My players have a habit of making obscene characters that excel at
One or two things. My Cleric Choose no diety and choose the Undeath doman, and Glory domain.
He gained +2 to the turning check and 1d6 to the turning damage.
Extra turning, He took empower turning as well. at 3rd level he took quicken turning. anyone else have players like that.
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An illusionist should send illusionary zombies at this guy, who will hopefully be mystified by his inability to turn them. Then, his necromancer buddy should send real undead after him, once he shoots all his turn attempts.
Also, with the stress on turning undead, he'll probably be lacking in other areas.
Overspecialization is a good way to guarantee extinction.
An illusionist should send illusionary zombies at this guy, who will hopefully be mystified by his inability to turn them. Then, his necromancer buddy should send real undead after him, once he shoots all his turn attempts.
Also, with the stress on turning undead, he'll probably be lacking in other areas.
Overspecialization is a good way to guarantee extinction.
One of the other players runs a paladin with the cleric, They are brothers. The paladin took Sheild Specialization, Adaptable shield
defence, they both trained in Team Sheild manuver. For third level the paladin took Sheild ward. They are a very effective team.
I played in an epic campaign once (ups and downs to those) where we started off at 23rd level. I must admit that I was pretty bad at building a nasty High Elf-Balenorn Lich, 5th level Wizard, 10th level Crypt Lord (from the 1st Relics & Rituals Book by Sword and Sorcery), 5th level Lore Master, 2nd level Epic Crypt Lord with a combined enchanced Int of 42! he was able to build a castle with double moats and an outer curtain wall using his magic in one day! I, oh so originally, called it the Castle in a Day!
But I was not the worst offender. My fellow player created some horrid amalgom of a Cleric with about 5 or 6 classes and prestiges to his name, I to this day still don't know what they all were, although I remember contemplative was one of them. Anyhow his true munchkin power was shown when we battled a couple black dragons, one of which was a great wyrm. Anyhow this cleric cast some sort of quickened spell that hurt the Dragon's Reflex save kinda like a Mind Fog does to Will saves. Then he cast a enlarged maximized Slime Wave (from the original Defenders of the Faith) as an 11th level spell. Anyhow the following happened. The Dragon was covered with about 6-7 patches of green slime, each doing 6pts of Temp Con Damage all at once, and the Dragon was -5 on its Reflex Save (which are it's worst save anyhow) and so poof! we are left with a Black Dragon Great Wyrm head and not a bit of it's body can be found! all in one round, without even breaking a sweat, he single handedly wiped out a CR21 Dragon! It was awe inspiring to watch.
My D&D games have always been fairly reasonable, but one time in GURPS my cousin dropped all 100 of his starting points plus 40 points from disadvantages in one skill, Guns(Pistol). In a system that rolls 3d6 and adds them to compare to a skill level, and in which the combat penalties are almost never worse than a -10 to skill, he had a final skill level of 29. He could snap shot a target in the left eye at a distance of 30 feet, with a roll of 16 or less on three dice. Of course, he couldn't do much else...
Sure. This is the classic issue of players "min-maxing" their characters. I actually like it when my players do this a little. It lets me know what kind of challenges to send at them when I want them to excel, and what I can send at them to take them off guard. Every min-maxed character has a weakness or two.
You might even say that the current system encourages min-maxing, at least to a certain extent. Prestige classes are often somewhat one-dimensional, allowing a character to excel at one thing to the detriment of everything else. Qualifying for a prestige class requires a player to shape his character in that direction early on. On the other hand, to answer the OP, sure, everyone has had players that do that sort of thing. Check out some of the threads regarding munchkins here on the messageboards. Just remember that in the arms race/brinksmanship style of play, everyone loses.
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My D&D games have always been fairly reasonable, but one time in GURPS my cousin dropped all 100 of his starting points plus 40 points from disadvantages in one skill, Guns(Pistol). In a system that rolls 3d6 and adds them to compare to a skill level, and in which the combat penalties are almost never worse than a -10 to skill, he had a final skill level of 29. He could snap shot a target in the left eye at a distance of 30 feet, with a roll of 16 or less on three dice. Of course, he couldn't do much else...
I played in a GURPS Supers campaign once where all players except for me and my brother attached their superpowers onto items, as this can potentially reduce the cost of the powers by as much as 75%! Needless to say, we were completely out-supered (if that is a word?) - until we stole their super-stuff, of course. After that, nothing really fazes me on the min-max topic anymore.
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I had a player whose character concept was, bluntly, a monster. He started as a half-shadow dragon minotaur that the party found guarding a dungeon hall and took barbarian levels to Frenzied Berzerker. Once he got Intimidating Rage it was hard to have any sort of combat that wasn't just him chasing down scared opponents and cleaving them with reach. I think his life's ambition was to acquire Thor's belt.
Frenzied Berserkers are impossibly easy to deal with. A wizard with improved invisibility already cast zaps with something like ray of frost or acid splash. He took damage, so he's forced to frenzy and attack the nearest enemy. And if there's no enemies to be found, he attacks party members.
The wizard waits for one of two things: FB kills his party members, or party members spend large amounts of resources stopping the FB. Either way, the wizard now cleans up what's left over.
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Frenzied Berserkers are impossibly easy to deal with. A wizard with improved invisibility already cast zaps with something like ray of frost or acid splash. He took damage, so he's forced to frenzy and attack the nearest enemy. And if there's no enemies to be found, he attacks party members.
