How mad do you get over homebrew limitations?

[Balor01]

Here, I am often reading the stories on how you go "Pazuzu Pazuzu Pazuzu" or "take Ur-priest" or take feats/templates/cutiemarks from gazzilion splatbooks just to make that infinite Wish loop.

So I am thinking ... my last campaign had these limitations:

- core+single additional book
- no tier 1 classes
- max spell lvl available is 5

PCs are lvl 6 now and have been handed about 1000 gp worth of equiptment each, no more.

They are having fun though. But I wonder how mad would optimisers get when "Pazuzu Pazuzu Pazuzu" trick would just get them exceptionally hairy crotch for 24 hours or they would get a "serious warning" from Good pantheon regarding "Gating all them Solars".

And alike ...

[Coidzor]

Well, I always find it slightly annoying when a DM is just straight up unwilling to check out homebrew at all, especially things that don't require much time at all.

I'd say I'd only really get mad if they had a snotty attitude as well, but that's more because I don't like getting a snotty attitude, especially because a snotty attitude usually indicates a DM that isn't very good at being a DM and who thinks he's better than me like some kind of tin-plated dictator. Can't say I exactly have much fondness for DMs who think like that.

As for your actual post... I believe you've been missing the point if you think that's very common behavior. I know you've had to have run into the idea of the gentleman's agreement too if you've seen Pazuzu and chain-gating show up.

But, yeah, generally I'd prefer a DM who actually had the human decency and respect to actually say what kind of tone and power level the game was shooting for before we started playing rather than doing childish things like that. As, again, if the DM doesn't have the respect for me as a person to actually speak to me before the game, it doesn't reflect well on them, and will probably prevent any kind of positive relationship from forming and poison existing ones if he was too much of an ass about DMing.

[Flickerdart]

I can't see any reason more arbitrary for banning content than what book it comes from.

Consider, if you will, the Paladin. What splat will he take? Oh, he's a divine class, so of course Complete Divine. But there's also Complete Champion, which is also for divine characters. And Complete Warrior for melee characters. And don't forget Heroes of Valor and BoED, for Good characters. And these are just the books that are thematically appropriate for him and have nothing to do with Pazuzu.

And then you have the wizard, who can "make that infinite Wish loop" in Core only. Banning splats does absolutely nothing if you're concerned about balance.

[rt_tlp]

My rules with homebrew and 3P are the same. I expect the player to come to me with all the information on hand, present it to me, and be fully able to answer any questions I have about it without answering "well read it. It's somewhere in that packet." If you can't do that, or I get a whiff of "this is looking like an ugly chain of overpowered" then I'll just say no and move on.

If you do this and pull one over on me, good on you. You'll pay for it, and your party will pay for it too because I will now balance the game around you being overpowered, so everyone else will be dramatically underpowered. When they get upset, I tell them why the game is so hard--because Powergamer A never even breaks a sweat during combat.

I then let a very angry group take care of the issue for me.

[Venusaur]

And then you have the wizard, who can "make that infinite Wish loop" in Core only. Banning splats does absolutely nothing if you're concerned about balance.

Tier one is banned, so no wizard wish loops. Sorcerers can do it, but they have a much higher cost.

[Krazzman]

I don't get that mad...

The things in my group that I don't like is: rolled stats, in one campaign critical failures, in another 1 = failure and else I can choose to play what I want.

What really got me mad is WBL and loss of wealth. No seriously. I like if my character is awarded a big reward for solving a problem in a town and can spend this with spelunking or other things. I started a level 16 games with having only ~10000 gp in gear. After spending 3 hours building gear for a level appropiate character. I know loss is/can be part of the game but some things are just ridiculus.

It helps that my "builds" aren't that strong as we sort of stop this ourselves.
See my sig for my currently played chars in most of them my char is one of the strongest. In the Cleric one the Druid and Swordsage will be stronger next level but currently only the Druid and I are fairly powerful. The wizard focuses on Illusions, the Sorcerer plays pseudoranger, and the Factotum isn't that strong at the begining.

The Warlock was deemed powerful because I 1 (or rarely 2) shotted those kobolds everytime. (1d6+1 against 4 hp and lucky dice rolls = win)
But this was sorted out later where our more healing focused cleric pulled ahead.

