Dealing With Damage Monkies
written by Donat P. Fevre
May 22nd, 2007 · 9 Comments
I’m sure that every once in a while, you’re going to end up with a player who has a character that can kill everything you throw at the party with nary a sweat. Often times, he can just cleave his way through a whole army, while the rest of the players hardly ever get a chance to make a contribution to battle. And not only can he deal it, he can take it as well, whether it be from damage reduction, high armor, or a combination of both! So, how do you go about dealing with that?
Send More Powerful Foes After Him!
Since your Damage Monkey can deal out loads of damage and take just as much, you may want to give him more of a challenge. He’ll be able to cleave through something that has the same challenge rating as his character level (including any applicable level adjustment) easily, so he’ll need something with a higher CR. I would recommend something with a CR at 2 levels above his (effective) character level.
But what about the rest of the party? They may not be able to deal as easily with a higher challenge rating foe as the Damage Monkey can. Lesser creatures can easily fill this gap. While the Damage Monkey deals with the greater threat, the other players can easily be occupied with the lesser beings. Plus, if you choose carefully enough, such lesser foes can actually provide a detriment to the Damage Monkey, making it worth the while of the other players to get those lesser foes off his back!
Destroy His Overpowered Weapon
Is it possible that your current Damage Monkey came across a weapon that’s more powerful than anyone else’s in the party? Perhaps he has a weapon that has enhancements on it that make it effectively a +3 (or more) weapon, whereas the party average is just a +1 enhancement? Maybe it’s time for that weapon to go *boom!*.
One way to go about this is to have the party encounter a beholder. Or two. Or maybe an army of them. Given the intelligence of beholders, they would recognize the greater threat, and thus use their disintegration rays on him. Or perhaps, more specifically, his weapon. 
Then they can just take all the player characters hostage.
Another possibility is making good use of the rules for disarming and sundering. Have the foes who fight the Damage Monkey try to disarm him, if you want him to to still keep his weapon. You can take this further and actually have this lead into an entire adventure dedicated to getting that weapon back! 
However, if his weapon just ticks you off enough, just have the foe sunder it until it’s finally destroyed. True, this is quite evil, but it solves your problem.
Check His Character Sheet
Probably the best way to deal with this kind of situation is to check the Damage Monkey’s character sheet. Perhaps a mistake was made during the creation of his character. Or perhaps he (or someone who helped him) got some math wrong. Also, in the case of a modified template (which just so happens to be my case, if you all are wondering) make sure the powers that weren’t dropped still match up well with the level adjustment. It’s possible that you and/or you player may have made a mistake is judging the powers, and thus made the level adjustment for the template a bit too low. Even a difference of 1 in the level adjustment is enough to throw off game-play balance.
I’ve suggested bigger challenges, being an evil bastard, and being nit-picky as ways to deal with Damage Monkies. Have you ever had to deal with Damage Monkies in your own campaigns? And if so, how did you go about dealing with him or her?
If you like this post, buy me an ale!Topics: D&D General
I never did stop to think about that. But then, I think our last session was more heavily RP than hack-’n-slash, even though it started out as a massacre thanks to our Damage Monkey.
It was still fun, and rather amusing, though.
[...] sure you’ve had a bad player here and there, as many DMs around the world do. Rules Lawyers, Damage Monkies, players who do nothing, etc. They’re all a pain in the rear for us. Sometimes, they can tick [...]
Ahhh you mean George.
One of my players, who professes an intense dislike for anything d20, will make a min/max melee damage monkey at every occasion. Sometimes the lipstick and eyeshadow will change, but it is basically a fighter/barbarian designed to do the maximum amount of damage possible.
I’ve been taking great delight in starting many of the encounters at 70 feet, just inside his charge range, but outside the rest of the parties.
A couple of easy-peasy warm-up encounters, where George slaughters everything ( lets see, thats a 32 to hit for 46 points) killing the 10hp gnoll.
Then I have the Bigger Bad Guy.
So lets day the party has dispatched 2 groups of low level mooks. The next group is a bunch of low level mooks, with one or two leveled mooks mixed in. All basically looking the same. (1st orc hits for 12, the other 4miss, and this orc hits for… ermmm, 17 doesn’t confirm… 42).
