Mechanical Talk: Breaking Things

So, let's talk about game mechanics, I'm not good at coming up with new game mechanics, mostly working well within a system I'm familiar with, but I always enjoy creating things within those mechanics, and expanding them to do multiple things, letting mechanics overlap, and intermingle, it allows players to find a mechanic they like and not be catastrophically confined to doing one specific thing, UND ONE THING ONLY!!!.

However, in between crippling overspecialisation and jack of all trades, master of none shenanigans, there is that sweet spot of being able to do multiple things well and being competent at their connected abilities, and if a party of PC's each has their own set of abilities that compliment each other without stepping on each others toes then that party works like clockwerk, making combat smooth, powered by the players who wanted to specialise in combat, and social skills flow from one to another, each person making a contribution suitable to their character.

Naturally, even in the perfect setup, there will be characters that overlap in skills and abilities, but having a player who greases the social wheels via bluff and perform will find his skills being used in different situations than the player who chose to be an intimidating thug that gives NPC's the choice of telling them what they want to know or losing their teeth, and if the players talk about it, that setup allows for great good-cop, bad-cop social encounters.

However, it's one thing to have a theoretically perfect party who have different specialisations and skills, and a party where nearly every character has the same abilities (normally caused by a lack of player communication); even in this situation it's entirely possible for a cunning DM to set up encounters and challenges where each PC is allowed to shine through.

If you're wondering why I've got 3 paragraphs detailing how having a varied party is a good thing, then you've either never played in a party where everyone chose to play similar roles, or you did and had a REALLY good DM for that party, because this is where I get onto the entire point of this rant: Broken Characters.

Now lots of players and DMs have entirely different measuring sticks for what constitutes a broken character, one of my current DMs insists that the coup-de-grace rules as written are broken beyond belief, and the other hates the Gunslinger rules with a level of passion normally reserved for a personal nemesis, and every player at my group except for one honestly believe it's impossible to play a Summoner without overshadowing the group entirely (It's not, but you need to know what you're doing).

Personally I think a broken character is a character that, either by accident or on purpose, overshadows other characters in their class specific abilities.

Compare a lvl 1 Fighter and Barbarian, there is no way that a Fighter will ever really out damage a Barbarian, and a Barbarian cannot wear the heavy armour that the Fighter can, but imagine that the Barbarian did gain Heavy Armour Proficiency, they'll lose some abilities (mostly Fast Movement), but now they can both out damage and out AC the Fighter, and if that Fighter chose that Class specifically to be a human shield, then that Barbarian has just purposefully decided that he wants to be as much of a human shield as the Fighter, and given his class abilities he can still generally out damage the Fighter, and so the player has created a broken character on purpose, either maliciously or because he thought it would be a good idea.

Contrast and compare to a group of players who had no communication during character creation, and they come up with individually; A Nerfer Wizard, A Blaster Sorcerer, a Super-Solo Summoner, a Nerfer Malefactor, and a Brick Paladin, now identify the broken character.

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If you guessed the Nerfer Wizard/Nerfer Malefactor, based on class ability crossover you'd be wrong, the Nerfer Wizard and the Nerfer Malefactor can specialise in separate styles, the Wizard going 1v1 with powerful save or suck spells, and the Malefactor granting a general area penalty to all saves. No the broken character here is the Super-Solo Summoner based on the fact that due to fact that nobody had any communication they decided to make a character that could potentially fulfil any role, and in doing so overshadowed the entire party, often making them useless.

Now I'm not saying that an Over Powered character is broken, or that any Broken character is automatically Over Powered, it's a lot more likely though; but that a character who repeatedly, without any real effort takes away the purpose and necessity of another party member is broken.

If you're having trouble with a broken character, then there is an easy fix, talk to the player, ask him if he wouldn't mind taking a back seat when issues come up. A character that specialises in combat to the point where he doesn't need the party to beat most fights, could feasibly hang back and use Aid Another, usually beating the AC of 10 in order to help their party members, allowing them to both make a contribution and not make the other party members feel useless, socially it is entirely possible for a character to just step back and allow the other party members to talk to the king, only stepping in if things start to go wrong.

Ultimately it's up to the player whether or not they step back or continue to overshadow the other PCs, however remember all Broken characters have a weakness, and it's often one that they don't expect to come up in gameplay.

Just remember you're playing the game to have fun, and if you have to gank someone to do so, don't let that stop you.