What to do when someone comes with a OP build

[Laserlight]

Generally the player who brings an OP build likes the "character construction" game and has other ideas on tap. Suggest he roll a support character. Nobody ever said "Bob, your character is OP, you make the rest of us look too awesome, knock it off."

[deljzc]

Talk to players beforehand and figure out what kind of game they're looking for. From a recent questionnaire thread to figure out player needs:

• There are those that prefer combat vs. those that prefer roleplaying.
• There are those that want to always feel like heroes and those that like a gritty challenge.
• There are those who want complexity and those that want their games to be relaxing.
• There are those who want to do crazy stuff and those who want to keep things down-to-earth.
• There are those with experience (and like higher level stuff) and there are those without.
• There are those who are strongly attached to their characters and those that are comfortable rolling new ones.
• There are those who feel that drama and infighting adds to the experience, and those that only have fun when it's a non-issue.

Try to figure out where your table disagrees at, and set an expectation. If only one player is not making an overpowered build, try to spend a little extra attention on what he's trying to get out of the game so that he still gets the chance to stand out. If only one player is making an overpowered build, consider talking to them about making some minor changes so that you don't have to create any balance issues within the team.

Just make sure to replace Power with Versatility, so that they get something instead of feeling like less.

For example, say you have a crit-fishing Vengeance+Hexblade+Elven Accuracy Paladin, rocking a 27% crit chance at level 5. You COULD reduce the number of Short Rests the players can take in a day (so that they can only use their Hexblade Feature and Channel Divinity feature once a day), but that also punishes everyone else who might be Short Rest dependent (like, say, if you have a full warlock in the party). Or you could just completely remove his Divine Smite feature, but that'd rip a huge part of the Paladin's playstyle, considering how expensive the Spell Smite versions are.
So instead, replace his Divine Smite feature with a feature that says that the Paladin automatically knows all of the Paladin Smite Spells for the appropriate level without them counting against the Paladin's number of known spells. Sure, he lost Divine Smite and its guaranteed crit chance, but now he can cast Wrathful Smite and still have his chosen Paladin Spells. It also can't be combo'd effectively with the problematic features, because all 3 of them use Bonus Actions.


Balance against the DM isn't necessarily a big concern, but balance amidst the team is. If one player is really good, do you make the game really easy for one player, or do you make the game hard for everyone else? It's best to address this as early on as possible.

I'm a big believer that before any DM starts a campaign with players that he hand out a "blind survey" of questions just like above to hash out and get feedback on what the players want/expect. I've even added questions like how much silliness is acceptable (i.e. Monty Python humor is what I call it). You'd be surprised how wide a range (I have them all give a range of 1 to 10 on my questions) I get on that question and how silliness at the table can really piss some players off.

It's just so smart to get feedback early so you can see if there is any potential for conflict and misinterpretation. Once you get the questions done, it literally takes 5-10 minutes to fill it out by the players but is invaluable to how you run the table.

[Pex]

The problem is not to challange those builds, it can be done, but challange them and not killing other party memebers at the same time. If rest of the party is "casual" and one is hardcore powerbuilder- that is the real problem.

Ok, but the problem is the existence of the disparity not that the hardcore powerbuilder exists. I can acknowledge it's possible the problem is the powerbuilder for a particular campaign. I'd only object to any assumption it must be and only is his fault always.

[Man_Over_Game]

Ok, but the problem is the existence of the disparity not that the hardcore powerbuilder exists. I can acknowledge it's possible the problem is the powerbuilder for a particular campaign. I'd only object to any assumption it must be and only is his fault always.

It might not be intentional, he might have all the right intentions trying to be strong to support the team, but that doesn't make it less of a problem.

As long as the focus is "team balance" rather than "punishment", I don't think there's too many wrong answers. Even if it means changing a feature to be more in-line with the other players. I would just suggest making it as little of a "punishment" as possible. Like maybe he loses one key damage feature, but instead gets several ritual-esc abilities, some skills, or a defensive trait to compensate.

Or, you can do it how Exalted does it: The more you suck, the more experience you get. So the power gamer might be strong, but doesn't get any stronger for a while (because he has no reason to). Once his teammates start to outshine him (because of their 2+ levels over his), he starts to gain ground back. A self balancing system that slows down the selfish and supports the supportive.

