Min-Maxing (lvl1 25AC Fighter) - How to deal with OP Chars as a DM?

So I love theory crafting/character creating in Pathfinder and yesterday I experimented on a Tank build (AC and HP focused) and came up with this:

Spoiler: Tank Min-Max

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Tank Build - Fighter lvl 1
Optimized Tank Build

16 Strenght +3
14 Dexterity +2
18 Constitution +4
13 Intelligence +1
10 Wisdom +0
10 Charisma +0

Feats:
Combat Expertise (+1AC*)
Shield Focus (+1AC)
Dodge (+1AC)

BAB: 3
AC: 25
HP: 14
CMB: 4
CMD: 18
Fort: 8
Ref: 3
Will: 0

Chainmail (+6/+2/-4)
Tower Shield (4AC)
Arming Sword (1d8)

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This Build only utilizes the CRB, with average stats and barely costs 200 gold to start with.
Now I'm not saying that I need help with my party, me and my mates aren't powergamers and we don't abuse the system overly much, but I'm curious how experienced DM's deal with such pest's. The way I see it this character build is practically invincible to everything but critical strikes and magic missiles, with maybe the exception of the occasional Combat Maneuver. (which will always result in AoO on the opponent on low levels) Only weakness I see, is that the characters is slow in medium armor, but give him a crossbow and that problem is solved also. (for running away opponents)

I let them have their schtick, but only some of the time. By which I mean, intelligent enemies will pull out tricks designed to fight people with heavy armor. Animals might naturally avoid the guy who looks and smells like armor. But say, oozes, zombies, won't adjust to his AC, and he gets to play super tank for those encounters.

I mean, I'm not going to totally build encounters just to screw with him. But some reasonable counters that should be available to enemies a lot of the time:

-Splash weapons.
-Combat maneuvers using reach weapons.
-Nets.
-Spells.
-Adding objectives for NPCs that don't involve killing the party. I'm surprised how many games don't include something like this. Maybe the enemies are after your supplies. Your horses. An NPC in the area. To escape from you. To destroy a bridge, siege weapon, etc. AC is a lot less useful in stopping someone else.
-Traps/obstacles/cover.
-Skirmishing. His AC drops significantly if he swaps out his shield for a crossbow.
-Going after someone else. This is a big one. With a tower shield and using combat expertise, he has what? +1 to hit? Hard to kill, plus low threat level means intelligent enemies will generally avoid you.

Also, this isn't exactly something that's going to steal the spotlight from other players. This character won't suddenly end encounters, or drop huge amounts of damage. He's just more likely to survive to higher levels, where AC becomes less important relative to other defenses. And since I don't go into games with the intention of killing PCs (though sometimes it happens), that's not a big problem for me as a DM.

That build's nasty, but unless it develops into a lockdown build or something that can force enemies to pay attention to him later on, all it is? A brick that throws itself at one enemy at a time and can be largely ignored by intelligent enemies until it's time to gang up and focus fire. Throw your own brick at him, and the two of them can pummel each other futilely until you're ready to deal with him.

25 ac is pretty hard to touch at level 1, but his touch AC is still pretty hittable. Not to mention he is slow, has no will save, and will sink like a stone in water. Hard to kill with melee attacks, sure. OP? not even close.

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Originally Posted by Mexikorn

Spoiler: Tank Min-Max

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Tank Build - Fighter lvl 1
Optimized Tank Build

16 Strenght +3
14 Dexterity +2
18 Constitution +4
13 Intelligence +1
10 Wisdom +0
10 Charisma +0

Feats:
Combat Expertise (+1AC*)
Shield Focus (+1AC)
Dodge (+1AC)

BAB: 3
AC: 25
HP: 14
CMB: 4
CMD: 18
Fort: 8
Ref: 3
Will: 0

Chainmail (+6/+2/-4)
Tower Shield (4AC)
Arming Sword (1d8)

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Your character has only a +1 to hit. Not a +1 with bonuses; a +1 total. The party wizard has a better chance of hitting with his staff. There is a reason why most Fighters don't run around with Tower Shields at level 1.

Also, Base Attack Bonus at 1st level Fighter is +1. The total bonus is +1 (BAB) +3 (Str) -2 (Tower Shield) -1 (Combat Expertise) = +1 total.

As for dealing with it? Sleep spell, any magic, tripping, grappling, or just having a decent AC and attacking something else. As noted, the tank isn't terrible good at hitting or damaging enemies. Anything tankier than an orc will probably be able to hold them off fairly easily, at least long enough for an archer to make life miserable to everyone else in the party. There's no need to even neutralize the character's main objective if you can just go around them.

