Broken? Naw, man, it's HIGH-POWERED!

[Fiery Diamond]

So, to introduce the topic of this thread: Things people have done (house rules-wise and examples) that would/could normally be considered overpowered/broken but because the campaign was intended to be high-powered you did it anyway. In addition to presenting our own examples (as players or DMs) we can comment on each others'! (Just no straight-up insulting, such as "That's a dumb idea, it's totally broken!" I mean, that's kind of the point - to talk about things that would/could normally be seen as broken.)

So, my example. I'm running a Gestalt campaign. That right there means that any attempt at balance is pretty futile. The players (currently level 7, I started them at level 3, and they aren't going to multiclass as far as I know) consist of a Cleric//Bard, a Druid//Ranger, a Monk//Sorcerer, and a Rogue//Ranger. Now here's the changes I did:
1) Made up my own version of wildshape that starts out much less powerful and ends up considerably more powerful than standard wildshape which is built around partial changes (growing wings, growing gills and fins, etc.) but eventually extends to include all the normal stuff as well plus some. I did it for the flavor.
2) The Rog//Rgr, with no primary casting, got her animal companion bumped to the same stats as a Druid animal companion.
3) I'm going to allow awakened animal companions. Additionally, I'm changing the stat increases for Awaken to the following: 3d6 Int, +1d6 Wis, +2d6 Cha, +2HD.
4) Roleplay driven bonus skill points, bonus spells, and bonus feats which will also cost XP and GP.
5) A system of specially created combat moves by the players costing XP and roleplay.
6) Cantrips are per hour instead of per day, though you only prepare them once per day.
7) Create water over a fire elemental of small or medium size deals 1 point of damage per gallon. Create water over a fire elemental of large size deals 1 point of damage per 2 gallons. Create water over a fire elemental of huge size deals 1 point of damage per 5 gallons. Greater- 1 point per 10 gallons; Elder- 1 point per 20 gallons.

SHARE!

[FishAreWet]

Using Tomb rules.

[Temotei]

Monk//sorcerer?

So now the monk character is dependent on Strength, Dexterity (to a lesser extent), Constitution, Wisdom, and Charisma.

Sorry. No houserules here. I just wanted to comment on that.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Monk//sorcerer?

So now the monk character is dependent on Strength, Dexterity (to a lesser extent), Constitution, Wisdom, and Charisma.

Sorry. No houserules here. I just wanted to comment on that.

Nah, a Sorcerer//Monk is Cha dependent. He just gets a bunch of neat class features to go with his spell casting. Ascetic mage changes the Wisdom dependence to Cha dependence and everything else can be replaced by spells.

[Narazil]

Nah, a Sorcerer//Monk is Cha dependent. He just gets a bunch of neat class features to go with his spell casting. Ascetic mage changes the Wisdom dependence to Cha dependence and everything else can be replaced by spells.

Uhm - how about Strength and Con? And that's forsaking Dex for ranged touch attacks.

[ZeroNumerous]

Uhm - how about Strength and Con? And that's forsaking Dex for ranged touch attacks.

Uh, how about "Why would he be in melee to begin with?" He's a sorcerer who gets CHA to AC, all good saves, evasion and an(effectively) continuous expeditious retreat spell. Taking levels in monk in Gestalt does not mean you are going to be fighting.

[Narazil]

Uh, how about "Why would he be in melee to begin with?" He's a sorcerer who gets CHA to AC, all good saves, evasion and an(effectively) continuous expeditious retreat spell. Taking levels in monk in Gestalt does not mean you are going to be fighting.

Hm, point taken. I may just be more of a Paladin // Sorcerer, myself.

[Justin B.]

My current game revolves around a specific magical stone that greatly enhances the power of anyone who interacts with it, as well as being a conduit directly into the magical energies of the world. The game is running on two points in time, an expedition that discovered the stones, and another fifteen years later after the stones have been fully integrated into their characters.

