Tell us about a time you were rightly shot down for powergaming

[daremetoidareyo]

I get it. Maybe you reached a little too far. Tell your story here.

[vasilidor]

I don't really have times where I got rightfully banned for power gaming.
I mean I got called a power gamer for wanting to have a +1 sword on a rogue, wanting to play a shadow dancer, playing a warlock, a War Blade, a monk, using strategy.
Closest I got was in a level 11 fighter where the DM was super generous with treasure and I got stuff that would normally be found on a level 20 character. But that was the DMs fault.

[Condé]

At the last campaign I played, my DM complained about my Dragonfire Adept, saying it was "op". Why?
Firest, because my character could fly h24... Even tho he had no problem with my playing a cleric with DMM before that. Oh and because the DFA could identify items for free. How powerful.
And the last thing... Behold: Slow Breath.
Sure it is annoying and you can't do anything about it. But the thing is, your DFA become a debuffer at this point. You are just here, reducing the action economy of your enemies to a crawl (almost literally) and that's it. It was awful for me to play because it was the best thing to do most of the time and awful for him because he thought it was very strong.

Once my DFA got killed, I played a druid in Will'o Wisp form with aberrant wildshape and enhanced wildshape for magic immunity all day long. No complaining.

(He is a great DM, but it is the kind of DM who ban things because he doesn't like them or because he doesn't know them very well. The DFA was the perfect example of that. A class with spammable 24hours buffs? Preposterous!)

[Crake]

At the last campaign I played, my DM complained about my Dragonfire Adept, saying it was "op". Why?
Firest, because my character could fly h24... Even tho he had no problem with my playing a cleric with DMM before that. Oh and because the DFA could identify items for free. How powerful.
And the last thing... Behold: Slow Breath.
Sure it is annoying and you can't do anything about it. But the thing is, your DFA become a debuffer at this point. You are just here, reducing the action economy of your enemies to a crawl (almost literally) and that's it. It was awful for me to play because it was the best thing to do most of the time and awful for him because he thought it was very strong.

Once my DFA got killed, I played a druid in Will'o Wisp form with aberrant wildshape and enhanced wildshape for magic immunity all day long. No complaining.

(He is a great DM, but it is the kind of DM who ban things because he doesn't like them or because he doesn't know them very well. The DFA was the perfect example of that. A class with spammable 24hours buffs? Preposterous!)

Sounds like your DM didnt have issue with POWER, but rather utility, more specifically, things that reduced the scope of things he thought was interesting. Flight limits the scope of environmental and terrain based obstacles, at will identify makes discovering the features of magic items trivial, and slow breath just made combat on his end annoying and frustrating.

In essence, you were reducing his fun by cutting back on his ability to design fun encounters. You can kind of compare it to tears of the kingdom, honestly, sometimes i feel bad when just airbiking everywhere and missing out on all the great world design that was handcrafted into the world.
The difference here is, the nintendo devs create the world for millions of people, and they will all explore it in their own ways, while your DM is making the world just for their players, so whenever you trivialize their work, it usually just goes in the bin, never to be appreciated. That feels bad.

[ciopo]

I was messing around with a very powerful mcguffin that's chaos related, basically a wish++ dispenser, (umd check), rolled poorly and so by the grace of the d100 for partial failures I lost an eye but gained a 1/lifetime "take 20" flavored as "you see the future".

I immediately used it to take 20 on the umd check to use the artefact again, GM was not amused, but mostly amused at the irony that he didn't see that coming when he handed me a take20, so I didn't go overboard with the wish equivalent


There was a time I tried to do infinite-loop of improved trip-> free attack -> knock-down-> free trip -> repeat, shut down with the proper "you can't trip a prone target"
There was a time I prepared a Return to Nature against a foreshadowed abomination BBGE, shut down with "sure you could do that, but that woulnd't be fun for the group, please prepare differently"
There was a time after other players got kicked from the group due to attendance issues, I argued for converting our remaining character to gestalt instead of trying to recruit replacements
There was a time a looong ago ( high school, so like, 20+ years ago ) I argued about getting the starting gear from multiple backgrounds, so like 3 bows, to sell them for money, of course

[Fero]

I had a wizard sucesfully magic jar a very powerful dragon. I pointed out to the DM that I could set things up to regularly reuse the.magic jar and to maintain control of the Dragon in perpetuity. However, I did not propose this for power gaming. To the contrary, I wanted to retire my character and thought this would be a fun retirement. Nonetheless, maintaining perpetual control over the dragon was too much for my DM to swallow. Mind you, this game involved a hard-core Ruby Knight Vindicator build and and an artificer that could maintain 70+ buffs on the party all day.

