Gamers say funny things sometimes...

[Teacup]

tl;dr: DM says my low tier 5 build is OP, but I can play a high tier 1.

A number of years ago I played a survival horror, undead apocalypse style campaign taking place in a major city and surrounding area. It was gritty, intense, and quite a thrill, and among the members of the group was a great balance of excellent roleplaying, deep game knowledge and fine optimization, long-time experience, and first-time excitement. We started at level one, with extreme variance in alignments (for story reasons), and by the time the following event occurred, the party consisting of:

Human Fighter 8 - THF with custom legacy weapon, Leadership (squadron of human fighters, never played to be game-breaking), tactician/battlefield control
Human Ranger 2 / Rogue 3 / Assassin 1 - Skillmonkey, Scout, combining various homebrew alternate class features for respectable TWF sneak attack damage vs undead
Gold Dwarf Cleric 8 - Anti-undead, buffing machine, especially with DMM quicken
Homebrew Lich-lite Sorcerer 6 - Slightly less intense mailman with a secondary focus in necromancy
Then me: Human Monk 2 / Paladin 5 - Just the regular classes, with Vow of Poverty... and all the other vow feats except for Nonviolence and Peace. I kept up all the RP requirements as well, something the DM recognized. Hardly unreasonable, right?

Apparently, wrong. :smallsigh: At around that time, the DM approached me separately to talk to me about my character. I was interested, since he had done the same for a couple other players to discuss personal side quests for character development and story awards. Wrong again. In a polite way, he explained how he felt that my character's abilities were definitely overpowered, and that they were unbalancing the game. (Huh?) He offered to have my character die in some great, self-sacrificing way, but wanted to be clear that one way or another, that character needed to go - its abilities were simply too powerful. He then made some suggestions for a new character, but most strongly recommended that my new character be a...

Druid.
With unlimited use of otherwise normal-level wildshaping, in return for giving up my previous character.

He may have misinterpreted the confused look on my face, for he quickly added "Or a wizard, but I won't make you memorize your spells. If they're in your spellbook, you can cast them spontaneously, but only if you specialize in transmutation and ban evocation and necromancy, since the sorcerer already focuses on those."

We talked about it for a while, and I tried to honestly understand his concerns, but in the end, we just didn't agree. So I went with druid. I mostly cast utility spells and pretty much only used wildshape for transportation. I had no desire to enact vengeance or "make him regret it" - we were friends, after all, and he had his opinion, and neither of those things were going to change. It wasn't long anyway before the campaign ended and we all left satisfied with a good game well finished (he was an overall amazing DM), but that confusing experience stayed with me.

To this day I still sometimes wonder if it was just a joke, an exercise in irony.

Has anyone else ever had one of those DM or player-related experiences that just doesn't make sense or seems entirely out of character? Such strange things can be hard to forget!

[Krazzman]

Ouch.

But yes. I have been there.
In my old group everything not casting was considered good and everything not needing ANY equipment for doing their stick was deemed OP.

I tried to make more out of the monk and good looked bad at for it. I played Halfling Barbarians and still was considered "min maxing" and "powergaming".

The baddest parts was when one guy played something, or told a story about what his character could do and so on... I tried to replicate the abilities of the char (using the same feats on a different chassis) and it was seen "gamebreaking" or OP or or or.

I wanted to introduce new material to the guys. 4e wasn't out yet but we were low on money due to us either being still in school, unemployed or other such factors. As such we had quite some... PDF's.

Playing a Soulknife was O.K.ed but then they were angry about it being "gamebreaking". One time (level 2) I just formed my mindblade to look like the claw Vega from Streetfighter uses and basically hit bad guys with it combined with power attack and... I don't know, maybe Weapon Focus or something along these lines.
After the session the DM ranted about how overpowered Psionics were and yadda yadda. He later came to reason and said that it is only "OP" if the one player is the only with access to it.

Yeah, TOB was considered OP. VOP was considered OP. And combining these two on a Monk 20 was considered heresy and I should feel bad for my powergaming tendencies. At least that was the reaction I felt.

This compared with totally misinterpreting the Tier-System which I tried to understand at that time lead to quite some "OP" calls.

So far in my old group the only REAL Campaign was from level 6 to 11 with my first DnD Char ever an Elven Rogue that ran away from monster and not grasping what weapon I could take and how archery and sneak attack functioned...

[Traab]

Good lord teacup. I have to admit i am going to be bugged by wondering what your dm was thinking too. The only thing I can think of is he planned on making some sort of encounter that, for whatever reason, your character could bypass too easily or something. I mean, in a situation like that all i would say is, "Can you give me an example of how this is too much? At the very least that way I can avoid it in the future." After all, its possible that he misunderstood something about your characters potential power level, or maybe there is some bit of cheese that your setup could do that you arent aware of.

[limejuicepowder]

He may not of known of the druid's power. Honestly, despite what I read on this forum, I've never seen a druid kick the amount of ass they supposedly can in real play. The rest of the regular group I play with kind of ignores them as weak and annoying nature worshipers. Also, lower level optimizers (which I assume he was) tend to be swayed by numbers, and VoP does have nice numbers.

I have to wonder though why he would bring it up. Typically, even if someone thinks something is OP, if they get the chance to see it in play, and see that it's actually not, they let it go. What happened in-game that might have confirmed his idea that you character is OP - even if it's just relative to the other players?

[Vultawk]

You've gotta remember that for most games the tier system doesn't exist. It's not something that's obvious, and likely doesn't come up in the majority of games. I only learned about it when I joined this site, but frankly, it's rarely a tool I have to use.

[SethoMarkus]

Yes, please, if you are still friends with this guy, please ask him to think back on that decision and see if he remembers the reasons why he thought any of that was OP. I mean, don't get me wrong, I played in a campaign that was fairly low optimization and we were all pretty lax to the point that the level 12 Monk was one of the main players (we had Cleric and Druid in the same group), but that was more because of our playstyle than anything inherent with Monk...

[eggynack]

This is a tragically common belief. I think that monk+VoP might have the biggest gap between apparent and actual power of anything in the game. A good majority of gamers I talk to think that it's crazy powerful, and so do a fair number of people on this board. I think it has to do with the perception that the player is getting away with something. Normally, losing access to weapons and armor would take away your main combat style, but monks don't use weapons and armor anyway. You're cheating the game by giving up a resource you weren't using anyway. It obviously doesn't work like that in practice though, and what you're trading away is far more than your weapons and armor. The separate perception that monks are overpowered on their own helps with this, because if they're natively powerful, losing the options that WBL grants isn't that big of a loss. I'm not sure on that one, but it's rather similar to the logic we use to claim druids as the best target for VoP.

