Whirling cavalcade of death.

[Lezta]

Oh yeah, don't be afraid to play the Star Trek game! It's Trek! How many episodes are there without a single shot being fired? Many. Make Admirals/Captains/Higher-ups 'tell them off' for using non-Starfleet agressive tactics!

That'll learn them.

[Publius]

Originally posted by Fesarius
Bring in the Pro From Dover. This is the guy who's as good as the offending character -- or better. Cheat if you have to, to create him

Bingo! My general rule in gaming is that players who minmax or find loopholes in rules will face NPCs doing the same or equivalent tactics. Works with a lot of things: ultraviolence in Trek, using phasers on disintegrate and using all avialble weapons in ship's combat. I call this "Do unto others..."

Originally posted by Fesarius
(I believe that categorizing minmaxing as exclusively a player problem is a cheap way to evade responsibility for building a balanced, tested system. It's impossible to make a system foolproof, because it's a handful of designers against hundreds or thousands of players, some of whom are as smart or smarter. But pushing the problem entirely onto GMs isn't the correct choice, either. The right approach, to me, is for the designer to work *hard* to get balance in the system, to the best of his ability, and then let the GM's handle the rest of it.)

Amen Fesarius. Getting sloppy with the rules and creating all kinds of minmax opportunities is a sign of poor design. A design that honestly attempts to deal with these issues and/or is otherwise sound but has some unforseen or unwitting loophole potential is a different matter entirely. Sometimes this can be attended to by having a strong GM hand in the character creation process or in requiring players to start with and maintain a "theme" with their character that responds to changes in the game rather than what happens to be the most effective loophole. Neither of which are easy with certain types of players however.

I have noticed that a lot of systems (though not all) created in the last few years have suffered from this minmaxing problem as well as rather arbitrary lack of balance in areas like character creation. These aspects seem to reflect the predominant "trend" in 21st century game mechanics. As has been mentioned too however in the last few posts, this is where Trek at least stands out -- it carries a lot of potential for non combat adventures that de-emphasize this kind of minmaxing.

[P'l]

Originally posted by Tobian

Scare your combat monster.. Have a game with NO combat, have lies deceit, rechary, spies, seduction, science, engineering, technology, biology, medicine... all o these things with difficult challenges... and no combat ! That will make them reassess their skill spending !

And if you simply must have combat, think about making it ship-to-ship combat, where his Unarmed techniques will be rather... useless.

[Balok]

I'd like to add a caution.

You should ask yourself first whether you need to correct this problem. If it's not interfering with everyone's enjoyment, maybe you shouldn't do anything about it.

You also need to consider the possibility that the player will realize what you're doing -- and you need to have a response ready for such an accusation. It could be, "Who, me?" or it could be "Yep. I wanted you to experience a different facet of the game, so that you'd understand the value of well rounded characters." The player may state that he developed his character as he felt such a character should be developed -- and since you didn't disallow any of his choices, you tacitly approved of it. NOW you're getting into the hazy realm of "Yes, but even the GM can make a mistake."

Certainly GM's do make mistakes, but ideally, they're like the umpires in a ball game -- they don't make many mistakes, and they don't make bad ones. You could find yourself caught between the need to appear infallible, or nearly so, and the need to keep a mistake from spiraling out of control.

Sadly, there are no good answers to some of these problems, because they almost always depend on the specific situation. Your best defense is to anticipate arguments the player will make, and prepare, in your mind, your counterarguments. Unless you are an excellent debater and can think very fast, you don't want to be developing campaign metastrategy on the fly.

[CaptainVarne]

In any RPG there needs to be a certain amount of communication between the players and the GM, thus allowing for trust. If you have communicated to your players that not every episode will be a massive fight and that there will be episodes that involve thinking on higher than neanderthal levels, then the players should know full well to make well rounded characters.

If you then have one player that has put all his points into one skill, there is nothing to hold you back from pimp slapping that player's character. In some cases, I've given a warning to the group as a whole. And if worse comes to worse, you are the GM of the game...use what I like to call "The Finger Of God." If the infraction by the offending player is bad enough, it would really suck if they had a transporter accident...for instance. Whether the other players go through the logs to find out after the fact that there was indeed a malfunction with that transporter pad is really besides the point: said character still has his pancreas on the outside.

If on the other hand you have NOT communicated to the players that they will need well balanced characters, you really can't justifiably do much when a pissed off uber gimp comes into the game with a STR of 18 and a 2 in all other attributes. In this case, if the uber gimp has a transporter accident, you just look like a sore loser and risk ruining what could have been a fun game.

[Mazza]

Originally posted by Tobian
Scare your combat monster.. Have a game with NO combat, have lies deceit, rechary, spies, seduction, science, engineering, technology, biology, medicine... all o these things with difficult challenges... and no combat ! That will make them reassess their skill spending !

I agree and I do this on a regular basis. The player just sits around complaining about having nothing to do, they don't reassess anything. Maybe I've just got a thick player. The player contributes quite a bit roleplaying wise to the group, but the character is definitely overly specialised on hand-to-hand combat.

