Experienced Munchkins - I hate them

[Thorin]

Munchkins leave a bad taste in my mouth.  Munchkins are roleplayers who pick optional rules to make their characters better and then keep pestering their DM until the DM says okay.  They don't pick the optional rules for interesting backstory, or for coolness factor.  It's all about boosting the stats so that combats are easier.  Easier combats means more loot, right?
I've got one in my current group and the DM is letting him do it while complaining about others.

If you want to play a high-damage fighter in 4th edition D&D, picking a race that gives a bonus to Strength and Constitution and then also lets you use over-sized weapons is an easy way to do more damage.  Of course, said race has to come from the Monster Manual, because for balance purposes it wasn't included in the Player's Handbook.

So there's my DM, complaining at the start of the campaign that player A picked a race from the Monster Manual (Goblin) while apparently letting player B be a race from the Monster Manual without telling anyone (Doppelganger).  And now player B is bored of playing his character so he gets to swap for a new character with yet another race from the Monster Manual (Minotaur).  Oh, and player A, who picked Goblin, wrote up a four-page history explaining why!  Player B, who picked Doppelganger and Minotaur, had no history for either.  Except, of course, that he didn't want anyone to know he got to pick Doppelganger, so he made sure to say his character was an Eladrin and we never got to find out until he was bored of the character and got to swap him for another one of exactly the same level and equipment.

The worst part is player B has been playing D&D for 8+ years, most of that time with the current DM either as DM or co-player.  They know each other well.  The DM should easily see that everyone else has less fun when player B gets to make his 50%-better characters.

[Mr. Analog]

Having been through this to a degree it's just as annoying as the DM because now you have more rules and errata to keep track of (as if I didn't have enough trouble with running games before).

This slides nicely into something else that bugs me. I would say that the most annoying thing about modern D&D role playing (3rd Edtn and up) is that it's all centered around tooling up for combat. Not just buying items or equipping gear but really building a character right from the alignment, class and in some cases species to be "the best".

What I think a lot of players and DMs don't get is that if they want to play as or introduce oddities into a campaign they have to work at it WAY harder than just picking it and trying to mash it into the current group of players. Some ideas are great, but don't fit for some campaigns.

I mean, if you were joining a group of players who were all set on being mostly sneaky rogues and one person shows up as the shining white half celestial Elf demigod whose lost their powers and their first campaign setting mission is to steal back a trophy from a rival village... well that Elf player is going to have to work really effing hard at making themselves fit. If they don't try to work with the group and fit in then it's just awkward and makes it difficult for everyone to play around and was a waste of a great character concept.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I want to foster creativity and parties with odd fellows in them, but, if the players don't put the effort into making it work then it falls flat and is too unwieldy to really do anything fun with.

Your current DM must be pulling his hair out by now.

[Thorin]

It all comes back to this basic concept: Everyone around a D&D table is responsible for making it an enjoyable experience for everyone else.

When a player puts together a character that clearly outshines all the rest in combat, he's making the experience enjoyable for himself but not for the others.

When a player puts together a character background that completely doesn't work with the rest of the group's backgrounds or motivations, again he's making the experience enjoyable for himself but probably not for the others.

I'm more likely to bend for a player with a cool background than for a player whose character has higher stats, better attacks, more hit points than is possible with just the standard rules.  In other words, as a player I'll help creative concepts expand, but mere number-crunching I hate.

My current DM appears to have become a pushover.  As I said, he's allowed Player B two different races from the Monster Manual both of which were clearly picked to optimize the character's combat abilities, not to help the backstory.  Yet he complained about Player A picking a race for backstory purposes.

[Thorin]

Well, "current" DM is now "previous" DM.  I quit that group.

A house rule was instituted that would make two-handed weapons deal Strength x 1.5 extra damage (instead of just Strength).  I did my number-crunching and showed that it would fit better with the obvious intent of the rules to leave it at Strength extra damage and then add a flat +1 bonus for two-handing.  Of course this upset Player A, as his character is a two-handed wielder.

At last weeks session it was suggested that Small characters should do less damage with their weapons, but that all weapons would then be available.  I play a Small character.  I looked at the damage conversion chart and had a gut feeling that it would actually let me do _more_ damage (bigger dice) instead of less.  They wanted to institute the new rule immediately, but I said Whoa, lets look at the numbers.  Sure enough, I could go from 1d10+4 damage to 1d12+6 damage following their current and suggested house rules.

So I suggest an easier-to-administer and harder-to-munchkin two-handed weapon damage rule, and then I suggest that we don't adopt small weapons because it'll make my halfling do more damage, and this guy just goes off on me.

I got in a good jibe, though.  He's calling halflings "hax" and "THE character to play".  To which I responded: "Here's the best test as to whether Halflings really are _the_ haxed character to play, though: Is [Player B] playing one?"

Lets just say he stopped being civil at that point.  Munchkins hate it when you call them munchkins.  They hate it even more when they say they want to use a rule from the forums (which of course helps them), and then you bring up an email from a couple of weeks earlier where they complained that rules from forums shouldn't be allowed (because of course it made their character not as good).

[Thorin]

Holy crap, turns out the DM would rather have me in the group than Player B.  So I'm still in.  But now he'll be looking for a player or two that can play every week in St. Albert, assuming the other current players still wanna play.  I dunno how they feel about it all, the email exchange got pretty nasty.

[Mr. Analog]

It's always tough when groups have trouble like this, sometimes it's unavoidable but sometimes not.

Hope you guys can find another player.

[Thorin]

I hope so too.  But if not, well, either we play with three characters or else I'm glad I found downloads of the books instead of buying them

[Thorin]

...and then the group decided they'd rather have the other player.

Interesting that the DM will continue to let Player B play, even though the DM was the one who suggested kicking Player B out.  I think he's a bit of a softie

[Tonnica]

Sounds like your chain has been jerked around quite a lot around this whole house rules/Player B problem. I'm starting to wonder if your DM is trying too hard to be everyones 'friend' and caving to only the squeakiest of wheels, instead of putting his foot down.

It's probably for the best. Bummer that you can't play D&D4 with the group but is the strife and powergaming worth it? No gaming group is perfect but this sounded like it was particularly silly.

All I could think of was Cartman in the episode of South Park where they were pretending to be ninjas. His ninja power would be all the ninja powers!

[Mr. Analog]

All I could think of was Cartman in the episode of South Park where they were pretending to be ninjas. His ninja power would be all the ninja powers!

ROFLMAO exactly!