Anyway, I'm not surprised by that, but I'm utterly confuzzled by the idea that druids are comparatively underpowered. I mean, brown bear form alone makes you a reasonably competent melee fighter, and adding a second brown bear and brown bear summons can get pretty crazy. I'm not saying that this is the best use of resources, but what I'm saying is that it's likely demonstrably true that an 8th level druid outfights an 8th level VoP monk, and does so before spells. It seems like the kinda thing I'd try to do, though it'd likely be a futile effort. The thing about having to specialize in transmutation was pretty hilarious. I've seen some crazy errors about the nature of the game's balance, but that set goes above and beyond most of them. Did you ever gain an understanding of how he came to these conclusions?

[Humble Master]

Bizarre. I really wonder why he thought your character was OP. I mean, were you eliminating encounters in a single round or crazy stuff like that?

[PaucaTerrorem]

Not the first to mention this, but yeah, a Bear riding a Bear whilst summoning Bears. Totally not OP.

[ArqArturo]

Not the first to mention this, but yeah, a Bear riding a Bear whilst summoning Bears. Totally not OP.

Did that came from the Mach 1 thread?.

I'll have to admit, that as a DM, I have seen characters that threaten to imbalance the game. Most of the time is just clever building, and you have to build through there, then there's the guy that actively sabotages the game because of X reasons, but that was only once.

As a player however, I had only one experience with that. I made a vanilla 3rd level druid (no splatbooks, no LA +X races) to play in a semi-historical (more mythical) D&D game. My character was a Celt, and mostly just focused on buffing the party and summoning critters to help in the fight (mostly just a bunch of the lower level ones, I had Augment Summoning, so my favorite was 1d3+1 wolves).

Turned out my DM had a headache every time I summoned them, since that meant tripping. Lots of it. It wasn't like 'the talk' your DM gave to you, but a friend noticed it and told me that I 'had to reduce the summoning, since it was taking away the fun of the fights'.

[koboldish]

I had a buddy who thought warmages were better than wizards.... "It can do more damage!"

Long story short, his character died a horrible death.

[ArqArturo]

I had a buddy who thought warmages were better than wizards.... "It can do more damage!"

Long story short, his character died a horrible death.

As a warmage player/fan, the problem that other people have playing them, is that they believe they're playing a spellcaster.

They're wrong. They should be playing them as one would play an archer, albeit a Warmage has a craptacular skill set, and have fancier 'ammunition'. That being said, a well-built warmage (aside the Rainbow Servant, since my DM did not allowed the 10th level shenanigans) can become a swiss-knife... Ok, a minitature swiss knife, but still a knife. And gains more from clever building than, say, a beguiler or a true necromancer, because those two have a lot to lose when they leave their class, and not the warmage.

[Gigas Breaker]

I've had DMs that were good optimizers that allowed optimized DFI or DMM persistent but not healing belt. I didn't push the issue because wands of lesser vigor were allowed. I still don't truly understand.

[Shining Wrath]

He may not of known of the druid's power. Honestly, despite what I read on this forum, I've never seen a druid kick the amount of ass they supposedly can in real play. The rest of the regular group I play with kind of ignores them as weak and annoying nature worshipers. Also, lower level optimizers (which I assume he was) tend to be swayed by numbers, and VoP does have nice numbers.

I have to wonder though why he would bring it up. Typically, even if someone thinks something is OP, if they get the chance to see it in play, and see that it's actually not, they let it go. What happened in-game that might have confirmed his idea that you character is OP - even if it's just relative to the other players?

When you're level 8, and the Druid wildshapes into a Dire Ape and summons a Dire Ape Nature's Ally, and unleashes their Fleshraker animal companion, ... yeah. My Warblade felt puny.

[Squirrel_Dude]

I had to struggle to get a the ninja outfit from the arms and equipment guide or whatever (I think it gives a +2 bonus to stealth checks in dim or dark light), but another player was allowed to play a dragonwrought Kobold.

It was weird. I was playing the ninja from complete adventurer, and I wanted the item for fluff (and the slight boost at low levels is nice). I'm try to remember how many ways I attempted to get it.

1. Can my character have purchased the ninja outfit as part of his starting gold? - No
2. I ask the guy running the small town general store if he has it - He doesn't
3. I ask the guy running the small town general store if he has any dark blue or black dyed silk - He doesn't.

*Why Silk? Because that's what the suit was actually made out of, and I wanted to do this right, for a little bit.*

4. I go through the market in the major city and see if I can find one - It's raining that stahl is closed.
5. I go through the market in the major city and see if there is a cloth merchant with blue or black dyed silk - You are directed to a stahl but it's raining and it's closed.
6. I go through the market and look for any blue or black dyed cloth. - No, would you stop it, I'm not letting you just get this.

I think I finally just yelled, "Why? All it gives me is a +X bonus to hide in dim or dark light." He just kind of said, "Oh. That's not so bad then. Add it to your equipment."

Honestly, it wouldn't have been as funny if I was almost level 2, when ninjas gain the ability to turn invisible.

[Karoht]

Players who complained when an enemy Bard dropped 2 PC's in one round. But had no complaints when a Mailman showed up and nuked a dragon in a surprise round.

Both of the dead party members had an easy and free res mechanic (one was a vampire who would be back the next day, the other was some kind of anti-paladin and 4 Enervations got him back on his feet), and even if they hadn't, the party was sitting on 170K and reses would only cost them 5K-10K due to some in game stuff.

Players had a problem with Tome of Battle maneouvers showing up in a Pathfinder game (because Mountain Hammer and White Raven Tactics are OP amirite?), but were completely okay with taking spells from Spell Compendium or feats from Dragon Mag. Or homebrew feats from dandwiki

A Monk in the party who consistantly put out the most damage versus enemies complained that she couldn't compete with the Barbarian in the party (even after obtaining 3 wishes per day for free) in a fair fight, couldn't figure out how to level the playing field, ergo her character was no longer any fun.

Sleetstorm was OP.
Snowsight was OP and banned because of Sleetstorm being OP. Meanwhile, fogcutting lenses and smoke bombs and fog cloud were all perfectly legit.
Enemies who summoned were OP.
Enemies who grappled were OP.
Enemies who could deal more than 10% of a players health per round (not per hit, per round) were OP. PC's who could deal 200% of an enemies health per hit were still legit.
Hold Person was OP.
Counterspelling was OP. Never mind Parry Spell (Spell Reflect after successful Counterspell).
Ring of Spell Battle was OP in my Sorcerer's hands but somehow not in the hands of the other Sorcerer at the table, because reasons.
Traps were OP if there was no trapmonkey present.

This is why I stopped playing with that group, along with some personal and out of game reasons. Apologies if that felt more like a rant and less like a 'lolwut' sort of post.

[navar100]

Funny how people can have differences of opinion on what is powerful. How shocking it is to some people that there exists those who don't know of the Tier System and get along just fine without it or even come to the opposite conclusions it claims. How heartbreaking it must be for some people the Tier System is not the universal rule of how everyone should believe 3E is supposed to be. What is this world coming to?

[shadow_archmagi]

Last night one of my players said he'd been musing on running his own campaign.

