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Hi all,
I wanted to get some opinions on a situation I have as a GM. I have a great group of Role players and are competent at building their characters But I have one player, Although a great Role player himself Optimizes his character (within the rules) so well that in fights he just breeze trough the challenges while the others are appropriately threatened/challenged.
How do I make the game challenging for Him with out killing the rest of the group?
No player is an island. He's got to have a weakness - Will save, Fort save, ranged attacks. Are you saying this guy can be surrounded with multiple-flanking bad guys and still come out on top?
The best way I've seen is design encounters that are really tough but play up the strengths of the other characters. This only works if you competent built characters with optimized one. If you have completely unoptimized character with fully optimized one you will have issues.
Like if you have druid in the group, make sure there is tons of difficult terrain for the druid to pass through with woodland stride. Give a rogue lots of concealment to use their stealth with. It can be difficult depending sometimes finding those strengths but if you do find them that helps a lot in dealing with the problem.
Hi all,
I wanted to get some opinions on a situation I have as a GM. I have a great group of Role players and are competent at building their characters But I have one player, Although a great Role player himself Optimizes his character (within the rules) so well that in fights he just breeze trough the challenges while the others are appropriately threatened/challenged.
How do I make the game challenging for Him with out killing the rest of the group?
It really depends on the character. As the above posters mentioned, no one character can be good at everything.
What tactics does he employ and what kind of challenges does he breeze through? You don't necessarily need to make things harder, just change the types of encounters occasionally.
If he's happy with the challenge level (easy) and the other players are happy with the challenge level (difficult), then I wouldn't do anything.
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thanks for the ideas, its not specifically a Pathfinder problem Yet ((will be running pathfinder once i know the rules better :> )
I especially like the idea of throwing the spotlight on other players hear and there in a fight, giving them some sort of specific advantage suitable to their character
But it might be My problem i guess, all the other players seem happy, i just hate to get rolled over on hehe I
We just did a part ouf our campaign wherethe Dm set things up where all the PC's would get their own special deal. Basically it was a ziggaraut that was a bit like a rap once you killed the first guardian that person couldnt leave and as more guardians Died the people who had allready killed a guardian got a NL.
There was stuff written on the walls about all having to make a sacrafice and it ment our strongest pc's ended up with NL first and by the time we got deeper in it ment the others got to do their thing. The Second to last encounter was a mirror match with our least optimized player and an oponent of the same clas setup.
the concept worked really well and pasing to the final encounter required our least omptimized character to pass a challenge to save the day.
If none of this made sense it was a bit complicated :P
Negative level.
Negative level.I see. That DOES sound like a fun game.
yeah for the final final fight my lvl 6 barbarian had 5 negative levels. (becasuse i had killed the first Guardian, the Next person had 4 NLS for killing the second guardian and so on.
Apparently for the curse of the place if any of us had died with these We would return as the Guardian for the spot we defeated.
The painful part was when we realized each of us had to defeat a guardian and our Oracle of life with absolutelty no combat feats or spells had to club a gnome bard to death after casting silence in a room.
There were alot of traps with rotating rooms or a maze with sliding walls all designed to temporarily seperate people for the rest of the group. Essentially the DM based on personality experience with the characters New which PCs were likely to try and interact with which situation.
It mostly worked Though anticipating player intent can sometime be hit or miss.
But it might be My problem i guess, all the other players seem happy, i just hate to get rolled over on hehe I
I can understand that. :-)
Don't be afraid to toss in something that specifically challenges that PC every once in a while (e.g. if he's an archer, try a fight in a windy area).
What I don't like is the idea that being well-prepared or using good tactics actually makes your life harder because the DM starts throwing tougher and tougher encounters at you. I've had that happen in the past and it was a turn-off for me. Hopefully you can avoid that with your players.
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But it might be My problem i guess, all the other players seem happy, i just hate to get rolled over on hehe II can understand that. :-)
Don't be afraid to toss in something that specifically challenges that PC every once in a while (e.g. if he's an archer, try a fight in a windy area).
What I don't like is the idea that being well-prepared or using good tactics actually makes your life harder because the DM starts throwing tougher and tougher encounters at you. I've had that happen in the past and it was a turn-off for me. Hopefully you can avoid that with your players.
Absolute;y!, Id rather it be an easy encounter than have the appearance of picking on him. in on game he is also the repair expert and he hand to stop an engine from exploding while the other PC's had to actually fight.
Be careful with exploiting weaknesses as it can lead to an arms race with the PCs to cover up those weaknesses.
For example: The PC's fighter has a low will save? Have him fail more than one will save in an encounter and you will have that PC doing everything they can to make sure it doesn't happen again.
This could be bad for a couple of reasons. First if it is just the one PC who does this now you will have to find a different weakness that he has...or worse, he no longer has any known weaknesses and is practically a god among men. Second, since your other PCs are not optimized they will fall further behind trying to overcome what they now believe is going to be the standard for encounters in your game.
This is all just what could be and doesn't necessarily mean it will happen, but in my experience it has happened more often than not.
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thanks for the ideas, its not specifically a Pathfinder problem Yet . . .
It sounds like you're not trying to fix an existing game, but rather to head off a problem anticipated for an upcoming game. That's good news! It's much easier to prevent a balance problem than to correct it after the fact.
My suggestion is that you talk to the optimizing player. Tell him that he's so much better at optimizing characters that you have difficulty making challenges that are appropriate for his characters and the others simultaneously.
Ask if he has any sub-optimal character concepts that he would like to try! My guess is that he does. Sell him your next campaign as a chance to play that Bard, Monk, Shadow Dancer, or Dragon Disciple he's been leaving on the back burner.
I saw all this because I'm the optimizer in my play group(s), and this would totally work on me. I would never sit down with my group to make characters for a new campaign and think, "I want to be a magic user who fights with claws" because I know the concept doesn't measure up optimization wise. But, given the invitation to make something 20% less effective, I have a list of discarded character concepts a mile long!