“Sorry, that homebrew was a bad idea. I messed up. Please help me fix this by making a new character.”

Some recognition of responsibility here is in order. The player certainly has some responsibility for powering up the character, of course. It's arguable whether that's a bad thing by itself or not — but it's irrelevant, because the DM has much, much more responsibility for this situation.

You approved a homebrewed class, and that turned out to be a bad DM decision. So the player is not really at fault at all — they just used what you gave them.

The traditional way to deal with this is to acknowledge that the original DM decision to allow this piece of homebrew was a bad call, and to work with the player to remove the homebrew from the game. Being a traditional fix, experienced DMs will give a warning by saying something like this at the very beginning, when approving the homebrew: “Okay, we can try that, but I reserve the right to remove the homebrew class if it turns out to be a problem.”

Naturally, it's more difficult now on a social level to revoke the homebrew, since that warning was (likely) not given originally. However, that doesn't change the fact that it's the fix for the situation that is cleanest, least complicated, least likely to break other parts of the game, and most likely to actually fix the problem.

Apologise to your player, say that the homebrew class is really, really not working out, and work with them to build a new character that doesn't use a broken homebrew class.

I have a player who has pretty much minmaxed his character to simply deal the most damage possible, and have a great amount of health.

Yes, that's what I do and what I expect almost all players to do.

The other characters are more quality-built, with evened out stat-blocks.

Characters with average stats across the board are really, really bad characters to play, and not really "quality-built". The wizard deveria be smart, the rogue deveria be agile, the cleric deveria be wise and the paladin should be Forte.

The numbers in your question seem completely unremarkable for a 3rd level character

24 hp is baixo. Assuming he didn't roll, he gets 10 at 1st, 6 each at 2nd and 3rd for 22, a constitution of 12 would give him 25.

AC 18 is normal for a heavy armour proficient character.

He "does more damage than the rogue"? Of course he does: he's a paladino. The martial classes (fighter, paladin, ranger) should do more damage than the skill monkeys (bard, rogue).

+6 to hit means an 18 in Strength (or Dexterity). While this is not possible at this level with the standard array or point buy, it is possible by rolling, with good but not ridiculously good luck. Depending on race, he needed to roll an 18, 17 or 16. The chances of this being your mais score are 9.34%, 30.07% and 56.76% respectively.

I would expect cada character to have at least +5 to hit - that's only a 16-17 in their primary attack stat, whatever that happens to be. +6 is totally unremarkable. In any event, there is a hard cap of 20 on ability scores (barring magic and barbarians) so this evens out anyway.

The game is designed so that the characters hit about 2/3 of the time because hitting is fun and missing isn't. Level appropriate challenges should have an AC of 13-15 so +5-6 is right on the money.

This class pode be broken: I just can't see it from what you've said. Perhaps the problem is not that this character is too strong, perhaps the other characters just suck?

Alternatively or as well, perhaps the jogador knows how to play the (tactical combat) game better than the other players? A player who knows how to squeeze the most performance out of their character in combat is going to make other players look bad by comparison: just like a grand master chess player makes other players look pathetic.

The correct response is not to try to fix this in fiction, but out of fiction where the problem originated.

You were a gregarious GM and let/helped a player port in a class from another edition that did not have the same balance ideals and design goals as 5e. This is a mark in your favor for being open and accommodating to players. However as you state, things had unintended consequences and now one player is disproportionately powerful to the rest. The response you detail of swapping stats used for checks to raise up the other players sounds like it would only highlight the initial problem and serve to frustrate the player controlling the 3.5e Knight PC. Maybe the player and you and the rest of the table all had different assumptions, but as you tell it the player created this character with your blessing, and it's turned into a huge success (for them personally) and now you are effectively nerfing them and moving the goal posts.

What you should do is have a discussion, whether one-on-one with the player or as a table, about how the 3.5e Knight is really successful, but unfortunately so successful that the power parity between the players in combat has become upended. You need to seek to rework the class with the player to retain the core ideas of what they like about playing the character, but to bring them in line with the power level of the party.

It might not be the class.

"The other characters are more quality-built, with evened out stat-blocks."

