I'm running a Savage Worlds game in a rugged sci-fi genre (think Firefly or Guardians of the Galaxy), and I've got a problem. One of my players is wildly over-powered in combat, (multiple attacks per turn, crazy stacked bonuses, etc), while the rest of my team is normal and balanced. It was my own fault, this was my first game as GM and the player made a fun pitch for his character, and I didn't realize how it would play out once the game got going.

Normally I'd talk to the player and strike a compromise to re-balance the character, but for two things: first, the player likely won't be with us for much longer so the problem will likely solve itself, and second, it's not unheard of for the character to entertain the party with his over-the-top nature (e.g. it's fun when Iron Man annihilates 100 guys in a minute, even if Captain America can only kill 4).

That being said, I still need to design encounters that are fun for all involved, and when one character can reliably kill 3-4 enemies per turn, that's getting tough. I've tried making the enemies tougher, but that means no one else in the party has a chance of getting a kill, and I've tried making hordes of enemies that even he can't overpower too quickly, but given how swing-y Savage Worlds is that could easily lead to everyone getting slaughtered from a few good (read: bad) rolls.

In the end I've started making combats less frequent (the character in question sucks at everything else), which is probably good for my education as a GM anyway, but I'm curious: are there other tricks for making fun combat encounters with an over-powered character? Surely I'm not the first person to wrestle with this problem.

Is there anything else I should try?

I'm running a Savage Worlds game in a rugged sci-fi genre (think Firefly or Guardians of the Galaxy), and I've got a problem. One of my player characters is wildly over-powered in combat, (multiple attacks per turn, crazy stacked bonuses, etc.),¹ while the rest of my team is normal and balanced. It was my own fault, this was my first game as GM and the player made a fun pitch for his character, and I didn't realize how it would play out once the game got going.

Normally I'd talk to the player and strike a compromise to re-balance the character, but for two things: first, the player likely won't be with us for much longer so the problem will likely solve itself, and second, it's not unheard of for the character to entertain the party with his over-the-top nature (e.g. it's fun when Iron Man annihilates 100 guys in a minute, even if Captain America can only kill 4).

That being said, I still need to design encounters that are fun for all involved, and when one character can reliably kill 3-4 enemies per turn, that's getting tough. I've tried making the enemies tougher, but that means no one else in the party has a chance of getting a kill, and I've tried making hordes of enemies that even he can't overpower too quickly, but given how swing-y Savage Worlds is that could easily lead to everyone getting slaughtered from a few good (read: bad) rolls.

In the end I've started making combats less frequent (the character in question sucks at everything else), which is probably good for my education as a GM anyway, but I'm curious: are there other tricks for making fun combat encounters with an over-powered character? Surely I'm not the first person to wrestle with this problem.

Is there anything else I should try?

¹ He's a Rocket Raccoon (from Guardians of the Galaxy) homage character called Battle Chimp, with racial Extra Limb traits that allow a gun to be held in all four "hands" (i.e. chimp hands & feet), ambidextrous (taken separately for each "hand") so all 4 are without penalty, then Shooting d8 and several edges to increase marksmanship, all on top of 3-round-bursting or doubling-tapping on every shot. He's got hindrances (like drug addiction, enemies, etc) and a lack of non-combat skills that balance everything out, mathematically speaking, but in combat he's just unstoppable.