"Of course, I'd have to decide whether to allow psionics, and if I did, I'd need to fix the... mind... dagger... guy. What if he could take a temporary -1 or a -2 to intelligence for x2 or x4 to damage? That should do it, right?"

[Karoht]

Funny how people can have differences of opinion on what is powerful. How shocking it is to some people that there exists those who don't know of the Tier System and get along just fine without it or even come to the opposite conclusions it claims. How heartbreaking it must be for some people the Tier System is not the universal rule of how everyone should believe 3E is supposed to be. What is this world coming to?
I completely agree with you that the Tier system is not so relevant as some players make it out to be.

On the other hand I have to question the intelligence of someone who sees no issue with infinite wish looping but bemoans a +1 hit and damage bonus on someone like a monk or a ranger. Yes, those people do exist, yes I've run afoul of them.

Kind of like how Homer Simpson had to have it explained that $20 is better than a single peanut, because $20 can buy many peanuts, because money can be exchanged for goods and services.

[nedz]

Funny how people can have differences of opinion on what is powerful. How shocking it is to some people that there exists those who don't know of the Tier System and get along just fine without it or even come to the opposite conclusions it claims. How heartbreaking it must be for some people the Tier System is not the universal rule of how everyone should believe 3E is supposed to be. What is this world coming to?

Player > Build > Class

If you've only ever seen a weak player playing a T1 class as well as a strong player playing a T4 class then you might draw the wrong conclusions.

A Wizard taking the same spell selection as a Warmage, is likely to be weaker than a Warmage.

[koboldish]

Last night one of my players said he'd been musing on running his own campaign.

"Of course, I'd have to decide whether to allow psionics, and if I did, I'd need to fix the... mind... dagger... guy. What if he could take a temporary -1 or a -2 to intelligence for x2 or x4 to damage? That should do it, right?"

Heh... Heh... Heh... I'm really sorry, but NO.

[pwykersotz]

I think the main issue with the skewed perceptions lies in people not understanding the entire game. On these forums, there is almost always at least one person who knows an obscure spell or feat to easily deal with an issue one is having. Around a table, not so much.

It's one of the things I dealt with when I first started gaming. I started with a GM who had been running games for 40 years, and players who had been gaming for 16+ years. I was...outclassed.

There were a lot of elements I didn't understand, tricks that I thought were way overpowered that I realized later were just bread and butter, and I had no sense of perspective on anything that went on. I legitimately thought that all the classes were balanced with each other, and that 'of course the game designers knew what they were setting up'.

So when you bring in your non gear dependent VoP Monk/Paladin and he's smiting evil and thumping it around and your AC and saves are beyond your peers because the GM really wasn't planning on handing out Cloak's of Resistance +5 or Rings of Protection quite yet...well, from that perspective you ARE overpowered.

Not in the global game sense, but in the perspective of the campaign sense. My friend played a VoP Wizard in my game recently, and despite knowing that VoP was considerably underpowered compared to the items one can get, it was still awkward because he was so separated from the loot tables. I had to consistently refresh my understanding of VoP as he went up to remind myself of his capabilities.

Likewise, I think his concessions to you with Wizard and Druid weren't as important to him, even though they break high powered campaigns. For the Wizard being spontaneous you might have the right spell at all times, but these are hordes of undead...he expects that you'll run out and isn't looking out for infinite casting shenanigans. The druid wild shape seems likewise simple...he wanted you to thematically be whatever creature you wanted to be, not equating versatility to raw combat power.

Now dependent on his loot tables and subject to the "normal" rules, he had a little more control with which to guide the campaign. This is all just a guess, of course, but it seems probable to me.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Player > Build > Class

If you've only ever seen a weak player playing a T1 class as well as a strong player playing a T4 class then you might draw the wrong conclusions.

A Wizard taking the same spell selection as a Warmage, is likely to be weaker than a Warmage.I think that this is partly because of how noticeable the effect of doing high damage can be, and the fact that combat is such an important part of D&D. The fighter or Barbarian doing 70 damage every time they attack is the most obvious reason that the enemy is dead now. It's not as obvious that the dragon's breath couldn't hurt them because the wizard cast protection from energy, or that they were able to hit the enemy because cleric buffed them.

I guess another way to say it is that the fact that the wizard incapacitating an entire room of enemies doesn't seem overpowered when they'll be using the fighter to actually go in an kill the enemies. The fighter being treated like a summoned creature notwithstanding, it feels like everyone has a role to play.

At least, that was my experience when I first started playing. As a fighter, who thought that magic was just unnecessarily complicated and a waste of time because of how poorly the other new players were using it. Watched a wizard cast color spray when he was 60 ft. away from an enemy.

[nedz]

I think that this is partly because of how noticeable the effect of doing high damage can be, and the fact that combat is such an important part of D&D. The fighter or Barbarian doing 70 damage every time they attack is the most obvious reason that the enemy is dead now. It's not as obvious that the dragon's breath couldn't hurt them because the wizard cast protection from energy, or that they were able to hit the enemy because cleric buffed them.

I guess another way to say it is that the fact that the wizard incapacitating an entire room of enemies doesn't seem overpowered when they'll be using the fighter to actually go in an kill the enemies. The fighter being treated like a summoned creature notwithstanding, it feels like everyone has a role to play.

At least, that was my experience when I first started playing. As a fighter, who thought that magic was just unnecessarily complicated and a waste of time because of how poorly the other new players were using it. Watched a wizard cast colour spray when he was 60 ft. away from an enemy.

I also think that it's a lot more obvious to DMs than players. If you're trying to create a challenging encounter for a party then balance issues are more apparent. Many players are also quite happy if someone else solves the magical problems for them, they often fail to see that their contribution is unimportant especially if the numbers are large.

[Immabozo]

I had a DM that wouldn't let me have a magical, personalized, bag of holding that was filled with an unending amount of gnomes with a flesh to stone spell on them, so my war hulk could throw them, instead of rocks (same weight, only fluff reasons that I wanted it, no mechanical reasons I just wanted to see our Gnome party member's face when I started chucking gnomes around). I wanted to buy this item.

But the DM gave us homebrew armor worth 200,000+, full plate (breastplate for me, a Barbarian) +5, 3, 3/day SLAs, +30 spot AND listen, intelligent item, at level 12.

But my bag of holding idea was broken and game breaking and I was a horrible person for wanting such a powerful magic item

[Socratov]

I had a DM that wouldn't let me have a magical, personalized, bag of holding that was filled with an unending amount of gnomes with a flesh to stone spell on them, so my war hulk could throw them, instead of rocks (same weight, only fluff reasons that I wanted it, no mechanical reasons I just wanted to see our Gnome party member's face when I started chucking gnomes around). I wanted to buy this item.

But the DM gave us homebrew armor worth 200,000+, full plate (breastplate for me, a Barbarian) +5, 3, 3/day SLAs, +30 spot AND listen, intelligent item, at level 12.

