The most common reason by far for banning material is that it's "overpowered." Yet, no one can agree on what precisely is overpowered. There are arguments against CoDzilla, against persistent spell, against nightsticks, against beguilers, against the ToB classes and so on until one reads arguments against just about everything. While some of this is just the flawed perception of some DMs (banning the Warmage is generally laughable) the effect is the same. Something gets called too powerful and someone jumps to keep it out of their game.
Heck, we can't even agree on what to measure power against. Do we measure it against CRs of an appropriate level? Or against the power of other classes at the same level? Which classes? Frankly, none of that matters to me, because in my game there's human intelligence directing each character's creation and actions.
I play and occasionally DM in an 8-person party. Lately we've played at high levels, and had some character turnover, meaning that characters with inorganic (that is to say, planned) builds are common. Additionally, to ensure even longstanding characters have a chance to create whatever character builds they currently fancy, our DM has included several rebuild quest opportunities. Our builds vary from a straight warlock to a fighter/frenzied berserker/modified warpriest/master of chains. There is, admittedly, some variance in combat effectiveness between our characters. Our wizard keeps everyone from dying on a regular basis, and that warlock will never be as good at killing anything as any of our heavy fighters.
And we're all happy. Every one of the 8 players in my group likes the character they play, and has fairly equal spotlight time both in and outside of combat.
This hasn't always happened. Our warforged character was, at one point, considerably stronger than any of our other fighters, and wrapped up a couple combats without any real assistance. He approached our DM on his own and asked if he could modify his build and redistribute some of his magic items because other players weren't having fun. Our DM didn't have to take any action, didn't have to preemptively ban any classes or combinations, and we all continued to play happily. No in-game nerfing occurred and the character wasn't told he could only use the ability that was too powerful so many times per day.
On another occasion, the other players in our group mentioned they felt our paladin was out of hand powerful in comparison to the other characters. He offered to make some character changes, and again we all enjoyed the game. Instead of creating increased group tension, and leaving players unhappy, if players would simply discuss their problems with other characters like the rational people they hopefully are, and then make whatever changes everyone feels would bring the group back into whatever sense of balance is necessary, everyone can leave happy.
There's no need for DMs to limit player options and ban material, because a good group of players should be able and willing to police themselves. My group has yet to ban anything, and we all play happily.
With my point made, there are a few exceptional cases where banning by DMs makes sense.
1) World building reasons
All halflings belong to such and such sect, worshiping ancient ghosts and aren't available to players because the DM wants to bring them in later a plot device. Even in this case, player-DM negotiations should be available if a player really had his heart set on a halfling sorcerer.
2) Unfamiliarity with the rules
A DM needs to understand his player's capabilities to design appropriate encounters. If a player brings in an incarnum based character and the DM doesn't know what said character can do, it can cause game problems. Thus, restricting materials to what the DM knows about is reasonable, though DMs should consider familiarizing themselves with what their players want to play. If all of a group’s fighter players would really like to try ToB characters, it seems reasonable that one of them lend the DM the book for a few weekends and he/she makes an effort to learn those rules.
This entire argument is just an application of a sentiment very common on these boards; players and DMs should discuss their problems and come to amiable solutions. If people did this instead of making heavy-handed rulings or hogging the spotlight from other players, everyone could more easily enjoy playing D&D.
Communication is vital to having fun when playing a cooperative game; not only does it allow you to figure out what your friends want to do, it also helps you figure out what you'd like to do! So, sit down and figure out which rulebooks you'd like to play with as a group. Then, if needed, make changes along the way to try and make sure that everyone is having as much fun as possible.
To horribly misquote Lincoln, you may be able to please most of the people some of the time, and you may be able to please some of the people most of the time, but you can't please everyone all of the time. You should aim to please most of the people most of the time. Make this your goal, and the rest will fall into place. Remember it's just a game. Have fun!
Thanks,
roll8dn
That being said, I agree that banning on the basis of a perception of "overpowered" classes is unnecessary. I used to play a few other RPGs where various classes had very different levels of power, especially at lower levels -- its simply a matter of tailoring adventures to the party you have. The "DM doesn't know the material" excuse also doesn’t work for me -- it doesn't take a lot of work to review a new class and think about how it will fit in your campaign.
I play and occasionally DM in an 8-person party. Lately we've played at high levels, and had some character turnover, meaning that characters with inorganic (that is to say, planned) builds are common. Additionally, to ensure even longstanding characters have a chance to create whatever character builds they currently fancy, our DM has included several rebuild quest opportunities. Our builds vary from a straight warlock to a fighter/frenzied berserker/modified warpriest/master of chains. There is, admittedly, some variance in combat effectiveness between our characters. Our wizard keeps everyone from dying on a regular basis, and that warlock will never be as good at killing anything as any of our heavy fighters.
And we're all happy. Every one of the 8 players in my group likes the character they play, and has fairly equal spotlight time both in and outside of combat.
This hasn't always happened. Our warforged character was, at one point, considerably stronger than any of our other fighters, and wrapped up a couple combats without any real assistance. He approached our DM on his own and asked if he could modify his build and redistribute some of his magic items because other players weren't having fun. Our DM didn't have to take any action, didn't have to preemptively ban any classes or combinations, and we all continued to play happily. No in-game nerfing occurred and the character wasn't told he could only use the ability that was too powerful so many times per day.
On another occasion, the other players in our group mentioned they felt our paladin was out of hand powerful in comparison to the other characters. He offered to make some character changes, and again we all enjoyed the game. Instead of creating increased group tension, and leaving players unhappy, if players would simply discuss their problems with other characters like the rational people they hopefully are, and then make whatever changes everyone feels would bring the group back into whatever sense of balance is necessary, everyone can leave happy.
There's no need for DMs to limit player options and ban material, because a good group of players should be able and willing to police themselves. My group has yet to ban anything, and we all play happily.
Wow! You have no idea how remarkable a group you have. In 28 years of playing and DMing I have yet to personally encounter a player who felt that his (or her) character was too powerful and asked that it be made weaker so as not to overshadow the other characters. I have made some downward revisions to party NPCs for this purpose, but I have yet to see a player voluntarily do this.
Since players rarely act with such incredible selflessness, DMs sometimes must step in to prevent abuses that lead to everyone but the abuser have a bad time. I have seen groups fall apart because the DM would not act to stop the abusers and everyone else quit.
I agree that everyone cannot agree on what's too powerful; that just makes it all the more likely that even in the presence of selfless players you can have imbalances that a DM might wisely foresee and act to prevent. It's much easier to prohibit something in the first place than to remove it later, after a player has gotten attached to it. I have an experience with a player who wanted to play a winged kobold ninja that worked out badly.
People on the boards warned me not to allow the combination, but I didn't see the problem and allowed it. It turned out that she wasn't offensively powerful and didn't dominate the game, but she was so defensively powerful that it wreaked havoc with all the encounters. She was almost impossible to hit, and since she would tend to fly out of range of melee attacks, the rest of the party would bear the brunt of all the enemies' attacks. In one ill-advised encounter that they could have avoided, everyone died but her character. She ended up with all the experience and treasure, and they ended up having to roll up new characters.
At one point I limited the kobold's power slightly by ruling that no matter how high the Dexterity, it couldn't have a maneuverability better than good, because generally speaking that's the limit on maneuverability for winged creatures. Creatures with naturally perfect maneuverability are typically non-winged creatures like air elementals. She complained bitterly about even this one minor limitation, despite the fact that it didn't prevent her from surviving when everyone else died. I can only imagine the hostility seriously limiting the character's power (say, by eliminating the winged template and giving her normal levels instead. or perhaps eliminating the ninja class as an option). It would have been much easier to simply ban the combination in the first place, as people on the boards urged me to do.
I had another, somewhat similar experience with something I shouldn't have allowed. A player wanted to play a nymph rogue. We cut out many of its abilities to reduce it to reduce its level adjustment from +7 to +4, but with 6 fey hit dice and a level adjustment of 4 she just wasn't a very good rogue. She really couldn't do much of anything to aid the party--even less than the winged kobold ninja who could at least do some decent arrow damage (probably because that was a low-level campaign)--and party members got killed as a result of her inability to do anything useful. The enemies, however, could barely do any damage to her. Longer-term players got mad at having their beloved characters die (even though the characters got brought back with true resurrection, the players had to sit around and do nothing for the rest of the combat, a considerable period) and it lead to the nymph's character leaving the group. It would have been better to simply have said, "that's a bad combination so I'm not going to allow it," instead of just warning the player that it was a bad combination but allowing it anyway.
So, I do think that a wise DM will make judicious use of bans, whether of particular classes, races, or templates. I don't think that DMs should just ban wide swaths of material (except, as you say, where the DM doesn't actually know the material) but I do think there's a place for a DM to prohibit certain things from the game. I do agree with your point that DMs probably ban far too much material too easily.
The "DM doesn't know the material" excuse also doesn’t work for me -- it doesn't take a lot of work to review a new class and think about how it will fit in your campaign.
Not every one of us can afford every single book that comes out, nor should we be under any obligation to allow everything that Wizards puts to press just because they put it to press. While it might not be hard to determine whether a favored soul (uses mostly core material with a little bit of a twist--clerical spells known and cast like a sorcerer) there are books like the one with incarnum (whatever the heck that is) or fighter "spells" (or whatever name they've given to them in the Book of Nine Rings or whatever it's called) that introduce essentially whole new systems into the game. It takes more than a little while to do a thoughtful analysis of how entire new systems will fit into your game.
I've seen DMs who ok material they don't really understand, only to have them repeatedly disallow parts of the material on the fly. It's better to use material that the DM does understand than to have him (or her) allow something in theory but then destroy it mid-game after you've invested time and energy into building it into your character.
There's no need for DMs to limit player options and ban material, because a good group of players should be able and willing to police themselves. My group has yet to ban anything, and we all play happily.
With my point made, there are a few exceptional cases where banning by DMs makes sense.