My warblade still dishes out the most damage and basically does the most things next to a Rogue/Ranger, Bard/Warlock, Druid and Favoured Soul.

the Pazuzu thing is mostly TO(Theoretical Optimization). And these things are more or less... not intended for play. PO(Practical Optimization) is another boat. Mostly because you have a certain thing in mind what you want your character to be able to do... under limited circumstances.

If all T1 classes are banned then wanting to play a Wizard is rather hard. Although you can argue that you can play a Wizard that is on T2 niveau.

Even if things are banned you can mostly talk to your DM. Tell him you have a concept that won't break anything and explain it to him and unless he has different reasons for it he will allow you to play what you want to play.

If I want to play a Warlock in a Core + 1 Splat, I would ask if I can learn certain Invocations from Comp Mage for flavor reason or because it fits the most (or take certain Prestige Classes).

I wouldn't be mad at those limitations but I would ask a few ways around them definitly, mainly because I have a concept in my mind I want to try out.

[Yora]

I run all my games with pretty short whitelists.

[Flickerdart]

Tier one is banned, so no wizard wish loops. Sorcerers can do it, but they have a much higher cost.
I am addressing specifically the splatbook limitation in that entire post. The ramifications of low WBL (everything breaks) and tier bans have already been explored repeatedly, and spell level caps are not an issue if the characters are still low level.

[RFLS]

Short answer: It seriously depends.

Long answer: There are two general reasons a DM will ban content. I'm sure someone's got a few extra categories, but these are the big ones:

It's thematically inappropriate.
He's afraid of optimizers.

The first one, I'm generally fine with. The DM is there to guide the players through a story, and if it doesn't fit his story to have people shaping magic items out of the power of their souls (sorry, Incarnum), then it doesn't fit. This should be fairly simple, and I'm generally inclined to accept it. A particularly nice DM might try to work with you on this anyway, but really, they have no obligation to allow content they see as thematically inappropriate.

The second one is the one that a lot of people have issues with, myself included. 3.5, despite its many good attributes, is absolutely terribly designed in regards to mechanical balance. Not a single book has been published that does not contain at least one massively abusable feat/skill/class/item, and honestly, most of them have way, way more than that. Therein lies the problem: There is no book that a dedicated optimizer can't abuse. Banning books to balance the game is a road that does not have a happy ending, because it can't be done. You cannot, under any circumstances, balance this game by removing splatbooks.

The issue I have with the OP is this: You seem to have conflated the two reasons to ban books, in that you've created a setting which supports thematic banning because you're afraid of optimizers. Your proposed solution for Gate/Wish abuse is honestly a little passive aggressive, and I would suggest that you'd be better off for simply talking to your players and explaining that you don't want to deal with shenanigans on that power level. If they're any sort of decent, they'll respect that.

In conclusion, I'll just say this: Banning splats hurts the good players more than the bad. It removes variety for the good players; maybe it takes their character concept off the table. The bad players? They see it as a challenge.

[137beth]

My rules with homebrew and 3P are the same. I expect the player to come to me with all the information on hand, present it to me, and be fully able to answer any questions I have about it without answering "well read it. It's somewhere in that packet." If you can't do that, or I get a whiff of "this is looking like an ugly chain of overpowered" then I'll just say no and move on.
This is generally my policy as well.

There are certain homebrews that I regularly use in home games. If a player wants to use anything else, I just ask them to explain it to me, show me the source, and answer questions. Possibly I'll retweak it as well. If it is from a splatbook that I have only passing familiarity with, then I treat it like homebrew--you need to explain it to me. If it is from a splatbook that I am familiar with, then I treat it like core.

If something is thematically inappropriate for the setting, my usual response is to ask the player who wants to use it to write a re-fluff. If they have trouble doing it, then I may just ban it.

[Big Fau]

Here, I am often reading the stories on how you go "Pazuzu Pazuzu Pazuzu" or "take Ur-priest" or take feats/templates/cutiemarks from gazzilion splatbooks just to make that infinite Wish loop.

