This happened to me only to talk to the player in question who said that he was having loads of fun playing the game and didn’t see what the problem was. He said if I was having an issue with how powerful he was, I should just use more powerful monsters. Which I did. And ended up killing 3 other people in the party before he killed them all without really taking any damage.

I tried banning his race, but he said I was ruining his fun and the group split up over it. Compare that to my 4e game where I currently just say “Make up any character you want” and everyone shows up with balanced characters.

From what I’ve seen, I like the Hybrid rules better. I can’t wait to try my two weapon fighter/ranger and see how well it runs in combat.

I agree fully with Rook managing the game and how balance the PCs are compared to each other rests with the DM, so if a character is overpowered then the DM needs to take the time to talk to the player(s) about the issue.

I really haven’t allowed hybrids into my campaigns yet, mainly because its still experimental, and my group tends to find ways of finding holes in the system to make overpowered characters. Once they have it officially released, I will start to allow them.

With the normal multi-classing feats, the only main reason my group uses them is to gain paragon paths mostly, or access to other feats (my group multi-classes into fighter a lot to gain access to the Kensei paragon path). I’ve been recently experimenting with the bard to see what I can make with all his multi-classing options.

I disagree that this is best handled between the DM and players. I’ve tried resolving it this way and it almost always ends up the same: The character with the extremely powerful character doesn’t want to give it up or tone down his character, and why should he? He is playing by the rules. The rest of the group likes the role playing aspects of their characters and don’t want to make more powerful characters. Either that or they ALL want to make up new characters and it ruins any ongoing storyline that you have set up.

I once spent an entire 2e campaign running a game with a 19 strength fighter because I allowed a race with +1 strength. He also rolled really high for hitpoints. The difference between his bonus to hit and damage when compared to the closest PC was so great that most of the other players would skip their actions and not even help during combats because they felt it was a waste of time. The other PCs all agreed it was better to give him the best weapons and armor they found since he’d use it better than they would. I tried to throw more and more powerful monsters at him until I accidentally killed 3 other PCs in a combat when he was still at full hitpoints.

I find that the Hybrid rules are closer to balanced, but still create varied enough characters to cause issues. Part of what I like about 4e is that it’s impossible to make a truly BAD character with a couple small rules. The Hybrid rules open up the doors to actually bad characters. There are warnings in the article about this. Part of why I like DMing in 4e is because I don’t have to vet every character to enter the campaign. I can say, “Make characters with any power, feat, race, or class from all published material” and be assured that everyone would show up with a character that was within reasonable limits of the rest of the PCs. The hybrid rules require that I look at every hybrid to make sure someone didn’t make an Archer Ranger/Swordmage. This kind of character requires too many different high stats to be viable and will likely spend a lot of actions switching back and forth between weapons while the rest of the party gets in attacks.

However, my other issue with hybrids is that they don’t actually feel like a hybrid. Your powers don’t combine in any way. Instead you play 2 different characters each of which have half the amount of powers as usual. From a roleplaying standpoint, I like the idea of a rogue who uses spells to sneak attack or a wizard who enhances his own strength with magic to attack with a sword. However, the hybrid rules don’t do this. I think that kind of concept is best served with new classes.

And to answer one of you questions, I think that anything that allows the player to further customize and tweak your character to fit your vision of that character is a good thing. And making them too powerful is a non-issue, since it’s up to the DM to adjust the encounters appropriately. Unless you mean too powerful compared to the other PCs, which is a problem best handled out of game between the DM and the players.
.-= Rook´s last blog ..4e Magic Item Use: A Compromise =-.

@ Swordgleam
You have your work cut out for you.

On the other hand, I can already tell it’s going to be one heck of a headache to add to my random 4e character generator.