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.
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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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.
My character is such a moron it'll break your campaign
I fear no power gamer,, but that thing... That thing scares me.
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.
It really depends.
I'm thinking about 3.5 in particular, where an optimized wizard will be able to do the job of the rest of the party (assuming they're built to be fine, but not power-gaming), better than them.
There's no real in-world way to balance that. Either the DM Fiats the power-gamer weaker, the DM tells the power gamer "no", or the rest of the party power games to. Its just too unbalanced.
If we're talking 5e, that's all out the window then. If 3.5's power runs from 0-10, the strongest 5e build is like a 6, and the weakest is like a 3. Its still extra work for the DM to balance, but can be done all in-world without needing to rely on metagame fiat.
And, of course, there's lots of other systems out there, where the above can be more true or less true depending on what kind of game it is, though 3.5's power ceiling is probably higher than 95% of the systems out there.
The DM is the arbiter of reality. You're not doing shit unless they allow it.
Yup, I’m here to make sure everyone has fun. Barring that, I’m here to make sure the most possible people at the table have fun.
I hate players like that. Once a player wanted to bring his gf into the game (I know, I should have stopped it there) and when I did a short 1 on 1 with her she comes with a ton of weird, homebrew or not yet tested rules to make a half elf multiclass character with 100+ft movement every round and I'm just like.... Yeah nah, I'm good with having to draw maps around an OP character
Wait... Why should you have stopped it there? Stopped it where, specifically?
note to self: never join a d&d campaign while dating someone who's also going to be in the campaign. I am unsure why it's bad, but I assume there's a reason.
It worked out great for me, now my daughter and I are players in my wife's game. Also we play D&D!
Drama, somehow it always starts drama
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
DR, charm effects, make the gun an unsafe choice due to the setting, give the other players a situational advantage like a fixed or crew-serviced weapon, make the fight more of a puzzle than pure action, give the fight stages where different types of damage are necessary, let the fight itself be avoided or changed with diplomacy.
Hell, don't worry about it. Exploration, interaction, and combat are all equally important in a successful tabletop game; and if they aren’t equal, there is a reason combat comes third in the list.
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?
I mean Chronomancers are outright banned at my table anyway because they are wildly unbalanced. I love Matt Mercer but he does not know how to create a balanced class at all.
That being said, nothing here works from what I understand. You'd have to elaborate more for me to figure that out.
~~First off, you're relying entirely on spells you have no guarantee of ever getting. You're a wizard. You don't get to just choose spells willy nilly. You find those and you copy them into your book or you learn from some other means. No guarantee of those means.~~ I'm fucking stupid
Second, all of your Mote stuff requires "under an hour of prep", true, but each mote only lasts an hour. So unless you're sitting outside of the BBEGs door and ready to throw it at him then this also isn't working.
Third, not sure what you're doing that is allowing 'simultaneous' casting of all of those spells at once. Each mote requires an action. So unless you're somehow stacking 5 spells all into one mote at the same time then you're just not doing that.
Fourth, the idea that your 15th level Chronomancer is going to 'autokill' the bbeg is laughable. Especially considering forcing a failure of a save requires a reaction from you so you're doing it once per turn.
Fifth, entire based off of the idea that you're going to have a level 10 Chronomancer and a level 15 Chronomancer in the same party. Which... good luck finding any DM who's willing to allow that.
Sixth, magic jar into a creature with no recourse? You mean other than the fact that the DM is the one deciding what creatures are nearby, if any? Then there's the fact that you must be 100ft within your body at all times. So you're just leaving your body there on the ground for any minion to destroy and kill which leaves you stuck in the creature. Until you then die of course.
Dafuq is definitely used but it's more out of confusion of why you'd think that'd ever work, not that it would.
First off, you’re relying entirely on spells you have no guarantee of ever getting. You’re a wizard. You don’t get to just choose spells willy nilly. You find those and you copy them into your book or you learn from some other means. No guarantee of those means.
What?
Wizards can choose two spells each level without having to find them.
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Only dealing with the L10 scenario.
(1) You get to choose two new spells at level up, in addition to those you find elsewhere. Assuming your DM hasn't restricted sourcebooks.
(2) This is where catnap is required. It shortens a short rest to ten minutes (at the cost of an L3 slot). This allows you to create new motes before the previous ones have expired.
(3) the motes are being triggered by familiars, who can become the concentration holder. How do you get that many familiars? Well, you give your familiar motes with Find Familiar and have them crush them.
Furthermore, each familiar can then dismiss their familiar to their pocket dimension for unbreakable concentration.
Everything works, rules as written. Broken? Yes.
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That is a pretty huge assumption. However I somehow did forget you just get to choose levels at level up. I don't fuckin know how.
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This is super pedantic but considering everything relies on specifics, you just killed your train by saying "by crushing the mote". If the mote is destroyed then the spell disappears and you do not regain spell slot. A creature has to use its action to cast the spell for it to do so.
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That being said, all of this relies pretty heavily on you taking this rest within an hours travel from the BBEG. The motes themselves only last an hour. So you can have a ton of familiars up but the beads that they have to activate? Those have a timer. The vast majority of situations will simply not allow you to be that close to the BBEG and have enough time that he doesn't notice people chilling and preparing to explode his life.
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It would still not be instant casting. Each familiar, in combat, rolls its own individual initiative and gains its own turn. So you would swarm the initiative with different familiars with spells, sure, but the likelihood of instant casting is essentially 0%. Not entirely, but the odds are so insanely low that they would all go at the same time at the start of initiative.
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It requires an action to dismiss a familiar so you cannot cast the spell and then dismiss them for unbreakable concentration.