What you are talking about isn't optimization in general, you are talking about Theoretical Optimization (something that is little more than a thought exercise and highly unlikely to be approved by a majority of the DMs out there). Pun-Pun (the Pazuzu thing) and infinite Wish loops are incredibly broken and not recommended for practical use unless everyone is using them (including the DM and the enemies he controls). Planar Shepherds, Killer Gnomes, Incanatri (SP), and other things along those lines are not meant to be used. Stuff like Wish Loops and Chain-Gating Solars/Titans is only to be used if the DM is also doing so.

Practical Optimization (the most common kind) is a lot less game-breaking than TO is (not that PO can't, it most certainly can, but the people who use PO most often are not actively trying to ruin the game). Stuff like Paladins taking the Battle Blessing feat and using it as a Divine Metamagic (Quicken) lite, Bards using Dragonfire Inspiration and Inspire Courage buffs, the Daring Outlaw builds, and countless other things are all realistically useable in any campaign that allows those sourcebooks.

Limiting the players to Core-only (well, close to it) actively punishes the noncasters. It takes genuinely complex understanding of the game to be able to play a noncaster in that environment (unless the 1 splatbook people chose was the Bo9S).

Allowing more splats may open up the most powerful game-breakers (Shadowcraft Mage, Incanatrix, Planar Shepherd, and others), but it also allows a wide array of options for the weaker classes that need the help. The ratio of useful:overpowered is fairly low in non-Core splats (as in there is more useful material than there is game-breaking), but in Core-only the concentration is ridiculously high.

[Vedhin]

The thing is, restricting splatbooks just intensifies the gap in tier between high and low. The high tiers are high because they can function well in pretty much any circumstance, and need little help. Low tiers are low because they need more help to just pull their own weight. The high tiers need little in the way of outside sources to be better (Druid, Wizard, Cleric and Sorcerer 20 are all perfectly viable builds), while low-tier classes need more splatbooks to be good (Swift Hunter, Daring Outlaw, good fighter bonus feats, ACFs, etc.). Heck, all those stories about how the Druid is the most powerful person in the party without even trying prove my point here.

Personally, my choice of splatbook would be, in no particular order: Tome of battle, Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic, Unearthed Arcana, Dragon Compendium, or Book of Exalted Deeds. Why? Well, the Tomes have their own self-contained subsystems (you can make a great martial adept or Binder with only thier book and core; Unarmed Swordsages and Binders are also fairly gear-independent if you build them right). Magic of Incarnum is also its own subsystem, and has the bonus of giving you free items effectively. Unearthed Arcana and Dragon Compendium have a bunch of ACFs, so you can probably find something worthwhile; in addition DC has plenty of feats also. Book of Exalted Deeds seems strange, but in a game with no WBL given out, Vow of Poverty becomes awesome. Seriously, that single feat would be enough to convince me to use BoED in that campaign.

[Deepbluediver]

I think a better title for the thread might use the word "Houserule" instead of "homebrew", since both of the examples you mentioned are RAW, AFAIK.


And to respond appropriately- I don't have any problems with whatever limitations the GM wants to give us, so long as the game doesn't become frustrating because of it.
If you played multiple games with only core material, I could see how it might become repetitive, especially if some members of your group ALWAYS play the same type of character. But I am of the opinion that all character-concepts and build ideas (whether unstated or not) require the DM's approval, and they are allowed to veto pretty much at will.

Now, a good DM won't veto all that often, and won't do so without giving a reason. That's where the "frustration" starts to creep in. I will play with the limits, but I need to know what those limits are, and telling my why something is or isn't allowed goes a long way towards doing that.

[BWR]

As long as my GM states beforehand what will and will not be allowed, for whatever reason, and sticks by his decision, I don't care. It's the GM's game and what s/he says goes. Most of them limit either on the basis of they don't like stuff or they don't want to have to worry about even more mechanics and whether or not there is some loophole there that allows something stupid to happen.

For the most part, though I tinker and house rule and homebrew all over the place as a GM, if I'm a player I don't care to try foisting my stuff on the GM.

[Eldan]

Not mad so much as potentially bored. After a good ten years of third edition, I just sort of feel as if I've seen what core has to offer. And even most splatbooks feel more like variations on the existing themes.

[Talya]

"Core + 1 book" ruins the entire point of 3rd edition. I wouldn't even play.

Options in character building are everything. You can limit broken crap on a case-by-case basis, but you don't prevent me from customizing with every last ACF, prc, feat or spell that WotC ever published. That's the whole fun of making a character.