A long time ago,
in the Letters section of
POLYHEDRON
Newszine, a gamer
asked for ways to
handle player characters
who "always
think they are hot
stuff." It was suggested
that DMs
consider using high-level
non-player characters
to teach
the player characters
humility. This sometimes
works, but
unfortunately won't
work very often and
usually works on the
wrong people. 

Several things go against it. First, players 
within a group tend to stick together, 
and may unexpectedly pitch in and trash 
out any threat to them or one of their 
number. This happens even if the threatened 
person isn't universally liked by 
other group members. The temptation to 
get involved in a fight can be too much, 
and group members may want to bump 
off any high-level NPCs they meet so 
their characters will be the new "hot shots" 
in town. 

Players will also eventually resent the 
DM's use of high-level encounters in 
attempts to kill off or disgrace characters 
in some fashion. This will lead ot abrupt 
termination of gaming with that DM. 

Another problem is escalation. It seems 
the more often that high-level encounters 
start appearing, the more cautious and
heavily armed adventuring groups 
become from accumulating treasures and 
experience points. It often happens that 
other DMs, sensing that one Dungeon 
Master is going to be using tougher 
encounters, will arrange things so the 
characters (if the same ones are being 
used in all campaigns) will find more 
powerful treasures, even allowing them to 
gain the much-beloved Atomic Hand 
Grenade. This is especially likely if the 
DM using tougher encounters is also 
cutting back on treasures being given 
out in his adventures. 

So, although using high-level NPCs 
can help, often it won't do more than 
escalate the size, power, and number of
encountered monsters without reducing 
the players' egos. It might be more helpful 
to look at who is really responsible for 
allowing some of the so-called "hot shot" 
characters to get their start. 

In reviewing old copies of DRAGON 
Magazine and other gaming magazines, 
one notes a number of articles and letters 
to the editor which decry the appearance 
of "player character demigods" who own 
every magical item known and then 
some, who have 54th-level characters in 
all classes, and so forth. 

Hey, who made those characters what 
they are? Are players completely responsible 
for how much treasure their characters 
accumulate? If they are, then they're 
cheating by inventing their characters' 
magical items, and that can be dealt with 
by exclusion or careful consideration. 

No, the Dungeon Master has a lot to 
do with this, too. There are Dungeon 
Masters who let characters gain more 
than one level per adventure. There are 
Dungeon Masters who have gods appear 
and raise characters a dozen levels at a 
time. There are Dungeon Masters who 
put artifacts in their treasure hoards (with 
millions of gold pieces to boot). There are 
Dungeon Masters who make it awfully 
easy to kill Asmodeus or Demogorgon in 
a few blows. This certainly feeds the hot 
shot problem. I should know. 

Forbid the  100th-level  character  with the +10  sword from  entering the  campaign,  and there  is one less hot shot.

I used to set up adventures in which 
characters latched onto the Silmarils, 
Thor's Hammer, and Captain America's 
flying shield, not to mention artifacts like 
Excalibur. The adventures wre entertaining, 
but eventually no one felt challenged 
by them, and things fell apart. 
Small wonder. Was it the players' fault? 
Not really. It took time for me to figure 
out what was going wrong, and how to fix 
it. It would be interesting to know how 
many of the DMs who've complained 
about "player character demigods" actually 
helped create those demigods. 

In all fairness, of course, there are 
many DMs who didn't have anything to 
do with creating such demigods. A DM 
may just want to run a good adventure, 
but the only characters the group can 
come up with are unexpectedly powerful. 
This, though, can be cured by allowing 
the players to roll up lower level characters 
for an adventure, or having everyone 
roll up new first level characters. A DM 
doesn't have ot let just any character 
wander into his or her campaign, even if 
the player of that character is a best 
friend. Best friends will understand if you 
want your adventure to be challenging for 
all, and not a walkover. 

