Breaking your DM

[mootoall]

We've had a lot -A LOT- of talk on these boards about broken spells, the ridiculousness of casters, etc. etc. For you guys, does guilt ever accompany absolutely demolishing your DM's hard work?

For example, my DM in one game had us plane shifted into some parallel dimension, where we were promptly attacked by a really awesome looking homebrewed creature. Detailed description, really imposing, the works.

Our Incarnate/Binder/Midnight Occultist goes in, hits it with some ridiculous amount of attacks, and does damage with a grand total of one of them. The cleric protects the vital NPC, and notices an odd statue of some sort of god. And I, a Witch, Baleful Polymorph the creature, fully expecting to fail. One natural one on a fort save later, we have just killed a dog.

I believe this was supposed to be some sort of plot significant encounter, and in the space of a round it was just ... over. And I felt kinda bad about it.

[DragonOfUndeath]

the same happened to me. we were level2 encounter against a homebrew level4 Solo Dire shadow-wolf (as in from the plane of shadows). we took it out 1/2 through the surprise round

[boomwolf]

I got broken as a DM once. the party decided NOT to travel inside the "dungeon" (more of a bank safe thingy actually), instead they went to approximately above the room of what they where looking for (they had blueprints, but they didn't have information on where what they were looking for was, they just assumed by blueprints.) and started to dig until they got it.

And the got the room right.

I'm NEVER making anything of value with blueprints available to acquire. (even though it cost them, it still ruined my rather long crawl.)
I assumed they would use it to plan their advance (and the blueprints were not complete either, some hidden rooms and passages were not shown, so I still had some tricks to surprise them.)
But noooo, they have to DIG into the damn place.

[Serpentine]

I got broken as a DM once. the party decided NOT to travel inside the "dungeon" (more of a bank safe thingy actually), instead they went to approximately above the room of what they where looking for (they had blueprints, but they didn't have information on where what they were looking for was, they just assumed by blueprints.) and started to dig until they got it.

And the got the room right.

I'm NEVER making anything of value with blueprints available to acquire. (even though it cost them, it still ruined my rather long crawl.)
I assumed they would use it to plan their advance (and the blueprints were not complete either, some hidden rooms and passages were not shown, so I still had some tricks to surprise them.)
But noooo, they have to DIG into the damn place.That is... Actually kinda awesome. I think my players would probably go "ooo dungeon, this'll be fun to tromp through!", but if they did what yours did I'd have to give them kudos.
What you shoulda done, though, I reckon, is either just decide it was in a different room (they wouldn't have known...) or give them a good reason to want to get inside - a great big hoard of undead are bearing down on them and only the vault walls can protect them long enough for them to gather their wits and their resources to fight back, somethin' like that.

I'm glad that I 1. have some houserules to deal with the save-or-die spells (including Baleful Polymorph), and 2. have players who willingly avoid the more problematic spells :smallsmile:
Although I do need to work out a way to deal with an untouchable Warlock :smallsigh: I think mindaffecting might be the way to go...

[Darth Crater]

It was the final battle of our campaign (well, the final battle that we actually fought round-by-round, anyway). Our near-epic party, buffed by a dual-9's mystic theurge (not very optimized otherwise - the DM let him continue MT past level 10), had been skirmishing with the Tarrasque and its Inevitable allies for hours. It was an upgraded Tarrasque - tough, intelligent, wearing full plate, carrying a colossal dancing greatsword, and possessing two separate ranged attacks. After a hard-fought battle, things had finally come down to the finish - the Tarrasque and the party were about to go all out in melee.

The theurge cast Irresistible Dance. And beat the SR.

[BoltVanDerHuge]

It was the final battle of our campaign (well, the final battle that we actually fought round-by-round, anyway). Our near-epic party, buffed by a dual-9's mystic theurge (not very optimized otherwise - the DM let him continue MT past level 10), had been skirmishing with the Tarrasque and its Inevitable allies for hours. It was an upgraded Tarrasque - tough, intelligent, wearing full plate, carrying a colossal dancing greatsword, and possessing two separate ranged attacks. After a hard-fought battle, things had finally come down to the finish - the Tarrasque and the party were about to go all out in melee.

The theurge cast Irresistible Dance. And beat the SR.

... Guh... wha...

That is the single greatest mental image I've ever envisioned.
Kudos.

[DeathsHands]

Actually had that happen on my Friday session.

My players were essentially returning to their fliers in the middle of an Ork-infested ruined hive; they got attacked by Kommandos. Not a hard fight, they win. Then I had two Lootas and a Mek come in; they dispatch them too, which was odd. Then when two Mega Armoured Nobs came in the picture (which have incredibly strong armour, mind you); they somehow managed to pin one, and the other was hit by a maximal Plasma Gun shot. They then got him into the crits in CC (in which the Nob's Power Klaws make it extremely dangerous to fight them, even in Power Armour); he got stunned. And set on fire. At Crit 6.

The second one broke Pinning and manage to charge into melee; and one of the players (an Explorator who had a Power Axe and Suppression Shield) decide to try and parry his Power Klaw. He passed. And the Nob kept missing. And he got torn apart. The worst part? Each of them got off only loosing 2 wounds.

