Most ridiculous things you've banned from the table

[Silentone98]

Or seen other DM's ban.

So as the title, start sharing stories.
I'll start.

factotum class + Iajutsu I think its called... wasn't even the my players build, think most of you seen it floating around. He wanted this with something called else,.. I forget the name, but it was like, skill moves or something- one was mosquito bite, and let him do sneak attack + iajustsu and the target not even realize he was hit,.... commence surprise round 2.



EDIT:
To clarify, for anyone still confused:

I am still not sure what the OP has in mind when he asks about banning ridiculous things: stuff that is so gamebreaking that it's ridiculous, or acceptable stuff that's ridiculous to ban?


---Take your pick- either goes.... we all make mistakes, players and DM's alike, and both can be equally amusing.
Share whatever comes to mind

[Gavinfoxx]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Silentone98]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Gavinfoxx]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Sir Chuckles]

{{scrubbed}}

They can be, when everyone else at the table is a Sword&Board Fighter, Healbot Cleric, and TWF Ranger with no Con investment. Or anything like that.
As I've said to you before: We're not all uber-optimized. :smallsigh:

I've never had to ban things outright, but I do small "No, you cannot do that" on occasion. Like one player never being to play a Paladin. He did once, and his first in-character action was to sucker punch the party's Cleric during a rant. Or one time I got tired of one of my players stream of Ranger, then Scout, then Ranger, then Ranger/Scout characters. All human. So I told him to be a Halfling Wizard. He want Arcane Trickster, and is now playing a Ranger/Wizard/Arcane Archer.

My players aren't terribly creative when it comes to magic items, so I've never had any 3,000gp Gate problems.

{{Scrubbed}}

[Curmudgeon]

I ban the Factotum class, just because it's not worth the effort to deal with all the poorly written class features. That's ridiculous in one respect.

I also ban full ranged attacks without provoking AoOs. (Ridiculous for the same reason as Factotum.)

Thought Bottle, Dust of Sneezing and Choking, Manyfang Dagger, and Incantatrix class. Those are ridiculous in another way.

[Alent]

The most ridiculous thing I've ever had to ban wasn't something in game... it was using Starwars or Skyrim to justify an argument for why something should/shouldn't work in game.

Everyone has that one guy who has to use starwars physics as his justification for why he should be able to do something, or why something shouldn't work.

[Silentone98]

The most ridiculous thing I've ever had to ban wasn't something in game... it was using Starwars or Skyrim to justify an argument for why something should/shouldn't work in game.

Everyone has that one guy who has to use starwars physics as his justification for why he should be able to do something, or why something shouldn't work.

so far, you win buddy.... that's good :)

[FleshrakerAbuse]

Guys, let's not argue whether or not his ban was justified or not. If that was the truly silliest ban he has had, he has been graced with a truly easy-to-deal-with game table, and we should be grateful for him. :smallbiggrin:

Back to the thingys, I'm lucky to have players who prefer to not go spellcaster abuse. The silliest I've had in my short career was a rogue/totemist who had about 6 attacks a round, SA damage of about 4d6 or so and craven for another 5 per hit, at level 3/4. I can't remember everything...

[Gotterdammerung]

My GM banned an alchemist build (not the pathfinder one... talking normal 3.5 here). I used some tricks to bypass the epic feat requirement for creating stronger alchemical items and then cranked out alchemy checks of unbelievably high levels (over 250 craft alchemy) to turn things like alchemist's fire into 11d6 fire damage with +12 splash. Eberron had a dual element version of alchemist fire that could get 11d4 of acid +12 acid splash and 11d4 of fire +12 fire splash in one flask. It would be a fine character if I stopped there, but I also added in some treasure chest homonculous to hold all my flasks and used metamagic tricks on the 0 level spell launch item from a wand. Twin spell chain spell allowed me to throw a very large number of flasks per standard action. 2 + (CLx2) bottles per activation at a range of 400 ft +40 per level. For instance, with a caster level 10 wand and dual wand wielding I could throw 44 flasks of alchemical items that did 20d4 damage+24splash damage per bottle. Eberron also had some alchemical bombs (edit: Explosive packs, Secret of Sarlona) that I could make that would level a city block (edit: 110d6 damage in a 220 ft radius, no save. can be set to do double damage to inanimate, unattended, stationary objects..i.e. city blocks). I could coat the bombs in another alchemical item to make them affect the ethereal plane. The bombs really did a ridiculous amount of damage after you increase them with epic alchemy. I just liked the idea of blowing away a huge chunk of a city and its ghosts.

It is probably my favorite build that I never got to play, largely because alchemy theme is so hard to do in standard 3.5. I was happy to find a loophole into epic alchemy. But also because of the cool factor of hunting through obscure books for weird overlooked alchemical items that when the dmg, or area, or duration is multiplied by 11, become REALLY AWESOME ITEMS! I particularly liked the undead killing positoxins I could make. Liquid mortality would of been awesome versus undead. DC 20 fort save against corporeal undead only with initial damage of 10d4 strength drain, secondary 20d4 str drain, if the undeads strength reached 0 it was destroyed outright!

The GM made a rule after I told him about this build.
"The Epic handbook doesn't exist until you reach 21st level."

The same GM also banned an infinite power point trick I came up with. So I came up with a different one. He banned that one too. So I looked online to see if there were anymore infinite PP tricks. I found some that I didn't think worked personally. But I did find one more infinite PP trick that I felt was legal. I tried to play the third infinite PP trick and the GM made another new rule. "No infinite loops allowed."

[fishyfishyfishy]

Or seen other DM's ban.

So as the title, start sharing stories.
I'll start.

factotum class + Iajutsu I think its called... wasn't even the my players build, think most of you seen it floating around. He wanted this with something called else,.. I forget the name, but it was like, skill moves or something- one was mosquito bite, and let him do sneak attack + iajustsu and the target not even realize he was hit,.... commence surprise round 2.

My group plays at a much higher power level than yours, and such a build would be encouraged since it's versatile and reliable and not too strong. You're lucky this is the worst of your problems.

I banned Planar Shepherd, despite my campaign taking place in Eberron.

[Silentone98]

Guys, let's not argue whether or not his ban was justified or not. If that was the truly silliest ban he has had, he has been graced with a truly easy-to-deal-with game table, and we should be grateful for him. :smallbiggrin:


lmao, exactly... was kinda my point in sharing that one. Very few bans needed at my table.
Thank you both Sir Chuckles and Fleshraker for understanding the nature of this thread.

btw guys, 'Most ridiculous thing" can either be silly on your part, or the thing you banned was really that bad... either goes.

[Kennisiou]

True facts about spiders (http://www.hamtwoslices.net/spiders.htm).

The story for why is actually not that entertaining.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I was banned psionics... on the ground no one in the party was a goblin.

[Bloodgruve]

I only ban Evil alignments unless I'm running an 'evil' campaign. I also warn my players if they abuse the RAI they will be turned into tofu though.

I have an auto-fizzle rule though for anyone casting a spell/using a power that they don't have the info available for at the time of casting. 5 casters having to look up their spell after its announced gets old quick, casual group...

Summons, animal companions and cohorts are discouraged also, extra actions and noone seems to come prepared :P

If they're prepared then its all good.


Blood~

[Zetapup]

I've actually never had to ban anything. My players are pretty low op (eg, they think fireball is an amazing spell, that sort of thing), so there's never been any issues with power. I've had to ban evil alignments in nonevil campaigns, but that's pretty self explanatory.

I may have gotten cavalier banned from play with one of my dms (they said they probably wouldn't allow cavaliers in later games, but weren't particularly annoyed about me using the class). The character was still fairly low op: around 50-70 damage on a charge on his mount using a lance at level 8.

Aside from that, I mostly play tier 4 or lower classes so my characters aren't overpowered/don't overshadow the rest of the party. Because of that, there have been very few things banned in my group.

[Hida Reju]

3.0 Planar Shepard Prestige class

All Infinite loops for power points, spells, damage, or infinite wishes or stats. You want to become a god forge a legend for yourself and get people to worship you.

Lawful Stupid - By this I mean if you play a Lawful good character you are expected to be good and play well with others. If the Neutral guy has a background that has a blood oath on the murderer of his family you don't have a cow when he hunts him down and kills him. Nor does it justify slaughtering everything that happens to be Evil without proof of wrong doing. Yes Detect Evil is a thing it is not a license to kill.

Any Race with level adjustment greater than +1, I don't use LA buy off so its really to keep you from nerfing yourself into the ground.

[HunterOfJello]

I banned Use Rope and Paladins because they're both dumb.


Wait, are we posting things that we were ridiculous for banning or things that we banned that were ridiculous for other reasons?


I also banned Candles of Invocation. You have to try pretty damn hard to get more ridiculous than a Candle of Invocation.

[Silentone98]

Lastly, I feel bad for the Factotum. Damage output is the last thing I worry about as a DM.

Blood~

its not even damage output really, you got to look at the thing in whole.

others may like to argue about tiers, and it not being overpowering. which I disagree... this is a class that pretends to be a jack of all trades and ends a master of all trades, anything you can do, it can do- and likely better(including wizards and other tier 1's).. but this is another argument not meant for here

but as to some of my reasoning, I find it disturbing when a player/character
1.) doesn't build their own character
2.) plays a class fully capabale of overshadowing the existing party, and doing everything they are capable of(and better in most cases, as per the factotums bonus in doing so) with the sole intent of doing just that and making everyone feel useless.
3.) plays a build that limits the DM in a severe way(i.e. With factotum, you basically learn what you encounter. Therefore anything I use against the party skill or spells wise, the factotum now has... just great) This is more work and annoyance for the DM and highly limiting. If your incapable of comprehending why then I don't know what to tell you.
4.) Factotum isn't a typical class,.. this means if your players or DM knows little or nothing about it, then its easily abused... and this class is already easily abused without that... so what do we have? a class that's completely broken because no one is capable of saying "No, that's not quite right"
and don't give me that argument of "Anything can be abused" well no **** Sherlock. How's that pertain to this one? it doesn't. Each case gets handled separately in its own way/if at all.
5.) It was a simpleton player attempting to play something beyond his full understanding... meaning DM has to do all the work because player is too lazy... Just,.. no, not happening, and especially not with this.

This list goes on... but there ya go. Not all of the reasons are due to the class itself- but a enough of it is.

@Hunter

Wait, are we posting things that we were ridiculous for banning or things that we banned that were ridiculous for other reasons?

Either, lol.
take your pick. It's all in good fun and stuff :)

[Sir Chuckles]

I constantly remind my players to build their own characters, and to only ask me for help when they want a specific thing (Just recently, a player of mine wanted to be a Diplomancer/Leadership Cleric. Chiming in with Dynamic Priest made him giddy).

I've had to veto several of my munchkin's build, purely because it was easy to catch him using a character that was not "his", such as one that was written by another play and said player telling him "He's gonna let you play this guy, I'm going to tell him you did not write it." or me finding the build as the first google result for a few key words.

I also ban names like "Ragnarok" and "Bloodwind Howler". Both have been attempted by that same guy.

[Telok]

Ebon Eyes.

Because it reads (well, the player wanted it to read) as if it allows you to see normally in both magical and normal darkness out to the limit of your normal and unimpeded line of sight.

The BoVD sacrifice/ritual rules.

Because a DC 40 Kn:Religion check gets you a free Limited Wish, Divine power, or Greater Magic Weapon every day.

[TheOrangeWizard]

My current DM has banned... wait for it... optimisation. Just for me, too. To be fair, our group doesn't actually use 75% of the core rules and guidelines (AOO, counterspell, WBL, full attacks, the list goes on), and most of the players don't even know half the rules we DO use. Except for me, of course. So even though I'm relied upon to solve rules disputes normally, I'm not allowed to use them to my advantage... :smallconfused:

[Silentone98]

My current DM has banned... wait for it... optimisation. Just for me, too. To be fair, our group doesn't actually use 75% of the core rules and guidelines (AOO, counterspell, WBL, full attacks, the list goes on), and most of the players don't even know half the rules we DO use. Except for me, of course. So even though I'm relied upon to solve rules disputes normally, I'm not allowed to use them to my advantage... :smallconfused:

I read that as Optimism at first... lol,.. I was like, what? does he force you to sit at the table and pout? :-p

I can see why he'd restrict an experience player, in a non-experienced group... but honestly I would ask why said player couldn't restrict himself? surely there would be plenty of options in game, so it would leave so much flexibility to do some fun class/race things instead of pumping everything to be as best it can(i.e. no who's **** is bigger contest)

[Deophaun]

I read that as Optimism at first... lol,.. I was like, what? does he force you to sit at the table and pout? :-p
I think Chief Circle banned that...

[rmnimoc]

The most ridiculous things I've ever banned are Monks. Those guys are hilarious. Newer players are like "Rawr, I'm Bruce Lee! I'm a big deal!". Of course the fact I ban them for their own good makes them think they are even more op, so it might not be working.

If it takes over 30 seconds to say your character's name, race, templates, and class? That character is banned on the spot.

I also auto-ban any kobold with a 3 letter repeating name, as well as any character concept I recognize from TO threads. No matter how much you beg you may never play as pun-pun, monty, or anything made by LoP or Tippy. No, not even then.

[Sewercop]

I ban background stories that are fan ficton and self indulgent masturbatory mind play that has no connection with the mechanics of your character.
If your character can`t do it, im sure as hell not incorporating your silly background into the world.

I got spiked chain banned when i played a fighter, and it wasnt even an optimzed tripper.
I got banned from playing any class but sorceror, cause sorceror sucks!!!
(yes even the ranger and monk was better in that groups eyes)
I got ac 50 banned..
loads more really.. That group is a mish mash of shait sometimes

On the other hand, we do have fun.. And that is what counts :D

[Silentone98]

I got banned from playing any class but sorceror, cause sorceror sucks!!!


Bit off topic.... my girlfriend had a sorcerer with that alternate class feature that gave +2 HP per level I think it was?(And high CON, +improved toughness,.. she had more HP than the half-tank, party had no real tank) You just give up 1 spell slot of your highest level spells. Expensive, but the reward is pretty dang good to. In conjunction to this, she had a feat that gave her an animal companion at half her level. and a reserve feat for fiery burst "Pretty necessary for longer dungeons.", made good use of her touch spells using her familiar while staying out of fire, and eventually went into rainbow savant and could heal/anything a priest could do spontaneously.... not sure if the prestige was being used correctly... but the build turned into one damn fine sorcerer I would say...

and yea... her spell picks avoided everything a cleric would have access to, like the summon lines... so there was no redundancy once she reached her end goal

[Socksy]

Monks. Kender.
Both because they annoy me so much and add nothing to the gameplay. Monks are hugely underpowered and can be replicated by a Psychic Warrior with Psionic Fist, Stunning Fist etc. Kender are... Kender.

[Venger]

Bit off topic.... my girlfriend had a sorcerer with that alternate class feature that gave +2 HP per level I think it was?(And high CON, +improved toughness,.. she had more HP than the half-tank, party had no real tank) You just give up 1 spell slot of your highest level spells. Expensive, but the reward is pretty dang good to. In conjunction to this, she had a feat that gave her an animal companion at half her level. and a reserve feat for fiery burst "Pretty necessary for longer dungeons.", made good use of her touch spells using her familiar while staying out of fire, and eventually went into rainbow savant and could heal/anything a priest could do spontaneously.... not sure if the prestige was being used correctly... but the build turned into one damn fine sorcerer I would say...

and yea... her spell picks avoided everything a cleric would have access to, like the summon lines... so there was no redundancy once she reached her end goal

that's stalwart sorcerer, wild cohort, and, well, fiery burst. rainbow servant works exactly like that, though it wouldn't give a sorcerer cleric spells known, it'd just let her pick cleric spells as new spells when she learned new ones. it's traditionally entered with one of the prix fixe classes, either beguiler or warmage. on those though, it does add the cleric list to their spells known (and thus spells available)

your group sounds like it's very low op if a stalwart battle sorcerer with a reserve feat is causing problems. it sounds like a fun build tho.

I was once essentially banned from speaking to NPCs. when the DM saw that my character (a beguiler) was capable of talking enemies out of fights (as is their way) by using logic and compassion, we only fought zombies and the like from then on. who were ruled as automatically overcoming any illusions because "they are zombies" yes, even non-mind affecting ones like silent image.

I didn't stay in that game after that session.

[Arbane]

I think Chief Circle banned that...

Along with antimony and relativity. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=275152) (Trekkin wins the thread, without ever even posting to it. :smallamused:)

[Kane0]

I once banned mundanes from being completely mundane. Everybody had to have access to at least a little magic.

My father was not happy, which made it all the more sweeter.

[Kudaku]

Most ridiculous? Probably Chicken infested.

[SiuiS]

I had a DM ban Rings of the Darkhidden, because "this is an under dark campaign, it's over-powered that nothing can see you". A ring of constant improved invisibility was fine though.


Also, ridiculous has an I as the first vowel, to show that a ridiculous thing is worthy of ridicule. :smallsmile:

[Silentone98]

....

Not my group actually.

also not sure whats considered low OP - high OP /(not OP?)so cant comment on that, but the build certainly trashes a standard wizard. Or at least how they played it with full cleric spell access.

and yea,. it does look like a fun build and I wanted it for myself :( lol




Also, ridiculous has an I as the first vowel, to show that a ridiculous thing is worthy of ridicule. :smallsmile:

Yep, was too late after I hit post,.. didn't care after that, lol.
is there a title edit?

[Venger]

also not sure whats considered low OP - high OP /(not OP?)so cant comment on that, but the build certainly trashes a standard wizard. Or at least how they played it with full cleric spell access.

trading your highest level spell slots for a few HP is definitely considered low op, and makes the already challenging experience of playing a sorcerer even more difficult. it's a particularly bad trade since sorcerers try to get into a prc ASAP due to their lack of class features.

reserve feats are also generally regarded as suboptimal because their function can largely be replicated by wands and your valuable feat slots (especially as a sorcerer) are better spent on metamagic, one of the few things they can do better than wizards.

the sorcerer you described would probably not beat a wizard played at the same level of op, but with full spontaneous access to the entire cleric spell list, yeah, it probably would.

[AntiTrust]

My former DM banned one of the players from burning down anything in the city the campaign was centered on. This was of course after he allowed him to play a character with a problem with pyromania.

[Sewercop]

but the build certainly trashes a standard wizard. Or at least how they played it with full cleric spell access.


Nope.. Then again, if you mean full acsess to any spell on the cleric list every day, whenever she wanted to cast a spell.... then yes. But I can not understand how they read it that way.

Sacrifising spell slots is a nono in that way

[Silentone98]

..

but could you 'define' low OP, high OP or whatever to me?

is low OP, still OP in regards to normal standard class's? Or is this a way of saying the class build does not fit in with an OP group(which is fine by me,... breaking off too far from the standard power level of a regular group is no fun in my book)

playing D&D alone doesn't exactly mean all players use such terms. So forgive my ignorance

I felt it fit in well and was comparable to tier 1 druid. And having a reserve feat, sub par or not, saves on money that can be spent on more permanent enchancements.
(1 spell slot, highest or not, wont be missed compared to the equivalent of +4 CON to prevent 1 shotting from even the weakest of opponents- although I suppose it could be argued for a defensive spell to do more/better, I wouldn't mind making the tank squirm at the numbers, lmao)

[Sir Chuckles]

but could you 'define' low OP, high OP or whatever to me?

is low OP, still OP in regards to normal standard class's? Or is this a way of saying the class build does not fit in with an OP group(which is fine by me,... breaking off too far from the standard power level of a regular group is no fun in my book)

playing D&D alone doesn't exactly mean all players use such terms. So forgive my ignorance

It's really a subjective term. When it's used in generalization, it's usually referring to commonly accepted "Thou shant do X" "rules" (loose usage there) that come with optimization. Giving up spell slots or caster levels is said twice in such commandments.

As for the subjectiveness, we all hear the horror stories of nerfed Monks and buffed Sorcerers. I've even been the victim, yes, victim, of Monk hatred. The DM said that I was too powerful and banned both Monks and me from the table. I have the sheet here, and I was a Large Human Fighter 4/Monk 10 at the time of banning. :smallsigh:
So, yeah, it depends on the group.

[Silentone98]

The DM said that I was too powerful and banned both Monks and me from the table. I have the sheet here, and I was a Large Human Fighter 4/Monk 10 at the time of banning. :smallsigh:
So, yeah, it depends on the group.

how did you acquire Large?

is that something that's allowed to be taken individually as part of the savage species or something? Or did you simply get it magically induced?

[Stux]

but could you 'define' low OP, high OP or whatever to me?

is low OP, still OP in regards to normal standard class's? Or is this a way of saying the class build does not fit in with an OP group(which is fine by me,... breaking off too far from the standard power level of a regular group is no fun in my book)

playing D&D alone doesn't exactly mean all players use such terms. So forgive my ignorance

What precisely constitutes high or low optimisation isn't really definable. It is very reliant on context too. What is high op for one group could easily be mid/low op for another.

As a rule of thumb, pretty much anything that delays when a full caster would access the next level of spells, or limit how many spells of your highest level you can cast, is considered a lower op choice for a caster. There is very little in the game that would be a worthwhile trade for that.

Also it is rarely worth using up very limited resources such as class levels and feats to increase HP. This is generally because it makes a lot more sense to shut an enemy down before they can do serious damage to you than to just absorb the hits.

[ekans]

I once had a DM who tried to ban "combos"

He defined a "combo" as two or more game elements that worked together in a way that the designers did not intend.

So, unless the designers intended the game elements to explicitly work together, they were a "combo"

I saw where he was trying to come from with it, but the way he phrased and attempted to implement the ban... not so much

Suffice to say, the ban did not last even until the start of the first session, and the game maintained relatively good balance despite the DM's feared "combos" being allowed.

[Silentone98]

What precisely constitutes high or low optimisation isn't really definable. It is very reliant on context too. What is high op for one group could easily be mid/low op for another.

.

this part,.. thank you.... I was reading this as Low Overpowered/high overpowered. Makes sense now.



And on Topic, I'll add one that the DM I first played with banned. This is what he banned:
playing a gender different than your own
lycanthropes
why? because one of the male players had an obsession to play female werecats. No exceptions.
This somehow went from sexy female rogue werecats to, a male cleric of Radiant something. Repenting for his sins I guess.

[Sir Chuckles]

how did you acquire Large?

is that something that's allowed to be taken individually as part of the savage species or something? Or did you simply get it magically induced?

Permanency.
It's as simple as that. All it takes is a 9th level Wizard or 10th level Sorcerer with Enlarge Person and Permanency.

We started at ECL 10, so buying it was no issue. I even directly asked the DM "Are you ok with this?"

Granted, he was using a 4e Module (Something to do with shadows and I got forced into a poker game or something like that...there were giant plant things...) that he desperately tried to retrofit for 3.5e, which led to a lot of "Why can't I grapple it? Because it does not have a grapple modifier?".
It was fun for me. I don't think I was fun to play with, however.

[Silentone98]

Permanency.
It's as simple as that. All it takes is a 9th level Wizard or 10th level Sorcerer with Enlarge Person and Permanency.


hate when that gets dispelled tho... permanency gets expensive if I remember correctly?