I think this is really your problem. 5th edition is built assuming that players will optimize stats to a degree. If you have one player doing this, and the rest just not, then the player who has optimized their stats (and perhaps the rest of their choices) vontade be dominant. Trying to tell your optimizer player to not optimize probably won't end well. Having him build an optimized base class rather than an optimized homebrew might well not fix the issue.

Adjusting the other players to function in a more optimized way might work better. Perhaps you can enlist the one optimized player to help them with tweaks and rebuilds?

At least, before you tell him to swap out his current character, ask him to build a lvl 4 version of something else (like fighter) so you can compare. Is it really the class that he's using, or is it the optimization skill?

Address the problem where the pain is, not where you think the problem is.

Addressing this out of character, with that player, at -that- point is, imho, far more productive than attempting to work-around the situation.

The "pain" in this situation is that one player is outshining his team-mates in combat too much, and that's, in your opinion, a problem.

From what I can tell, from your post, it may or may not be related to his homebrew actually being overpowered. I say this because with minimal effort, I can seemingly replicate most of his stats to within plausibility of some stat-generation methods(A Variant Human Fighter with 14 Con, 16 Str, the feat blade mastery, Chain Mail and a Shield has all the stats you describe). Addressing this by targeting the homebrew, when the PC thinks the homebrew is fine, will only cause resentment. The alternative explanation is that your PCs either optimize to different degrees or play with different levels of competency. No amount of ban-hammer-whack'a'mole will stop him from optimizing or out-strategizing his team-mates.

Suggested first-steps:

• Talk to your player about the imbalance of character performance, and come to a negotiated conclusion about why the issue is arising and how to best fix it. Options you can say you've considered, based solely on reading my answer, are: banning the class, re-balancing the class, coaching other players to achieve optimization parity, lowering his build's

• Post your homebrew'ed Knight somewhere(here or the recreio) and have it evaluated for balance. Getting some 3rd party opinion on how balanced your homebrew is will help you navigate this situation without appearing biased.

Don't punish a player if you can avoid it, but work around him by using other tools in your toolbox.

Players like this are a problem in more than just 5e. I see a lot in my Chronicles of Darkness game, and I have to go out of my way to deal with it. As you've presented it, the character's good at two things: taking and dealing damage, which means a number of his other skills are going to be a bit weaker. This means you have a wealth of options to get around your problem player in combat and other situations:

• Locks that you can't force or pick - Its always nice to interject a puzzle. Slap an unpickable, unbreakable door in the way, and see what happens.

• Make your monsters fight smarter, not harder - Especially if there's been survivors, or your antagonist(s) is particularly careful about planning. He's got to have someone watching these fights and seeing what happens. Eventually, his minions will be told not to fight him directly, but pick off the weaker party members to slow them down. Essentially, monsters can use tactics (especially anyone with INT above 8) to get around problem PCs.

• Hit the weak spot - Munchkin players usually do everything they can to deal damage, but they're not particularly great when damage doesn't kill the monster. Things like Spectres and Wraiths that don't go down when you hit them, or avoid physical damage all together are great ways to indirectly punish a twinked physical damage dealer. Of course, resistances are another way you can balance the player if applied carefully.

• Terrain and other complications - You can put tactical terrain into fights to mess with things, especially if you're using a battle map. Try things like slime that causes you to slide. Physically move the player two additional squares after they place down their miniature to represent this (Its worth CR 1/2 or so as a Slime Trap). Make a heavy wind move players, do underwater combat. Give the bad guys some advantage to compensate for the Knight's prowess, and see what happens.

Aside from in-game solutions, always remember if you have a problem with a player, talk to them immediately and privately. The faster you address the issue, and say 'hey, i made a mistake and its making the game unfun for me and the other players' the quicker you can work on a solution with your friend. Chances are in a home game, they don't realize they're creating a problem in the group, and calling it out maturely and privately can go a long way towards getting a fix. It is your right as the DM and potentially host of the game to ask players to change things that are unfun for the group. Yes, that sounds immature, but its important to try and work things out before you go extreme.

One simple solution is build combat encounters where the PCs face off against numerous minions + one big monster or leader who is an even match for the Knight PC. For example, twenty Orcs and a Troll.