1) World building reasons
All halflings belong to such and such sect, worshiping ancient ghosts and aren't available to players because the DM wants to bring them in later a plot device. Even in this case, player-DM negotiations should be available if a player really had his heart set on a halfling sorcerer.
2) Unfamiliarity with the rules
A DM needs to understand his player's capabilities to design appropriate encounters. If a player brings in an incarnum based character and the DM doesn't know what said character can do, it can cause game problems. Thus, restricting materials to what the DM knows about is reasonable, though DMs should consider familiarizing themselves with what their players want to play. If all of a group’s fighter players would really like to try ToB characters, it seems reasonable that one of them lend the DM the book for a few weekends and he/she makes an effort to learn those rules.
And I use both arguments to "ban" psionics.:P But there is a third acceptable reason- the PC suggested is too disruptive. The Frenzied Berserker comes to mind.
And a weak 4th- the class/race combo is so unbalanced, the DM will have problems with designing encounters- and combat that will challenge the rest of the party will either be a complete walk-over or a insta-death for that one PC. A true Vampire PC is a good example.
I do not like the Truename magic or Incarnum magic books for the reason that reading them and understanding those unique rules makes my brain hurt.:P Thus any PC wanting to play one better have a darn good reason and a solid commitment to it, so I have a good reason to force myself to read those rules.:D
Wow! You have no idea how remarkable a group you have. In 28 years of playing and DMing I have yet to personally encounter a player who felt that his (or her) character was too powerful and asked that it be made weaker so as not to overshadow the other characters. I have made some downward revisions to party NPCs for this purpose, but I have yet to see a player voluntarily do this.
Since players rarely act with such incredible selflessness, DMs sometimes must step in to prevent abuses that lead to everyone but the abuser have a bad time. I have seen groups fall apart because the DM would not act to stop the abusers and everyone else quit.
(Snipping example)
So, I do think that a wise DM will make judicious use of bans, whether of particular classes, races, or templates. I don't think that DMs should just ban wide swaths of material (except, as you say, where the DM doesn't actually know the material) but I do think there's a place for a DM to prohibit certain things from the game. I do agree with your point that DMs probably ban far too much material too easily.
While, I can understand your actions, the mindset that produced them is what worries me.
Player's that don't want to sacrifice personal power for group balance and entertainment, need to learn otherwise. Instead of reactionary banning, which is effective in the short term, instead discussions need to take place within gaming groups to allow those players to see that everyone can and will have more fun if the group remains within relative balance (taking into account individual player and DM styles).
Personally, I think most people are mature or have the potential to become mature enough to see that. And I feel that merely banning material or limiting player power instead just encourages that competitive mindset instead of creating a desire in players for balance.
While, I can understand your actions, the mindset that produced them is what worries me.
Player's that don't want to sacrifice personal power for group balance and entertainment, need to learn otherwise. Instead of reactionary banning, which is effective in the short term, instead discussions need to take place within gaming groups to allow those players to see that everyone can and will have more fun if the group remains within relative balance (taking into account individual player and DM styles).
Personally, I think most people are mature or have the potential to become mature enough to see that. And I feel that merely banning material or limiting player power instead just encourages that competitive mindset instead of creating a desire in players for balance.
You're worried about my mindset? What part of avoiding obviously foreseeable negative consequences bothers you? :P If you'll recall, I allowed the useless nymph, which led to a long round of hard feelings and two departures from my group. I also allowed the broken kobold, which led to everyone else losing their character and the kobold getting the whole party's treasure and experience. It's precisely because I didn't ban them then and suffered the consequences that I'd ban them now.
I have to disagree with your assessment about the maturity of most people. In 28 years of playing and DMing I've never seen anyone say that his character was too powerful and voluntarily give up that power. I'm not saying that it never happens, because you've seen it, but I am saying what I started out to say--it's incredibly rare.
I agree too with Daniel above--something like the frenzied berserker can cause terrible disruptions and hard feelings in the party. I have seen time and again where the player of the disruptive character just doesn't care that it disrupts the other players; indeed, I've seen a lot of players who seem to enjoy primarily disrupting other players.
Aren't nymphs bound to a particular location or land feature?
I think you're thinking of dryads, which are bound to particular oak trees.
Aren't nymphs bound to a particular location or land feature? If so how did the player justify getting around this? Winged kobold ninja?? In what setting? Underdark Kara-Tur?
I seem to recall that in 1st Ed a nymph was bound to a particular tree, but I don't have my 1st Ed Monster Manual handy. The 3.5 the nymph "often had a place she holds sacred." For the nymph character I said that the main bad guys had desecrated her part of the forest and she had joined the resistance against them. As I indicated, not only did the character not work out, but neither did the player.
We used the winged kobold ninja in an Eberron campaign. I invented for her background that a secret society of advanced kobolds had been living in the location of Sharn since before humans arrived, keeping their winged nature secret by learning advanced techniques of hiding, disguise, distraction and martial arts. When the player wrote up a background and sent it to me, however, it completely ignored the background material I'd created. When I told her that she needed to write a different background that used the material I'd created, she acted like she didn't remember that I'd invented the background to justify having a kobold ninja in the first place, and she never sent me an updated background as I'd requested. I never mentioned it but the group never really came together for me and after we took a break for the holiday, I never bothered to call it back into session.
In both cases the character in question had a troublesome build that caused trouble for the other players. Neither player had the maturity to admit that it was troublesome and go with something that would have worked better for the other player, so banning it would have been the only way to avoid having the uncooperative player cause trouble for the other players.
I might also add, as I've read elsewhere (it might go all the way back to the 1st Ed DMG) that it's much easier to ban something in the first place than to take it away after you've allowed it, as was the case even with the perfect maneuverability of the kobold with a high Dexterity score and the winged template. The player objected repeatedly to even having the maneuverability reduced one place to good.
Personally, I think most people are mature or have the potential to become mature enough to see that. And I feel that merely banning material or limiting player power instead just encourages that competitive mindset instead of creating a desire in players for balance.
Well you have only gamed for a short time and that with a very good group. But that doesn't mean that all players are like this. More often than not, players will throw a temper tantrum about how you want to ruin their fun, threaten to leave the game when they can't play their overpowered combo, or as revenge, make the game unenjoyable for everyone. Like many other good (on paper) ideas, mature talking only works in a perfect world and thus is not a realistic option except in certain cases.
Banning is, and always will be, a very valid and sensible thing to do. But like with other things you must not overdo it. And we do not have to agree what is overpowered or not. Every DM has to decide this for himself and ban things according to that. He does not need other DMs on the net to agree with him.
Wow! You have no idea how remarkable a group you have. In 28 years of playing and DMing I have yet to personally encounter a player who felt that his (or her) character was too powerful and asked that it be made weaker so as not to overshadow the other characters.
In a mere 5 years of gaming experience I've seen it happen twice. And the number of times an overpowered character has actually overshadowed the players has been 4 times. So its certain not uber-rare in my experience.
I admit that 'friends of friends' player groups help with this as oppose to gaming clubs, or perhaps it is the hardy climate of Wales and Northern England causing greater camaraderie.
Out of interest, since your examples were both of characters which did not overshadow the other characters (out-survive yes, fail to help yes, overpower, no) how many times in your 28 years of experience have you had an overpowered character overshadow your players? Or did this never happen due to pre-emptive bans?
My own bans of things are always for disruptive reasons (no evil characters around the paladin because it become inevitable that you can't join or the paladin leaves/falls, no drow around elves slaughtered by drow) or campaign reasons, but I have been known to amend things because they are silly as written. I also have a low tolerance of new systems for the sake of it, but would be prepared to learn incarnum or tome of battle if anyone actually wanted to use them.
You advice is great for stable groups. However, I play at clubs sometimes, and I know I'm not the only one who does that (I would get bored pretty quick if I was the only one). In this cases, were players come and go every week, the DM has not choice but to institute some preventive bans. He can't playtest all the material fast enough, and sometimes the risk of ruining an adventure just to please a guy who will probably not even show up next week is just not worth it. In cases like this, I believe the DM has to go with his gut, assume that some player will try to powergame, and make an effort to prevent it.
I've even played in stable groups where players just seethed with animosity for one another. Everybody looked for an advantage over everyone else, and most of the players had contingencies for how to kill the other players' characters. One woman in one group confided in me that my barbarian was at the very bottom of her "kill list," but she was the least hostile of all the group members! One guy quit because the DM so grossly favored her roommate (the woman who's character had my barbarian at the bottom of her kill list) and to a lesser degree another guy in the group.
Later the DM's best friend joined the group and the favoritism grew even more rampant, and players who routinely were hostile to me tried to enlist my support in a plan to kill the best friend's character if need be. The DM bumped up her best friend's character by 8 levels instantaneously by giving him a book that granted him the vampire template, and then shortly thereafter (in the same dungeon) gave him an earring of daylight adaptation--essentially a magic item that allowed an extra body part--that made him immune to sunlight! In the same campaign, the player of the ranger bitterly resented me because my barbarian was so drastically better in melee than his ranger. So when the ranger got possessed by a magic, the player actually was hoping to kill my character. I had my character bull rush his ranger off the damned evil throne so he would return to himself--and he was clearly disappointed.
The sad thing is, I'm not even 100% certain that that was the worst long-term group in my experience in terms of players trying to gain every advantage for their own characters over everyone else's characters. The game is full of far more selfish, grasping players than the mature, self-restrained players you've had the good fortune to fall in with!
I think you're thinking of dryads, which are bound to particular oak trees.
Ah, good call. I wish I'd remembered that. I'm getting old and forgetful.
In a mere 5 years of gaming experience I've seen it happen twice. And the number of times an overpowered character has actually overshadowed the players has been 4 times. So its certain not uber-rare in my experience.
I admit that 'friends of friends' player groups help with this as oppose to gaming clubs, or perhaps it is the hardy climate of Wales and Northern England causing greater camaraderie.