Here's another that another DM banned: Correcting the DM, midplay

If the DM is wrong about something, it should be corrected so its not repeated... and hopefully so it doesn't happen to begin with! Well... the first DM I played with thought differently, and he made ALOT of mistakes. The players suffered severely for most of them.
All issues could be addressed to him after the session, assuming he was in the mood.

I agree with this for like,... small things, but if my character is gonna be left with any type of lasting issue from the DM's lack of understanding the rules, I got an issue with that!

[Silus]

Arcane and Divine casters of all stripes, only allowing the PCs to roll Adepts. The NPCs had no such restrictions.

Edit: To clarify, I was a player in the game. Most I've banned were Summoners and most Summon spells, due to the nature of the campaign world.

[SiuiS]

Not my group actually.

also not sure whats considered low OP - high OP /(not OP?)so cant comment on that, but the build certainly trashes a standard wizard. Or at least how they played it with full cleric spell access.

and yea,. it does look like a fun build and I wanted it for myself :( lol


Optimization. It's the defining trait of the tier systems. A Tier 1 can be built and played down at tier 5, but a tier five cannot be built and played at tier 4, let alone tier 1.

Doing damage, blasting, and having high armor is lower optimization than instantly killing with a save, blanketing enemies in curses so they are as weak as goblins, and not being there to get hit, being immune to damage and being immortal are.



Yep, was too late after I hit post,.. didn't care after that, lol.
is there a title edit?

If you go into edit your post, there will be a title bar above the buttons for font and color and size and stuff. You can edit it there.

And sorry, I assumed you'd appreciate the correction because it seemed like English wasn't your first language from the opening post? Everyone I know who is learning/has learned English prefers to be corrected rather than coddled. :smallredface:


trading your highest level spell slots for a few HP is definitely considered low op, and makes the already challenging experience of playing a sorcerer even more difficult. it's a particularly bad trade since sorcerers try to get into a prc ASAP due to their lack of class features.

reserve feats are also generally regarded as suboptimal because their function can largely be replicated by wands and your valuable feat slots (especially as a sorcerer) are better spent on metamagic, one of the few things they can do better than wizards.

the sorcerer you described would probably not beat a wizard played at the same level of op, but with full spontaneous access to the entire cleric spell list, yeah, it probably would.

Huh? At what optimization level does "better at meta magic" happen? Default play is sorcerer is penalized. You need either obscure feat combinations, sudden feats, or the like (book trawling, encyclopedic knowledge of game structures, clear build idea and progression; ie more optimization) to get there. Whereas a reserve feat is like dipping warlock; no thought, just do it.

A wizard at that level of optimization would be taking toughness and coddling their cute familiar.


how did you acquire Large?

is that something that's allowed to be taken individually as part of the savage species or something? Or did you simply get it magically induced?

Large can be acquired on a human with the Jotunbrud feat. Kind of.

[Silentone98]

sleep deprivation my friend...sleep deprivation and a damn sticky keyboard for the rest of it. lol
I'll try not to take offence at the English comment.

and the title edit didn't work when I first made the thread. :/

EDIT: Why do things not work when you first do them,.. but then when someone tells you to do exactly what you just did, and you try again, suddenly it works?.... anyhow, title fixed *rolls eyes*

RE-EDIT: ohhhh..... look at post 12... I edited that post for the title... so apparently I was suppose to change the title on the original post, and can't do it from another post.
Sleep deprivation will mess you up man!
ridiculous

[SiuiS]

Dunno. Site gets finicky sometimes.

[Sir Chuckles]

hate when that gets dispelled tho... permanency gets expensive if I remember correctly?

Well, it was a module supposedly focused around undead, and it was apparently episodic to where the necromancers wouldn't show up until we were looking at them gathered around a dark and scawwy chanting circle, I wasn't worried.
Granted, I've since learned to tone it back when I step down from DMing (My rules-fu and Psychology-Fu have both greatly improved since then), as the two strongest characters they've ever known are a Human Barbarian 10/Frenzied Berserker 10/War Hulk 4 and a Human Afflicted Weretiger Rogue 4/Sorcerer 12/Duelist 4.



Here's another that another DM banned: Correcting the DM, midplay

If the DM is wrong about something, it should be corrected so its not repeated... and hopefully so it doesn't happen to begin with! Well... the first DM I played with thought differently, and he made ALOT of mistakes. The players suffered severely for most of them.
All issues could be addressed to him after the session, assuming he was in the mood.

I agree with this for like,... small things, but if my character is gonna be left with any type of lasting issue from the DM's lack of understanding the rules, I got an issue with that!

I would not be able to play in that campaign. Plain and simple.
I get corrected frequently for PrC features I'm unfamiliar with, occasionally simple things like AoO movement rules, and I learn from them and in turn I teach them things like "That's a range INCREMENT. You can shoot ten times that distance, if you take a penalty."

[Brookshw]

Along with antimony and relativity. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=275152) (Trekkin wins the thread, without ever even posting to it. :smallamused:)

I read that as alimony at first and started nodding.

For myself, eh, varies a bit and I don't keep a list, rather gauge based on campaign and group. Relative permabans include: gnome, kobolds, kender, psionics, BoVD possibly including material reprinted elsewhere, thought bottles, infinite loops, force weapon property. Some others as well.

[Silentone98]

I would not be able to play in that campaign. Plain and simple.
I get corrected frequently for PrC features I'm unfamiliar with, occasionally simple things like AoO movement rules, and I learn from them and in turn I teach them things like "That's a range INCREMENT. You can shoot ten times that distance, if you take a penalty."

I think my worst instance of it was, while playing warlock I dispelled a monster brought forth from a trapped object.... I was like, well it's a trapped item, I can't think of any mundane trap that can possibly cause this thing to appear in much the same fashion as a summon monster spell.. therefore this must be magic!
I dispel magic... nothing... I dispel magic again and roll damned high. Nothing... I then look at my DM and say "wtf... your screwing with me." and he tells me he is playing the adventure straight out of the book and it is not a summoned monster,.. so I asked him to read it again, he refused and forced me to roll with this.

I then look up the adventure and skip to that part... it was a summoned monster V and I should have dispelled it on the first attempt. >.> found like 10 HUGE mistakes in that session alone.

@Brookshw
Oh wow... is it something to do with their size?

I want to ban psionics, but I can't find enough reason to do so... I have made many VALID points against it... but on the whole I cannot find enough fault as many of the same things viewed flawed in psionics can draw an equivalent in the core books- and those that can't can simply be addressed individually(if at all)
so I end up allowing it, with heavy scrutiny.

[Brookshw]

@Brookshw
Oh wow... is it something to do with their size?
.

Kenders really don't need any explanation I think. As to gnomes, hate the bastards, pure and simple. Kobolds,.......freaking silly little things I have no respect for and I'll keep it that way. Or maybe I'm a sizest.

[CombatOwl]

Or seen other DM's ban.

So as the title, start sharing stories.
I'll start.

factotum class + Iajutsu I think its called... wasn't even the my players build, think most of you seen it floating around. He wanted this with something called else,.. I forget the name, but it was like, skill moves or something- one was mosquito bite, and let him do sneak attack + iajustsu and the target not even realize he was hit,.... commence surprise round 2.

Kobold + Egoist...

Quite literally, that's the only thing banned in my current 3.5e game, though because I am requiring unique tricks (combinations of feats, spells, equipment, etc that result in very powerful abilities), players have to kill the previous user to get some of the more broken stuff. Cancer mage + Festering Anger, for example, would first require a player to go kill the current NPC with that PrC and disease. Why? Because the people broadcasting the dungeon crawls don't like to watch the same stuff over and over again, and so require competitors to have a unique style (else be banned from competition).

[Psycho Yuffie]

Here's a few things that my DM has banned:

1. The spell Dark Way is banned due to a battle gone wrong. He made a miniature model of the area the final boss of the campaign was in. He was on top of a elevated area and there was only a thin stair case leading to him. The elevated area was surrounded by baddies. One of the party members cast Dark Way to avoid all of the baddies on the ground and go straight for the boss. Now, if a character casts Dark Way, they are immediately struck dead by lightning.

2. Psionics aren't technically banned, but you must succeed on a Concentration (DC 15) check every time you manifest a power or every spellcaster in a 10-mile radius is alerted to your presence and will want to kill you. While DC 15 isn't terrible. It is annoying. Apparently, he does this because he thinks that psionics are overpowered.

3. Weapons with wounding enhancements are banned.

4. There's a guy that's a minmaxer in our group and he has restrictions placed on him because he would make things like a 5th-level character who can kill CR16 creatures. It was impossible to challenge his characters without wiping the rest of the party. He would also wipe out the encounter with little difficulty if we got monsters at our challenge rating. So he was banned use of the Tome of Battle, Pathfinder books, and everything he does has to be run by the DM first. He has also been ordered to try to make weaker characters. Unlike the rest of us, he has to keep the first set of ability scores he rolls too.

[Sewercop]

Optimization. It's the defining trait of the tier systems. A Tier 1 can be built and played down at tier 5, but a tier five cannot be built and played at tier 4, let alone tier 1.


Wrong, tier system assumes equal optimization and understanding of the classes. A tier 5 can easily reach more power with TO.

A tier 1 is always tier 1, the floor of optimization sometimes vary inbetween the classes. Thats it. If you want a link to the tier system just say so instead of spewing false words.
So many fail to understand the tiers,, as if they never read the first page

[nedz]

Current Game
Non Dwarves. Reason: It's a Dwarf only campaign
Heward's Haversacks. Reason: Too ubiquitous.

Next Game
Wizards, well all Tier 1s too. Reason: T1

Things I've seen another DM ban
All PrCs, except for Ur-Priest. Reason: ?

[Krazzman]

Things I banned:
One player wanted to join an Rashemen Barbarian Tribe game with a Darkling Ninja (Winged black demonic creature)... I told him no because else the whole tribe would have killed him instantly. Afterwards he wanted to be a Half-Orc Samurai which funny enough fitted.
And I banned the vancian casting system.

@low-op:
We played in a campaign (on hiatus) where we were all pretty lowish in the optimisation.
One Human Augment Ashbound Summoning Wolves everywhere (Druid)
One Human Cleric with a Warlock dip (wanted to go into Divine Disciple)
One Halfling Unarmed Swordsage
One Halfling Factotum that certainly didn't overshadow anyone
One elven Wizard focused on illusions
and one elven sorcerer that should better have been a ranger.

I think the top 3 are the most optimized(in that group) but mainly because I knew their builds and know that the sorcerer isn't that well built.

Edit: to elaborate further the "higher" op way of building the cleric would've been Warlock/Urpriest/Divine Disciple instead of Cleric/Warlock/Divine Disciple as one example of how to do it better. An evel lower op build would've been a cleric/warlock mix without any PrC.

[Forrestfire]

In my current game, I guess I could say I've banned a few things, like ridiculously optimized tier 1s, for instance. Mostly just for the reason of not wanting to deal with them. I have no problem with high optimization (in fact, I'm glad when my players build strong characters), it's just a bit more work to match it. Similarly, most of the TO exploits like Cancer Mage+Festering Anger or the Hulking Hurler will elicit a "really?" look from me, then a request to not use it.

Thinking about it, this is pretty hypocritical of me, because I'm fine with NPCs having stuff like this if it improves the story or campaign. Freeing or killing a festering anger Cancer Mage trapped under a mountain or two might make for a good adventure, thinking about it, and there are several archmages out and about to make some stuff happen.

In specifics, Pun-Pun is banned, because he probably exists as an overdeity. It hasn't come up, but I think that he'd show up in person and rewrite things if someone tried to start that loop. The Omniscificer is banned as well, because in my current campaign, it's a plot point that one existed at one point and the strain of knowing everything exploded him/her/it.

I also banned a homebrew class that one player was using, because we decided it just wasn't something that we wanted in the game due to power (optimization floor somewhere around tier 2).

[Dawgmoah]

I've banned one thing from my campaign: bringing in player characters from other campaigns. If they want to just use the stats and name and such and come in at the same level as the current party, fine. Had one guy try to bring in a level 9 into a party of level 3's.

[The Oni]

I banned naturally-flying PCs once, mostly because the campaign was Wild West themed and involved a lot of overland travel.

Otherwise I believe in limits, not bans.

[GungHo]

He defined a "combo" as two or more game elements that worked together in a way that the designers did not intend.
Please provide an example of what you mean.

[Bloodgruve]

As not to detract from the thread.



its not even damage output really, you got to look at the thing in whole.

others may like to argue about tiers, and it not being overpowering. which I disagree... this is a class that pretends to be a jack of all trades and ends a master of all trades, anything you can do, it can do- and likely better(including wizards and other tier 1's)..

but as to some of my reasoning, I find it disturbing when a player/character

2.) plays a class fully capabale of overshadowing the existing party, and doing everything they are capable of(and better in most cases, as per the factotums bonus in doing so) with the sole intent of doing just that and making everyone feel useless.
3.) plays a build that limits the DM in a severe way(i.e. With factotum, you basically learn what you encounter. Therefore anything I use against the party skill or spells wise, the factotum now has... just great) This is more work and annoyance for the DM and highly limiting. If your incapable of comprehending why then I don't know what to tell you.
4.) Factotum isn't a typical class,.. this means if your players or DM knows little or nothing about it, then its easily abused... and this class is already easily abused without that... so what do we have? a class that's completely broken because no one is capable of saying "No, that's not quite right"
and don't give me that argument of "Anything can be abused" well no **** Sherlock. How's that pertain to this one? it doesn't. Each case gets handled separately in its own way/if at all.
5.) It was a simpleton player attempting to play something beyond his full understanding... meaning DM has to do all the work because player is too lazy... Just,.. no, not happening, and especially not with this.



Factotum can master everything once a day, that is it. X Inspiration points a combat. Very limited spell casting. Limited healing. Good ability to skill monkey. These are not things that will over shadow anything other then a very low optimized party, inexperienced players or another skill monkey.

Player skill and level of Optimization being equal a Factotum won't be better then a T1 after maybe 6th level.

It sounds like the problem was neither you nor the player understood the class mechanics.

2.) Agreed, if the player is trying to overshadow others purposely. I would be more inclined to ban the player though. Cunning Knowledge can be done once a day per skill and only if Inspiration was left over from the previous encounter. Inspiration resets at the beginning of each encounter therefore the Factotum could very well not have the ability to boost skills.

3.)The class doesn't have any mechanic that does this. I'm not incapable of understanding, the problem is you don't understand what the class can and can't do.

4.)If not understand a class makes it broken then by all means ban it. Factotum has a lot of tricks but it is hardly a class that can be easily abused if you as a DM knows how it works. The only thing you have to watch for is Cunning Surge, it should be limited to once a turn IMHO.

5.)Agreed wholeheartedly.

I ran an optimized IF Factotum/Swordsage for quite a while. I still had to rely on our Wizard and Druid to control the field so I could deal decent damage at mid and higher levels though.

To lower the effectiveness of a Factotum simply throw the same skill check at him multiple times. Also, achieving Flat Footed isn't easy but it is doable, the build has to really focus on this to be effective though which reduces its ability to 'jack of all trades'. Without Iaijutsu Focus, Factotum doesn't have much in damage output and will be quite overshadowed at mid to high levels. If anything banning just Iaijutsu Focus would probably bring him to a level that I'm guessing your group was at.

I defend Factotum because it's simply one of the most fun classes I've played and would hope everyone would take it for a test drive at some point.

Blood~

[ekans]

Please provide an example of what you mean.

Exactly what it sounds like.

He wanted to ban things like crazy theoretical optimization that takes advantages of the way things are written and abuses them, but he had trouble trying to quantify that as a set thing he to ban, because it is somewhat subjective. So he went way overboard and banned "using game elements together in a way that was not explicitly expected by the designers", as if that was a more concrete way of qualifying it, which it still wasn't, because how are you supposed to find out what the designers think?

Nobody in the game was really going for theoretical optimization; one other player and I were moderate optimizers, but the rest of the group was not far behind, and we knew how to reign it in.

I think he was just intimidated.

[papr_weezl8472]

Well, this thread seems to have become more about ridiculous bannings than ridiculous banned things, but in my game, the only thing I've banned is the Noble Scion PrC (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/n-r/noble-scion). At tenth level, it can recruit a cohort the same level as itself.

[Eldest]

As not to detract from the thread.




Factotum can master everything once a day, that is it. X Inspiration points a combat. Very limited spell casting. Limited healing. Good ability to skill monkey. These are not things that will over shadow anything other then a very low optimized party, inexperienced players or another skill monkey.

Player skill and level of Optimization being equal a Factotum won't be better then a T1 after maybe 6th level.

It sounds like the problem was neither you nor the player understood the class mechanics.

2.) Agreed, if the player is trying to overshadow others purposely. I would be more inclined to ban the player though. Cunning Knowledge can be done once a day per skill and only if Inspiration was left over from the previous encounter. Inspiration resets at the beginning of each encounter therefore the Factotum could very well not have the ability to boost skills.

3.)The class doesn't have any mechanic that does this. I'm not incapable of understanding, the problem is you don't understand what the class can and can't do.

4.)If not understand a class makes it broken then by all means ban it. Factotum has a lot of tricks but it is hardly a class that can be easily abused if you as a DM knows how it works. The only thing you have to watch for is Cunning Surge, it should be limited to once a turn IMHO.

5.)Agreed wholeheartedly.

I ran an optimized IF Factotum/Swordsage for quite a while. I still had to rely on our Wizard and Druid to control the field so I could deal decent damage at mid and higher levels though.

To lower the effectiveness of a Factotum simply throw the same skill check at him multiple times. Also, achieving Flat Footed isn't easy but it is doable, the build has to really focus on this to be effective though which reduces its ability to 'jack of all trades'. Without Iaijutsu Focus, Factotum doesn't have much in damage output and will be quite overshadowed at mid to high levels. If anything banning just Iaijutsu Focus would probably bring him to a level that I'm guessing your group was at.

I defend Factotum because it's simply one of the most fun classes I've played and would hope everyone would take it for a test drive at some point.

Blood~



Nitpick: I do not believe that inspiration resets. You gain X Inspiration at the beginning of an encounter. It does not go away unless you spend it.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

3.0 Planar Shepard Prestige class

There was a 3.0 Planar Shepherd? I thought that was native to Eberron (and therefore 3.5).

As far as ridiculous things I've banned? It wasn't 3.5, but in a Risus game I ran, I had to ban "Sean Connery" as a cliche.

[Bloodgruve]

Nitpick: I do not believe that inspiration resets. You gain X Inspiration at the beginning of an encounter. It does not go away unless you spend it.

That would have been helpful to realize..

[Eldest]

That would have been helpful to realize..

Technically it doesn't go away ever, IIRC, so if you're playing by exact RAW you can clear a kobold warren or something in preparation for a big quest. (I am not advocating this, the Factotum does require some interpretation regardless of group, although I do not understand where Silentone got his info on the class.)

[Doc_Maynot]

In my group I've had to ban Spongebob references at the table (Doesn't sound too bad but when you hear one once every 10 minutes they tend to get on your nerves).

[Story]

The most absurd ban I've ever seen was a 4ed DM who banned shifting (equivalent of 5ft steps). To be fair, it wasn't deliberate - he had apparently not even bothered reading the PHB and refused to believe that a mechanic like that existed. Whether that puts him in a better or worse light, I don't know.

As for other silly bans, one DM banned my suggested Mount + Traveler's Mount combo because you're going to use my planned out airship darnit, even if you could travel faster by horse.

I've also seen Psionics banned a lot, either due to it being wrongly perceived as OP or due to DMs just not liking the flavor.

[Curmudgeon]

Nitpick: I do not believe that inspiration resets. You gain X Inspiration at the beginning of an encounter. It does not go away unless you spend it.
That's one of the many things that makes the Factotum class a pain to deal with, in this case due to the many meanings of "gain". The FAQ thinks the Factotum gains (synonym "attains") total IP as specified, resetting each encounter. This opinion thinks the Factotum gains (synonym "adds") the specified IP to their unspent existing total.

Just one of many problems with the way the class is written, and that poor writing is why I consider the Factotum ridiculous.

[Silentone98]

As not to detract from the thread.




Factotum can master everything once a day, that is it. X Inspiration points a combat. Very limited spell casting. Limited healing. Good ability to skill monkey. These are not things that will over shadow anything other then a very low optimized party, inexperienced players or another skill monkey.

Player skill and level of Optimization being equal a Factotum won't be better then a T1 after maybe 6th level.

It sounds like the problem was neither you nor the player understood the class mechanics.

2.) Agreed, if the player is trying to overshadow others purposely. I would be more inclined to ban the player though. Cunning Knowledge can be done once a day per skill and only if Inspiration was left over from the previous encounter. Inspiration resets at the beginning of each encounter therefore the Factotum could very well not have the ability to boost skills.

3.)The class doesn't have any mechanic that does this. I'm not incapable of understanding, the problem is you don't understand what the class can and can't do.

4.)If not understand a class makes it broken then by all means ban it. Factotum has a lot of tricks but it is hardly a class that can be easily abused if you as a DM knows how it works. The only thing you have to watch for is Cunning Surge, it should be limited to once a turn IMHO.

5.)Agreed wholeheartedly.

I ran an optimized IF Factotum/Swordsage for quite a while. I still had to rely on our Wizard and Druid to control the field so I could deal decent damage at mid and higher levels though.

To lower the effectiveness of a Factotum simply throw the same skill check at him multiple times. Also, achieving Flat Footed isn't easy but it is doable, the build has to really focus on this to be effective though which reduces its ability to 'jack of all trades'. Without Iaijutsu Focus, Factotum doesn't have much in damage output and will be quite overshadowed at mid to high levels. If anything banning just Iaijutsu Focus would probably bring him to a level that I'm guessing your group was at.

I defend Factotum because it's simply one of the most fun classes I've played and would hope everyone would take it for a test drive at some point.

Blood~



lol, this is why I didn't want this being a debate on everything when Gavin first attacked my OP.

2.) I attack that rat,.. inspiration reset. Is there a fly in the room? I attack it. O.o
It's a downhill battle if I have to say "No it doesn't work like that" when in fact it does, and I'd be denying the class's innate functioning. Easier to ban.
And yes, this player did eventually get banned, lol- couldn't ever get his butt to the table so the issue became mute... after that I wasn't willing to consider him for a player anymore.

as to 3.) yes it does. No matter your class, your character still isn't psychic(ok, there are exceptions, lol). The class feature doesnt state that you automatically know these class features- that's plain silly and means they can bring class features in from other books that haven't even been in play.
Therefore you cannot suddenly use any class feature, without first learning of it before hand or observing it in battle or otherwise, from the lvl 19 class ability(and thank god there's this limitation).
granted this is a lvl 19 or so thing? No worries for a long time... but these long campaigns are exactly what my groups play- and will there be a list brought out at the end of this? most likely, and I would be face palming at a lot of what is brought out I am sure.
point is... im not moderating the entirety of what I use because of this. I could simply ignore it and let things roll out naturally, but then I'd certainly pay for it later. I have a rule against class's that cause excess work on the DM's part.

4.) this is rather insultive if taken one way, and you answer one of my bigger complaints with the class in the same breath. I am alittle more aware of the class than you like to portray, just because I haven't seen it in action doesn't mean I cant imagine just how ridiculous this would be starting each battle with 7 standard actions, before feats/other class's(at one point,.. don't bother pointing out the level charts, I know already dammit..)
this amplifies the class's ability to overshadow others quite a bit

This is an issue with impact per turn, inbuilt into the class. sure you burn out on the first turn,.. but is there even a second at this point? Rinse and repeat next combat encounter please.