Longer story short, George has died more than any other player, and almost half the total deaths. I’m running a party of 8-10 PC’s, 1 cohort and 1 NPC through Return to Temple. Hopefully he will learn that being all alone in front of everyone else is not always a good thing.
DR 10/Piercing is your friend here. That way, the party rogue has a chance to shine. Or you could just twink out the AC to absurd levels, and let the mages spam thigs with save DCs at it. Or, both.
[...] far, it seems like 4th Edition may be a power-gamer’s paradise. And I’m not fond of power-gamers at all. So it appears that it may be more difficult to create encounters that are actually challenging, [...]
During one of my rare bouts as a PC, I was an orcish berserker with a fullblade during my playthrough of Red Hand of Doom. So, I was lucky enough to see this problem from the player’s perspective. I would consider ways that my DM could account for my character, while watching with interest to see what he’d actually do.
Send More Powerful Foes After Him
- If the damage monkey does not engage the enemy for whatever reason (failed save, distraction, etc.) then you’re going to have a complete disaster. If you hold back on your attacks as a result, your evil plans become painfully obvious to the party. If you don’t, someone’s going to die.
- Higher CR means more XP means the PC just got more powerful. In some cases, this is desirable since barbarian two-handers become less significant with time, but in other cases, such as with pre-published adventures, it can be problematic.
- I’ll also add that continuing to subvert a player’s character choices by tailoring encounters against his PC is an exceedingly poor practice. Reward character choices, don’t punish them!
How about, instead:
Keep Him Occupied.
All the damage in the world means nothing if the target only has 5 hit points. A swarm of minions between the damage monkey and his target can slow him down considerably while letting him get some use out of his Cleave feat. Rather than a single powerful wizard, consider two, each at opposite ends of the battle field. You could have the most distant one be involved in the casting of a very powerful spell, that will be completed any round, but not if you can stop him first!
Destroy His Overpowered Weapon
The character might be overpowered due to a specific weapon. Perhaps it was a mistake on your part, or the party chose to pool their wealth for the purchase without realizing the consequences to their own enjoyment of the game. Regardless of the situation, live and learn, but do not punish the player for your own mistake and attempt to rob him of his item. A better solution would be to focus on the other PCs, increasing their power to match. With a little care, powerful items can be dropped that are only useful to specific characters. Or perhaps a character discovers an unknown aspect of their ancestry, leading to the acquisition of a template?
Check His Character Sheet
Good advice. I also recommend searching the Internet for any particular issue that comes up. If it’s serious enough for you to be concerned about, odds are someone is ranting about it online.
Might I add:
Talk To Him
If you feel that there is a serious problem with a player character and you’re unable to deal with it on your own, take the player to the side after the game and relays your concerns to him. You should be able to reach some sort of compromise and he’ll walk away less upset than if you had just robbed him.
And a final suggestion:
(true story)
Don’t Try To Kill Him
Because you’ll only get upset when you fail to do so!
Personally, having played D&D since I was six, (my parents having nerdiness roughly equaling mine) I’ve faced my share, and sometimes been, a damage monkey.
First off, I usually put more actual role-playing into my story, just because most players don’t seem to take an interest in developing their character as a person. Teach these damn nerds some social skills! (no offense) There was one time I had joined a game by my friend’s request, and found myself in the middle of some mongo monty hauling! One guy in particular, he who I took over for as DM, had made his character practically a god due to a mix of psionics and magic, and expected me to let him continue use of him as a player! So I took the easy way out - they all woke up chained to walls in separate rooms of a dungeon, missing all but some basic clothing. Oh, and for the godded character? Someone had put a cursed ring on ‘em that he couldn’t seem to take off, which inhibited all but his weakest spells. I got some major death glares on this one, but it ended up being a really fun quest to remove that ring. Not they ever did it, mind you, (blame the idiot who felt like waking up the dragon) but it was still a pretty good run, and it made them think!
The guys I used to play with in high school were all damage monkeys. There came a day when I decided that the party being able to wipe out a GRAND MASTER OF FLOWERS! in a couple rounds was obscene. The next major opponent I threw against them was one they couldn’t hit at all. Their weapons just bounced off him and he would always take out the spellcasters first so they couldn’t cast.
His secret? Armor that made him invulnerable to magical weapons. He also possessed a hat that granted him free action. That combined with a cloak draped over his arm that could deflect one attack per round made him nearly unbeatable…that is until he got into a good grapple.