I was speechless textless.

[Callista]

My DM recently discovered that no matter how good your demon wizard is, he can still fall to a good initiative and a well-placed grapple check.

In the DM's defense, we weren't supposed to fight to begin with; but considering we're a mostly-Good party that (very sensibly) doesn't trust demons, it shouldn't have been that much of a stretch to realize we'd attack. And after that happened, things mostly fell apart because if you don't expect people to fight the enemy then you probably haven't prepared its stats or its strategy ahead of time, and are left paging through the PHB for spells with verbal components only while the party is peppering your squishy wizard with the attacks of their choice.

(We were honestly quite lucky the DM didn't think of Dimension Door. It'd have been a TPK otherwise.)

'Course, being a demon, he'll be back; but we gained a level off it, anyhow. :)

[Ryu_Bonkosi]

The party I was in was going up against a white dragon (age unknown, but it was most likely younger than adult), it was sleeping so we got a suprise round. We all either hit max damage or got criticals so that the beast died before it got to act. The look on the DM's face was that of shock and displeasure.
This had a sort of two-pronged effect on the campaign from then on. First we never got a suprise round ever again, and second, now that I look back, WE never killed another 'boss' again. We either got chased away by epic level NPCs, they escaped or they died through DM intervention.

[fratar11]

Shivering Touched DMs BBEDragon

[J.Gellert]

My players break me by trying not to break me.

Me: "Seriously, you could've just solved the whole thing with negotiations."

Player: "Yeah... but I didn't want to ruin your plot."

Some people just want railroads. :smalleek:

[Kurald Galain]

I once broke a DM by casting Charm Person on another PC.

No really. We had a long-running campaign and one guy's paladin died in battle. It was his hope, and the DM's intent, that we go on a long quest to resurrect him. However, considering we were in the middle of two or three other quests, our characters decided not to.

So the pally player made a new character, a wizard called Tim who seemed built to annoy the rest of the group. I honestly don't know if the player was intentionally pissing us off, or if he simply thought it would be funny. Anyway, Tim was introduced with the classic "hey, you're a PC too, why don't you travel with us?" routine. And then his character got to insulting us, and got us kicked out of our inn, and sold our horses to make money, and when we rented a boat to travel to the next city he set it on fire. The boat, that is, not the city.

So after much discussion, I decided to cast Charm Person on him, because he wouldn't treat us so badly if he was My Friend. And he failed his save, and since this was 2E, the spell would last days or weeks. Now I'm not saying this was a nice move on my part, but it was in character, and asking party members to behave more-or-less as friends really shouldn't be that big a deal. But this did end the campaign, then and there, and none of us have played with that DM since.

[FelixG]

So the pally player made a new character, a wizard called Tim who seemed built to annoy the rest of the group. I honestly don't know if the player was intentionally pissing us off, or if he simply thought it would be funny. Anyway, Tim was introduced with the classic "hey, you're a PC too, why don't you travel with us?" routine. And then his character got to insulting us, and got us kicked out of our inn, and sold our horses to make money, and when we rented a boat to travel to the next city he set it on fire. The boat, that is, not the city.

I was in a game with a character like that once, in the middle of the night i PKed the character and took his things. (D20 modern post apoc game)

Didnt break the GM, he just laughed and told the player he had it coming for the way he was acting when the guy complained

On the upside we all had a wonderful strange jerky to eat over the next few adventures :D

[HunterOfJello]

I played two session in a game where the DM eventually gave up on the group and went back to being a player.


The group (1 gnome cleric of The Traveler, 1 halfling Bard) was transported along with several humans to a strange room at the start of the campaign. My cleric of The Traveler got a good bluff roll and convinced one of the men to lick each of the walls because it might let us out. He got pretty pissed after it didn't work and was about to attack us when we were given orders by a wierd black orb to kill a specific elf warrior. We were then teleported to another dimension and met the elf.

Instead of killing the elf as ordered, my character decided to kill everyone else (minus the halfling). He grabbed the halfling, hid in the bushes and sniped the two human warriors who were fighting the elf.

Since the entire plot of the campaign was actually based on us killing the elf everything kinda fell apart after that.

[Traveler]

Kinda just did this the other week.
We have a rotating 3.5 games. A low one and a high one. We had just played the low one and were at a good point to quit for the night. However, we had some time to kill before everyone packed up and went home. So two of us, me and (lets call him Tim) Tim, asked the DM if we could do a one shot uber battle with our two characters from the high game, characters that we haven't played for a few months (calander issues). Doesn't count for anything kind of battle. The DM just grins and pulls out a book. Backstory spoiled for length.

So, the setting was a arena. Our two characters were a 10th level wizard (wiz, sorc, and ulti mage I think) and a 8th level fighter (4 fighter, 1 artificer, and 3 fighter/homebrew). DM put us up against a CR 16 blue dragon (I don't know the age from memory). First round, the wizard casts phantasmal killer and drops the thing. It isn't often that we get a defeated look from the DM.
Raised it and fought it the standard way, and still won, but now we know what we can kill.

[bloodtide]

I've never been 'broken' as a DM. But from reading the posts, I have a much different style.