The players should naturally figure out the optimal strategy: the Knight character pairs off with the boss monster while the other players are busy fighting the minions. This way all of the players participate in combat.

If I could just add slightly to Resposta do SSD (which I think is very strong and mostly on-point):

As I see it, there are 2 options here:

1. Own the mistake yourself, and have the overpowered character make a new player (SSD's answer addressed this well, so I won't dwell on it),

2. OR allow the other players to change their characters in ways that add greater balance to the game.

This balancing could be accomplished in a couple of ways:

Itens Mágicos - in my games, I've found that the use of magic items can easily bring underpowered players onto the same level as other, more powerful ones. Maybe give your Rogue a +2 dagger, or your Bard an Instrument of the Bards. This could help balance the characters out, without having to resort to nerfing the overpowered character.

Allow other PCs access to homebrew materials - just as you've done with the Knight character, you could also allow the other PCs to create some homebrew characters of their own. Maybe point them to some of the prestige classes from 3.5, and try to figure out ways to bring it into your 5e game. While this would create more work for you, it would again provide an alternative to forcing the Knight to roll a new character.

Compromise with the Knight - try talking 1 on 1 to the Knight player, and explain the situation to them. As SSD noted, I think it's important here to take much of the responsibility for yourself, since you are the DM of the game. However, through discussion you may find a compromise short of completely rerolling a new character. Maybe you'll decide to reduce the frequency of class skills being available, or maybe adding some sort of character flaw which penalizes the character in some other way (for example, maybe he is an excellent combatant, but is also extremely socially awkward, penalizing him in out-of-combat scenarios).

To summarize, if you are looking to reroll the character, I would point you to some of the other answers already here. But if you are looking for an alternative short of that, I think it would be possible to balance all of the characters out by improving the weaker ones using some of the suggestions above.

Your problem is not a home-brewed character sheet messing around with core character sheets. Your problem is that one PC is stronger than others and overshadows them. There are actually just a few ways to fix this. All of them include you discussing this with your group and asking if everything is OK for other players.

• If everything is OK and other players don't complain (probably it is so), don't do anything, let him rock. Probably, throw in some non-combat challenge for those not-so-combat guys.
• If they are not OK with the situation, suggest them to probably rebuild their character folhas in a more efficient way: @DaleM has already pinpointed that those stats aren't really too high, your homebrew probably isn't as broken as you think, it's optimization level. Notice that changes made to the character sheets não imply changes to the characters' personality, to the plot etc.
• If other players don't either want to change their character sheets, but don't like the Knight being too strong, suggest him to nerf the character a bit, discuss the issue and rework the char sheet together. Let him still be a cool warrior in a cool armour, but just not as much strong as before. Adjust challenges, however, so the group is on a fair basis; he would probably still be able to have his glory on the battlefield, but will just share it a bit with, say, the Paladin. Note that you don't have to nerf the class, only this one character sheet.
• If you have other players disliking him being too strong, and neither party wants to change the character sheet, you have a problem. Someone has to leave the group -- probably, the problem Knight. You should probably warn him when suggesting to nerf his character that the other option is actually leaving the party.

If this player really wants to play a cool guys built in a cool way, while others don't want it, you have different players attempting to play different games at the same table, and would probably benefit very much from a session dedicated to a Same Page Tool discussion. Perhaps this discussion will reveal that not all of the people gathering at that table should play together.

Min-max characters will always outshine the average character. It may not have anything to do with the class. If you change the class he may go to the next one and min-max that character.

One thing to consider before you try to fix him is to see if everyone is losing interest because of him. I've played in games where there was always at least one guy that did over 100hp of damage through some build. I didn't immediately try to fix it. As long as everyone was fine with telling him to hit the biggest bad guy while they took on the rest it worked.

If they are fine then just create situations that naturally require him to take care of. Or if you want someone else to have the limelight throw them into situations that will give him a disadvantage against some opponent. Maybe there is some monster with a high AC from the front so only someone that can flank and get sneak attacks in can damage it. Maybe there is a monster that is only harmed by magic. That kind of thing.

I wouldn't worry too much about him hitting harder unless he is stopping anyone else from having fun.

