Fondue Stew: what cheese do you allow?

[Azernak0]

Every game has some kind of cheese. So, to ye DM's, what kind of cheese do you allow? DMM: Persist perhaps? Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil?

Seriously: what do you allow or disallow and for what reasons?

[Mystia]

Thankfully, I have yet to have players cunning enough to execute any kind of advanced cheese. I have never even seen the spell "Polymorph" ever being used, so I'd say I'm quite lucky. So, until they begin making game-breaking stuff, I pretty much allow anything ^^. Goddess, now that I think about it, if anyone uses cheese, that'd be me, as DM.
I do ban Wishes and Miracles, though. For the obvious reasons, I'd say.

[nyjastul69]

I allowed a ring of evasion to stack with evasion and give improved evasion to a 17 lvl minotaur ranger. Does that count? It probably doesn't. My players have a strong sense of the gentlemen's agreement. I have to push them to optimize a bit more.

[Callin]

I allow my players to go all out but to not ruin the fun of the other players. Whatever line that may be. The few times I have run for my regular group they have kept it fairly tame.

[Gildedragon]

I've allowed a monk to play as a were lion, just dropping the bonus HD for no LA... Worked out nicely.
I am pretty lenient withte caveat that if it gets overboard we're having a talk and things will get toned down or nerfed.
I don't have a ban list per-se

[buttcyst]

I allow cheese to the extent that keen stacks with improved critical, 2 different things creating the same effect, one is enhancement on the weapon itself and the other is your own martial skill, I think they should stack. we are starting to broaden the range of weapon focus, if it a relatively similar weapon type, focus translates to it. about the most cheese in the games run a my house is the character creation house rules, we run a higher powered game so ability roll are 4d6, reroll any 1s, then reroll lowest, and we allow 1 extra feat. I generally try to work with my players so that I have less wtfs to worry about. The only time I put down a big N O is when one of my former players decided to gestault level once he prestige, he didn't have permission and didn't run it by the group, and was trying to pull a fast one, I figured it out when he did a turn undead and started adding cleric lvls I wasn't aware he had.

Cheese makes thing fun if the whole group is on board, I do my best to not tell my players they can't do something, including the high lvl divinations, our druid has some but thank goodness she doesn't use them often (fire seeds is more relevant to her than find the path)

[TheDarkSaint]

My players tend to be woefully unoptimized. One PC was a Monk with a Cha o 8...taking the Leadership feat.

I let them do what they want. I have to pull a lot of punches.

[Karoht]

Pathfinder + 3.5 campaign.

Bard. Soundstriker. Gets Weird Words. DM interpreted this as a weapon-like effect.
Bard was also a Dragon, or at least sufficient enough to qualify for Dragonfire Inspiration.
Weird Words grants 10 bolts per round, delivered as a Ranged Touch Attack. maintained as a free action. Free action to stop, move action to re-activate Weird Words.

10D8 +10x Cha Mod + 10x(12D6 Fire), followed by that again, twice per round. Add in a Belt of Battle for a third strike.
And with another feat or two, he could add another elemental type for an additional 12D6 per bolt.

Said DM is highly encouraging me to do the same in a current campaign. I am refraining. For now.

EDIT: The whole thing comes on line very well by level 6 BTW.
6D8 +6x Cha Mod + 6x(6D6 Fire)

[Lateral]

I lean towards mid-high op for my games, but generally I try to make sure that the party is balanced within itself. I'm fine with using tricks to get 100+ damage a round at level 5, so long as the rest of the party is similarly powerful. If not, I always discuss it with the whole party before deciding if, who, and what to nerf. That said, I almost never ban things- my limit is essentially "if it's less powerful than an optimized Dragonwrought Kobold Sorcerer, and the rest of the party is balanced with it, then it's okay."

[Ravens_cry]

I generally allow quirky and potentially powerful things that work in-universe more than things that hinge on a weird interpretation of RAW, even if it isn't that powerful.

[GeekGirl]

I allow my players to go all out but to not ruin the fun of the other players. Whatever line that may be. The few times I have run for my regular group they have kept it fairly tame.

My last group was almost all new player so I have been kinda hard on the more experienced players. I am trying to let them do what they want, but I don't want it to ruin the game for the new players.

But with the more experienced groups I just remind them that I know the rules better, so what ever they come up with I'll find a challenge.

[nedz]

I allowed a Monk to take Improved Weapon Finesse.
This is a non-existent feat which adds dex to damage.

[FleshrakerAbuse]

I allowed a Monk to take Improved Weapon Finesse.
This is a non-existent feat which adds dex to damage.

Otherwise known as Shadow Blade, Dead Eye, or Crossbow Sniper.

[Fyermind]

DMM metamagic is fine as long as the player isn't trying to get arbitrarily large amounts of turn attempts. If they do, I get to play with disjunction.
In general if people start persisting a lot, I start pulling out my dispel magics and antimagic fields.

Ice Assassin, Shapechange, Polymorph, and things like them are not okay. Alter self is acceptable, but attempts to make it do crazy things are not.

Templates are okay, finding ways to get templates for free are not (I'm looking at you symbiots).

Leadership is acceptable only if everyone at the table is okay with it.

If you ever play a character that cannot get along with another character to the point they cannot play together or you play a character that invalidates another character, be aware that I may ask you to remove it from my game or remove yourself from my table.

[Snowbluff]

I usually allow simple optimization cheese, like early entry to Theurge classes. DMM is fine, considering the feat investment.


I allowed a Monk to take Improved Weapon Finesse.
This is a non-existent feat which adds dex to damage.

I allow Monks to take VoP and then lose [Exalted] status.
If you are using ToB, check out Shadow Blade.

[Essence_of_War]

I'm playing in a game right now that allows DMM:Persist but not stacking Nightsticks.

We're still low level so all it really ends up doing is to let him persist Divine Favor, and I don't think he's planning on mega-dipping PrCs for additional Turning so I think it'll probably be fine.

[Eldonauran]

Allow? I never say no to what my players want to do. I do, however, stress that they are not unique snowflakes and that everything they do in the game will come back on them.

Ie, break my game and my game tries to break your characters. Swing enough power around and certain entities will take notice. Some will want the power for themselves, some will want to see how you obtained it so that they can use it for the greater good and others will try to put you down before you throw the whole system out of whack.

Living, breathing and adapting worlds are my specialty. Everything has a consequence and no one plays in a vacuum. We've had fun with incredibley high-op games that would decimate worlds (and did, to some extent) and they eventually grew weary of it. Absolute powers comes with absolute responsbility and the absolute desire for absolutely everyone wanting a piece of you.

[Phippster]

Most people I've ever played with didn't have a problem with excessive optimization. I don't really recall ever having had anything amazingly powerful. I think the worst I've ever had from a player was probably an optimized archery bard, but the party wasn't too far behind. My players have a good deal of fun playing in low-op games, and I have a good deal of fun designing those kinds of encounters.

I think the most I've done as a player with these same friends is just... be a Warblade. It was just too powerful for them. Dips were fine, but too much more than that was just too much. We found it interesting, and I've used it in higher powered games, but it was too much with my usual players. Other than that, I played a Legendary Captain who optimized Leadership to get a bunch of higher-level followers for his pirate-hunting endeavors.