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You mentioned that this player is tied to a sorcerer that is also playing with you. I would talk to your sorcerer before you boot the bad player.
Why is power gaming bad?It's bad when only 1 player of a table is doing it, because an imbalance of a party is a pretty big problem to deal with.
Personally I think it's worse when more than 1 person is doing it....
It's like trying to herd cats - who've all grown superpowers.Sure, I CAN rebalance things 3, 4, 5+ ways to account for each persons style of OP. But it's easier when I only have to do it once.:)
Why is power gaming bad?It's bad when only 1 player of a table is doing it, because an imbalance of a party is a pretty big problem to deal with.Personally I think it's worse when more than 1 person is doing it....
It's like trying to herd cats - who've all grown superpowers.
Sure, I CAN rebalance things 3, 4, 5+ ways to account for each persons style of OP. But it's easier when I only have to do it once.:)
I guess it depends on whether people are building optimized characters because they don't want to feel especially challenged, or because they do want to feel especially challenged.
If it's the former, there's never any problem when everybody can roll pretty much anything that they face, since the goal is pretty much "experience a story, feel like a hero". If it's "I want to showcase my tactical acumen and rules mastery at every step of the way" then you're going to have problems.
I feel like WotR is a really good AP for the former, since the mythic rules are so swingy it's going to be darn near impossible to challenge people but not make things too hard for an unspecified group of mythic characters. It's not really a good AP for people who want broken characters and challenge.
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If I refused to run a game every time someone in my group had read the adventure for whatever reason I'd never run a premade. Suck it up and change some stuff it's all part of GMing. Did he read ahead specifically to cheat or had he read it before? I've read adventures that I've thought about running but didn't then ended up playing.
Bully/Loot: How does the rest of the group feel has anyone said anything or is it just side talk to you? If you have one guy bulling a large group of people you have a very spineless group of people. All loot issues should be discussed in game by party members. If they don't like it but let it happen then it's not the GMs place to intervene.
If you just jump to kicking a person from the group without reasonable discussion from all sides it sounds more like a personal issue especially when you consider you said you'd basically made up your mind to kick him before posting this thread. You posted here seeking validation from the like minded and likely gave little thought to anyone posting an alternative. Your thread title alone suggests a biased toward this player.
All too often GMs slip into a Me vs. Them mentality rather than remaining neutral and letting the dice fall. You win some you lose some.
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All too often GMs slip into a Me vs. Them mentality rather than remaining neutral and letting the dice fall. You win some you lose some.
This may be fine for PFS, or for people who play on the regular, but if i have one session every 1-2 weeks and a life of work and school in between and my choice to spend my relaxation time is gming and this person is making it an unpleasant experience, odds are that either he goes or the campaign trickles off as time goes by and i find more things that "need my attention" and require cancelling a session.
Remaining neutral and letting the dice fall may be fun for some, but it is at its root a tournament mentality for playing with near or complete strangers.
Why is power gaming bad?
Its bad when you power game more than the other people at the table, thereby earning the title of "power gamer". A power gamer is someone who power games more than his or her peers.
:)
I feel like "Read the AP in advance" is sort of an intolerable breach of trust since you're basically telling the GM "hey, do a bunch of extra work or I'm going to ruin things for everybody else."
THAT!
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I agree with those saying it's not the superpowered paladin character that's really the problem. It's the behavior of the player.
Paladins in capable hands are powerful characters. Paladins in Wrath of the Righteous...that AP was basically tailor-made for showcasing paladins. Add the mythic rules to it and yes, you have Superman with a Holy Avenger. That's just kinda the way it goes with that combo platter.
But that was already acknowledged going into the campaign...the focus wasn't the fist-through-steel-wall-through-three-faces issue, it's the roleplay. In this case the player is reading ahead in the AP, meta-gaming his little heart out, and arguing/challenging the DM on calls. Talking with him directly hasn't worked, and may have made the situation worse.
If you haven't already, take his friend aside and explain the situation before you kick the paladin out. See if you can't get resolution through the friend first, and it will also give you an opportunity to perhaps keep the sorcerer in the game if you do have to kick the guy.
I still think you're ultimately going to have to kick him out, but this may at least give a last shot of not having to go that far.
