The most ridiculous thing a player has tried to get past you

[newbDM]

So there is a pretty large thread concerning ideas attempted by players, but I want to hear from the DMs' perspectives.

Also, of these what have you OKed/turned down?

[Eldariel]

The only thing I've had to turn down was Incantatrix (along with a reworking of Feral for the same game).

[mikej]

Anything with a level adjustment, generally my players try to approve of them playing some monsters in some book. Things like drow or tiefling I have no problem with but a floating brain ( Psionic book ) or mindflayers from my illithid fanatic player.

Worse I let go was one PC wanted to play vermin lycantrope from the main website, he wanted to be a were-scorpion barbarian. In a campaign were I was going to send powerfull foes it was tough with someone with over 400 hps before epic...oops

[jcsw]

a floating brain ( Psionic book )

Unbodied? But those aren't floating brains! They have no normal form so the picture is more or less symbolic. (Although some unbodied like the floating brain form... (I'm playing one. Makes for funny espionage.)

[mikej]

Unbodied? But those aren't floating brains! They have no normal form so the picture is more or less symbolic. (Although some unbodied like the floating brain form... (I'm playing one. Makes for funny espionage.)

Yeah thats it, away from books atm.

The player wanted to be like the floating brains from Futurama. Just didn't know how to add something soo weird.

[Saph]

Probably the most recent one would be a player who wanted to do the Arcane Thesis one-trick-pony Wizard character. He'd picked Scorching Ray and got it up to 100 damage or so at level 7.

I tried to explain to him that making a character who can do 100 damage with one standard action just means I have to send monsters at him with 250+ hit points each . . . I'm not sure if it sunk in, though.

And the Druid actually mentioned the Planar Shepherd *shudder*. Thankfully he already knew it was ridiculously broken and was just trying to wind me up. :)

- Saph

[jcsw]

...Body Fuel + Voidmind Template for infinite PP.

[newbDM]

...Body Fuel + Voidmind Template for infinite PP.

It's people like that who give us psionics fans a bad name.

Yeah thats it, away from books atm.

The player wanted to be like the floating brains from Futurama. Just didn't know how to add something soo weird.

I have wanted to get one of my favorite PC to "ascend" like that for a while now. Sort of like in Stargate with the ancients.


p.s. What anime is that cute avatar from?

[mikej]

Probably the most recent one would be a player who wanted to do the Arcane Thesis one-trick-pony Wizard character. He'd picked Scorching Ray and got it up to 100 damage or so at level 7.

- Saph

To be honest i'm doing the " Arcane Thesis " route myself but with Enervation and in my opinion if I was the DM its pretty easy to work around. Not saying its bad but not ridiculous at all but you pigeonhole yourself in feats to make it viable. C'mon like who has fire resistance anyways.

NewbDM: its Miku Hatsune from VOCALOID ( vocal-synthesizing software ) dual wielding leeks.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Feral catfolk character.

[Saph]

To be honest i'm doing the " Arcane Thesis " route myself but with Enervation and in my opinion if I was the DM its pretty easy to work around. Not saying its bad but not ridiculous at all but you pigeonhole yourself in feats to make it viable. C'mon like who has fire resistance anyways.

Of course I can work around it - I just shouldn't have to. I've got 7 players in my game, and I don't have the time to redesign every monster so that it can't be one-shotted by Arcane Thesis abuse. Banning the feat is a much better solution.

- Saph

[banjo1985]

I let a player get away with a Pixie Assassin character, mainly because it was silly enough to be hilarious. We had a ghost/spectre character in the group, as his player had decided to continue playing as him after his untimely death in the game.

The two of them invented a tactic they called the 'Wailing Banshee.' Because the spectre was weightless but corporeal the pixie could easily pick him up and fly him over the battlefield. The spectre would then cast Horrifying Visage and Ghost Sound and the pixie would drop him on unsuspecting foes as he screamed and wailed and generally scared the crap out of them.

It was a very funny and interesting tactic, which was the main reason I let it stand. I like to reward creativity.

[Kurald Galain]

The Precocious Apprentice trick.

Turns out in retrospect that it wasn't necessary - the player pulled some Ultimate Magus near-cheese to create essentially an invoker that cast standard fireballs and so forth, and that eventually met his end because he thought meleeing a dragon was a good strategy for a caster.

Also, some people have had out-of-WBL magical items, but I think that's more the result of people being sloppy at math than of them trying to "get something by" me.

[mikej]

Of course I can work around it - I just shouldn't have to. I've got 7 players in my game, and I don't have the time to redesign every monster so that it can't be one-shotted by Arcane Thesis abuse. Banning the feat is a much better solution.

- Saph

Touche ;D

I never seen abuse like that since the atmosphere in my group is that if you want to over do it...others in the world can also show less restraint. Like the horror of wraithstrike cast upon a dragon...

[newbDM]

Of course I can work around it - I just shouldn't have to. I've got 7 players in my game, and I don't have the time to redesign every monster so that it can't be one-shotted by Arcane Thesis abuse. Banning the feat is a much better solution.

- Saph

You could have just sent out more encounters their way before rest periods. That is the drawback with having one-trick/one-shot wizards/casters like that.

[BRC]

A Wizard expected me to believe that Acid Orb was a 1d8 damage/level, 1st level spell that gave no saving throw and required no touch attack.

[chronoplasm]

The paladin in the group demanded a celestial dragon as a mount at level 4.

[Epinephrine]

A player in GURPS who somehow always had a katana and martial arts training in any campaign setting I ran. Even when there was no orient. Very irritating.