But my bag of holding idea was broken and game breaking and I was a horrible person for wanting such a powerful magic item

well, maybe he thought your character was just a tosser :smallbiggrin:

[chainer1216]

a few years ago i was in an epic game using our newly bought 3.5 books, the setting was basically Devil May Cry, i was a fighter18 half fiend who used a greatsword and a gun, all of my feats were spent on weapon focus/greater W.F, weapon spec/greater WS, melee/ranged weapon mastery, and weapon supremacy. keep in mind that there was a 22lvl wizard and a 22lvl cleric in the party. after the first session the DM pulled me aside and told me to change most of my feats because i was too powerful.

[Teacup]

Well that was more, faster response than I expected!

I do appreciate the sharing of your experiences as well. For a group of people who (at least in my experience) seem to be generally a little more open-minded, clear-headed, and overall rational than average, gamers can still be -let's say "silly"- sometimes. I'm right with you who have discussed the perception of power as a major contributor. In the example of casters (or whatever equivalent in other systems), I for one have yet to play in a group where any buffer, debuffer, or battlefield controller of mine was thought by other players or the GM as unbalanced (including some quite optimized (though never TO)) - as long as the rest of the party did the actual killing. But fire one well metamagic'd scorching ray as a last-ditch effort to prevent a TPK... Or sometimes "mundanes should not be fantastically powerful/versatile!", leading to "fighters can't have nice thingsWhen characters start to break the four boxes, even if in the interest of each other rather than personal glory, there is a tendency to get uncomfortable.

Rule of cool mixes in with this as well, I believe, though in reverse. I think perhaps one of the reasons why some balance issues are the way they are. For example, thematically, monks are cool, right? So they must be effective. So let's make sure not to make them too effective.

As for Adam "Just Adam" (the Monk/Paladin), his ability scores were straight twelves before VoP. In combat, he mostly flanked for the rogue, was a skirmisher to distract other skirmishers / minor baddies, and drew aggro from the squishy sorcerer or provided other support. Out of combat, he was the primary moral compass for the party, and he usually was the tiebreaker of goodness when dealing with the party's divided approach to NPCs. I can't think of any one single mechanical advantage he had over every member of the party, and really the only single thing he could do much better than anyone else was tumble vs everyone but the rogue. Oh, and one consequence of the near zombie apocalypse was above WBL for everyone, so VoP was not an unbalancing factor in my favor.

The DM was extensively familiar with a number of game systems and understood the tier classifications for 3.5. When I told him at the beginning of the game that I wanted to play a low-power exalted character, he suggested a sorcadin or monk werebear, and he had no problem then with my choice of monkadin. The other players made far better use of their far better class features than I did, yet I'm sure he did not "have it out for me". Unfortunately, he and I have been out of contact for a couple years, and I've no way of asking him further questions, and harbor no lingering feelings of resentment or ill will, so all I'm left with now is a feeling that it was all so surreal. Really, with his knowledge that just made no sense for mechanical reasons. Perhaps due to one sleepless night his plan for the conclusion of the campaign (and maybe Adam's incompatibility with whatever that storyline included) was confused with a perceived imbalance? Who knows.

It may as well all have been a joke anyway, since now I look back on it and laugh.

[navar100]

a few years ago i was in an epic game using our newly bought 3.5 books, the setting was basically Devil May Cry, i was a fighter18 half fiend who used a greatsword and a gun, all of my feats were spent on weapon focus/greater W.F, weapon spec/greater WS, melee/ranged weapon mastery, and weapon supremacy. keep in mind that there was a 22lvl wizard and a 22lvl cleric in the party. after the first session the DM pulled me aside and told me to change most of my feats because i was too powerful.

I am mindful that some people think fighters don't deserve Nice Things and cannot break the laws of physics but spellcasters can do whatever they want because "It's Magic!".

Of course the wizard can cast Quickened Maximize Fireball and Maximize Fireball to deal 120 points of damage to all the bad guys in a 20 ft radius from 500 ft away. He has to use up two high level spell slots. However, you wielding your greatsword dealing 2d6 + 30 damage each and every attack infinite times per day is just too powerful.

[Togath]

I once had a situation similar to the OP's, where my gm thought fighter would be over powered.. so he offered barbarian, or "should I choose something even weaker"*, a warblade..
what?
I still don't know what he was thinking.. I mean.. how could anyone think warblade was weaker than a fighter?

*his own words

[Gigas Breaker]

I once had a situation similar to the OP's, where my gm thought fighter would be over powered.. so he offered barbarian, or "should I choose something even weaker"*, a warblade..
what?
I still don't know what he was thinking.. I mean.. how could anyone think warblade was weaker than a fighter?

*his own words
Maybe something to do with heavy armor?

[GlorinSteampike]

tl;dr: DM says my low tier 5 build is OP, but I can play a high tier 1.

A number of years ago I played a survival horror, undead apocalypse style campaign taking place in a major city and surrounding area. It was gritty, intense, and quite a thrill, and among the members of the group was a great balance of excellent roleplaying, deep game knowledge and fine optimization, long-time experience, and first-time excitement. We started at level one, with extreme variance in alignments (for story reasons), and by the time the following event occurred, the party consisting of:

Human Fighter 8 - THF with custom legacy weapon, Leadership (squadron of human fighters, never played to be game-breaking), tactician/battlefield control
Human Ranger 2 / Rogue 3 / Assassin 1 - Skillmonkey, Scout, combining various homebrew alternate class features for respectable TWF sneak attack damage vs undead
Gold Dwarf Cleric 8 - Anti-undead, buffing machine, especially with DMM quicken
Homebrew Lich-lite Sorcerer 6 - Slightly less intense mailman with a secondary focus in necromancy
Then me: Human Monk 2 / Paladin 5 - Just the regular classes, with Vow of Poverty... and all the other vow feats except for Nonviolence and Peace. I kept up all the RP requirements as well, something the DM recognized. Hardly unreasonable, right?

Apparently, wrong. :smallsigh: At around that time, the DM approached me separately to talk to me about my character. I was interested, since he had done the same for a couple other players to discuss personal side quests for character development and story awards. Wrong again. In a polite way, he explained how he felt that my character's abilities were definitely overpowered, and that they were unbalancing the game. (Huh?) He offered to have my character die in some great, self-sacrificing way, but wanted to be clear that one way or another, that character needed to go - its abilities were simply too powerful. He then made some suggestions for a new character, but most strongly recommended that my new character be a...

Druid.
With unlimited use of otherwise normal-level wildshaping, in return for giving up my previous character.

He may have misinterpreted the confused look on my face, for he quickly added "Or a wizard, but I won't make you memorize your spells. If they're in your spellbook, you can cast them spontaneously, but only if you specialize in transmutation and ban evocation and necromancy, since the sorcerer already focuses on those."

We talked about it for a while, and I tried to honestly understand his concerns, but in the end, we just didn't agree. So I went with druid. I mostly cast utility spells and pretty much only used wildshape for transportation. I had no desire to enact vengeance or "make him regret it" - we were friends, after all, and he had his opinion, and neither of those things were going to change. It wasn't long anyway before the campaign ended and we all left satisfied with a good game well finished (he was an overall amazing DM), but that confusing experience stayed with me.