Is it the homebrew class?

The problem has to be identified.

Reading over the Knight in particular, the chassy is heavily based on the 5e Fighter.

The only thing that stands out is the mount feature, that permits it to tame a mount of CR of its Knight Level or less. That is crazy OP, as a CR 10 creature is a challenge for an entire party of level 10 heroes.

The CR limitations on Druid shape change should be an upper limit on what you allow here. A Knight riding a Dragon may be cool, but that would be way outside even 5e's loose balance.

But I asked, and the Knight as it stands doesn't have an animal companion.

In effect, if you swapped this character for a Champion or Battlemaster Fighter, everything mentioned about the hero would be the same or better.

The only advantage the Knight has over a Battlemaster is that it can give itself disadvantage in order to give itself an extra [W] damage die.

On a foe it hits on a 7+ against which it has advantage (near ideal situation), with 18 strength and a 1d12 damage weapon, this translates to 12.55 DPR instead of 10.205 DPR (+2.345 DPR).

The Rogue with a 1d6 weapon and 18 dex deals 14.245 DPS.

So that doesn't seem to be the cause.

So the problem isn't the Knight Homebrew.

A thing to note is that 5e D&D doesn't have in-combat balance between classes or characters.

The "Warrior"-type classes are simply better at combat, at least the part of "hit things until they die and take beatings in return".

A fighter wearing heavy armor using a large weapon built as a "bruiser" will be melhor at combat than most rogues, barring a huge optimization difference. They'll basically match the Rogues damage, and have better AC, have more HP, etc.

This doesn't seem fair, and I suspect that is what you are detecting here. Why should one archtype be better at combat than another? That clearly doesn't work if you assume balance within combat is part of the game goals.

5e attempts to have balance by balancing entre the spheres of adventuring; combat, exploration and social.

A "Warrior" type class (Fighter, and the Knight looks similar) is specialized to be good in combat. They do not have magical utility or awesome skills to fall back on. They hit things hard.

Magic using characters have piles of rules veto abilities that change how the game works out of combat. Command, Detect Good and Evil, Detect Magic, Purify Food and Drink. It also has a bunch of combat-based utility, like Cure Wounds and Protection from Evil and Good.

So, Paladins are as tough as Fighters mostly, but have to heavily burn their spells via smites (utility) to keep up with damage and run out of steam faster (offensively; healing wise, they beat Fighters).

For Rogues, they have their Expertise features, which gives them large and growing skill modifiers. In theory these kind of features makes up for their lackluster difficulty with soaking damage.

The short form is, Warrior-types are supposed to be dominant in combat; they are supposed to have less to do in exploration and social situations.

Como corrigi-lo

The first approach would be to embrace 5e's balance. Have more exploration and social encounters where the Knight doesn't have the spotlight quite so strong. Problems that can be solved with spells or skills or other things like that.

That might not be enough. If the rest of the party goes "splat" whenever the Knight is challenged, you combat (which can take some time and is of importance) can get boring.

So another approach would be to sit down with the Knight player and talk. Point out that they have over-optimized for your table, and ask them to shave off combat capability in order to increase non-combat capability, so you can throw challenges at the party that won't make the rest of the party go splat.

Yet another approach would be to tweak the other classes. You want Rogues to deal more damage than Bruiser-Warrior types? You are the DM, the rules are yours.

Balance is achieved by the GM, not by the players.

You need to balance your challenges so that each party member gets something interesting to do at least every few sessions. Your rogue should be doing more than backstab: he should be sneaking, lockpicking, picking pockets, etc. Your tinkerer should be building interesting things, your magic users should be using magic to resolve problems as well as just kill things, and so forth.

You also need to make the encounters balanced. That means each character should get a foe they can shine against, at least every now and then.

If your scenario is designed to run on rails, and you stick religiously to the random-monster tables, then this will be harder: if you don't even allow yourself to modify your tables or challenges to suit your party, then it sill be next to impossible. But in such a case, I'd argue you aren't being a GM, you're just a secret-keeper: the only thing that prevents them from just discarding you completely and using the scenario without a GM is that they'd see things before they should.

