Anyone else got a dwarf killing machine as a player?

One of my players is a belligerent dwarf (the character, not the player!) who is on a determinedly martial career path; he started as a fighter and now, at 12 experience, he is a thug. And by Sigmar's gonads can he dish out the damage. He is regularly swinging his axe about causing 20-25 points of damage in a single blow, which needless to say is causing most adversaries to be cloven in twain at the drop of a hat.

This is getting a little frustrating for me as a GM, as he is so much more powerful than the other players and is therefore dominating combats; not to mention felling what should be interesting opponents before they have time to say "what tha-" let alone use their tricky actions.

Any ideas? I general, l can introduce more social encounters, a bit of disease and corruption now and then—things that he's not equipped to deal with. But I can't think of anything to do with combats beyond upping the challenge of the opponents, and that tends to leave the other players badly outmatched. And even really pretty powerful beasts can be felled with a couple of blows with this kind of damage dealing.

does this negatively effect your players enjoyment too? is the dwarf player aware of the imbalance? does he care? if he wants to improve your experience at the table get him to help you.

i would try to mine the situation for comedic value with the players input.

have his reputation precede him. NPCs (allied and enemy) give him monikers. or jokes that he finishes as quickly in bed as he does on the battlefield.

tie in your other post about the drawback of horseback riding. have him get motion sickness riding on the cart and have this effect him in battle.

aside from thematic solutions mechanically, conditions are you answer.

generate them on chaos stars, banes and even blood droplet thingies if you want.

he hits so hard that his weapon takes on the Damaged condition which will reduce the DR by 2.

he misses a swing so ends up Exposed.

he cuts an orc in half and slams his axe into the wall on the follow through and ends up Staggered.

outside of conditions get creative with the chaos stars and banes. results in his axe getting stuck in the corpse, maybe he keeps swinging it with the body still attached, maybe he needs to pry it loose. he lets go to the axe and it clatters across the floor.

have the creatures perform stunts to tackle him to the ground making him prone.

fatigue should be his weakness, so have him manage his reckless stance which will reduce the number of successes.

I would presume he has a "dump" stat and has high str(6?) toughness and agility? Attack his dump stat - terror and fear are good, give him lots of stress tokens - especially if he powers through fatigue - bring on the insanity!

He would likely get a reputation for his martial prowess at some point(if not yet), feel free to have enemies specifically target him first.

Everyone knows he's tough, so shoot him with arrows from a distance. Set up trip wires. Make him fight in water (at only 4' 6" tall, can be a BIG problem). Use poison. Steal his weapons one night whilst he sleeps. Ambush him. Worst comes to worst, one of his friendly NPC's is actually an assassin; stick him in the back with a sharp pointy thing.

Personally, though, I like to have a tough PC about; at some point they get all heroic and die gloriously (and bloodily) whilst everyone else runs. Using NPC's with Improved Parry/Guarded position and lots of def and soak sounds good. Also, why not have an enemy as tough as him appear - whole big honourable challenge thing - could be a glorious fight to the death

Excellent ideas! Fantastic! Inspiring! Many thanks.

I had our great fighter meet a diestro style fighter, started with disarming him, and after that it went downhill for the player, till support arrived...

Even whitout overpowered characters sometimes encouter's are really easy for II rank characters...especially when they have initiative or outnumber opponents, no matter how bigs...

Sometimes i give important opponents more "special rules", like having more action per round (usually equal to player's number) or making all player's rolls contested (so Str 6-7 monster are much harder to hit)

In your case i would suggest to make the dwarf deal whit one of such opponents, while the rest of the party is engaged whit lesser foes: maybe the dwarf will come up pretty beated, and will succed only whit the aid of his companions, binding the party togheter even more.

- Send in a lot of opponents against the dwarf, and do not use henchmen rules. The dwarf will kill 1 per turn, meanwhile 4 more each round are hitting him and doing damage, etc. Doing 20-25 damage against a goblin is overkill. Even little hits will add up, but feel free to give the enemies access to a variety of attack actions, such as Trollfeller Strike and Reckless Cleave, etc.

- Do the reverse. Send him up against a Black Orc in full plate, or similar enemy. Feel free to be a bit loose with A/C/E pool, and use most of it to add challenge and misfortune dice to the dwarf's attacks. Don't forget to also use Dodge/Block/Parry. Make the foe trained in the appropriate skill too, for the extra . Also, again, check the attack actions he gets to use.