A tank is only as useful as his ability to occupy enemies' attention. If he blocks a doorway, then the party's ranged combatants can go to work over his shoulders. If he is in any sort of area where people can go around him, he is suddenly a very intimidating looking battlefield ornament.

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Originally Posted by Keltest

very intimidating looking

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Not with that charisma he's not.

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

Not with that charisma he's not.

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If he gets a scary enough looking helm, anything is possible.

"Man, your HELMET has more Charisma than you do."

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Originally Posted by erikun

Your character has only a +1 to hit. Not a +1 with bonuses; a +1 total. The party wizard has a better chance of hitting with his staff. There is a reason why most Fighters don't run around with Tower Shields at level 1.

Also, Base Attack Bonus at 1st level Fighter is +1. The total bonus is +1 (BAB) +3 (Str) -2 (Tower Shield) -1 (Combat Expertise) = +1 total.

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This. If I were DMing for this character I would "deal with him" by having enemies ignore him as soon as they notice that he's about as good at hurting them as they are him.

I don't get as bothered by more OP passive stuff like defenses. So I'd give the player plenty of opportunity's to be the super tanky distraction. I would also make sure that his heavy armor and whatnot could at times be a liability.

I would avoid having single big monster type fights, but having played a tank it's fun occupying 1 dire mountain lion while the rest of the party dealt with another, and then really turned it into pile of bone and viscera.

Also if the dude is big and heavily defended I'd make him a target of the enemies that were more prideful of their own size and strength and have other minions trying to stay away from him while taking down his help, only going after him after everyone else has run or fallen.

I would explain to my player that I have no intention of grinding through combat with them. They either have to improve their offensive capabilities so combat doesn't take forever, never engage in combat at all, or I'm going to initiate rocket tag a few levels early. I don't have forever to get through this adventure and I can have something better to do with my time.

Meanwhile, John the 1st-level human... screw it, monk, is going around with, on the same 28 PB, 14/18/13/10/16/10, weapon finesse, weapon focus temple sword (Human), and dodge (Monk). So, he's attacking with +5, damaging with 1d8+3, AC of 18. That's nearly as good as your "Optimised" build but he's a monk. Oh, and he can take a -1 penalty to make 2 attacks. He can take Bleeding Attack instead of WFTS and then punch you until you take damage, then grapple you until you bleed out.

Meanwhile, Jimbob the Barbarian has 20/14/14/10/11/10. He has weapon focus (Greatsword), and Death From Above. He then rages, and charges you down a hill, giving him a +13 bonus to his attack roll. 45% of the time, he will hit you and your 14 hit points, dealing 2d6+10 points of damage, most likely knocking you out if he hits.

Phil the wizard has 20 int, 18 dex and we don't care about anything else. He has Spell Focus (Ilu) and GSF (Ilu). He walks up to you and casts colour spray, DC 17. Oh, wait, your will save is absolutely terrible. You, by some miracle, pass the save, and then you miss him with your sword because you're terrible. He steps five feet back and casts it again, then keeps CdGing you with a quarterstaff until you die.

None of those builds was difficult. None took long to come up with. All are as good as or better than your character and one of them is a monk. Feel shame.

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Originally Posted by Karl Aegis

I would explain to my player that I have no intention of grinding through combat with them. They either have to improve their offensive capabilities so combat doesn't take forever, never engage in combat at all, or I'm going to initiate rocket tag a few levels early. I don't have forever to get through this adventure and I can have something better to do with my time.

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This is more like dealing with UNDERpowered characters :P

Ignoring for a moment the fact that the OP's character is not remotely OP, the question is how DMs deal with "such pests."

As you have read by this point, quite well, thank you. Assuming DMs decide to "deal" with a given character - which strikes me, generally, as needlessly singling one person out - there are plenty of tools to do so. The thing to remember is this: In any game system where there is a tier system of versatility (e.g. D&D/PF), any character that isn't a Tier 1, no matter how optimized, has a weakness. That weakness can be exploited. Tons of armor? Rubbish touch AC. Highly mobile and evasive? Poor Will save. Casts spells? Antimagic field. You can generally neutralize most non-Tier 1s easily.

