Throughout my time in playing D&D 3.5, there have been a number of foibles that rear their ugly heads again and again. House rules tend to try to fix these types of issues, but a player/DM can only house-rule against insistent power-gamers for so long until it becomes time to find other people to game with. And it seems I'm not alone in this matter:
The 3.5 rules set is excellent, but it has its flaws. Over the past few years, a number of common problems have seemed to crop up again and again, problems that delay the game or cause no end of arguments....
Perhaps a list of game-breaking or game-grinding issues would aid Paizo in creating a Pathfinder RPG that people would be generally happy with. Even if it wouldn't, I'd be a bit interested to hear what has broken your games to a point of extinction.
Some of the issues I've ran up against are the following, as both player and DM:
Polymorph - So much errata, and with so much material to draw from it becomes a game of "What's the perfect solution to this encounter" or "I know the rules better than you". The spell hasn't in so much broken a game as it has grinded a number of games to a halt.
Custom Wonderous Items - This often starts innocently enough, with a player wanting another ability that isn't covered by their options already. Unfortunately, the Estimating Gold Piece Values table is utilized/argued as formula rather than educated guess-work, and an unforeseen consequence slips by the DM; that item or precedence of the item might ruin a plot-line or skews the power level so much that the game becomes virtually unplayable.
Telejack - The Scry/Teleport combo abused. Scry on a target constantly until he fails, then (likely when they are sleeping) teleport to their location and kill them / take their stuff. Good characters might rely on this only to take out the BBEG, while Evil characters (or characters that have recently undergone an alignment shift) have little reason not to do this as often as possible. There are defenses against this technique, but to have every target constantly have those defenses going all the time stretches the veil of disbelief beyond its natural limits.
Splat Prestige - Custom, wacky character builds are fine and are part of the game. Every PC in the party having a minimum of 6 classes (many prestige classes) by level 20, though, can result in such anti-climatic encounters as no less than 21000 points of damage to Kyuss in the first round.
I'm not saying that a simple Rule 0 won't eradicate these issues, I'm just saying that they've ended games in my past. What has ended your games in the past?
Magic of incarnium has broken more than a few of my games
Vow of Poverty plus Monk plus Touch of Golden Ice feat.
The character can do 1d6 dex damage DC 14 then 2d6 dex secondary to any evil creature it touches. So a monk is doing damage and an ass load of dex damage per hit. God forbid flurry.
VoP isn't so bad. My biggest complaint is it pigeon holes you into staying with the wealth by level charts. I tend to have lower magic/wealth, but with VoP I either have to reduce the VoP feat or jack up character wealth.
Fizz
the teleport/scry thing can be irritating. It prevents genuine investigation and research, prevents players from having to investigate surroundings. Shapechanging spells as well can be kind of annoying. It's things like that that remind you of the darker side of Gygax.
Of course this is what the more interesting monsters and opponents are for, and what the environment is for as well. You just need to make it challenging and now and then not make a big deal out of it so that the players don't think you're just deliberately blocking them. For example the BBEG in my campaign is a lich, and scrying doesn't do much good when he uses spells to often confuse his surroundings and deceive as to what's really there. The one time he was successfully scryed against he was actually setting a trap for the pcs, who immediately were caught.
Splat books. 90% of the issues (except for polymorph as you identified) come from bad splats and/or splat combos. This is called book creep. It causes problems for every system. Eventually somebody takes all the info and combines it, then pushes the reset button. It's just easier than weighing all the corner and special case rules together.
I've never actually had my game "broken," but I have had things that I initially allowed that had to be banned from the game or, at the very least, heavily modified in order to fix the problem.
Case in point, a PrC from AEG's Mercenary book...I think it was called the Skirmisher. I gave it a cursory glance, and it sounded okay so I allowed it. Then, in about six levels, I had a combat monster that could make a move action and still take a full attack action and auto-crit about 50% of the time. Yugh. That book when elsewhere quickly.
Luckily, I don't have major power-gamers or munchkins in my group, so things stay manageable most of the time.
Monsters having "blank as Characters" entries in the Monster Manual. I'd like to shoot whoever decided to make mind-flayers or worse yet, stone giants a legitimate choice for character races. When I was new to the game I made the mistake of allowing monster races. I ended up with a drow, a mind flayer, a stone giant, and a pixie. The soon broke the game. The 'monsters as character' rules are seriously f~+%ed up and shouldn't even exist.
