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I have a campaign beginning in a week and a half. Two groups are involved in which they will play on different nights, but they take place in the same land, just different parts of the map. All of their choices and abilities to shape the world are pretty open ended, including what may happen if the two groups ever run into eachother. (most of the players expect to be enemies as one group is evil, the other is good,  but this was all a coincidence)

I'm handling item shops and gold a little different early in the game as it sort of begins with survivors of a country fleeing to a new land (so currency is essentially worthless) treasure and item gains will be random or created in game for fairness. One more thing I should point out is one group is more experienced in DnD than the other, as in the other, 2 of the 4 players have never played before.

Now the problem. In the more experienced group I was approached by a player telling me he wanted to purchase a specific magic item with gold. I informed him there were no shops as supplies were limited and that items would be crafted or discovered and to make it fair for everyone , he would only acquire that specific item by chance, or perhaps much later in the campaign, when shops made more sense. He accepted this.

Now tonight, another one in the same group said he wanted his character to be a crit character, and that he wanted feats and magic items allowing his character to crit at levels 20, 19, 18, 17, etc. He said he wanted an item like this by level 7. I considered this a rediculous request and sort of metagaming, to ask for this item specifically for his character, because, and these are his words 'he thought of it.' I told him i'd consider it, and if it happened I'd toss it int he world and leave it to chance on whoever found it as that is fair. He then got mad and said it was his idea and because he's merely building his character it's not meta gaming. the arguement ensued. Keep in mind sometime in the conversation before it escalated he veen admited he enjoyed breaking the game and making his character as OP as possible.

Unfortunately now everyone in his group is on his side, and what he is doing is not metagaming in the slightest and that I am the one doing it wrong, and every other DM/campaign does it this way.

If I am in the wrong, please tell me, I only want this game fun and fair for everyone, and I feel if I did as he asked the other group would be upset, and they already thing the more experienced group is cheating as it is.

When doing stats for characters we did a dice rolling method. By chance, the more experienced group got much better rolls. (three of the four) I assued them it was all legit and I witnessed it so they calmed down, but I feel if this came up they would be very mad.

Am I wrong to prevent the player from min/maxing his character for critting? I really need advice because they're making me out to be the bad guy and I just feel this would wreck the experience for the newer/slightly weaker players as the experienced group already made it clear they want to destroy group 1.

Aug 25, 2012 -- 11:57PM, Salla wrote:

First, lose the dice rolling and go to point buy.  Everybody will be on an even playing field.

If you say 'magic items are limited', then magic items are limited.  Mr. Critical Guy can get his critical range as high as he wants via the methods available (Scimitar, learing Improved Crit at level 8), but if you say something ain't happening, something ain't happening.  If he don't like it, there's the door, he knows how it works.

Don't do PvP.  It never works well.  Especially with an experienced group attacking an inexperienced group ... it'll be like a semi truck running over a squirrel.  The new players will almost assuredly NOT enjoy it, because it will feel like getting bullied (and they may well be right).

No one wanted to do point buy, and it was the players who built it up in their heads they'd be gaainst eachother, since the different groups schedules conflict I doubt there'll be much interaction between them.

Thanks for the straight forward advice, I pretty much told him the same thing, unfortunately most of that gorup think I'm DMing wrong now. I suppose if worse comes to worst I'll just drop them and stick with group 1, they seem more interested in what ever gets thrown at them then making their characters gods anyhow.

On the surface, it sounds like you're a DM getting bullied by players. On the surface. Scratch that first layer of paint a bit and you'll see what the real problem is - your perception. Luckily, since you are only able to change yourself and your own perceptions (as opposed to the players who are other people), you can solve this problem.

First, you mentioned "metagaming" several times in your original post. Its use was as I've seen many DMs (wrongly) talk about it: Someone is doing something you don't like and so it's "metagaming." My first recommendation would therefore be to stop thinking that way. Metagaming is actually helpful to the group and this player is using it correctly by telling you what he wants his character to have so you can work it into the game. You don't agree with that for reasons stated, so you're using "metagaming bad!" as a bludgeon to get people to think the way you do. Not only is that not going to work, it's the wrong way to look at it. A DM shouldn't meddle in the affairs of players building their characters and justify themselves by saying they're "curbing metagaming." Instead, give the player what he wants or make him quest for it. In other words, make getting what he wants fun for everyone.

Next, this item is only overpowered if success and failure in your encounters is always determined by one side annihilating the other. By putting alternative objectives/goals for both PCs and monsters in your encounters, it usually doesn't matter how much damage a PC can do - he can post up huge damage numbers all night long (which is all he really wants most likely) and have a total blast, but still not diminish the challenge or overshadow other PCs. I regularly give my players overpowered stuff - bombs, laser guns, overlevel magic items... all sorts of loot that many DMs would balk at. And it doesn't make much difference to the encounter difficulty at all because reducing everything to a puddle of goo and entrails is almost never the best way to "win" the encounter.

As DM, it's important to know what you can control and what you can't control. You can't control your players' desire to have capable characters that do big damage. But you can use that impulse to make your game more fun. You just have to change the way you look at it, which is something you can control. To do otherwise is to place yourself in an adversarial relationship with your players which rarely bodes well for the game.

Metagaming is 'using out-of-character information to affect in-character decisions'.  Asking the DM for something is not an in-character action at all, it is purely out-of-game, and therefore is not metagaming.

Additionally, not all metagaming is bad.  It is entirely possible for a player to use that information to make a game go more smoothly (such as 'Hi, new PC, I feel oddly compelled to trust you even though I just met you so we aren't standing around for two hours figuring out why you're tagging along with us').