In any system where there isn't a tier system, it's likely that most characters can't reach game-breaking levels of OP. Games that aren't D&D tend not to share the grotesquely overpowered tendency of D&D Wizards to be able to do everything. And while you can optimize a character for virtually any task in most games, you tend to do so at the expense of other abilities, thus creating exploitable weaknesses. I honestly can't think of a non-D&D-type system in which a single character has absolutely no vulnerabilities of which a GM can take advantage.

That said, I take issue with the idea of "dealing with" a character, as I noted above. As a GM, I don't consider it my role to stop or defeat the PCs, but to offer them challenging and interesting encounters. A given PC might be hard to beat, but that doesn't mean that he has the tools to overcome an encounter. As others have observed, for example, the OP's character is, at his best, a brick; tough to take down, but otherwise worthless. He can't slay a dragon. He can't climb a cliff face. He can't negotiate with slavers. He can't sneak into the castle. He can't do anything but take hits, and even that ability will rapidly diminish. It would be child's play to challenge this character. And that's the goal. Not to kill the character, but to offer a challenge. And unless you're dealing with a Wizard who daily comes up with new ways to tell the laws of physics to shut up and sit in the corner, you can challenge pretty much any party if you set your mind to it, OP-levels be damned.

@Jormengard: No I won't. I'm glad you're a veteran and It's interesting for me to see your builds, but as somewhat of a newcomer to the genre of pathfinder and tabletop gaming in general, I'm still exploring many of the aspects this game has to offer. I'm probably going to ask a lot more "stupid" questions in the future, so if you don't like that, feel free to kindly **** off. If you're interested in teaching me and sharing your experiences with me on the other hand, you're most welcome to contribute. And while I'm interested in overpowered min-maxing stuff, just to check the limits of a system, it's not what I, or my group, focus on in gameplay anyways. First comes Roleplay and Authenticity, we have backgrounds. In other words, we play persons, not antisocial wizards who tell the world to **** off until they're lvl 20 gods, kinda what Red Fel said. (I also like his approach to DM'ing) Personally, I want to know what's "strong" before I decide not to do it and rather play with a swag build, because I want my character to be this way even tho it's somewhat weak. (like that witty ranger build I once made, with Improved Initiative; Quickdraw and Alertness) I want to know what I'm missing out on, if that makes any sense to you.

Putting aside the question of how effective, OP or well/poorly optimized the build cited originally is, the title problem of dealing with charOP as a GM is an important one.

For me, the best way to deal with charOP as a GM is to set expectations about it before the game starts. Everything between "Go Nuts" and "Just take these pre-builds with set tracks" are valid playstyles. If you don't want to play with characters min/maxed to the point where they're pushing certain game mechanics to the fringe just tell them that.

Put in something like this when you send out information on the game, before the firm commitment stage:

"I understand that building characters is fun, but I'm not really looking to run in a high optimization environment right now. Obviously, it's fine to to be effective but if you're looking to build in guarantees or push numbers that dominate the primary rolls it's probably a bit much for this campaign. If you've got any questions or the line seems fuzzy somewhere feel free to ask. In some cases if something is just a tad too much we might be able to work out a compromise."

Problem solved before it ever becomes a problem. Players attached to high OP walk out to start. Anyone who joins knows we're kind of playing with the kid gloves on a bit and are fine with that.

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Originally Posted by Mexikorn

@Jormengard: (...) And while I'm interested in overpowered min-maxing stuff, just to check the limits of a system,

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http://ihititwithmyaxe.tumblr.com/po...eaking-3-5-d-d

here is an idea on an overpowered build from the link above:

Barbarian 1- Lion Totem Variant: Complete Champion, pg 46, gives Barbarians some options not found in the Players Handbook, in the form of spirit totems. Lion is awesome, because it gives you the Pounce ability. In other words, you can charge and full attack. It’s brutal in this build, and truly valuable for any melee fighting character. And you get it at Barbarian 1 instead of getting fast movement. You don’t even need to take more levels of Barbarian! First level feat: Power Attack (Players Handbook).

Fighter 1- This build is feat-intensive. Fighter gives you Bonus Feats and full BAB. Nuff said. Fighter Bonus Feat: Cleave (PHB).

Fighter 2- Fighter Bonus Feat: Improved Bull Rush (PHB). You need this feat for later to qualify for the Shock Trooper feat. Don’t feel compelled to Bull Rush just because you can.

Third Level Feat: Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Spiked Chain (PHB). The Spiked Chain is easily the best weapon in the game, barring exceptional circumstances. You have 10-foot reach and still threaten adjacent squares. This increases your threatened spaces on the grid from a 3x3 shape to a 5x5 shape, a 300% increase in Cleaving Potential. This is worth a feat!