To this day I still sometimes wonder if it was just a joke, an exercise in irony.

Has anyone else ever had one of those DM or player-related experiences that just doesn't make sense or seems entirely out of character? Such strange things can be hard to forget!

I can very easily see how a character who needs 0 gear can ride around on a horse snatching people up, dragging them around and smiting them while being immune to anything with a save(besides natty 1) can look game breaking to players who aren't trying to break the game. As someone mentioned earlier the tier system doesn't exist in most games.

In fact, most games I run are 'broken' by 2 dip monks that either go raging duskblade flying gish on 8d8 full attack charge, 2 dip monk druids who don't understand natural attacks, or 2 dip mounted monks ACF when I try to be less restrictive.

On a similiar note a player of mine contested for years that 2H Wielding barbarians + PA were game breaking.

[Squirrel_Dude]

I once had a situation similar to the OP's, where my gm thought fighter would be over powered.. so he offered barbarian, or "should I choose something even weaker"*, a warblade..
what?
I still don't know what he was thinking.. I mean.. how could anyone think warblade was weaker than a fighter?

*his own wordsC'mon, fighters all clearly superior with all those feats they get. They get all those numerical bonuses to hitting with that one weapon they use. And all those feats mean they can do all those things with them.

You know, like that one thing they can do.

[Karnith]

I still don't know what he was thinking.. I mean.. how could anyone think warblade was weaker than a fighter?
Well, uh, the Shock Trooper/Leap Attack combo comes online slightly earlier for a fighter? Ditto some other feat chains? I guess? Did he actually ever read the ToB?

[Teacup]

I can very easily see how a character who needs 0 gear can ride around on a horse snatching people up, dragging them around and smiting them while being immune to anything with a save(besides natty 1) can look game breaking to players who aren't trying to break the game. As someone mentioned earlier the tier system doesn't exist in most games.


Only the party was given all the gear it need, I had no mount, and smite was once per day for maybe (have to hit) +4, less than anyone but the sorcerer on a regular attack. And you can read how it was played. Saves were on par with that of the rest of the party. DM would not cite any particular unbalancing mechanic or numerical advantage, and none of the players had a problem with that character, and were all sad to see him go. As for the tier system, that was just referenced for one way to compare the old and new character's potential power.

But I'm not offended by your having offered suggestions as to why you think he may have made that decision.


Of course the wizard can cast Quickened Maximize Fireball and Maximize Fireball to deal 120 points of damage to all the bad guys in a 20 ft radius from 500 ft away. He has to use up two high level spell slots. However, you wielding your greatsword dealing 2d6 + 30 damage each and every attack infinite times per day is just too powerful.

I have also seen sometimes: The guy who's supposed to hit things hard can do it all he wants, but a blaster? Gish? Cleric? Druid? Overpowered! They're supposed to BC/debuff, die/suck, heal/buff others, and be a hippy, respectively. I think various expectations of what characters "should" do is one of the major causes for different opinions of balance. And of course comes familiarity and actual experience. For no particular reason, I've yet to be in a game seeing an initiator level above five, and with handy (but never amazing) results. I have, however, seen a fellow party member play a fighter/barbarian with high optimization and dish out massive melee damage. A player in that group could draw some quick conclusions from that about ToB vs regular melee... Oh, different experiences.

[eggynack]

I have also seen sometimes: The guy who's supposed to hit things hard can do it all he wants, but a blaster?
I don't really understand this one. I've always thought that wizards were originally designed to be blasters, and fitting that archetype is an expected thing. I suppose I've never perceived people perceiving blasters in a particular way, so it's possible that perceptions differ from my projected perceptions. Still, it seems like most things we learn about the design that went into 3.5 indicates fireball as the iconic wizard spell, and thus one that a DM should expect. The circumstances in which I'd expect a DM to make calls of overpoweredness are when he sticks a stone golem into an AMF, and the wizard shoots it with an orb of fire. It just flies in the face of most expectations, so a good number of gamers would probably be surprised that the combination doesn't shut down the wizard very effectively.

[DementedFellow]

I used to think Duskblades were OP because the first time I saw one it was a DMPC who nova'd and almost took the boss down solo.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Yeah, nova can make a character look much more powerful than it actually is. It's definitely part of the reason DMs can be hesitant to allow psions, or have had bad experience with them. It's far more perturbing what a psion is able to do when it is fully augmenting every power it casts.

[NeoPhoenix0]

One of my group who DMs a lot also believes the VoP plus monk combo is OP. The main reason he believes this has to do with a lv 10 build I made from monk fist of the forest and the saint template which had almost 40 AC and about 30 touch AC and 30 Flat-footed AC. Can't remember the specifics of the build. I maintain that the Saint template is OP because it is more powerful than almost all other +2 LA, not really because of its inherent power. Of course the AC was the only reason the build was OP.

I think the main reason he thinks the VoP monk is OP is it puts the monk at a fixed power level that is more powerful than most of the melee characters built by his other groups.

He also doesn't like ToB and bans any initiator base class except the warblade because they replace the other martial class and he doesn't like the flavor. I can understand the flavor argument to a point, but he lets you play a warblade even though it replaces the fighter which he defends and he wishes the fighter was more powerful.

Edit: on nova duskblades. Yeah they can solo a lot of bosses, but we let that go because at low level when he mainly one shots them he can only do it once a day, twice tops. So you just have another boss to fight after that one, maybe one that can fly and has the ability to ground the duskblade if it can fly.

[Kane0]

My father had a priceless one the other day.

Our group is considering moving our game from 3.5 to 4th ed. Me and my father are veteran 3.5 players and the DM and his best mate are 4th edition fans. We took turns talking it over, pros and cons, etc.

Then our DM explained at-wills, encounters and dailies to my dad. As soon as the words "So you can spam say, magic missile, all day but can only cast something like fireball once per fight" left his mouth the expression on my dads face was a kodak moment.
And that was before healing surges came up, which made a funny moment hilarious.

So yeah, he's going to be fighting against 4th ed till the bitter end.

[Deophaun]

I can understand the flavor argument to a point...
My go to response to any flavor argument is "Then you don't have to play it."

I had three ideas for characters for a game. One was a dragonfire adept, another was a totemist, and the third was a wizard. No multiclass or PrCs, all human. Guess which was the only concept not deemed broken.

[NeoPhoenix0]

My go to response to any flavor argument is "Then you don't have to play it."

I had three ideas for characters for a game. One was a dragonfire adept, another was a totemist, and the third was a wizard. No multiclass or PrCs, all human. Guess which was the only concept not deemed broken.

Wizard.

That's why I said to a point, also you can take the prestige classes if you qualify using the feats and/or warblade.