Out of interest, since your examples were both of characters which did not overshadow the other characters (out-survive yes, fail to help yes, overpower, no) how many times in your 28 years of experience have you had an overpowered character overshadow your players? Or did this never happen due to pre-emptive bans?
My own bans of things are always for disruptive reasons (no evil characters around the paladin because it become inevitable that you can't join or the paladin leaves/falls, no drow around elves slaughtered by drow) or campaign reasons, but I have been known to amend things because they are silly as written. I also have a low tolerance of new systems for the sake of it, but would be prepared to learn incarnum or tome of battle if anyone actually wanted to use them.
I'm not sure if "hardy climates" (i.e. places with unpleasant weather :D) breed more camaraderie than, say, Hawaii or the Polynesian Islands, where the natives generally seemed pretty friendly. ;) There's no doubt though that you're likely to have better results with a group of long-term childhood friends than with your more common adult group cobbled together through online and game store ads or through meetings at a game store.
As far as overshadowing characters, keep in mind that prior to 3rd Ed D&D didn't have the incredible flexibility of customization that it has today. There were no prestige classes or feats, must less combinations of them, to make some characters overpowered (and others useless--except maybe the 1st Ed bard, who was, as I recall, a mediocre fighter and a mediocre spellcaster--perhaps not so unlike today's bard :D except that it took many levels of being just a fighter and then an underpowered wizard before getting to be a bard at all).
Generally in original D&D we didn't have any problems with overpowered characters--at least not overpowered versus other PCs. It was very common for "Monty Haul DMs" (like I was at the start, as a reaction against my first two DMs who were killer DMs) to give out too much treasure so that the PCs became overpowered versus the monsters. I recall once in my first campaign the party getting another vorpal weapon and one character asking, "is there anyone who doesn't have at least one vorpal weapon yet?" :D On rare occasions one PC might get a collection of magic items that made him (or her) much more powerful than everyone else, but nothing specific comes to mind.
I would say that the rules on multiclassing for demihumans did at times seem to make demihuman characters a little too powerful relative to humans. When a human with one class had, say, 6 levels, a demihuman with two classes had 10 levels and a demihuman with three classes (the maximum) had 12 levels. On hit points, however, the demihumans effectively had only the same number of levels as the human, but in terms of class abilities the demihumans really excelled.
To balance the large advantages of multiclassing, the demihumans originally had strict limits on how hight they could advance in some classes. Thus if you maxed out in a class, you wasted part of your experience contributing to the class in which you could no longer adventure. Indeed you might max out in all your classes and not be able to advance at all. Subsequent publications allowed these races further advancement in limited classes for high prime ability scores (like an extra level of fighter for a halfling with 18/01-50 strength, an extra two levels for 18/51-75 Strength, etc.). I might also add that most demihumans had other advantages, like longer lives (and thus able to take the aging effect of the old haste spell with no problem), either infravision or ultravision, ability score bonuses, and a few other advantages that don't come immediately to mind. Oh, yes, some demihumans could not join some classes at all, but again DMs routinely ignored those racial class restrictions.
Realistically most campaigns involved low-level characters and so the demihuman level restrictions rarely had any balancing effect at all. Typically if characters did get to higher levels, the player would either dump the character for a new (human or otherwise unlimited one) or the DM would just drop the limit to let the valued player keep playing his valued PC. Some of us did argue over the demihuman advantages, and people who always played demihumans often claimed they played demihumans for roleplaying purpose and not for metagame advantages (we never used the term "metagame" in those days), and that they would have played demihumans even without the advantages. Not 3rd Ed did the game strip away both the demihuman multiclass advantages and the level (and class) restrictions, and furthermore give humans an extra feat and an extra skill point per level (extra 4 at first of course) to compensate for the demihuman's other advantages.
So I'd say that we did have a little trouble with overpowered demihumans, but it wasn't enough, for instance, to keep me from regularly playing humans. (For the heck of it, however, I did once, under 1st Ed, play an elven fighter/cleric/wizard just for the fun of totally optimizing a character with all the demihuman benefits. That was with a group where people rotated DMing to some degree, and I took a certain satisfaction in playing an overpowered elf in the campaign of a DM who only played overpowered elves as a player. :D)
Now in 1st Ed the publication of Unearthed Arcana did generate a firestorm of protest about overpowered races and classes. Grey elves, deep gnomes and drow were all overpowered relative to the standard races. The cavalier class too was pretty overpowered with automatic access to armor (field plate or full plate) that was better than the best pr armor in the game previously, armor that gave both a better AC and actually absorbed some damage (like adamantine armor in 3rd Ed). DMs and players routinely fought over the various superior abilities of the UA races. One DM who didn't like the deep gnomes' immunity to illusions, decided that, despite being having illusionist as their favored class, deep gnomes couldn't even perceive illusions. It was often a horrible mess of arguing, player grubbing for power, and bad DMing.
Then there was the mighty--and mighty difficult--barbarian. Gary Gygax actually introduced the class in Dragon before UA. One the one hand, with the biggest hit die (yup, the first to get the mighty d12), multiple dice rolled to develop the Strength, Dexterity and Constitution scores (I think it was 6d6, 4d6, and 5d6, versus 3d6 for the normal character), and double Constitution and Dexterity bonuses, the barbarian looked awesome indeed. (There was no rage ability.) On the other hand, the barbarian needed drastically more experience to advance than other classes, and had a virtually unplayable set of restrictions on not only the use of magic but on the ability to belong to the same party as magic-using characters. So the barbarian was oddly too powerful on the one hand, balanced by being not only the hardest class to level but also by being almost unplayable in a normal group.
Some DMs--typically those who didn't ever play fighter-types--hated the barbarian and either banned it outright or forced the character to run around destroying magic items, usually with explosive consequences, so that the party hated the barbarian (and often the barbarian's player). Other DMs though tended to look the other way as far as the restriction went, especially the restrictions on association. In those cases, the barbarian would be playable, although some people still thought, despite the high experience needed to rise in level, it was too powerful.
In my experience the barbarian would start out as the most powerful character at 1st level (followed by the cavalier). By the time the barbarian got to 2nd level at 6,000 experience points, pretty much everyone else had reached 3rd or 4th level, and the barbarian was no longer so powerful. Fighters, for instance, had a superior better THAC0 and superior hit points, especially if they'd started to acquire magical weapons. In those days many creatures had immunity to normal weapons, an as the barbarian didn't get to do damage as a +1 weapon until 4th level, the barbarian fell behind the curve.
I recall an encounter with a flesh golem where the party still regarded my first-level barbarian as grossly powerful, but he had absolutely no ability to to anything against the flesh golem--and the limitations on use of magic items preventing him from even picking up a fallen comrade's +1 sword to hit the thing. So I my barbarian ended up hacking at it futilely in hopes of getting it to try to hit him instead of the character with the magic weapon. (That tactic worked, thankfully, as none of the spellcasters in the party could affect it either.)
I might also mention that the barbarian's slow route to gaining levels also kept the character susceptible to the trusty old 1st-level sleep spell for a long time after everyone else was immune--so that, as happened to me once, when the magic user cast the sleep spell only my barbarian (none of the enemies) fell asleep, right in front of the enemies, of course.
Still I know that some other players hated my UA barbarian characters and always thought they were overpowered. Once I was allowed to bring a UA barbarian into a campaign at the same level as the existing PCs, and he was definitely overpowered compared to the other PCs. As it was, however, he was the only one able to rescue a long-term PC who was nearly killed by a monster in the water that nobody else could really get to, so they were actually pretty happy to have him. (Some of them were chain-smokers, however, and I just couldn't tolerate the smoke-filled environment and had to spend much of the session standing in the doorway, and I never returned.) I didn't use the power of the PC to lord it over other PCs, however, but only to help them, so I think in that particular group, at least for only one session, nobody had any problem with his power.
UA had such better races and classes, that I remember one post-UA group in which everyone played either a deep gnome, a cavalier (one human and one regular elven), or a barbarian (another human). We used to joke that regular elves had vanished as a race. :D
In those days though DMs tended to allow whatever TSR published--there not being the plethora of materials for PCs that there are today--so that I think it was harder for DMs in those days to just forbid the use of things. Some did, but often they'd allow it and then punish you for it throughout the game. The DM ruling that deep gnomes couldn't even see their illusions was one such punishment. The same DM punished my barbarian by, for instance, not even allowing me to roleplay his reaction to regaining unconscious invisible (One of the deep gnome illusionists made him invisible when he got knocked unconscious to reduce the likelihood of monsters killing him--in those days, there was no full-round coup de grace, and you could kill an unconscious creature pretty much must by stepping on it as you went to use your real attacks or your spells on someone still conscious.)
2nd Ed removed the UA material (at least at first) and so got rid of all those debates about overpowered races and classes. Other than the standard old demihuman problem--very much old hat by then and not so bad when viewed from the lens of having had the super-demihuman races of UA--I don't really recall much of an issue with banning anything. Perhaps some of the other posters will recall things from pre-3rd Ed that people found objectionable as overpowered.
In 3rd Ed I've seen a few cases of characters really overshadowing other characters. I was playing a barbarian in one campaign where a player had a half-orc cleric/fighter who'd gotten spiked chain proficiency and focus with the war domain and then optimized himself for tripping people as they came at him. With the +2 half-orc bonus on Strength (and I guess a starting base score of 18) he was definitely stronger than my human barbarian (I think 20 versus 16), and with the spiked chain he seemed somewhat more effective in combat too. Then the DM let him arm wrestle someone in a bar for the someone's belt of giant strength. The player rolled higher on the d20, and then got the belt, which raised his Strength to 26. We were maybe 2nd level at the time, so this was pretty ridiculous, and the character totally overshadowed my barbarian.