1)I use plenty of minions. And not 'dumb orcs with clubs', but more 'half-shadow dragon drow warlocks'. Very often the so called 'broken' characters go 'nova' early in the game session.

2)Time. The character's must game and play all day. That is roughly 10-16 hours of game time. In that time they will have encounters and events spread through out the time. Most broken-type characters will go 'nova' before game time noon and then be normal the rest of the day. Many games I've seen have only like three encounters a day, with the characters at full strength and power for each one.

3)Plenty of traps. The players are softened up a lot.

4)The game is high powered...so NPC's have good magic items that fit them. Protection items, for example, are common.

5)I keep game information secret. So the so called broken characters can't metagame. They are not told the type of the creature encountered, for example. So they can't plan the 'nova' attack, so they just attack. Very often broken character's waste attacks this way(like daisy-chain fireballs on a fire giant, for example).

[oxybe]

we break DMs by having 4-6 brains compared to his 1.

we simply have that much more computing power among us and can see and approach any given situation from several different point of views due to having different player types:

-i'm generally a pragmatist and go for the practical approach.
-my buddy is more spontaneous and will try anything once.
-our munchkin would metagame the crap out it if possible.
-my other buddy, our sneaky guy, would go around the problem if possible.
-one of the group's face, the FLGS's owner, doesn't really come up with plans, and when he does he's a very practical guy, but he can be expected to give well-reasoned feedback on any of our plans.
-we got a new player recently. haven't played much with him to get a good grip on his type but he seems to be somewhere between me, my buddy and the face: a practical guy who can come up with some weird ideas at times.

this means when we start thinktanking a problem it'll range from your generic "gas them all/burn down the boat!" to "here are possible numbers we might use! what resources do we have to put these numbers in our favor?" to "i'll go in, lock their doors/create distractions/sow misinformation/etc... then you guys go in and..." to "why don't we just parley?"

and by that point we just tend to add several elements together.

so while the face parleys and distracts them, the rogue sneaks in and gets what we need / causes problems for them, the munchkin acts like our synchronized watch and keeps us all coordinated with our resources in check and when we're ready we gas the place and burn down the survivors with the efficiency of a flaming sword on a butter golem in a warm summer's day.

we just look at problems in several different ways and the GM might not have thought of them all.

[Volos]

The last time my players attempted to break me it didn't end very well for them. I had dropped several hints about this castle they were trying to reach. They assumed it was abandoned and they also assumed that they could just take it and rule over the surrounding lands. Given, this place is in the middle of a desert, but it is centered on the largest oasis in the entire desert. Also I could see how they would think that they could rule over the surrounding lands, there isn't much there to begin with. But I digress.

After failing trying to get them to do research / divination / common sense, I flat out told them to do it. With reluctance, my players did their research... and crit failed all of their checks and concentration checks for spells. So now they have no idea, honestly, what is happening.

After a long battle with the hundreds of troups outside the castle and disabling a good number of the defenses inside, they finally reach the epic tower of doom. Rather than sneaking up, they decided to delcare an attack and fly to the top of the tower. The evil sorcerers who took over this castle had been trying to raise a fallen titan. The reasoning behind this goes into the story of my world, but they players didn't bother with trying to figure anything out... so the sorcerers decide to bring the titan back now, rather than in a few months when they finally mastered the magics.

So 14th level party VS Titan and a group of 11 pissed off sorcerers of their level... when all I wanted was a simple stealth mission. So by bullrushing the plot, they players knocked off my kiddie gloves and prepared themselves for a world of hurt.

[VirOath]

5)I keep game information secret. So the so called broken characters can't metagame. They are not told the type of the creature encountered, for example. So they can't plan the 'nova' attack, so they just attack. Very often broken character's waste attacks this way(like daisy-chain fireballs on a fire giant, for example).

Most of it, I don't have a problem with. But do you not allow knowledge checks and remove all divination spells from the book? Or do you simply fudge the information so it doesn't give anything? And more importantly do you let your players know about this?

Not letting PCs rest, liberal trap use and all can be harsh to play through, but the above just really makes me wonder.

[Knaight]

I'm a heavily improvisational GM, the only way prep work on my end can get broken is if players manage to get their characters killed and I have to help them make a new one. That said, this has happened a few times, mostly through friendly fire accidents, or "You're taking him down with you if you want to or not" scenarios.

[Gavinfoxx]

Why would a properly built broken character that blasts have blast effects that are easily resistible as their main way of taking down a single big bad guy? Daisy chaining Orbs of Force, now... now you have something of note...

[Ella]

And I, a Witch, Baleful Polymorph the creature, fully expecting to fail. One natural one on a fort save later, we have just killed a dog.

A witch :)

The big thing is, the dm can't predict what will happen, and creating things for play is only is never guarenteed to have a pay-off, and I hope the dm is seeing it as a great victory for the player (you) rather than being upset about it.

Of course, in the future they will probably take steps to avoid it happening again.

[mootoall]

A witch :)

The big thing is, the dm can't predict what will happen, and creating things for play is only is never guarenteed to have a pay-off, and I hope the dm is seeing it as a great victory for the player (you) rather than being upset about it.

Of course, in the future they will probably take steps to avoid it happening again.

