New game whats broken ?

[AsheItachi]

Starting (DM) a campaign classic 3.5 modules and such not is there anything i should house rule ban or keep out thats game breaking?

I use to use the 3.5 forums but they are dead now ... so little help ?

[sonofzeal]

What books are available? What optimization skill do your players have? What power level are you going for?

[eggs]

The most overt things to watch out for are social skills an open-ended effects (like Simulacrum, Planar Binding, Polymorph, Magic Jar, etc.).

The social skill system just doesn't work, and the spells essentially turn every monster entry in the game into a new set of character abilities.

Adjudicating the skills is relatively easy - it's not hard to hash out some rudimentary guidelines to treat them as modifiers to roleplayed scene outcomes. The spells are trickier, because the problem spells include quite a few archetype-defining abilities. The easiest fix is to just ask your players not to be ***** about using them; more effective fixes address the abilities specifically (eg. replace Polymorph ability alterations with capped enhancement bonuses to certain abilities, or remove the parts of the Calling spells that make summoned outsiders do what the caster wants).

The more subtle problem is that there's a pretty noticeable gap in the number and power of options available to spellcasting characters and nonmagical characters. That part becomes increasingly conspicuous as characters gain levels.

[Slipperychicken]

Depends. Which books are you using? You only need to worry if someone has good system mastery, and even then only if that person doesn't have self-control. If your group thinks Monks and Rogues are overpowered, you don't have much to worry about in terms of game-breakage.

In general, there are some more over-arching things which should catch most of the abuses. Disallowing infinite/near-infinite loops (things like infinite damage, or loops to achieve arbitrarily-large stats or caster level), free money shenanigans (casting Wall of Salt, then selling the salt), Epic Spellcasting, immunity to damage, Sarrukhs (especially their Manipulate Form ability), Astral Projection, Shapechange, gaining free Wishes (from Planar Binding, Gate, or similar abilities. You don't need to ban the spells themselves, just say you can't get Wishes from it), the Shock Trooper feat, or chain-gating creatures (I Gate one creature, it Gates two more, those two Gate in two more each...)

[Gandariel]

Planar Binding and Gate (spells)
Planar shepherd (Prestige class)

those for sure.
for the rest, just go with it. much depends on people and how well they optimize.
casters tend to be stronger and monks tend to be weak.
adjust stuff on the go if unbalanced things happen (take away stuff to a strong charachter. or give new toys to a weak one)

Also, there are a lot of ways to break a game, but players aren't likely to randomly discover them. if they do, talk to them and get them to power down.

[Amnestic]

Nothing until you find out how your players treat it. Even Planar Shepherd can be reasonable depending on how its used. Pre-banning stuff before it becomes an issue seems...silly.

[Slipperychicken]

Nothing until you find out how your players treat it. Even Planar Shepherd can be reasonable depending on how its used. Pre-banning stuff before it becomes an issue seems...silly.

This. Don't get ban-happy before the game starts. If your players don't abuse it, it's not a problem.

[ericgrau]

Thirded. It's better to play first and then determine what's broken second instead of the other way around or you'll end up with pages of pages of potentially useless and annoying house rules.

As a general rule look over your player's character sheets, look up all their abilities, and if you smell a dirty trick then google it up. But without internet help players are unlikely to find these tricks anyway, and most players aren't trying to break the system. That's the main thing right there. And there's so few that if you do run into them you can ban them without worrying about limiting player options much.

Then after that a useful banlist becomes not the extremely broken things but the things that are a little too powerful for your tastes yet weak enough that civil players might still consider them. Then you draw that line where you personally want.

[NichG]

The only problem with play-first, ban-later is that there may be resentment from players that you're specifically nerfing their builds, especially if they had long-term plans centering around certain tricks. At the very least, you should explain what you're doing and make retraining available if you do it.

Also the other caveat is, some players like to try to get as much out of the system as they can - its a big part of their enjoyment of the game. Completely unfettered, these players can be problematic (they'll constantly be finding things you want to nerf, creating a sort of circle of resentment). But if they have a reasonable set of bans/limits ahead of time, then they can go all out without worrying too much that what they find will be taken away from them.

Edit: Its also better to ban by outcome than by detail when you can. What I mean by this is that its better to say 'no infinite combos - anything that would get you an infinite or nigh-infinite thing is automatically banned' than it is to say 'Sarrukhs are banned, and Crusaders are banned, and Sadism/Masochism are banned and ...'. Basically explain the situations that will cause you to ban things so players can just avoid them in the first place rather than taking it as a challenge to find the next one that does that trick. Some suggested bans then would be:

- No infinite combos
- No wish loops/infinite wishes schemes
- Don't break the economy
- No invincibility/auto-win tricks (for an example here, taking all damage as nonlethal and being immune to nonlethal).

[AsheItachi]

Depends. Which books are you using? You only need to worry if someone has good system mastery, and even then only if that person doesn't have self-control. If your group thinks Monks and Rogues are overpowered, you don't have much to worry about in terms of game-breakage.

In general, there are some more over-arching things which should catch most of the abuses. Disallowing infinite/near-infinite loops (things like infinite damage, or loops to achieve arbitrarily-large stats or caster level), free money shenanigans (casting Wall of Salt, then selling the salt), Epic Spellcasting, immunity to damage, Sarrukhs (especially their Manipulate Form ability), Astral Projection, Shapechange, gaining free Wishes (from Planar Binding, Gate, or similar abilities. You don't need to ban the spells themselves, just say you can't get Wishes from it), the Shock Trooper feat, or chain-gating creatures (I Gate one creature, it Gates two more, those two Gate in two more each...)

So basically just say a creature that is here that has been gated has lost its gate ability

[AsheItachi]

What books are available? What optimization skill do your players have? What power level are you going for?

I have all books, the are starting of basic classes and races and 2 are new to DnD so idk if they will figure out how to break the game , on mentioned glibness cause hes thinking half rouge half bard combo.... i looked some stuff up on it if i do bluff correctly it doesnt break the game.

[AsheItachi]

Ok i get what your saying dont start out with the ban hammer.
Just tell them if they delve into the system breaking stuff or find loop holes they will be fixed , we are here to have fun not wreck a system.

[navar100]

This. Don't get ban-happy before the game starts. If your players don't abuse it, it's not a problem.

In addition, don't confuse being "powerful" as to be broken. PCs are allowed to be awesome at something, even at 1st level. Make sure what you consider broken is only that which makes the game unplayable, either something trumps everything or something loses everything.

[ericgrau]

Ok i get what your saying dont start out with the ban hammer.
Just tell them if they delve into the system breaking stuff or find loop holes they will be fixed , we are here to have fun not wreck a system.
Pretty much.

NichG has a good point that you shouldn't get ban happy afterwards either. Keep it limited even then and if you must do it mid-campaign (rather than immediately after character creation) then allow character rewrites. Agreed that vague general concepts are better and even then only when needed.

[Malroth]

Better than banning overpowered stuff is helping the under powered characters build an effective character based on their concept. The system is pretty much designed for a group to build themselves up from a humble farm boy to the power of the epic heroes of Myth so you should go in expecting them to become very good at the things they're good at.