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[Gorjo MacGrymm]

maybe ask the other players if they even want to play with this numnut?  I can see it now:

Numnut:
"Haha, I draw my uber sword, fear me, pain and loathing, rah rah."

Everyone else:
"Oh wow, you killed us. Game over.  Lets start a new one right now with our old characters without numnut.  Horray.  Profit.  Dont let the door hit you in teh ass.""

[Captain Mayday]

Basically as I understand it... The weapon and the user becomes one essentially cloning the soul inside the weapon and putting the old soul into storage.

Yes I know he is being freeken annoying and is trying to abuse the system intentionally. He isn't SUPPOSED to set his character up for power, he is doing that as a way to make himself more powerful then the other characters.

Unfortunately I cannot do anything about that.

Except as the GM, you can always just say 'no'.

[Sowelu]

Or, you can get really creative and do something I did in my last game, have a space ship crash in the middle of their dungeon delving experience.  It is something you have to do with care, but can totally rehook players into the game.  One Dm I had, while we played a Hawaiin islander feel D&D game, had a 2 mile long 40 story Submarine rise outta the ocean in our bay.  caught us totally off guard and ended up being the coolest game I was ever part of.

I'm curious about this--how did they do it without throwing balance totally out of whack?  I mean...dude, machine guns and rocket launchers.  TPK.


Man, on the "annoying players who are dumb and annoying":  I asked my characters to make, you know, moderately developed backstories--it wasn't a shallow setting but wasn't very deep either.  Everyone's background made it in first try except for one guy, let's call him Ben.  I think his third attempt at a backstory after the others were rejected was that when he was a young boy, one chromatic dragon of each color descended on his remote village and burned it to the ground, leaving him as the only survivor, with an unknown destiny and--  yeah.  My response to that as a GM, and everyone else as players', was to say "Yeah okay no," and then ignore or contradict him whenever it came up.  I mean, we DID say no, why bother to argue?

So my advice is that the sword just plain works differently than he expects.  You tell him that, and if he complains, ignore the complaints.  When he tries to use it in a way that you and him disagree on, you win, and he will either be unhappy or confused, but either way it doesn't slow the game down and it won't annoy YOU as much.

[Max White]

Man, on the "annoying players who are dumb and annoying":  I asked my characters to make, you know, moderately developed backstories--it wasn't a shallow setting but wasn't very deep either.  Everyone's background made it in first try except for one guy, let's call him Ben.  I think his third attempt at a backstory after the others were rejected was that when he was a young boy, one chromatic dragon of each color descended on his remote village and burned it to the ground, leaving him as the only survivor, with an unknown destiny and--  yeah.  My response to that as a GM, and everyone else as players', was to say "Yeah okay no," and then ignore or contradict him whenever it came up.  I mean, we DID say no, why bother to argue?

So my advice is that the sword just plain works differently than he expects.  You tell him that, and if he complains, ignore the complaints.  When he tries to use it in a way that you and him disagree on, you win, and he will either be unhappy or confused, but either way it doesn't slow the game down and it won't annoy YOU as much.

I get the feeling Ben is big on video games. They tend to throw players as the sole protagonist, and give there protagonist an 'epic' back story, then cast them as the 'chosen one' figure. It's not a great attitude to have if your part of a bigger team, and dnd is better as a team novel, then a bunch of people playing diablo with paper and dice.

[Qmarx]

Better yet the weapon holds a peice of the character's soul and is basically an intelligent weapon made from their soul.

The appropriate DM response is something along the lines of "you can use the totally broken combination of founding your own weapon of legacy and making the same weapon your item familiar."

Then, if he argues, you have some insignificant concessions you can make so he thinks he's won.
1) "you can cherry pick weapon properties from other weapons of legacy for the appropriate slots even if they aren't listed on the menu"
2) "fine, you can waive the gp and xp ritual costs"
3) and, if he's willing to meet you halfway elsewhere "fine, you can ignore the tables of penalties from wielding it"

The argument here is "in DnD, a weapon that you put your soul into is your item familiar.  That's how you do it in the system.  Similarly, a weapon that draws out skills and magical abilities of former wielders is a weapon of legacy. And this combo is great, since normally you'd take massive xp and skill rank penalties if your item familiar gets destroyed, but a weapon of legacy can only be destroyed with a certain ritual."

dnd is better as a team novel, then a bunch of people playing diablo with paper and dice.

Funny you should say that.

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

Or, you can get really creative and do something I did in my last game, have a space ship crash in the middle of their dungeon delving experience.  It is something you have to do with care, but can totally rehook players into the game.  One Dm I had, while we played a Hawaiin islander feel D&D game, had a 2 mile long 40 story Submarine rise outta the ocean in our bay.  caught us totally off guard and ended up being the coolest game I was ever part of.

I'm curious about this--how did they do it without throwing balance totally out of whack?  I mean...dude, machine guns and rocket launchers.  TPK.  - It was all just high magic based.  No guns.  We avoided cross tech contamination so to speak.  Also, we watched a bad guy wizard/evillord blow the shit outta the sub and sink it.  Put the fear of him in us, definately.