Well to be fair, I was only resorting to Baleful Polymorph because I was fairly certain it was immune to mind-affecting spells ... He left me no choice!

[Ella]

And how are you finding playing a witch, I assume you are using the same one as me?

As a dm, I think one of the main things you just have to accept is that things might not go your way with the rolls and your bbeg could die before you are ready for it to happen and that you might want to have some sort of back-up plan in place.

[mootoall]

And how are you finding playing a witch, I assume you are using the same one as me?

As a dm, I think one of the main things you just have to accept is that things might not go your way with the rolls and your bbeg could die before you are ready for it to happen and that you might want to have some sort of back-up plan in place.

It's quite lovely, actually. I'm playing Jarrick's homebrewed witch, which has a nifty Hex ability, and I don't think that's what you're playing.

[137beth]

I got broken as a DM once. the party decided NOT to travel inside the "dungeon" (more of a bank safe thingy actually), instead they went to approximately above the room of what they where looking for (they had blueprints, but they didn't have information on where what they were looking for was, they just assumed by blueprints.) and started to dig until they got it.

And the got the room right.

I'm NEVER making anything of value with blueprints available to acquire. (even though it cost them, it still ruined my rather long crawl.)
I assumed they would use it to plan their advance (and the blueprints were not complete either, some hidden rooms and passages were not shown, so I still had some tricks to surprise them.)
But noooo, they have to DIG into the damn place.
That's a rather impressive show they made. Of course if you don't give them a blueprint, the party wizard will eventually just cast a divination spell to find it once they are a high enough level.

[Psyx]

GM wrote an awesome Spacemaster campaign, that involved an evil self-replicating robot being unlocked from stasis during archaeological diggings, going off and re-creating it's race in a galaxy-threatening kind of way.

Creature was AT20 with a 400DB and -4 crit severity, immune to stuns blah blah, just to 'make sure' it would survive the encounter and escape.

Wit the most spectacular string of open-ended rolls I have ever pulled off, followed by a '00' crit, the thing was reduced to a pile of cogs by a lucky shot.

GM said he'd never run the system again. :(

[LordBlades]

The only two times I've 'broken the DM' were just incerdible streaks of luck on my part.

First one was a very long time ago. I was playing a Dread Necromancer in an evil party, that, after a loooong string of bad decision allowed the forces of good full control over the material plane. Being one of the last remaining groups of evil, we're constantly on the run, and eventually caught (we were lvl 9 or 10 at this point). While we await for our trial, we're imprisoned in a chapel, guarded by a single astral deva. I try phantasmal killer and 2 natural 1s for the DM later, the deva is dead, and we get enough time to plane shift out of there. Turned out I had actually thwarted what was supposed to be the camaign ending :smallbiggrin:

Second one was in our last campaign, I'm playing a 7th level raptoran cleric/skypledged, built around longspear charges with shock trooper. We were in a cave (can't recall exactly why) and we manage to sneak upon a small camp of kobolds (couple of guards, a wizard, and a sleeping large white dragon). We have surprise round, and I cast fleshripper at the dragon. Cofirmed critical. 14d8 damage. Then we roll for initiative and i go first. I charge the dragon with Full Power Attack and Shock trooper. Another critical. With dive and a valolorus longspear the damage looked something like (1d8+25)x5. the poor dragon, that was supposed to be the main threat in the encounter died before getting a chance to act.

[Aotrs Commander]

GM wrote an awesome Spacemaster campaign, that involved an evil self-replicating robot being unlocked from stasis during archaeological diggings, going off and re-creating it's race in a galaxy-threatening kind of way.

Creature was AT20 with a 400DB and -4 crit severity, immune to stuns blah blah, just to 'make sure' it would survive the encounter and escape.

Wit the most spectacular string of open-ended rolls I have ever pulled off, followed by a '00' crit, the thing was reduced to a pile of cogs by a lucky shot.

GM said he'd never run the system again. :(

I love RM dearly, but even I have to admit you just can't do BBEG-boss type battles in RM. Like, EVER. Because THAT. ALWAYS. HAPPENS. *skulldesk*

Seriously, to worry 'em now I have to use Greater Black Reavers with Sianetic Harbinger shields and anti-proton cannons. That's Reavers PLURAL.

Generally, though I mke it a point NOT to break the DM's game. Totally break, anyway. 'Cos if I break his game, he'll probably stop running it, which means it's me back behind the screen again. (Or nobody plays!)


That is... Actually kinda awesome.

Less so if the DM's a prep-based one and has to shrug his shoulders and says, "Well. Bugger. That's all I got today," though...

(Okay, I do have some bias here, but then again, every DM in our groups are prep-based and always have been, so...)


My players break me by trying not to break me.

Me: "Seriously, you could've just solved the whole thing with negotiations."

Player: "Yeah... but I didn't want to ruin your plot."

Some people just want railroads. :smalleek:

It's a doubled-edged sword. On the one hand, like you said. One the other hand, usually with those sort of players (like mine) you can pretty much run whatever the frag you like and they'll be happy little gold-obessed, murderous hoboes. (My players, I mean, not their characters.)



