Need some help (D&D 3e)

[Farmer]

Howdy,

I've a player who has done the following... (A lot of it is my fault for letting him do it, but now how do I fix my mistakes?

He first created a sorceror/monk with excessively high stats. I allowed all my players to set their own ability scores with the trust that they would do so to match their character concepts. Everyone else did.

This follow did not. Rather he created the character and then attempted to make up some concept for it which was quite ridiculous.

Specifically, this character was designed to exploit a weakness in the rules. He naturally had an AC of 18 (from +4 wisdom and +3 dex, and +1 for being a 4th level monk) and he would combine that with the Armor (+4) and Shield (+7) to come up with an armor class of 29. During the course of the game, the party comes upon various protective magics, and he of course takes his "fair share" and ends up with an AC of 31.

Thus, any foe that would be a challenge for this character would destroy the rest of the party and anything that is a fair challenge fo the party would be a joke to this guy.

So, realizing the problem, I have a chat with the player, explaining my problem. He seems to understand, and we conspire to allow an in character way for the broken character to disappear and be replaced with a new character that he will make.

And he makes a new one. A mad cleric of a newly risen god of fire with a real personalty beyond "psycho stealer/killer." I get really excited. Yet another convert from the ranks of the Power Gamer / Rules Lawyer towards the Mad Gamer (said categories are cited from Uncle Figgy's guides).

And in my excitement, I offer to break a few rules to make his character even more interesting. Let's severely limit his spell selection, I say, (since his God is new), but let's give him the same attack bonus as a fighter.

But it is only after we start playing that I realize that he broke this character too. Not only is he a Copy Cat (tm) of the Mad Irishman from Braveheart for all his role play (roll play?), but he abuses the spell Magic Vestment by casting it on both shield and armor, bringing his AC back up to where it was for the first character.

And, oh yes, he still has other spells. So once again, he's made an invincible character.


So yes, I made some mistakes. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Anyone have any idea on how I can repent and be saved? (Besides throwing him out?)

[Anastasia]

*Disclaimer*

I'm not up on 3rd edition, so I can't offer anything specific to that setting.

but he abuses the spell Magic Vestment by casting it on both shield and armor, bringing his AC back up to where it was for the first character.

In this case, use the first rule of DMing - The DM makes the rules as he sees fit. If you feel he is unfairly abusing the spell, limit it. Rule that it only works on either armor or shield but not both. If it's still badly out of hand, you can always have his God not grant him that spell for whatever reason - or even ban it outright. I'd consider that a rather heavy handed solution and only use it if other limitations fail.

Or, perhaps the spell will have a unpleasant side effect on him or a rare material componant that makes it rare to cast.

[Dracos]

Yeah.  You need to re-study the rules on stacking and enforce them.

As a rule, the player can get away with nothing the gm doesn't let them do.  AKA:

If he cast magic vestment, note it down, and note down his AC.  If he tries to cast it again, nod, subtract a spell from his sheet, and then inform him that he's just renewed his magic vestment spell.

Do not let him stack stuff that shouldn't stack or is insane to stack.

From beginning to end:

First off, while what you did is fine...you should always check over and approve the characters.  Make sure none are too weak or too strong for what you have in mind for a campaign.  If you don't, you will almost always have someone who creates with excessively high stats.  And worse, if you allow it, overtime it will corrupt other players.  People don't like feeling useless, and a character who is overwhelmingly capable tends to make other characters feel useless.  This results in others attempting to twink.  Even such a thing as a few extra points here and there can really end up hindering a campaign.

With the monk, I'm an expert on what's allowable and not allowable with monks.  First off, if he's wearing armor of any kind, that removes his wisdom bonus AND his monk dodge ac bonuses.  It also, naturally, incurs a dexterity penalty in most cases.  Simultaneously, it removes most monk abilities, most notably the ability to flurry.  A monk can still use pressure points, but while restricted in motion, they can't be doing their aerial stunts or full body swarm attacks.  The magic armor does stack on monks, but shield can't be cast on them, and a proper magic item that cast shield regularly should be prohibitively expensive despite it being a 1st level spell.

Shield, if you notice, is an obtusely powerful first level spell.  I personally tend to bump it up a level or two, but even if I don't, if it's not a wizard casting it (range self only is the rule for it), then any magic effect that causes it should not be cheap.  I believe though the bonus is an 'ac' bonus, which means it wouldn't stack with magic armor.

