Making Balance with Overpowered Characters



So the player went ahead and made a superpowered character despite your requests to the contrary. This happens to all GMs and it goes witht he territory. The important thing to remember is this- all characters can be threatened, all characters can be destroyed. The important thing as a GM is make the players realize this and to use this to make the game interesting, and keep the players on the edge of their seats. It isn't necessary to destroy overpowered characters. A good GM can accomplish much simply by showing that a player's character is mortal. Likewise a good GM can accomplish much by weakening a character plausibly through in game methods.

Pointing out other aspects of the game
A common problem for GMs is that players will often build characters who are combat machines that seem invincible in regular combat. The best way to challenge said characters is non-combatively.

In “Heroes Unlimited” Kevin Sembieda points out that 'Super-heroes' who think only of combat tend to kill their foes and tend not to think about civilians. Sembieda recommends using bad press against the characters. Have the widow a super-villain go on Television and explain how her husband was desperate to get enough money to pay for their infant daughter's critical surgery and now the child is dead from here congenital illness because the players heartlessly killed the baby's desperate father. Have the police charge the heroes with second degree murder. Even if the players don't have their players give up, it will often take the wind out of their sails and make them act a little more humble and responsible.

Instead of a dungeon crawl for a critical treasure that has the magical power needed to save the kingdom, make the treasure held by a critical- but fragile- ally of the kingdom that hired the characters. The players must convince the ally to hand it over the treasure without making the player's patron appear weak and also without damaging the fragile alliance. A +5 longsword of sharpness doesn't help here.

It doesn't matter how skilled the player is with an ion pistol if the ship is venting oxygen into space, and the players must find the sabateur and repair the leak while preventing new leaks from being created.

Traps, bombs, diplomatic entanglements, unexpected engagements to rescued princesses, poison, radiation, a cloud of dust from a meteor impact that blocks the sun and is causin plants to die: any and all of the these plus many more are possible ways to threaten the characters and force them to take action. Almost all characters can starve, or die of asphyxiation. Almost all characters can drown, most can burn if the temperature gets hot enough, and if they can't almost everyone has some weakness.

You are the GM, you create gods, stop complaining and get creative

Offering Trial runs for players individually
One way to use the above tricks to your advantage is to allow players a solo adventure trial run to see if they like the character they've created. Include just a few of the ideas that you think might be a problem for the player's super-character, and see if this doesn't make the player decide to re-balance their character somewhat. If it doesn't work, then you have at least pointed out the character that they can be threatened and this should work to keep them motivated in the future.

Depowering Characters through their own Actions
As a Game Master you will find that they best way to depower a player is through their own actions. Everything a player does can affect the health and prosperity of their characters. Players know this and understand it- even though they don't like it. The trick is, in all cases, to make certain that the player- in retrospect- had several chances to do avoid the depowering as could have seen it coming with a little bit of work and/or luck. Arbitrary depowering makes players angry. Getting zapped because the player couldn't resist grabbing the solid gold idol off the pedestal in the middle of the empty room of the dungeon, that's another matter.

Traps and Tricks and Theft of Cool Gear
Watch the Indiana Jones movies a few times and then come back and read this section. Ever Game Master who as ever played a fantasy or espionage RPG knows about traps. In Science Fiction games they are called security, but it amounts to the same thing. Traps can be most effective when they are not lethal, but force players to make ugly choices. The player's character is trapped in a magical leghold trap in the wizard's lower halls and the wizards mechanical dogs are getting closer. The Key hole to the trap looks like its large enough to jam the character's magical sword into, but there's no telling what that might do. A smart GM will offer a couple other dubious alternatives as well, and give them all some small chance of success.

On a more gruesome note, watch the Ewan McGregor movie 'Nightwatch', where Ewan's McGregor's character is about to be killed and his best friend uses an autopsy knife to slice his thumb off and slip out of the handcuffs to rescue his friend. Any nasty choice trap will work when the choice is stay and die or sacrifice and live, but they work even better when the choice is stay and die AND the world ends, or sacrifice and live and save the day and heavy cost. The player then gets to feel like a really cool hero and the lost gear seems like the cost of doing business rather than an offering to the evil GM.

Crippling traps can lower overpowered physical attributes, magical or electrical based traps can damage somebody's mental attributes (or offset them with a suitable anmesia or insanity). Holding traps and slow death traps can require the playerss to damage their character's gear in order to break the mechanisms an escape. There are many easy ways to divest characters of power. In diplomatic and political games a trap can be situational, forcing a character to either give ground to win or lose influence by making a politcal misstep. Traps that force players to abandon vehicles or other expensive equipment can be used to cut into the finances of an overly wealthy character. A character that has a lot of allies can be damaged by having those allies killed, kidnapped, politically compromised (turning them into a liabilty rather than an asset), humiliated, or turned against the character. Nasty unbalancing powers can be dealt with by using huge engines of destruction.

The PC is invulnerable? Build a Doomsday device that will destory the whole world (give them plenty of chances to stop it ahead of time, but make it really hard to do) that has an off switch at ground zero of its power core. Only somebody invulnerable has even a chance at reaching the center and even they might not survive (reference Superman and the nuclear missile in The Dark Knight Returns). Let the character risk certain death to be the ultimate hero and make them roll to see if they survive. There should be a reasonable chance of death, and a reasonable chance of total power loss, but a more likely chance of powers weakening and a small chance of powers being unaffected. This way the player feels like they have a chance, and when (as is statistically most likely) they end up only partially invulnerable, it feels like they won a prize. And they get one hell of cool gaming story for the Game shop banter...

"So there I was. The world was going to die and anybody LESS than invulnerable couldn't even get close! I mean this thing could have taken out Superman! So, you know, I had to step up..."

Sacrifices to Stay Alive and Get Ahead
“Run! I can't hold this up much longer! Leave me here and get out!” Sacrifice is the mark of a hero. Most players won't think of this sort of thing on their own, but if a GM has a recurring disaster that was stopped in the previous generation through the hero sacrificing her life, then the players will have it in mind. Give them other alternatives, and then see if they can pull it off, if things get too bad one player will generally offer to be the dying hero. Most campaigns offer a way to bring characters back, just be certain that there is a cost to the character (preferably in the over balanced part of the character sheet) for said ressurrection.