On the other hand, I tend to break my own games by being far too lazy to adhere to the WBL when using converted AD&D modules and thus the players usually make me cry when it comes time to sell off the loot. (And the one time I did run a 3.5 module proper, they broke the module partly by having a Dread Necromancer/Palemaster and a Shadow Sun Ninja and partly by having level-appropriate armour and shields...)

[rakkoon]

If I may add some LARP stuff.
140 people, three day campain (Fri-Sat-Sun) with lots of roleplaying.
Main story was about the local baron
We stormed the castle at noon on saturday and killed the baron.
There was no backup plan, all NPC's were called back and we spent the next 5 hours being attacked by the same 4 wolves.
But it was sunny...

[senrath]

I played two session in a game where the DM eventually gave up on the group and went back to being a player.


The group (1 gnome cleric of The Traveler, 1 halfling Bard) was transported along with several humans to a strange room at the start of the campaign. My cleric of The Traveler got a good bluff roll and convinced one of the men to lick each of the walls because it might let us out. He got pretty pissed after it didn't work and was about to attack us when we were given orders by a wierd black orb to kill a specific elf warrior. We were then teleported to another dimension and met the elf.

Instead of killing the elf as ordered, my character decided to kill everyone else (minus the halfling). He grabbed the halfling, hid in the bushes and sniped the two human warriors who were fighting the elf.

Since the entire plot of the campaign was actually based on us killing the elf everything kinda fell apart after that.

I think your DM tried to make you play a game based on the manga Gantz.

[mrxak]

My favorite wizard spell of all time in 3.5 was Sound Lance from the Spell Compendium. Awesome art for it in the book, too.

Basically it's a single-target fireball that uses d8s instead of d6s.

Now you toss in some metamagic. Rod and a "Sudden" feat. I hope you're getting the idea...


This DM just wanted to make some arena-style single monster high-level encounters at some level or another to kill time. His usual group wasn't playing, and half my usual group including our DM wasn't playing, so we sort of merged parties and each rolled up new characters. Then we went into the arena. I don't really remember what the creature was, just that I won initiative, and killed the thing in a single shot :smalltongue:

It was meant to be a difficult encounter, hehe.

[Ashram]

My favorite wizard spell of all time in 3.5 was Sound Lance from the Spell Compendium. Awesome art for it in the book, too.

Basically it's a single-target fireball that uses d8s instead of d6s.

Now you toss in some metamagic. Rod and a "Sudden" feat. I hope you're getting the idea...


This DM just wanted to make some arena-style single monster high-level encounters at some level or another to kill time. His usual group wasn't playing, and half my usual group including our DM wasn't playing, so we sort of merged parties and each rolled up new characters. Then we went into the arena. I don't really remember what the creature was, just that I won initiative, and killed the thing in a single shot :smalltongue:

It was meant to be a difficult encounter, hehe.

Must have been one weak creature (Or you are close to or at 10th level), considering Sound Lance is Fortitude half, unlike a Fireball. Or it rolled a 1 on its Fortitude save.

[Tyndmyr]

Less so if the DM's a prep-based one and has to shrug his shoulders and says, "Well. Bugger. That's all I got today," though...

(Okay, I do have some bias here, but then again, every DM in our groups are prep-based and always have been, so...)

If you are a preparation based DM, prepare some extra material. Always. Players will invariably do the unexpected, so having some contingency material to fall back on is great.

Plus, since it'll inevitibly be used eventually, it's not extra prep time, and certainly not wasted time. It's just preparation done in advance, instead of procrastinating it until the session you think you'll need it.

I'm invariably annoyed by being stuck on the rails because the DM says he has nothing else prepared. I've offered to hand the DM a stack of level appropriate modules on many an occasion as a result. Lots of material exists.

[Terumitsu]

I've got one from a game I was DMing. Not a break but it was a very unique solution to the problem. Also very funny.

So, to set things up, I was running a game where an evil dwarf sorcerer (the BBEG) was making weather machines which royally #$%&ed up the ecosystem so that he could make the aboveground world more like that of the belowground world. Anyway, the party, consisting of a half-elf bard, a goliath barbarian, an orc and human warblade, and a human swordsage (Lots of healing manouvers going around in this party), had reached the end of a mountain cave in which a weathermachine was being completed where the BBEG was overseeing the final stages of completion. Well, the bard had a wand of Enlarge Person and buffed everyone with that as there was enough room for everyone to not step on any toes being Large size. That was all fine and good until the goliath grinned and said something along the lines of 'Ehehehe. They look like ants.'

His player suddenly got that look in his eye where you know an idea has just clicked into place. He then raged and initiated combat, succeeding on his overrun attempt through several beefed up workers and then stated he was going to bodyslam the dwarf as if he were some sort of wrestler. He succeded on the grapple check and, as he did so, called out IC 'Dog Pile!' The rest of the party got the idea and there was suddenly a pile of very large PCs on top of what was going to be a boss fight. After calculating the total weight from the enhanced characters, the total came up to around two tons. I made a judgement call that it would be pretty hard to live through that and they succeeded in mashing the end boss into a fine paste.

Of course, all the commotion did mean that the machine went unfinished and was activated prematurely, causing a catastrophic meltdown from which the PCs had to make a mad dash for the outside. By that time, though, all of us were laughing pretty hard and it was a good end to the campaign as the mountain top blew itself apart as the PCs made their way down.

