Help, How to I beat this guy...

[Shark_Force]

questions:

1) why are you trying to 'beat' your players anyways? you don't 'win' at roleplaying by beating the players, anymore than the players 'win' by beating the GM.
2) did you give them all this stuff, and if not, why are you punishing yourself for what another GM allowed to happen? if you *did* give them this stuff, then why did you give it to them if you don't want them to have it?
3) you would probably be better off just starting from scratch at level 1, in my opinion. let them 'win' (it really doesn't matter anyways, you should be playing to have fun, not to beat someone else), they get the pantheon they want, the hordes of worshippers, whatever... it doesn't really matter. then you retire those characters and start new ones at a level that you as a GM are comfortable with GMing. once you do that, it's fine to be generous as a GM, but don't hand the world to them on a silver platter... make them *work* for what they get. as i said, the fun is not in *being* the level 10 shifter, it's *getting there* that most of the enjoyment will come from.

looking back, the time the 1st or 2nd level characters barely managed to save the day is not likely to be any more or less fun than a similar group of level 10 or 12 characters that just barely manage to save the day. the difference is that, as a GM, it's a heck of a lot easier to arrange for the "barely winning" part if the group isn't high level with hundreds of spells and abilities that you need to keep track of. and until you've got a pretty firm grip on what you're doing, my advice is that you try to stay at those lower power levels until you feel ready to challenge the higher level groups. it can still be done, but you will need to put a lot more work into it, because at the higher levels the group has so many options.

so like i said... do yourself (and your group!) a favor, start at low level, and work your way up to being extremely powerful. in roleplaying, it is the journey, and not the destination, that matters most.

[Mercdog]

Total agreement with Shark_Force.

I assume that your players had all of their characters and their equipment from a previous game and you volunteered to try running the game for a while. Problem being that you agreed to let them take their existing characters, and now they are running rampant in your campaign. So your in over your head as a first time GM running a game for experienced power players. Am I correct?

I had a similar situation when I first tried my hand at the GM spot. It really turned me off from even wanting to play for a while.

Tell your players that your a little unsure of yourself and that you would like to start the game from scratch, with everyone creating new characters. If they flatly refuse to give up their powerhouse characters, you may at least want to think about finding another group to cut your teeth with.

If your players are the type who will not relinquish power willingly, you did say that Ares gifted the sword. How would he feel about a possible usurper to his position? How would any god react to a bunch of upstart mortals wanting to be equal to the Gods?

Not favorably, IMO.

[csbioborg]

get a another group of players and start playing ball then set up the old head of vecna gambit

http://www.blindpanic.com/humor/vecna.htm

[SkyeFyre]

I'm with Shark Force on this one. However if you want something that can kill anything... GO MECHANOIDS

Sorry, I love the guys. They're my response to everything.

[Shark_Force]

for the temporal wizard, i suppose you could grab a promethean from phase world. from what i recall, the stage 2 prometheans get involved in all sorts of random stuff, you just need to invent a random reason (or, for that matter, you could not bother inventing a reason since he's not likely to ever find out why anyways). and a phase adept seems like it might have abilities that would somewhat mirror your temporal wizard.

edit: to clarify, i'm not saying to sick a phase 2 promethean on him directly... i'm suggesting that a stage 2 promethean could have some sort of random reason to send phase adepts after him.

[runebeo]

I've always encouraged my GMs to shake things up from time to time, players can get too dependent on their equipment & vehicles. Any item can be stolen, misplaced or damaged and I firmly believe rotating equipment is one the best role playing tools, it lets you use the new things from new books, adds spice to the game & character, plus it stops a power weapon or item from stealing the show. My character had a Sword of Atlantis for a few sessions it was cool it dominated his actions and made him feel hallow, his personal abilities were never going to rival the sword's power, so I decided to sell it as it was a crotch that would only prevent my character from become just another guy with another Atlantis Sword.

[Nekira Sudacne]

level 15 godling psi-null with the OCC Shifter with 6 greater demon familiars. Oh, did I mention it's a godling temporal raider who rules a large nation?