[Phippster]

A friend of mine was running Red Hand of Doom, and I decided to roll up a Warblade. I'd read through both ToB and several guides on the class despite having never taken levels in a martial adept class before. I was not insanely optimized by any means, I had a two-hander and Power Attack, but I wasn't attempting to go for anything uber-charger like.

I was deemed OP by the DM due to the fact that I had these "maneuver things" that refreshed every combat, instead of acting like spell slots. However, he has no problem with the absurdly home-brewed character his girlfriend is playing, and it's not even out of a sense of favoritism. She easily churned out more damage than I did due to her 3rd party equipment, was more durable for the same reasons, the only difference was that I had a few more hit points.

He recommended I play a Wizard instead.

[NeoPhoenix0]

What is it with these people pushing wizard every time they see something "overpowered". Personally i have massive grips with the wizard that have nothing to do with it being overpowered. I still manage to blow people's minds with insane sorcerer builds, but i can't play a swordsage. :smallsigh:

[Krazzman]

I have to say... I am really happy with my current usual DM (we have 1 guy DMing a 3.5 Fumble game currently lvl 2 and me DMing a Pathfinder game, and our usual dm for Warhammer and a 3.5 campaign [I am talking about the last one]).

I used a Warlock in a game that went till 6th level. Just a ranged warlock. I never miss. And do rather ok dmg. And was the main damage dealer till the Cleric (healing focused) went into crusader for RKV.
At first his response was compared to the others i am OP (but this was more jokingly said). After skimming through ToB to allow me to play a Warblade he at first thought about a few things to change... he understood the maneuverlevels to be equal to class level (ie an 6th level warblade could use 6th level maneuvers). After quite some time my char is still the best in that group (currently lvl 5) due to being a heavy hitter and all challenges he threw at us were "easy" for me. Climbing up a mountain? I do it in a Breastplate! Swimming? Easy, while druid and Bardlock and Rogue/ranger nearly drown.

His exact words where: If the char is too powerful they tend to die rather quickly. As such as I still have a clean record in this group I think my Chars aren't overpowered in his view. Except for a jokingly said "That's OP" I don't have the same stuff going on as in our old group where playing an Elan Psion (He had Skate and Mindblast [the 1d10 dmg one] and Animate Object) was considered OP because the Bossmob couldn't Stun me with his Spell right before his Speech of how evil he is. Buuuut anyway. That is gone.

[Hyena]

My DM, who is in my black list now for a number of reasons (like behaving like a creepy stalker), was sure that non-casters are equally powerful with casters, if played smartly. I challenged him to the arena. Turns out, fighter is equally powerful with druid only in his comfort zone - that being core (PHB, DMG and MM1 only). I shrugged, took druid and kicked his ass. And then I kicked his ass again. And again.
The funniest moment was when he declared my character to be stupid, because I wildshaped into a dinosaur, and there is obviously no way a druid can know of such things.
Well, I am not being entirely truthful - he kicked my ass once, but it was because he took leadership to bring a caster to the battlefield and save-or-losed me.


He also tried to power down my unarmed swordsage, because "there is no way fists can break stone or wood" and "shadowblade is using weak points and undead has no such thing"

[Norin]

He also tried to power down my unarmed swordsage, because "there is no way fists can break stone or wood" and "shadowblade is using weak points and undead has no such thing"

Oh, but the logic behind arcane\divine\psionic spells\powers are not up for discussion? ;)

I love how people try to ban things on the basis of what would be logic, or possible irl, and not even glancing at the vast amount of things in D&D the fantasy rpg that could not even be remotely justified that way.

[nedz]

A friend of mine was running Red Hand of Doom, and I decided to roll up a Warblade. I'd read through both ToB and several guides on the class despite having never taken levels in a martial adept class before. I was not insanely optimized by any means, I had a two-hander and Power Attack, but I wasn't attempting to go for anything uber-charger like.

I was deemed OP by the DM due to the fact that I had these "maneuver things" that refreshed every combat, instead of acting like spell slots. However, he has no problem with the absurdly home-brewed character his girlfriend is playing, and it's not even out of a sense of favoritism. She easily churned out more damage than I did due to her 3rd party equipment, was more durable for the same reasons, the only difference was that I had a few more hit points.

He recommended I play a Wizard instead.

Could be you were over shadowing his SO ?
Just a thought.

***********

The other one I noticed is with Warlock, I call it Theory X and Theory Y.
Theory X: Warlock, SLAs all day = totally OP.
Theory Y: Warlock, Can only ever do 1 thing = totally useless
The reality is neither of course, though Y is closer to the truth — at least out of the box.

***********

A lot of the comments on this thread though boil down to the following:
Novice players talk damage, Veterans talk Options.

[Lord Haart]

Warlock…Is too anime and overpowered. Experts say that. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10832)

[Agincourt]

…Is too anime and overpowered. Experts say that. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10832)

That entire thread appears to be tongue-in-cheek.

[nedz]

The other one I noticed is with Warlock, ...
…Is too anime and overpowered. Experts say that. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10832)That entire thread appears to be tongue-in-cheek.

Yeah that's a wonderful old thread, but unfortunately the Theory X people I've met were serious.

[Teacup]

And in all actuality, sometimes those "effectively infinite use powers" really are "unbalanced" - not in the same way some spells or class features are, of course. But for example, in a lower level campaign where resources are stretched over longer battles and more encounters per day, some players may spend most of the time feeling less useful while watching their friends never run out of tricks. That depends on certain circumstances, sure, but while balance is more accurately judged in play than in theory, it can take only one experience to form an opinion. I could honestly and intelligently describe X as overpowered and Y as underpowered based on my experience(s) while someone else does the opposite.

Thank goodness there are no people who intentionally abuse and/or break rules to have "fun" at the expense of the enjoyment of others, with the unfortunate effect of tainting those peoples' views of various game mechanics!

[Bogardan_Mage]

He also tried to power down my unarmed swordsage, because "there is no way fists can break stone or wood"
Does he not have access to YouTube? Has he never seen any kind of martial arts show?

[gr8artist]

I'm proud to say that in our group, we play with a focus on flavor and not balance or strength. We optimize, sure, but only because we all like a challenge.
The only time we ever had to address a balance issue was a hulking hurler/barbarian. We had access to a magic smith who custom crafted bracers of enlarge person for the barb (and ring of reduce person for the mage) as well as a cold-iron spiked ball that could enlarge itself via some wizard spell. We calculated all the values fairly, and he spent a small fortune on a cold-iron boulder. But... damn, when he threw that thing. It was +1 with the calling property, so he threw it every round. With charging hurl, he got it as a free attack in a charge, then drew his greataxe to finish off the victim. So, in one turn, he hit for 5d6+Str and 3d6+Str, with accuracy that trumped anything of equivalent CR. It didn't help that he had a 35-ish strength score (18+race+enlarge+rage+item). His AC was in the gutter, and he was effortless to mind control. The campaign ended before he got levels in war hulk, but we had to sit and talk with him for a while because the sheer damage he could output in a single round meant that combat encounters were out of the question. They would either be too easy for him, or too dangerous for the rest of the party.
I wouldn't say he was overpowered. The other player surprising us with a vampire warlock was trying to be overpowered (after half dragon monk and custom-race gunslinger). But he was overpowered in a combat sense. He was far too specialized in his area of expertise, and I think any build that gets too focused becomes a balance problem.
So, really, anything can be overpowered in at least one area, regardless of tier. But if the players are building for fun and an interesting challenge, then it shouldn't be an issue.