Oddly enough, I had a barbarian with identical ability scores (used the same rolls for the previous one that I'd gotten for this one as the DM didn't want me to take time to roll scores) who overshadowed the other melee specialists in our party. At 1st level he actually was overshadowed by both the bipedal feline humanoid rogue and the "earth giant" cleric. They both had substantial ability score enhancements and no level adjustment. That was very early in 3.0; I doubt many DMs would allow that now (although maybe that DM would).
But as we went up in level, things changes. The rogue bumped his Dexterity, and the cleric his Wisdom, while my barbarian pushed his Strength. He also at some point (10th level maybe?) got the party's sorcerer to make him a +4 belt of giant strength. He spent him money enhancing his combat abilities as much as he could. Eventually he got much, much better in melee than the rogue or cleric, and even really outshone the ranger. In 3.0 the ranger really wasn't all that great anyway, and the player grossly suboptimized him. He took the Spring Attack tree of feats so that he was regularly doing on one attack per round when my barbarian had three attacks per round, and he put his money into items not too helpful for combat. Where my barbarian took a prestige class specialized in doing extra damage to certain monsters, he took the duelist, which is good pretty much only against humanoids. So we'd fight a dragon, and my barbarian would be attacking three times a round for lots of damage with a greatsword and some bonus damage, and he'd be tickling it with a rapier doing no extra damage.
Worse yet, he ended up taking heavy armor that came from his character's storyline heritage, which I believe in that version of the duelist lost him most of his PrC benefits. I know that he resented my character overshadowing his character, but I certainly wasn't going to give up my character just because his was weak. This is the same campaign where when the DM's best friend joined, playing a blackguard, she gave him an 8-level bump by giving him the vampire template and an earring of daylight adaptation, and where she gave her roommate a magical staff that was an artifact. It's true that my character outshone everyone else in melee, but there were other very powerful characters too.
Now in all of this 3rd Ed stuff there's really no talk of banning. I mean as a DM I'd "ban" myself from giving out free +6 belts of giant strength to 2nd-level characters :D But really, the overshadowing nature of these characters (his half-orc or my barbarian) came from things that really nobody would consider banning anyway. When the dragon disciple came out, I wanted that barbarian to take it, but the DM did ban that. She argued that it was designed for sorcerers, but that was just her way of banning it, or at least of preventing my character from getting it. She was, as I've mentioned, grossly more generous with her buddies' characters. Maybe the home-made PrC that my barbarian took was a bit too powerful, and she could have banned that, but that would have just let the vampire and artifact-wielding wizard be that much more powerful by comparison.
I'm not a big fan of banning. You'll notice that despite people trying to persuade me to ban the kobold with the winged creature template and the nymph rogue, I allowed them both. Another (new) player more recently wanted to use the Item Familiar feat from the 3rd Ed Unearthed Arcana. In fact he just added it to the sheet without even asking me about it. I looked it over and had my suspicions about it being overpowered--not necessarily game-breaking, as so many people argue about anything that's even slightly more powerful:D--but still, probably overpowered. I solicited feedback on the boards here, and got very little. What I did get indicated that it did seem a bit overpowered. I thought about just revising it downward a bit, but the player wasn't even cooperative to switch 2 skill points into Handle Animal to fight the background story we'd worked out, so I decided not to bother putting the effort into adjusting it and just suggested that he choose another feat.
So most of the trouble I've seen with 3rd Ed characters overshadowing others comes not from specific, overpowered PrCs or feats, but from with mostly core material, whether either the DM has just handed out too much to certain character, or a player seriously suboptimized his own character.
I did have a player who wanted to play a frenzied berserker. In a group of friends, an FB might not disrupt anyone; perhaps the party's cleric just keeps a calm emotions or two on tap for the FB, just like the cleric keeps cure spells on tap for the FB. But in a different group the FB might be very disruptive; non-friends might not want to worry about the whole attacking allies thing. In the group I run I talked to other players and offered the new player the option of playing an FB only if he took Righteous Wrath feat, allowing the character to control the frenzy and avoid attacking allies, but requiring the PC to be exalted. So I didn't ban the PrC, just added something that would remove the disruption. (The player, by the way, didn't accept the offer, not wanting to have to play a character that good. :D)
Anyway, while I defend the right of the DM to ban things, I don't recommend routine banning. I tend to prefer to try to work with the player to make thing work rather than ban them outright. Oh, I do have to add one thing: in my main campaign I allow only good-aligned characters. I've just been in too many campaigns where the neutral or evil characters did things that no good character would accept, but because of player pressure the player of the good character either had to look the other way (and not really roleplay being good) or face the hostility of the other players. I really prefer the players to be the good guys anyway. Evil wins too much in the real world already.
You're worried about my mindset? What part of avoiding obviously foreseeable negative consequences bothers you? :P If you'll recall, I allowed the useless nymph, which led to a long round of hard feelings and two departures from my group. I also allowed the broken kobold, which led to everyone else losing their character and the kobold getting the whole party's treasure and experience. It's precisely because I didn't ban them then and suffered the consequences that I'd ban them now.
I have to disagree with your assessment about the maturity of most people. In 28 years of playing and DMing I've never seen anyone say that his character was too powerful and voluntarily give up that power. I'm not saying that it never happens, because you've seen it, but I am saying what I started out to say--it's incredibly rare.
I agree too with Daniel above--something like the frenzied berserker can cause terrible disruptions and hard feelings in the party. I have seen time and again where the player of the disruptive character just doesn't care that it disrupts the other players; indeed, I've seen a lot of players who seem to enjoy primarily disrupting other players.
I've only been gaming for 3 years, but some of the guys I game with have been at it for 10+ yrs. I just wanted to say that you shouldn't really blame "not banning" something on the poor results in that campaign with the kobold. In my opinion, and it's only my opinion, there's a niche and a strength and a weakness for every character. Sometimes, due to the situations at hand one character may fair much better than the others. A character that has the cold or fire subtype that fights a NPC "evoker" that uses just the elemental spells that the player just happens to be immune too. That doesn't mean that the character was overpowered, but happened to fare better, much better in your case, in that instance.
A tanglefoot bag could have prevented the kobold from flying in that combat, hold monster, a harpoon with a rope tied to it (listed in races of Faerun, but could be adapted for Eberron also), ray of enfeeblement, ray of clumsiness, and the list could just keep going for ways to hinder the kobold. Also, how could you have known that the kobold would have been the only person to survive that particular encounter. Kobolds seem to be self sufficient survivors. It almost seems natural for him to stay out of the way, with the negative to Con and whatnot. Sorry for rambling, but i just wanted to get the point across that you shouldn’t blame yourself for not banning a certain character, anything can happen in a campaign that can let some players shine and others falter.
Still, I do concede that my experience may not be typical, but I do hold out hope that even if not all people are as good players as those I know, a lot of people are actually reasonable if you talk to them. Still, I am one of those perfectionists who would rather play once a month online with players I trust than twice a week face-to-face with players who cause me grief (whether as a DM or as another player).
I banned psionics in my last campaign for plot reasons. I had been planning for ages, and at the last minute one of my players asked if he could be psionic. I insisted that he couldn't, because I already planned a long running plot where they met a group of adventurers with psionic powers. Which wouldn't have worked if they already knew of its existence.
Also, for an upcoming campaign, I have chosen to disallow paladins and monks. Again, for plot reasons. The campaign is based around the characters joining a thieves guild. It would be difficult to explain why there were paladins and monks there. I'm also considering doing away with the druid and ranger, as the campaign will be primarily urban, but I'm worried about limiting choice too much.
I've only been gaming for 3 years, but some of the guys I game with have been at it for 10+ yrs. I just wanted to say that you shouldn't really blame "not banning" something on the poor results in that campaign with the kobold. In my opinion, and it's only my opinion, there's a niche and a strength and a weakness for every character. Sometimes, due to the situations at hand one character may fair much better than the others. A character that has the cold or fire subtype that fights a NPC "evoker" that uses just the elemental spells that the player just happens to be immune too. That doesn't mean that the character was overpowered, but happened to fare better, much better in your case, in that instance.
A tanglefoot bag could have prevented the kobold from flying in that combat, hold monster, a harpoon with a rope tied to it (listed in races of Faerun, but could be adapted for Eberron also), ray of enfeeblement, ray of clumsiness, and the list could just keep going for ways to hinder the kobold. Also, how could you have known that the kobold would have been the only person to survive that particular encounter. Kobolds seem to be self sufficient survivors. It almost seems natural for him to stay out of the way, with the negative to Con and whatnot. Sorry for rambling, but i just wanted to get the point across that you shouldn’t blame yourself for not banning a certain character, anything can happen in a campaign that can let some players shine and others falter.
I was running Wizard pre-packaged Eberron adventures and they didn't include any of those things. I could perhaps have personalized the campaign more to make at least the tanglefoot bag available, but this was a secondary campaign for me and I was trying to run it as written so that I could devote most of my DM prep time to my primary campaign. Also the winged kobold has ninja levels and so was able to become invisible as a swift action after she attacked each round for at least a few rounds. So she would fly and shoot her bow, then become invisible, rinse and repeat. It's possible that part of the problem lay with the ninja class itself, allowing invisibility (and as a swift action) at a mere second level.
After 3 years being a player by a rather experienced DM, I took his reigns and am a DM of the same group now. I never said ban. We had a mailing session during which we came to a common understanding.
As I was a new DM, and only 2 players out of 5 were familiar with psionics, we didn’t allow it in the campaign. Everyone was OK with that. The player who asked after psionics found the Tome of Magic, and happily embraced the shadowcaster. Though this was somewhat different from the standard casting classes, it still is easily comprehensible for me, so it was OK, and he just loved the idea.
I also allowed LA races. I only pointed out that, as we started at level 2 characters, it would be very unpleasant to have no class levels. Everyone agreed and two of the player took an LA+1 race. All OK, no hard feelings.
...kobold getting the whole party's treasure and experience...
Since when is it only the survivors that get XP?! Besides that, are you actually claiming that the ability to fly is "bOrKen?!"