[Greenish]

Anyway, the party, consisting of a half-elf bard, a goliath barbarian, an orc and human warblade, and a human swordsage (Lots of healing manouvers going around in this party)Wait, what? None of them have access to healing maneuvers.

[bloodtide]

Most of it, I don't have a problem with. But do you not allow knowledge checks and remove all divination spells from the book? Or do you simply fudge the information so it doesn't give anything? And more importantly do you let your players know about this?

Not letting PCs rest, liberal trap use and all can be harsh to play through, but the above just really makes me wonder.


Of course players are free to use the knowledge skill and spells. This is not much of a problem. Most 'broken' characters would much rather have a 'daisy chain fireball uber death spell' memorized, then some boring divination. And the knowledge skill does not give you game information. You don't learn the Type and Subtype, for example. You would learn that the 'Fire Monster' is from the Elemental plane of Fire, but that does not tell you if it's of the Elemental, Outsider, or such type..though you can guess it has the Fire subtype.


The play might sound 'harsh', but it's a bit more 'edge of your seat'. And both the players and myself like it. I'm sure it sounds harsh to the group with 'safety wheels', where they know the DM has 'Safety proofed the game'(like you do to a house with a newborn) so the characters will never die, be harmed or even slightly treated unfair.

[Terumitsu]

Wait, what? None of them have access to healing maneuvers.

Feats my good man! Several feats allow one to take maneuvers that are not regularly in one's list. They were all around level 13 or so if I remember it correctly.

[mootoall]

Stuff ... What? Firstly, knowledge checks represent the depth of a character's knowledge. If they hit the required DC, they would know if it's immune to fire. Also, it's pretty much universally recognized that evocation (fireball) spells are the weakest school. Scry and Die, battlefield control or debuffing which generally aren't HP attacks, are much better. A properly broken character will not use a fireball. Example: One failed save, you're a dog.

[jiriku]

Of course players are free to use the knowledge skill and spells. This is not much of a problem. Most 'broken' characters would much rather have a 'daisy chain fireball uber death spell' memorized, then some boring divination. And the knowledge skill does not give you game information. You don't learn the Type and Subtype, for example. You would learn that the 'Fire Monster' is from the Elemental plane of Fire, but that does not tell you if it's of the Elemental, Outsider, or such type..though you can guess it has the Fire subtype.


The play might sound 'harsh', but it's a bit more 'edge of your seat'. And both the players and myself like it. I'm sure it sounds harsh to the group with 'safety wheels', where they know the DM has 'Safety proofed the game'(like you do to a house with a newborn) so the characters will never die, be harmed or even slightly treated unfair.

Except that knowledge checks really DO give you game information. Later monster manuals even specify what knowledge is gained, e.g. Knowledge DC 15 reveals that the creature is a construct and reveals all the features of the construct type. Game was built to work that way.

[Kaun]

Of course, all the commotion did mean that the machine went unfinished and was activated prematurely, causing a catastrophic meltdown from which the PCs had to make a mad dash for the outside. By that time, though, all of us were laughing pretty hard and it was a good end to the campaign as the mountain top blew itself apart as the PCs made their way down.

Everybody loves a LBB
(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoadBearingBoss)

[Tyndmyr]

A properly broken character will not use a fireball.

Now, now, fireball can be awesome. Consider, for instance, the hydra. OOoh, scary. Oh, look, it's a smoking crater.

I built an E6 char for a friend not long ago. Warmage. Not a great class you say, right? Basically an evoker? Well, he had fireball. And Arcane Thesis. And the fire reserve feat. And of course, you get warmage edge by default, for additional damage. Even before he got a single bonus E6 feat, it was a "if it's not a rogue, it dies" spell.

Optimizing damage is highly underrated.

[mootoall]

Yeah, evokers are fine. At low levels (E6) and for direct damage. In fact, they're the best at direct damage inside core. But a conjurer with the Orb spells is much better at direct damage at high levels. And you know what's great about conjuration? Fire creatures can be summoned! Not to mention conjuration has some of the best no save spells. At higher levels, a conjurer will be much more effective and versitile than an evoker. Lower levels maybe not, but I think at higher levels a conjurer's better.

[nihilism]

as a dm i have been broken a few times all in roughly the same way.

Dms are broken by loud obnoxious parties who exhaust the poor dungeon master until he/she starts making mistakes in his/her stressful, mentally taxing job.

Another problem with the same sort of party. They do not take the game seriously, they joke around and do stupid things. Thus the dm subconsciously thinks, "casual game" and he starts to play casually next thing, the preposterously optimized party of munchkins slaughters the innocent monsters.

there are 4 monosyllabic words which end these situations: "get the hell out"

[Talon Sky]

In my last campaign, I had a player who broke several of my bosses by having skill points piled into Iaijutsu, plus Skill Focus a few times on said skill, plus the feat Quick Draw. He proceeded to buy as many katanas as he could carry, and yeah....

Also, later on, he bought a ring of Blink that was it's own little bag of fun. Including Blinking himself and the BBEG off a friggin' cliff into a mirror leading to a stasis dimension, and survived because of one lucky Grapple check on the wall of the cliff as he fell. He then proceeded to Blink up back to the top.