Monsters having "blank as Characters" entries in the Monster Manual. I'd like to shoot whoever decided to make mind-flayers or worse yet, stone giants a legitimate choice for character races. When I was new to the game I made the mistake of allowing monster races. I ended up with a drow, a mind flayer, a stone giant, and a pixie. The soon broke the game. The 'monsters as character' rules are seriously f!%!ed up and shouldn't even exist.
Really? I've always heard that the LA and racial HD almost always make monster races a poor choice.
At the higher levels, yes they do suck. But at the low levels they are vastly overpowered and easily break the game. That's part of the reason I despise most monster races (things like kobolds and goblins are cool); they give you all kinds of cool bonus abilities and stat boosts and stuff that quickly break a game not designed for that but after the midlevels, their lack of higher level class abilities starts to hurt because all those cool racial abilities aren't as powerful as the higher level class abilities. Besides, no one has ever played a monster race well at my table; they've always just been played the same as joe the human but with tentacles or wings. I'd be more open to the monstrous race progressions if someone roleplayed them well.
At the higher levels, yes they do suck. But at the low levels they are vastly overpowered and easily break the game. That's part of the reason I despise most monster races (things like kobolds and goblins are cool); they give you all kinds of cool bonus abilities and stat boosts and stuff that quickly break a game not designed for that but after the midlevels, their lack of higher level class abilities starts to hurt because all those cool racial abilities aren't as powerful as the higher level class abilities. Besides, no one has ever played a monster race well at my table; they've always just been played the same as joe the human but with tentacles or wings. I'd be more open to the monstrous race progressions if someone roleplayed them well.
Hmm - well the huge piece of advice that is given out in regards to LA, etc., is not to allow monster races until the party is to the point where you would be allowing characters of that level.
The mind flayer for instance is +7 LA on top of 8 racial hit dice? That means one person should have a 15th level fighter, while the other has a plain old mind flayer, no class levels at all. Stone giant? 18th or 20th level (if elder). Pixie gets one class level and is 5th (7th with Otto's irresistible dance), and Drow are just +2 LA on their classes, but that still means no one should be one before 3rd level.
I've seen a gestalt samurai/cleric half-dragon Goliath (ECL 5) in a party of 1st level characters. He died (no more hp than anyone else).
Things that break: clerics with one level of wizard and a staff of the magi.
Magic of incarnium has broken more than a few of my games
...Please, elaborate. Our group was always tremendously fond of Incarnum, but it never saw very much use because it was just a little short of the power curve.
Magic of incarnium has broken more than a few of my games...Please, elaborate. Our group was always tremendously fond of Incarnum, but it never saw very much use because it was just a little short of the power curve.
Same here. Incarnum's a decent idea but I never offered it up as an optionto my players because the classes and soulmelds seem quite underpowered in comparison to the core classes.
I have a 19th level monk player in our group with a huge AC and all the dodge related feats that (thanks to magic items) also can fly, go ethereal and has freedom of movement. Very annoying, SO hard to capture, hit, stop! :D Bless him.
Made the mistake of carrying over 3.0 stuff after the rules switched to 3.5.
I figured that changing to the new rules could only make my game better (they were an updated, more balanced version right?), but I fumbled the ball by allowing my guys to keep using the expensive books they had diligently purchased from WotC that were 3.0 rules (seemed only fair at the time, as they had spent the money).
My power gamers quickly took the leash and ran with it, using old classes with new equipment and vice versa to come up with some truely "Ho hum, ok, so we kill the three trolls and their beholder master and loot his stuff... next!"
DM: "Gasp! But we havent even finished the first round of initiative yet!"
Dwarven fighter of the group who roled a 5 for initiative: "Groan. I know! This always happens to me!"
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Some of the spells in the Spell Compendium annoy me, but they haven't broken my game because I have banned them.
Fast wildshape into dire bear, cast bite of werebear on self and animal companion to get ludicrous strength, cast fires of purity so bad guy takes a ton of damage whenever he hits you. That kind of thing.
Hmm my GM had to NERF my Lion Totem Barbarian. The Pounce thing was just too powerful. It was breaking our game.
P.S. I noticed this too, and was willing to accept a change.
Hmm my GM had to NERF my Lion Totem Barbarian. The Pounce thing was just too powerful. It was breaking our game.