Because if you're players' ability to get away from a TPK is what you consider unbalancing, perhaps you should stop massacring your party.As for the specific topic at hand: I've been DMing and playing for over 15 years now and I allow nearly anything. I, too, don't use Incarnum along with Dragon Magic, more because I don't like things existing in a vacuum, that is I'd want to work them into my campaign (Eberron, btw) and I just don't feel that they add anything that I would enjoy playing around with. I wouldn't call that "banning," I'm just not going to throw anything and everything into my game.
That being said, I think banning classes is the domain of the heavy-handed, short-sighted, and narrow-minded DM. So what if the Scout is really good or the Dread Necro? My players fight against both, along with Warblades and Warlocks. So what if your Warblade can hack through solid stone? Don't put stone between your PCs and their goals... put walls of force! So your kobold can fly... the MM is full of monsters with a flight speed! This really isn't very difficult; adapt DMs!!!
This has lead to some arguments at times, but none of them are a cause for hurt feelings. Mostly its different opinions on rules and the like that we all come to an understanding on. The biggest one has been transparency of magic and psionics. We still haven’t decided that one lol:D
But currently my cousin is DMing an Eberron campaign and a am playing the groups arcane caster. This will make the 2nd decade that i have played wizards in D&D so i know how to make them powerful quick.
But at the beginning my cousin came to me and asked a make a "fluff" character that would allow the rest of the party to 'keep up' so instead of my typical 3.5 power build I decided to try a new class the Ultimate Magus. Now my character is much better at handling more encounters a day, but cannot cast anything over 3rd level spells even though we are now approaching 11th level.
I intestinally built a sub optimal character so everyone can have more fun. Sure it sucks to get swallowed by things I should be able to obliterate at this level... but it’s cool to have the swashbucklers player happy when he can go all Errol Flynn on the monster to rescue me :P
I enjoy the game and the sessions to much to get bent out of shape over not being the most powerful character in the party. I mean how much fun is it to hear this, "Yay... the wizard gated in another Paragon Pseudo-natural Titan :embarrass "
Since when is it only the survivors that get XP?! Besides that, are you actually claiming that the ability to fly is "bOrKen?!"
I don't appreciate these childish personal attacks. I never claimed that flying itself is broken, so don't put words in my mouth and then laugh at the foolishness you yourself have introduced to the thread. This thread was actually decent--civil and intelligent--until you posted.
You know nothing about the scenario. I was running a Wizards module and the players had a duplicate of what the bad guy wanted. They could have just given him the duplicate and he would have gone away. He had obviously powerful forces, but they chose to fight it out instead. The kobold buzzed around pretty uselessly while the other party members fought it out with the bad guy's forces. If the kobold had been useful the party probably would have survived even this poor choice. If the kobold had just flown down to the favored soul who has been Strength-damaged to the point of being unable to move and administered a potion of lesser restoration that the kobold had, the favored soul would have survived. He was a warforged with adamantine body and the bad guys took rounds to actually kill him even using the coup de grace action. So if the player of the kobold hadn't been so enamored of the kobold's ability to fly around unmolested because of a ridiculously high AC and saving throws while the rest of the party did all the work, she could have prevented the rest of the party from dying even with her broken build.
A DM that bans stuff "because he can" or "because he likes it better that way" is a rare case. He usually has a reason, is willing to explain and likely even willing to compromise.
Not all of us can engage in our favorite hobby with our friends. Most of mine have recently moved away, so I'm in that in-between stage where I have to make new gaming friends (as well as new friends in general). This is a problem: I don't know how the other guys I'm sitting down to roll dice with are going to act; I don't know how much of the rules they know; I don't know if the GM will allow crazy stuff that I would never even think of letting my players near (*cough* Dark template *cough*). So, I can see the necessity for the players and the DMs out there to know what should be considered a reasonable banning of rules. But now I have a question: what does banning mean?
See, this game, in its current incarnation, is a good deal like Rifts (from what I recall of that system). New books are coming out all the time, and the power level seems to be creeping higher and higher than ever before. The main difference is that there's an overall governing body (RPGA, the net, the consumer, etc) that influences how powerful each new book is (there's also the fact that Wizards is pushing to make more money, and thus the quality of the books we're getting isn't what it should be). This is why things were changed from 3.0 to 3.5 (haste?). For this reason I tend to see most of the new material as perfectly acceptable in any given gaming situation.
Basically, I don't think that banning of material is appropriate. I think it's appropriate to tell a player that a certain race/class/spell/item/rule/whatever doesn't work with the game you're running on the basis of flavor, utility or ignorance.
By flavor, I mean reasonable, logical, role-playing, in-game rationale: my world is dominated by humans. Elves and dwarves (along with a significant number of other races) don't inhabit the world, and haven't for a long time. Every once in a while someone can play one of these foreign races, but they have to have a really good reason
By ignorance, I'm referring to a lack of understanding of the rules, either by the GM or the player(s). Most of the time just the one player and the GM needs to know the rules, but there are times when everyone needs to know at least a little bit, and if people don't want to take the time to learn them, then it's best to avoid using them.
Utility is a concern that I don't think has been explored as of yet. If you're planning on running a one-shot adventure, perhaps a dungeon where almost all the encounters are with fire-based creatures, it would be useful for the players to all be immune to fire, but it might also make the adventure too easy. Maybe that works for some players, maybe it doesn't. What if, instead, one player was immune, but the others weren't? A short-term game usually has one or two loopholes built in, either intentionally or not, and allowing a player to exploit it before they even begin the adventure may be grounds to restrict his/her choices.
Note, at this point, that I'm still questioning the use of the term 'ban.' The word suggests to me that the GM is establishing a rule that prevents something from ever being used - EVER! That's harsh. I feel that people should keep an open mind and try to incorporate new ideas, if they want to put forth the effort. And if the disagreements are too much of a problem, find a new group of friends to game with.
Originally posted by Menoth's Fire
So your kobold can fly... the MM is full of monsters with a flight speed! This really isn't very difficult; adapt DMs!!!
I must agree with this as well, in principle. I know the frustration of creating an adventure that sounds really cool in my head, only to have it destroyed in the first ten minutes (an undead infested dungeon, wasted by a cleric); instead of crying, I should have just winged it (add some Turn Resistance to the Big Nasties near the end). And if things don't work out, do sweat it. Just plan a special surprise for the special character and see if they survive it. So long as it's executed fairly, the player will thank you for giving them something exciting to brag (or cry) about later.
You either ban material or you ban powergamers, one of the two. In my opinion, the first is a bit more accommodating to different play styles.
The last two characters didn't even have powergamer builds at all. There was a Fighter/Ranger/Kensai and a Monk/Swordsage/Shadow Sun Ninja. Both of these characters were unbalanced entirely because of magic items, something I find contributes far more to how "overpowered" a character is in relation to the party than class or build. In the first case, I was inexperienced and allowed that character to be from a noble family, assuming that even though the other party members, even though they weren't in charge, would still benefit. Within a few games of him gaining his power, he engineered his character's fall to Lawful Evil and started hoarding the other character's items. The other was just dumb luck with some guys he stole a bunch of minor defensive items from while alone and sold for big $$$.
Of course, there are always complaints from players than X character is overpowered, but most of the time these are not true and are a result of the DM only preparing kinds of adventures that favour those characters or the player is just whining (I had an Assassin whose player complained the Fighter was overpowered because she killed three enemies in one round with Cleave and a critical hit, completely ignoring that he had killed ten enemies of the same level on his own in a house not two hours before).
Allow me to quote K on what happens in a RAW game if you have the slightest clue what you're doing:
the game ends around 8-11th level. At that point, any spellcaster can kill anything else in the game with either large amounts of effort or small amounts of effort. The test comes from whether he can do it often enough per day to complete the current adventure before the plot gets away from him (for example, killing a dragon after he destroys the city isn't as good as doing it before). I mean, you can just have an adventure against eight 16th level Wizards and assume that you'll win if you have surprise and can take them one at a time, once a day.
Lamn’s Finger Darts and Greater Shivering Touch are just the one round auto-kill spells. Lesser Planar Binding and a few minutes to read through a few monster manuals can net you a few monsters who can get together and be assured of killing a powerful Wizard.
Of course, if that same Wizard knows you are coming he used Discern Location or a Crystal Ball to find you and Greater Planar Binding to send a Pit Fiend after you, you are toast.
But hey, that’s the dangerous world of high level. Why do you think death needs to be so reversible?
But surely, if I banned Persistent Spell and/or nightsticks because I didn't care for the idea of the Cleric having a minimum stat of about 30-40 and tons of incredibly powerful spell effects running and being very difficult to dispel (increased caster level and such) and still having all his spells per day left over I must either be unfamiliar with the rules or have world building purposes. And yes, this is absolutely possible. In fact, all you have to do is persist all the spells you want right before the time of day your cleric refreshes their spell list. So assuming you're just starting the day of adventure after a day of downtime, it's easy.
Does that sound like a logical conclusion? I certainly don't think so, but judge for yourself.
Maybe you think that it should also be okay for someone to just grab wand surge, and persist unfettered heroism to get infinite action points and infinite wand charges. Because banning Persistent spell for such a silly reason would SURELY be because I'm unfamiliar with the rules or doing it for setting purposes, and NOT because it's a poorly written and abusable feat. Right?
What about the Planar Shepherd? What about Polymorph, which even WotC recommends removing? What about assuming the powers of a Sarrukh to amass nigh-infinite power with an infinite loop? Surely, you shouldn't ban those things unless it's for building a setting or not being familiar with the rules.
Obviously, I'm being sarcastic. Anyways, I hope this demonstrates some cases where banning is absolutely warranted beyond the narrow 2-item list you presented. Broken things really do exist. There are things that deserve to be hit with a banstick, because they're just not well-designed. If you REALLY want some sort of element or effect like them, rewrite them sensibly. Of course, technically that's banning the original, and making up something new yourself.
