Friday, December 12, 2008

Powergaming Part 3

I had originally intended to simply transcribe Jameson's character sheet, rather than talk about how cool I thought he was. Then I found out my wife recycled him. Sorry.

Anyways...

For various defensive and offensive reasons, I started taking levels of Monk with Jameson. My DM allowed me to take the feat "Ascetic Mage", despite my being a Wizard. Normally reserved for Sorcerers, this feat allows you to use Charisma towards AC, stacks your Monk and Sorcerer levels for purposes of the Monk's unarmored AC bonus, lets you convert spells into +to hit/+dmg equal to the spells level on all attacks for a single turn, and lets you freely multi-class between the two. In short, a damn good feat. By spending much time and resources in game, I was allowed to use it on my Wizard, using my Intelligence score for AC.

I also took "Arcane Strike", a feat the also lets you drop a spell for a +to hit/+dmg bonus. However, rather than +1 per spell level, it gave +1 to hit/+1d4 dmg per spell level, for every attack you make until the next turn. The best part was the feats weren't mutually exclusive, so I could drop two spells a turn, if I had a mind to (and I often did).

Then, after finding out that a pre-existing magical item could be permanently augmented, I took a pair of Ogre Gauntlets and turned them into a Frankenstein worthy monstrosity. After I was done with them, they went from simply granting +2 st, to the following: +4 str, +4 AC, +1 to hit, +2 dmg, Flaming Burst (+1d6 fire dmg, +1d10 extra on a crit), and they were acid proof (courtesy of the scales of a green dragon I slew while separated from my party). I would have added more, but alas, Tom made sure to keep my party VERY busy, not giving me the chance to tweek them.

I made the mistake of teaching Tom how to beat a powergamer. I explained to him that rather than trying to contest with the strength of their character, you simply need to force them into situations where, a.) Force of arms doesn't matter. b.) They must make choices they hate. c.) They are relatively powerless.

Simple enough, really. Some DMs get so caught up in literally trying to beat the players, they miss easy ways to take them down a notch.

Armed with this knowledge, Tom almost succeeded in shutting me down completely: He made me king.

I hate leading groups. I'm not bad at it, but I lack patience when it's most crucial, and if I'm in charge, it HAS to be my way. So, to avoid conflict, I let others lead. Of course, I still want to do things my way, so quite often, I end up separated from the group. Sometimes I'm right, sometime I'm wrong. In this case, going my own way turned into a nightmare.

After fending off a siege by the lich, and routing his army of undead, the city was in shambles. We stayed to try and rebuild, and offered the money and resources we had to the effort. However, the city's council felt that we were solely the blame for the attack, and it was our fault (I agreed). So, their answer to the destruction was to leave, and plead their case to the king that we were evil and left the city in ruins. I felt that being labeled as brigands by the king wouldn't help us beat the lich in the slightest, and that we needed to reach the king first, and take responsibility for what happened. That way, we could avoid his wrath, and solicit his help in fighting the lich.

After much agony and conflict (myself and the two NPCs I traveled with, Galin the half-dragon, and Lady Cross the Paladin, were ambushed by the green dragon I mentioned, which left one of them permanently scarred), I reach the king, and tell him everything that happened, leaving nothing out. He sympathizes with our plight, and absolves us of guilt for the fate of the town. To celebrate our victory in driving back the lich, he invites me to a banquet. At said banquet, an assassination takes place, which Galin, Lady Cross, and myself vainly try to stop (Draco-liches are tough customers, I'm afraid). With the king's dying breath, he gives me the royal signet ring, and leaves me his throne.

What. The. Fuck.

That makes absolutely no goddamn sense. I've known the king for all of one day, and he makes me his heir. So, I immediately try to seek out his closest blood relative. There are none. I seek out other royalty within the kingdom. None are present. So, I spend much time agonizing over how to not be the king anymore, and how to hide this from my party. Before I left, we had discussed petitioning the king to make John, our fighter, the mayor of the city, which we could then use as our base of operations against the lich. John had spent the entire game bitching about how my mage rendered him useless, so I supported this idea, to give him a stronger sense of purpose within the group. And Tom knew this. Bastard.

So, as I return to my party, having found a proper steward for the kingdom in my absence, I receive word that the nation to our south is poised to invade, after hearing the former king had passed. So now, I'm faced with letting this country fall, or trying to save it. As I mentioned earlier, I lost my soul to a demon. It was the price I paid for it saving my life. In addition to fighting the forces of the lich, I was fighting a personal war for my free will. In order to keep the trust of my party (which ended up with multiple Paladins), I continued to risk personal safety for the greater good, despite my Lawful Neutral alignment. So, for me, it was more than a simple invasion, it was a test to see how far I would go to prove that I wasn't secretly evil, and that I wasn't a puppet of the demon.

So, I travel south to parlay with the invading nations king (again, with Galin and Lady Cross, no real players). I end up being so frustrated with the whole situation, that once I enter the throne room, I launch a one man assault on the royal guard. I reasoned that I was a higher level than the other king, and his guard, and that I could intimidate him into withdrawing from my border. I was half right. I tore through his guard, with Galin and Lady Cross covering my flank, to find that the king was an epic level rouge, and that he could sneak attack me even if I wasn't flat footed (which isn't even really possible, I found out later, given the rouges build).

I was completely outplayed. Tom was able to manipulate the actions of my character, alienate me from the group by playing us against each other, and waited until the last minute to bait me into fighting a superior foe, so that my defeat would be complete. I have to admit, I never saw it coming, not like this.

However, I ended up having the last laugh. Do to the sheer overwhelming power of the foes we faced, we died a lot. A lot. But Tom allowed for frequent resurrections, even in the absence of divine healing. It annoyed me, but what broke the camel's back was when we got ambushed by a Hell Wurm. It flew over the city, hit us with it's breath weapon, then left. I was taken to -14 HP instantly, from full. When Tom found this out, he kinda blinked, then said I was only at -9 HP, courtesy of the demon that owned my soul. So, I told him that I was at -14 HP, and that I wasn't going allow myself a 7th extra life, for the sake of accommodating his unbalance encounters. I told him my death was final, and that player fatality needed to be taken more seriously, otherwise there was no point in playing.

Doing this seemed to rally the party, and they all agreed with me: our deaths would be final, and meaningful, not just hiccups in our campaign.

Which to me, is the heart of the issue with powergaming to begin with. When something ceases to be a challenge, what's the point? If all the enemies in the world only provide you with resistance equal to that of a cardboard cut-out, why play? Likewise, when every battle you fight offers crushing defeat, why play? A balance must be struck. Where the outcome isn't certain before conflict begins, where defeat and victory are both equally real options. That's what makes gaming fun. That way, if you lose, you still want to try again, cause you can do better. If you win, you still want to come back and do it again, if only to try and outdo yourself.

I think that Tom forgot that he was tasked with challenging us, not beating us. I think he treated DMing like he did playing a character: He was in it to win.

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