[Sparky McDibben]

That's an interesting point, MoG - what about XP for failing? Like, you get extra experience for dropping to zero, or for failing a key save, or for really leaning into the RP of a charmed condition. That would help provide mechanical support for the Exalted-style idea. Plus, you've incentivized the other players to take more risks, understanding that there are rewards aside from looking like a jackass.

[Man_Over_Game]

That's an interesting point, MoG - what about XP for failing? Like, you get extra experience for dropping to zero, or for failing a key save, or for really leaning into the RP of a charmed condition. That would help provide mechanical support for the Exalted-style idea. Plus, you've incentivized the other players to take more risks, understanding that there are rewards aside from looking like a jackass.

The problem with strict, mechanical justifications is that things like "death" aren't always representative of the associated player's failure.

For example, the Wizard died. Maybe it was the Wizard's fault, but more likely it's because the Fighter decided to focus on killing the flying enemy and let all the Kobolds with Pack Tactics focus on the Wizard. Or now you get Leeroy Jenkins players who go and kill themselves at the expense of the team in order to "earn" bonus experience.

I'd honestly just do it exactly how Exalted does it:

You earn up to 90% more experience for the session depending on:

• How negative or dramatic your narrative was, and how it kept you from succeeding.
• How much you helped others succeed instead of yourself.

How I'd do it is just keep track of a tally for each character behind my screen, jotting down a few notes as to why each chunk of 10% EXP is being rewarded.

"Grog, you punched the merchant for being cheeky, and everyone yelled at you for it. You also threw your table at the wizard despite the fact that it was granting you cover. Your recklessness is creating conflict of its own, so you get 20% more experience. Ahlsa, you did an excellent job of trying to keep Grog out of trouble, so you get 30%. Everyone else, great job for killing that Wizard!"

This way, you can have showoffs who are strong, and the highest level people on the team are the ones not stealing the spotlight. It's always within the DM's control, and the focus is either on helping the team, or using your narrative in a dramatic way. Not "I want bonus experience, better go be stupid again".

[Daithi]

I have had an OP character or two, and my DMs favorite method of dealing with the situation was to kill me.

[Kyutaru]

DM: That's a very lovely optimized character you got there.

Player: Thanks! I worked on it all year long, trying every possible combo, hunting every piece of cheese from all across the internet.

DM: Yeah it shows. Hey, what do you think of my lovely optimized monster?

[Zuras]

Hmm...

1-4
5-9
10-15
16-20

Basically just shrink Tier 1 (where the power difference is huge), expand Tier 3 (where the power difference is small), and keep Tiers 2 and 4 roughly the same. You want to expand the higher level tiers when you can, so that more players can randomly join in. You'll always have new groups that are easy to fill, but you'll have a lack of mid-high level groups with enough players to run a module with. By shifting Tier 2 to level 5, they'll be more consistently filled, and Tier 3 will be more easily filled just by expanding the level range (when there's a distinct lack of game-changing abilities between levels 10-15). Tier 4 will always be something you have to especially organize, either as a special event or with a group of friends, and expanding it any more than 5 levels will create a massive power disparity at the table.

In practice, the biggest issue is when you have a 1st level PC in with an APL (average party level) of 3-4, or 5th level PCs in a tier 2 group at 8th or higher.

First level PCs are so fragile you almost have to avoid attacking them if you want them to stay conscious when you are running threats appropriate for 4th level characters. Works OK with an archer, but the 1st level Barbarian is either going to play out of character or die.

Tier 2 is slightly less problematic, but you still have major issues with AoEs. One of my first Tier 2 AL experiences was as a 5th level Cleric in an APL 8 party. I spent several fights unconscious after being KOed by a single cone of cold. So many Mages in those modules!

[Pex]

It might not be intentional, he might have all the right intentions trying to be strong to support the team, but that doesn't make it less of a problem.

As long as the focus is "team balance" rather than "punishment", I don't think there's too many wrong answers. Even if it means changing a feature to be more in-line with the other players. I would just suggest making it as little of a "punishment" as possible. Like maybe he loses one key damage feature, but instead gets several ritual-esc abilities, some skills, or a defensive trait to compensate.