The wizard waits for one of two things: FB kills his party members, or party members spend large amounts of resources stopping the FB. Either way, the wizard now cleans up what's left over.
Awesome.
I have a similarly specialised PC in my group. Don't go out of your way to keep foiling his ability - in fact, make a point of letting him make use of it some of the time - just remember that he's overspecialising, so he lacks other cool abilities that could have been more useful against non-undead.
I have a similarly specialised PC in my group. Don't go out of your way to keep foiling his ability - in fact, make a point of letting him make use of it some of the time - just remember that he's overspecialising, so he lacks other cool abilities that could have been more useful against non-undead.
Yes, as annoying as overspecializing seems, you should let the guy take center stage once in a while with this ability.
I was playing in a game where I overspecialized, and my DM went out of his way to make sure I never (or at least rarely) ever got to activate my souped-up ability. It was a huge disappointment for me.
Yep, I agree. DMs should find ways to allow every PC shine from time to time. I also think it's important for DMs to shut down a PC from time to time (sending undead towards the rogue, flying archers attacking the melee specialist, etc). The key is to not fall on one extreme or the other.
Yep, I agree. DMs should find ways to allow every PC shine from time to time. I also think it's important for DMs to shut down a PC from time to time (sending undead towards the rogue, flying archers attacking the melee specialist, etc). The key is to not fall on one extreme or the other.
I agree that letting them shine once in a while is great, it adds some enthusiasm to the players and gives them, that I'm important feeling. But beware some of the best laid setups of the DM can undone real quick. As a PC I destroyed my DM undead attack and healed my party with one well time mass heal, he was not impressed, but the party found it awsome, my PC paid for later. :)
I once made a Gurps character who had both the dwarf and gigantism disadvantages.
*rolls eyes*
Yep, I agree. DMs should find ways to allow every PC shine from time to time. I also think it's important for DMs to shut down a PC from time to time (sending undead towards the rogue, flying archers attacking the melee specialist, etc). The key is to not fall on one extreme or the other.
Indeed. I tend to lean more toward the former than the latter, largely because I would rather play in a game where my choices were more beneficial than detrimental. Also because one of the guys I used to game with played a rogue to level thirteen and could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he'd gotten to use sneak attack. Undead, Constructs, Oozes, fortified armor, blur, light fog... about the only thing that won't render sneak attack useless is cursed armor.
I have a player who is always coming up with really wierd PC combos. He has this character that combined a aventian with the winged template, to get a character that can fly with wings and breath underwater.
His most recent thing is a goliath (from races of stone) barbarian, fighter with exotic weapon master prestige class. He's got it set up so that he can use an oversized weapon (racial feature), and get a 2x damage on strength when using it two handed (some feat, I forget, or maybe it was from the prestige class) at any rate he's also got a really high strength, so he can easily dish out between 30 and 50 damage per hit at 8th or 9th level. He hasn't brought the character into the game, and I feel a little leary about allowing it.
Oh yeah, I forgot mention that he gutted the character's intelligence to 3, and his sword is magic and intelligent, so the sword tells the Goliath what to do, and it calls him meat sack. He has some weaknesses (Will save +3) and if he loses the sword he's a walking gunga, which won't be very useful. At least he's a creative munchkin.
I also have to say the ammount of books coming out is getting out of hand. I can't keep track of all the feats and prestige classes my players are finding. I'm thinking of limiting my players to the core books, but the players spend money on this stuff, so I feel bad about restricting their options. I do have them run everything by me, but when a player comes up with a character that has so many different weird ability and feat combinations its hard to keep up, and that's part of the fun of the game for that player so I don't want to take it away from him.
I get a lot of stuff like this at the beginning of games sessions "guess what? I was going through these books and I figured out a way that I can get full plate armour with no armour check penalty. If I make the armor out of this particular metal and take these two feats blah blah blah..." Shoot me now and put me out of my misery. Sorry Jeff, no offence, you're a great player and I love having you at the gaming table.
I also have to say the ammount of books coming out is getting out of hand. I can't keep track of all the feats and prestige classes my players are finding. I'm thinking of limiting my players to the core books, but the players spend money on this stuff, so I feel bad about restricting their options.
One thing you might do is have each player pick one non-core book. I suppose they could collaborate and come up with a set that lets them do the same stuff you're talking about, but at least it's still a relatively finite set that you can wrap your head around.
I also have to say the ammount of books coming out is getting out of hand. I can't keep track of all the feats and prestige classes my players are finding. I'm thinking of limiting my players to the core books, but the players spend money on this stuff, so I feel bad about restricting their options.I wouldn't feel bad about it. Before starting off our last campaign, everyone pretty much agreed on core, Eberron, and Complete. Everything else is subject to review and/or approval, which is usually done on a tentative basis - if something seems overwhelming, it's eventually removed or replaced.
When I'm DM'ing, core is open season - if it's in the core books, you can take it no questions asked. If it's in a book I own, there's a good chance I'll allow it - though a handful of things are tossed (I'm looking at you, thought bottle from Complete Arcane). If it's in a book I don't own, there's a chance I'll allow it; you have to loan me your book for at least a week while I review whatever it is you want and take any notes I need to feel comfortable.
That's also how I do it, same as Zherog. Basically, the trick is to let them use anything from any books you've had a chance to look through. That way, they won't start using stuff you haven't seen, and you can filter out the occasional broken item (Thought Bottle) as well as anything that isn't suited to your game world.
It's also a good excuse to get your players to lend you books.