Yea there's other class's that do stuff like that, im well aware, no need to point it out.. if its inbuilt to the class tho, and so easily repeatable... I don't want to deal with this, if you do then go ahead, im not stopping ya. This isn't a debate and I am not interested in any counterpoints. You enter this thread with different views, expect people to think differently than you, and/or have different reasoning. No one is required to offer all their reasons or fully explain any situation.
So I would rather not have everyone debating each post, or we'll never be sharing them stories like we are suppose to.


now if we can please move on with the topic and people stop questioning this O.o

Here's another thing my old DM banned: Pathfinder. Yet he allowed 3.0 feats and class's in our 3.5 games(which introduce the same issue of, they weren't made for eachother,... maybe more so)
He had this magic item booklet made for 3.0,... some of it worked in 3.5 but a lot of it didn't. He insisted we all accept it as part of the game. I think he was just crutching on any excuse for the booklet not to go to waste.

[weckar]

I once had to bad a variation on the Locate City Nuke. I've seen other people ban any form of PC-on-PC surgery after.... incidents.

[Axinian]

I once had to ban the... KUNG FU BEAR!!!!

We were playing a 10-12th level gestalt game, one of the first ongoing campaigns I ever ran in fact (not sure why the hell I agreed to do a gestalt game as my first but whatever). It was really fun and everyone made really overpowered characters, at least compared to what we were used to. This was fine as I got to have fun making really overpowered monsters.

However, one player's character died and he came back to the table with a Druid//Monk. The monk aspect didn't make him overpowered he could have had any class with extra feats in that slot. I don't remember his exact build unfortunately so you might have to take my word on this. He would wildshape into something called an Ursa... something, basically just giant bear. Not too bad, just gave him ridiculous physical ability scores. But he also had some ridiculous combination of many attacks + knockback+ Combat Reflexes + insane reach that made it literally impossible for my monsters to approach him or the party without being knocked back (and prone I think) and taking massive amounts of damage. He probably could have taken all the planned encounters on his own, but after 1 we all agreed (even the player) that the character should be banned and he make something else. Even he was surprised about how insane it was and actually apologized afterwards.

Otherwise I haven't had players that bring things to the table that are so overpowered or silly as to require banning.

[Gavinfoxx]

He had Frozen Wild Shape, and it was an Urskan, from Frostburn.

[jedipotter]

Other then my standard ''we are playing D&D here not a pen and paper video game'' bans like the Tome of Magic and the Tome of Battle..........the big thing I bad are player creations.

Its common for a player to try and slip something like ''my character has a Zoot Sword...it is a social sword made out of Zoot and can cut through anything'' or things like ''my weapon has a non magical +5 enchantment to hit''. Spells with no saves or SR, or silly things like ''it does nonmagical fire damage.''

My favorite is prestige classes. The classic is the ability that does something like ''1d6 damage per round it is held active''.

[Silentone98]

.

Not that those things are strictly banned from my games or anything but:

I enforce sticking to the books, and new campaigns always start at level 1.

That's not to say I don't make exceptions, but players bringing in wtf swords like that don't become an issue since everyone starts at base.

same with custom spells and such. So I mostly end up dodging such issues and it doesn't come up.
I've had to create custom races and feats and class's before to accommodate particularly needy players.. which basically was, they tell me what they want, I write something up- run it by 2 or 3 more experienced players for balancing help... then present to the player for approval and go from there.
If im at a shortage of people to assist, I turn to these forums, lol.

[shylocke]

3rd edition boots of striding and leaping got banned because of my monk. 180ft plus 10ft step as a move action.

[Forrestfire]

Other then my standard ''we are playing D&D here not a pen and paper video game'' bans like the Tome of Magic and the Tome of Battle..........the big thing I bad are player creations.

Please tell me that this is meant to be blue :smallconfused:

[Telok]

Please tell me that this is meant to be blue :smallconfused:

Don't worry I didn't understand any of that either. Especially the bit about social swords and banning spells without SR or saves. And nonmagic fire... Did he ban oil and torches?

I mean, I can understand disliking the Orf of X spells because they replace all single target direct damage spells and reinforce the magic = win button paradigm. I can understand not liking the descriptive text of ToB (and those legacy weapons in the book are trash). But a level in a prestige class that grants 1d6 damage a round when "held active" (what is held and who is active?) is more like a +1 weapon or armor enhancement than a game warping... something.

Could we please have some clarification what was actually banned?

[Alent]

Don't worry I didn't understand any of that either. Especially the bit about social swords and banning spells without SR or saves. And nonmagic fire... Did he ban oil and torches?

Social knights always use social swords.

Fire emblem jokes aside, what ~is~ a social sword? :smallconfused:


I mean, I can understand disliking the Orf of X spells because they replace all single target direct damage spells and reinforce the magic = win button paradigm. I can understand not liking the descriptive text of ToB (and those legacy weapons in the book are trash). But a level in a prestige class that grants 1d6 damage a round when "held active" (what is held and who is active?) is more like a +1 weapon or armor enhancement than a game warping... something.

Could we please have some clarification what was actually banned?

I'm kind of baffled at 1d6 a round being banworthy. I'd like to know what was so bad about this. :smallconfused:

[Kafros]

-a half golem golem... well I didnt exactly ban it but I explained the player that a half golem golem has a level adjustment of +12 in a level 13 campaign so he would start as a level 1, (he somehow seem to think that I would allow him to get another 12 levels on top of that). Then he presented me with a half minotaur minotaur, a warforged charger warforged and after ... 48 hours of correcting his character sheets I baned the player from the campaign. Mainly cause correcting his character sheets took more time than making the campaign and ... he still had no valid character to play.

-an artificer effiger with 4 tarsque effigies.... I was actually tempted to let him play that but the player decided to withdraw that character after I made a comment on the lines.... I wonder how does a colossal tarasque squeeze through a medium sized door. And that was before I started correcting the other mistakes in the character sheet

[Firechanter]

I am still not sure what the OP has in mind when he asks about banning ridiculous things: stuff that is so gamebreaking that it's ridiculous, or acceptable stuff that's ridiculous to ban?

Back in 3.0 days, I banned Monks. And not only because they didn't fit the theme I wanted for my game, but because I considered them overpowered. "I mean look at them, lots of attacks, three good saves, a Special every level..."
But that was typical back then; nobody really understood the system and the Druid was considered perfectly balanced with the Rogue.

In the last 5 years or so, I didn't have to ban anything that a player brought to the table. I did, however, preemptively ban certain things, such as the Celerity line of spells, various broken Kobold crap and certain other Magicks.

[TuggyNE]

Its common for a player to try and slip something like ''my character has a Zoot Sword...it is a social sword made out of Zoot and can cut through anything'' or things like ''my weapon has a non magical +5 enchantment to hit''.

What is this I don't even. Who even does that? Do you have to recruit from six-year-olds? :smalleek:


Spells with no saves or SR, or silly things like ''it does nonmagical fire damage.''

Heh. Well, the orb line is not homebrew, although it might be better if it were. And I think it should be fairly clear that it is at least theoretically possible for a spell to cause mundane fire damage indirectly: for example, if burning hands lights someone on fire, the 1d6/round is nonmagical. d6/level mundane fire, now, that's a lot harder to justify.


My favorite is prestige classes. The classic is the ability that does something like ''1d6 damage per round it is held active''.

I dunno, it's hard for me to consider that classic when it sounds like nothing I have ever heard of. (For one thing, is it charging for increasing damage, continuous damage at the same rate, or what?)


Social knights always use social swords.

Fire emblem jokes aside, what ~is~ a social sword? :smallconfused:

Special, I bet. An odd typo but not impossible.


I am still not sure what the OP has in mind when he asks about banning ridiculous things: stuff that is so gamebreaking that it's ridiculous, or acceptable stuff that's ridiculous to ban?

Yeah, I don't know either.

[Svata]

Other then my standard ''we are playing D&D here not a pen and paper video game'' bans like the Tome of Magic and the Tome of Battle..........the big thing I bad are player creations.

Its common for a player to try and slip something like ''my character has a Zoot Sword...it is a social sword made out of Zoot and can cut through anything'' or things like ''my weapon has a non magical +5 enchantment to hit''. Spells with no saves or SR, or silly things like ''it does nonmagical fire damage.''

My favorite is prestige classes. The classic is the ability that does something like ''1d6 damage per round it is held active''.

Firstly, ToM is cool, even if not the most well-edited thing in the world, and ToB makes martial characters useful, and gives them actual options.


As for the rest... What?

[Rejusu]

Here's another that another DM banned: Correcting the DM, midplay

See I'd consider this because if someone corrects me midplay my first instinct is to reach for the rulebook and look it up, and that just slows the game down. Nevermind the fact that I've seen players try and correct DMs (or other players) on rules they don't understand themselves. Once had a player try to tell another player that you only got a reduced penalty on TWF if your off-hand weapon was a short sword. Not a light weapon, specifically a short sword. :smallannoyed:

I had to step in there because the DM wasn't too familiar with the rules himself at this point. Rules disputes (unless they result in some major problems like character death) should probably be worked out post session, and that way everyone knows for the next game.


Psionics aren't technically banned, but you must succeed on a Concentration (DC 15) check every time you manifest a power or every spellcaster in a 10-mile radius is alerted to your presence and will want to kill you. While DC 15 isn't terrible. It is annoying. Apparently, he does this because he thinks that psionics are overpowered.

And spellcasting isn't? :smallconfused:


I also ban names like "Ragnarok" and "Bloodwind Howler". Both have been attempted by that same guy.

See I would allow this, but with a condition and a warning. The condition would be that it couldn't be his real name, his real name would have to be something terribly embarrassing like Mimsy Pimplebottom. The warning would be that every NPC he meets would react like a real person would if he introduced himself with that name: laughter and derision.


The most absurd ban I've ever seen was a 4ed DM who banned shifting (equivalent of 5ft steps). To be fair, it wasn't deliberate - he had apparently not even bothered reading the PHB and refused to believe that a mechanic like that existed. Whether that puts him in a better or worse light, I don't know.

*snip*

I've also seen Psionics banned a lot, either due to it being wrongly perceived as OP or due to DMs just not liking the flavor.

Any DM who hasn't read the rules and isn't prepared to accept input from players who have has no business DMing. Poor Psionics. So many examples of bans that have resulted from a lack of system knowledge in this thread. As for not liking the flavour I find that really bothersome too. Flavour is malleable. Most everything can be refluffed to fit the setting.

[Bloodgruve]

2.) I attack that rat,.. inspiration reset. Is there a fly in the room? I attack it. O.o

3.) yes it does.

4.) this is rather insultive if taken one way

This is an issue with impact per turn



2. I interpreted and played Inspiration as reset not cumulative. I can see how, if you had a problem player, you wouldn't want this in your game.

3. Here I assumed that your player grabbed a net build. Generally with and IF build you'll be dipping out enough that you'll never get Cunning Brilliance. Even so, if you can deal with 9th lvl spells this is no worse and it's only Extraordinary abilities.

4. Sorry bout that, after reading some of your other posts I figured if you could dish it you could take it.

I agree Cunning Surge needs limiting.

In the hands of a good player Factotum is a well balanced class. In the hands of a munchkin I'll concede that it could get messy. IMHO

[Raezeman]

I've banned one thing from my campaign: bringing in player characters from other campaigns. If they want to just use the stats and name and such and come in at the same level as the current party, fine. Had one guy try to bring in a level 9 into a party of level 3's.

that guy didn't actually think he would be allowed to bring in a level 9 character in a level 3 group, did he? I mean, he might as well ask if he could use this special d20 that only has 20s on it...

[Silentone98]

I am still not sure what the OP has in mind when he asks about banning ridiculous things: stuff that is so gamebreaking that it's ridiculous, or acceptable stuff that's ridiculous to ban?



As I stated twice already. Take your pick- either goes.... we all make mistakes, players and DM's alike, and both can be equally amusing.



Adding the above to the OP.

Yea, Blood... I only questioned someones understanding of the rules when what they say is clear opposite of stated rules in the books. I.E. the guy in that flat-footed discussion. I find it a bit messed up if someone does the same to me over an opinion and not over RAW O.o
If there was something in clear violation of RAW, an oopsie I made, I'd certainly at that point go as far as EXPECT you or someone to point it out.

I will say I speak half out my ass when it comes to Factotum, since I never allowed myself to play with one.

And the player did grab a Net build.. I honestly don't remember the details, but it revolved around feats and skills to take, race picks,.. that sort of thing. It held his hand and told him what to take. He did this with every fricken character concept he had, shows me something on the net and says that's what he wants.... my whole table was grumbling about forcing him to make a character on his own and unplug the internet, lol.

And part of why im getting touchy is because im damn near being attacked here over Factotum, yet theres clearly others that feel the same way. And in a thread about sharing stories! Not debating such silliness.


@Rejusu
Yea, I can see where the DM came from on that one.... it really does slow down game pace. But being barred from even bringing up things that can severely effect you if it's being done wrong/poorly? And even if your right, get nothing but a shrug "Opps, its established! too late now!" from your DM afterwards... more than a bit wrong. Needless to say, no one wanted to play with him as DM after a lot of his mistakes were brought to light.

as to psionics. That argument goes both ways.... there are just as many valid arguments against them as there are invalid ones. In some cases, I would question the players ability to not understand why it was banned, rather the DM for banning it.
and the DM can always just say: We got enough things confusing up the gameplay already... please spare me the headache.

-with that said, im personally still allowing psionics at this time.

[Dawgmoah]

that guy didn't actually think he would be allowed to bring in a level 9 character in a level 3 group, did he? I mean, he might as well ask if he could use this special d20 that only has 20s on it...

Yes, he did actually. He threatened to leave the campaign if he didn't get his way so I said nothing's keeping you buddy.... It's another variation of what Jediplotter mentioned above: he would then try to sneak in any number of odd feats and magic items "given" to him by this other DM.

I have a nice shiny web page full of information on how to create a character in my game: which was promptly ignored.

And he has not been back since though he did hit me on Skype and wanted help building some outrageous build for another game. I told him I am admittedly one of the worst optimizers the world has ever seen and perhaps go look up some of the handbooks instead.

[Rejusu]

@Rejusu
Yea, I can see where the DM came from on that one.... it really does slow down game pace. But being barred from even bringing up things that can severely effect you if it's being done wrong/poorly? And even if your right, get nothing but a shrug "Opps, its established! too late now!" from your DM afterwards... more than a bit wrong. Needless to say, no one wanted to play with him as DM after a lot of his mistakes were brought to light.

as to psionics. That argument goes both ways.... there are just as many valid arguments against them as there are invalid ones. In some cases, I would question the players ability to not understand why it was banned, rather the DM for banning it.
and the DM can always just say: We got enough things confusing up the gameplay already... please spare me the headache.

-with that said, im personally still allowing psionics at this time.

I haven't stopped players from correcting me, I'm just saying I'd consider it. If I'm having to reach for the rulebooks every five seconds the game isn't going to get anywhere. And considering I probably know the rules the most out of anyone at the table odds are it's not going to be a correction so much as a rule they misunderstood. At any rate I'm not saying that DMs shouldn't be corrected or that they should establish their misunderstandings as house rules. I'm just saying that sometimes it's better to wait until the end of the session if it's not a big deal.

As for Psionics I take serious issue with anyone that bans it because it's "overpowered" yet allows full spellcasters. I would always question the DM for banning anything, not just Psionics, if they didn't have a valid reason for doing so.

[Story]

Why stop at full spellcasters? I played a game where Anima Mage + Persist Spell was allowed but psionics still wasn't.

[Silentone98]

Why stop at full spellcasters? I played a game where Anima Mage + Persist Spell was allowed but psionics still wasn't.

hence the title... commence the giggles.

bottom line, regardless of who was in the wrong... **** happens, lol.
I'll have to look anima mage up later

[Xervous]

I ban foods while strongly discouraging drinks and phones. Of course, players are free to keep such things off the table so as to not distract/threaten the game at hand.

So far we haven't lost any more character sheets to water/grease damage and no precious books have been tarnished. Also, the players pay more attention.

[SiuiS]

Don't worry I didn't understand any of that either. Especially the bit about social swords and banning spells without SR or saves. And nonmagic fire... Did he ban oil and torches?

Contextually, being able to throw nonmagical fire. But yeah. Weird.


I mean, I can understand disliking the Orf of X spells because they replace all single target direct damage spells and reinforce the magic = win button paradigm.

That's actually a misunderstanding; the orbs can be shot through a field of anti magic, but spells cannot be cast in the first place in antimagic, so they aren't quote as broken as people seem to think.


*


Lessee. I've banned flaws. Once, because of a two hour argument that some one should get a bonus feat all of a sudden when they lose an arm (because they now have a flaw...) and once because, screw it, take two feats for free and I'll use your character's personality against you in fun ways.

I've banned the player's handbook, before. Wrote up an introductory campaign based on oriental adventures, and decided that instead of limiting what my players could take by deduction, I would allow stuff by addition. So every option they were allowed to use was written out and handed to them, from feats and classes to equipment. Rather than get frustrated though, the group unanimously declared the idea fantastic, since the clearly delineated choices made the entire tone and narrative come together before even we began to play.

[Seerow]

I played pathfinder once. It was basically the same thing as banning fun for anybody who doesn't want to be a caster.

[Mrc.]

I don't really consider banning this ridiculous, but BoEF. If your players ever ask to use this, chances are they're too immature to do so. Of course, I'm sure that many people have found it enhanced their roleplaying, but I did my best frowny face when one of my players sidled up to me and politely asked for this. I was less than amused. :smallmad:

[Alent]

I played pathfinder once. It was basically the same thing as banning fun for anybody who doesn't want to be a caster.

In this venue, my DM banned limp lash the one time I used it.

For those of you who don't play Pathfinder, Limp Lash is a level 2 wizard spell that you make a whip-type ranged touch attack with. The target then takes an immediate 1d6 str, dex, and con penalty, and another one every turn until you release the whip. When any of the above stats reach 1, the creature becomes paralyzed.

Level 2 spell, there is no save, the drain can be maximized and enlarged.

It sucks to be a melee in Golarion.

It also isn't that good to be a dragon, either.

[Eldonauran]

I once ran a strictly Core game (PHB, DMG, MMI) game and did not allow any variants rule (this includes prestige class, btw).

It was highly entertaining. We had; a barbarian4/druid16, a cleric16/monk4, a Fighter3/wizard17 and Rogue4/Bard16. They didn't have a single issue the entire game, mostly due to the spellcasting between them.

[Silentone98]

I once ran a strictly Core game (PHB, DMG, MMI) game and did not allow any variants rule (this includes prestige class, btw).

It was highly entertaining. We had; a barbarian4/druid16, a cleric16/monk4, a Fighter3/wizard17 and Rogue4/Bard16. They didn't have a single issue the entire game, mostly due to the spellcasting between them.

O.o really now? I am actually surprised at the wizard getting some fighter levels. Same with cleric. I mean they all sound kinda weird but especially those two

I want to play in that campaign with you guys >.<

[JusticeZero]

Elves. Also pixies, but mostly elves. It was an issue with a couple of people..

[Alent]

It was an issue with a couple of people..

The non-gameplay bans seem to have this as a very common justification.

I find this very amusing, one day we will have to start a "What did that one player do?" thread.

[Necroticplague]

A DM I was once with banned using the internet while playing. He had a pretty good reason that he told us: "It takes up way too much time and slows down combat by an incredible amount".Fair enough. But later, after the campaign was over, he actually said this to me: I wanted you to stop playing that class, or at least tone it down. You simply had too many options, and I needed to restrict you somehow." Said class was a homebrew from these boards. So if I couldn't look at my class, surely it'd weaken me? It kinda backfired when that just made me memorize every piece of it, meaning I knew it better than before. To be fair, he kept with the rule in the future (thus leading to the creation of my Rainbow Beguilersnake builds, with the only book needed was a printout of of beguiler spells/day table, bonus slots table, and a stickynote in "cleric spells" in the PHB).

[Eldonauran]

O.o really now? I am actually surprised at the wizard getting some fighter levels. Same with cleric. I mean they all sound kinda weird but especially those two

I want to play in that campaign with you guys >.<

Funny thing about the wizard. He actually started as a fighter with 14 Int. Everyone else in the party starting multiclassing early and just decided to jump into wizard at 4th level. He certainly had a knack for playing a wizard. Stuck to mostly spells that lacked somatic components and picked up still spell when he couldn't.

The cleric dipped monk right away for the Wis bonus to AC. He was convinced to take monk to level 4 so that he didn't "waste any BAB". We weren't using any variants (even fractional BAB). I have suspect it was for the good saves too. I certainly wasn't pulling any punches in that campaign.

I walked away from that game understanding one thing very clearly... You really don't need to optimize to own the monsters in the MMI equal to your ECL. At least, if every single own of your players is a spellcaster of some sort. The rogue/bard was a UMD beast. She even took craft wand and staff. I've never seen a party appreciate their trap finder/party buffer (aka bard) so much in my life.

[kpumphre]

My rogue swashbuckler who used Weapon finess/Power attack/Insightful strike with a spike chain was banned well more told house rule that would not work.

[Brookshw]

That's actually a misunderstanding; the orbs can be shot through a field of anti magic, but spells cannot be cast in the first place in antimagic, so they aren't quote as broken as people seem to think.

That's pretty well understood actually. Still very powerful.

[Divide by Zero]

As for Psionics I take serious issue with anyone that bans it because it's "overpowered" yet allows full spellcasters. I would always question the DM for banning anything, not just Psionics, if they didn't have a valid reason for doing so.

I would imagine that 99% of the people who ban psionics but not spellcasters for reasons other than flavor are doing it because they missed the rule about not spending more PP than your ML at once.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

I don't really consider banning this ridiculous, but BoEF. If your players ever ask to use this, chances are they're too immature to do so. Of course, I'm sure that many people have found it enhanced their roleplaying, but I did my best frowny face when one of my players sidled up to me and politely asked for this. I was less than amused. :smallmad:

There is one class from that book that, with the exception of one line of fluff, wouldn't be out of place in normal play. Of course, you may still want to ban it for its content, but that's because it's basically the Incantatrix, but only three levels long (so you can have all of both in one build!). It is, of course, the Metaphysical Spellshaper.

[Seerow]

I would imagine that 99% of the people who ban psionics but not spellcasters for reasons other than flavor are doing it because they missed the rule about not spending more PP than your ML at once.

They also tend to miss that all of the things Wizards get to do for free requires a Manifester to expend psionic focus (thus preventing the vast majority of metamagic stacking)

[Santra]

Had a DM who banned monks for being "OP". Same DM also claimed that fighters were the best (non-monk) class in the phb and that warlocks are so OP he will kick you out of the group if you even consider playing one.

He also gave wizards d6 hit dice because "d4 is just an unplayable typo".

He was my first DM so I had no idea at the time he was just an idiot.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

They also tend to miss that all of the things Wizards get to do for free requires a Manifester to expend psionic focus (thus preventing the vast majority of metamagic stacking)

And they often don't quite grasp just how very powerful the core casters (and others of their ilk) are. Or that they can Nova just (or just about) as hard as the manifesters. There tends to be a sense of "well, I mean, I know the Wizard/Cleric/Druid is Tier 1, but they can't do [insert psionic thing here], can they?" Even when the [psionic thing] is well within the bounds of what those casters can do.

