I am starting a Pathfinder game and want to be wary of potentially broken feats or feat combinations. I searched the forums, but could not find anything relating to this question.
I am restricting my players to the Core Rulebook and Advanced Players Guide, but they can petition me for one-off exceptions. The Summoner is banned and I am allowing the Spell-less Ranger from New Paths (3PP).
The players are experienced in 3.5 (and eariler versions) and some of them have played Pathfinder.
Thanks for the help.
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This is really more a question of your player's creativity, to be honest. But I would say if you're worried about something a bit extreme, watch out for the two-handed fighter at low levels as it can one-shot most of the creatures of an appropriate CR.
As fa as I've seen though, there really aren't any game-breaking feats in the paizo products. There are some good combinations to be sure, but no one trick is good enough to beat the entire beastiary.
If you stick with Paizo published materials your players may surprise you with what they can do from time to time but it is all balanced (even the summoner is balanced) as long as you are aware of rules that govern the game. The people that wrote this game are the creators of 3 and 3.5 and have learned from mistakes of the past. It also appears they are determined to not repeat those mistakes.
One of the things I love about this company is instead of putting out new books to increase player options and power each month they are putting out new adventure paths.
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Be careful to distinguish between "powerful" and "broken". High-level characters are powerful; doesn't mean that they're broken. If you're expecting a low power level, a lot of things will look broken; but the actual problem is your expectations.
So before you say "X is broken, because it's really powerful", check to see if Y and Z, from the same level, aren't just as powerful, and that apparently X is in line with the normal power for that level.
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Why are you limiting players to those books? I hate when players have to adhere to strict rules like this. Just promise me you won't renig when they come up with a concept, within your rules, and you just say "nope, you can't have it, its broken." And its a really bad start to a game.
I am of the opinion that if you are going to be in a strict rule set, and limit your options as a DM or as a player, then you might as well go play a videogame, because it defeats the purpose of a tabletop RPG. tl;dr banning books is bad.
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I'm in favor of limiting books; not because the other books are broken (they usually aren't), but because it's a lot of reading.
I think character creation should generally be limited to stuff the GM has had time to read. Often classes, feats, abilities etcetera are balanced by all kinds of rules that do exist, and do balance it, but can be overlooked if you're not familiar with the entire book they come from.
So it's fair to say "these books I've read, and you can make stuff from them with the presumption that it'll be allowed". And about the other books "I haven't read them (yet), so the presumption is that they're not allowed. There are over a hundred of those books. If there's something you really really want, I may take the time to read it and maybe I'll allow it, but that's not a right, it's me doing you a favor."
As an example: the summoner. The class is difficult, and maybe it's broken. But half the complains I see about it on the forum are cases when a player made mistakes constructing the eidolon, and once you're using the correct rules, the class isn't quite as powerful as it was when you were accidentally breaking those rules.
So it's good if the GM only uses stuff when he's reasonably familiar with the appropriate rules.
Without specific examples of the feats you're worried about, it's hard to give a specific response. But I think limiting the scope of approved books is absolutely valid. Personally, I include all of the Ultimate series, and then anything that is directly relevant to the campaign. (For example, I'm getting to run Way of the Wicked, so I've also approved the Book of the Damned series.) Anything outside the approved series is with GM approval only.
Contrary to master-marshmallow, I think it's a perfectly valid approach for a GM. For WotW, I have to read 600 pages of adventure material (several times) and all of the material associated with the enclosed stat blocks. I also have to read and understand all of the abilities for all of the PCs. At some point, IMO, it's perfectly legitimate for a time-crunched gm to draw some limits. But, I also trust my players to not abuse the system, hence I'm willing to look at and approve things from outside the list of approved books.
Personally, I love the summoner, but everyone's tastes vary. You could have a ridiculously powerful eidolon (as I do in a campaign I'm playing in) but it frequently means the summoner herself is as fragile as a reed. (It's also a very complicated class, so I think it would be fair to restrict it to an experienced player. Even then, the player will make mistakes while learning about the restrictions and caveats. If you don't want to take the time to deal with that, I think it's understandable.)
As someone else said, be careful about conflating powerful with broken. Personally, I've found the official materials for pathfinder to be incredibly well balanced. I'm more inclined to exclude materials for thematic reasons or the aforementioned GM-bandwidth issue than for fear of it being overpowered.
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It really depends on your definition of broken. A Human sorcerer with 20 chr, the Fey bloodline and using their two first level feat in spell focus (enchantment) and greater spell focus (enchantment) now has a DC20 for their Sleep spell at first level. Some people would consider that broken, others would look at them and say "yeah, but it's really all they can do."
For any "broken" combination, the solution for the GM is almost always: look up how it works, and just make sure it isn't a god power in every situation, while also making sure they still get a chance to shine. Throw some mindless undead or vermin at that fey sorcerer, but don't make it more than half the encounters or the player will rightly conclude that you're intentionally blocking them from doing the only thing their character is designed for, which makes them completely useless. They'll get frustrated and either a: seek a way to just make a new character because you've decided this one isn't allowed, or b: just leave and never play another game you're GMing.
Straight out banning characters is generally worse than this--going too far with the banning because something could be overpowered idea starts to stink of the GM who says "you can't play that because it's not in this part of the world" for monks, druids, clerics of all but one or two deities, and everything but humans. Rarely do players stick around for a full campaign with those GMs.
