Tips for DMing with Optimizers

Author: Icebrick1

If you’ve ever been the Dungeon Master for an optimized character before, you may have experienced some frustration as they easily invalidate encounters with a huge amount of “nova” damage or by using potent control spells like web, hypnotic pattern, and wall of force. The other players may have expressed frustration due to the “overpowered” character. This guide will present a few options on how to adjust your game and expectations when an optimizer is present and how to maximize fun for you and your players.

It is worthwhile to consider why players optimize in the first place and what they hope to gain. There can be multiple reasons, but commonly it’s because the player wants to overcome the challenges they face in an adventure, and views character creation as part of that. Almost every player tries to do their best when they’re in the midst of combat to defeat their enemies, an optimizer just takes it to the next step.

While an optimizer tries to become as strong as possible with the tools they are given, this does not mean they don’t want to be challenged, it is likely the exact opposite. They want to feel rewarded for making smart decisions, and conquering huge challenges feels very rewarding. Therefore, in order to maximize fun for an optimizer you just need to give them interesting challenges, though you should also consult the player and the rest of the party and ask if this is what they actually want.

Don’t worry too much when an encounter is easily won

Optimized characters are much stronger than the average character, so you may find that encounters designed to be dramatic and difficult end up becoming cakewalks. While you might be disappointed that you never got to show some monster’s cool ability before it got incapacitated and killed, it’s most likely not a big deal to the players. They are probably just happy they won. While stomping too much will eventually get boring, players also generally like feeling powerful, so don’t get too upset when a few encounters you expected to be much harder get bypassed.

Use counters with moderation

A hard counter is some ability specifically designed to make a player’s ability or spell useless or near useless. For example, if some wizard particularly likes using web and hypnotic pattern, you may want to make your next boss immune to the charmed and restrained condition, or use a bunch of enemies that are immune to both. This is fine, after all there are a number of enemies in the Monster Manual immune to charm, it’s only natural for immunity to it to crop up occasionally.

Similarly, there are many natural situations that can act as a kind of soft counter to an ability. For example, if the players are surrounded by many opponents, web and hypnotic pattern will only be able to hit a limited number of enemies. These are fine as well. In fact, the optimizer probably prepared for them.

However, you should be wary of abusing hard counters too much. If you make every enemy for the whole campaign immune to charm, or give them abilities along the lines of “If a creature tries to cast a spell within 1200 feet of this monster, they instead take 20d6 damage.” The players are likely to feel that this is unfair as you are specifically targeting them and punishing them for optimizing, especially if the ability is so powerful and covers so many options (like antimagic field) that their character basically becomes useless.

For big bosses where you really want a counter, consider using counters that don’t completely shut down an ability. For example, maybe the boss can escape from being incapacitated, but it takes a turn and costs some resource. This way the fight wasn’t immediately ended, but the player’s attempt wasn’t completely wasted.

Counters can make an encounter more interesting, even a complete hard counter like antimagic field can be a fine one-off problem, but make sure not to go overboard or use it on too many enemies. If you want to provide a challenge, there is a better way.

Use more encounters

A fully optimized character is likely reliant on spell slots and/or other limited resources. Even if they only face enemies that are automatically defeated by wall of force, if you make them overcome enough encounters without resting, they will have to use other strategies. If you only have 1-2 encounters per day and try to give a challenge, you’ll likely have to use counters, which isn’t ideal for the reasons described above. As an added benefit, if the optimizer is spending less resources per encounter because they have to ration them, this will give a chance for less-optimized characters to feel like they are contributing more.

That’s not to say every day has to be a battle of attrition. Depending on the level of optimization and number of optimizers in the party they can likely defeat monsters well above their level. Letting them go all out by beating a pit fiend or some other really powerful monster at relatively low levels will likely make them feel great. Just make sure you know your party well before you ramp it up so you avoid a TPK. For more standard days, using a lot of encounters is an easy way to give a challenge.

In a party with mixed optimization, help the less optimized character feel like they are contributing

A party where some people are optimized and some aren’t may cause conflict as the less optimized players feel that the optimized player is overpowered and dominating the game. If you use more encounters, as described above, this will likely help a little, but you also shouldn’t be afraid to give the less optimized players powerful boons to help bridge the gap. This will probably take the form of magic items, but it could also include things like sidekicks and special mounts. Ideally, these should be items that the unoptimized characters can use to the greatest effectiveness, as otherwise they might end up in the hands of the optimizers.

For example, say you have a melee Fighter who is annoyed when the enemies get trapped in a web because he can’t attack them without becoming restrained himself. Giving him some kind of decent ranged option via a magic item will make him happy (Yay, advantage!) when web gets cast rather than angry. Throw the optimizer some magic items as well, you don’t want them to feel like they are being punished but keep in mind that you can give an unoptimized Fighter a lot of crazy stuff before they’re in danger of overshadowing an optimized Wizard.

Another way is to engineer scenarios where the other players can shine. Most likely there’s still some things the optimizer can’t do, or at the very least can’t do as efficiently as another player. If you identify these things you can give the players a scenario where the unoptimized player can feel like an important part of the team. Maybe the optimized player didn’t pick up many blast spells while the unoptimized player loves using them. Giving them a horde of enemies with low hit points will make them feel cool when they wipe out 10 of them with a single fireball.

Nerf responsibly

There is some stuff that a player can theoretically do, especially at very high levels, that probably shouldn’t be allowed in a typical campaign, such as creating an infinite amount of simulacrums via wish. It would be pretty difficult to continue playing the game if every encounter involved fifty copies of one player. However, getting nerfed feels bad, and the motivation is oftentimes colored by anecdotes where some spell or ability just happened to perfectly win an encounter. Think of the cases you might’ve seen where a DM wants to knee-jerk nerf Sneak Attack because the Rogue happened to roll a critical hit and did a lot of damage that one time!

Sometimes a nerf or unfavorable ruling on how to interpret something will increase fun, especially if it prevents the player from completely overshadowing the rest of the game or requires a counter that you don’t want to give to every monster, but you should only do this with great reluctance as it can easily feel unfair or like you don’t want the player to have fun. 

Communication is key. If anyone at a table is not having fun because of optimization, you should try to talk about it and resolve it as a group. Sometimes what a DM has perceived as an issue has not bothered any of the players, and often you can resolve a number of issues without a nerf, or with a player-driven “self-nerf” with mature players.