One of the characters, a Paladin, set a rather large hunk of the stone into his shield, and by being used as a focus for many of his holy spells and abilities, has developed a near-sentience that allows it to cast spells as that of a Cleric equal to his Paladin level. Sometimes he can request spells, othertimes it gives them to him randomly. It never acts against him.

One of the Fighters o the group reacted very suddenly and powerfully with the stone, transforming his crossbow into a potent magic item that fires arrows as rapidly as he can pull the trigger. Many times the arrows are of an elemental and magical nature.

[Solaris]

... Pretty much all of my homebrew.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Oh, I have one that fits this topic perfectly.

Two campaigns ago (the first one I ran at college), I told my players that absolutely anything was fine for their builds, so the two other DMs in the crowd (who favor much lower-power campaigns and a teensy bit of iron-fisted railroading ^*cough*) tried to prove that it would make a bad game by seeing how far they could take things through template abuse...which then prompted the 8 new-to-3e players to go "Hey, I want to play something weird too!"

It ended up that every single person had the Elder Eidolon, Ice Beast, and Effigy templates, using incarnate construct in between for -2 LA each (yes, I know it's somewhat debatable RAW-wise, but hey, I was feeling nice), so after all was said and done everyone pretty much had +12 worth of free LA at 1st level. I split up the players into two groups to make things easier to handle and rewrote the entire plot about them being freaks that the civilized folks were trying to kill. The characters:

• Party One--the "mostly sane" party
  
  • Someone we nicknamed the "Dragon Dragon Dragon Dragon Dragon Dragon" because he took every possible class/ability/etc. related to dragons, who ended up as 6 or 7 different kinds of half-dragon by the end of the game and had upwards of 13 breath weapons at will
  • A Tashalatora type cranked up to 11 with enough power points to spare by 5th level that he routinely intimidated prisoners by launching 3 or 4 fully-augmented energy rays at rocks and trees
  • An aberration-grafted Daelkyr-spawned ray-spec sorcerer who got in a ray-on-ray duel with a beholder and won
  • A half-fire/half-plant goblin possessed by an agent of Mephistopheles who dealt enough fire damage per round to one-shot great wyrm red dragons
  • A flaming skeleton necromancer (arcane and divine) who had more skeleton minions than hit points and who could turn vampires to dust without needing to roll his turning check
• Party Two--the "why in Pelor's name!?" party
  
  • A half-brass-golem wendigo monster-of-legend [...] fast-zombie xvart who was pretty much invulnerable
  • An amalgamation of almost every elemental template and class out there, who turned into smoke and ripped people to shreds while inside their lungs and pretended to be his familiar because he had a Hide mod of +60 at 1st level
  • A half-illithid favored-spawn-of-Kyuss who permanencied bloodwind to grapple everything with sight with his skeletal tentacles and turn them into spawn of Kyuss
  • A tauric quasi-Hulking Hurler
  • A warforged multi-headed multi-wielding soulbow with at least a dozen arms (and grafting more at every opportunity) for whom I had to write a program to calculate his attacks because, by 19th level, he had to roll 20+ attacks per round just counting crits that got past miss chances

So...yeah. Slightly more than I was expecting, but I at least managed to break the two DMs out of their "Core is perfect, splatbooks are meh, using 2+ splatbooks on a character automatically ruin games" philosophy. I've made it clear that I was trying to make the new folks' first game fun and amazing and that I'd appreciate it if they inform be before they decide to do something that crazy again.

[alchemyprime]

Two words for you: Prime20. Where Tier 3 is underpowered.

Yes. Every campaign I've run has been too overpowered. Its fun.

[Solaris]

Oh, I have one that fits this topic perfectly.

Two campaigns ago (the first one I ran at college), I told my players that absolutely anything was fine for their builds, so the two other DMs in the crowd (who favor much lower-power campaigns and a teensy bit of iron-fisted railroading ^*cough*) tried to prove that it would make a bad game by seeing how far they could take things through template abuse...which then prompted the 8 new-to-3e players to go "Hey, I want to play something weird too!"