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Se but he is a paladin and they have 3 full casters. The paladin gets like 3 attacks max and he doesnt shut down anything.
The full caster can just autowin. Martial cant.
And he can. If he tarpits the paladin then the rest of the party can deal with the other threats.
Correction; Caster are not autowin. They require work and proper planning. They are only autowin when you remove all context of the situation. When you don't know the full context of the situation, it's best to ask.
To address the quandary of the OP though, best bet: Cut him loose, don't invite him back, and be an adult about it. Let him know his immaturity makes everyone uncomfortable. I know you don't want to lose the sorcerer, but you just may have to. I know when my party was running Rise of the Runelords, we had started out with 5, but one player liked intra-party conflict a bit too much, so we had to ask him to leave. We also lost his girlfriend setting us up with only 3.
The AP after that the AP did become more stressful, but it also put the remaining 3 of us on top of are game. We were still able to finish the AP with 0 PC deaths and accomplished everything flawlessly.
Rule #2, if someone is reading the AP (and not just played it in the past), end the AP. I do enough work every week to keep things going as a GM. If someone wants to cheat that badly, end it. Tell your players EXACTLY why you ended it. Do not mince words. "X was reading ahead. I'm making a story and if you want to peak ahead, I'm not running the AP"
I think this is the real issue.
Basically he is cheating.
He has to go.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Correction; Caster are not autowin. They require work and proper planning. They are only autowin when you remove all context of the situation. When you don't know the full context of the situation, it's best to ask.
Yep, player skill (both in build and play) makes a huge difference here. I guarantee I can make a CRB-only monk or rogue that will outperform, say, Ezren handed to a newbie player.
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He attempted to use Beyond Morality to completely negate his need to RP or fulfill his obligation to be Lawful GoodNo. No, no, no, abso-freaking-lutely NOT. There's "jumping off the slippery slope," then there's this. You made the right call refusing to allow a paladin to have that ability. A paladin with Beyond Morality in the hands of anybody who isn't a well-practiced roleplayer is a ticking time bomb waiting to execute the entire multiverse over the tiniest offenses.
There is also the itty-bitty matter of the fact that a paladin is still granted their powers by a conscious entity who will either check in on said paladin or have their underlings do so in their stead. If he violates his god's ideals, they will strip him of his power. I'd even argue that taking the ability would instantly result in his god pulling the rug out from under him on the grounds that he simply cannot be trusted anymore.
Beyond Morality seems to be a power mostly built to allow the occasional chaotic monk, lawful barbarian, non-evil assassin, and to provide a mythic escape hatch for alignment based attacks and spells.
Yeah beyond morality doesn't free you from the paladins code.
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The full caster can just autowin. Martial cant.If you don't think a Martial can end a fight before anyone else can act, with no chance of failure, clearly you haven't played Wrath of the Righteous.
TBH weapon/armor masters handbook have really upped that game too.
I think out of game I would ask the player to leave. He seems a bad fit for the group and seems to ignore any compromise. I would not throw him out because he read the AP. I'm both a player and DM. I have read every AP up until Giantslayer. I also am very good at playing dumb and acting like I never ever read the AP. I'm not out to ruin any DM campaign and tell a new DM that I have read the AP.
Now if he read the AP when he was not supposed to and it's generally bad form to do so as a player that's another strike against him imo.
Why is power gaming bad?Its bad when you power game more than the other people at the table, thereby earning the title of "power gamer". A power gamer is someone who power games more than his or her peers.
:)
I'm not sure if you meant this tongue-in-cheek, but you kinda nailed it.
When 1 PC is significantly out of step with the party average (either more or less powerful), that's a problem.
1 extreme optimizer at a table full of 'regular' PCs is a big problem.
1 'regular' PC at a table full of extreme optimizers is just as much of a problem.
The 1 powergamer stomps encounters if they're designed for 'regular' PCs, and if the GM designs encounters to challenge the one optimizer, the other PCs either can't hit or die to a single hit from the baddie.
The 1 regular PC at the optimized table can't 'pull their own weight' in combats designed for optimized PCs. They can't hit, will die to single hits from the baddie, etc.