[Mazza]

Originally posted by Fesarius
I'd like to add a caution.

You should ask yourself first whether you need to correct this problem. If it's not interfering with everyone's enjoyment, maybe you shouldn't do anything about it.

You also need to consider the possibility that the player will realize what you're doing -- and you need to have a response ready for such an accusation. It could be, "Who, me?" or it could be "Yep. I wanted you to experience a different facet of the game, so that you'd understand the value of well rounded characters." The player may state that he developed his character as he felt such a character should be developed -- and since you didn't disallow any of his choices, you tacitly approved of it. NOW you're getting into the hazy realm of "Yes, but even the GM can make a mistake."

Certainly GM's do make mistakes, but ideally, they're like the umpires in a ball game -- they don't make many mistakes, and they don't make bad ones. You could find yourself caught between the need to appear infallible, or nearly so, and the need to keep a mistake from spiraling out of control.

Sadly, there are no good answers to some of these problems, because they almost always depend on the specific situation. Your best defense is to anticipate arguments the player will make, and prepare, in your mind, your counterarguments. Unless you are an excellent debater and can think very fast, you don't want to be developing campaign metastrategy on the fly.

Well, it certainly doesn't interfere with the player's enjoyment, but it definitely interferes with everyone else's enjoyment of the game, including mine. Everybody else hates standing by and watching the character deal with almost all the villains by herself while they stand around and scratch themselves - they feel it is like the player is hogging all the fun to themselves. My episodes tend to not have more than one or two fight scenes, if any, and so naturally everybody looks forward to getting their hands dirty as a change of pace. And this sort of thing lessens my enjoyment of the game because all the sense of drama is gone from combat - it is just a given that the security officer will win just about all the time, and if she isn't there, then the rest of the crew will get creamed.

I don't really like the proposed solutions of a "a pro from Dover", because like I said, I don't run a combat oriented game. I don't generally have my heavy as a combat monster, I prefer heavies with a brain between their ears instead, if I have a heavy at all.

[Phantom]

What does this character do in other situations (social, academic, etc?) I tend to agree with what has been posted here about using a more cerbral approach to game planning. Perhaps not having any fight scenes for one or two sessions migh be in order, to show the PC that they can't always get out of all situations with there fists. Hit threm with traps and tricks that need to be thought through...instead of being broken through.

[Tobian]

Yes, the problem is if you put anyone into that situation and for whateve reason the Security chief fails, then the others will die horribly!

My best advice is to go with the twist, suprise your PC with clever tactics.

If she rolls an amazing initiative, gets the drop on them all.. have them surrender.. as their friend gets the surprise drop on her from behind.. one shot with a stun setting will soon knock her out!

There of course is the other possibility.. Ok so she knocks them all out BUT it's still possible for someone to resist a stun.. and then pretend to be unconceous.. Then carefully they aim, rasing their bonus (and mitigating the penalty from the stun) and BAM one unconsceous security officer!

and as I keep saying - forcefields forcefields forcefields ! Your enemies can gloat on the other side of one, giving your other PC's time to think a way round the problem (such as a security computer test etc).

As always it's possible to use even the most useless NPC's, which have much lower abilities to outwhit your players... Sure in a head on combat she will win.. what happens if they don't go head on!

I wonder how she'd do against the 'arsenal of freedom'

[Pericles]

I wonder how she'd do against the 'arsenal of freedom'

Die horribly I would imagine. The resolution to that episode was about as classic an example of thinking your way out of a problem rather than fighting your way out as I can think of for the entire TNG run. Both the surface and the space weapon platforms were ultimately defeated by brains and not brawn.

One other way to show the error of the hand to hand solves everything mentality is to throw aliens that grossly over match a human like a very large Nausican or Gorn. This is just a form of the "Pro from Dover" plan, but it makes it look a little less obvious, especially if you think your player is slow on the uptake.

[Owen E Oulton]

Personally, the best way I can see to handle the situation is to inform the player that you believe he has interpreted the rules incorrectly and that the various modifiers involved are not cumulative. It's your game, you're the GM, your rules interpretations are the operative ones.

Further, it sounds like you let him use modifiers from unarmed combat skills while using a phaser - is that correct? If so, why? That seems quite unreasonable to me...

[Mazza]

No, I didn't let the player use unarmed combat modifiers to the character's phaser rolls, I really meant combat in general, because the character has quite high Unarmed Combat: Starfleet Self-Defence and Ranged Combat: Energy Weapons. For some reason I didn't say anything but unarmed combat in the original post. The character has the ranks in both.

There really aren't too many fight scenes in my campaign - if that was the case, I would be having this problem with all my players instead of just this one because everybody would pour all their focus into their combat skills. I suppose I can make those fight scenes I do have more devious, and the times I have done that in the past it has been good fun and quite challenging and all.