Man, on the "annoying players who are dumb and annoying":  I asked my characters to make, you know, moderately developed backstories--it wasn't a shallow setting but wasn't very deep either.  Everyone's background made it in first try except for one guy, let's call him Ben.  I think his third attempt at a backstory after the others were rejected was that when he was a young boy, one chromatic dragon of each color descended on his remote village and burned it to the ground, leaving him as the only survivor, with an unknown destiny and--  yeah.  My response to that as a GM, and everyone else as players', was to say "Yeah okay no," and then ignore or contradict him whenever it came up.  I mean, we DID say no, why bother to argue?lol, with that kind of stuff I let it go on, knowing its secretly a delusion/hallucination/mental break from the tragedy of losing his family and dont tell him.  the more he acts like its true, the more his mental problem gets roleplayed on the sly.  Everyone else is in on it, its awesome 

So my advice is that the sword just plain works differently than he expects.  You tell him that, and if he complains, ignore the complaints.  When he tries to use it in a way that you and him disagree on, you win, and he will either be unhappy or confused, but either way it doesn't slow the game down and it won't annoy YOU as much.

[nenjin]

I am not sure if he is taking their well intentioned advice and peverting it (afterall the Soul Reaper's story would work fine as a legacy weapon if it wasn't so ultimate) or if he is actually getting crazy people to add stuff in.

I've found your problem.

He thinks he's playing "Bleach: The table top game."

People that don't know squat about D&D think it's a place where they play the most ridiculous, ohosocool thing that life prevents them from being. You'd better disabuse him of that idea quickly, or you're going to have a terrible play session. It's your world, not theirs, and any players or gamer that tells you what they want is more important than what you will allow is wrong.

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, you know, he might be happier playing Big Eyes Small Mouth.

That game is sort of geared towards everybody being incredibly broken and manages to make it work. It's also pretty fun ^_^

[nenjin]

Yeah, there are many systems out there designed so people can do super hero stuff and have super hero stuff and the game doesn't rip apart.

D&D isn't one of them. It may have all the cool trappings, but mechanically it doesn't support some levels of fun. Especially when it centers around one character as opposed to being part of each character. (My race is better than your race.) When half your party expects to be playing half competent swordsmen who are one step removed from peasants, and the other half come in wanting to play demons with intelligent weapons right out of the box because it's part of their favorite anime....expect friction, disappointment from everybody and a lot of whining about "but why can't I?" Lots of players are only into RPing for their own experience, not realizing that getting to dictate everything about themselves isn't what the fun is about.

D&D is notoriously bad about having some party members get ridiculous strong, while others basically stay totally ineffective. It got so bad in one game, because all the older players had relationships with gods and all these granted powers, that all 8 people in the party eventually took deities just so we could feel powerful too. We ended up calling it the God Party, because our whole time was consumed with pleasing our gods and doing errands so we could get another bit of power.

FWIW, I've tried multiple times to start high level parties where people either had lots of creative control, or lots of random goodies to start out with. It's NEVER worked well. EVER. The first time you throw out a monster and a player is hittin in the +7 to +10 damage range, you're going to hate yourself. The first time a wizard uses 4th level spells to solve what was supposed to be a roleplaying problem, you're going to hate yourself. It is far, far less enjoyable for everyone when they get the things they want to start with, and get the tools to trivialize situations before they've gotten into them.

I'm not kidding when I say that keeping high level parties from rolling over you as the DM takes experience, practice and a lot of failure before you find the balance. It sounds like this player is pushing you in the direction where you're going to lose control of him and the situation quickly.

[GlyphGryph]

Don't host overpowered games in D&D, seriously. Most of the high end D&D stuff is terribly broken, not just balance-wise but fun wise.

D&D works best when the players have to deal with constant risk, overcome their limitations, and struggle to achieve some specific goal.

Also, Big Eyes Small Mouth has rules geared specifically to what you're doing (allowing your players to create what amounts to plains of existance)

[Neonivek]

It is a 10th level campaign... He is just being a butt.

Sorry for posting without the weapon stats yet... he is going to take longer because he needs to write 10-15 OTHER artifacts he wants... as well as creating gods with godly items so he can take it with the other godly items he owns.

I mean... GOODNESS...

[Fayrik]

Have his mule die, or his backpack tear.
Break EVERYTHING he owns.
Except one item, you don't want to look mean now, huh?

Heheh. But seriously, if he's going to do that, you've got to penalise him in game. DMs are given full control of the world for a reason.

[Neonivek]

What makes me mad is the idea is good... It is just him breaking it (and me not wanting to interfere in anyway with his vision) that is really hurting me.

[Fayrik]

Neonivek, are you a DM or not?
I realise that my lack of experience isn't really going to help, but the one thing I can see a mile off is the fact you're going to have to put your foot down.
Perhaps you can be a bit subtle about it and suggest he might be a little bit overboard with his ideas.

[Neonivek]

Neonivek, are you a DM or not?
I realise that my lack of experience isn't really going to help, but the one thing I can see a mile off is the fact you're going to have to put your foot down.
Perhaps you can be a bit subtle about it and suggest he might be a little bit overboard with his ideas.

It is mostly that I don't want to undo anything a player put effort into doing... I also want them to feel somehow powerful

Which yes is a bad habit...

Especially since I know this player is what I call a "Timebomb character"... or rather he will just wait until he can destroy the party... and will.