[Silentone98]

And they often don't quite grasp just how very powerful the core casters (and others of their ilk) are. Or that they can Nova just (or just about) as hard as the manifesters. There tends to be a sense of "well, I mean, I know the Wizard/Cleric/Druid is Tier 1, but they can't do [insert psionic thing here], can they?" Even when the [psionic thing] is well within the bounds of what those casters can do.

I agree, and I think the bigger issue is they key in to a few things, and ultimately ban the whole without giving the rest a chance.


this particular issue is amplified since mostly experienced players turn to psionics. It's not exactly something you find at your first game, not being core and all.
Therefore what they build will end up more powerful than your new DM, or new players are ready for- giving the wrong impression.

this also doesn't help when a new and/or casual DM is hosting a group of all casual and/or new players. Now experienced player X is the only one that really optimizes, but he also wants to play something fun... psionics fits the bill.

I seen the above happen enough times to think its nearly a trend.

[CrazyYanmega]

I would imagine that 99% of the people who ban psionics but not spellcasters for reasons other than flavor are doing it because they missed the rule about not spending more PP than your ML at once.

I was not aware that this was a thing. Interesting.

In relation to psionics, I once had a DM effectively ban mixing Psionics and Spellcasting. Moderately amusing story behind that, if anyone is interested.

[Silentone98]

I was not aware that this was a thing. Interesting.

In relation to psionics, I once had a DM effectively ban mixing Psionics and Spellcasting. Moderately amusing story behind that, if anyone is interested.


very interested.
Especially about mixing spellcasting and psionics.... in what context are we talking? like two classes, one psionic, and one arcane on the same character? or merging the two systems into the same magical item?

elaborate, im interested, :)

[CrazyYanmega]

Okay, this is all my fault, really. Okay, first some background. I was talking to my DM about an upcoming campaign (which I did not end up joining, due to disagreements between me and two of the other players). We were also discussing hobbies, and I introduced my DM to "A Certain Magical Index."

For all you non-otaku out there, ACMI is a Light Novel series that roughly focuses around a conflict between the Magic Faction (underground spellcasters who mix arcane and divine magic) and the Science Faction (Humans who have awakened as Psychics and those who study them).

Now, here is where my DM started to get interested. See, anyone who uses magic cannot awaken to psionics. However, psions can use magic. At a price. Something along the lines of 4d6 CON damage per spell.

I pointed out that there WAS an Arcane/Psion Prestige Class, and that there was a character in the series who could use both Psionics AND magic. "Sure, you can do that, and reduce the Constitution damage. If you live that long. I really like this. Thank you for showing me this."

"Screw you."

[Firechanter]

Well, casters can't keep spamming max level Powers until they run out of points, can they?

That's not to say I ban Psi for power reasons. In fact I hear it is supposed to be balaced better than Vancian magic. I just cba to become proficient with yet another subsystem. :p

[Aharon]

My GM banned an alchemist build (not the pathfinder one... talking normal 3.5 here). I used some tricks to bypass the epic feat requirement for creating stronger alchemical items and then cranked out alchemy checks of unbelievably high levels (over 250 craft alchemy) to turn things like alchemist's fire into 11d6 fire damage with +12 splash. Eberron had a dual element version of alchemist fire that could get 11d4 of acid +12 acid splash and 11d4 of fire +12 fire splash in one flask. It would be a fine character if I stopped there, but I also added in some treasure chest homonculous to hold all my flasks and used metamagic tricks on the 0 level spell launch item from a wand. Twin spell chain spell allowed me to throw a very large number of flasks per standard action. 2 + (CLx2) bottles per activation at a range of 400 ft +40 per level. For instance, with a caster level 10 wand and dual wand wielding I could throw 44 flasks of alchemical items that did 20d4 damage+24splash damage per bottle. Eberron also had some alchemical bombs (edit: Explosive packs, Secret of Sarlona) that I could make that would level a city block (edit: 110d6 damage in a 220 ft radius, no save. can be set to do double damage to inanimate, unattended, stationary objects..i.e. city blocks). I could coat the bombs in another alchemical item to make them affect the ethereal plane. The bombs really did a ridiculous amount of damage after you increase them with epic alchemy. I just liked the idea of blowing away a huge chunk of a city and its ghosts.

It is probably my favorite build that I never got to play, largely because alchemy theme is so hard to do in standard 3.5. I was happy to find a loophole into epic alchemy. But also because of the cool factor of hunting through obscure books for weird overlooked alchemical items that when the dmg, or area, or duration is multiplied by 11, become REALLY AWESOME ITEMS! I particularly liked the undead killing positoxins I could make. Liquid mortality would of been awesome versus undead. DC 20 fort save against corporeal undead only with initial damage of 10d4 strength drain, secondary 20d4 str drain, if the undeads strength reached 0 it was destroyed outright!

The GM made a rule after I told him about this build.
"The Epic handbook doesn't exist until you reach 21st level."

The same GM also banned an infinite power point trick I came up with. So I came up with a different one. He banned that one too. So I looked online to see if there were anymore infinite PP tricks. I found some that I didn't think worked personally. But I did find one more infinite PP trick that I felt was legal. I tried to play the third infinite PP trick and the GM made another new rule. "No infinite loops allowed."

@epic alchemy
What tricks would that be? I thought about a non-magic using character that did this, but I couldn't manage without 3rd party stuff.

[Silentone98]

Well, casters can't keep spamming max level Powers until they run out of points, can they?


well, the argument on this one is that they burn themselves out for the day by burning up all the PP s fast.
I dislike that argument for several reasons, but its true.

the thing I don't like most is psions seem to have a tendency to fall into an impact per turn vs impact per day trade-off depending on their in combat actions and im not too thrilled with the potential extremes on both sides of the trade-off.

it's nothing worth getting into tho I don't think.... Either ban it or keep it. But it's not worth the debate. Personally I couldn't find enough to ban it for... so it stays for my groups.

[Threadnaught]

Official WotC Classes.

From Wizard to Psion, from Swordsage to Fighter, from Artificer to Aristocrat. They're all banned in one game, for the players' use.

[Valtu]

but could you 'define' low OP, high OP or whatever to me?

is low OP, still OP in regards to normal standard class's? Or is this a way of saying the class build does not fit in with an OP group(which is fine by me,... breaking off too far from the standard power level of a regular group is no fun in my book)

What they're saying in this context is whether a build is high or low "op" as in optimization, not whether a character is "O.P." as in overpowered. All the really similar abbreviations can definitely get confusing.

I personally get a little tired of hearing about tiers as well. It all seems pretty subjective, and, with the right person and level of optimization, I'm sure classes on one end of the spectrum can easily move over to the other side.

[nedz]

What they're saying in this context is whether a build is high or low "op" as in optimization, not whether a character is "O.P." as in overpowered. All the really similar abbreviations can definitely get confusing.

I personally get a little tired of hearing about tiers as well. It all seems pretty subjective, and, with the right person and level of optimization, I'm sure classes on one end of the spectrum can easily move over to the other side.

OP can also stand for Original Poster or Original Post (in the thread). This can be a little confusing but the context is normally clear.

As to tiers: Player > Build > Class and whilst optimisation can move classes up a tier or two this applies to T1 also. I've certainly seem low tier Wizards: 16th level Wizard who in any fight who only ever casts Magic Missile or Fireball :smallsigh: Moving a Low tier class upwards is much harder, generally there are only a handful of known tricks for this.

[Talya]

Official WotC Classes.

From Wizard to Psion, from Swordsage to Fighter, from Artificer to Aristocrat. They're all banned in one game, for the players' use.


That's fine... if one is using pathfinder or Sword & Sorcery or something. If you're actually playing D&D, that's sorta like banning all motor vehicles from autoracing.

[Necroticplague]

That's fine... if one is using pathfinder or Sword & Sorcery or something. If you're actually playing D&D, that's sorta like banning all motor vehicles from autoracing.

Thank the skies for advancing by HD and Templates.

Or that statement is an indication that 'brew was used. Which would make it for like banning all cars from autoracing (and then watching everyone switch to motorcycles).

[ArendK]

I tend to have an issue with the elemental kin (Ifrit, Undine, and the other two who I can't think of atm) as well as other races like goliaths, template-spam, and other assorted goofiness. They just seem...there. Even as a dedicated character developer, I can't think of much I can really do interesting with them. The Aasimar/Tieflings? I have no issues either way with them.

Admittedly, I'm kind of a stickler GM most of the time, as I generally go for the more straight-forward, traditional style of game emphasizing story (preferably the party's developing story as a group and not just what the crap I wrote) and memorable challenges. It's hard to tell a good story with the Ifrit sorcerer going "well, I'm a genie-kin of fire, of course I have to burn everything down."

Certain things that have plausibility I am apt to allow if the player can sell it to me (so to speak) about actually wanting to develop the character as a person and see what happens. A lot of times though, I wind up seeing silliness emerge.

[Threadnaught]

That's fine... if one is using pathfinder or Sword & Sorcery or something. If you're actually playing D&D, that's sorta like banning all motor vehicles from autoracing.

Yeah, no. We're playing D&D 3.5e in Eberron.

I prefer to think of it as a race where you have to use some form of transportation other than your own feet. No wheels allowed. :smallamused:
Yes, this ruling allows you to use other people's feet.

Thank the skies for advancing by HD and Templates.

Or that statement is an indication that 'brew was used. Which would make it for like banning all cars from autoracing (and then watching everyone switch to motorcycles).

Yep, PCs may have levels in approved homebrew classes only.

[Brookshw]

Yeah, no. We're playing D&D 3.5e in Eberron.
.

can I interest you in playing call of cthuhlu in eberron instead?

[Threadnaught]

can I interest you in playing call of cthuhlu in eberron instead?

Well... I am planning on running some horror. :smallamused:


Oh, are you using Blue because you're being sarcastic? Good one, yeah. Totally didn't see that one coming, just like my players when they end up meeting Cthulhu (a Half-Dragon Ilithid) anyway.

[Silentone98]

My DM once shared a story about how a DM he played under once blocked the entire parties paths with a giant mithril door.

so they chipped away at the sides(non-mithril doorway/wall) until they brought the mithril door out and dragged it all the way to town to sell at around level 5.

This wasn't banned, but,.... interesting. Poor DM had his defenses turned into party profit. The party didn't even stop for a second to think "Wtf.... how do we get by this?" it was an automatic, FREE MONEY!!! And they treated the entire campaign in that way, taking anything and everything that wasn't nailed down, and even then some. lol

[Seerow]

My DM once shared a story about how a DM he played under once blocked the entire parties paths with a giant mithril door.

so they chipped away at the sides(non-mithril doorway/wall) until they brought the mithril door out and dragged it all the way to town to sell at around level 5.

This wasn't banned, but,.... interesting. Poor DM had his defenses turned into party profit. The party didn't even stop for a second to think "Wtf.... how do we get by this?" it was an automatic, FREE MONEY!!! And they treated the entire campaign in that way, taking anything and everything that wasn't nailed down, and even then some. lol

It's all fun and games until the door explodes.

[Calimehter]

so they chipped away at the sides(non-mithril doorway/wall) until they brought the mithril door out and dragged it all the way to town to sell at around level 5.

You know, we tried that trick once too when confronted with the same obstacle, but we were too low level/unequipped to get the thing back to town, so we went back to town ourselves and went about the process of hiring some grunt labor and making inquiries to local merchants about moving that much mithral.

Unfortunately, "loose lips sink ships", as they say. Someone overheard us and put two and two together, and got out there ahead of us and stole the door before we could. :smallannoyed:

Some of that was the DM saving his own butt, but we really did spend a lot of time around town getting a lot of "while we are here I also want to do X . . ." auxiliary-type tasks done, so it was partly our fault too.

[nedz]

My DM once shared a story about how a DM he played under once blocked the entire parties paths with a giant mithril door.

so they chipped away at the sides(non-mithril doorway/wall) until they brought the mithril door out and dragged it all the way to town to sell at around level 5.

This wasn't banned, but,.... interesting. Poor DM had his defenses turned into party profit. The party didn't even stop for a second to think "Wtf.... how do we get by this?" it was an automatic, FREE MONEY!!! And they treated the entire campaign in that way, taking anything and everything that wasn't nailed down, and even then some. lol

I used to dress ancient Dwarf complexes with Mithril doors until one party suddenly realised that the door was worth a lot of cash. I stopped doing this thereafter. I think this comes under the heading of realising fluff.

[SiuiS]

I played pathfinder once. It was basically the same thing as banning fun for anybody who doesn't want to be a caster.

Hahahahahahahahahaha!



You really don't need to optimize

every single own of your players is a spellcaster of some sort.

I think you've misunderstood 'optimization'.


That's pretty well understood actually. Still very powerful.

There was an entire thread on that just recently, actually. Most very intelligent 3.5 people didn't note that caveat.


Official WotC Classes.

From Wizard to Psion, from Swordsage to Fighter, from Artificer to Aristocrat. They're all banned in one game, for the players' use.

Huh. That would be neat.

[Threadnaught]

There was an entire thread on that just recently, actually. Most very intelligent 3.5 people didn't note that caveat.

Really? An entire thread?

How many pages before someone stated that. No magic can* be cast in an AMF, but Instantaneous Conjurations aren't suppressed while in an AMF as long as they had been cast outside of the AMF.

*Chosen of Mystra, can.


Huh. That would be neat.

So far so good, the last few hours were supposed to be the second session, but one of the players couldn't get online. Problems with Skype.

I've seen plenty of Class ban stories here, but I'd never before seen anyone mention banning everything. So it seemed appropriate.


Also by linking the players to these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245701), it's a much friendlier introduction to the game than linking them to these (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/classes.htm). :smallyuk:

[Silentone98]

Also by linking the players to these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245701), it's a much friendlier introduction to the game than linking them to these (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/classes.htm). :smallyuk:

was this a joke? the first link scares me with unfamiliar names and class's not easily(at all) found in the core books O.O

[Forrestfire]

Honestly, I'd rather have a new player start by reading the basic rules, then this (http://www.brilliantgameologists.com/boards/?topic=1002.0) and this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5256.0), assuming that they want to spend the time doing it.

[SiuiS]

Really? An entire thread?

How many pages before someone stated that. No magic can* be cast in an AMF, but Instantaneous Conjurations aren't suppressed while in an AMF as long as they had been cast outside of the AMF.

*Chosen of Mystra, can.

I was, as far as I know, the first person to bring it up. When called on my BS, someone else linked to the relevant SRD text. I know the thread eventually hit double digits, but didn't care for the vitriol. I just remember it was weird no one knew that and everyone was so angry about everything.


was this a joke? the first link scares me with unfamiliar names and class's not easily(at all) found in the core books O.O

The point was a game where all official wizards of the coast classes are banned, so of course there wouldn't be familiar classes.

[Silentone98]

Rod of Wonder

idk why my old DM banned it...
one of my new players reminded me of this, as he also had a DM ban it.

I think the explanation went "Some players cant control themselves"
:)

[The Trickster]

Well, the Deck of Many Things is pretty ridiculous, so we normally ban it.

Psychic Warriors are banned a lot in my games too. They are deemed as OP. It only takes one uber charger optimizer to ruin a class for everyone. :smallconfused:

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Well, the Deck of Many Things is pretty ridiculous, so we normally ban it.

Psychic Warriors are banned a lot in my games too. They are deemed as OP. It only takes one uber charger optimizer to ruin a class for everyone. :smallconfused:

What happens when somebody rolls up with an ubercharger Commoner? Does the Commoner get banned as OP?

[bekeleven]

I was, as far as I know, the first person to bring it up. When called on my BS, someone else linked to the relevant SRD text. I know the thread eventually hit double digits, but didn't care for the vitriol. I just remember it was weird no one knew that and everyone was so angry about everything.


An antimagic field suppresses any spell or magical effect used within, brought into, or cast into the area, but does not dispel it.
You can cast spells freely within an AMF, but their effects are suppressed. Good for buffing and such.


The effects of instantaneous conjurations are not affected by an antimagic field because the conjuration itself is no longer in effect, only its result.
The effects of instantaneous conjurations are not suppressed.

Yes, I can see how people would take issue. I don't want to get into the whole "spellcasting is extraordinary" - it looked painful enough reading the thread where JaronK had to repeat himself every other post for 15 pages - but that's the basis for the argument.

[Brookshw]

What happens when somebody rolls up with an ubercharger Commoner? Does the Commoner get banned as OP?

The commoner got banned for op as soon as chicken infested came out :smalltongue:

[Seerow]

What happens when somebody rolls up with an ubercharger Commoner? Does the Commoner get banned as OP?

Depends on definition of ubercharger. A psiwar ubercharger is going to be way more effective than a commoner ubercharger. It's like asking if you ban the totemist for having too good natural attacks after someone banned the Psiwar after somebody at your table created the King of Smack.

[Telok]

Rod of Wonder

idk why my old DM banned it...
one of my new players reminded me of this, as he also had a DM ban it.

I think the explanation went "Some players cant control themselves"
:)

Ah, I understand why. See, I have a thread over in the world building forum where I am keeping a journal of a game. For the past several weeks my players have had a rod of wonder.

They keep using it on each other. When the "combat, not plot" people get bored (eg. fifteen minutes without a fight) they bust out the rod. People have turned orange, grown an extra foot on their shoulder, opened a gate to the plane of shadow, started growing palm leaves, fallen in love, been turned into water, and called down meteorites on themselves.

People get killed and the game gets derailed without adding any real benefit.

[Brookshw]

There was an entire thread on that just recently, actually. Most very intelligent 3.5 people didn't note that caveat.
.

I'm honestly surprised at that. I thought the orbs had kinda driven this home.

[Alent]

Yes, I can see how people would take issue. I don't want to get into the whole "spellcasting is extraordinary" - it looked painful enough reading the thread where JaronK had to repeat himself every other post for 15 pages - but that's the basis for the argument.

This topic is intriguing to me because I've been strongly considering recategorizing Spellcasting as (Su) rather than (Ex) in an upcoming campaign, as part of a homebrew class update.

Now I'm wondering what the ramifications of such a "ban" would be. I consider it ridiculous that Spellcasting is (Ex), but this also unmasks a subtle mechanical reasoning behind it.

[icefractal]

Ah, I understand why. See, I have a thread over in the world building forum where I am keeping a journal of a game. For the past several weeks my players have had a rod of wonder.

They keep using it on each other. When the "combat, not plot" people get bored (eg. fifteen minutes without a fight) they bust out the rod. People have turned orange, grown an extra foot on their shoulder, opened a gate to the plane of shadow, started growing palm leaves, fallen in love, been turned into water, and called down meteorites on themselves.

People get killed and the game gets derailed without adding any real benefit.Now I'm curious - what Rod of Wonder table are you using? Because the thing I noticed about the SRD one is that it's actually safe to keep using repeatedly. In fact, you can use it this way as a discount source of size-category reduction, and (if you have minions to do it) an unlimited source of small gemstones.

[bekeleven]

This topic is intriguing to me because I've been strongly considering recategorizing Spellcasting as (Su) rather than (Ex) in an upcoming campaign, as part of a homebrew class update.

Now I'm wondering what the ramifications of such a "ban" would be. I consider it ridiculous that Spellcasting is (Ex), but this also unmasks a subtle mechanical reasoning behind it.

Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291625) is the thread I was talking about. If you read it you'll begin to notice that JaronK has a cycling list of arguments that resets every 2 pages or so because of the short-term memories of other threadgoers.

A few basic tips about ability categorization:

Na - Granted by Alter Self
Ex Sa - Granted by Polymorph
Ex - Granted by Master of Many Forms
Ex class features - Grabbed by Factotum 19.
Ex + Su - Granted by Shapechange.
Su, Sp - Unusable in AMF (spells are).

Basically, the simplest solution is to say "raw be damned, spells are their own category" or "Spells fit into category A (Na, Ex, Su) but have their own rules (cast in AMF, inaccessible to alter self, polymorph, shapechange, or what have you)", effectively creating a 5th category for them.

[Yawgmoth]

Rod of Wonder

idk why my old DM banned it...
one of my new players reminded me of this, as he also had a DM ban it.

I think the explanation went "Some players cant control themselves"
:) Whereas in my game the Rod of Wonder is mandatory. And like any good DM, I made my own list for it. And made it a major artifact.

[137beth]

I would imagine that 99% of the people who ban psionics but not spellcasters for reasons other than flavor are doing it because they missed the rule about not spending more PP than your ML at once.
I think it's also that they miss the magic-psionics transparency. Then they complain that psionics is totally broken because there's no rules at all for how it interacts with spells:smallsigh:

Anyways, the weirdest thing I've banned was probably all core classes and races, and (almost) all core spells.

I did encounter a DM who banned wands of CLW, because he wanted endurance to be a factor in the game...
which would make sense, except that he was perfectly okay with wands of lesser vigor:smallconfused:

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Depends on definition of ubercharger. A psiwar ubercharger is going to be way more effective than a commoner ubercharger. It's like asking if you ban the totemist for having too good natural attacks after someone banned the Psiwar after somebody at your table created the King of Smack.

A Psywar Ubercharger definitely has a higher ceiling, but after a certain point, where you ceiling ceases to matter. And that point is, for most games, achievable by a Commoner with the right feats and gear. If the King of Smack gets Psywars banned, then yeah, it's reasonable to ask "Would a Totemist run into the same issues?"

[The Insanity]

Any resurrecting effects or spells. If you die, you stay dead.

[12owlbears]

I had a DM who banned swashbucklers because "pirates are gay" and bards because "singing is for girls". Admittedly we were 7 years old at the time. Aside form that the only ridiculous thing I had to bane was a harry spider/incarnate construct/phrenic/winged anthropomorphic whale druid(on a side note would this actually be legal by RAW assuming we allowed 3.0 material).

[jordan.k93]

Personally, I ban all Psionics, however I don't have a good reason, I'm a bit of a noob and after I tried to learn it I though "This is way too ****ing complicated for what it is" and luckily I've never had a player who had their heart set on playing a Psion, so no problems...

Oh, one player wanted to play a Fey-ri for a Level 2 character... After I said no he asked about Dragotuar...

[SiuiS]

You can cast spells freely within an AMF, but their effects are suppressed. Good for buffing and such.


The effects of instantaneous conjurations are not suppressed.

Yes, I can see how people would take issue. I don't want to get into the whole "spellcasting is extraordinary" - it looked painful enough reading the thread where JaronK had to repeat himself every other post for 15 pages - but that's the basis for the argument.

There is text somewhere that says "casting cannot happen in an AMF", but I can't be buggered to go through all that again. We'll have to agree to disagree, I suppose.

[Yawgmoth]

Personally, I ban all Psionics, however I don't have a good reason, I'm a bit of a noob and after I tried to learn it I though "This is way too ****ing complicated for what it is" and luckily I've never had a player who had their heart set on playing a Psion, so no problems... Psionics is literally the simplest spellcasting. You have X points, powers cost Y pp to use. Spend those points, get the power's effect. Some powers let you spend extra points for added effect, and this is noted in their description. You can't spend more points than your caster level without feats/class features that allow such.

That's it. That's really all there is to it. It is a very lightweight system in a game that is 95% spaghetti-code design.