While I do agree that many people ban things for no good reason, I believe your article is poorly written and makes wide generalizations and leaps to conclusions almost as much as some guy screaming that the Warmage should be banned, as demonstrated by my counter to your statement that there are only two situations where banning makes sense.
Let’s examine my campaign to illustrate this point. A year and a half ago we decided as a group to undertake what we thought would be the biggest hack n’ slash D&D challenge we have ever faced: the World's Largest Dungeon. Knowing that many others around the world were doing the same, we wanted to try to compare our progress against them by playing as "fairly" as possible while at the same time correcting some of the most obvious campaign killing flaws.
The group also decided not to go core only, despite the fact that the adventure is core only. Many other groups went that way as well, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Still, they wanted me to be more of an impartial judge than a creative DM for this campaign. The players in this campaign were not expected to police their own character's "fairness" they were expected to start at first level with a relatively random person and use their wits and abilities to survive to the end.
On the other hand there are a few considerations that entered into the picture that would have spoiled the campaign had I not intervened.
1) We didn’t want to blow through the adventure in a couple of months by using some cheesy rules loophole, so they weren’t allowed to cut through the stone. The campaign also limits teleportation and such, which just makes sense, but that's just the writer banning stuff instead of me.
2) The logistics of D&D combat in a dungeon forced me to ban characters who try to make their own army. The D&D system is not designed for 50 vs 50 combat, its designed with 5 vs 5 combat in mind. The animate dead spell, leadership and similar options were removed.
3) Similar to #2 I also have a general rule that no NPC should outshine any PC, which still seems very sensible. After all, the general theory behind gaining XP is that you have put yourself at risk and learned something from the experience. If all you have done is put your army or your hireling at risk, I don’t think that qualifies. Play your own character... yeesh.
4) Divinations were limited as a campaign rule to prevent the circumvention of the challenge of the dungeon. Considering my campaign, I had to wonder what were they thinking when they wrote "Find the Path"?
5) Wish, Miracle, Divine Metamagic and a few other spells were eliminated to preserve game balance against encounters that are limited in how they can be modified.
Regarding all this custom encounter non-sense. I fail to understand how the DM can maintain any sense of objectivity if he custom creates everything with the PCs in mind. In my campaign the players want to know that if they are killed its because they did something stupid, or just got unlucky. If I were to custom design all the encounters the players would (and have) stop wondering if their characters are good enough and instead wonder if the DM is simply being unfair. In their mind the dungeon was there, it existed, before they entered it and should not change based simply on their presence.
Or perhaps that's not enough to make you think Persistent Spell is a bit much. Maybe you don't think it's wrong to have Wraithstrike and Swift Fly last all day for free.
Maybe you think that it should also be okay for someone to just grab wand surge, and persist unfettered heroism to get infinite action points and infinite wand charges. Because banning Persistent spell for such a silly reason would SURELY be because I'm unfamiliar with the rules or doing it for setting purposes, and NOT because it's a poorly written and abusable feat. Right?
What about the Planar Shepherd? What about Polymorph, which even WotC recommends removing? What about assuming the powers of a Sarrukh to amass nigh-infinite power with an infinite loop? Surely, you shouldn't ban those things unless it's for building a setting or not being familiar with the rules.
I'm saying that in a group that actually talks with itself and establishes what sort of game they plan on playing, there's no reason to actively ban anything because players simply won't do it.
I'm saying you shouldn't have to ban any material because players should be capable of balancing their own internal power level without DM intervention at all.
The final effect is the same. There won't be clerics using persistent spell and nightsticks. Banning said material just fosters discontent, while actively getting your players involved and agreeing not to abuse ridiculous power combos accomplishes exactly the same thing and leaves everyone at the table happy.
Since when is it only the survivors that get XP?!
Since always. Dead men gather no XP. Time honored rule and all that.
Regarding all this custom encounter non-sense. I fail to understand how the DM can maintain any sense of objectivity if he custom creates everything with the PCs in mind. In my campaign the players want to know that if they are killed its because they did something stupid, or just got unlucky. If I were to custom design all the encounters the players would (and have) stop wondering if their characters are good enough and instead wonder if the DM is simply being unfair. In their mind the dungeon was there, it existed, before they entered it and should not change based simply on their presence.
I think you misunderstand. Rather, it's a DM's responsibility to tailor adventures to character's abilities. If your group has some ability that allows them to decimate an encounter with little difficulty, it's not particularly fun. If your party is completely lacking any way at all to create fire or acid (this is an extreme example, as most parties should at least be able to buy/make tochkes), then putting trolls against them is simply mean.
I don't appreciate these childish personal attacks. I never claimed that flying itself is broken, so don't put words in my mouth and then laugh at the foolishness you yourself have introduced to the thread. This thread was actually decent--civil and intelligent--until you posted.
You know nothing about the scenario. I was running a Wizards module and the players had a duplicate of what the bad guy wanted. They could have just given him the duplicate and he would have gone away. He had obviously powerful forces, but they chose to fight it out instead. The kobold buzzed around pretty uselessly while the other party members fought it out with the bad guy's forces. If the kobold had been useful the party probably would have survived even this poor choice. If the kobold had just flown down to the favored soul who has been Strength-damaged to the point of being unable to move and administered a potion of lesser restoration that the kobold had, the favored soul would have survived. He was a warforged with adamantine body and the bad guys took rounds to actually kill him even using the coup de grace action. So if the player of the kobold hadn't been so enamored of the kobold's ability to fly around unmolested because of a ridiculously high AC and saving throws while the rest of the party did all the work, she could have prevented the rest of the party from dying even with her broken build.
You still fail to explain how flying is the problem. Your PC acted cowardly after the players made a poor decision; simply because the ability to fly made her actions effective doesn't mean flying is the problem, yet that is what you call:
...the broken kobold...
and you would have chosen to use the tactic of banning instead of either addressing the player's actions or tailoring encounters to provide CRs that are actually indicative of the challenge they present to your players. And that's not putting words in your mouth because you wrote:
It's precisely because I didn't ban them then and suffered the consequences that I'd ban them now.
Since always. Dead men gather no XP. Time honored rule and all that.
I should speak more precisely: the dead don't gain XP, but their presence is counted amongst those participating in the encounter when the overall XP. That is to say that the total available XP for the encounter is divided by the number of participants, not survivors.
I'm saying that in a group that actually talks with itself and establishes what sort of game they plan on playing, there's no reason to actively ban anything because players simply won't do it.
First, this is overtly presumptuous and wholly untrue for many people, ESPECIALLY when you get into large or formalized games.
I'm saying you shouldn't have to ban any material because players should be capable of balancing their own internal power level without DM intervention at all.
The final effect is the same. There won't be clerics using persistent spell and nightsticks.
In fact, lots of people use clerics with nightsticks or persistent spell unless you *tell them not to,* which is the same as banning, which is the same as discussing it with your players and agreeing not to use it. Just go to the CharOp boards and ask how many people use it.
Banning said material just fosters discontent, while actively getting your players involved and agreeing not to abuse ridiculous power combos accomplishes exactly the same thing and leaves everyone at the table happy.
Agreeing not to use Persistent Spell is the exact same thing as banning it. I consult with all my players much as you seem to be suggesting... you just seem to have this irrational revulsion to the actual term. "It's okay if you don't want me to play a Planar Shepherd so long as you don't actually ban it (e.g. disallow players from playing)"
Also, people's definitions of "ridiculous" vary greatly. Some will say Druids or at least Natural Spell are broken, but being core things as they are they are rarely disallowed or contested. Some players would call this ridiculous. Alternatively, some would call just about anything fine, short of actual game-breaking material like infinite loops.
So, your argument falls apart on two points: First, you are telling people to regulate the material they bring to the table and agree not to use game-breaking material which is actually the same thing as banning. If everyone says "Okay, we won't play a Planar Shepherd" then that's exactly what banning is. When you ban something, you get your players to consent to to not use certain material. You just admitted a potential need for exactly that. Second, you don't take into account people's differences, and get the faulty idea that people will automatically regulate themselves in comparison to others. This just doesn't happen realistically, especially if the players are unfamiliar with each other.
Regarding all this custom encounter non-sense. I fail to understand how the DM can maintain any sense of objectivity if he custom creates everything with the PCs in mind. In my campaign the players want to know that if they are killed its because they did something stupid, or just got unlucky. If I were to custom design all the encounters the players would (and have) stop wondering if their characters are good enough and instead wonder if the DM is simply being unfair. In their mind the dungeon was there, it existed, before they entered it and should not change based simply on their presence.
I think that's absolutely right. The players know fairly quickly when things are being built around them. It takes away much of the interest.
It's quite acceptable to have one encounter react to the results of something earlier. If you capture the BFG 2000 from one castle, it's not surprising if the next castle has men at arms with anti-BFG armor.
I should speak more precisely: the dead don't gain XP, but their presence is counted amongst those participating in the encounter when the overall XP. That is to say that the total available XP for the encounter is divided by the number of participants, not survivors.
I'd always share XP among survivors. If an encounter is dangerous enough to kill almost everyone, then the survivors deserve to be rewarded for getting through it. It's the upside of hitting something dangerous.
There are considerable costs in running a campaign, in both time and money. Agreeing to be a DM is not an acceptance of unlimited liability.
Having said that, a successful campaign will allow for input from players. If someone really wants to play something, I'd try to allow it. Some of the best characters in games sessions I've run have been 'specials' where I've had to wing the rules as I go along.
I'd always share XP among survivors. If an encounter is dangerous enough to kill almost everyone, then the survivors deserve to be rewarded for getting through it. It's the upside of hitting something dangerous.
See, here's how that actually works: You make a smart decision and save your ally from dying instead of being stupid and getting an almost TPK and being a lone survivor? You get less XP. Essentially, you are rewarding the survivors for being stupid, lucky, or poor teammates, and actually widen the already sizable XP gap between survivor and victim a great deal more.