I'm pretty sure that's not how Blink works btw, but I let it happen at the time for the Rule of Cool. But I was steamed that my boss, at full HP and spells (a high level Duskblade/Cleric) was taken down in two rounds.

[Greenish]

In my last campaign, I had a player who broke several of my bosses by having skill points piled into Iaijutsu, plus Skill Focus a few times on said skill, plus the feat Quick Draw. He proceeded to buy as many katanas as he could carry, and yeah....Skill Focus doesn't stack (for a single skill). Also, getting Iaijutsu Focus only happens against flat-footed enemies.

[VirOath]

Of course players are free to use the knowledge skill and spells. This is not much of a problem. Most 'broken' characters would much rather have a 'daisy chain fireball uber death spell' memorized, then some boring divination. And the knowledge skill does not give you game information. You don't learn the Type and Subtype, for example. You would learn that the 'Fire Monster' is from the Elemental plane of Fire, but that does not tell you if it's of the Elemental, Outsider, or such type..though you can guess it has the Fire subtype.


The play might sound 'harsh', but it's a bit more 'edge of your seat'. And both the players and myself like it. I'm sure it sounds harsh to the group with 'safety wheels', where they know the DM has 'Safety proofed the game'(like you do to a house with a newborn) so the characters will never die, be harmed or even slightly treated unfair.

Oh yes, save for the fact that the 'Broken Characters' you are describing sound more like mindless blasters that like rolling dice. Truly 'broken' characters can take your hours of planning and just bend it over a barrel as they do their bidding. Liberal use of divination as well as a proper selection of spells means they aren't caught unawares. 'Broken' Casters don't cast more than one spell in a combat every often, because they don't need to. Going 'Nova' is foolish.

Don't try painting a picture of 'training wheels' on another group, you don't even know why I'm bringing it up and it's rather insulting to imply that my group babies it's players.

[bloodtide]

Except that knowledge checks really DO give you game information. Later monster manuals even specify what knowledge is gained, e.g. Knowledge DC 15 reveals that the creature is a construct and reveals all the features of the construct type. Game was built to work that way.

Most knowledge checks don't give game information. Take the later book Monster Manual V.

Ember Guard-no matter what DC you make, you are never told the creatures type or subtypes. It tells you cold is it's weakness(yet does not mention it's cold resistance) and resistant(note the text does not say Damage Resistance) to all by good weapons. It does not mention it's immune to fire and poison, nor does it mention Spell Resistance.

Siege Beetle-You never learn the creatures type

Vinespawn-You never learn the creatures type

Only some, like the Shaedling say 'you learn all the traits'. And mostly it's obvious: oh that skeletal creature is an undead, you don't say?

[Kylarra]

Most knowledge checks don't give game information. Take the later book Monster Manual V.
MMV actually explicitly says that you get game information.


Except when otherwise noted, an appropriate and successful DC 15 Knowledge check reveals all of a creature’s type and subtype traits as defined in the glossary. This often includes information about energy resistance or various immunities.

[Tyrmatt]

My group has a penchant for slaughtering my most powerful creatures and being chomped on by the most basic of basics.
Case in point, my wonderful, leaping, pinning slashing zombies with powerful claws and the ability to travel what was essentially a good chunk of the battlegrid in a single turn were repeatedly headshotted and instantly killed by a series of lucky rolls.

My most basic of weakling zombies with a movement rate of 10ft and a D4 damage dice reduced one character to half health and had another bleeding to death in a single round :(

Even my walking, immune to bullets tank still got dynamited to death. It was fun to see their faces when they all fired a round of shots into it and it didn't even flinch.

Of course, if they had targeted the necromancer powering the damn thing...well it would've dropped dead anyway. He did get a stick of dynamite for his troubles in the end though.

[Souhiro]

Well, nothing breaks your DM like buying a thousand of 10-foot ladders (5 cp each) and selling two thousands of 10-foot poles (2 sp each)

In Spain, we make fun of our president (Zapatero) and we made a campaign in which the PresidKing "Zapaterpoulos" had ruined the economy by legalizing that prizes. So, the ultimate job was "Dungeoneer" people who had to raid the prosperous dungeons and plunder it!

- The background was that some high level mosters acknowledged that they had a fortune in gold with them (They didn't realize until then) and spent it into the prosperity of the dungeon: Sewer systems for the undergrounds, Electric power, Colleges, Dental plans... and many factories of 10-foot ladders!

[Myth]

OK now i feel guilty. My levlel 4 very un-optimized Wizard who was headed for Gish-dom since level one (and thus is a generalist and took Dodge and Militia) is in a low power, low optimization, low wealth campaign. The DM doesn't have access to stuff outside the SRD but has allowed things if we provide the full write up.

I took Ray of Stupidity a while back because we were chased by a Hydra. It seems he never read the description I provided, because suddenly now that my character wants to go and one-shot it he is a very annoyed panda.

[khylis]

In the last session I was DM'ing, the players themselves broke another player. Background: most of this group is RP based, some even randomly take notes (yay, not very useful notes, but notes nonetheless), their knowledge of 4e is basic, but their characters are fairly decently optimised.