It isn't that either playstyle is 'wrong', it's that the playstyles are incompatible. A table might be able to handle that incompatibility for a session or two, but over the long haul, that kind of imbalance will damage the play experience for everyone.
I don't see the logic in banning hybrid classes in a 27 point mythic game ... like at all. Occult classes don't have mythic support so that makes sense.
Oh, I do, but not because of power. Rather, it's because of complexity. The hybrid and occult classes add plenty of additional contextual subsystems that, for the most part, I wouldn't want to deal with either. The newer the classes (or other rules) the more likely you'll screw something up, particularly with a large group of PCs and the additional complexity of the mythic rules. For the WotR campaign in particular, I wholeheartedly endorse GMs curtailing the number of classes they'll allow as a sanity check.
I have tried not to be a jerk in return to this player but, I am out of options. The meta-game cheating, the power gaming, and the (I didn't mention this part before) bullying of other players into RP'ing the way he wants and controlling the distribution of party loot in his favor, have all gone too far. He is ruining the game for all of us and he will be removed from the game. I mostly came to that decision before posting this thread but wanted to get the opinions of more experienced GM's to see if there was a better way.
Oh yeah, he's gotta go. Sad that you might be losing an additional player over it too. As others have suggested, definitely discuss the issue with them too so they know they're welcome and the ban has nothing to do with them (and, in fact, complicated the issue).
Honestly he should allow the paladin to take beyond morality and then have him fall when he commits an evil act. While completely removes your alignment an evil act is still evil even when performed by someone with beyond morality. It would give him more flexibility with regards to chaotic acts as those do not cause you to fall unless they are against the code. But evil acts are explicitly mentioned in the code as an instant fall.
If you don't think a Martial can end a fight before anyone else can act, with no chance of failure, clearly you haven't played Wrath of the Righteous.
Indeed, I played a Swashbuckler in WotR (a weak class by most standards) and I finished with an Init mod of +32, who auto-crits 25% of the time to the tune of 300+ damage, 70 feet of movement, and pounce. A lot of fights I would run up to the mage and kill them before they can get anything off. You get so many feats up to level 20/tier 10 that I ended up with the Teleport Tactician chain so even if I didn't finish them off, they weren't necessarily going to finish their turn alive.
Regarding "no hybrid/occult" classes though, I'm not so sure about that. No occult in WotR makes sense since there aren't mythic paths that support them in first party content. I'm not sure Hybrid classes really add that much complexity though, maybe the Shaman, the Brawler, and the Arcanist, but the Slayer and Swashbuckler are easy to play, the Hunter's no more complex than a druid, the Investigator is no more complex than the Alchemist, and the Warpriest is generally easier to play than a Cleric.
Also, have you talked to the rest of the table? If ALL the players are fine with it and having fun then maybe you could care less about it knowing that everyone is enjoying having a super paladin? But if they aren't okay with it, then you can have a table talk and show that he's ruining the fun for a good chunk of the table and maybe that will help him realize he's over the line.
A couple of things....
1. If even one of the other players is unhappy with the situation, then the situation has to stop. Only if the entire table is ok with 1 PC being way beyond the powercurve does it become acceptable to just let it go.
2. People seem to forget that the GM is a player too. The GM is the player that has put in the most time and energy in bringing the game to life for everyone. If the GM is unhappy with an unbalanced character, then the table is not unanimously ok with the unbalanced character, even if every other player doesn't mind it.
If the GM is unhappy, eventually the game will die. The GM will have 'real life' things that result in game sessions being cancelled. The GM's frustration and lack of enthusiasm will be felt by the players, diminishing their own enjoyment. If a single player is the source of most of the GM's problems, and that player has refused to participate in resolving the issues, then that player has to go.
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1. If even one of the other players is unhappy with the situation, then the situation has to stop. Only if the entire table is ok with 1 PC being way beyond the powercurve does it become acceptable to just let it go.
In this case I don't agree with what you are saying. This is not a situation where someone is being callous/violent/rude/etc. What you are saying is to exchange 1 snowflake for another.
This needs to be judged by the group. If 4 of 5 people have no issue with this case, then there isn't an issue. If 3 of 5 have an issue I would expect there to be a discussion on how to rectify the problem. If everyone but the problem player has a problem I would expect the character to be rewritten.