It ended up that every single person had the Elder Eidolon, Ice Beast, and Effigy templates, using incarnate construct in between for -2 LA each (yes, I know it's somewhat debatable RAW-wise, but hey, I was feeling nice), so after all was said and done everyone pretty much had +12 worth of free LA at 1st level. I split up the players into two groups to make things easier to handle and rewrote the entire plot about them being freaks that the civilized folks were trying to kill. The characters:

• Party One--the "mostly sane" party
  
  • Someone we nicknamed the "Dragon Dragon Dragon Dragon Dragon Dragon" because he took every possible class/ability/etc. related to dragons, who ended up as 6 or 7 different kinds of half-dragon by the end of the game and had upwards of 13 breath weapons at will
  • A Tashalatora type cranked up to 11 with enough power points to spare by 5th level that he routinely intimidated prisoners by launching 3 or 4 fully-augmented energy rays at rocks and trees
  • An aberration-grafted Daelkyr-spawned ray-spec sorcerer who got in a ray-on-ray duel with a beholder and won
  • A half-fire/half-plant goblin possessed by an agent of Mephistopheles who dealt enough fire damage per round to one-shot great wyrm red dragons
  • A flaming skeleton necromancer (arcane and divine) who had more skeleton minions than hit points and who could turn vampires to dust without needing to roll his turning check
• Party Two--the "why in Pelor's name!?" party
  
  • A half-brass-golem wendigo monster-of-legend [...] fast-zombie xvart who was pretty much invulnerable
  • An amalgamation of almost every elemental template and class out there, who turned into smoke and ripped people to shreds while inside their lungs and pretended to be his familiar because he had a Hide mod of +60 at 1st level
  • A half-illithid favored-spawn-of-Kyuss who permanencied bloodwind to grapple everything with sight with his skeletal tentacles and turn them into spawn of Kyuss
  • A tauric quasi-Hulking Hurler
  • A warforged multi-headed multi-wielding soulbow with at least a dozen arms (and grafting more at every opportunity) for whom I had to write a program to calculate his attacks because, by 19th level, he had to roll 20+ attacks per round just counting crits that got past miss chances

So...yeah. Slightly more than I was expecting, but I at least managed to break the two DMs out of their "Core is perfect, splatbooks are meh, using 2+ splatbooks on a character automatically ruin games" philosophy. I've made it clear that I was trying to make the new folks' first game fun and amazing and that I'd appreciate it if they inform be before they decide to do something that crazy again.

I'm not gonna lie. After I got done reading the first group, I thought to myself "That's sane!?"
You've officially beat anything I've allowed into play. Good job.

[JaronK]

I did an Efreeti Wish Loop using Candles of Invocation in one game, but I got permission to do it with the gaurentee that I wouldn't use it for anything game breaking. I made the most pimpin' carriage of all time, Haunt Shifted and permanently under my control. That's the most recent one.

JaronK

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I'm not gonna lie. After I got done reading the first group, I thought to myself "That's sane!?"
You've officially beat anything I've allowed into play. Good job.

Heh. I ran the sane party Friday nights and the crazy party Saturdays, from around 9 in the evening to 3 or 4 in the morning. Imagine, if you will, trying to run the "sane" party after 4 hours of homework while improvising absolutely everything. For instance, I was completely at a loss for where the plot should be going at one point, so after I stalled the party in the Elemental Plane of Fire for a little while I called a 30-minute dinner break and frantically plotted out a destroy-the-demonic-artifacts plot arc and write out a two-page pretentiously-poetic prophecy for the players to fiddle with and give me ideas.

The worst part is that this campaign is, given that I was running two parties and was beset by the usual issues of freshman year, the only one I've run since 1e that I didn't keep a campaign log for, so I only remember general anecdotes and not all the little amazing details.