[nedz]

Ah, I understand why. See, I have a thread over in the world building forum where I am keeping a journal of a game. For the past several weeks my players have had a rod of wonder.

They keep using it on each other. When the "combat, not plot" people get bored (eg. fifteen minutes without a fight) they bust out the rod. People have turned orange, grown an extra foot on their shoulder, opened a gate to the plane of shadow, started growing palm leaves, fallen in love, been turned into water, and called down meteorites on themselves.

People get killed and the game gets derailed without adding any real benefit.

Maybe you need to make it unreliable, or have some cost (A uses per day limit maybe?). Retconning this may be unpalatable, so make this happen when they use it in a wild magic zone — you know how those work ?

I'm sure you could arrange this if you wanted, just make sure that they have a warning first (subtle obviously).

Alternatively just destroy it: Your game is more important than one item.

[Silentone98]

Personally, I ban all Psionics, however I don't have a good reason, I'm a bit of a noob and after I tried to learn it I though "This is way too ****ing complicated for what it is" and luckily I've never had a player who had their heart set on playing a Psion, so no problems...

Oh, one player wanted to play a Fey-ri for a Level 2 character... After I said no he asked about Dragotuar...

Despite what others might say.... I agree with this reasoning for one fact. Your new and not yet ready for it.
This is perfectly reasonable.
Can't comment on Fey'ri and Dragotuar tho... haven't looked that way yet.

I have had a player who if introduced to your table, he would proceed to ask why you wont allow psionics, he would harass you until you allowed it. and then at this point he would prey on your lack of knowledge of the system and do things like "My auto-hypnosis check lets me ignore death and stay up with 1 HP!" Which is does nothing of the sort, it simply lets you substitute a check to stabilize.... but for a DM that doesn't/hasn't read the rules yet, he may get away with this many times before you get around to it... especially if other players are also introducing things your not familiar with.
Theres the willpower check he can make as well at 0 HP- but that's functionally different than he portrays it


I saw said player do this at anothers table, and get away with it the entire time.... When he was at my table he got rather annoyed because I actually know how his entire class and every option available to him, worked. I knew it better than him and he hated this as there was no room for his lies or to take advantage of DM lack of knowledge.

(this line of thought, "I don't even allow players like that at my table and neither should you,.. taking it out on psionics doesn't solve anything" doesn't necessarily always apply. Often times, you just don't know who is gonna be like that, especially as a new DM- and the less rules to remember at once, the better.)

[Gavinfoxx]

You can only play a Lesser Fey'ri as a level 2 character, though...

[ZamielVanWeber]

Psionics is literally the simplest spellcasting. You have X points, powers cost Y pp to use. Spend those points, get the power's effect. Some powers let you spend extra points for added effect, and this is noted in their description. You can't spend more points than your caster level without feats/class features that allow such.

That's it. That's really all there is to it. It is a very lightweight system in a game that is 95% spaghetti-code design.

It is also intuitive and dumps some of the rules baggage Vancian casting has. All custom item creation by.players.is banned in my and my friend's.games. This stems from one person's flagrant abuse of the system (this guy also got all forms/variants of Leadership banned in both games). Hilariously.he caused both bans at the same time. Even more hilariously this guy refuses to ban anything in his games and will simply outcheese you if he does not like what you are doing.

[weckar]

There is always a bigger cheese...

[Alent]

There is always a bigger cheese...

Summon Bigger Fish. (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0033.html)

[Threadnaught]

was this a joke? the first link scares me with unfamiliar names and class's not easily(at all) found in the core books O.O

Nah, if I were joking, I'd either overuse the word totally, or made up some story about how I believe Wizards are underpowered and Monks are overpowered. In fact, let's do that shall we?

The world consists of a massive Dead Magic Zone when it comes to Casters being allowed to use their Casting. Not only are the Wizards not allowed to cast any of their game breaking Spells like Fireball and Cone of Cold, but their Familiars are unable to deliver Touch Attacks, have d2HD equal to their master's HD and are completely under the DM's control. And lastly, Wizards are constantly targeted by high CR magic using creatures that ignore the DMZ's effect, it only works for PC Wizards.

OMG have you seen Flurry of Misses Blows? They get Unarmed damage for free, not even broken Fighters get it that easily. Wow they can run really fast, can a Wizard do that? Slow Fall, a Wizard has to cast a 1st level Spell or wear a Magic Item to get this effect, a Monk gets it to use all day, for free.
A Wizard may be able to, outside a DMZ or AMF, tell the laws of reality to shut up with their mind, but a Monk can punch the laws of reality into submission anywhere.

Because Rouge.


Honestly, I'd rather have a new player start by reading the basic rules, then this (http://www.brilliantgameologists.com/boards/?topic=1002.0) and this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5256.0), assuming that they want to spend the time doing it.

Let's see, I linked the player I already knew to the d20 srd so they could learn the mechanics.
Then I linked them to JaronK's Tier list here on Giantitp, since it's one of the more recent versions.
I'm not sure if I linked him to Why Each Class is in it's Tier, but I made sure they understood that the Tier system isn't so much about actual power and versatility, but rather, potential power and versatility.
Then I cut out all the WotC Classes.


The point was a game where all official wizards of the coast classes are banned, so of course there wouldn't be familiar classes.

As an introduction to the game, even official Classes are unfamiliar.

[Brookshw]

Well... I am planning on running some horror. :smallamused:


Oh, are you using Blue because you're being sarcastic? Good one, yeah. Totally didn't see that one coming, just like my players when they end up meeting Cthulhu (a Half-Dragon Ilithid) anyway.

Sorry, couldn't help myself (meant the blue as a joke actually)

[Threadnaught]

Sorry, couldn't help myself (meant the blue as a joke actually)

I know. :smalltongue:

It was pretty funny. :smallbiggrin:

[Rejusu]

Personally, I ban all Psionics, however I don't have a good reason, I'm a bit of a noob and after I tried to learn it I though "This is way too ****ing complicated for what it is" and luckily I've never had a player who had their heart set on playing a Psion, so no problems...


I really don't get this, Psionics is a much less complicated system than vancian casting. Outside the cardinal rule that you can't spend more PP than your manifester level it pretty much follows the classic RPG MP system. On the whole Psionics cut out a lot of the minutia involved with divine or arcane casting.

You want a system too complicated for what it is then try Incarnum. I own the book and I still haven't cracked it. Though I rather suspect it's because the rules are more obtuse than they are complicated.

[ArendK]

My DM once shared a story about how a DM he played under once blocked the entire parties paths with a giant mithril door.

so they chipped away at the sides(non-mithril doorway/wall) until they brought the mithril door out and dragged it all the way to town to sell at around level 5.

This wasn't banned, but,.... interesting. Poor DM had his defenses turned into party profit. The party didn't even stop for a second to think "Wtf.... how do we get by this?" it was an automatic, FREE MONEY!!! And they treated the entire campaign in that way, taking anything and everything that wasn't nailed down, and even then some. lol

By chance are you in Michigan...because I did EXACTLY that to one of my GM's with an adamantine sickle I used as a character in a level 5 gestalt campaign...admittedly, we didn't turn into murderhobos or a loot fest (I didn't think so at least).

[Psycho Yuffie]

My DM had a similar story where the first time he DMed, he gave the entrance of the dungeon gold doors. The 1st-level players took down the doors, went back to town, sold the doors, and promptly retired, which obviously ended the campaign. Seems like a common DM mistake to make epic, impressive doors and then have players screw them over because of it.

[nedz]

My DM had a similar story where the first time he DMed, he gave the entrance of the dungeon gold doors. The 1st-level players took down the doors, went back to town, sold the doors, and promptly retired, which obviously ended the campaign. Seems like a common DM mistake to make epic, impressive doors and then have players screw them over because of it.

Well you want your dungeon to be impressive, don't you.

[ShadowsGrnEyes]

I banned cell phones. . . . having 5 ppl messing on there phones during combat drove me nuts.

to use there phone they had to go in the other room. and have me play their character till they got back.

[Axinian]

I really don't get this, Psionics is a much less complicated system than vancian casting. Outside the cardinal rule that you can't spend more PP than your manifester level it pretty much follows the classic RPG MP system. On the whole Psionics cut out a lot of the minutia involved with divine or arcane casting.

You want a system too complicated for what it is then try Incarnum. I own the book and I still haven't cracked it. Though I rather suspect it's because the rules are more obtuse than they are complicated.

The system itself is less complicated. However, using any given psionic power I've found to be slightly more time consuming than casting and resolving a spell on account of augmenting. Often times it takes some time to decide whether to augment, by how much, and then calculate the PP cost if the resultant power. The autoscaling nature of most spells mitigates this time. Now, experienced players will calculate their most likely uses of a power before hand, true, but that doesn't negate this point.

[ddude987]

My group generally has the usual banned, dust of sneezing and choking, candle, other funsies. One of my DMs soft banned shock trooper which basically meant "don't use it and I won't use it." I ban Vow of Poverty because VoP gimps your character and I don't want to deal with the headache of "whaa my character is bad, can I have this and this to make them good, or can I make a new character."

[SiuiS]

I really don't get this, Psionics is a much less complicated system than vancian casting. Outside the cardinal rule that you can't spend more PP than your manifester level it pretty much follows the classic RPG MP system. On the whole Psionics cut out a lot of the minutia involved with divine or arcane casting.

Not so. Vancian casting is tres simple. Load bullet. Fire.
Psionics, by comparison, is being a bullet smith.


You want a system too complicated for what it is then try Incarnum. I own the book and I still haven't cracked it. Though I rather suspect it's because the rules are more obtuse than they are complicated.

Yeah. Incarnum is amazing, but obtuse.

Your 'spell slots' are basically permanent magic items that only you can use. You put points in them up to a limit to improve them. You put them in specific body slots for specific effects.

Cue weird fluff and overly technical explanation!

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Cue weird fluff and overly technical explanation!

And more synonyms for Blue than you can shake a stick at.

[Venger]

what makes incarnum hard to use isn't its rules themselves. they're actually relatively straightforward when compared to spells. since they're at-will, there's also a great deal less bookkeeping.

the problem with incarnum is that the book is horribly organized.

when you want to roll, say, a psion, you go and look at the psion powers list, your discipline powers, and you're done. if you wanted psywar instead you do that. same for say, wizard, or cleric.

as you scroll through to see how many rays you fire from scorching ray, you don't have to scroll past savnok or night's long fingers, because they're not all jumbled in there.

when looking at melds, they chose, for whatever reason, to list all melds alphabetically and jumble them all together, even though totemist and incarnate only share 2 melds (riding bracers and lammasu mantle) and soulborn only has 5 unique melds (soulspeaker circlet, mauling gauntlets, thunderstep boots, fearsome mask, and gloves of the poisoned soul) pulling the rest from incarnate

so if you want to, say, check the bonus for what mage's spectacles give you, you've got to scroll through a bunch of totemist stuff that you can't use (and vica versa)

this is exacerbated by the fact that the mini-writeup before the melds (kind of like the "1st lvl wiz spells, 2nd lvl wiz spells," etc section) does not in any way signify when melds can be shaped to different chakras.

for example: keeneye lenses can be shaped to both the brow and soul chakras. if you were checking to see if you can enjoy both it and, say, the truthseeker goggles, you might just see in brow and say "oh well" and move on, missing that it's also in soul.

this isn't an isolated instance. a large number of your melds can be shaped to more than one chakra.

the blurbs also don't tell you what type the bonus melds grant are, so answering "can I stack meld x with meld y since they both boost skill z?" means having to check both melds every time.

this along with the fact that the most basic information (such as how much essentia you can have in a meld at a time) is scattered at random throughout the book makes it worse.

if the book hadn't been laid out so horribly and things like how much e you can put in a meld were in the meldshaping basics section where they belong, it would be much easier to pick up.

[Silentone98]

I ban incarnum.... because of this guy ^^

[Quertus]

Personally, I ban all Psionics, however I don't have a good reason, I'm a bit of a noob and after I tried to learn it I though "This is way too ****ing complicated for what it is" and luckily I've never had a player who had their heart set on playing a Psion, so no problems....


Despite what others might say.... I agree with this reasoning for one fact. Your new and not yet ready for it.
This is perfectly reasonable.

I have had a player who...<snip> would prey on your lack of knowledge of the system and do things like "My auto-hypnosis check lets me ignore death and stay up with 1 HP!" Which is does nothing of the sort.

I saw said player do this at anothers table, and get away with it the entire time.... When he was at my table he got rather annoyed because I actually know how his entire class and every option available to him, worked. I knew it better than him and he hated this as there was no room for his lies or to take advantage of DM lack of knowledge.

(this line of thought, "I don't even allow players like that at my table and neither should you,.. taking it out on psionics doesn't solve anything" doesn't necessarily always apply. Often times, you just don't know who is gonna be like that, especially as a new DM- and the less rules to remember at once, the better.)


I've banned one thing from my campaign: bringing in player characters from other campaigns. If they want to just use the stats and name and such and come in at the same level as the current party, fine. Had one guy try to bring in a level 9 into a party of level 3's.


First off, I would like to give a most emphatic second to Silentone98's response - banning something because you don't understand it is a good reason - better than most reasons, in fact. Better than banning monks because they are OP. I'll try not to enter a game balance rant, but banning something for balance is questionable even if you are right - and often, those who ban for balance run the most fun-killing unbalanced games, IME.

What matters is fun. I've played in a great many 2nd edition games, and a very few 3e games, where the party level was noticably out of sync. One of the most fun games I was in, the rule was, everyone starts out at 1st level. If you die, or a new player joins the group, 1st level. I joined in, and was playing a 1st level character when the party was mostly 7th level (1 or 2 other people joined in while the "elders" were still 7th). Eventually, I was one of the "elders" in the teens when 3-4 people joined in or were reset to 1st. There were a lot of things that made this game fun, but working with such a diverse party with such diverse power levels made for tactics and roleplaying you just don't get in your cookie-cutter "everyone is the same level" game.

Game balance and fun are not synonyms. If anything, they are opposed to each other.

That having been said, when one player dominates play - even if it is the most under-optimized character, being run by the brilliant, charismatic player - it can be no fun for people. The same is obviously true for the "over-optimized" character doing everything - especially if they are doing it on purpose. Ban that player for being an anti-fungineer intentionally working against having a fun gaming environment. Players should be able to self-moderate to try to make things fun for everyone, although sometimes, if they don't get it on their own, you have to explicitly tell the player what they are doing that is unfun for the group.

Note that I said "can be" - sometimes, having one brilliant, charasmatic player and/or one over-optimized character dominate play fits the party's play style, and is lots of fun. YMMV. I've seen it go both ways.

Dawgmoah, balance issues aside, if the character had been the same level as the party, would you still have issues with him being an existing character?

Back to my original statement - I used to run with the motto, "I'll allow anything I understand - and if I don't understand it, explain it to me". I'm fairly well known for letting things into games - people will run things by me with the intro, "no sane DM would ever allow this, but...". As long as everyone is having fun - that's what's important.

Subsequently, in the spirit of the op, I will list some of the things that have not been banned in 3.x games I've been in:

Custom Item Creation
Custom Spells
Custom Races
Custom Prestige Classes
UA mana-based casting
Infinite mana / PP (or, at least, infinite out-of-combat regeneration of resources)
Celerity
Fast Time Planes
2-Headed Lernaean (immune to damage except S/P to head) clay 1/2-golem (immune to S/P & magic)
Maho-Tsukai (AKA "Tainted Sorcerer")
Illithid Savant
Hulking Hurler
Whisper Gnome Rogue / Totemist / etc... (net effect: super Hide, attack and remain hidden, can't even be sensed by tremorsense)
Vow of Poverty "machine gun" (not sure of this build's name - massive damage from throwing copper pieces)
BoVD sacrificing sentients for free craft XP
Multiple Crusaders with stacking Iron Guard's Glare
Dumping bags filled with alchemist's fire on foes for full effect
Keen + Improved Crit + Vorpal (+ great cleave + ...)
Templated undead/effigies/etc
PC Undead augmented by Corpsecrafter feat chain
3rd-party sourcebooks
Other d20 games/classes/backgrounds (d20 Modern and Wheel of Time; so far, no Star Wars, World of Darkness, etc)


Come to think of it... in most of these parties, I was neither the DM, nor the player in question.

Of all of these, one of the custom prestiges classes, and the last Tainted Sorcerer (there were several) were a bit problematic, but neither was run for more than a session or 2. And I've seen more PCs than major villians die to the stacking alchemist's fire. It was actually really nice to see the party fighter(s) be useful with uber-crit vorpal action.

Despite the fact that, even without these... builds... other players usually (not always, but usually) eclipse my characters (for RP reasons, my favorite "Tier 1" wizard is more like "Tier 5", and, when listing off the party, my favorite player quote to describe him was simply, "that useless wizard") - despite that fact, I am still responsible for the only thing I can remember being banned from play: the Rod of Wonder. Simply put, before shenanigans to use it multiple times per round, by firing it every round, you can earn an average of 14400 * .03 * 25 = 144 * 3 * 25 = 10.8k per day during downtime. Simply order one of your undead minions to keep firing it, collect the gems, and you can nearly double your income each day. Fun fact: if you lose control of them (by, say, controlling/creating new undead), undead keep repeating their last instruction, so you can have a theoretically infinite number of these undead firing off rods of wonder. By the time the black boils of the DM's Festering Anger appear, you should be sitting pretty on over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gp. (just a little shy of a google gp, give or take rounding errors)

Why would anyone want to ban that level of good, clean, RAW- and RAI-safe fun? No monsters were harmed in the making of this fortune. :smallwink:

[Quertus]

Here's another that another DM banned: Correcting the DM, midplay

If the DM is wrong about something, it should be corrected so its not repeated... and hopefully so it doesn't happen to begin with! Well... the first DM I played with thought differently, and he made ALOT of mistakes. The players suffered severely for most of them.
All issues could be addressed to him after the session, assuming he was in the mood.

I agree with this for like,... small things, but if my character is gonna be left with any type of lasting issue from the DM's lack of understanding the rules, I got an issue with that!

This is a tough one. My guiding principle is Fun. If 5 hours out of a 6-hour session were spent looking up rules to see how things actually work, my brother and I would consider that a good session - someone on the internet was wrong we had a chance to learn something new, to better ourselves, and to teach it to everyone else in the room. Good times. Not everyone feels that way, however. :smallfrown:

Despite my... strong desire to play things "correctly", I found 2 groups with different "incorrect" styles that I like, and will take the time to advocate here.

In the first group, rules arguements were encouraged mid-session. However, these debates were limited to 5 minutes (per topic). If a clear case could be made, for one side or the other, then the rule was corrected / remembered as correct. If not, then the DM would flip a Duplex cookie: White side up, the rule went in favor of the party; Black side up, the rule went against the party. Either way, the rule was now set in stone, as part of the fabric of reality. The players (and DM) were free to use the new "house rule" as they saw fit.

I loved this for several reasons. One, things could be "correct", so long as I knew the rules well enough and could find them quickly enough. This meant, among other things, players (myself included) were sure to much more likely to look up and read over anything that was important to their build ahead of time, and to bring their books, so they could argue for the rules that were important to them at the drop of a hat in under 5 minutes. People came to the table knowing their stuff, prepared. Well, more so than in most groups, at least. :smallwink: I guess the "knowledgeable players" counts as point #2.

3) It meant everyone was involved in the rules debates. Maybe I just didn't notice, or they hid it well, but, unlike in most groups, no one here seemed to fear rules arguements, and close to everyone really enjoyed them. There was no criticism of being a "rules lawyer" when you tried to point out that "d42" was a typo - the stigma was gone from trying to create a consistent reality. :smallsmile:

4) Good snacks (or, at least, Duplex cookies) were guaranteed at the games :smallbiggrin:

Another group I play with has an unspoken "let it slide" policy (that I sometimes forget to abide by, in part because it is unspoken - my bad). Simply put, any mistake that isn't astronomical (and even a few that are) are simply played the way the DM (or player) thought they worked. This usually applies to other things (war games, card games, etc), too. The people who think/know that it must be wrong usually look it up after (or, if there is a lull, during) the session. Depending on the mistake, and the game, if the rule was misinterpreted, the offending party is either informed between sessions / at the next game, OR after the campaign. Any future infractions (like when I forgot - again :smallredface: - the ramifications of a rider occupying every space of their mount) are corrected on the spot.

This lets the game flow smoothly, yet still gives everyone the opportunity to learn to play the game "correctly". It also makes players like me more likely to try to read over the rules they "know" again to make sure they're applicable in a new situation, because few things are sadder for someone like me than having a character's story that wants to be told... that relies on the rules of reality being wrong. :smalleek:

In summary,

Best thing to ban from the table: stigma wrongly associated with the phrase "rules lawyer"
Worst thing to ban from the table: Duplex cookies

[Axinian]

Game balance and fun are not synonyms. If anything, they are opposed to each other.


Aaaaannnd that second part is demonstrably and completely incorrect. The opposite is not true either, but this is a very ignorant assertion. You're assuming that just because you've had fun with unbalanced parties that banning things in the name of "balance" is wrong.

I can provide anecdotal evidence that counters yours. AD&D. most of the party was lowish level. I was a fighter/magic user. Most of us were pretty on the level with each other. I thought we were leveling a little slow but that's what we get for multiclassing :smalltongue: For some reason, however, the DM allowed a player to bring an illusionist into the party. A really high level one, way higher than our equivalent levels. Things went as I thought they would. The high level illusionist could do so much more and do way cooler things than us, and I, as another magic user, struggled to even make my multiclassing relevant given that the other player could just get creative with illusions and solve anything. His backstory was naturally more historied to explain his high level, and thus he was able to make more RP opportunities for himself. The only way I was able to get screen time, roleplay or combat was to distance myself from said character. His presence literally drove the party away from each other.

Again, you are right in saying that balance does not equal fun, but nor are they opposed. The fact that I even can provide a story counter to your statement, and that I'm sure plenty of people can provide their own (you see such woes on this forum all the time), makes it likely to be untrue.


Sorry if I come off as hostile, but you made a statement basically disregarding a very important part of game design and something essential to a lot of people's fun. Not only that, an untrue statement. If balance is contrary to your fun, well I'm sorry for that but go ahead and play that way. As you said, fun is most important. However, saying "balance and fun" are opposed to each other is making a lot of presumptions.

[nyjastul69]

Not so. Vancian casting is tres simple. Load bullet. Fire.
Psionics, by comparison, is being a bullet smith. ...




Yes. *slowly applaudes* well said. That is almost SIG worthy.:smallsmile:

[Silentone98]

As you said, fun is most important. However, saying "balance and fun" are opposed to each other is making a lot of presumptions.

I completely agree with you,.. basically everything I was thinking when I read the other guys post.

Yet his point he was trying to convey was the focus, and I, like you, agree with him whole heartedly on that- pushing for rules and balance too much throws fun out of balance to the point where it doesn't exist.

personally I find it hard to let up on the rules. I got called a rule Nazi at my first table >.>
But this was because I was not having fun since I basically got walked all over because neither the DM nor the other players bothered to read or understand the rules much at all and I had to correct everything... The DM did read up on rules lightly, but only enough as to twist them so he could screw with the group some more(as he wasn't enjoying playing with dumb players so he took his enjoyment in screwing with us)
^This was ironic to me in several ways.

didn't help that several of the players impression of DnD was to have RP orgy's and talk over everyone else- only reason I don't blame that DM for his own shortcomings during that disaster.
(If it wasn't RP orgy's, it was argue'ing over real life issues, in character...*facepalm*)



speaking of.... its an unspoken rule to keep real life issues out of my games. You will be asked to remove yourself from the table if your unable to game due to out of game arguments/issues.
-along the same lines, I don't allow anyone with a real-life relationship(marriage/boyfriend/girlfriend) to have ingame relations with eachother unless I know they will control themselves....
^This is all because of that first dnd experience... I honestly don't expect to be having them issues again anytime soon and the ban is partly a going joke among anyone that knew about it.