Most of the balance issues that come up are at the DM's expense and fix themselves. Seemingly unbalanced issues usually seem unfair in bizarre circumstances or at certain levels. So we either level-up or never come across those unique circumstances again.
I'm not pretending all the classes are perfect or balanced in core, but frankly that hasn't prevented me from enjoying playing them all these years without access to four dozen splat books. My experience, however, has taught me that the sheer range of extra options made available in extra sources makes it possible for characters to be created that are far more powerful than less ambitiously optimized PCs of the same level, creating undesirable tension even in good groups. (Half-ogre fighter of the sam ECL; hafling TWF ranger with feat that made his Kukri's wounding; PC with Soul-drinker class, etc.)
While I have seen a character power down an overpowering character on a few occasions, it's really very rare, and less bad feeling would have been caused to all involved if it hadn't been allowed in the first place. The sort of open atmosphere described in the initial post, while something to strive for, can't be counted on to exist, and even well intentioned players can have different expectations of 'what's reasonable'.
While I appreciate the extra options and customizability offered by books, I also find myself not wanting to have to deal with all the new systems proposed in Tome of Battle and Tome of Magic and so forth; I don't own the books, and don't feel that I have to readjust my understanding of how D&D world works even more (and honestly, the spells in the PHB can trip me up enough), while possibly making traditionally classed characters obsolescent.
While I believe in a DM working closely and flexibly with the players so that they can build the character concept they want is important, I also believe it is not only fair but vital that a DM set limit on the kind of systems and extra materials he wants or feels capable of dealing with as well. An 'anything goes' attitudes can possibly (frequently, in my experience) lead to unbalanced characters that create tension within in the group and surprise the DM with capabilities they are unfamiliar with, or are simply hard to counter in a balanced fashion without being an obvious nerf or punishing to the whole party. For these reasons, I feel banning is a fair practice, particularly if attempting to create a more balanced party.
I have to admit that I have been fortunate enough to be playing only with people interested in getting together with buddies and having fun for the night. Even one player who tended to play a bit more like a video game (less interested in role playing than smashing stuff and collecting treasure) was aware that he was there along with others to have fun. I may simply not have run across the uber-gamer but near as I can see the trick isn't to tell them "no you can't do that" but rather to let them have moments to shine and then talk to them about what's reasonable. If they know their time is coming most players seem to being willing to let others get their shot as well.
I know it’s not quite the subject but I also want to point out that I don't punish players for my mistakes as DM. I may rule out my mistake for all future games and will inform players I have made such a ruling (and admit my mistake) but they get to keep what they have. I have had the misfortune as a newer DM to find myself in situations where my ruling led to a party with a ridiculous AC all around. I had trouble hitting them with anything that wouldn't kill them. My response was not to remove there armor (a few pieces of which they either shouldn't have had or were not possible under the rules) but rather to put them against foes who focused on hitting more than damaging as well as foes who didn't roll attacks (mages). Their ridiculous ACs still helped them (they didn't get hit by even huge bonus attacks half the time). Once they saw that I did the work to find a way to bypass that one overgrown aspect of their characters they were however forced to stop progressing their ACs a little and focus on killing foes quicker.
So when DO I consider banning appropriate? Simple when the only way a player can be balanced is to either ban or build every encounter to nullify them. Even in this situation I still prefer a "talk to the player" point of view though and when it comes down to it I'd rather use the game to correct itself then tell someone that I can't handle what they are doing.
Simple example, in one campaign we had a psychic warrior, but he never called himself that, never even heard of psionics. What he said was that he was a Soldier of the Iron Hand. The Iron Hand was a martial school that taught its students to push their bodies to and past their physical limits, to deaden pain sensors to ignore the strikes of ones foes, how to train their senses to react to threats faster and find holes in the enemy defenses. In short he focused on self buffs that upped stats or gave bonuses to hit and damage. He didn't get flashy, and most of the group never even thought he was a psychic warrior, figured he was a cleric.
So sometimes DMs have to say, I just don't like how this class, race, PRC, whatever is built, so it does not exist in my world. Otherwise, someone is going to eventually pull out a printed base class that has Fighter BAB, Monk Defenses, casts better than a Wizard, skills like a rogue, and HP like a Barbarian. But you can't just ban it! After all, not everyone in the world can agree on what is overpowered. Though, that is actually the same thing can be said for every topic in the world.
In general, I agree with what you say though, I just don't think you can make a blanket statement like saying banning is never the answer. Even given the caveats you state, which I also agree with. In general I just don't like blanket statements, so I'll make one. "Blanket statements are bad."
1 Monsters always get the cool powers before you. When you have persistent/nightsticks/whatever, expect Mormikden's disjunction and antimagic field to be as regular as save or die.
2 There is no place in the DMG where it actually says that there are never more than 4 encounters per day.
3 Optimize at will. The monsters will just be optimized as well as you.
4 If said character is the king of a country, expect it to have a small army of high level characters at his command to keep the country going. So if you try to go directly against him, don't come complaining when you all die from a squad of elite rogues/casters/melees.
Believe me, it makes wonders. The party can play anything it wants, but everything has a price :P. The stronger you are, the more attention you bring upon yourself, and more powerful enemies you enrage
I play and occasionally DM in an 8-person party. Lately we've played at high levels, and had some character turnover, meaning that characters with inorganic (that is to say, planned) builds are common. Additionally, to ensure even longstanding characters have a chance to create whatever character builds they currently fancy, our DM has included several rebuild quest opportunities. Our builds vary from a straight warlock to a fighter/frenzied berserker/modified warpriest/master of chains. There is, admittedly, some variance in combat effectiveness between our characters. Our wizard keeps everyone from dying on a regular basis, and that warlock will never be as good at killing anything as any of our heavy fighters.
And we're all happy. Every one of the 8 players in my group likes the character they play, and has fairly equal spotlight time both in and outside of combat.
This hasn't always happened. Our warforged character was, at one point, considerably stronger than any of our other fighters, and wrapped up a couple combats without any real assistance. He approached our DM on his own and asked if he could modify his build and redistribute some of his magic items because other players weren't having fun. Our DM didn't have to take any action, didn't have to preemptively ban any classes or combinations, and we all continued to play happily. No in-game nerfing occurred and the character wasn't told he could only use the ability that was too powerful so many times per day.
On another occasion, the other players in our group mentioned they felt our paladin was out of hand powerful in comparison to the other characters. He offered to make some character changes, and again we all enjoyed the game. Instead of creating increased group tension, and leaving players unhappy, if players would simply discuss their problems with other characters like the rational people they hopefully are, and then make whatever changes everyone feels would bring the group back into whatever sense of balance is necessary, everyone can leave happy.
There's no need for DMs to limit player options and ban material, because a good group of players should be able and willing to police themselves. My group has yet to ban anything, and we all play happily.
Wow! You have no idea how remarkable a group you have. In 28 years of playing and DMing I have yet to personally encounter a player who felt that his (or her) character was too powerful and asked that it be made weaker so as not to overshadow the other characters. I have made some downward revisions to party NPCs for this purpose, but I have yet to see a player voluntarily do this.
I just wanted to comment on this a bit, currently I am playing a group and my character is by far the most powerful in a group of 7 players. We had one encounter in which my character failed a save vs a hold person, and it resulted in a TPK. We replayed the encounter with the DM adding in 2 more bad guys, and we promised we would not metagame, this time I made my save vs hold person and we won the encounter easily, with no PC deaths and me being at full HP at the end.
Last week I was unable to make the session, this has never happened to me before I make every session, but something came up, normally when a player misses, and players do miss regularly, we just have the PC "fade away" for the session or until the player shows up. This time they decided not to play, because the players didn’t want to risk a TPK because I was not there to save them. FYI, I am the only healer in the party and the main tank.
Even though my character is so much more powerful than the rest of the party, I would not feel good about nerfing him, since I think it would have a great chance to lead to a TPK.
I thought that Shadowcasters were much harder to understand then psionics. Then...why can't I play a PSYCHIC rogue instead of a rogue in the fey campaign?!
Oh, and /rant.
Just my 2 copper/silver/gold/platinum/mithril/electrum/daggers-to-the-throat.
Some campaigns have no room for samurai, ninja, favored souls, spirit shamans, beguilers, duskblades, or purple dragon knights. Players need to be more accepting of the fact you don't always get to use everything from the books you've spent money on.
I think you are both correct and incorrect on your assessment. I think in many cases everything could and should work out the way you have stated, I just feel that way to much stuff is deemed over powered by to many people for it to be completely wrong.
I think the problem lies in a combination of play style and the sheer amount of rules involved with playing D&D. When you play a specific way, implement house rules that make the game more interesting for your group, and take into account that some people are just oblivious to certain rules some things can become over powered. Sometimes changing play style and figuring out what rules are being screwed up would just not be the best course of action for the players and therefore banning something that isn't working well and becoming to powerful is just the best way to go.
Personally my group finds that Teleport makes the world too small so we have banned it. We also think that Scry is a type of spell that needs its own freaking book and that we just don't want to bather and we also do no use it. Now could we be completely off base? Probably. Does that mean we should un-ban it? I don't think so. For us its just not worth it.
Wow! You have no idea how remarkable a group you have. In 28 years of playing and DMing I have yet to personally encounter a player who felt that his (or her) character was too powerful and asked that it be made weaker so as not to overshadow the other characters.
Hey, it happens. I did that once myself, when I felt the bard I had been playing for over a year was becoming too powerful. It would have been okay in a standard party of 4 PCs, but a party of 6 players can multiply a bard's buffs too much, especially when a single-class bard is optimized to be a bard rather than a jack-of-all-trades, with all feats, spells, and skills chosen to enhance party buffs. It isn't fun anymore when the party can easily mop up all the planned encounters in the campaign.
I have an experience with a player who wanted to play a winged kobold ninja that worked out badly.