Or, you can do it how Exalted does it: The more you suck, the more experience you get. So the power gamer might be strong, but doesn't get any stronger for a while (because he has no reason to). Once his teammates start to outshine him (because of their 2+ levels over his), he starts to gain ground back. A self balancing system that slows down the selfish and supports the supportive.

That's where your own bias comes in. Why is the player "selfish" for making a strong character? The game choosing to use XP awards to balance disparity is fine. The weaker characters get stronger until such time the stronger character is weaker, so it's his turn to get more XP until stronger and the cycle repeats. Labeling him "selfish" for being strong in the first place connotates a wrongness how dare he he does not deserve.

[2D8HP]

I think we've all seen those builds, the ones where a barbarian can single handedly deal enough damage to kill a red dragon or one where a fighter does the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in damage while using a weapon from the 12th century...

No, I can't say that I have.

If I um..

...wanted to avoid making such an awesome inappropriate build (that's the ticket!) build, what specifically should I not do?

-asking for a friend

[Mortis_Elrod]

There's nothing wrong with powerful characters inherently. Many people enjoy that power fantasy feeling, others don't. Usually this should be addressed before anybody makes a character.

But on the off hand it isn't, the DM's job is not to be the Nerf Modulus Regulator™©®

DM's job is to find out if its actually an issue or if he's now allowed to step his game up. I've yet to see a build that is playable from level 1 and up that is so overpowered it requires a DM to do anything more than:

add more encounters
add puzzles
add time crunch
add objectives that can't be solved with damage
add objectives that need to be resolved via decent roleplay
or read the rules.

[Skylivedk]

I barely ever nerf anything.

My few exceptions include:
- Restrict extra attack for druids to level five (and compensate by making wild shape better for moon druids between 6 and 11).
- looking into changing Hexblade to make level 1 a less powerful dip (probably removing it and making a lot of it pact of blade features/invocations)

Instead I buff what I and my group perceive to be weak. Dual wield for Extra Attack classes ie

[SanguisAevum]

I think we've all seen those builds, the ones where a barbarian can single handedly deal enough damage to kill a red dragon or one where a fighter does the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in damage while using a weapon from the 12th century. Overall there's quite a few ways to make OP and powerful builds in 5e which I have often had to step in for as a DM which had me thinking. When it comes to players coming in with the most OP and optimised character in the world what do you do? I'm wondering just to see what people's feelings are on these cases.

I let them play the character, and use it as a way to improve my ability to DM from the experience of it.
It's a game... everyone should be having fun.
Plus... i trust the designers.. i have yet to really come across anything in the official rules that i thought needed changing.
(For reference, i've been DMing DnD for 30 years, and have seen my fair share of "OP" builds)

[Willie the Duck]

I think we've all seen those builds, the ones where a barbarian can single handedly deal enough damage to kill a red dragon or one where a fighter does the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in damage while using a weapon from the 12th century. Overall there's quite a few ways to make OP and powerful builds in 5e which I have often had to step in for as a DM which had me thinking. When it comes to players coming in with the most OP and optimised character in the world what do you do? I'm wondering just to see what people's feelings are on these cases.

It's always going to be context dependent, and the primary goal is to let everyone have fun. There's no right or wrong way to play a friggin' elfgame, except where it makes others not have fun. If I say, 'everyone make an __th level character, and give them a +1 weapon or armor of your choice,' and one person makes a halfling barbarian named 'Belkar Jr.' who dual wields knives (clear flavor character), another picks a fairly reasonable battlemaster fighter with even Str and Dex and defensive fighting style (generalist, not weak in any way but certainly not what an optimizer would probably do), and the third makes a one-handed quarterstaff with shield, PAM, and dueling fighting style half elven hexblade-dipping sorcadin (or other similar thing), they are the odd one out, and yes I'm going to ask them to play an alternate character ('you did bring an alternate character, right?'). If everyone wants to play optimization bingo, I have no problem with that, either. Honestly, the party playing Belkar II and the generalist probably will have a better time of it, because...

I would say that power isn’t a problem, it is relative power disparity within the party that makes things tricky, so as long as the rest of the party are also fairly strong, play will be just fine.

I point to my session 0 guidelines where I stated that it is not necessary, because the challenge is not set in stone. Over optimization is just met with more challenging stuff if it makes everything a cake-walk.