Getting rid of PC demigods goes a long 
way toward getting rid of "hot shot" 
characters. Forbid the 100th-level character 
with the ⁺10 sword from entering the 
campaign or adventure, and there is one 
less hot shot. This leaves the generally 
"normal" characters, whatever "normal" 
is for your campaign. Does this cure the 
hot shot problem? Not entirely, though 
the situation is a little easier to deal with. 

The essence of playing fantasy role-playing 
games like the D&D or AD&D 
games is simply to have a good time. The 
players and referee interact to create a 
story, a common myth in which everyone 
participates in the guises of their characters. 
It is difficult to find fault with using 
player-character demigods, so long as 
everyone in the group (including the DM) 
is having a good time with them. If so, 
then there's no problem. 

Inevitably, if someone has a character 
that's been around for a while and has 
been generally successful, that person will 
take pride in that character. The player 
will talk about past adventures, great 
deeds, treasures won, etc. The longer the 
character has been around, the more 
attached the person will become to it. 

This creates its own problems, however. 
There comes a time when the player 
realizes that the character might eventually 
be killed, and this doesn't go down 
well. The character may be high level and 
quite powerful, but the adventures the 
character is going on have become 
increasingly dangerous, too. SOme people 
retire their tougher characters to keep 
them "young and pretty" (and alive). 
Others keep using their characters, but 
become more defensive, hedging more of 
their gambles, and accumulating all sorts 
of items to lessen the chances of that character 
getting killed permanently. Some 
DMs interpret this as being a "hot shot". 

This can be dealt with without a lot of 
fuss. Adventures can be set up which may 
not involve risk of death, but would 
involve lots of work and excitement for 
the characters. Political and religious 
maneuvering, clearing terrain of minor 
mosnters, and similar adventures still 
throw the element of the unexpected into 
the characters' lives without endangering 
them. The referee needs to remember 
that while he or she has access to literally 
millions of monsters and NPCs, the players 
have very few, usually one or two 
apiece. One can always roll up a new 
"first-level nerd," but a tenth-level character 
is hard to replace. 

Now let's change the perspective 
around. This article has looked at the 
question of "hot shot" characters from 
the players' view, yet everyone can recall 
someone who was difficult to get along 
with, who played charactesr who hogged 
the treasure or were uncooperative. These 
are the ones that most poeple think of 
when the subject of hot shot characters 
comes up. What can you do about them? 

There are two courses of action. If the 
person is truly too obnoxious to get along 
with, then the person should be excluded 
from the group. This is touchy because 
nobody wants to be the "axeman" who 
goes over to the person and says, "Look, 
we're having a lot of trouble getting along 
with you in the group, for a lot of reasons, 
and I'm speaking for eveyrone 
when I say that we'd rather you didn't 
game with us anymore," or "It's difficult 
to be a DM for you, because you keep 
arguing whenever I rule against you, and 
the game turns into a big mess of hurt 
feelings all around, and I just don't want 
to run a group with you in it anymore." 

It may be hard, but if no one says it, 
then things are going to stay bad until 
everyone has been driven out of the 
game. The odd thing is, once somebody 
does manage to get  the offending person 
out of the group, then the game gets 
better. People enjoy themselves, the atmosphere 
is less oppressive, and so on. The 
game is fun<.> You may still have to deal 
with the person who was put out of the 
group, but they usually manage to cope 
with it and either find something else to 
do or find another group to game with. 

The other alternative can be used if the 
person appears to be "salvageable" for 
gaming; he pouts sometimes when he 
doesn't get his way, but he makes some 
pretty good jokes, or she's rude and often 
pushy, but has a lot of experience in gaming 
and shares treasure she finds. Everyone 
has some fault somewhere. So how 
can a DM deal with people like these? 
You don't want to lose them, but you're 
having trouble with them as they are. 

It would be nice if there were an easy 
answer to this problem, but there isn't 
one. The group may have to resign itself 
to putting up with the less friendly aspects 
of everyone else's behavior. The DM will 
have to put up with it, too (like everyone 
else has to put up the the DM). Talking 
with someone about their "problem 
behavior" may go a long way to help. 