People on the boards warned me not to allow the combination, but I didn't see the problem and allowed it. It turned out that she wasn't offensively powerful and didn't dominate the game, but she was so defensively powerful that it wreaked havoc with all the encounters. She was almost impossible to hit, and since she would tend to fly out of range of melee attacks, the rest of the party would bear the brunt of all the enemies' attacks.
Well, another player in my group voluntarily degraded his character for a similar reason quoted above. He made a female pixie rogue with permanent reduce person, because he wanted to play Tinkerbell (who is Tiny, not Small). Well, the pixie's perfect flight and Greater Invisibility racial trait made every attack a sneak attack, and also made her impossible to hit. She turned out to be our "tank." The DM really got frustrated with that. The player didn't expect her to be such an unbalancing factor, and agreed to degrade the pixie's abilities somewhat (lesser invisibility and another +1 level adjustment, I recall). We all had fun.
I guess, from reading this thread, that I am fortunate to have a gaming group with a maturity level above the norm. Yes, whoever plays the DM will ban a few things. We don't whine about bans, and we occasionally offer to make adjustments if our characters prove unbalancing. We all know the point is to have fun, and it's no fun if you contrive to eliminate the challenges. We aren't all old folks either; the ages of our group members have a fairly even distribution from 16 to 45.
-A
I'd always share XP among survivors. If an encounter is dangerous enough to kill almost everyone, then the survivors deserve to be rewarded for getting through it. It's the upside of hitting something dangerous.
I share the xp among survivors too. I include among survivors someone who dies and gets raised in relatively short order. At the level of the module I was running with the broken kobold, getting raised from the dead wasn't an option.
I just wanted to comment on this a bit, currently I am playing a group and my character is by far the most powerful in a group of 7 players. We had one encounter in which my character failed a save vs a hold person, and it resulted in a TPK. We replayed the encounter with the DM adding in 2 more bad guys, and we promised we would not metagame, this time I made my save vs hold person and we won the encounter easily, with no PC deaths and me being at full HP at the end.
Last week I was unable to make the session, this has never happened to me before I make every session, but something came up, normally when a player misses, and players do miss regularly, we just have the PC "fade away" for the session or until the player shows up. This time they decided not to play, because the players didn’t want to risk a TPK because I was not there to save them. FYI, I am the only healer in the party and the main tank.
Even though my character is so much more powerful than the rest of the party, I would not feel good about nerfing him, since I think it would have a great chance to lead to a TPK.
That reminds me. I wanted to add that in 27 years of DMing I've never had a party come so close to a TPK as the one with the winged kobold. Usually I don't provide the sort of encounter that the module provided, where the DM tries to lead the PCs by the nose and if they don't follow then they'll probably all die. The players could easily see that the module's encounter was written that way, and chose to have the fight instead of taking the easy way out provided by the module's author. As it was they did defeat the bad guys, but with the loss of everyone except the kobold. With a better balanced character in place of the kobold they most likely would have defeated the bad guy without losing most of the party.
A few years ago I played in a group where they used my character when I missed a session. They ran across some hill giants throw rocks at them from on top of a hill. Instead of just riding away, they climbed the steep face of the cliff with rocks coming down on them. Under those conditions the party members arrived one at a time, at the top, whereupon the hill giants slew each one in turn. I cannot imagine the sheer stupidity involved in these "tactics," if one can dignify walking headfirst into the business end of a power drill as "tactics." That's actually when I quit the group and starting running the Eberron module series.
So Starfire, how did you end up with a character so much more powerful than all the others? Maybe the problem isn't that your character is too powerful, but that the others are too weak for their level. Or are they lower levels?
I ran into one DM who insisted on starting each new PC at 1st level. This resulted in my character and one other being 1st level when we had a 6th-level dwarven fighter and assorted 5th level characters as well. We started out pretty much useless and helpless. This sort of party imbalance is virtually guaranteed to cause serious problems. Fortunately the game was being run at the time by the "assistant DM" who was actually one of the players, and he cut us all a break repeatedly so that the low-level characters could actually survive long enough to level up repeatedly. As so often happens with D&D groups, it collapsed after a few sessions when one key player got transferred. I think the DM tried to recover the group after that but didn't succeed. I frankly don't think that anyone really wanted to play with him as the DM.
So has your DM done something to make the other PCs so weak compared to yours, like making them levels lower? If not, then why are they so much weaker?
In fairness, I feel this is a common misperception of DMs. The majority of issues with "bannings" are not banning at all. If a DM says you cannot run a frenzied berserker, it does not mean the DM has "banned" frenzied berserker. It means the DM has decided to not allow frenzied berserker. Everything outside of the PHB, DMG, and MM is optional subject to inclusion, not mandatory subject to exclusion.
Some campaigns have no room for samurai, ninja, favored souls, spirit shamans, beguilers, duskblades, or purple dragon knights. Players need to be more accepting of the fact you don't always get to use everything from the books you've spent money on.
Actually, our group feels that even the core material is "optional" to an extent. One of our DMs refuses to include halflings in his campaigns because he can't reconcile them in his mind. Another has ruled "no more Rings of Sustenance" after one party had three of them pop up in the party (completely coincidentally).
Mostly we treat issues as a referendum. We discuss what the issues are and then come to a consensus as a group on what to do about it. So I guess it's not really 'banning' ... It's more along the lines of an agreement (SALT talks for a campaign?).
So Starfire, how did you end up with a character so much more powerful than all the others? Maybe the problem isn't that your character is too powerful, but that the others are too weak for their level. Or are they lower levels?
Good question, there really isn’t much disparity in the group levelwise. Here is what we have:
Me level 5 crusader/level 2 Hellreaver
PC 2 level 4 Swashbuckler/ Level 3 Rogue
PC 3 Level 7 Warlock
PC 4 Level 6 Warmage
PC 5 Level 6 Bow Specced Scout
PC 6 Level 6 Bow Specced Ranger
PC 7 Level 5 Goliath Monk.
All built with 25 point buy, all had 9K gp to start at 6th level, and we split treasure 100% evenly.
I will let you guys try to guess why my party feels the can not go on without me, tip it has very little to do with the amount of damage I can do.
Actually, our group feels that even the core material is "optional" to an extent.
So does ours. We agreed to ban the core spell find the path, for example, after we tried to use it to find our way back out of the dungeon to get more supplies in town. It turned out that the only way out was to get through unexplored parts the dungeon. This rather spoiled the game for both the DM and the players because find the path not only reveals the route but also all the traps along the way. I recall we let the spell's duration expire early before it ruined everything.
The players in our group are also known to degrade their own characters in the interest of balance. And one player seems to enjoy creating characters with the worst possible ability rolls.
Good question, there really isn’t much disparity in the group levelwise. Here is what we have:
Me level 5 crusader/level 2 Hellreaver
PC 2 level 4 Swashbuckler/ Level 3 Rogue
PC 3 Level 7 Warlock
PC 4 Level 6 Warmage
PC 5 Level 6 Bow Specced Scout
PC 6 Level 6 Bow Specced Ranger
PC 7 Level 5 Goliath Monk.
All built with 25 point buy, all had 9K gp to start at 6th level, and we split treasure 100% evenly.
I will let you guys try to guess why my party feels the can not go on without me, tip it has very little to do with the amount of damage I can do.
I don't know much about the crusader, but as it comes from the ToB and has nonmagical spells along with its fighter abilities, I'm not surprised that it's stronger. I have no idea what a hellreaver is. Is it a prestige class from ToB?
Good question, there really isn’t much disparity in the group levelwise. Here is what we have:
Me level 5 crusader/level 2 Hellreaver
PC 2 level 4 Swashbuckler/ Level 3 Rogue
PC 3 Level 7 Warlock
PC 4 Level 6 Warmage
PC 5 Level 6 Bow Specced Scout
PC 6 Level 6 Bow Specced Ranger
PC 7 Level 5 Goliath Monk.
All built with 25 point buy, all had 9K gp to start at 6th level, and we split treasure 100% evenly.
I will let you guys try to guess why my party feels the can not go on without me, tip it has very little to do with the amount of damage I can do.
Your crusader can heal in battle and has the best AC of the group. If you use Iron guards glare you can make the enemy concentrate on you and if you use martial spirit the party gets healed as you hit.
I don't know much about the crusader, but as it comes from the ToB and has nonmagical spells along with its fighter abilities, I'm not surprised that it's stronger. I have no idea what a hellreaver is. Is it a prestige class from ToB?
I am not really stronger than the rest, the swash/rogue and warmage can both out damage me and the rogue, ranger and scout both have more skills than me and can do good damage also, the warlock and monk are just plain weaksauce in the group though, but they still contribute.
Hellreaver is a PrC out of fiendish codex 2, it is an improved paladin PrC IMO, but designed for fighting evil outsiders. the main ability I get out of it is that 3 times per battle, as a swift action, I can add +2 att/+1D6 dam for 1 attack or heal 10 HP at range 30ft.
Your crusader can heal in battle and has the best AC of the group. If you use Iron guards glare you can make the enemy concentrate on you and if you use martial spirit the party gets healed as you hit.
Bingo, and I am the only tank and only healer, if I were to nerf myself in anyway, this would really adversely affect the party.
Bingo, and I am the only tank and only healer, if I were to nerf myself in anyway, this would really adversely affect the party.
Therein lies the problem. I've heard of DMs complaining because a player is 'too strong', the truth is that plenty of times the player is using good tactics or a synergistic build to be good at a certain style of combat or focus. But I have had the opposite problem, I've had players who don't know how to build characters or who scream that any capability is munchkinism and that weak feats or non-synergy is equal to good RP, and it means that I have to weaken encounters or face multiple character deaths or TPKs.
And my definition of average might be underpowered to some and overpowered to others. Look at arguments over races and class balance, on play style, on the intent of the game, now imagine trying to logistically create an 'average game' and don't argue modules since those have widely swinging power levels and gear access, some give artifacts at low levels, some are frankly player killers, and the module itself is built on internal balance, not necessarily in game context.