The sky turns dark, and an oppressive air pervades everything around you
"It's that bastard again isn't it?"
I remain silent.

"So er... what's happening?"

"You wait around, nothing happens for quite a while, the village seems as it ever was, then it begins to drizzle lightly"

"Well that's new..."
"So?..."

"It starts raining harder..."
"And?..."
"and harder..."
"..."
"The rain is becoming torrential now..."

"Wait! S$#% 6 years of rain in the backlash of the spell we disenchanted!"

"Suddenly, chickens start to appear out of thin air; in the thunderstorm, one of the chickens gets struck by a bolt of lightning, instantly charring it - vines start to grow out of the earth and wrap around the local architechture"

"I tell the mayor to sort all of this stuff out and cut the plants and herd the livestock into hastily constructed pens - and then I beckon to my comrades that we shall leave for the next village"

"Hedron! Neeskah! what are you two doing?!"
"We're killing chickens! Oooh look! a 20! critical"
"Ooooh I got a 20 too!" exclaims Neeskah

"Um great, the chickens you crit are automatically skinned and gutted, and marinated in a light wine sauce" I utter, rather perplexed
"Cool!"

"Guys! can we please move on! we've got a village to save!" utters Orekt the magnificent drow bard
"Wait wait! I'm sacrificing chickens to my god!"
"Neeshkah... don't you worship bahamut?"
"Yes, doesn't he get hungry? He's this giant dragon, it means he should get even more hungy!"

at this Orekt slaps his forehead and walks to his house
"Hey mom, I think I will be staying for dinner"
She hands him a vial, "It's poison!"
"I know" Orekt mutters, resigned and tosses it back
"Ah crap, I got it mixed up with baking soda; sniff sniff, I suck at being an evil drow mother"
He starts to froth at the mouth, eliciting many growls from their tag-along npc wolf.

"You know what? I give up, I leave to the next village by myself!"

Yes, they managed to break one of their own party members XD

[Myth]

what is this i don't even

[mrxak]

Must have been one weak creature (Or you are close to or at 10th level), considering Sound Lance is Fortitude half, unlike a Fireball. Or it rolled a 1 on its Fortitude save.

Yeah we were level 10 I think. And no, did not make his fortitude save.

As the DM, I've been broken more than a few times by crazy spells.

[Yukitsu]

Planning tends to make my DM unhappy. But only because I take it to an extreme.

We got a returning player who wasn't around when I joined after a 3 year hiatus. He said "[Yukitsu] you're plans don't always work out."
Player 2: "Actually, they do always work out. Hey [DM], remember when [Yukitsu] had "Kill a bird" written on that plan list, and it came up during the encounter? And ruined the entire encounter?"
DM: *Twitch*
Player 2: "Yeah. [Yukitsu] plans like batman fighting a ninja riding a dinosaur."
Me: "Yeah. If I have to roll dice, or if enemy die rolls are a factor of success or failure, I didn't plan enough."
Player 2: "Actually, he's right. That one plan where you got plane shifted to Faerun was a failure."
Me: "Yeah, well my plan was run in, cause crippling damage and die. The only objective I failed on was dying."
DM: *Twitch*

[Talon Sky]

Skill Focus doesn't stack (for a single skill). Also, getting Iaijutsu Focus only happens against flat-footed enemies.

Both of which I glossed over for a homebrew Zatoichi-style prestige class :D

[Kylarra]

Both of which I glossed over for a homebrew Zatoichi-style prestige class :DI don't think it counts as breaking the DM when the DM handmakes the tools to do it.

[Talon Sky]

I don't think it counts as breaking the DM when the DM handmakes the tools to do it.

I never expected the whole deal with buying a sackful of katanas to continually use, though. I suppose you're right ;p

[khylis]

what is this i don't even

I don't know either =/ my players are a very unique group

[DropsonExistanc]

I tried a mid-level VoP Strongheart Halfling Druid, with a fleshraker companion, just once. Pre-approved with warnings and everything.

First battle, everyone got one round in while I was 'shaping, then my companion and I did the dual fleshraker rumble. A charitable elephant support society in the next town got a lot of gold when we rolled in... then fleshrakers were banned, my character being grandfathered till the end of the game.

To his credit, there was no weeping, but one of my next characters under him was a gestalt mid-level Half-Nymph Planar Shepherd/Swordsage, with two levels of Wilder on the Swordsage side for the charisma bonus to touch AC in any form. No Eberron planes cheese though- and not high enough level for Ysgard to be particularly useful.



On my end, I recently had a player in 4e Encounters (season 3 if anyone cares) skip most of the encounter because he followed a random NPC across the city. He was forcing it so hard, I finally said, "fine. You sit and watch the unconscious half-dead prisoner. There's a priest on the other side of the room, watching you watch him." Then I came back to him about an hour (4 turns, maybe, 6-person fight sans him) later, after someone used a loud thunder-type power, and gave him one final perception check to get back in.

I feel that, considering I was giving him INSIGHT checks at the end of my 15 mins dealing solely with him to keep him from being out of the fight, he deserved the time-out. I talked to him afterwards and he hasn't been much of a problem since.