[TechnoGothic]

Introduce the group to......The Dragonwright Cult !!!
If you have Dragons & Gods that is.

See if the cult recruits the group. If they join, well then they have opened themselves up to alot of good roleplaying options.

btw. Dont bother with the Rifts Dragonwright followers. They are not the True Dragonwright...

[keir451]

huh???????? Ok Ican understand wanting to run a game, w/ pre-existing chara. but c'mon these guys need to learn the simples rule of gaming, the GM is GOD. Send in a CS armored division and have the PA pilots and Robot jocks mess w/them while a lone sniper lines up a laser targeter on them from concealment and then the MLRS' dump missiles into them while the forewarned CS beat a retreat. End of story, at least that's what I'd do to a group of power gamers.
I HATE POWER GAMERS!!!!!
On the other hand if things are getting better and you're getting control over them then by all means continue.

[Astral Pantheon]

Late last night was a good game session. So they more or less now have a merc company. They went into a small town and payed people to join. In total they got about 68 new recruits. We determined this with a D00. Now this is the dumb part of what they decided to do. They killed the shop owner and requisitioned all his gear. They didn't have enough so they warped to a near by city and started emptying the back room of every shop they could find. They almost got caught twice but I wasn't lucky enough. They also wanted to capture people to train them to become soldiers. (the new recruits I mean) They found a near by outpost of raiders. High lvl ones too. They killed half of them, the other half left and a handful got captured. They where given a small wage and ordered to train the populace. Then they wanted vehicles. to get that they warped into a couple merc HQ. 1st they got caught. they stuck in a hanger bay full of tanks. they bared the doors to hold them back while the wizard prepares to warp them and a handful of tanks out. They got out just in time. the 2nd base they where not so lucky. They had to deal with a couple of heavy hitter borgs and a bunch of grunts. didn't matter though, the vampire npc's took the brunt of the dmg and the group got away again. So now they have a well armed large platoon of soldiers with moderate skill. (this all happened in the course of a week in game time)

Ares noticed there activities and confronted them. He made a deal with them that if they become apart of his army to help stage a coupe on Zues he would help bring them to god hood. So he decided to give them a special rune tablet that detailed the ritual of what needed to be done. If they could get all the items they needed then Ares would give them his blessing. A day would pass and they find there compound over run with A LOT of angry people. A large battle broke out but of course the group had a LOT of powerful magic spells on there side and most of the better equipment. In the end they lost 27 people, a handful of tanks and sustained a lot of dmg to themselves. The opposing forces where slaughtered, ran, and a group where captured. The group quickly got patched up and pursued one company to there home base. They gave them an ultimatum. Join or die. They only had about 30ish men left. None of which could stand up against the wizards. they packed there gear up and moved to the town. Now they are making plans to find and kill a dragon.

This is turning out a lot better than I expected. I'm going to try and look into the dragon and gods book. A friend mine might lone it to me. any other tips for a new GM would help!

The Dragon the group needs to kill is Zeus the Thunderer, his "gods", and an Army of 50,000 gargoyles strong...

[demos606]

See, there's a small problem with planning to become gods - you tend to get the attention of the existing gods and they tend to not like competition. You also draw the attention of things like Alien Intelligences (Merlin, Lurker, etc), extremely powerful dimensional beings (half of Atlantis at any given time, Ancient Dragons, Prometheans, Demon Princes), and a rather interesting variety of powerful but mortal adversaries (other temporal mages, Knights of all kinds, etc). Simply having an item as powerful as that sword in the area should be getting the attention of every powerful being for hundreds of miles as rumors spread. The more persistant the rumor gets with the hint of an established base and other powerful goodies should bring "collectors" like moths to a flame for the very least of your players troubles. If they're really lucky some Splurgoth decides they'd make lovely additions to his gladiator stock and sends a collection team.

[Balabanto]

Three words:

Carpet of Adhesion.

[demos606]

Um, just as a point of interest, how exactly are they able to teleport tanks? Even working as a group to teleport a larger mass you'd need (few quick guestimated numbers) dozens of high level mages per tank to meet the weight allowance.