P.S. I noticed this too, and was willing to accept a change.
:_)
Thats the sign of a good player.
Some of the spells in the Spell Compendium annoy me, but they haven't broken my game because I have banned them.
KELPSTRAND from the Spell Compendium. Holy Gamestopper Batman! Who ever thought this spell should only be a 2ND level spell was not playtesting their ideas.
Made the mistake of carrying over 3.0 stuff after the rules switched to 3.5.
Ow. I remember attempting to carry a game through that switch. Didn't go as poorly as your story, but it certainly didn't go well. I feel your pain, there.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Vivatious template from Planar Handbook. Incorporeal summoned healing monsters that can just sit in a target's space and overload them and make them go boom!
We cleaned out a small dungeon with vivatious giant diet owls "Fly through the wall, if you see a monster sit in it until it explodes, wash, rince, repeat."
Banned by group consensus.
Abjurant Champion. I played a battle sorcerer, being able to quick cast protection from evil, icecicle and dispell magic every round, with no loss of caster level and a shield bonus of +9? Yes please. Picture a pseudo dragon familiar with an AC in the high 30's low 40's. Combined with...
Shivering touch. The "What were they smoking when they made this" spell. 3d6 dex damage, per hit? see the impossible to hit pseudodragon (see above) take out the BBEG with a well placed dropping of the dex to 0.
Draconic Polymorph. All the polymorph goodness plus
+4 to Str and Con, and extraordinary abilities? Yes, please, lots. We were fighting giants with the above battle sorcerer. The fighter had enlarged himself and was laying the smackdown, but I finally ran dry of orb of force, and I had to finally get into melee. I took the Mountain Troll form, with the Abjurant Champion spells working I had an AC of 40, Str, 38, regeneration, and my sword now did 2d8 + 16 damage. More when I burned arcane strike.
Everything above 12th level breaks my game.
Wild Spell's pretty cheesy too.
Some of the spells in the Spell Compendium annoy me, but they haven't broken my game because I have banned them.
Same here. I only allow Spell Compendium spells that I've first looked over and approved. Too many of them are so incredibly broken. They become even more so when the players skim the spell description, get the gist of it and then use it in play without understanding its limits and nuances.
Everything above 12th level breaks my game.
Bingo. Although I would lower the number to 10+.
This is just plain wrong, and I'm surprised no one has ever caught it. It is a horrible design error and should have been fixed long ago.
The problem with this thinking is that some monsters' abilities are of limited usefulness in combat, but are much more useful out of combat. Take a troll's healing. Yes, it makes it annoying while fighting them, as they heal some of the damage you do to them, but I haven't ever had a party not be able to overcome that and eventually drop a troll through straight pounding. Now let's assume a troll PC gets hurt in combat. Then combat ends. After a few rounds they are suddenly back at full strength.
Never had my game break at any level. Then again, I keep the reins pretty tight on what I allow to enter in the first place. I keep the PCs magic-light and poor, they find the items I place as treasure, gain the spells that I put in captured spell-books and so forth. If they save their pennies then they can research or craft custom items (always cool) but then I get the chance to review and balance them.
Played the last campaign to 17th level with no problems.
That might be my problem, as I allow most books. But, considering that my players and I have spent $ on them, I don't feel comfortable restricting them. We want options, but unfortunately, those same options lead to the bloated monstrosities that higher-level PCs become.
That's because they are basically just like the other races, with no level adjustment. Orcs, hobgoblins, etc. substitute nicely too.
Also, there's a lot more information on the culture and behaviour of these races and thier outlook on things is a lot more similiar than say, a pixie or a satyr. I wouldn't even mind these creatures in a campaign as much if they were well balanced and most importantly, if they could be roleplayed well.
The mind flayer for instance is +7 LA on top of 8 racial hit dice? That means one person should have a 15th level fighter, while the other has a plain old mind flayer, no class levels at all.
This is just plain wrong, and I'm surprised no one has ever caught it. It is a horrible design error and should have been fixed long ago.
Since the relative PC-Level strength of a monster is defined by it's CR, then LA = CR, end of story. Hit Dice, Special Abilities and so forth are already factored into CR. CR is by definition the "Level" of the monster. Taking a monster as your race and using it as written in the MM is (or should be) no different than multi-classing any other combination.
It's so simple and obvious, really. I must presume the whole LA=HD thing was a cruel hoax in order to punish twinkie-gamers and keep the monsters from running amuck.