While overall, I agree, more powerful party plus more powerful challenge doesn't play quite the same as less powerful party plus less powerful challenge. The stakes are higher, and any given mistake (and there will always be a mistake) or bad roll can have greater consequence. I've seen significantly more character deaths (and definitely more TPKs) in high-powered play that low-powered, to a pretty hefty margin (like two and a half times as many, or something like that).

[Man_Over_Game]

No, I can't say that I have.

If I um..

...wanted to avoid making such an awesome inappropriate build (that's the ticket!) build, what specifically should I not do?

-asking for a friend

Maybe 1 Hexblade, Zealot Barbarian X build?

Cast AoA and Hexblade's Curse the target on turn one, then Rage and start Reckless Attacking with something like Polearm Master. With an enhanced crit range (5% to 10%), and the fact that Advantage nearly doubles your crit chance (10% to 19%), you have a 1/5 chance of critting with your weapon damage, adding your Barbarian critical, and doubling your dice Zealot damage.

[MaXenzie]

My ruling's pretty simple. If you go out of your way to make a character that isn't optimized, you have no right to complain when someone else does. If you wanted to deal a lot of damage, make a build that does that, and don't be angry when someone scores higher numbers than you.

[stoutstien]

My ruling's pretty simple. If you go out of your way to make a character that isn't optimized, you have no right to complain when someone else does. If you wanted to deal a lot of damage, make a build that does that, and don't be angry when someone scores higher numbers than you.

*DM only hands out one magical pole arm and laughs maniacally*

[Guy Lombard-O]

Generally the player who brings an OP build likes the "character construction" game and has other ideas on tap. Suggest he roll a support character. Nobody ever said "Bob, your character is OP, you make the rest of us look too awesome, knock it off."

Agreed. Just because your build might be stronger than some, it's really how you play it. I have an ancients paladin/hexblade I run in a campaign. He's certainly tough (high Res-Con, high Cha) and can take a hit pretty well. But he's usually running a Bless and focusing on protecting the group's casters. Meanwhile, the Bless-buffed Zealot GWM barbarian is trashing our foes, while the casters do BC, heals and debuffs.

The DM commented that my PC is hard to hurt (or break his spell concentration). But my damage output doesn't hold a candle to the barbarian, and nobody else in the group is complaining about my presence adding 6-9 to their concentration checks while they shelter under my umbrella, or when I use LoH. Played differently, I'm sure I could annoy the other players with the build, but even my "cheesy" build is clearly outclassed by another player's straight barb build.

My DM can easily adjust the challenges to deal with my (and I guess the barb player's) builds and the overall party strength. But targeting the PCs that are "strong" (primarily, just in combat) will undoubtedly feel like exactly that to the players who run them. I could easily see that approach creating a much more toxic atmosphere in a group than simply having stronger or weaker PCs (especially as these things vary level to level where multiclass builds are involved).

[Man_Over_Game]

That's where your own bias comes in. Why is the player "selfish" for making a strong character? The game choosing to use XP awards to balance disparity is fine. The weaker characters get stronger until such time the stronger character is weaker, so it's his turn to get more XP until stronger and the cycle repeats. Labeling him "selfish" for being strong in the first place connotates a wrongness how dare he he does not deserve.

Note that the mechanics that were being implied didn't really have anything to do with character strength (and when they did, I didn't support them), but rather they focused on how negatively your RP impacted yourself OR how you supported your team.

For example, consider the Cleric. They have Medium-Heavy armor, often have martial proficiencies. Have a full casting spell list. Have multiple features that are often relevant for each combat. Have some of the most powerful spells in the entire game (Bless, Spiritual Weapon, Guardian Spirits), have a 1d8 HP (highest amongst the Full Casters), have support for both spellcasting AND weapon attacking. For most characters, this would be WAAYYY too much.

So...what makes them balanced? It's that the majority of their spell list is focused around aiding allies instead of themselves. They are terrible at dealing direct damage and stealing the spotlight with the exception of very few spells. As a result, they actually help OTHERS succeed, despite having a plethora of tools to do it themselves. They ARE overpowered, but they shed that overpowered-ness to the rest of the team.

It has nothing to do with how powerful you are. It has everything to do with how powerful you are compared to the rest of your team. So a Cleric might be OP, and the Vengeance Paladin might be OP, but the difference is, the Paladin is more likely to be considered "selfish" (because of the lack of methods to support a team, focusing the majority of its playstyle on itself).