[Kalidor]

You know, I thought this post was kind of silly at first... but after reading about his day one exploits I say if he's having fun and the group is having fun then more power to them.

It's crazy epic beyond anything I'd ever want to do in my game, but that's the beauty of Rifts... people can do whatever they want as long as it's fun.

When I read about their adventures I wasn't thinking "Wow, what a bunch of munchkin power gamers!" I thought "Wow, what a crazy plot to an 80s B-Movie, except with unlimited special effects."

Good show.

[Thinyser]

...snip...
Better yet, have them fight themselves....

This can be a useful tactic especially if you give the mirror image slightly better stats and bigger guns/more spells

[Zer0 Kay]

Total agreement with Shark_Force.

I assume that your players had all of their characters and their equipment from a previous game and you volunteered to try running the game for a while. Problem being that you agreed to let them take their existing characters, and now they are running rampant in your campaign. So your in over your head as a first time GM running a game for experienced power players. Am I correct?

Yes you are correct! Very good may I add.

For Shark_Force
Also to answer the questions (which are very good may I add)

1) The reason why I am trying to kill them is because, I feel I wouldn't be giving them a good enough challenge if that wasn't my goal. You know what I mean? The problem is that they have more experience at hijacking the game than I'm use to.

2) They did get all the cool stuff from other games.

3) Yes I agree with you completely! It is the journey not the destination.

Now I don't want to just throw out the game. It's really good and we always enjoy ourselves. I see it as a battle of the minds. I give them a monster with a set of tactics that I don't think they can beat and they mist him in a couple rounds in a way I never thought possible. They literally took the last demon and grinned him down into a pool of blood and meat. It was some spell that forced him to run really really fast and one that caused friction to keep him in place. So... ya... But I know I'm getting better though. I know this because it's taking them a little bit more longer to dispatch these monsters and bosses and what not.

1. Now this is what I'm planning. If there going to amass this mercenary army, I'm going to put spies in it. Ones from CS too. Their going to extract as much info from them as possible and logically invoke the wrath of the CS. Mages becoming gods?!?! No self respecting servant of man would want that! Then I can start sending out CS militants after them.

2. they have to collect a number of things in order to ascend into god hood. I couldn't find any rules for that so I decided to make my own. Tell me what you think of this.

1. Blood, flesh or saliva from a dragon
2. 50,000 PPE Gathered and placed in a special Rune sword.
(the sword will act like a charger, it gets PPE from killing those who have PPE and if the holder wants to donate PPE to the sword, they can do that too.)
3. Wood from the millennium tree.
4. Blood or flesh from a vampire intelligence, or splugorth
5. gain the worship of or kill 1000 people in your name
6. Blood, flesh or hair of a demi-god or godling
7. blood, flesh or blessing of a god.
8. Perform the ritual with all said items.

They will most likely find all of this out next time they see Ares... Right now the group knows they will eventually find a means to there ends and are just "gearing up" for the long haul. Ares likes war and wants to start one against a few other pantheons and may decide to try and stack his side so when a war does break out between the gods. He can come out on top. I'm going to eventually have Ares stage a coupe for power. Now if the players will play along that is ambiguous.

Last thing. I would like something of a temporal wizard police to stop that guy from power gaming to the max. I don't want it to be a god, demi-god, or godling just yet though. I also don't want to just force him to stop being his best. I just want something that can keep up with him. Any recommendations?

There is no ascension to Godhood unless you are borne a Godling. The reason is that Palladium Gods are not living beings so much as they are a collective created by the beliefs of a people. If a God has no believers ANYWHERE in the Megaverse they "DIE". As I recall a Demi-God is the offspring of a God and mortal so even if no one believes in it, it will exist until its lifespan expires or they're killed so even then there is no ascension to Godhood for a Demi-God. Now one thing I've seen and done is hide the person's origins that they are a Demi-God or Godling and they don't come into their power until they quest or learn from the parent.

As far as the wizard goes... Nega-Psychic or simply a one way teleport to Splycers for the whole group or a Nightbane Astral plane with the "no magic" power on it.

[Zer0 Kay]

You can use realism to keep them in check. It sounds like you're just giving them things too easily. Could one character with a Chemistry: Pharmaceutical pass a skill roll and find the cure for AIDS?