- As mentioned, "attack" the weakness of the dwarf. Stress or Fatigue are great. Disarming is handy.

- Have enemy archers use Immobilizing Shot to prevent the Dwarf from getting into melee range. Alternately, have the combat layout such that the dwarf is at a disadvantage in position or unable to get to grips with his enemies. Archers on a wall or in a tree, for example.

It's been mentioned before but mobility is the downfall of any dwarf. Goblins on wolves strafing the group, large oponents with knockback abilities, archers taking pot shots with impunity, area of effect stuff (burning pitch, nets, pitfalls, etc).

A few years back I had a dwarf in gromril armour thumbing his nose at a good many of my carefully sculpted "big bad npc" types. It went on for a while and because he was a canny player I couldn't seem to get the better of him (I trained my baby brother too well I guess). The other players would get annoyed at the "Jesse vs Tony" show. So I backed off for a couple sessions and just let him wreck my baddies (turns out we had a fine time even though it wasn't nearly grim and perilous enough). Then we had a fight versus some bandits, and these guys were just plain ol' mooky mooks that were dying like flies (well not flies but they were out-classed for sure). The bandits began to break and flee over a bridge crossing a stream nearby. Tony's dwarf went charging after them like a squatty panzer before I had even finished my description of what they were doing because he didn't want them getting back to their camp and warning raising further alarm (when players interupt me like this I don't usually get upset, but I don't offer passive "noticey/spotty" checks either because they are clearly being hastey).

Thud thud thud went his boots on the bridge. The bandits got to the other side and their three pals in the trees fired crossbow quarrels tipped with burning pitch at the powder kegs strapped the bridge's struts. The blast didn't hurt my baby brother's dwarf much. But it turns out he couldn't breath water. Thus ended the glorious life of Aloznogrog (gorgonzola spelled backwards lol).

@universal Head: use skaven, those special actions inflicting criticals are nasty and will bring every dwarf to his knees or further.

We had a swordmaster that was quite broken and the player was a murderous s.o.b. with the character. It completely ruined all social encounters and he helped the party mow through The Gathering Storm in 5 sessions (with ease). Yes, there are broken characters out there and I suspect that his interpretation of some of the action cards may have been flawed as well. Martial characters get quite broken and I've not seen a satisfying way to change that except by watching for card combos (and I'm no longer allowing swordmaster as a basic career). The player ended up moving away prior to last session and things got back to "normal," however I let the other players know a couple things:

1. All players had better have a back-up character ready (so we rolled some up). I noted that I wasn't pulling any punches on insanity or crits anymore (as I had been doing).
2. I am granting "corruption" for evil actions. Evil. That's right. Evil actions (the D&Dism definition) will get you corruption points at my whim. This stopped a couple of players who were ready to follow in the footsteps of the murderous swordmaster's player's actions. Some examples: wonton slaying of innocents get you some corruption from khorne (as has been suggested by others). As much as I didn't want to go this direction, it has gotten the players back on the heroic track rather than burning down every inn with a mutant in it (regardless of the other occupants) and from just slaying anyone who looked at them wrong or whom they suspected of being dishonest. They were also simply killing all travelers and taking their stuff so they could fund their horses. It was really ugly. That door has closed.
3. On un-accounted-for chaos stars, I have a d10 chart that involves a lot of weapon dropping, weapon damage (as suggested earlier) and all those other effects suggested in the Player's Guide.

I've houseruled a bit weaker characters: I limit n00b characters to a 4 in any given characteristic, but I feel your pain. We've still got a trollslayer that I can foresee being somewhat of an issue. I'm not too worried about it if he's the only tank, but for a while, we had 3 tanks and a wizard!!!

I'd like to see what kind of min-max combos players are using out there and then nixing them. The best ideas I've seen so far are those where GMs house rule that certain cards can't be used while another particular card is recharging (e.g. reckless cleave and thunderous blow).

jh

I haven't started running a game yet, but this has me worried, I don't want this kind broken character to even be possible in the game. How is it he is getting to 25 damage? From what I know, damage should be around 12 to 14 ... STR 6 + WD 6? What am I missing? Is he doing an action card for double hits or something?