Seriously, when you're balancing an encounter of monsters against PCs you use their CR, not LA+HD. So if you're balancing a party of PCs that includes monsters why would you use different math?
The whole LA, El, and CR system is so incredibly, horribly broken when it comes to monstrous characters. I don't allow them due to mechanics as well as RPing.
The time I allowed the stone giant I got increasingly frustrated as it killed just about everything in one hit so I threw something that it should have been more than equal to according to the EL: a marilith. According to the Monster Manual, a 1st level stone giant sorcerer should be equivalent to a 19th level character (14 racial Hit dice+4 LA+1 class level and therfeore should be able to easily defeat a maralith (CR 15). It should have been able to defeat things up to maybe a CR 20 so it seems like it should have been a very short fight. And it was. The maralith, with her six attacks a round or something, could dish out more damage than the stone giant could take because ultimately, she had the hit points of a 14th level cleric/1st level sorcerer, someone for whom this would have been a difficult fight for on their own. Add to that the fact that she had the wealth of a 1st level character rather than a 19th level character, and she couldn't stand against something that should have been easily defeatable according to the El/LA rules.I don't know why you wouldn't just use the standard CR as the starting level for a monstrous character rather than adding level adjustment and racial hit dice.
Using the Mind Flayer as an example, say you have a 9th level party going into a dungeon. Tim decided to play a mind flayer and just added class levels to the CR. Now he has a 1st level sorcerer mind flayer. In a party of ninth level characters, he's going to have the same number of hit dice as everyone else (8d8 racial+1d4 class) and rather than having all of the sorcerer abilities, he'll instead have the mind-flayer powers at the expense of being eight levels behind any other spellcasters (which is a crippling gap for spellcasters). It seems like he should be equivalent to a 9th level character, rather than a 16th level character.
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Excellent point. So you need to re-adjust LA for some monsters to that they are CR + LA (if any) for such abilities. However, aside form those with regeneration or fast healing, I think there isn't much.
The problem is the Level Adjustment system as presented in Savage Species. It forces the PCs to sacrifice HD in return for their special advantages. There is no way to balance the resulting characters with any conventional party of humans and elves, they're either horribly overpowered or horribly underhitpointed (if that's a word). This occurs whether they start a new character with full monster abilities or level up through the monster racial levels.
The only way to fix this is to come up with another balance mechanism for monster advantages, such as Champions/GURPS-style disadvantages.
I sincerely hope that 4E or Pathfinder can come up with a working solution because I would dearly love to play a djinni or centaur or something in a balanced fashion.
My humble opinion, of course.
Using the Mind Flayer as an example ... and just added class levels to the CR ... in a party of ninth level characters ... to have the same number of hit dice as everyone else (8d8 racial+1d4 class) and rather than having all of the sorcerer abilities, he'll instead have the mind-flayer powers at the expense of being eight levels behind any other spellcasters (which is a crippling gap for spellcasters). It seems like he should be equivalent to a 9th level character, rather than a 16th level character.So are you saying this works? Seems that it should to that it should to me. Actually, since Sorcerer and Mind Flayer don't "stack" they are somewhat non-associated so he needs +2 Sor for each +1 CR. I'd let him stack Mind Flayer HD to his Sor Levels for determining his Caster Level and call it a good, balanced day.
I'm saying should work. Can't be sure without trying it out and that's one can of worms I don't want to open in my game again.
A decent way of doing it would be to give each monster race an associated class. Then, if a PC takes it as a character and takes the associated class or classes they could trade in their racial hit dice for levels in that class on a one for one basis. Take the above mentioned mind flayer and then you could make it a mind flayer Sorcerer 6 and keep three racial hit dice, getting sorcerer hit dice for your other six. Problem with that is that it could get out of hand really quickly if a powergamer got their hands on it, what with the large stat boosts and other abilities most monsters get. Perhaps impose a limit on the number of hit dice traded in (no more than half maybe) or make it so you trade them in on a two HD for one level basis, although then that would put the character at a lower level than his buddies. Theoretically though, the racial abilities should balance it out.Instead of replacing the EL/LA system perhaps it could be modified with the above racial hit dice for levels trade in but then added the LA. Again using our mind flayer sorcerer as an example, it could then be the equivalent of a 15th level character with its +7 LA with all of its racial HD traded in for levels in sorcerer. Although this again brings up the problem of it being short hit points (by almost half in this case).