Also you could crack down on Metagaming, since they might be doing that too much.

Yeah there is one of two things they are likely thinking of you. Either: He is a push over or He is awesome and if you actually attempt to be a killer GM and do manage to kill one of them you either go from push over to he grew a spine or he is awesome to he's an A Hole. You shouldn't play santa and satan in the same game. An awesome equalizer to overpowered items, when they are sleeping either apply theifs liberally or if you want to try killing them at the same time use a tektonic entity which absorbs all their unwarn equipment and if the mage banishes it twist the rules a little bit and say that the equipment dissapear with it. So with the theives the equipment is gone and they can try to track it down leading to an adventure. With the Tektonic entity either the group beat the heck out of it with whatever they happen to have left and damage/destroy their own equipment OR the mage essentially gets rid of all their equipment (leading to the group disliking the mage).

[The Beast]

level 15 godling psi-null with the OCC Shifter with 6 greater demon familiars. Oh, did I mention it's a godling temporal raider who rules a large nation?

Does he have a Dwarven Titian Juicer-turnerd-Murder Wraith as a body guard?

[ShadowLogan]

The battles get pretty hardcore but end with the wizard killing most of everyone on his own. everyone in the group is lvl 10 (we did a quick start for levels) We have the temporal wizard, Necromancer (with 2 vampire NPCs helping him), Shifter, two Lay Line Walkers, and a Mystic.

Want to take the bite out of a magic using group that is heavily dependent on magic then use:
-opponents that are IMMUNE/Impervious to magic (Hawrk-series of races in Atlantis are an example)
-already mentioned, but Psi-Nullifier (Psyscape) type opponent(s)
-want to be really EVIL Zavor (Rifts Conversion Book 1 Revised), any magic (includes Rune Weapons) that harms them does no damage and results in them being duplicated and are only vulnerable to certain materials.

[Noon]

Why not just say as GM 'Your guy is defeated', if your just going to choose whatever creatures will result in the same thing?

It just seems passive aggressive to try and hide the fact your just deciding this.

[V-Origin]

K I am a new GM and am running a game for about 6 people. All of them are power gamers. The worst one is a lvl 10 Temporal Wizard. He has a lot of powers and carries a powerful ruin sword given to him Ares. The sword can animate. The hilt looks like a spartan with his arms around the hilt. It can grow and look like a bronze Spartan and fight for the wizard. The battles get pretty hardcore but end with the wizard killing most of everyone on his own. everyone in the group is lvl 10 (we did a quick start for levels) We have the temporal wizard, Necromancer (with 2 vampire NPCs helping him), Shifter, two Lay Line Walkers, and a Mystic. They decided they all want to ascend to god hood (or at least become demi-gods or godlings) and establish a new pantheon. They decided they want to build a mercinary army first to help them with that. They are going to use the wealth and ruins they amassed to start funding a small HQ. Then they will build up and try and take over a town or two and conscript more people. When they get a large company started they will be sending people out on quests to collect items to get to god hood. Also to help protect them against the other pantheons and there minions. Now they didn't start the mercenary HQ yet but are on route to a town to begin recruiting.

When I said I would GM I only had a couple rules.

1) You can't start off as a god, demi-god or godling.
2) I will allow for all possibilities and all outcomes. If it can be thought of, it can be done.
3) Everyone gets a fair shot to fight back.

I'm sure if I kill the wizard first, everyone else will fall with great ease. At least I think so. Please help.

I don't really pour cold water on your players but your players' ideas of "gods" are really weak.

Depending on a rune sword? huh????

true power comes from inside you and not external toys

tell you what... your player has a better chance of being gods if he can assimilate the rune sword itself

[kevarin]

humm a level 10 temporal mage never realy played casters that have gotten that high but how about having them
come under the attention of the unknown from nightbane

allso may take a look at the voracious absorbers from rifter 45 thay can level any playing field if put together right

[Noon]

tell you what... your player has a better chance of being gods if he can assimilate the rune sword itself

That sounds pleasant...

[Danger]

End the game.

You win.