My players found a deck of many more things (because the dice gods on the loot chart hate me), and now one of them is a solid 3 levels above everyone else with a VR item to boot. I'm struggling to balance the encounters due to the sudden power surge of the menace that has become the kobold shadow sorc (surprisingly not the winged tiefling ranger). Any ideas to help regain some semblance of control while keeping combat balanced for the lower-level players
My advice is to talk to the player. I had two such characters, one oddly enough from the Deck and the other from a Prestige Class in the old 3.5 edition. The DM said that I was out of balance with the group and we worked out an in-game solution to the issue. I've also seen it with another character in our current group, that character was retired and replaced with another who was more balanced.
What happened before were errors. You could have just said no to the "dice gods" or ruled that you cannot gain more than enough experience to achieve the next level. If you allow it to continue and impact the fun for everyone, that would be a mistake.
Just discuss it with them, they might surprise you!
My advice is to talk to the player. I had two such characters, one oddly enough from the Deck and the other from a Prestige Class in the old 3.5 edition. The DM said that I was out of balance with the group and we worked out an in-game solution to the issue. I've also seen it with another character in our current group, that character was retired and replaced with another who was more balanced.
What happened before were errors. You could have just said no to the "dice gods" or ruled that you cannot gain more than enough experience to achieve the next level. If you allow it to continue and impact the fun for everyone, that would be a mistake.
Just discuss it with them, they might surprise you!
I agree, you can always just nope the dice gods, set loot piles are a lot more fun anyways. Aside from what you said, the DM could also just nerf their character in some way, or buff the other characters to match.
The above are all great solutions. There is one more unmentioned solution. Just raise the rest of the parties characters levels. I am sure you can find an in game way to do that at the end of a session.
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GM all,
My players found a deck of many more things (because the dice gods on the loot chart hate me), and now one of them is a solid 3 levels above everyone else with a VR item to boot. I'm struggling to balance the encounters due to the sudden power surge of the menace that has become the kobold shadow sorc (surprisingly not the winged tiefling ranger). Any ideas to help regain some semblance of control while keeping combat balanced for the lower-level players
My advice is to talk to the player. I had two such characters, one oddly enough from the Deck and the other from a Prestige Class in the old 3.5 edition. The DM said that I was out of balance with the group and we worked out an in-game solution to the issue. I've also seen it with another character in our current group, that character was retired and replaced with another who was more balanced.
What happened before were errors. You could have just said no to the "dice gods" or ruled that you cannot gain more than enough experience to achieve the next level. If you allow it to continue and impact the fun for everyone, that would be a mistake.
Just discuss it with them, they might surprise you!
I agree, you can always just nope the dice gods, set loot piles are a lot more fun anyways. Aside from what you said, the DM could also just nerf their character in some way, or buff the other characters to match.
The above are all great solutions. There is one more unmentioned solution. Just raise the rest of the parties characters levels. I am sure you can find an in game way to do that at the end of a session.