[Olive_Sophia]

I’ve never really gotten a lot of this. Probably because, while I do optimize and follow RAW for the most part, I do it for fun rather than to become overpowered. I also turn away from TO tricks and such that I feel are too cheesy.

But there was this one time, early in my career, where I was applying to a low level game with a narrative focus. I applied with a stock thri-kreen ubercharger :D And I was rejected, of course. The build was still new to me at the time, and I did have an interest in the insectile aesthetic, but it wasn’t the right time or place.

[lylsyly]

Once, the very first (and last) time that Planar Shepherd was allowed at our table. Plan was Druid 5 / Planar Shepherd 10 / Druid 5. I was at Planar Shepherd 7 when the DM said "everyone else might as well not show up, just let ******** finish it by himself."

It was the last time I tried to truly optimize a character.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I once made a simple illusionist wizard (with a few divination and enchantment spells) with everything to increase spell DCs (focused specialist, shadow weave, GSchool Focus....) to reach DCs in the high 30s around level 10. High DC SoL and shadow Evoc/Conjurations were admittedly too much for the power level of the rest of the party, and it would really not be very fun to simply have most enemies lose in the first round to a dice roll. He was also pretty cocky and hypocritical, which didn't help his relation with the rest of the party. I was soft-shot down by having basically all enemies have absurd Will saves, and one player even quit the game after I basically refused to tone its attitude down... In hindsight, not my greatest char, not my greatest time.

[SimonMoon6]

The only time I've been shut down was right after Savage Species came out. This was in an "anything goes" kind of gaming group, but I still wasn't allowed to play an anthropomorphic whale. Poor "Bubba Blubba" never got to see the light of day.

[pabelfly]

I wouldn't say I was "shot down", but while playing Pathfinder, it was collectively decided that my Trox Fighter with a bow was too OP for the group (think it was around level 6), and when talks initially started about banning the character, I was able to instead come up with several ways to nerf the character - either give it some LA or change to a low-BAB class like Rogue. The campaign it was in fizzled out for unrelated reasons so I never got to put any either of my suggested nerfs in play.


In my defense of playing with a Trox, I was pretty hesitant about throwing it into the game and did talk to the DM about it, and suggested before everyone else that it might need a nerf.

The takeaway lessons for me, though: the nerf you put on your own character is always preferable to nerfs other people put on your character, if they don't outright ban it. And you might be able to get away with some fairly outrageous concepts if you put some reasonable nerfs elsewhere to take the overall power level to something that's reasonable.

[CallMeBagel]

We were playing a game, the DM said go crazy do what ever you want. We were around 16-18, I built a wizard/ur-preist combo. I didn't get shot down, but I was honestly bored. I could kill anything we went up against without a second thought. I could take the party head on if I felt like it. It was as all out as I've ever built but it was boring. I ended up re-rolling and doing something similar, but mostly just taking buff/debuff. That was much more fun.

[Akal Saris]

I optimized Intimidate as a secondary tactic on a character, and the DM was deeply unamused to learn that I had paralyzed the BBEG in fear as my move action. That got nerfed mid-fight :P

[Clause]

I have played a shifter monk/ tatooed monk.at lvl 8
The combo i used was longtooth venomous strike+dilacerating ky+spider tatoo.
The DM puts a bullette, and the beast dies in one punch. The second time was a desert giant, third time, a sea wich. So the game have a "pause" bute the DM plays in secret to the others

[vasilidor]

Some of these things don't really sound that problematic to me. I mean they would be if they interfered with people's fun (The DM is there to have fun as well), but in and of them selves they sound like things with easy work arounds.