It should be firmly stated that killing 
obnoxious characters isn't the best solution. 
Having "blue bolts from heaven" 
smack a hot shot character on the head 
just ticks off the hot shot player and can 
lead to more problems. Having a god 
show it up and sock it to the character is 
just as bad (unless the hot shot has been 
mouthing off against the gods themselves 
and one of the deities hears its name 
being abused; the character deserves 
everything it's got coming to it.) Dungeon 
Masters need to find a way to not kill 
characters. Any fool can kill a character. 
It's another thing to get a character to 
rethink its behavior and values. 

It is very important to be subtle about 
this. Direct threats rarely work. A good 
DM should spend time considering the 
various strengths that characters have that 
makes them think they're invincible. Is it 
the number of pluses on his sword, or the 
thickness of her armor? Is it a history of 
past successes with huge monetary 
returns? Make a few mental notes on the 
props that keep a character's ego inflated, 
and consider what it would take to knock 
the character's confidence out like a light. 
Take away a character's self-assurance, 
add the element of the unexpected and 
the unpredictable, and a lot of hot shots 
in your group will cease to be. 

Imagine a scenario in which a group 
becomes shipwrecked on a small junlge 
island. Up until this point, everything has 
gone pretty much as expected. The characters 
grumpily drop their belongings and 
pitch camp under a tree as a downpour 
soaks them completely. There are one or 
two standard encounters with boa constrictors 
which the party easily wins. 

But there are other things entering the 
picture. No one in the group hears birds 
calling in the trees. Except for a few 
snakes, no other animals or creatures of 
any kind can be seen. Characters on 
watch at night hear strange calls, like 
random bits of conversation amplified 
and echoing across the darkness, words 
that make no sense or are randomly 
ordered. Characters start getting nervous. 

Attracted by odd noises, they come 
across a ruined farmhouse, and meet 
some ghouls. These ghouls, however, do 
not act like "normal" ghouls. They are 
carrying on a weird parody of normal 
daily life: some laboring in sterile, rock-strewn 
fields with broken implements, 
some laying out a table in the farmhouse 
with empty places and broken glasses. 
The ghouls see the adventurers and attack 
them with wild cries. 

I used the above adventure on a group 
one evening and it worked quite well. 
The player characters were quite powerful; 
they probably had more magical 
weaponry on them than most dungeons 
have in their first three levels, and they 
shouldn't have had much trouble cleaning 
up the adventure. Things, however, were 
not what the players were used to seeing. 
The lack of normal creatures on the 
island the strange calls in the night, and 
the encounter with the walking dead at 
the farmhouse shook their confidence. 

All of this was carefully presented to the 
group, and treated with great seriousness. 
Here, on this island, was an awful thing 
that left an undying mockery of life in its 
passing. It was unquestionably evil and 
powerful. Not once in the adventure hd 
I come out and said that. No hot shots  
appeared in the group, even in the end 
when the group met and defeated the 
island's necromancer king. 

Horror was the key element in preventing 
the appearance of hot shots, though 
the group was also experienced and not 
prone to bickering or petty rivalries. 
Manipulating the atmosphere of an 
adventure and keeping the unexpected 
alive goes a long way to deflating egos 
and adding excitement to role-playing. 

Most hot shots are like you and me; 
they play to have fun. Unbearable players 
can be dealt with by exclusion or working 
out the problems. 

Dungeon Masters need to take responsibility 
for creating hot shots, and should
use more care in managing their campaigns. 
DMs can discreetly pour a little 
cold water on local hot shots, and do it in 
such a way as to avoid singling out the 
hot shot for unfair punishment, and give 
the whole group an adventure to remember 
as well. Ultra-tough NPCs and monsters 
are not the best answer; setting the 
mood of the adventure might work a lot 
better. Be subtle. Make hot shots 
sweat a little. It'll do them good. 

<c6 image>

Dungeon Masters need  to find a way  to not kill  characters.  Any fool can kill a character.