[nedz]

I'm proud to say that in our group, we play with a focus on flavor and not balance or strength. We optimize, sure, but only because we all like a challenge.
The only time we ever had to address a balance issue was a hulking hurler/barbarian. We had access to a magic smith who custom crafted bracers of enlarge person for the barb (and ring of reduce person for the mage) as well as a cold-iron spiked ball that could enlarge itself via some wizard spell. We calculated all the values fairly, and he spent a small fortune on a cold-iron boulder. But... damn, when he threw that thing. It was +1 with the calling property, so he threw it every round. With charging hurl, he got it as a free attack in a charge, then drew his greataxe to finish off the victim. So, in one turn, he hit for 5d6+Str and 3d6+Str, with accuracy that trumped anything of equivalent CR. It didn't help that he had a 35-ish strength score (18+race+enlarge+rage+item). His AC was in the gutter, and he was effortless to mind control. The campaign ended before he got levels in war hulk, but we had to sit and talk with him for a while because the sheer damage he could output in a single round meant that combat encounters were out of the question. They would either be too easy for him, or too dangerous for the rest of the party.
I wouldn't say he was overpowered. The other player surprising us with a vampire warlock was trying to be overpowered (after half dragon monk and custom-race gunslinger). But he was overpowered in a combat sense. He was far too specialized in his area of expertise, and I think any build that gets too focused becomes a balance problem.
So, really, anything can be overpowered in at least one area, regardless of tier. But if the players are building for fun and an interesting challenge, then it shouldn't be an issue.

Your barbarian here is very unbalanced; when his trick works he dominates the encounter, but when it doesn't he's useless, and then again, when it goes very wrong he's a problem for the party.

He's really the opposite of the Beguiler/Illusionist type; who incidentally would make mincemeat out of him (or more precisely control him so that he makes mincemeat out of the rest of the party) unless the Barbarian manages to charge the Beguiler/Illusionist down first of course.

[Sith_Happens]

because "there is no way fists can break stone or wood"

Except for mine when I was seven years old.:smallsigh:

[Karoht]

Except for mine when I was seven years old.:smallsigh:That is totally fake, except when it happens in wrestling, because wrestling is real.
I know there are some martial arts myths out there, but seriously people...

[Doxkid]

AS I've said in another thread...I was kicked out of a gaming group with long-time friends for playing a Marshal Sword+Board tank, directly after playing a no-minion Dread Necromancer (attacking with a Greatsword only and using spells for debuffs, summoned flankers and self healing) and a competent Warlock.

The DM said I made too many OP characters and I broke all of his games.

[Karoht]

A friend of mine recently got kicked out of his long time gaming group.

The first complaint was that he made OP characters and upset the world.
His 'upsetting' of the world in one context was for his Wizard to cast Plane Shift. Yet it was okay when my Oracle cast Plane Shift for some reason. Which I brought up, and it fell on (moron) deaf ears.

So the next campaign he asks what he is allowed to play. The DM of this campaign had previously played a Monk and done rather poorly at it. She said he could play a Monk, then immediately took that back. Probably because she knew that he would show her up. So she said Cleric. And basically made him play a healbot. Which he did, with great gusto.
The other complaint was that he deviated too far from the 'on rails' story. In sandbox campaigns. Yeah. Figure that one out. But he promised that he would stick to the rails. And he did. And he only ever made the 'stay on the rails' choice after other party members did the same thing.

Why was he booted out?
He was too 'on the rails' and he upset the campaign. By healing.

The logic fail of this was just completely mind blowing.

[DustyBottoms]

***********

The other one I noticed is with Warlock, I call it Theory X and Theory Y.
Theory X: Warlock, SLAs all day = totally OP.
Theory Y: Warlock, Can only ever do 1 thing = totally useless
The reality is neither of course, though Y is closer to the truth — at least out of the box.

***********


Completely this. I'm currently playing a Warlock9/HFWarlock3 in a party that also includes and Favored Soul and a Sorc (with a bloodline, i think) and while the CA Ninja understands Theory Y (one trick pony), the rest of the party (also a factotum and a paladin) see only Theory X. The only exception is that we fought a large army (~25) medium-power baddies and I locked them down with a bunch of Chilling tentacles and the paladin about went ballistic, which is understandable, but not impossible for the Sorc to do as well.

[navar100]

I tried to play a psion in a Pathfinder game recently but was told it was too powerful. Among the complaints was a 1st level power doing 1d10 damage, a 2nd level power power doing 3d6 damage to five opponents, and expending focus giving auto roll of 15 on Concentration check to cast defensively. Meanwhile the party had a Summoner with his Eidolon and a Druid with his Riding Dog. I gave all the usual arguments for why psionics is balanced but to no avail.

I've switched to a Dark Tapestry Oracle Dual Cursed, and the DM got a little bothered by the Dual Cursed Revelation of forcing someone to reroll a d20. We use the Critical Hit/Fumble decks and got annoyed when a party member rolled a 1, and I had him reroll to avoid the fumble chance. Likewise an enemy's critical threat I made reroll which then became a miss.

I think the issue is my optimization level is too high for his taste. We play in another campaign where he is a fellow player. There I'm playing a Life Mystery Oracle and purposely playing him as a healbot, which I do enjoy. I've optimized him as well - Selective Channeling, Extra Channeling, Quick Channeling, Blessing Of Fervor, Grace, spam Bull's Strength and Shield of Faith on the party's warriors. However, since the character is passive the optimization isn't so glaring. Another player did some calculations and noticed that I virtually double the party's hit points enabling the party to take on CR + 2 encounters without a problem. The party is strong in their own right, but he admitted his Inquisitor can concentrate more on offense because he knows my character has the party's back in defense. In one combat the party got wailed with several Ice Storms. A couple of Channelings by me, and the party was back to near full health. The rest of the party went on full offense and killed the bad guys.

[Akal Saris]

Last night one of my players said he'd been musing on running his own campaign.

"Of course, I'd have to decide whether to allow psionics, and if I did, I'd need to fix the... mind... dagger... guy. What if he could take a temporary -1 or a -2 to intelligence for x2 or x4 to damage? That should do it, right?"

Hahaha, that really made me laugh IRL. That sounds so much like my own groups' attempts theory-crafting :P

"Man, rangers are so strong with their swift action spells from the Spell Compendium. Do you think maybe I should just ban swift actions?"

[Phippster]

Could be you were over shadowing his SO ?
Just a thought.