As a rule, there are always ways to remove stuff from people.  Poison that  causes permanent status loss is a great trick.  Some monster sneaks up by ambush, grabs him, sneaks away while the party has to hunt the monster through a level...  whereas you have the monk lose some of his equip/benefits.  Removing stuff from players, if done well, can be an adventure in it's own right.

You did the right thing having a chat with the player, but you overestimated the capability for change.  The fastest I've seen munchkins go to decent players required at least a few campaigns and a hell of a lot of enforcement.  They have to generally learn to enjoy playing a not-god to actually have any desire to play a 'not-god'.

Being a copy-cat of a movie character isn't necessarily a bad thing if you aren't worshipping originality.  Everything under the sun has been done before in one way or another.  The emphasis should be how it's being role played now though.  Outside of that though, your big problem is toning him down.

Knowing the books you are using there are significant rules for stacking stuff.  An intelligent player can rape them over, but they are still fairly restrictive.  Regardless, a wise gm has his own house rules.  Limits what the player can manage.  It was bad to give him a modified character when he's already shown a tendancy for abuse.  It's not a wise thing to modify character designs on the spot unless you know what you are doing.  The character he wanted should've been built by multiclassing normal cleric and fighter classes.

looking over it, I see obvious hints of restriction rules not being applied at all.

 For one, if his AC is so high as a cleric/fighter, he's probably wearing a hefty load of armor and casting magic in it.  If you are, there's some nasty spell failure rates that you incur.  These are intentional to limit fighter/spellcaster classes because those naturally can be rather devestating.

I don't remember magic vestments spell offhand but assuming it's a Magic Armor type spell that gives an AC bonus, the bonus would be zero.  Magic Armor and all like spells do not stack on armor or shields.  At all.  Two armor type bonuses do not stack.  Unrealistic perhaps, absolutely necessary gamewise though.  You have to keep an eye on things that are broken.

Fearless Leader

[Dracos]

Exception to the above note:
The only two armor bonuses that ever stack are the armor bonus of a shield and the armor bonus of a suit of armor.  Those two can stack and only those two.  A helmet cannot.  Nor can a ring or a bracer or anything of the like.

Fearless Leader

[Celeborn]

Dracos. there is one failure on the armor thing you talking about.
As a cleric they dont have magic casting failure as they are praying to the god/goddess for the spells. if he had been a mage he would have spell failure. but a cleric dont have.

and the armor bonuses what can stack is natural armor + armor + shield. not more and not less.  if he had a ring of natural armor +5 he could still have a shield +5 and armor +5 and those would stack to +15 +bonuses from the armor and shield.
Leather armor have normaly 2+ac and magical +ac if he have that.

Magical westment is a person only spell and he can not cast it more than 1 times as it protects the whole person. it cant used on armor and shield.
(edit. magical westment can stack with natural armor.)
it dont stack with a new magical westment. you only get more time before it goes out. the time dont stack either.

[Dracos]

Dracos.  My name is generally included twice in any post I make.  Pleased be to be gettin' it right.

Anyhow, 3rd Ed, despite me not playing it for a long time seriously, is still my area of rules expertise.  And your correction is flawed.

Armor and Natural Armor stack.  They are in two separate categories of bonuses.  Natural armor represents bonuses gained from hide toughness, magically or otherwise.  Armor represents stuff worn (such as a suit of chainmail).  They do not count in the same category.  As a rule, all things in different categories stack.  Notably, natural armor enhancements cost twice as much and four times as much if they take no space.

Secondly, as I recall, spell casting penatlies apply to both groups in 3rd ed (primarily to prevent spell casters from walking around in full plate), as prayer or not, most spells require strict motions and words that can get fumbled with movement restrictions.  That may be one of their optional rulesets though.  Don't feel like looking it up.

Thirdly, Monks are my area of expertise.  They do actually retain some of the advantages, but not many worth stating.

Magical Vestments is an "Enhancement" type spell.  It does stack with natural armor, but not with *generic suit of armor +1*.

Anyhow, aside from the fact that you fumbled correcting me in every conceivable method aside, upgrade your spelling.  That's not acceptable for these forums.  The occassional error is one thing but that post was a swarm of repeated spelling errors, some that really have no excuse as the spellings are stated several times in the posts that you are responding to.

Clean it up.

Dracos

[Carthrat]

Well, Drac, clerics actually *can* get away with wearing armour, but the rest is right.

[Celeborn]

Err. sorry Dracos my fault to write your name wrong.

i wrote armor and natural armor stacked.

i did write wrong on the monk. sorry about that one.

a cleric dont have spell failure read the players book. its a optional rule that clerics can get spell failure.

Sorry that i did have that much spelling errors. But you dont need to bite my head off.