The way I run campaigns - fast and loose, and improv - this is easy. I just slot in mobs that work well for the current party makeup and state. One of the main things I pay attention to is the número of foes.

In 5E, combat characters are OP vs single targets, and that's OK, it's by design. In a recent session as a player, I had to dig up 24d6 for my rogue's crit damage (reasonably high-level, reaching the end of a 2-year campaign).

Yet personally, I feel this rogue is underpowered compared to the rest of the group. He's a one-trick pony. Backstab. Essentially, combat for this rogue is the RPG equivalent of buttonmashing. Which works OK against a single distracted foe and is largely ineffective against massed foes, or 1-on-1 combat.

Magic users are OP vs multiple targets, and that's OK, it's by design. A magic user rolled about 20D6 against multiple targets. Magic users get a huge number of options for attack, and the players even complain when they find themselves using the same spell over and over.

Magic users fare poorly when faced with multiple waves of enemies between long rests, since they must recharge; combat-monkeys can keep on going forever, or at least until the heals run out, and then you risk TPK.

If your fighter is OP vs single targets, then stop throwing single targets. Throw a pair of targets. Throw a mob of cannon-fodder. An ambush where they're attacked on all sides.

Eventually, in my experience at least, the player will start feeling a little useless: if you can read your players, you'll be able to spot this rising up, but in balance, the mages are really shining and are having a field day. Let them have their fun: to me, the art of good GMing is to manage the balance and angle of the game to give every character a chance to shine at least every couple of sessions.

Then you roll out the boss character, and your OP fighter gets to hold him at bay while the others, low on spell-points, pelt him from range, and suddenly he's the lynchpin of the combat again, and makes the final hit, and he had a great session that he'll be bragging about for ages :)

OP doesn't usually even exist. Only specialization exists.

If, as a GM, you are providing only encounters that allow one specialization to shine, you probably need to reconsider your approach to encounters. If they're on rails, consider refining those rails before the session, to bring out the different aspects of the party. If they're more improv, then mix it up a little.

If you have experience in stage-writing or playing, you'll know that a good playwright will always give every named character, no matter how minor, a chance to shine: a chance for the audience to relate to them, and for the actor to show their chops. It's what brings actors to the stage. If you have a secondary character who does nothing interesting, and could be cut from the plot with no loss, then you get imbalance; a skilled actor in such a tedious role could steal a scene with action alone. So it's the director's job to ensure that every actor shines to the point where they feel they had a "great show" every time the curtain falls.

As GM, even if you are using a pre-generated scenario so you aren't the playwright, you remain the director of the play, you dictate who gets front of stage, who gets the spotlight, in each scene.

Consider playing a superheroes campaign next time: I have found that for me at least, these are fantastic training in handling ridonkulously OP characters and still giving them challenges. Even Superman can be brought low without kryptonite, with the right challenge. Kryptonite isn't even his main weakness: people are. Every one of your characters and players will have numerous such armor chinks.

One of the things it taught me is: don't resolve every problem at swordpoint. Have your most powerful character protect the bad guy without knowing it, screw over the party without knowing it, suffer moral dilemmas, etc. Stuff like that. He can't shapechange, or fly, or call down lightning. He's a mundane in a world of magic, he's NOTHING.

And it's OK - no, vital - to give him chances to shine, just like every other character. Be sure to remember to do this, as in a lengthy 5E campaign, the other characters will level their magic past him, and he's stuck being their mundane meat-shield: at higher levels, the powers of magic users are practically gamebreaking. And give him chances to die nobly in that role: especially since death is OK in 5E, it's only permanent if there's a TPK. For players, the times they die are one of the most memorable times, remembered most fondly, or most bitterly.

Here's an in-game way to deal with an issue like this.

The character gets a reputation for being a tough cookie. Like a wild west gunfighter, he gets challenges from stronger and faster NPCs, who want to add to their reputations by taking him down. At first the PC will feel flattered by the extra attention, but it quickly becomes a nuisance and even downright dangerous.

To defuse this situation, the PC should come to you and ask for help. You can then suggest making his character more balanced. That (in my opinion) is a more humane and diplomatic way to handle the problem. It can even generate a few laughs.