She was better in combat than I was. She did more damage, was hit less, etc. I think I out-shined her once because I used IHS to recover from Dominate Person.

[IIzak]

Personally as a DM, when I see something that I think might unbalance my game, I try to look at it as more of a challenge to me to make sure it doesn't unbalance my game while letting the players do what they would like to do without nerfing them a ton. For instance in my campaign i'm currently, there is a cleric of pelor that was extremely well thought out and built. Now the party has no other casters besides this person and he is the most experienced player out of everyone at the table (including myself). At level 1 he had 11 turn undead's per day, and he could use them up to quicken cast spells. He took Sun and healing as his domains and he's saved the party more times than I can count. If it wasn't for his character, the game would have turned into a TPK several times before this. But no one complains about him doing this because I get creative with my encounters and let everyone be useful. Alot of times, a character can seem OP to other players at the table, and even to the DM, simply because of the types of encounters that are getting thrown at the party.

Also for one of the crazy things that i've seen happen. I had a person in my group say that their character was useless. Their character was a rogue/swashbuckler build that dual wields Rapiers, crits on a 15-20, and deals sneak attack dmg every time they crit. Not only that, but she skill monkeys like crazy, and she can go as the face of the party.

[eggynack]

Also for one of the crazy things that i've seen happen. I had a person in my group say that their character was useless. Their character was a rogue/swashbuckler build that dual wields Rapiers, crits on a 15-20, and deals sneak attack dmg every time they crit. Not only that, but she skill monkeys like crazy, and she can go as the face of the party.
It's probably not the absolute worst build in existence, but that character sounds pretty useless to me. Rogue/swashbuckler isn't a terrible combination, particularly if you're making use of daring outlaw, but a two weapon fighting and critical hit based character isn't really the way I'd start out making something powerful. I'm sure her character's not completely useless, but it's not at all surprising to me that she'd think that it is. Moreover, if she's the one saying it, it makes me all the more inclined to agree.

[IIzak]

The thing is that she really isn't useless. She consistently deals out damage, plus she can diplomance really well, so not only is she good in combat, but she's good outside of it as well. Her RP brings a ton to the table, and the character itself is very interesting to play, with a well fleshed out character that also has a great backstory. Yes, the build she is playing isn't neccesarily the greatest, but its not bad (4 attacks a round that all crit on 15-20, with 5d6 sneak atk and rapier dmg, it can get pretty powerful and she has a weapon that lets her critical constructs, so thats not even really a problem for her), and the fact that she has been useful in just about every fight (except for 1), and the fact that she has a ton to do outside of battle, both skill and storywise, I can't really see uselessness in this character. maybe its just me though

EDIT: and yeah, she is taking advantage of daring outlaw

[Norin]

Enter a campagn with only mindless undeads and constructs and she's got issues. The whole adventure will be about searching for things al day long. Whee.

Ive been there with chars like that, and it sucks. :smallsigh:

[IIzak]

Enter a campagn with only mindless undeads and constructs and she's got issues. The whole adventure will be about searching for things al day long. Whee.

Ive been there with chars like that, and it sucks. :smallsigh:

But here's the thing, she's already got a weapon that deals with constructs, and I'm extremely limited on the undead that I can throw because the cleric had 11 turn undeads at lvl 1(they're lvl 13 now). Undead get destroyed before they touch the group, so they haven't really dealt with any. So those things haven't been problems in the campaign. I've specifically made it so that she won't have to deal with that all the time, and she doesn't, so that's why it was a bit confusing to me.

[eggynack]

I think the point, ultimately, is that it's not a particularly surprising thing for a tier four character to be perceived as useless. Sure, she might find a handy niche, but TWF is a path fraught with problems. Also, if she's in the same party as a tier one character who's pretty decently optimized, that just seems to compound the problem. He seems to be intentionally holding himself back a bit, because he took quicken over persist, and is going RSoP instead of one of the more seriously powerful cleric options, but he's still a cleric. It's not like every person in her shoes is legally required to feel useless. I'm just saying that I can understand the fact that she does.

[IIzak]

I guess thats true. I'll be honest, this is the first session I'm DM'ing and so theres tons that I don't know (Such as the tier system. I study like crazy to keep up, but there's always more to learn), but from my side of the table, everyone playing in my game has their niche, something they can do that makes them useful to the group. I agree with you that playing with a character who is more powerful than you could make a person feel useless, but idk, i try to do as much as i can in my game to make everyone feel like they are useful to the group (Its a specific thing I focus on when I design the encounters) so to hear her say that, it just kinda hurt a little.

EDIT: sorry, didn't mean to make this so personal.

[eggynack]

I guess thats true. I'll be honest, this is the first session I'm DM'ing and so theres tons that I don't know (Such as the tier system. I study like crazy to keep up, but there's always more to learn), but from my side of the table, everyone playing in my game has their niche, something they can do that makes them useful to the group. I agree with you that playing with a character who is more powerful than you could make a person feel useless, but idk, i try to do as much as i can in my game to make everyone feel like they are useful to the group (Its a specific thing I focus on when I design the encounters) so to hear her say that, it just kinda hurt a little.
It's a tricky thing, sometimes. A core assumption of the game is that there are several different roles you can fill, and that all of these roles are equally valuable. Neither of these ideas are really true of the system. The first assumption is untrue because it assumes that each character can only fill one role, or if they branch out they'll be far worse at that role than a specialist in that role. One of the better examples of this is the druid. In their natural state, they simultaneously fill the role of caster, because their list is pretty excellent in places, and beat stick, due to a combination of summons, the animal companion, and wild shape. Moreover, out of the standard, "rogue, arcanist, beat stick, and healer" party, the druid can theoretically fill all four roles at once, often better than specialists in those roles. That's a major aspect of the tier system right there.

The second assumption is untrue on its face. The ability to hit things hard, and the ability to rewrite reality as a standard action, are not equal roles. The fact that rewriting reality often means creating beat sticks makes things even worse for the fighter. The fighter starts out the game with the ability to defeat weak monsters, and ends the game with the ability to defeat somewhat strong monsters. The wizard starts out the game with the ability to defeat weak monsters, but then he moves on to defeating encounters, and defeating cities, and defeating worlds. It's an imbalance that has to be actively worked against if there is to be peace in the game world, especially if that imbalance has already been discovered by the players. In the meantime, the D&D problem is rare that can't be solved by normal conversation. You should probably just try to figure out why she feels useless, and problem solve from that starting point. If she wants to do the whole skill monkey/stabbing thing, maybe suggest a factotum. Often, weaker classes are also boring classes because they lack options. Factotums have options by the bucketful, and fill the approximate role of her current character mightily. The D&D problem is also rare that can't be solved by the infinite application of factotums.

[IIzak]

I agree with the factotum sentiment (I play one myself actually) but she's set on the character she is playing now, so I am mainly just trying to make sure there is stuff in encounters to make her feel useful, and trying to keep the game balanced. Thanks for the info about all that stuff though, it definitely helps.