[pabelfly]

Some of these things don't really sound that problematic to me. I mean they would be if they interfered with people's fun (The DM is there to have fun as well), but in and of them selves they sound like things with easy work arounds.

I don't think the question is so much "can this be countered" but "is this notably more powerful than what the rest of the group is doing?" Especially if the DM is running farily standard encounters or a prewritten campaign module.

[H_H_F_F]

Only kinda shot down... I played a bard once in a short adventure. Very core only, low-op, very low-wbl, 4th level.

I used glitterdust to basically turn off our first encounter. The DM didn't say anything, but I could see he was disappointed.

I talked to him after the fact and asked if the spell was too much for him. He said it's fine if I'm sure I read the spell correctly, but eventually did say it was more powerful than the power level he planned for. I asked him if he'd like me to swap out the spell, he said yeah.

[King of Nowhere]

Only kinda shot down... I played a bard once in a short adventure. Very core only, low-op, very low-wbl, 4th level.

I used glitterdust to basically turn off our first encounter. The DM didn't say anything, but I could see he was disappointed.

I talked to him after the fact and asked if the spell was too much for him. He said it's fine if I'm sure I read the spell correctly, but eventually did say it was more powerful than the power level he planned for. I asked him if he'd like me to swap out the spell, he said yeah.

And so yet another dm discovers that "core only" and "low op" are very different concepts

[vasilidor]

I don't think the question is so much "can this be countered" but "is this notably more powerful than what the rest of the group is doing?" Especially if the DM is running farily standard encounters or a prewritten campaign module.

I agree with you entirely. I also see the opposite as a problem. Which is why I disallow core monks (unchained monks and some archetypes are ok) and Kineticists. I disallowed the vigilante because the core rules on alignment are enough of a headache to deal with. I also allow character rebuilds.

[Mnemius]

In a group where most players were playing monsters with +7 LA... I made a human druid... vow of poverty/fey kissed.
We leveled fast... At 15, the dm got tired of me not being part of the loot, so a deity intervened and gave me permission to use an item. (I did not ask for that, DM was like, if I have you deity give it to you, it doesn't break the vow.) I asked for an amulet of mighty fists with a couple abilities on it. (Like a the weapons the rest of the party were getting.)

Next boss fight, I wild-shaped into a cryohydra and out damaged the DM's epic/godly helper character. DM promptly had the monster turn around and hit me with a "tiamat breath weapon" of 24d6 fire, 24d6 cold, 24d6 acid, 24d6 sonic, and 24d6 electric.
Yep, I got melted for being too op.

[The Insanity]

Played in a short-lived 3.5 game a long time ago. It was somewhere around 10-12th level. I made an exalted Monk with a prestige class or two that made her more paladin-like and more effective against evil outsiders. I don't think I optimized her particularly strongly, but it seems the DM din't like something about her because he allowed another player, who played a caster and apparently was on the evil side, to planar bind some high CR (at least higher than my character's level) fiend and send it to where my PC was. Obviously I couldn't ignore a monster (that I was built to fight, mind you) killing innocents, so I engaged it, solo. Unsurprisingly, my character was killed and I dipped out of that campaign. I later heard that it was heavy on evil outsiders, which none of the other PCs could fight effectively, and that the evil caster "PC" turned on the other PCs.

[daremetoidareyo]

Played in a short-lived 3.5 game a long time ago. It was somewhere around 10-12th level. I made an exalted Monk with a prestige class or two that made her more paladin-like and more effective against evil outsiders. I don't think I optimized her particularly strongly, but it seems the DM din't like something about her because he allowed another player, who played a caster and apparently was on the evil side, to planar bind some high CR (at least higher than my character's level) fiend and send it to where my PC was. Obviously I couldn't ignore a monster (that I was built to fight, mind you) killing innocents, so I engaged it, solo. Unsurprisingly, my character was killed and I dipped out of that campaign. I later heard that it was heavy on evil outsiders, which none of the other PCs could fight effectively, and that the evil caster "PC" turned on the other PCs.

That sounds like the opposite of being rightly struck down