Fighter 3- Mostly a dead level. Your bad saves go up by 1, though. Use your wealth at this point to get a magic Spiked Chain, and if you can afford it, get the Valorous enchantment for weapons from the book, Unapprochable East (pg 54). At the cost of a +1 Bonus price, your weapon now does double damage on a charge. Double. Damage. That’s major value.

Fighter 4- Fighter Bonus Feat: Great Cleave (PHB). Now, whenever you drop an enemy, you can hit another one. At this point, you should start to look really, really good in combat against chump clumps. Charge in, connect for double damage, drop a goon. Repeat for every good within reach. If you’ve got decent Strength, you should be able to hit consistently, and get decent damage from swinging two-handed. If you’re confident, Power Attack by taking just 1 or 2 off your attack roll. Two-handed Valorous PA means -1 or -2 from attack turn into +4 or +8 damage. If you think that’s good, hang on because the ride gets crazy from here.

Fighter 5- You now get your second attack on a full attack, which you get whenever you charge because of Pounce from the Lion Totem. What was just thematic a level ago is suddenly doubling your offensive capabilities. And speaking of doubling…. Sixth Level Feat: Leap Attack (Complete Adventurer, pg 110). The prevailing errata on Leap Attack means that when your charge end in a jump that covers at least 10 feet, add +100% of your power attack damage. That -2 from your attack roll just turned into +16 damage when you do a Two-Handed Valorous Leap Attack! If you Power Attack the whole -6 at 6th level, you’re adding 48 damage. But wait, you don’t want to take so much off your attack roll, or you won’t hit your foe. That is, until….

Fighter 6- Fighter Bonus Feat: Shock Trooper (Complete Warrior, pg 112). This Tactical Feat allows you use of 3 maneuvers. Two of them are interesting and can be exploited by other builds. The third maneuver, however, is why you’re taking Shock Trooper. If you charge and Power Attack by at least -5, you can shunt as much of the attack roll penalty to your AC for the next round, on top of the -2 to AC you get for charging in the first place. This is huge. Power Attack as hard as you want without decreasing the odds you’ll hit when you swing.
And that is how, in 7 levels, you become a combat titan, sure to warp any encounter you’re in. Your math looks like this, assuming strength 22 and a +1 weapon at level 7, which you should definitely be able to get (if not better).

Two-handed Damage = {weapon + 1 magic + (str*1.5) + [(power attack*2)+leap attack]}x2 valorous

= {2d4 + 1 + (6*1.5) + [(7*2)*2]}x2

= (2d4+1+9+28)x2

= 4d4+76

Each hit is 80-92 damage. If that’s enough to drop what you’re swinging at, you get to do that to everyone in reach as long as you keep dropping things. Did something survive that? You’re pouncing. Attack again, applying all the same bonuses. If 170 damage doesn’t at least put a serious dent in the boss, try again whilst raging. You do have that one-level dip in Barbarian, after all!

welcome to the dark side, we have cookies. :smallcool:

abuse their weaknesses, like that lack of a will save. If it is bothering you, do it frequently. If it is not, then only do it at critical moments.

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Originally Posted by Mexikorn

@Jormengard: No I won't. I'm glad you're a veteran and It's interesting for me to see your builds, but as somewhat of a newcomer to the genre of pathfinder and tabletop gaming in general, I'm still exploring many of the aspects this game has to offer. I'm probably going to ask a lot more "stupid" questions in the future, so if you don't like that, feel free to kindly **** off.

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I'd appreciate it if you a) spelt my name right, b) didn't tell me, kindly or otherwise, to anything off, even conditionally and especially not if it's censored by the forum filter, and c) didn't overreact to a joke (anyone who seriously tells someone that they should feel shame because they're not a great optimiser... well, I like to think doesn't exist.

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

I'd appreciate it if you . . . didn't tell me, kindly or otherwise, to anything off

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Dance-off, bro! Me and you!

http://cdn.makeagif.com/media/5-07-2015/BlP7s1.gif

Seriously, though, OP, Jormy may be blunt, and more harsh than necessary, but his point was sound. A lot of fairly simple builds can do what you were trying to do, and then some, better than yours. But that's what we're here for (or some of us, anyway); to help you better design ideas like this.

That said, lashing out at a poster - even one who was admittedly harsh - doesn't win you any friends. We have a language filter, but that doesn't mean it needs testing. Please keep that in mind when responding to people here.