I know how to get around the character's ability to transform into a whirling ball of certain doom, that isn't the problem. I don't mind that the character is so skilled that virtually every punch thrown or every shot fired is an almost certain hit. What annoys me is that there is no real upper limit on action points, and so the character can just go crazy until either there is nobody left standing or it is no longer worth trying (and it is more frequently the former than the latter). It gets pretty silly.

I'm thinking about introducing a house rule whereby if you take extra actions one round, you sacrifice an action the next round, but I really hate introducing house rules when there isn't necessarily inherently broken in the system, which seems to be the case since it is just this one problem character.

[Tobian]

To be honest I don't see your issue with action points; you only (usually) have 3 at any one adventure... You only re-gain them by doing something heroic...

Your science officer turning into a whirling dervish of death, who has a combat skill of 2 is heroic - a combat veteran who has a combat skill of +14 taking out some bone headed bad guys is NOT heroic because he can, before rolling his dice, beat their defence bonus! The defenition for me is to award a player / character for doing something beyond his capabilities, where he has had to risk his life, put himself in danger, saved the life of a dying alien or saved the ship from exploding - those are what you should award action points for!

Whatever the rules say Startrek is meant to be about people pushing themselves, challenging fate and cheating death.. if it's routine to do that.. then they shouldn't be awarded for it... On the flip side, your security officer defusing a bomb, solving a murder mystery, realigning the dilithium matrix before it explodes.. IS heroic because they acted in an area they had no experience / tallent / skill in! or to the converse.. your security officer trying to take on the afore mentioned 'arsenal of freedom' WOULD be heroic because it was virtually impossible!

[Balok]

The Pro From Dover doesn't have to be someone who's more of a combat monster, just someone who's ... better in some fashion. For example, I have a character who has driven my players batty because (although they don't know it yet), he can become intangible for short periods of time (and with certain other adverse consequences). He could also be someone who's "studied" the character, i.e. can take advantage of what YOU know about how the character operates.

And as Tobian says, Action Points come back when YOU decide they should, not when the player wants (or needs) them back. How quickly I return them depends on what I think of the action for which they were used. Some don't come back until the next game session.

And, of course, there's raw honesty: tell the player you make a mistake and, while HE may be having a ball, no one else is. Tell him that his character is threatening the future of the game, if you believe that's true. If he's got any consideration for others, and any maturity at all, he'll concede the point, and permit his character to be toned down a bit, or even replaced.

[Publius]

I still like the Pro from Dover option (although the others mentioned have been very good too). It might be used in a one on one situation, where the player is in their field of advantage, and the other Crew are involved in another aspect of the adventure (See the example below). It also does not have to be someone that breaks the rules either, just use the same exact rules that the player does; only you as the Narrator have an inherent advantage: you can always make more

The player uses multiple actions to do more than one thing with a moderately good score even after the mods. Have the bad guys do that too, only there are more bad guys than good guys, each firing two or three times. Individually they might suck and not hit anything, but sometime someone is going to get lucky with doubles. Have the bad guys use their bonuses to max out on an initiative roll or whatever just like the PC. Create a threat race that operates at a slightly different temporal state than the rest of the universe, which allows them a special ability to preempt one other action per round, or 10 rounds or Scene. Or a threat race which have all of the inititative boinus edges as part of their basic racial template. etc. etc.

Also, you don't think that the bad guys are noticing who is causing all the damage? Have then attack this one PC en masse until the PC is taken out. Is this not the tactic that most PCs use? Narrator's may want to spread the attacks around for play balance but why do the Bad guys have to suffer like that? This is especially helpful if you spread the exra actions out (I always do that after 1st ed Shadowrun) so that those with extra actions only get them one at a time in between everyone else's actions.

Example: The players are on detatched duty, basically Deadheading their way from Point A to Point B (OR if there is a PC Captain in your crew, they are sharing a Leave at the same time while the ship is investigating a gaseous anomoly in the Fuggitabbatit Sector) when they are stopped and boarded by Pirates (using a cloaked ship of course). Let the HTH PC chew through a bunch of them while the others are kicked back. Let them be Mr/Mz Impressive. Then the Pirate uses a alien sound device to knock the PCs all unconscious (the Pirates of course all wear bulky headgear that protects them and even if they are all out cold by this point there are more bad guys on their ship).

When the Crew wakes up the Pirate band have brought them to a world which still engages in gladitorial blood sports. The world is technically prewarp, but the Pirates (and other races in the system that do not belong to the Federation) have been visiting them for many years. The HTH PC is forced to fight their alien champion... the Pro from Dover. When the HTH PC defeats him (if), there is another... and another... Meanwhile, and I would actually do this while the fight is going on, having one or two rounds of HTH PC's combat for every miniscene for the other players, the rest of the Crew have an opening for escape and must secure some means of getting offworld (the Pirate's own vessel for instance). Jumping back and forth like that can make for some very interesting 'cut scenes'. The Badass HTH PC will have a chance to shine and the other PCs will have a chance to do something that is more meaningful. If the PC gets skewered in the process of fighting all those alien badguy champs, well, you live by the sword...