[Suteinu]

Puns.

Specifically, my incessant puns. GM once dropped a 3-ton wheel of green jello on my character, as per the spell Summon 3-ton Wheel of Green Jello, because of my (character's) puns.

[Quertus]

Aaaaannnd that second part is demonstrably and completely incorrect. The opposite is not true either, but this is a very ignorant assertion. You're assuming that just because you've had fun with unbalanced parties that banning things in the name of "balance" is wrong.

I can provide anecdotal evidence that counters yours. AD&D. most of the party was lowish level. I was a fighter/magic user. Most of us were pretty on the level with each other. I thought we were leveling a little slow but that's what we get for multiclassing :smalltongue: For some reason, however, the DM allowed a player to bring an illusionist into the party. A really high level one, way higher than our equivalent levels. Things went as I thought they would. The high level illusionist could do so much more and do way cooler things than us, and I, as another magic user, struggled to even make my multiclassing relevant given that the other player could just get creative with illusions and solve anything. His backstory was naturally more historied to explain his high level, and thus he was able to make more RP opportunities for himself. The only way I was able to get screen time, roleplay or combat was to distance myself from said character. His presence literally drove the party away from each other.

Again, you are right in saying that balance does not equal fun, but nor are they opposed. The fact that I even can provide a story counter to your statement, and that I'm sure plenty of people can provide their own (you see such woes on this forum all the time), makes it likely to be untrue.

Sorry if I come off as hostile, but you made a statement basically disregarding a very important part of game design and something essential to a lot of people's fun. Not only that, an untrue statement. If balance is contrary to your fun, well I'm sorry for that but go ahead and play that way. As you said, fun is most important. However, saying "balance and fun" are opposed to each other is making a lot of presumptions.

Some say Brevity is the essence of Clarity. For me, however, it seems when I try to abbreviate an idea, it loses clarity. Allow me to give that idea more of the content it deserves.

My assumption (yes, I have one) is that we play D&D to have fun. If we actually play it to troll our friends, or to practice our math skills, or for some other reason, then yes, my whole concept falls apart.

It's a standard business principle that, if you want something to change (improve), pay attention to that thing. Businesses that want call time to improve start taking metrics on call time.

In my experience, people who care about game balance do it to improve the gaming experience - to make the game more fun. In my experience, many of those who start to care too much about game balance lose sight of why they cared about game balance in the first place, and their games are less fun than when they were less balanced. Because they spend so much time fighting for balance, they forget to pay attention to fun.

Similarly, most people who claim to care about balance only care about beating down the strong. They fail to uplift the weak. Very few people would take the effort to make the game more balanced for my "Tier 5" wizard - and I don't care, I find it fun to play him as underpowered... but I don't like the hypocracy of people claiming to care about game balance and then running badly unbalanced games.

Then there are the rare few DMs who care about game balance, and who actually remember to hit both ends, and try to uplife the weak. DMs who try to give (usually my) characters extra loot, or even extra HP, to try to balance them out with the party. DMs who fudge rolls against weaker party members. DMs who... usually sap the fun out of the game for me by its obvious unrealism. :smallfrown:

Now, then there's the truly rare DM who dose it right. Who makes combat encounters against different foes at the same time, so everyone has a role to play - often an important one, if there are things like "guard this person" or "open this door so we can escape" as part of the combat. Who, when some players are sad that they never get to solve the puzzles, creates simpler puzzles, and asks the usual puzzle solvers to stand aside to let the others solve this one (and often comes up with a good "excuse" for them to be absent IC or OOC - be it splitting the party, or just a pizza run). Who feed the RP-hungry players with NPCs that want to interact with them, not just with the party star.

Of course, most of these examples involve a party that works together - whether tactically, by discusing and dividing duties in combat, or socially, by letting other players get a turn in the limelight of puzzle solving or RP. If one wizard tried to blow up the bulk of the foes, and have his familiar open the door, and quickened a summon spell to protect the important NPC... well, kudos for being smart enough to solo my theoretical encounter, but bad use of resources (mana and party), and poor teamwork.

Don't get me wrong, a balanced game can be fun, and just as fun as an unbalanced game. I have nothing against game balance. But *caring* about balance, *focusing* on balance, draws attention away from what should be the heart of the game: fun. Thus, like everything to which one's attention can be drawn, they are in opposition for "screen time". Worse, because people usually get into balance by caring about fun, they often seem to subconsciously think that they are doing their due diligence of caring about fun by caring about balance... and subsequently the fun suffers. IME.


His backstory was naturally more historied to explain his high level, and thus he was able to make more RP opportunities for himself. The only way I was able to get screen time, roleplay or combat was to distance myself from said character.

So... he had a background that gave him more RP opportunities. Sounds like he could have had the RP limelight without being any more powerful than anyone else. And before you say that he had that background because he was more powerful, nothing kept Gilderoy Lockhart from having a "powerful" background without the power to back it up.

That just leaves balance. I've been in literally perfectly balanced games where I (and others) were outshined in combat due to other players advanced knowledge of the system. Imagine two identical fighters, but one is run by someone who knows that the DM, like most DMs, just pulls monsters straight out of the book, and who knows exactly what AC and how many HP every monster has, so he knows exactly how much to power attack for so as to most efficiently kill each monster we encounter. I've also seen things unbalanced by what the GM would and wouldn't allow during play (I'm looking at you, WoD Mage). I've had GMs not even allow rotes straight out of the book (sort of like banning certain PH classes and feats and spells... after you've picked your character). So even balance doesn't guarantee that you will get fair screen time in combat.

Ultimately, it was a lack of share in the limelight that drove your party apart. That problem was caused by the party's inability to find a way to share the limelight when there was such an unbalance in the party. I'm sorry if your party wasn't experienced or cohesive enough to make sure that everyone was having fun under the admittedly sometimes more challenging scenario of lack of balance, but please don't vilify diversity - of RP or character ability.

IME, the key is and focus should be on fun. The party should work together to make sure everyone is having a good time. When they do that, little else matters. Balance is just a distraction.

That is what I meant when I said that game balance and fun are, if anything, opposed to each other.

[Quertus]

Younger sibblings. Younger sibblings that aren't playing certainly have been banned from games I've been in. Some would argue that anyone not involved in the game should be banned from the play area, but younger sibblings deserve special mention.

Not just the "can I roll the dice for you?", looks up to you like a god kind.

Not just the "secretly in love with your best friend" kind.

Not just the "straightened you room for you while you were out" kind (if you're not playing in your room, make sure it's locked while you're gone, btw).

But, and especially, the ADHD / Tourette (really want to spell it "turrets") / "ate all your snacks and fell into an insuline shock coma" kind.

Not all of these were my younger siblings, but all of them were one player or another that I gamed with's younger sibling. OK, kid didn't actually fall into a coma, but not for lack of trying.

Deserving special mention is also the "still in diapers, chewed/slobbered on your books and dice" kind. Although you may hate your parents for sticking you with your kid brother/sister, parental license should be revoked for believing a gaming area is an appropriate place for a baby brother/sister. At least, that's my opinion.

[Axinian]

My assumption (yes, I have one) is that we play D&D to have fun. If we actually play it to troll our friends, or to practice our math skills, or for some other reason, then yes, my whole concept falls apart.

It's a standard business principle that, if you want something to change (improve), pay attention to that thing. Businesses that want call time to improve start taking metrics on call time.

In my experience, people who care about game balance do it to improve the gaming experience - to make the game more fun. In my experience, many of those who start to care too much about game balance lose sight of why they cared about game balance in the first place, and their games are less fun than when they were less balanced. Because they spend so much time fighting for balance, they forget to pay attention to fun.


And this has not been my experience. What's your point? We spend a lot of time arguing about balance on forums because it's a good outlet to do so. It's true that what you have described could happen, but you're making it sound like it's a common experience for people who care about balance. Hint: it's not. Not in my experience anyway.



Similarly, most people who claim to care about balance only care about beating down the strong. They fail to uplift the weak.


Again, incorrect. The massive amount of fighter fixes in the homebrew section can attest to that. One of the most common pieces of advice given to people complaining that a character is underpowered is to boost them up, not tear everyone else down.

True, the most common solution to an overpowered character is to bring that character down to the level of everyone else. But that's because it just makes more sense to bring 1 person in line than change everyone else's characters.



Very few people would take the effort to make the game more balanced for my "Tier 5" wizard - and I don't care, I find it fun to play him as underpowered... but I don't like the hypocracy of people claiming to care about game balance and then running badly unbalanced games.


1) People give others advice on how play to their characters' strengths all the time. Yes, even casters.

2) Yeah hypocracy on this count is bad. So what? That has little to do with the discussion, unless you're assuming most people who care about game balance run unbalanced games?



Then there are the rare few DMs who care about game balance,

Rare few? Not on your life. Try every other person running a game.



DMs who fudge rolls against weaker party members. DMs who... usually sap the fun out of the game for me by its obvious unrealism. :smallfrown:

OK, me too.



Now, then there's the truly rare DM who dose it right. Who makes combat encounters against different foes at the same time, so everyone has a role to play - often an important one, if there are things like "guard this person" or "open this door so we can escape" as part of the combat. Who, when some players are sad that they never get to solve the puzzles, creates simpler puzzles, and asks the usual puzzle solvers to stand aside to let the others solve this one (and often comes up with a good "excuse" for them to be absent IC or OOC - be it splitting the party, or just a pizza run). Who feed the RP-hungry players with NPCs that want to interact with them, not just with the party star.

Of course, most of these examples involve a party that works together - whether tactically, by discusing and dividing duties in combat, or socially, by letting other players get a turn in the limelight of puzzle solving or RP. If one wizard tried to blow up the bulk of the foes, and have his familiar open the door, and quickened a summon spell to protect the important NPC... well, kudos for being smart enough to solo my theoretical encounter, but bad use of resources (mana and party), and poor teamwork.


OK, so you're saying overpowered characters aren't a problem because its kind of a jerk move to play one in an ill-suited party? True enough. It stops it from being as big a problem as it appears. Doesn't remove the imbalance problem when the mechanics of a system allow for it.



Don't get me wrong, a balanced game can be fun, and just as fun as an unbalanced game. I have nothing against game balance. But *caring* about balance, *focusing* on balance, draws attention away from what should be the heart of the game: fun. Thus, like everything to which one's attention can be drawn, they are in opposition for "screen time". Worse, because people usually get into balance by caring about fun, they often seem to subconsciously think that they are doing their due diligence of caring about fun by caring about balance... and subsequently the fun suffers. IME.


So how do you propose balance should be viewed? If you can't focus on it, nothing can be done. Detracting from fun is bad. However, NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING about trying to balance the game inherently draws the focus away from fun. Nor is it a likely occurrence, contrary to your assertion. Any number of DMs I've played under care quite a bit and they game has probably been MORE fun because they've cared. I can guarantee you my players would be very unhappy if one character was clearly allowed to shine more simply by choosing a different class and not even needed to exercise system mastery.


I have more of your post to rebutt, but I need to go to class soon. I'll be back.

[Eldonauran]

Some say Brevity is the essence of Clarity. For me, however, it seems when I try to abbreviate an idea, it loses clarity. Allow me to give that idea more of the content it deserves.

My assumption (yes, I have one) is that we play D&D to have fun. If we actually play it to troll our friends, or to practice our math skills, or for some other reason, then yes, my whole concept falls apart.

It's a standard business principle that, if you want something to change (improve), pay attention to that thing. Businesses that want call time to improve start taking metrics on call time.

In my experience, people who care about game balance do it to improve the gaming experience - to make the game more fun. In my experience, many of those who start to care too much about game balance lose sight of why they cared about game balance in the first place, and their games are less fun than when they were less balanced. Because they spend so much time fighting for balance, they forget to pay attention to fun.

Similarly, most people who claim to care about balance only care about beating down the strong. They fail to uplift the weak. Very few people would take the effort to make the game more balanced for my "Tier 5" wizard - and I don't care, I find it fun to play him as underpowered... but I don't like the hypocracy of people claiming to care about game balance and then running badly unbalanced games.

Then there are the rare few DMs who care about game balance, and who actually remember to hit both ends, and try to uplife the weak. DMs who try to give (usually my) characters extra loot, or even extra HP, to try to balance them out with the party. DMs who fudge rolls against weaker party members. DMs who... usually sap the fun out of the game for me by its obvious unrealism. :smallfrown:

Now, then there's the truly rare DM who dose it right. Who makes combat encounters against different foes at the same time, so everyone has a role to play - often an important one, if there are things like "guard this person" or "open this door so we can escape" as part of the combat. Who, when some players are sad that they never get to solve the puzzles, creates simpler puzzles, and asks the usual puzzle solvers to stand aside to let the others solve this one (and often comes up with a good "excuse" for them to be absent IC or OOC - be it splitting the party, or just a pizza run). Who feed the RP-hungry players with NPCs that want to interact with them, not just with the party star.

Of course, most of these examples involve a party that works together - whether tactically, by discusing and dividing duties in combat, or socially, by letting other players get a turn in the limelight of puzzle solving or RP. If one wizard tried to blow up the bulk of the foes, and have his familiar open the door, and quickened a summon spell to protect the important NPC... well, kudos for being smart enough to solo my theoretical encounter, but bad use of resources (mana and party), and poor teamwork.

Don't get me wrong, a balanced game can be fun, and just as fun as an unbalanced game. I have nothing against game balance. But *caring* about balance, *focusing* on balance, draws attention away from what should be the heart of the game: fun. Thus, like everything to which one's attention can be drawn, they are in opposition for "screen time". Worse, because people usually get into balance by caring about fun, they often seem to subconsciously think that they are doing their due diligence of caring about fun by caring about balance... and subsequently the fun suffers. IME.

Just wanted to add my 2copper in on this. My gaming experience falls roughly in line with yours. I'm not saying its true for everyone but it has been for me.

[gadren]

When Bo9S:TOB first came out, one of the GM's I played with immediately banned the entire thing because someone in our FLGS pointed out the White Raven Ping Pong exploit to him.

[Silentone98]

Axinian, if I can nitpick....

this entire argument/debate seems to be based off of individual experiences, which means everyone is right and yet everyone is wrong... so take my experience with a grain of salt, like everyone else's.


as to very few rare DM's actually caring about game balance, I agree with Quertus.
Some don't really give a crap, or say they do but in practice either don't or are incapable of comprehending what game balance even is.

I recall my second DM I played under... she massacred 70% of the rules and systems in favor of her own homebrew systems and rules. She did this because she found the regular system too unfair and easily abused/unbalanced and a bunch of other excuses.
Listening to someone explain her system, it took me 5 minutes to piece together a character with more combat power than her regular group that's had characters in game for years. And I was starting at base level and everyone was way ahead of me....
I joined her campaign just to prove how stupid and unbalanced her rules were.. killed off one of her players and my character walks out of the campaign unharmed(successfully escaping the rest of the party, who I could have also killed, but I didn't have any beef with them)
the funny thing was... I told the DM before I even initiated combat that if I did enough damage to outright kill the guy in the first round, to not have him die. Have him survive with 1 HP to have a chance. I of course did do enough damage to kill him three times over(with a single attack, out of the four or more I was allowed? lol), but as requested he was spared the first round.... but not the second.
oh,.. and despite everyone being 'theoretically' more powerful, she refused me levels to 'balance' her game out... you know, instead of fixing her broken system that allowed me to stomp such powerful characters so easily O.o

the rest of her table soon started complaining of the very problems I initially pointed out before I even joined the table.

So as to the 'every other DM" whom you state care about game balance... most of them obliviously don't care enough to moderate or correct themselves if they do something that throws everything off balance.
In summery, I WISH I had your luck with at least half the DM's I played under, as I have yet to play under a single one that hasn't failed in this department.


and while we are on the topic of game balance and fun... every DM I know, except myself, will take DM bribes for ingame benefits. There is no two ways around this one,... that's simply unbalanced and unfair to everyone(everyone who doesn't engage in the bribing). But what is this anyways? DnD, pay to win edition? wtf...

[sambouchah]

Didn't feel like wading the entirety of this thread just to post, my apologies.

I've had to ban any racial progressions other than those in Savage Species. Also I've had to ban the majority of Metamagic reduction because I had a wizard once deal the final boss of the campaign(they were all level 23) ten times it's full HP in five different energy types. Then all the minions also got hit with the effects and other such things. It was V bad.

[Axinian]

Axinian, if I can nitpick....

this entire argument/debate seems to be based off of individual experiences, which means everyone is right and yet everyone is wrong...


That's exactly my point, in so many words. He made assertion that can only be backed up with personal experiences, but my and others' personal experiences spoke to the contrary.

I'm not saying his experiences and way of playing were "wrong," but the statement "balance and fun are opposed to each other" can not be said to be true, because the correlation between the two varies from group to group. In saying this, it implies that people who seek game balance are wrong for doing so because it supposedly reduces fun. However, since this varies, he is essentially calling my values in a game misguided with a statement with no solid basis.

That's why I jumped into the argument. Otherwise I would probably leave well enough alone.

[Silentone98]

...but the statement "balance and fun are opposed to each other" can not be said to be true, ...

That's why I jumped into the argument. Otherwise I would probably leave well enough alone.

agreed, and he does to I am pretty sure.

his words just didn't reflect whats on his mind properly... I have the same issue. Just look at what he was trying to say and not how it came out, lol.
basically sums up to "Some push for so much a balanced system that they lose sight of maintaining a fun system as well."
(im 100% certain this is what he wanted to say instead)

Which is absolutely true, there is a sweet spot for everything and too much rules and regulation CAN be a bad thing, just as too little can.


On to the thread topic: I am ABOUT to ban taking advice from other people. Have this one player that is new getting advice from his roommate and he is being told to take scribe tattoo as a soulknife... wut? lol, this isn't the first time his roommate making weird suggestions like this.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/psionicTattoos.htm

[gadren]

On to the thread topic: I am ABOUT to ban taking advice from other people. Have this one player that is new getting advice from his roommate and he is being told to take scribe tattoo as a soulknife... wut? lol, this isn't the first time his roommate making weird suggestions like this.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/psionicTattoos.htm

Are you playing PF or 3.5? If you are running PF, the player giving the advice may think that the rule about potions doesn't apply to psionic tattoos.

[Eldonauran]

...and while we are on the topic of game balance and fun... every DM I know, except myself, will take DM bribes for ingame benefits. There is no two ways around this one,... that's simply unbalanced and unfair to everyone(everyone who doesn't engage in the bribing). But what is this anyways? DnD, pay to win edition? wtf...

Add me to that list. I don't accept bribes for in game benefits. Horrible practice.

[Quertus]

Just wanted to add my 2copper in on this. My gaming experience falls roughly in line with yours. I'm not saying its true for everyone but it has been for me.


And this has not been my experience. What's your point? We spend a lot of time arguing about balance on forums because it's a good outlet to do so. It's true that what you have described could happen, but you're making it sound like it's a common experience for people who care about balance. Hint: it's not. Not in my experience anyway.

Again, incorrect. The massive amount of fighter fixes in the homebrew section can attest to that. One of the most common pieces of advice given to people complaining that a character is underpowered is to boost them up, not tear everyone else down.

Rare few? Not on your life. Try every other person running a game.



So how do you propose balance should be viewed? If you can't focus on it, nothing can be done. Detracting from fun is bad. However, NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING about trying to balance the game inherently draws the focus away from fun. Nor is it a likely occurrence, contrary to your assertion. Any number of DMs I've played under care quite a bit and they game has probably been MORE fun because they've cared. I can guarantee you my players would be very unhappy if one character was clearly allowed to shine more simply by choosing a different class and not even needed to exercise system mastery.


I have more of your post to rebutt, but I need to go to class soon. I'll be back.


Axinian, if I can nitpick....

this entire argument/debate seems to be based off of individual experiences, which means everyone is right and yet everyone is wrong... so take my experience with a grain of salt, like everyone else's.


as to very few rare DM's actually caring about game balance, I agree with Quertus.
Some don't really give a crap, or say they do but in practice either don't or are incapable of comprehending what game balance even is.

So as to the 'every other DM" whom you state care about game balance... most of them obliviously don't care enough to moderate or correct themselves if they do something that throws everything off balance.
In summery, I WISH I had your luck with at least half the DM's I played under, as I have yet to play under a single one that hasn't failed in this department.


That's exactly my point, in so many words. He made assertion that can only be backed up with personal experiences, but my and others' personal experiences spoke to the contrary.

I'm not saying his experiences and way of playing were "wrong," but the statement "balance and fun are opposed to each other" can not be said to be true,

Yes, without a thorough survey of all D&D players and their gaming experience, statements of whether or not a particular behavior is common is absolutely a matter of personal experience. Because my (1st- and 2nd-hand) experience was so extensive, I simply stated my experience and research as if it were a given. Clearly my bad. I am not at all surprised to hear others echo my experiences; I am surprised and pleased to hear that not everyone has had the experience I and my interview candidates have had.

I got in early enough to get the original books & dice off someone who was "upgrading" to the next edition; in the height of my gaming, I was in 6 different campaigns each week. Off the top of my head, I can only remember 47 groups I've been in... more if you count splinter groups. The people I've spoken to at college, at conventions, in my play groups, and people I met randomly (at work, at the mall, whatever) and talked to but never played with... and they all had similar horror stories. Now, to be fair, this board is largely 3e and later, where game balance exists or at least is more measurable than in 2e and earlier, which comprises the majority of my experience - or at least, the opinion-forming portion of it.


Even so, please remember that my statement was never that "balance and fun are opposed to each other". Rather, it was, (emphasis added for clarity) "Game balance and fun are not synonyms. If anything, they are opposed to each other", because "<like> everything to which one's attention can be drawn, they are in opposition for screen time." Where "screen time" = focus / DM headspace / whatever. Not exactly the quote I want to be remembered for, but certainly better than something I never said or intended.

Even if 2 people had the same experiences, they could subjectively view them differently. Axinian felt his group was pushed apart by a lack of balance; not having been there, I can't say for sure in that case, but I can say that the same problem can result even in a scenario with perfect game balance, while such imbalance need not cause that problem, so please don't just blame lack of balance and assume it is the only cause. In a cooperative environment, the limelight can be shared, even in cases of extreme imbalance. You may have never experienced it, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. Yes, over-empower the troll, and you'll never see the limelight of day again, but imbalance need not cause the limelight-blocking overshadowing you experienced.




Similarly, most people who claim to care about balance only care about beating down the strong. They fail to uplift the weak. Very few people would take the effort to make the game more balanced for my "Tier 5" wizard


Again, incorrect. The massive amount of fighter fixes in the homebrew section can attest to that. One of the most common pieces of advice given to people complaining that a character is underpowered is to boost them up, not tear everyone else down.