The time I allowed the stone giant I got increasingly frustrated as it killed just about everything in one hit so I threw something that it should have been more than equal to according to the EL: a marilith. According to the Monster Manual, a 1st level stone giant sorcerer should be equivalent to a 19th...
Here's the issue - the 1st level sorcerer stone giant *should* have had 19th level wealth. Starting wealth is based on ECL, not class level. And I'm not sure what the rest of your party was, but a Marilith is CR 17, and would be quite a good fight for a 19th level character solo.
Using the Mind Flayer as an example ... and just added class levels to the CR ... in a party of ninth level characters ... to have the same number of hit dice as everyone else (8d8 racial+1d4 class) and rather than having all of the sorcerer abilities, he'll instead have the mind-flayer powers at the expense of being eight levels behind any other spellcasters (which is a crippling gap for spellcasters). It seems like he should be equivalent to a 9th level character, rather than a 16th level character.
I have a Mind Flayer cohort in my epic game, and he's pretty darn potent. I'd say the HD+LA is a pretty accurate measure of his strength.
For your example, let's see, 9th level sorcerer, say 4 phantasmal killers per day, 5 fireballs, etc. The Mind Flayer has an at will Psionic Blast that stuns everything for 3d4 rounds. Allll dayyy long, with a DC much higher than ordinary b/c of PC stats.
But the real reason that a Mind Flayer is +7 LA is because of their massive Spell Resistance (25+class level). If you call them CR 9 at first level, someone their own level would need to roll a 17 on the caster level check. Adding +7 LA makes that a 10, which is the standard for SR (see Monk Diamond Soul).
Two separate things I have had break up two different games.
1. D&D and Real World Physics DO NOT MIX!! I ran a group through a theives stronghold and they fell into a trap that had a mithiral gate. They eventually escaped and defeated the rogues, but decided to come back for the gate. The players used the density and found the value of the gate iteslf would have been 100,000+ gp. Their math was right but I, as the DM, was not willing to let them exploit the flawed rules on the subject, because according to their math, a mithiral shirt would have cost about 30,000 gp. Players were mad enough to walk away from the game.
2. Too many DM's, not enough players. This group I was in had 8 players with 6 of them taking turns as DM. One was stingy with the gold. One was stingy with the XP. Two were very inexperienced. One wanted to focus on role-play. I was the rules lawyer. Needless to say, there was eventually to much conflict and not enough fun and we went our sepatate ways.
Frenzied berserker didn't break my game, but severely bent it for a while. And I, too, would like to hear the tale of how incarnum broke a game--I've always thought of it as a little under-powered.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Some things that I think warp the game:
* Excessive quantities of SR: No spells, particularly high-damage ones
* Adding new ways to buff abilities/AC/etc - sacred bonuses to Str or AC, Luck bonuses to AC, etc.
* Related to that, characters who have ACs or saves high enough that no monster is a threat to them, but it can manhandle most or all of the rest of the party. Usually done through bonus stacking or multiclassing.
* Two-handed power attack, particularly in conjuction with ways of ignoring all or part of the target's armor class
* Stackable initiative bonuses (i.e. marshal + dragon shaman + combat readiness + nerveskitter...)
* Stackable initiative bonuses (i.e. marshal + dragon shaman + combat readiness + nerveskitter...)
How does that break anything? There's a very real diminishing return on initiative bonuses; a high-dexterity character with Combat Reflexes is going to go first most of the time already, and if your players want to waste their auras and spell slots on decreasing the already slim chance that they won't go first, it's no skin off your nose. A character who goes first with a +50 initiative mod isn't going to do any better than a character who goes first with a +10 mod.
I lost a game in 3.0 to archery and Persistent Spell.
Archery from a ranger/arcane archer. Back then enhancement bonuses from ammunition stacked with weapons, so she was firing +5 arrows with her +5 bow, and was literrally dealing 100+ hp of damage each round, easily.
Same party, different character, a cleric with the Persistent Spell feat. Back then, it was a metamagic feat that raised the spell level by +4. Currently, it raises spell levels by +6, and I haven't seen it abused nearly as much. Persistent Righteous Might, Divine Power, Spikes, the list went on and on. He had the highest AC, best attack and damage in melee, the most HP, the best saves, and he still had some spell slots left when he wanted to just blast stuff.