Here's how you prevent it:

1. max starting ability score of 4 for all characters. This keeps players from making one-trick battle ponies with fellowships and intelligence of.
2. Make reckless cleave and thunderous blow Rank 2 actions (meaning that the players cannot take them off the bat).
3. Ironbreakers get adamantine breastplate and chain instead of plate.
4. Swordmasters (make them an advanced career).

That will solve MOST of your issues right there.

jh

Romus said:

STR 6 + Great weapon 7DR = 13 base damage.

Reckless Cleave :

- 3 Hammer + 3 dam

- 1 boon : + STR

Max : 22 damage but recharge 4

Thunder Blow :

1 Comet : + Weapon DR

Max : 20

but only 1 roll of 6 with rk 1 PC.

Troll Fell :

3 hammer : +3

1 boon +1 (ignore armor)

2 boon : +3

3 Boon : +4 (ignore armor)

Comet : X wound

Max : 20 + ignore armor + X wound

Emirikol said:

Well, it's too late for all that!

Search for a condition/insanity/critical hit or creatures with attacks that allow you to add a recharge token to player's action card. Use it in a fight and add recharge tokens to block mellee attacks. If your player has only few of them (knowing he has only 12 XP, I assume he cannot have more than 3 including mellee strike, ) he'll quickly end up attacking only once per 2, 3 rounds.

Also check if your player isn't misinterpreting the rules (or worse - cheats). Elyandel showed few actions, but they never got over 22 dmg. Personally i think that you don't have much possibilities for 1st/early 2nd rank character to inflict 25 dmg at all (maybe a dreadfull combo with some tactics or reputations?). Besides - you need to have some luck to do that and you certainly can't do it every single round!

I would work with big bad NPCs that have great deflection/dodge/parry/disarm skills. Throw in as Yarghuzzz suggests, a condition to keep his actions from recharging as quickly.

Realise that an NPC should have the same will to live as your dwarf... He'll not play fair if he sees a dwarf like that come up against him. Use traps/nets/poisons/restraints/drugs of any kind. A dwarven thug, sedated, caught in a net & disarmed, is maybe no fearsome foe to best, but I'm sure the NPC prefers living

Emirikol: I've done the same with adding corruption, but generally make it a toughness or willpower check (scale up the purple dice if it's particularly disturbing).

im very new to warhammer but my tendency as gm is these situations in other games is to give the player what he wants and turn his battle prowess into adventure hooks and RP opportunities.

for warhammer i might say :

his reknown as a fighter has become so great he has attracted an entourage of cronies and groupies who follow him from place to place asking for handouts, training, attention etc.

his reknown as a fighter has become so great a master diestro swordsman is seeking him out for a one on one duel to the death.

his reknown as a fighter has become so great he and his friends have drawn the attention of powerful members of the criminal underworld or law enforcement who want their services for high risk high reward jobs.

last resort - his reknown as a fighter has become so great he has drawn the attention of the khorne and is slowly starting to manifest a mark of the blood god that becomes more and more prominent with each creature he slays.

obviously it does take some work to make it so the other players are included and its not a one man show but ive found that incorporating a badass characters badassness into the game goes over a lot better than giving all your beasties silver bullets. silver bullets are usually transparent and can quickly escalate into a a hostile gm vs player situation which is never a good thing.

My best solution for a DPS power house is to design the encounter with him in mind. If I know he'll be present, there will be 2-3 extra mobs included with the full expectation that he'll take them down. Mobs that appear more threatening than they are can be ideal. The warrior gets the satisfaction of, "Remember when I tore down those black orcs one right after the other!" while you as the DM know that they only existed to buy the Big Bad enough time to monologue and reveal the next portion of the plot.

Water: the bane of the dwarf.

Reputation: if the mobs have heard of this dwarf, they may not want to fight. They surrender immediately when they realize what it is they're up against. Play up to the character's (or player's) ego as they praise him/try to recruit him/do anything but fight him. If he murders them, anyway... he'll get bored after he stops getting to roll any dice and just slaughters non-combatants, and word may eventually get to law enforcement. If he holds back out of honor, kudos!

If he constantly goes chasing after NPCs that have broken and fled, try to angle your description of the scene like a horror movie where the character is the Jason Voorhees and the broken troops are just kids, and maybe it will get the point across on the thin line between hero and villain -- and from the player's reaction, you can further develop the plot.