[Zeta Kai]

Well, I had a player who joked about playing a Kobold Wizard. I though she might be kidding on the square, so I retorted that Sarrukhs don't exist in my campaign setting. She changed her mind & played a Killoren Druid instead.

The most egregious thing I ever let slide was a Locate City Bomb. Once. I thought it was incredibly clever at the time (when I thought it was original ), so I let it work, under the understanding that it would never work again. I was planning on destroying that town somehow anyway, & the players quickly learned that blowing up a whole town has very bad unintended consequences.

[RTGoodman]

The guy who thinks Monks are the most overpowered class out there in my group tried to "sneak past me" a "really broken" Monk/Sorcerer build once. I let him get by with it.

(Yeah, we don't really have anything close to approaching character optimization.)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The guy who thinks Monks are the most overpowered class out there in my group tried to "sneak past me" a "really broken" Monk/Sorcerer build once. I let him get by with it.

(Yeah, we don't really have anything close to approaching character optimization.)

Monk2 does bring a lot of power to Sorcerer, particularly with the feat that lets you use your Cha to bonus to AC. Evasion also can be handy, particularly at lower levels, and you generally have enough Reflex save to be able to pull it off.

Assuming, of course, that you don't have access to ToB.

Once, I had a guy who always insisted on playing a Draconian, even when we were not in the Dragonlance world. And he insisted that all his actions, no matter how egotistical and blatantly evil (slaying someone who said something that might have been interpreted as an insult to one of his other characters) were not cause for falling from paladin-hood.

Then, when 3.x came around, he wanted to play a half-dragon, so I hit him with the LA, and he complained about that too.

[kjones]

Well, I had a player who joked about playing a Kobold Wizard. I though she might be kidding on the square, so I retorted that Sarrukhs don't exist in my campaign setting. She changed her mind & played a Killoren Druid instead.

The most egregious thing I ever let slide was a Locate City Bomb. Once. I thought it was incredibly clever at the time (when I thought it was original ), so I let it work, under the understanding that it would never work again. I was planning on destroying that town somehow anyway, & the players quickly learned that blowing up a whole town has very bad unintended consequences.

The Locate City bomb requires taking several feats that are not particularly useful in any other circumstance... I pity your players.

[Deepblue706]

A constant enhancement of True Strike on a Longsword for 5,000gp.

"C'mon, it's not like it's a GREATSWORD, or anything."

Yeah, I turned that down.

[Shpadoinkle]

I'm surpised nobody has mentioned kender yet.

[Kantur]

I'm surpised nobody has mentioned kender yet.

Amusingly my gaming group just finsihed a Dragonlance game that had a Kender in it. We all wanted to kill him. Do you know why? Because he was so unlike any true Kender that the DM kept threatening to take away his immunity to fear. We'dve actually been fine with a proper Kender who has their fascination for a particular type of object and made sure to pick up things you'd 'misplaced' and had just 'forgotten' to return...

I'd say it's a tough thing to balance - 'aquisition of new objects' and that unbound curiousity with not stealing the spotlight every five minutes and trying to evoke that annoyance and "Irritating little Kender!" in the characters without annoying the players.

[Mephit]

Yeah, kenders are fun. When played by DMs. As a DMPC, you can even have a hard time not letting your character be nice to them.

But don't ever let them play as a PC. Too much trouble, unless the player knows what he's doing. (Make sure he read the Dragonlance books a couple of times maybe, so he knows how to be subtle)

[Kantolin]

I tried to explain to him that making a character who can do 100 damage with one standard action just means I have to send monsters at him with 250+ hit points each . . . I'm not sure if it sunk in, though.

Gah, I essentially have to deal with this with great frequency. It's gotten to the point where I know that if a certain person asks for something, I usually can go to ye olde internet and search up the broken combo he's attempting.

Most recently, he went off about my permitting another cleric in the party to have divine metamagic but not him. I patiently explained that the other cleric was using his divine metamagic for fair (and actually kind of underpowered) things like enlarge spell, and not for persist nor quicken nor even maximize. Really, these things could be okay, but the entire party is well balanced around a power level that everyone's having fun with - I keep telling him that if he wants to optimize, he should find a group of people who are more optimization-friendly, as nobody has fun when one person is better than everyone else. Oh, well...

...also I have a party member that's fond of playing hyperevil characters who don't get along with the party and cause strife, which is at least as annoying if not more.

[RTGoodman]

Yeah, kenders are fun. When played by DMs. As a DMPC, you can even have a hard time not letting your character be nice to them.

But don't ever let them play as a PC. Too much trouble, unless the player knows what he's doing. (Make sure he read the Dragonlance books a couple of times maybe, so he knows how to be subtle)

I don't know, I just think it takes a good player to know when and when not to do the sorts of things that get annoying. I've got a Kender in my current PbP Dragonlance game (see my sig) that hasn't stolen the spotlight or been annoying or anything. (So far - they've only just made it out of Solace, so there's more opportunity for, um, finding things once they get to bigger settlements.)

[Aneantir]

For a Gestalt game, starting at level 3, a player tried to get me to let him play something that looked like this:

Relevent stats:
Dex 20
Int 18

Level distribution:
Factotum 3//Dark LA +1/Chameleon LA +1/?

And that, my friends, is a whole lot of hide check.

[Vinotaur]

For a Gestalt game, starting at level 3, a player tried to get me to let him play something that looked like this:

Relevent stats:
Dex 20
Int 18

Level distribution:
Factotum 3//Dark LA +1/Chameleon LA +1/?

And that, my friends, is a whole lot of hide check.

So disallow Darkstalker and have a fun game.