I also agree with Ascalaphus. If you're going to ban books from use, it should only be because you don't have the time to read through them and aren't familiar with what's in it. I did have a player join in halfway through a game and make a summoner, and he seemed greatly overpowered. At some point, I asked to see his character sheet over the weekend, checked over the rules and found that he had made some understandable, honest mistakes (this was also the second PF game he had ever played) with how the rules worked that happened to be highly in favor of his character. While he was frustrated to find that he wasn't nearly as good as he thought, he accepted it and continued play with his corrected character.
I lusuallyplayers to the OGL Books for a few reasons. Mostly, I'm not familiar with the Golarion books so it would require a lot more frequent looking up and double-checking for me (which alone isn't too much of an issue), but also a lot of them are setting specific and including them all.
Of course I make exceptions. There are a few homebrew things I found online that I like and allow for my players, and now and again if a player really wants a single spell from a Golarion book, if it looks okay, I'll let him take it.
Without specific examples of the feats you're worried about, it's hard to give a specific response. But I think limiting the scope of approved books is absolutely valid. Personally, I include all of the Ultimate series, and then anything that is directly relevant to the campaign. (For example, I'm getting to run Way of the Wicked, so I've also approved the Book of the Damned series.) Anything outside the approved series is with GM approval only.
Contrary to master-marshmallow, I think it's a perfectly valid approach for a GM. For WotW, I have to read 600 pages of adventure material (several times) and all of the material associated with the enclosed stat blocks. I also have to read and understand all of the abilities for all of the PCs. At some point, IMO, it's perfectly legitimate for a time-crunched gm to draw some limits. But, I also trust my players to not abuse the system, hence I'm willing to look at and approve things from outside the list of approved books.
Personally, I love the summoner, but everyone's tastes vary. You could have a ridiculously powerful eidolon (as I do in a campaign I'm playing in) but it frequently means the summoner herself is as fragile as a reed. (It's also a very complicated class, so I think it would be fair to restrict it to an experienced player. Even then, the player will make mistakes while learning about the restrictions and caveats. If you don't want to take the time to deal with that, I think it's understandable.)
As someone else said, be careful about conflating powerful with broken. Personally, I've found the official materials for pathfinder to be incredibly well balanced. I'm more inclined to exclude materials for thematic reasons or the aforementioned GM-bandwidth issue than for fear of it being overpowered.
This why I am limiting books (initially, at least) and why I am open to allowing specific things a player may wish to include. Its not that I feel the books are bad, just that I am not familiar with everything in them.
As Truesight suggested, I am wary of Leadership. Do you think it would help if I mandated that the cohort be an adventuring-focused companion rather than a stay-at-home magic creation machine?
Adventurer cohorts are a lot more disruptive to a game than a cohort that stays at home base cranking out potions and wonderous items.
The reason is the same as why Summoners, Druids and any other "pet" class make things difficult. They aren't broken. They just make combat rounds more complicated due to extra characters on the board.
Think about it like this- an adventuring cohort is their character. An extra person that they control. A crafting cohort is your character. You determine what materials are available, and how much time could reasonably be spent crafting under the circumstances back at home base.
It's essentially a player spending a feat in order to get certain kinds of items at 1/2 cost, and have a greater chance that the magic shop will have exactly what they're looking for.
Leadership presents a situation where the player and DM can hash out some campaign-friendly options. In my case, I pitched using Leadership primarily to gain a great mount. It's good for flavor and shouldn't be over-powered. He approved it without question. If I pitched a crafting bot without quality ties to the story or my own character, I would have gotten quite the eye roll from my DM. Some players seem to expect absolute freedom within the confines as RAW. I always assume my build details are provisional until the DM signs off. To help get everything I want, I try to have strong concepts that help campaign flavor. Do you and your players have a similar dynamic? If so, there shouldn't be much to worry about.
My previous Gm forbade any and all non-core for 3.5, but used such extensively against us. Bad form. He absolutely FEARED getting upstaged and that was his BAD solution.
I agree on the Leadership feat and have no solution. I want such a feat, but do not want what exists. The 'gift' of an extra combatant can truly irritate other players, not just the GM. A Fighter with a personal healbot, buffer, etc. can dominate a group. A game I'm not in has 2 Summoners and a Druid, all with Leadership feats, and I keep hearing horror stories about how little gets done in a game.
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I'm in two minds about Leadership... there's a lot of legitimate uses for the feat, but also a lot of disruptive uses. A healbot cleric in a party that needed one seems legitimate to me. A super-scout for the party that doesn't like to split up for scouting can be good. Same for the spy that the party can send into town to gather information. Monster mounts are also a very nice use; it's a way for non-AC classes to get a mount that survives at higher levels.
However, I also GM for a large (7) party, so I'm leaning against cohorts that will take a lot of time to process during combat. So preferably no cohort spellcasters or warriors with tricky abilities.
Leadership is really the feat that requires special handling. Not because it's a "wrong" feat, but because it's got special impact on table dynamics. Done right it can do a lot of good to the game; done wrong it can be aggravating.
Starting with the CRB and APG - axing Leadership, using the FAQ'd version of Antagonize, solves most of the stupid. Especially for a group that is largely new to Pathfinder.
I suggest Carrion Crown as the appropriate Adventure Path to inaugurate the group with. ;)