The house rules are available somewhere online?I've never been kicked from a group, but I've had to leave a group three times. The first time was in an online 3.5e campaign (was the best game I ever had) with some awesome houserules (that I reccomend to others since they are available online) we played through IRC, due to time zones and a lack of sleep. Between work and waking up at 04:00 AM every wednesday morning, I had to place my health above the awesome game and reluctantly take my leave.
The two other times were due to that one DM, and those are stories I'd need to dig up from older threads.
Yes. I can PM the link if you want.
I wasn't kicked, but I left a group after something much like kevin_video's story. For me it was just one session, though, which made it easier. However, all of the others were in on it, and the entire point was to have fun at my expense by killing my character.
Needless to say, I did not have anything more to do with them after that. It is ancient history now, but I still can't fathom how someone can get it into their heads to do something like that.
I've had a DM mock my homebrews behind my back to the rest of the group.
Trust me, I can see someone being mean enough to kill a character just for mockery's sake.
Yes. I can PM the link if you want.
I'd like to see 'em, if you don't mind.
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I had a player try out the summoner class. He'd played a conjuration wizard in our old 3.5 game, so I knew he liked the archetype, and decided to let him run with it.
The summoner was so much more powerful than the rest of the party that it became almost impossible to run the game. Anything that was a challenge for his character would probably kill any other character. He turned difficult fights into cakewalks. He's a skilled player and a good optimizer, and the action economy of the summoner was crazily powerful.
So you know what I did? I talked to the player about it. He agreed the character was too powerful, and admitted he'd taken to holding his character back in order to try to mitigate the problem (it helped that he's DMed before too, so understood my perspective). We agreed that the class was causing too many difficulties, and he retired the character and brought in a new one at a similar power level to the rest of the party.
This is how reasonable adults attack these kinds of issues.
Some people need to be smacked in the head with a clue by four.
Ever hear of Pun-Pun? That's your reason for wanting core only. It doesn't sound like you are one of them, but there are some people out there--Min/Maxers, Power Gamers, etc--who study ways to break the system. The more books you allow to be used, the more the odds that such a players will find the "I win!" loophole and create a character that will give you a headache. Remember, GMs do a lot more work than players in preparation. Would you like it if somebody created characters that would make your hard work worthless? The samurai from CW is a bad example. Yes, he's not that much better than a fighter, but then you add all the feats, spells, other classes, prestige classes, and so on in that book, you can see how it makes a GM's job progressively more difficult. The rest of the Complete books in 3.5 had even more exploitable content, getting worse with each release over time. Pathfinder is the same way to some extent, but I believe Paizo has much better quality controls in place. I still restrict which Pathfinder books are allowed to Core, APG, UM, and UC.
Oh please, let's not start with the "core only games are balanced" excuse. Maybe PF is a little different, but three of the 5-6 most broken 3.0/.5 classes are right in the PHB. Source books allow players to get more creative, whether to power game or simply to game, but if someone wants to break the game they don't need sourcebooks.
There's a legitimate reason to say 'core-only', however tiresome the phrase is: unfamiliarity with all those new widgets. If nobody at the table is experienced with D&D, it can save a headache or two to at least start a group as core-only. There's also the possibility that the DM is new and doesn't fully trust his players for whatever reason, or that he simply can't be bothered to deal with all those game widgets. Though I'd question whether the DM is playing with the right group in the first case, and whether he's DMing the right game in the second case, but whatever.
But core-only = balanced is a lame excuse.
And FYI, Pun-Pun's creator explicitly says it's not meant to be played. He says so right on the wiki.
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Yes. I can PM the link if you want.
Yes, I would very much like that.
I wasn't kicked, but I left a group after something much like kevin_video's story. For me it was just one session, though, which made it easier. However, all of the others were in on it, and the entire point was to have fun at my expense by killing my character.
Needless to say, I did not have anything more to do with them after that. It is ancient history now, but I still can't fathom how someone can get it into their heads to do something like that.
I am very sorry to hear that.
This is how reasonable adults attack these kinds of issues.
Very nicely handled.
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And FYI, Pun-Pun's creator explicitly says it's not meant to be played. He says so right on the wiki.
I like the idea of having Pun-Pun appear as soon as the player shows interest in replicating the conditions, smite the character out of existence, and declare "This is the fate of all who seek my power."
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And FYI, Pun-Pun's creator explicitly says it's not meant to be played. He says so right on the wiki.I like the idea of having Pun-Pun appear as soon as the player shows interest in replicating the conditions, smite the character out of existence, and declare "This is the fate of all who seek my power."
::falls over laughing::
Now I really want to do this.
TS, I've had too many players trying to file the serial numbers off pun-pun to buy into the "he's not supposed to be played!!!" line. I only restrict books to those books I own so I actually know what is in front of me and I'm not just taking someone's word for it.