Sorry, replace "people" with "DMs" in my above text. IME (1st- and 2nd-hand experience) DMs who attempt to power-up the unbalancedly weak party members are in the minority. Perhaps I should even amend that to, "DM's who succeed sufficiently at powering up the unbalancedly weak to have their efforts succeed or even be noticed" - whether or not they wreck the suspension of disbelief for me (or other players) in the process - are in the minority.

On a more personal note,

Back in 2e, some of my characters were fairly strong. Of course, in some of the groups I played with, all I had to do was add my strength bonus to damage, or remember to apply my bonuses to my base THAC0, in order to be viewed as a god. <insert facepalm here>

In more modern games, when DM's complain about my characters, it is usually that they are below the curve. Other players often ask, "why are we sharing our treasure and XP with you?" One of my few "over-performing" characters (a straight fighter) was held back by his irrational fear of "scary things" - you know, most monsters. Roll init, and... flee.

In one of the most recent games I was in, I was actually told that my character's build was too powerful. My first response (internal) was, "Really? I finally made something stronger than the rest of the party (that wasn't some sort of infinite combo that I talked about without bringing to the table)? That's new."

However, given a moment's thought, I pointed out how untrue that was. In the first combat, I went all-out defense, until the rest of the party rescued me. And it just went downhill from there. In the double-digit sessions I played the character, I only took out one monster - and, if I hadn't, that monster would have died to another party member's AoE that hit immediately thereafter. I was thoroughly and demonstrably the most under-performing character, the weakest link in the party who did the least and had to be saved the most often, whether from grapples or traps or just being overwhelmed by monsters the rest of the party shrugged off.

I even explained all this, and asked, since balance was brought up, if anything could be done to bring my character into balance.

Care to guess if that character was ever put on par with the rest of the party? :smallmad:



So how do you propose balance should be viewed? If you can't focus on it, nothing can be done.

So glad you asked. :smallbiggrin:

Start at fun. Ignore everything else, start at fun. In your example, you weren't having fun. Why? Because you never got the limelight. Why? Because one player overshadowed you in combat, had a similar ability-set to yours, and overshadowed you in RP, by having a more... "historied" (?) background than yours.

Solve this problem. Per your and your group's style. My style, well, is actually complicated, but I will return to advocating discussing the problem with the group, and coming to a solution together. See my limited ranting about having NPCs talk to everyone, or encounters that require... um... "full-party action economy", to coin a phrase; ie, encounters that give everyone a chance to, and encourage everyone to, participate meaningfully. [If I'm going to be known for something, I'd rather it be coining the phrase full-party action economy than my 1 line about the relationship between game balance and fun.]

There's myriad other ways to go about it - have your character research or invent new spells to fill a new role, apprentice under the other wizard (for RP and tactical reasons), ask the wizard to buff the party (to the point where everyone else can participate more, but he has to participate less to conserve his limited remaining power), *let* him solo encounters until he gets bored with it and/or runs out of juice, get *another* player to come in and upstage *him* if he doesn't get the point, have the party thief steal his items and sell them for the party's benefit, realize you've wasted your life studying magic - you'll never be as good as him - sell all your worldly belongings give the proceeds to the poor and wander around aimlessly with the party until you see a new calling. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how I've seen this problem solved, let alone how one could theoretically solve it.

I've solved similar problems (and seen them solved by others) many times without focusing on balance. So don't get caught up on one idea, like balance, so much that you think "nothing can be done" without focusing on it - that is exactly the trap I was trying to get people to avoid - the one that has killed the fun in so many games I've been in and heard about.

As to the OP - Biggest thing to ban from the table: me talking, unless there's a "me to brevity" translator nearby, or you've got time. One DM (jokingly?) threatened to ban me from talking to NPCs. :smallredface:

[Quertus]

his words just didn't reflect whats on his mind properly... I have the same issue. Just look at what he was trying to say and not how it came out, lol.
basically sums up to "Some push for so much a balanced system that they lose sight of maintaining a fun system as well."
(im 100% certain this is what he wanted to say instead)

Which is absolutely true, there is a sweet spot for everything and too much rules and regulation CAN be a bad thing, just as too little can.


Um... what he said. In the vein of "can't see the forest for the trees", view what I said as focusing on a few trees of my idea, and what Silentone98 said as the forest I was failing to describe. The bulk of the forest, at least - that's at least the most important 90% of what I wanted to say in less than 10% of the words I used. Kudos.



and while we are on the topic of game balance and fun... every DM I know, except myself, will take DM bribes for ingame benefits. There is no two ways around this one,... that's simply unbalanced and unfair to everyone(everyone who doesn't engage in the bribing). But what is this anyways? DnD, pay to win edition? wtf...

Sadly, while I won't do it for anything major, I will do it for very minor concessions (more like the "pay to have a cool costume with no statistical benefit" model some games use).

Biggest example of that I've heard: the intelligent magical sword that gets "hungry", and will refuse to operate... until the DM is fed.

Oh... which reminds me... on the topic of the OP - one thing that a play group I was in discussed (not sure if they implemented or not) banning from the table: the DM passing around a collection plate after the game.

[MirddinEmris]

Even so, please remember that my statement was never that "balance and fun are opposed to each other". Rather, it was, (emphasis added for clarity) "Game balance and fun are not synonyms. If anything, they are opposed to each other", because "<like> everything to which one's attention can be drawn, they are in opposition for screen time." Where "screen time" = focus / DM headspace / whatever. Not exactly the quote I want to be remembered for, but certainly better than something I never said or intended.


Your whole theory is based on the flawed assumption that everyone fun is the same (as yours). It is not, of course. For some people balanced game IS fun (or part of it), so ignoring balance issues is detrimental for fun and vise versa.

[Curmudgeon]

Add me to that list. I don't accept bribes for in game benefits. Horrible practice.
Oh, maybe not so horrible. You want armor of a special color? Keep the DM from running out of Dr. Pepper. There's no mechanical benefit, but it is a simple way to accomplish some minor customizations in the game. Another example: a shield found in treasure will, by happenstance, have your family crest/deity's mark/whatever emblazoned on it. Yes, I can make my own trips to the refrigerator, but I appreciate being able to keep the game going without interruptions.

[Axinian]

Even so, please remember that my statement was never that "balance and fun are opposed to each other". Rather, it was, (emphasis added for clarity) "Game balance and fun are not synonyms. If anything, they are opposed to each other", because "<like> everything to which one's attention can be drawn, they are in opposition for screen time." Where "screen time" = focus / DM headspace / whatever. Not exactly the quote I want to be remembered for, but certainly better than something I never said or intended.


This STILL isn't necessarily true. You're still assuming balance and fun are necessarily separate. Look, "aspects of fun" encompasses everything about the game can be said to make it enjoyable. For many, balance is one of these things. Not the only thing. Not a deal breaker thing, but its something that can most certainly be used to increase it (or yes, decrease it).



Even if 2 people had the same experiences, they could subjectively view them differently. Axinian felt his group was pushed apart by a lack of balance; not having been there, I can't say for sure in that case, but I can say that the same problem can result even in a scenario with perfect game balance, while such imbalance need not cause that problem, so please don't just blame lack of balance and assume it is the only cause. In a cooperative environment, the limelight can be shared, even in cases of extreme imbalance.

Perhaps, but when the very mechanics of a game support imbalance, that inherently means the lime-light will be skewed. Should not every player have an equal shot at the limelight until their decisions and DM shift it? Should it not be that the player loses or gains chances to shine by their own decisions, rather than have it biased against them in favor of other players by the game's mechanics?



Sorry, replace "people" with "DMs" in my above text. IME (1st- and 2nd-hand experience) DMs who attempt to power-up the unbalancedly weak party members are in the minority. Perhaps I should even amend that to, "DM's who succeed sufficiently at powering up the unbalancedly weak to have their efforts succeed or even be noticed" - whether or not they wreck the suspension of disbelief for me (or other players) in the process - are in the minority.

On a more personal note,

Back in 2e, some of my characters were fairly strong. Of course, in some of the groups I played with, all I had to do was add my strength bonus to damage, or remember to apply my bonuses to my base THAC0, in order to be viewed as a god. <insert facepalm here>

In more modern games, when DM's complain about my characters, it is usually that they are below the curve. Other players often ask, "why are we sharing our treasure and XP with you?" One of my few "over-performing" characters (a straight fighter) was held back by his irrational fear of "scary things" - you know, most monsters. Roll init, and... flee.

In one of the most recent games I was in, I was actually told that my character's build was too powerful. My first response (internal) was, "Really? I finally made something stronger than the rest of the party (that wasn't some sort of infinite combo that I talked about without bringing to the table)? That's new."

However, given a moment's thought, I pointed out how untrue that was. In the first combat, I went all-out defense, until the rest of the party rescued me. And it just went downhill from there. In the double-digit sessions I played the character, I only took out one monster - and, if I hadn't, that monster would have died to another party member's AoE that hit immediately thereafter. I was thoroughly and demonstrably the most under-performing character, the weakest link in the party who did the least and had to be saved the most often, whether from grapples or traps or just being overwhelmed by monsters the rest of the party shrugged off.

I even explained all this, and asked, since balance was brought up, if anything could be done to bring my character into balance.

Care to guess if that character was ever put on par with the rest of the party? :smallmad:

So you are blaming your lack of fun on the pursuit of balance, when it was in fact people's poor understanding of mechanical balance in the first place? Yeah, if someone doesn't understand chemistry properly and tries to mix volatile chemicals... bad stuff happens. Doesn't make the pursuit of the science any less valid. You're saying here that because the others were wrong about how powerful your character was, it was the fault of "balance" and not their ignorance. Seems like the focus is on the wrong thing here.



Start at fun. Ignore everything else, start at fun. In your example, you weren't having fun. Why? Because you never got the limelight. Why? Because one player overshadowed you in combat, had a similar ability-set to yours, and overshadowed you in RP, by having a more... "historied" (?) background than yours.

THAT IS WHERE I START! THAT'S WHERE I ALWAYS START! It's the only reasonable place TO start. Again, your assuming that balance is an entirely separate thing, when it is merely a factor that can (not always will) influence fun. For me, it very often does but as I said it varies from person to person.


I've solved similar problems (and seen them solved by others) many times without focusing on balance. So don't get caught up on one idea, like balance, so much that you think "nothing can be done" without focusing on it - that is exactly the trap I was trying to get people to avoid - the one that has killed the fun in so many games I've been in and heard about.

Look, dude, the best way to solve a problem caused by imbalance is to remove the imbalance. Period. All your solutions are stop-gaps that don't actually solve anything, but simply make the situation slightly more bearable given the circumstances. That's not a bad thing, but consider this: why should I have to work even harder for my character concept to be valid, when I can APPARENTLY just try to bring in a new character who's just better than everyone else? Why should I bow my (character's) head in humility to this guy just to get my limelight? That still makes the situation ABOUT HIM! He's still stepping on my toes by being mechanically stronger. The more powerful character is inherently a magnet for attention, either mechanically, RP-wise, or both. We're a party, dammit, we should be working together, as you said, but working together is clearly less important when someone can do more and do it better. It's definitely much harder to work together when one has to spend so much time working AROUND a fellow player! His power and presence makes it into an slightly adversarial situation by its very nature. We shouldn't have to work AROUND a player, we should be working WITH them!

(And, oh, steal his stuff, good advice right there. Definitely won't be any hard feelings for that.)

"Oh the DM can just design encounters where everyone can contribute" Yes, they should, but the DM shouldn't have to account for one character more than everyone else in so many more situations than everyone else. Unless you think they should. But then what are the other characters there for? It just doesn't make in-character sense for an uber-powerful guy to keep taking these weaker dudes on adventures when he can handle everything himself and just hang out with them during down time because he likes them? I get that the players are there to play and that's why out of universe, but if not pursuing balance in the name of suspension of disbelief is important, what about when imbalance obstructs it? It makes sense for the weaker guys to have a powerful ally, but again, they're working around a character. His very existence is an obstruction. It doesn't matter if he's intentionally taking a back seat or not, because that's just putting a damper on an issue that could have been avoided to begin with.

Everyone has a role or roles, and they should be weighted accordingly to their roles and character concepts in the designing of encounters. Some will outshine others in combat, fine. Others will to better in investigation situations, fine. People's roleplaying needs, styles, and such vary. That's not imbalance, because everyone has their thing. It starts getting bad when a character's abilities starts encroaching to the point of just being worth more almost all the time.

[SiuiS]

When Bo9S:TOB first came out, one of the GM's I played with immediately banned the entire thing because someone in our FLGS pointed out the White Raven Ping Pong exploit to him.

Heh.

I soft-banned it once, hiding the book, never mentioning it, removing it from our shelves and book lists, hoping no one ever knew about it. I planned to spring it on them out of nowhere.

Another DM beat me to it, and he did a terrible job. Like, personalitiless DMPC rivals called "the swordsage" and "the crusader" bad. The whole thing broke when I corrected how crusader maneuvers worked.

[Quertus]

Your whole theory is based on the flawed assumption that everyone fun is the same (as yours). It is not, of course. For some people balanced game IS fun (or part of it), so ignoring balance issues is detrimental for fun and vise versa.

ABSOLUTELY NOT! My theory is based on the assumption that different people can have different definitions of what is fun. If my theory were based on the assumption that everyone's fun is the same (as mine), I would be advocating 100% rules correct games, where 90% of the session was spent rules-lawyering. :smalltongue:

My theory is based on watching the other players, seeing what they enjoy, what saps the fun... and if you don't understand what is making them upset, ask them. My theory is largely based on working together as a group to solve the problem - the *actual* problem - not just blaming some buzzword like "game balance" or "girl gamers" or "too many books".

For me, a balanced game is fun. But so is an unbalanced game. Both can be fun, if the DM and players make it so. Both can be un-fun if the DM and players make it so.

My theory is to pay attention first and foremost to fun. If balance is actually a problem, by all means fix it! But, IME, almost no DMs successfully fix game balance issues, especially if they involve characters who are too weak. So I advocate not just jumping on the game balance band wagon, and actually thinking about what is wrong and what can be done to fix it. Effort spent on game balance in the name of fun is, IMO, better spent on fun in the name of fun.

As an aside, I once created a series of metrics by which I measured different portions of a character's game balance, with dozens of different sample encounters to test the character's DPS, durability, saves, etc. Characters then got ratings in several categories. It helped a little with setting expectations for party balance, but even that was a flawed system. So I do care about balance, to the extent it matters for people having fun, and I am willing to put forth the effort to try to make it happen - I just don't start there.

[nedz]

The thing is that unbalanced games are much harder to DM. You fall into the trap of making encounters which are too easy for some characters whilst at the same time being too hard for others. So many DMs strive for balance so that they can focus on other issues; however the system doesn't really help them.

It's very hard to create a balanced party in 3.5 and then some players may not help by either creating characters which are too OP, or alternatively, too weak.

So: blaming the DM for failing to create a balanced game is somewhat of a fallacy, especially since you haven't considered that if they didn't try to balance the game at all the game then it would be even more unbalanced than anything you may have seen. It's really not fun watching one guy's character die repeatedly attempting tasks which another PC can resolve trivially, often with just one spell.

[Quertus]

I love rules lawyering. To me, a well rules-lawyered game is a fun game. Still, one could say, "rules lawyering and fun are not synonyms; if anything, they are opposed to each other" in the same spirit I described game balance: if the focus is on rules lawyering instead of on fun, the game tends to become less fun. Not everyone enjoys rules lawyering. Even though rules lawyering has a time and a place (and that time and place is far smaller than its advocates would have you believe), the focus should remain on fun. Perhaps that makes my sentiment regarding game balance more clear?


So you are blaming your lack of fun on the pursuit of balance, when it was in fact people's poor understanding of mechanical balance in the first place? Yeah, if someone doesn't understand chemistry properly and tries to mix volatile chemicals... bad stuff happens. Doesn't make the pursuit of the science any less valid. You're saying here that because the others were wrong about how powerful your character was, it was the fault of "balance" and not their ignorance. Seems like the focus is on the wrong thing here.

I think this is the closest we've come to understanding each other, so maybe we should start focus here. For those of you who don't care, please return to the original post, (hopefully) already in progress.

Unlike my "tier 5" wizard, I didn't build this character to be weak. If being weak was a natural consequence of the build, well, that was OK, too.

I was fine playing the character until... around 8-12 sessions in, when I was told that the character was OP. By that point, I had plenty of experience with the character, experience with the party, and anecdotal evidence to say... um... no. wtf?!

At this point, if people were going to care about game balance, well, so was I. I laid everything out, and explained how I was totally under-whelming, to the point where I had actually managed to contribute nothing to combat. I asked if anything could be done to beef my character up - I even accepted the loss of suspension of disbelief to create the balanced party people supposedly desired. But - big shock - nothing was ever done to bring my character in balance with the rest of the party.

So... my lack of fun started when I was forced to see that my character was unintentionally extremely underwhelming (in the spirit of beating him down in the name of game balance).

My lack of fun continued and grew as, even after making a strong case for how he really needed help, and please bring him back into balance, nothing was done, and he continued to underperform.

IF I am blaming my lack of fun on anything, I am blaming it on the so-called "pursuit of balance" as I have seen it implemented by so, so many DMs, and as I have heard of it being implemented by so, so many more.

Really, it doesn't matter whether the conversation was, "your character isn't in balance, let's fix it", or "what can we do to make the game more fun for you?" - the fact that nothing was done to fix the problem once it was discovered is what hurt my fun. The same person who was so willing to attack my character when they thought it was overpowered was unwilling to lift a finger to help my character when it was demonstrated that it was underpowered.

So, no, you're still focusing on the wrong things here. I'm saying, if you're going to care about balance, care about balance, but first and foremost, care about the party and fun, and fix balance in a way that makes things fun. Ham-fistedly breaking reality to make things balanced makes things not fun for me (and I'm not alone in that). Just beating down the strong without also uplifting the weak fails at producing game balance - and can reduce the fun (seriously, if the DM doesn't have enough attention to fix game balance correctly on both ends, there's no way they also have enough attention to still pay enough attention to fun if their focus is on game balance). Discuss what can be done together, and come up with a solution that makes everyone happy fits your group's play style.

I think your chemistry metaphor might help give us some traction here. So, let's talk about two sciences: Game Balance, and Rules Lawyering.

Both of these sciences have value. Both of these sciences have a long and ignoble history. Both of these sciences should only be practiced between concenting adults in groups in ways that the group enjoys.

Both of these sciences should be privileges, not rights. If the DM hasn't taken the time to find out that I don't enjoy losing my suspension of disbelief when they ham-fistedly alter reality to enforce game balance, they should lose their license to practice the science of game balance. When my brother and I spend 90% of a session rules lawering one topic to the rest of the party's boredom, we should lose our license to practice the science of rules lawyering. Or, at least, these licenses should be temporarily suspended.

Similarly, when someone comes in with an OP character... if the party doesn't enjoy it, and they can't find a way to make the game work, that player should lose their license to play that character. With some types of players, they should lose their license to play any OP characters. The same goes for just about anything. However, in this world-view, when a group is incapable of working with any player playing any OP character, that group loses its license to play unbalanced games. At that point, and only at that point, should "game balance" become part of that group's vocabulary, because at that point they have proven demonstrated their inability to handle variety in any way other than banning it.

You can talk about Game Balance or Rules Lawyering being an essential part of fun - but, from a certain point of view, neither are necessay in the game if everything is perfected before the game starts. Which, of course, is approximately impossible. So both are names for tools / sciences people use to try to fix fun when fun somehow gets broken. As both of these sciences have a tendency to explode and hurt people's fun, I advocate safer, "homeopathic" solutions that involve opening with a discussion rather than a hammer.

Or, in other words, please keep your game balance theoretical and out of the game, and I'll keep my rules lawyering theoretical and out of it - until one or the other is needed. And please attempt diplomacy before pulling out the big guns.

As to the one specific party and my suggested solutions,


Look, dude, the best way to solve a problem caused by imbalance is to remove the imbalance. Period. All your solutions are stop-gaps that don't actually solve anything, but simply make the situation slightly more bearable given the circumstances. That's not a bad thing, but consider this: why should I have to work even harder for my character concept to be valid, when I can APPARENTLY just try to bring in a new character who's just better than everyone else? Why should I bow my (character's) head in humility to this guy just to get my limelight? That still makes the situation ABOUT HIM! He's still stepping on my toes by being mechanically stronger. The more powerful character is inherently a magnet for attention, either mechanically, RP-wise, or both. We're a party, dammit, we should be working together, as you said, but working together is clearly less important when someone can do more and do it better. It's definitely much harder to work together when one has to spend so much time working AROUND a fellow player! His power and presence makes it into an slightly adversarial situation by its very nature. We shouldn't have to work AROUND a player, we should be working WITH them!

(And, oh, steal his stuff, good advice right there. Definitely won't be any hard feelings for that.)

"Oh the DM can just design encounters where everyone can contribute" Yes, they should, but the DM shouldn't have to account for one character more than everyone else in so many more situations than everyone else. Unless you think they should. But then what are the other characters there for? It just doesn't make in-character sense for an uber-powerful guy to keep taking these weaker dudes on adventures when he can handle everything himself and just hang out with them during down time because he likes them? I get that the players are there to play and that's why out of universe, but if not pursuing balance in the name of suspension of disbelief is important, what about when imbalance obstructs it? It makes sense for the weaker guys to have a powerful ally, but again, they're working around a character. His very existence is an obstruction. It doesn't matter if he's intentionally taking a back seat or not, because that's just putting a damper on an issue that could have been avoided to begin with.

Everyone has a role or roles, and they should be weighted accordingly to their roles and character concepts in the designing of encounters. Some will outshine others in combat, fine. Others will to better in investigation situations, fine. People's roleplaying needs, styles, and such vary. That's not imbalance, because everyone has their thing. It starts getting bad when a character's abilities starts encroaching to the point of just being worth more almost all the time.

First off, I'm honestly amazed, given what you've said, that fixing the game imbalance wasn't the first thing your group tried. I would have been shocked if I was in that party and the new character even lasted a session before people were crying game balance. If you couldn't / didn't want to come up with another good solution (where breaking the party apart, in my opinion, and I think in yours, does not qualify), I am amazed that the OP character was allowed to stay. I have nothing against game balance, and would have voiced my agreement at removing him if that was the only solution that worked in your group.

Second, "best" is a tricky word. Certainly, beating down the strong appears, on the surface, to be the fastest and easiest solution. Sometimes, depending on the group, it is the right solution. In a good group, the player of the OP character will usually fix the problem themselves, once they notice it.

However, the things I listed are not just stopgaps - they are a few of the many things actual players in actual parties did, and had lots of fun with. OK, to be fair, "stealing all his loot" is a bad suggestion. However, you have to look at the metagame here. I've been in too many parties (one would have been more than enough) where PK was a thing. Compared to that, stealing all his stuff was a light slap on the wrist for "making things unfun in an unintentional but fixable way". I was simply trying to point out that the solution to the problem should depend on the group. Focus on fun first and foremost, look at the group dynamic, and keep an open mind as to what can be done to fix the problem.

If you honestly can't imagine any way to have fun in a party with a major power imbalance... well, then, maybe you can't. I must admit, I find it difficult to imagine liking to RP, yet not liking any possible solution to any scenario that involves a lack of limelight due to a power imbalance other than banning the source of the imbalance. Or maybe it was just my specific solutions, or the specific example you suffered through, that you can't imagine enjoying.