I mean it works in theory, kinda, but it would never work in practice.
I agree. It's very situational, requires huge investment in prep, an extra five slots (for catnap), familiars all ready to go, probably a surprise round to get all the spells off together, and a bunch of other insane ideal circumstances. A smart enemy wouldn't be caught flat-footed like that either.
The less broken things are just to give your other party members their own familiar, give other party members a single wizard self buff (like Shadow Blade), or combat cast something like Leomunds Tiny Hut. All of which requires downtime or precombat prep.
Wizards are broken in general. This one is just more broken than others.
But again, only broken if your DM doesn't have a spine. It relies entirely on getting everything you need and hitting green lights at every intersection. That's just not... realistic.
L15 scenario. The above are two entirely separate scenarios -- I was not assuming two chronomancers in the same party.
Let's simplify this from an action economy perspective so we aren't running into the reaction limits. Let's assuming combat lasts four rounds, and on each of the first three rounds, you cast Polymorph (killer whale), and use your Chronal Shift to force a reroll if they save, generally with the goal of burning legendary resistances. Obviously this works better with a bigger party casting save or suck, to burn them faster (you can only Chronal Shift once per round though) or you can use the L10 trick above if well prepared. Great, in the fourth round, you cast Polymorph (killer whale) again and force them to fail the save as a reaction. Take one point of exhaustion. Easy enough, right?
Well, magic jar is fun, but requires serious prep to reduce the risks. An L15 wizard should already have a lair where they can leave their body safely, and they'd need to capture their target and bring them to their lair. This is why I chose L15 for this scenario instead of L14, because you need access to the spell. Assuming your wizard has a Researcher background or something (so you can handwave the meta), you can use locate person to find a CR12 Duergar Despot who has immunity to exhaustion. They exist in Forgotten Realms at least. Your DM might rule they don't exist, and then you'll have a harder time finding a humanoid immune to exhaustion to capture to magic jar into. That whole capture scenario would be an amazing multi-session mini-arc.
So worst case scenario, the DM says such a target doesn't exist. Well, then you have to wait until L17 to pull this shit off. True Polymorph can create a humanoid that is immune to exhaustion (there are dozens of them!) to create a magic jar target. Or you can use Wish (also broken) to summon such a creature, or simply wish yourself immune to exhaustion.
I mean, if you're an L17 wizard, you're basically god anyway. But the Chronomancer can pull off godhood at L15 if they can become immune to exhaustion with magic jar.
Even at L14, with the exhaustion penalty, it's stupidly strong.
Side note: killer whale is my go to. It's huge, thus hard to carry away by minions; has a huge bag of hitpoints, hard for minions to slap once to return back to BBEG form; and has a speed of zero on land. A good BBEG will have contingencied dimension door or something, so it isn't foolproof. You can try to trap them in Mordenkainens Magnificent Mansion or something that prevents escape through teleportation, but that adds another layer.
Did I mention that wizards are broken?
Again... relies entirely on assumptions.
Let's simplify this from an action economy perspetive so we aren't running into the reaction limits. Let’s assuming combat lasts four rounds, and on each of the first three rounds, you cast Polymorph (killer whale), and use your Chronal Shift to force a reroll if they save, generally with the goal of burning legendary resistances.
You have two massive assumptions there which rely entirely on the DM doing what you want, being passive, or by the BBEG being completely alone. If the BBEG counterspells then you have to change your plan. If the DM has minions at all with counterspell, change of plan. Honestly really just if there are minions at all it'll change the plan because you don't get to just stand there doing whatever you want without the bosses goons immediately focusing heavily on you.
Well, magic jar is fun, but requires serious prep to reduce the risks. An L15 wizard should already have a lair where they can leave their body safely, and they’d need to capture their target and bring them to their lair. This is why I chose L15 for this scenario instead of L14, because you need access to the spell. Assuming your wizard has a Researcher background or something (so you can handwave the meta), you can use locate person to find a CR12 Duergar Despot who has immunity to exhaustion. They exist in Forgotten Realms at least. Your DM might rule they don’t exist, and then you’ll have a harder time finding a humanoid immune to exhaustion to capture to magic jar into. That whole capture scenario would be an amazing multi-session mini-arc.
This is really driving my point home for me. You keep making the assumption on all of your plans that the DM will just give you want you want. That you'll have a lair, you'll be able to find a non-exhaustable creature and that the DM would allow for a quest to go get this creature and do what you want with it.
So worst case scenario, the DM says such a target doesn’t exist. Well, then you have to wait until L17 to pull this shit off. True Polymorph can create a humanoid that is immune to exhaustion (there are dozens of them!) to create a magic jar target. Or you can use Wish (also broken) to summon such a creature, or simply wish yourself immune to exhaustion.
Yes and the worst case scenario of that situation is that you fail the questline because you were waiting to gain two levels to try to build something broken. This is another major assumption that the DM and the BBEG will be completely passive and give you want you want, that being those two levels. Also if you wish to be "immune to exhaustion" there is a decent chance you're going to die considering the Wish spell is pretty clear that it is often a monkeys paw type scenario. The Wish spell doesn't say you can get immunity to exhaustion so there's no clearcut rules on it. The closest is that you can resistance to a magical effect but whether exhaustion in this situation is considered magical is a debate and left ultimately up to the DM. So you're making another assumption on whether that spell could even work in the first place.
Every single part of that plan hinders entirely on you getting what you want from the DM, DM never saying no and the BBEG being extremely passive. This would only work in theory because any DM with a spine would immediately laugh and say "Good luck" knowing that it would never happen. These types of "broken" characters are literally what the meme is talking about.
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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.