up to compete, as well as stating that he wants a challenge; we're merely providing possibilities to do so. Without knowing the player in question, we're having to take broad strokes as to how to provide this challenge.
Can anyone suggest anything I can do to challenge my player e.g. give him a specific (rubbish!) class to play, or make his life hard in some way. I think he'd like a challenge and I would collaborate with the player on it.
Do you really want to get into an arms race with the player where you are constantly trying to restrict him enough to be 'balanced'? Will that be fun for you and the rest of the group?
I think this situation needs a verbal game contract.
Sorry to post and fun - had to give the baby some dinner (she has no sense of the importance of some things!) Thanks for all your thoughts guys, it's given me some good ideas.
Some more background:
- The nature of this campaign is that it's a bit of fun (hence the wierd classes and not at all balanced party) in between more serious campaigns.
- Not everyone has played every session (by design - we found we weren't gaming enough when trying to fit in around everyone's lives) so there is uneven character progression across the board. I think this guy played pretty much every session so far, which explains maybe why he didn't feel the need to level up recently.
I certainly don't want to take punitive action, like I said, it's meant to be fun and I want to include him in that. So, the session I have in mind will have challenges specifically aimed at each PC's strengths/abilities/interests since the more experienced players sometimes drown out the others. This gives me good scope to arrange an suitably exciting exit for this player.
Thanks!
Hi Ruth N. Here is what I would do...
1) Talk to your player as to why he wants the character to be nixed. Could he just be challenging you to TRY to kill is fantastic character? I don't know. Does he want to go out in a blaze of glory or would he want to retire him and have him as a possible contact for the PCs, effectively rewarding the player for showing up every game session, but not overly so. I would also thank him for being willing to play a cleric, but you should restrict him to certain spell sources. Not to punish him but because you have to be familiar with his spells also. I like PHB and spell compendium. Both are 3.5. and give lots of spells.
2) If you want to challenge a character you have to know their strengths and weakness. Just for you, I took a look at the lurk. Here is what I think... your lurk has an insanely high int. This works as a DC for augments, probably more than doubles his normal PP, and gives a huge bonus to initiative. Your player probably uses the augment-stun attack and then augments the DC. Here you need to limit him to his level as a maximum augment to the ability. Does it say that? No. Does it say a power cannot be augmented beyond one's level? Yes. On page 63 of the expanded Psionics Handbook. Even though it does not say the augment is limited it should work off the same principles as powers. I would stake a large sum of money that Bruce Cordell would agree. It might even be found in the errata. The same applies to "additional sneak attack", max 10 PP for additonal 5d6 sneak damage (remember this is only one attack) Next he should have only one 4th level power because at 9th level he has 9 max 3rd level and at 10th he has 10 max 4th level. Does he have one? If I was to guess what 4th level power he has it would be death urge. If so enforce the fact that he cannot augment the power because it is limited by his level (10) and to augment the power he would need to expend a minimum of 11 points.
The lurk's weakness is burning through PP and not having many to start with. (This is slightly mitigated by the insane int score) Here is how I would challenge him... give him plently of flunkies to take out. Preferably ones with good will saves. I suggest aberation, monstrous humanoid, or undead. Undead are not affected by compulsions so that negates many psionic powers and not affected by sneak attack damage either. Allow him to burn through his PP and then when the party decides to rest, attack with the leader, who happened to check on his minions and found many of them dead. A simple clairvoyance spell can do this and you would think an int enemy would check on his guards at least one/day.
I hope this helps.
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Concerning his exit plan: Is he a hardcore gamer? Do you think he's hardcore enough for this after adjustments for his level?
As for his new character, ever thought about Popeye Syndrome? Have him play a Commoner who can change to a set player class(like say, Barbarian) for a short amount of time. Could also take the Hulk route and make the change involuntary and dependant on certain stimuli.
Obviously I meant to say 'post and run' above....
Baramay - I think basically he's bored with his character, and feels like he's hit the limits with it.
Thanks for looking at the lurk stats, I think you're right about the PP issues, I've noticed that too during play. And is certainly something I can play on. I might give him the option of looking at limiting the augments etc, try and plan something to play on his weaknesses and then have a finale up my sleeve if towards the end he'd still looking like he'd want to retire his Lurk.
Mikaze - I like the popeye idea - I don't think we've ever had a similar situation before in our group.
A slightly humorous campaign, eh? Have you thought about having him spontaneously polymorph into a sm * rf?
Smurf!
What kind of character roll does he usually like to play? Tank? Blaster? Healer? Skill-Monkey? Buffer? Trumpcard? Mobile Artillery? Ambusher?
Maybe suggest a class/race combo that usually good for one kind of roll, and then suggest he try to make it into a different kind of roll.
For example, if he usually likes to play an ambusher type (rogue, scout, monk, etc.), suggest he play a warmage (blaster) that likes to get into melee (tank), using Chill Touch, Shocking Grasp, Fist of Stone, Vampiric Touch, True Strike, etc. for offense and Fireshield, Fireburst, Wall of Fire, etc. as an active defense.
Throw an Aleax or a mirror of opposition at him. Let him try his own medicine.
I once had a player with a really mighty paladin, and he was getting quite annoying with his character, specially for the other pCs. What I did is take his character and make an exact opposite, and antipaladin, same stats and items (evil of course) and made him his nemesis. Ofcourse with some subtle changes not to make him suspicious that he was confronting himself.
To date that has een the NPC he has been scare of the most. After that he learned a bit of humility and stopped boasting not to call too much attention.
Hmmm...If your party is resuming its campaign at the levels you mentioned before, why not start your power-gamer's character a couple levels behind the rest of the party? Eventually he will catch up, but in the meantime, he will have to be very crafty to be useful to the party (as well as stay alive!).