Your responses to my suggestions a few of the ways I've seen this handled that didn't involve fixing game balance are a bit confusing to me. At work, and in real life, I interact with plenty of people who are better than me and worse than me at certain things. That does not put us into an automatic adverserial relationship. If everyone automatically entered an adverserial relationship with anyone who had a skill that was noticably better or worse than their own, I dare say everyone would be in an adverserial relationship with everyone!

I've seen plenty of people in roles where I could have done that role better than the person in that role was doing it. I'm sure most people reading my posts say that they could do a better job voicing my opinions than I have. :smallredface: But that doesn't auto-agg us, does it? I've had someone join a project who knew a lot more than I did. It didn't auto-agg us - I thought it was great to have such skilled coworkers, and learned everything I could from them. I've been added mid-project because of my superior knowledge and skills, and helped other people out when they were stuck. Do you think they auto-agged me, or do you think they were grateful for the help?

You say you shouldn't work around him, you should work with him... yet you chose to work around him. I've seen plenty of parties work with an imbalance, and have great fun doing so. I've seen plenty of real life events work with an imbalance - some were great fun, some not so much. Why did you choose to work around him rather than find some way to work with him?

I can't make everything IRL balanced. I have to work with imbalances all the time. I actually prefer an imbalance of skills - that gives us the opportunity to learn from each other. I would love to set a certain minimum competency for coworkers, but even that isn't guaranteed. So I focus on utilizing people's skills / aptitudes / likes / etc to maximum efficiency / utility / performance / fun. Same thing for my group projects in college, my picking teams in grade-school sports... and most everything else in my life. No shock that I do the same thing in games.

Also, the same groups that are quick to try to fix a mechanical imbalance are, IME, slow to do anything about a RP imbalance. There are no statistics on the character sheet for how smart or charismatic the PLAYER is, how comfortable or experienced they are with the system or background, or even how comfortable they are with just standing up and talking / socializing with imagionary people / singing baudy songs / whatever. Put "superstar" player in a perfectly balanced game with "3 blind mice", and, guess what - nobody will get the limelight except "superstar". Unless, of course, "superstar" happens to be a cooperative soul who tries to help out the 3 blind mice. ("mousy" does mean "shy", right?)

Since what I dubbed "RP imbalances" pretty much have to be handled through discussion and teamwork, and power level imbalances *can* be handled through discussion and RP and teamwork, I advocate focusing on fun, having discussions, and only using enforced game balance as a last resort, if your group isn't capable of a better solution.

Because short of playing chess or checkers, you aren't likely to be in a balanced game. Wait, someone goes first - that's completely unbalanced! :smallwink:

[bekeleven]

Add me to that list. I don't accept bribes for in game benefits. Horrible practice.

Eh.

If I'm playing a doritos + Beer fluff-for-bonus game, I'll give +2 to an attack roll if the paladin describes how he winds his sword in past the troglodyte's defenses. And while he's doing that, the ranger was in the kitchen grabbing another 2l of pepsi. I consider both of these donating time to table enjoyment, so ranger gets +2 on his next shot.

[Eldonauran]

Eh.

If I'm playing a doritos + Beer fluff-for-bonus game, I'll give +2 to an attack roll if the paladin describes how he winds his sword in past the troglodyte's defenses. And while he's doing that, the ranger was in the kitchen grabbing another 2l of pepsi. I consider both of these donating time to table enjoyment, so ranger gets +2 on his next shot.

To each his own, I guess. I have a distaste for mixing the real world with the gaming world, and try to make sure the two don't interact more than necessary. I often grant circumstancial bonuses to the characters based on roleplay but never for out of character actions.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Your whole theory is based on the flawed assumption that everyone fun is the same (as yours). It is not, of course. For some people balanced game IS fun (or part of it), so ignoring balance issues is detrimental for fun and vise versa.


This STILL isn't necessarily true. You're still assuming balance and fun are necessarily separate. Look, "aspects of fun" encompasses everything about the game can be said to make it enjoyable. For many, balance is one of these things. Not the only thing. Not a deal breaker thing, but its something that can most certainly be used to increase it (or yes, decrease it)

Yep. People play StarCraft II. People like to play StarCraft II. Getting better and studying all these strategies is fun to them. Doing Day[9]'s Funday Mondays is fun to many of them too.

People also play Dark Souls. People like to play Dark Souls. They like to grab the Gravelord Sword or Great Scythe as soon as they get to Firelink Shrine. They like to grab a Rapier and Buckler and be the best duelist. They like to run around with Chaos and Lightning Caestus (Caestuses? Caesti?). They like to do SL1 runs, they like to do SL3 or whatever it is Thief runs, with Thief starting gear.

[Silentone98]

I am not sure I'd give a crap about Bekeleven's level of bribes... that's small enough to not care about and easily partaken by all.

Both my first and second DM's I played under allowed things like...
*"buy me $50 worth of groceries and get a godsword in game!"

*"Lets trade DM favors... I do this in my game for you, and you allow this in your game!" (looks legit to the trading DM's but to everyone else, this is complete garbage)

*"Spend tonight in my bed and get so and so in game" (This was an actual thing at my second DM's table... I don't think anyone went there tho, she was that bad)


To make matters worse, I have observed people partaking in bribing the DM, only to see lots of their bribes ignored and wasted.
Meanwhile, the ones actively assisting the DM(free weekly rides to the doctor to keep you alive? yea, I think that's worth something!) Don't ask for anything, but the DM by all means SHOULD throw something their way given all the bribes they take... and they don't.

>.> maybe theres some room for DM bribes in DnD where it can be done fairly and lightly- but I am thoroughly disgusted by what I have observed as far as that goes and won't allow it in my games.

[Mrc.]

*"Spend tonight in my bed and get so and so in game" (This was an actual thing at my second DM's table... I don't think anyone went there tho, she was that bad)

Mustn't say it, mustn't say it, mustn't say it!

I think if the group is ok with minor things being handed out then there's no need to ban it for the sake of the group, only if you as DM have a genuine issue with it. Also, things like money are best kept out of game, for obvious reasons. I suppose the closest to bribes I've come is when the entire group bought me a pizza to have a look at the stats for the next encounter they were to face. It's quite telling that I remember nothing about the encounter, but that was a mighty fine pizza!

[Seerow]

I am not sure I'd give a crap about Bekeleven's level of bribes... that's small enough to not care about and easily partaken by all.

Both my first and second DM's I played under allowed things like...
*"buy me $50 worth of groceries and get a godsword in game!"

*"Lets trade DM favors... I do this in my game for you, and you allow this in your game!" (looks legit to the trading DM's but to everyone else, this is complete garbage)

*"Spend tonight in my bed and get so and so in game" (This was an actual thing at my second DM's table... I don't think anyone went there tho, she was that bad)


The second I don't mind as long as it's the same rule being changed in both games. (ie "I'll allow these alternate magic item rules if you allow them in your game" as opposed to "I'll allow you to ignore prereqs on this prestige class if you let me use this homebrew in your game").

The first and third though really are awful in any situation. I can't even imagine sitting at a table where sexual favors are openly traded for in-game benefits. And I've been at tables where the GM had his spouse playing.

[The Oni]

"Spend tonight in my bed and get so and so in game" (This was an actual thing at my second DM's table... I don't think anyone went there tho, she was that bad)

That...would be creepy beyond all reason even if she was gorgeous...no, especially if she was gorgeous. Gives new meaning to "Dungeon Master" and not in a good way.

[Eldonauran]

That...would be creepy beyond all reason even if she was gorgeous...no, especially if she was gorgeous. Gives new meaning to "Dungeon Master" and not in a good way.

... Despite the situation, your comment made me laugh. :smallbiggrin:

Otherwise, ewwww. :smalleek:

[Silentone98]

good,... I have broken the minds of an entire forum... muhahahaha.

But hey, if she was actually gorgeous then at least there would have been some point to having that option available!

as to the game rule trading.... if it were only game rules, I could see that being acceptable possibly as another player, depending on what.
But im generally speaking like,.. I trade you godsword in my game, for godarmor in yours.

[Seerow]

as to the game rule trading.... if it were only game rules, I could see that being acceptable possibly as another player, depending on what.
But im generally speaking like,.. I trade you godsword in my game, for godarmor in yours.

Ah yeah. That sort of thing would never fly with my group.

[Windstorm]

Overall I'm glad I've never seen things like silentone has brought.

most ridiculous thing I have ever seen banned was wild shape druids, however the story behind it is interesting, to say the least. short version is that I rerolled partway through the campaign after an encounter with a frost wurm, and decided that a wild shape druid would be entertaining, with a focus on dragons. knowing how wild shape had been errata'd I designed the character with those in mind, however during the first session for the character, the DM said I was "doing it wrong" and should be using the rules as presented in the book. this being a dm ruling I said ok, your call, and did what wild shape druids do (still trying not to be overpowered). he subsequently locked down my character at every given opportunity after seeing what it was capable of (backed us into a corner with a balor) and then banned wildshape druids from every game since.

build in question was a druid/MMF with rapidstrike, using a fang dragon as form of choice. not optimized much at all, I wasn't very good at it then

Personally, I try not to ban stuff unless its the only way to keep a game from going completely off the rails, and much prefer to do a case by case "no you can't do that because it isn't reasonable" than a blanket banning of things from square one. Exception is BoED/BoVD since there are a few in the group I gamed with that proved themselves unable to handle the content they contain in a mature way.

[Renen]

To the two people having a discussion on fun. Please make your own thread.

As for banning: Only things that are severyly UP, and I mean T6.

I did see both ToB and Psionics being unjustly banned either because DM didnt know that fluff can be changed, or because even claiming 15 years of experience still havent read 1/2 the books.

[Silentone98]

or because even claiming 15 years of experience still havent read 1/2 the books.

don't you hate that? it's sad when a new player walks up to a DM stroking their own ego. Say how great a DM they are and all these years of experience- only to play with them and see how god awful it is.

think I mentioned it earlier with my second DM not even using most the book(yes a single book... different system than D&D but same style).. throws it all out the window claiming it was unbalanced- I am 99% certain she didn't read even 10% of the book.

I spent 2 weeks reading the entire thing over many many times until I understood it down to a science... only to decide to join their group and be told they don't use most those rules O.o... of course that let me know how badly her rules clashed with the few rules she did keep. my 2 weeks to her 10-20 years(forget what she claimed) and I know more >.>

[Renen]

Yeh. I dont by any streach mean that DMs like that cant be great DMs, but I started aDnD around this time last year, and I know psionics, shadow magic, ToB, incarnum, and pathfinder (since you know, technically a whole different game).

I find it sad when a DM has been playing for 10+ years and bans ToB because they dont know about refluffing, and bans Psionics because they cant understand a system thats used by every video game out there (mana system)

[icefractal]

Sometimes the reason things are banned is more annoying than the ban itself. Like, I would accept "I'm a new GM, I don't want to deal with more subsystems" as a reason for banning Psionics or ToB. Maybe not my ideal game, but it's a legitimate reason.

But "it's too sci-fi" or "it's too anime", respectively, are BS reasons, and I will likely think less of a GM who gives them. And would think twice about being in that campaign, even if I had no desire to play those classes.

[Invader]

Well, this thread seems to have become more about ridiculous bannings than ridiculous banned things, but in my game, the only thing I've banned is the Noble Scion PrC (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/n-r/noble-scion). At tenth level, it can recruit a cohort the same level as itself.

Thats not even close to what the ability that I'm looking at reads? :smallconfused:

[squiggit]

Thats not even close to what the ability that I'm looking at reads? :smallconfused:

Greater Leadership, the second level feature gives him Leadership and notes that at 10th level he gets a cohort of the same level as himself.

[Invader]

Greater Leadership, the second level feature gives him Leadership and notes that at 10th level he gets a cohort of the same level as himself.

Ahh ok, I was confused

[Silentone98]

Thats not even close to what the ability that I'm looking at reads? :smallconfused:

lol,... I missed that post by papr_weezl8472

I actually would refuse his linked class if a player proposed it to me, I think... idk if I'd say it's because of fluff, or it's just weird..... It's not even the amount of gold (which is quite extremely small)...
something about it doesn't sit well with me and im not sure how to put it to words.

im not sure I'd ban it for what its capable of at all,... it looks quite weak. And cohorts are a nasty trap if your DM wants to be difficult with you, so having the disposable meat shield isn't as valuable as it first looks.

[nobodez]

My DM once shared a story about how a DM he played under once blocked the entire parties paths with a giant mithril door.

so they chipped away at the sides(non-mithril doorway/wall) until they brought the mithril door out and dragged it all the way to town to sell at around level 5.

This wasn't banned, but,.... interesting. Poor DM had his defenses turned into party profit. The party didn't even stop for a second to think "Wtf.... how do we get by this?" it was an automatic, FREE MONEY!!! And they treated the entire campaign in that way, taking anything and everything that wasn't nailed down, and even then some. lol

Reminds me of a game I played an Artificer in. We were given an adamant ken door as an obstacle, I just fabricated my way around it. The DM made us sell the resulting adamantine chain over the next half dozen levels.

[CrazyYanmega]

Sometimes the reason things are banned is more annoying than the ban itself. Like, I would accept "I'm a new GM, I don't want to deal with more subsystems" as a reason for banning Psionics or ToB. Maybe not my ideal game, but it's a legitimate reason.

But "it's too sci-fi" or "it's too anime", respectively, are BS reasons, and I will likely think less of a GM who gives them. And would think twice about being in that campaign, even if I had no desire to play those classes.

Rule Zero: WHAT THE DM SAYS, GOES. PERIOD. And though I dislike the reasons you indicate, they are completely legitimate and well within the DM's rights to implement. Sure, you can refluff, but doing so takes up a lot of time to do properly. More hassle, more time wasted, and then the DM says "F*** it, YOU'RE banned," and kicks you from the table. DM's word is law, and if you don't like it, you find another table.

[Eldonauran]

Reminds me of a game I played an Artificer in. We were given an adamant ken door as an obstacle, I just fabricated my way around it. The DM made us sell the resulting adamantine chain over the next half dozen levels.

:belkar:

I absolutely adore when my players try to do something like that. My DM sense goes off and the juices begins to flow. Plot hook here, plot hook there, ooh... That's nice!

What do you suppose happens when a somewhat lower level party hauls in an ancient adamantine door savaged from a dwarven ruin? Especially in a small town that has only so much gold? Well, shopkeeper calls in an expert (if he isn't already), people start to talk, local ruffians get ideas about mugging the party on their way back from the next haul, or if the party is too powerful for them, tail the party and scavenge from the dungeon whilst the PCs distract the monsters...

Really, the repercussions of such actions is delightful. My worlds are dynamic and fluid. It reacts to the players in real ways. Why, I've even had a local thug try to kidnap a party members sibling and hold them for ransom because of the amount of gold he was throwing around the night before.

:smallamused:

Good times....

[Forrestfire]

Rule Zero: WHAT THE DM SAYS, GOES. PERIOD. And though I dislike the reasons you indicate, they are completely legitimate and well within the DM's rights to implement. Sure, you can refluff, but doing so takes up a lot of time to do properly. More hassle, more time wasted, and then the DM says "F*** it, YOU'RE banned," and kicks you from the table. DM's word is law, and if you don't like it, you find another table.

:smallconfused: I'd imagine that even more important than Rule Zero is the other unwritten rule: "if the DM is the type who says "**** it, you're banned" if you request to use something he doesn't like, instead of explaining or figuring out a compromise, is probably going to find himself without players soon."

While I'm sure you disagree, inconsistently banning things on the basis that "It's too sci-fi" and "It's too anime Celtic Mythology" are both invalid reasons in my eyes, at least. Unless the DM is consistent and bans all of the sci-fi elements and all of the elements that breaks his interpretation of "realism."

[Silentone98]

Rule Zero: WHAT THE DM SAYS, GOES. PERIOD.

I agree, but only to an extent.....
a DM who won't negotiate, discuss or compromise(within reason) is a bad DM

[squiggit]

I never understood people calling Tome of Battle "Too anime" when basically every anime protagonist is best portrayed by a wizard.

[CrazyYanmega]

To each his own. Everything balances itself out eventually.

On the subject of the original poster, I once had to consider banning entangle. Every time it was used, it ended up either working in the enemies favor, or devolving into bondage orgies.

[Eldonauran]

I never understood people calling Tome of Battle "Too anime" when basically every anime protagonist is best portrayed by a wizard.

Except for those martial oriented anime characters that don't have a spellbook.. :smallbiggrin:

But seriously, I think only the Swordsage really has that feeling going on and it should. It's a different take on what the Monk could have been, more supernatural oriented than extraordinary oriented.

[icefractal]

Rule Zero: WHAT THE DM SAYS, GOES. PERIOD. Well, I would also think twice about playing in a campaign where the DM phrased Rule Zero that way. :smalltongue:

But that's sort of tangential to my point. Sure, a DM can ban things for any reason, nobody's even disputing that. I'm saying that if the reason they give is something stupid, I would be less likely to join their game (and I might think less of them, but that's between me and myself).

I mean, a restaurant can serve nothing but peach-anchovy cobbler if they want, but I'm not likely to go there.

[Silentone98]

lol,... exactly... not a table I'd enjoy I think, especially after so many crappy DM's I played under already...
Depends tho... you could have a DM that stated "What I say go's PERIOD!" and still end up being a damn good DM. Although rare, and I would seriously question any DM so stoked on his own ego as to bar any outside input all the time. O.o

As to the original poster Crazy, that is me.... but you are right we are off topic so let me contribute:

Flashing a lamp in the DM's eyes while game is in session. (or ever).... yes I seriously needed to talk to one of my players once about this as they positioned themselves in the room with a lamp so they can read their rules and sheets better.... it was ALWAYS positioned in a bad way for me.

[Axinian]

Rule Zero: WHAT THE DM SAYS, GOES. PERIOD. And though I dislike the reasons you indicate, they are completely legitimate and well within the DM's rights to implement. Sure, you can refluff, but doing so takes up a lot of time to do properly. More hassle, more time wasted, and then the DM says "F*** it, YOU'RE banned," and kicks you from the table. DM's word is law, and if you don't like it, you find another table.

The weird thing about this is that it's simultaneously true... but also not. In many situations you should just roll with what the DM says....

AND THEN THERE'S CHIEF CIRCLE (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=305986)! In which case you DEFINITELY should not! (Unless you want to break out the cheese forges?)

[Svata]

Ah, Marty. The epitome of everything a DM shouldn't be.

[Silentone98]

I have just sent all my current players a message stating "I am implementing a new forging system with cheese for our DnD game. Exact rules and requirements are still being built, but expect an update by tomorrow."

O.o

[Silentone98]

Oh no... what have I done... they want the cheese forges...

[Renen]

To each his own. Everything balances itself out eventually.

On the subject of the original poster, I once had to consider banning entangle. Every time it was used, it ended up either working in the enemies favor, or devolving into bondage orgies.

Unless its a stuck up GM, who says stupid things and expects you to follow them because rule 0. In that case it wont balance out, and that GM will not be a GM for long, as being a GM implies having players who you play with.

[squiggit]

Except for those martial oriented anime characters that don't have a spellbook.. :smallbiggrin:

I know blue, but honestly? A wizard faking martial competency with spells is going to be better at it than a monk. And there's certainly no way in hell a fighter's going to fly and shoot lasers out of his hands (or teleport or turn into a giant monkey or create dozens of dopplegangers or turn into a dragon.. etc. etc. etc.) without a spellcaster enabling it for him in the first place.

If you want to keep anime out of your game the first thing you should ban is the core wizard.

[Necroticplague]

I know blue, but honestly? A wizard faking martial competency with spells is going to be better at it than a monk. And there's certainly no way in hell a fighter's going to fly and shoot lasers out of his hands (or teleport or turn into a giant monkey or create dozens of dopplegangers or turn into a dragon.. etc. etc. etc.) without a spellcaster enabling it for him in the first place.

If you want to keep anime out of your game the first thing you should ban is the core wizard.

Tenser's transformation. Can you say "super saiyan"? Arguably, psionics is even worse about it, though. Heck, it's pretty much the entire point of psychometabolism school.

[Silentone98]

I know blue, but honestly? A wizard faking martial competency with spells is going to be better at it than a monk. And there's certainly no way in hell a fighter's going to fly and shoot lasers out of his hands (or teleport or turn into a giant monkey or create dozens of dopplegangers or turn into a dragon.. etc. etc. etc.) without a spellcaster enabling it for him in the first place.

If you want to keep anime out of your game the first thing you should ban is the core wizard.

I thought the fighter could do that already with magic items.
I guess that counts as a spellcaster enabling him tho since a spellcaster or god would have needed to make the items >.>
And a wizard can only fake it better than a monk for so long. "naturally" running as fast as a monk needs to count for SOMETHING. Where'as the wizard hides behind the excuse of magic, which isn't limited to anime by any means at all.

I get your point with ToB, and I agree... but find it hard to overlook these other things when it comes to pointing the finger strictly at wizard. (Which really only amplifies your original point, lol)

[Threadnaught]

Except for those martial oriented anime characters that don't have a spellbook.. :smallbiggrin:

Eidetic Spellcaster, your claim is invalid. :smallamused:


Of course DMs will allow Wizard to take anything to improve their abilities, they're over underpowered as it is.
Ignoring Spells.

[Keneth]

I don't generally ban things. I fix them. Unless, of course, the most efficient way of fixing the broken rule is by removing it. Some rules are basically cancer. :smallbiggrin:

[Eldonauran]

Eidetic Spellcaster, your claim is invalid. :smallamused:

There's an exception to every rule. :smallwink:

[Doc_Maynot]

I've had to ban background dealing with royalty. If one wants to be born a royal, they have to pass it by me and even after they are at best 42nd in line to the throne.

[Waker]

I tend to be rather laid back about banning stuff from games and just use the more mutable "Don't p*** me off" rule for players. Stuff like spotlight grabbing, stirring up party conflict for the lulz and so on.
As far as ridiculous though, I ban cliched character concepts. Now I realize that certain character concepts are almost inherently cliche, like the bookish wizard or the permanently intoxicated warrior, but I refer to the more specific types. If you decide to play as a Drow duel-wielding scimitars who abandoned his society because of his goodly ways or a Half-Angel/Half-Demon or... Those kind of characters manage to annoy me even more than the staid, one-dimensional characters.

[Svata]

I always ban Rouges. They are terrifyingly overpowerdered.

[bekeleven]

I always ban Rouges. They are terrifyingly overpowerdered.

Are they from the tomb of battle?

[Sir Chuckles]

Are they from the tomb of battle?

I imagine they might be from the BoEF.

[Alent]

I always ban Rouges. They are terrifyingly overpowerdered.

It's comments like this that explain Magic of Incarnum's Color Coordination.

[Svata]

Are they from the tomb of battle?


I imagine they might be from the BoEF.

Both wrong. They're from the ToM. Tome of Makeup

[nedz]

I've had to ban background dealing with royalty. If one wants to be born a royal, they have to pass it by me and even after they are at best 42nd in line to the throne.

No, no, 1st in line to the throne is fine. It's just that the entire Kingdom has been overthrown by creatures from the Far Realms and you are 1st level.


Both wrong. They're from the ToM. Tome of Makeup

I thought they were in Complete Thespian ?