Ever hear of Pun-Pun? That's your reason for wanting core only. It doesn't sound like you are one of them, but there are some people out there--Min/Maxers, Power Gamers, etc--who study ways to break the system. The more books you allow to be used, the more the odds that such a players will find the "I win!" loophole and create a character that will give you a headache. Remember, GMs do a lot more work than players in preparation. Would you like it if somebody created characters that would make your hard work worthless? The samurai from CW is a bad example. Yes, he's not that much better than a fighter, but then you add all the feats, spells, other classes, prestige classes, and so on in that book, you can see how it makes a GM's job progressively more difficult. The rest of the Complete books in 3.5 had even more exploitable content, getting worse with each release over time. Pathfinder is the same way to some extent, but I believe Paizo has much better quality controls in place. I still restrict which Pathfinder books are allowed to Core, APG, UM, and UC.Oh please, let's not start with the "core only games are balanced" excuse. Maybe PF is a little different, but three of the 5-6 most broken 3.0/.5 classes are right in the PHB. Source books allow players to get more creative, whether to power game or simply to game, but if someone wants to break the game they don't need sourcebooks.
There's a legitimate reason to say 'core-only', however tiresome the phrase is: unfamiliarity with all those new widgets. If nobody at the table is experienced with D&D, it can save a headache or two to at least start a group as core-only. There's also the possibility that the DM is new and doesn't fully trust his players for whatever reason, or that he simply can't be bothered to deal with all those game widgets. Though I'd question whether the DM is playing with the right group in the first case, and whether DMing the right game in the second case, but whatever.
But core-only =...
Sounds like a very poor DM and poor sport. Ask the player to make a new character if you find out it is becoming unbalancing, not invent witch hunts. As for you having 6 already in your group, add a 7th. Believe me it won't be that much of an issue and you will be helping a friend. Yes, some DM's can go way overboard with house rules and restricting sources, but that doesn't mean that there are not good reasons for doing so to a certain extent. It is called moderation and game balance.
And FYI, Pun-Pun's creator explicitly says it's not meant to be played. He says so right on the wiki.I like the idea of having Pun-Pun appear as soon as the player shows interest in replicating the conditions, smite the character out of existence, and declare "This is the fate of all who seek my power."
Even funnier if Pun-Pun waits until just before the player takes advantage of that final technicality before curb-stomping the upstart. "You really thought nobody had thought of this before?! I will suffer no rivals!"
Not very mature of the DM, mind you, but funny!
TS, I've had too many players trying to file the serial numbers off pun-pun to buy into the "he's not supposed to be played!!!" line. I only restrict books to those books I own so I actually know what is in front of me and I'm not just taking someone's word for it.
Well if you own half the books, ya can't be a half-bad DM in my book!
As to players trying to pull the Pun-Pun fast-one, wouldn't you say the problem is with the players? I'm not denying that 3.x D&D is a hot mess, but if I had players actually thinking that Pun-Pun would be fun to play I'd think I had more of a problem than a bunch of ill-worded stats.
Just yesterday one of the guys here got inspired to begin a 3.5 game, and outright told us to powergame our hearts out. And even that's not license to play Pun-Pun.
...Well, maybe I'll play Pun-Pun for ten minutes, just because I don't think anyone in the group knows what he is, and then say "Just kidding, here's my real character..." as I pull out a second character sheet.
what 3.5 player with internet access can't recognize Pun-Pun. DC 25 knowledge religion, candle of invocation, candle of invocation chain, the Saarukh, Pazuzu.
If we are at 3.5, could I play a stone giant hulking hurler? Oh, and I need a solid osmium sphere that is right at the top of my load limit...
I talked to the player about it. He agreed the character was too powerful, and admitted he'd taken to holding his character back in order to try to mitigate the problem (it helped that he's DMed before too, so understood my perspective). We agreed that the class was causing too many difficulties, and he retired the character and brought in a new one at a similar power level to the rest of the party.
This is how reasonable adults attack these kinds of issues.
Some people need to be smacked in the head with a clue by four.
Impressive. I've occasionally retired campaigns due to the players getting too powerful and generally everyone agreeing that things had become a cakewalk by a certain point. A big problem we had with 3E was extremely rapid character advancement due to the 'generous' EXP levels (my tendency to have the characters encounter monsters above their CR level didn't help this, but was necessary due to them annihilating anything of the same level with almost trivial ease due to good optimisation), sometimes resulting in characters levelling every session, and if not that than every other session. One of my biggest regrets is that we never satisfactorily worked out a houserule to reduce that problem (and PF with its slower advancement table came out too late in the day).
I think there needs to be a little clarification to this, as this is not an entirely accurate recount of the evening in question.
Probably not appropriate to get into it here, but this was also not an accurate recounting of the evening in question. No mention of the 'morality sin' rule was made at any point, certainly not during character creation, until this particular moment. There also seemed to be an underlying assumption that all members of the group present were thoroughly familiar with the Storyteller system when this was not the case (I had played exactly one session of it before, which was a game of Trinity some four years earlier which did not use this rule).
We were actually only using this modified Storyteller rule system due to half the group not wanting to play 4E and the other half not wanting to use 3E/Pathfinder, so Storyteller - which everyone was at least okay with - was deployed as a compromise. The problem with this is that there were some assumptions of the rules not appropriate to a D&D-like gameworld (such as 'dwarves have to kill goblins on sight or suffer an XP penalty', a rule not present in D&D/PF in any way, shape or form).
If anything, this episode showcases a whole load of problems which arise when you try to mix and match game styles and rules which were never really meant to work together. Still, the motivation - keeping a group that was starting to splinter in different directions - was a good one.
want to know how you curb optimization?
you don't make the encounters harder, you make them easier.
making them harder only encourages more optimization and an even bigger arms race.
making them easier tells the group "you don't need an ubercharger to be viable".
it helps that i never start with a 20 when 15+racial bonus works just fine.