Emirikol said:

This tends to show up a lot really. The group picks the outwardly "martial" careers and suddenly your hurling dragons, bloodthirsters and whatever else you can get your hands on just to stop the mangy bugger from criting his way through the whole bloody creature guide.

My observations:

1. Don't give corruption for "evil" actions, grant stress and insanities for them instead. Corruption builds up to mutations that eventually get the group chased out of town. Insanities make life really hard over the general long term and don't go away. The character eventually becomes unplayable. most likely because accumulated stress turns him into a catatonic lump.

2. Why not just draw a miscast card and imaginatively apply the result?

One other thing you could do is lessen his XP rewards (or, actually, raise those for his allies).

Maybe he'll stop bulldozing his way through everything when he notices that other players are getting more advances each session because they're doing a better job with the role-playing aspect and less "playing the system".

It'll also serve to get them up to a level where he doesn't "own" the battles any more (and you can bring in tougher enemies that he can't handle alone)

One final possibility is to have him be SO well known as a warrior that enemies have "scouted" him.

If he always uses Reckless Cleave, have the enemy know this and be ready for it, making it either harder on him to hit with it (an extra <P> or two), give them some ungodly amount of avoidance against it (maybe 4-5 misfortune dice rather than what would normally be gotten from their armor), or even make a special "Reaction" action for it (similar to improved dodge, but a lot more pointed -- and more powerful -- saying they've done a lot of training against this particular attack because they knew of his reputation).

Does anyone else consider:

Mob(s)+mage?

It seems to appear quite a lot throughout the various source material and sample adventures and when you look at it, it has alot of possibilities.

A large mob of minions which will take yonks to plow through. All of them have various attacks that cause fatigue.

A mage at extreme range hurling spells that target willpower rather than defense. Granted, an ironbreaker may well have willpower of 4 or so, and discipline trained, but it might give you a better shot than trying to smack your way through anywhere up to three challange dice and more misfortune then paupers on the titanic.

Turn 1

Dead minion.

Soul drain!

Turn 2

Dead Minion

Breaking the wheel!(Or fatigue equivelent)

Turn 3

Dead Minion

Rampant mutation!

You get where this is going. Hold back something truly horrid for when he eventually crawls through the horde.

Turn X

Ha! I've finally cleaved my way through your horde of...

Chaos Spawn

Oooooh fiddlesticks.

I have a few thoughts on this:

1) I personally dont think it's right to 'punish' such a player/character without discussing it with him first. After all, all the player did was create a character fully allowed by the system. If you as GM dont like to have that style of character, simply add some of the restrictions at character creation. Yes, it's too late for that now, but discussing it with the player could lead to him toning it back on his own.

2) If you dont mind having the character present but are simply looking for more ways to challenge the party/player, I would agree with the suggestions about concerning numerous opponents. A swarm of smaller foes can be quite dangerous, especially if they can cause Fatigue as part of their attacks (ie, Skaven). I would also consider allowing a group of opponents to 'get him' and perhaps attack together to inflict minor wounds, but some Fatigue as well.

3) As others have suggested, use the environment. Wear him down via continual movement and harsh terrain. Character/players like that tend to want to rush directly at their opponent and kill them quickly. So have the opponents 'skirmish' and continually move to drive up his fatigue cost.

But definitely, give the player a chance to address it first via talking with him. Nothing is more frustrating to a player (in my experience) than to be continually penalized for success. If you allow him to keep the character as is, just make sure to let him have fun with the combat from time to time too. Dont always set out to contrive situations that are difficult for him.

There has been some excelent suggetstions in this thread, especially about discussing it out-of-play to see if it's a concern within the group.

Personally I wouldn't tweak any rules or penalize the character (actually penalize the player). Instead I would expect more of him and certainly the world/NPCs would expect more of him. For example I would try to put the group in situations were they have to do several things and split up. Maybe one character need to stall the attacking horde of greenskins while the others help the villagers, and so on. This can be done in several ways, for example using one major monster and several minor ones in encounters (the killing machine facing the major monster and his friends the lesser ones).

Also I would use a lot of social encounters.

Generally I don't like to punish players (or rather, that the players feel punished) as they get better, many players enjoy being real heroes. But remember what happened to Sigmar when he became all powerful?