Plus odds are the GM's only problem is he feels he's not providing a challenge to the party for the party to have fun. If the party likes having gandalf do all the cool things then do you really need to remove him? It's more a perception change. Cause really? Why else would a GM not be having fun that the party is winning?
I am also running WotR. I assume you are in book 2.
I have give many creatures the Advanced Template.
The ones I want to challenge the party I also add class levels and make them Mythic, even to the point where the enemies are higher tier.
Want to knock the Paladin down? Use Beyond Morality on an antipaladin to engage the paladin. Smite Evil won't work, but Smite Good will. The armor ability Warding will negate a smite.
Retrievers can pull his armor right off him. Advanced Extra HD Retrievers with the Agile Mythic template works well. Even add Swashbuckler levels with combat reflexes/mythic combat reflexes to have unlimited parry/riposte, so it can constantly block attacks and counter attack. Make it a called creature whose orders are to defeat the paladin then when it does it's job it gets sent back to the Abyss.
I have reworked most of the main NPCs/BBEGs to fit our group.
You should do the same so that things are not as he knows it. If he complains then tell him it is all his fault for cheating.
The GM disallowed him from taking Beyond Morality. To continue banning it, yet using it against him, would certainly cause more problems than solve them.
@OP
As for the rest of this character's build, it honestly doesn't sound so bad with Mythic considered. He spent a mythic feat on Shield Focus, which means he has one less mythic feat to spend on the truly game-breaking crap, like Mythic Vital Strike. If he's spending Mythic abilities on Longevity & Beyond Morality, then he's not spending them on Legendary Weapon & Divine Source, so quite frankly I'd welcome the addition. I think he's just trying to cover his bases as a frontline tank.
Honestly? I think you're overreacting a bit. Just wait a few levels, and your Mythic Archmage will make him look like a joke, believe me. The ability to teleport away in response to attacks is a WAY better defense than AC 30.
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I am also running WotR. I assume you are in book 2.
I have give many creatures the Advanced Template.
The ones I want to challenge the party I also add class levels and make them Mythic, even to the point where the enemies are higher tier.
Want to knock the Paladin down? Use Beyond Morality on an antipaladin to engage the paladin. Smite Evil won't work, but Smite Good will. The armor ability Warding will negate a smite.
Retrievers can pull his armor right off him. Advanced Extra HD Retrievers with the Agile Mythic template works well. Even add Swashbuckler levels with combat reflexes/mythic combat reflexes to have unlimited parry/riposte, so it can constantly block attacks and counter attack. Make it a called creature whose orders are to defeat the paladin then when it does it's job it gets sent back to the Abyss.
I have reworked most of the main NPCs/BBEGs to fit our group.
You should do the same so that things are not as he knows it. If he complains then tell him it is all his fault for cheating.
The GM disallowed him from taking Beyond Morality. To continue banning it, yet using it against him, would certainly cause more problems than solve them.
@OP
As for the rest of this character's build, it honestly doesn't sound so bad with Mythic considered. He spent a mythic feat on Shield Focus, which means he has one less mythic feat to spend on the truly game-breaking crap, like Mythic Vital Strike. If he's spending Mythic abilities on Longevity & Beyond Morality, then he's not spending them on Legendary Weapon & Divine Source, so quite frankly I'd welcome the addition. I think he's just trying to cover his bases as a frontline tank.Honestly? I think you're overreacting a bit. Just wait a few levels, and your Mythic Archmage will make him look like a joke, believe me. The ability to teleport away in response to attacks is a WAY better defense than AC 30.
Maybe just me but I thought he disallowed the Paladin to take it to stop him from thinking he could just do as he pleased in regards to evil acts.
Though how would the player know that the GM used it? I am sure he doesn't post his builds to the group, but that is also why I gave an alternate option with Warding Armor. I am a believer that the GM gets options that the players don't.
Remember that this is just the beginning, they are only in the first 3 tiers considering their level range. Longevity, in the way used, has given a very solid power boost, but I agree, things get stupid once attacks get Mythic Vital Strike and Mythic Power Attack added in.
Mirror Dodge is a good ability, but it is still an immediate action and short range. Intelligent foes, like most Demons are, will quickly adapt to it.