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Originally Posted by Jormengand

I'd appreciate it if you a) spelt my name right, b) didn't tell me, kindly or otherwise, to anything off, even conditionally and especially not if it's censored by the forum filter, and c) didn't overreact to a joke (anyone who seriously tells someone that they should feel shame because they're not a great optimiser... well, I like to think doesn't exist.

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So you got hit by poe's law. Sounds like a good time to apologize for the misunderstanding and move on, not insist the other person is overreacting to a joke that they obviously did not understand was a joke.

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Originally Posted by Seerow

So you got hit by poe's law. Sounds like a good time to apologize for the misunderstanding and move on, not insist the other person is overreacting to a joke that they obviously did not understand was a joke.

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Seconded dude. Responding to a newbie question with 3 bits of op-fu that clearly haven't occurred to them,followed by 'didn't even need to try' followed by 'Feel Shame' comes across a bit arrogant, even after you say rather defensively that it was a joke.
To the OP: new players often get hold of one mechanic and think it's the be-all and end-all, and think that when they find a few things to stack to optimise that one thing they think they've beaten the game with an unbalanced character. In fact, they've made an unbalanced character in the sense that it has all its eggs in one basket, not in the sense that it's overpowered compared to other possibilities. My advice: your player wants to feel badass about having a 'can't touch this AC'. Cool. Let him feel badass about it, and by all means give him his fun having attacks just bounce off. Then have him come a non-terminal cropper with something he's weak against. Don't pound away at his will save, because at this stage there's little he can do about it, but make his character aware that he's not invulnerable and needs to do something about his weaknesses when he can.

Simply put: player resources are finite. For every thing they improve, something else is left wanting. if they pump a bunch of resources into one thing, several others will be left wanting. So if you want to make sure that everyone feels properly challenged, just make sure to look at everyone's weaknesses and make them come up sometimes.

In this case, his REF and WILL are pretty poor, his offense is nonexistent, and he has absolutely no utility, and his mobility is basically "no". Every once in a while, just pick one of those and use it to put him off his game, remind him he still has weaknesses. Have something that kites him with ray spells. Have some blasting spells smack him. Make him the target of traps (if I only had the REF to dodge...). Use illusions. Use REF-targeting spells that move him when he's dangerously close to some 10-foot deep water. Have a field of difficult terrain that slows his progress to a plodding pace. Have some enemies run past him, let his poor to-hit do nothing to them. Set him up against an enemy with DR, which his low damage will have a hard time punching through. He's got plenty of holes you can target if you want to make sure he's not dominating everything. Of course, it's kinda a jerk move if you always do it and single him out, though.

Since other people have done an excellent job pointing out the build's weaknesses, I'd just like to add that you should let the player do his thing sometimes. He built the character that way because he wants to be this big brick wall that enemies can't touch, so have enemies (especially one or two individuals in a group) sometimes try to beat him up, even if (even though) it doesn't make tactical sense for them. Basically, don't shut this guy down all the time just because it's easy to do so. That only leads to frustration.

Yeah, Jormidgardsorm was in line.

Anyway, to try to be helpful to the original poster, when I encounter things like as a DM I usually combine the following:

1) let them have their glory, and
2) play their weaknesses.

Some encounters I let them dominate. They feel good about it, the party feels good about it, I feel good about it. In other encounters, their shtick does them no good. As others said, you can do stuff like splash damage, stuff with Will saves, use touch attacks, magic which auto-hits, etc. And then I'll have such encounters where both things happen. Dominate some enemies, ineffective against others.

I would suggest *not* having every monster they come across do #2 to them. For example, I read a story about a Halfling thrower character who got a bunch of attacks at touch AC. Mysteriously, *all* the baddies started having *absurdly high* touch AC's. This is not a good move on the DM's part, essentially defeating the point of the character's build.

Throw a level one wizard with Grease (isn't that a first-level spell?) prepared at him. When he falls into a spiked pit. Then have a boulder crush him.

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Originally Posted by atemu1234

Throw a level one wizard with Grease (isn't that a first-level spell?) prepared at him. When he falls into a spiked pit. Then have a boulder crush him.

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Then have the wizard urinate on him while yelling, "Is this making it past your AC?!"

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Originally Posted by ComaVision

Then have the wizard urinate on him while yelling, "Is this making it past your AC?!"

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Well, if he's unconscious, and urinating is probably a ranged touch attack which wizards are quite good at... probably?

Encourage them.