When I mean "Selfish", I mean "Only planning on making yourself succeed".

[Pex]

Note that the mechanics that were being implied didn't really have anything to do with character strength (and when they did, I didn't support them), but rather they focused on how negatively your RP impacted yourself OR how you supported your team.

For example, consider the Cleric. They have Medium-Heavy armor, often have martial proficiencies. Have a full casting spell list. Have multiple features that are often relevant for each combat. Have some of the most powerful spells in the entire game (Bless, Spiritual Weapon, Guardian Spirits), have a 1d8 HP (highest amongst the Full Casters), have support for both spellcasting AND weapon attacking. For most characters, this would be WAAYYY too much.

So...what makes them balanced? It's that the majority of their spell list is focused around aiding allies instead of themselves. They are terrible at dealing direct damage and stealing the spotlight with the exception of very few spells. As a result, they actually help OTHERS succeed, despite having a plethora of tools to do it themselves. They ARE overpowered, but they shed that overpowered-ness to the rest of the team.

It has nothing to do with how powerful you are. It has everything to do with how powerful you are compared to the rest of your team. So a Cleric might be OP, and the Vengeance Paladin might be OP, but the difference is, the Paladin is more likely to be considered "selfish" (because of the lack of methods to support a team, focusing the majority of its playstyle on itself).

When I mean "Selfish", I mean "Only planning on making yourself succeed".

Then you're condemning the Striker character to coin a 4E term. You condemn the Eldritch Blast happy warlock, the Great Weapon Master barbarian, the smiting paladin, the blaster Sorcerer, etc. Game mechanics is not team play. Some game mechanics of some classes help in that regard, but that's not the Superior Way to play. Team play is about the players, not the characters. I'm just as happy for the paladin to go smite crazy on the demon while I do my own thing as I am the bard who gives me Inspiration when I need to make an important ability check.

[NatureKing]

Play the game your players want to play. If the players are wanting to run powerful builds, let them run powerful builds. Give them opportunities to use powerful builds.

If there is anyone who is an exception to the demographic of the game as a whole (be that one player who over optimises, one player who under optimises, players wanting to do stuff that none of the other players are interested in, or a DM wanting to the players to listen to a political trade agreement story, rather than slaughter their way through a monster filled dungeon, or Dm's adding 'morally grey' edgey stuff into a relaxing game dedicated to blowing people up in a myriad of gore explosions), they need to either get on board or find a new game.

If you were playing video games, sometimes you want the Witcher, Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Darksiders, or Borderlands. Sometimes you want the Council of Elrond, other times, want the Mine's of Moria. If you want to play one and and not the other. You'd turn off the game you didn't want to play. Why should dnd be different?

[Innocent_bystan]

I used to DM a lot for power gamers in the 3.5 era, which had the uber-build of the week problem.

The solution I used was rather simple: don't increase the difficulty per enemy, rather increase the amount of enemies. And assign a disproportionate amount of enemies to the uber-build. After all, the blender of death draws a lot of attention. They will get slaughtered. That's their job. Be sure to be dramatic about it.

In 5e this problem still exists, more or less, but the problem is less pronounced. The DPR difference is a factor 2 instead of factor 10. And a lot of problems disappear when you ruthlessly enforce the standard adventuring day: 6-8 encounters, 2 short rests per long rest. This because a lot of the OP builds rely on limited resources. A sorcadin without spells is just a crappy fighter.

[belfastbiker]

Trust the designers. Going around removing, changing or restricting abilities in the game is lazy.

Every build has a weakness. People have described some of these already here. If one player is killing it in some way, find ways to let the others shine, or even have a look at the other guys character sheets and talk about optimising them a bit more. Some people delve into the books, some don't. I do, and as such have helped a couple of the other players change **** around for a new level 10 upcoming campaign. (I weep to see bonus action ability go unused...)

Oh god my Yuan-ti Pureblood Shadow Sorcerer / Circle of the Shepherd Druid / War Magic Wizard / Hexblade Warlock is going to be great craic... Limited in some ways due to the multiclassing extremes, but fun. :) Isn't that what it's all about?

It's up to a good DM to find the limited chinks in my armor.