| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Straw man. I never said allow all books indiscriminately. Just because I say don't do X, it doesn't mean do Y.
Banning books without reading them first is always bad. Period, end of sentence.I
Just the opposite- allowing books without having read them is bad.
Even I with quite a bit of disposable income and 1000 wpm reading speed can't possibly buy and read every single book out there.
Huh? There are dozens and dozens of books, esp if you include Guides. What’s wrong with the DM saying “I allow Core (except guns), and if you want something for another source, you have to specifically ask, otherwise no”. that effectively bans all books I haven’t read. Then if your wants something from “Munchkins of Golarion” you ask, I read, and I make a ruling.
What you seem to be saying is that all is permitted, until the DM specifically bans it. This causes a problem with builds. With my way, a Player knows that any build he has constructed that is Core will be allowed. If he wants something from another sourcebook, he just asks first. The other way is for players to do a build, then possibly have them rejected after the DM reads the source material.
Thereby 'all books outside Core are banned except on a case-by-case exception" works better.
Straw man. I never said allow all books indiscriminately. Just because I say don't do X, it doesn't mean do Y.
Banning books without reading them first is always bad. Period, end of sentence.I
Just the opposite- allowing books without having read them is bad.
Even I with quite a bit of disposable income and 1000 wpm reading speed can't possibly buy and read every single book out there.
Huh? There are dozens and dozens of books, esp if you include Guides. What’s wrong with the DM saying “I allow Core (except guns), and if you want something for another source, you have to specifically ask, otherwise no”. that effectively bans all books I haven’t read. Then if your wants something from “Munchkins of Golarion” you ask, I read, and I make a ruling.
What you seem to be saying is that all is permitted, until the DM specifically bans it. This causes a problem with builds. With my way, a Player knows that any build he has constructed that is Core will be allowed. If he wants something from another sourcebook, he just asks first. The other way is for players to do a build, then possibly have them rejected after the DM reads the source material.
Thereby 'all books outside Core are banned except on a case-by-case exception" works better.
Very few things are actually broken in this game. I'll allow pretty much anything so long as the player doesn't intend to abuse it, and I talk to my players a lot about what they want to do with their characters and how they want that character's story to impact the game.
You also must realize, over powered characters do not scare me, there is nothing I as the DM cannot kill or overpower myself.
Limiting your players options for flavor, or for balance between the players at the table to keep power level relative, I can see that being legitimate, but banning things because you don't wanna bother reading them is bad form, especially since it shows how much you trust your players to be having fun at the table.
|
I guess I should emphasize that my banning of specific books usually is about 49% anti-optimization, 51% I-don't-want-to-figure-out-how-this-fits-into-the-campaign-world sentiment on my part. I should have added that we don't play on Golarion. Our world is scratchbuilt by me and, as I said, I tend to want everything that gets used to have an 'ecology' behind it--a specific and plausible-sounding way it fits into the world.
That is why typically the only thing I've banned is the Summoner. If the APs are any indication, even Paizo has trouble fitting that beast into a campaign world.
I'm in the category of "anything I own is allowed (with exceptions banning evil things unless you've proven you're mature enough to play evil)", and I own all the hardcovers (aside from the Inner Sea World guide) as well as a lot of softcover books.
If a player wants to use anything else they just need to bring me the source and get it approved, and I approve most things. Fortunately I've never had an outright powergamer in any of my groups, so I have been safe from cheese so far.
There are some "broken" options in that they have enough ambiguity in terms of how the they are worded that they result in wide variations in terms of how they adjudicated. Simulacrum is a poster child for this type of option.
There are also options which when they engage with the basic imbalances within the system tend to act as a multiplier effect. Some of the metamagics that tend to make SoL effects more potent are a noticeable example of this.
Very few options simply irrevocably break the game and typically those are fairly easily spotted as they were much more common in 3.x and there has been some effort to avoid recurrences of them in PF. However be very leery of claims of backwards compatibility with 3.x because there can be some options unlocked that can result in extremely unbalanced characters.
Straw man. I never said allow all books indiscriminately. Just because I say don't do X, it doesn't mean do Y.
Banning books without reading them first is always bad. Period, end of sentence.I
Just the opposite- allowing books without having read them is bad.
Even I with quite a bit of disposable income and 1000 wpm reading speed can't possibly buy and read every single book out there.
Huh? There are dozens and dozens of books, esp if you include Guides. What’s wrong with the DM saying “I allow Core (except guns), and if you want something for another source, you have to specifically ask, otherwise no”. that effectively bans all books I haven’t read. Then if your wants something from “Munchkins of Golarion” you ask, I read, and I make a ruling.
What you seem to be saying is that all is permitted, until the DM specifically bans it. This causes a problem with builds. With my way, a Player knows that any build he has constructed that is Core will be allowed. If he wants something from another sourcebook, he just asks first. The other way is for players to do a build, then possibly have them rejected after the DM reads the source material.
Thereby 'all books outside Core are banned except on a case-by-case exception" works better.
You also must realize, over powered characters do not scare me, there is nothing I as the DM cannot kill or overpower myself.
Limiting your players options for flavor, or for balance between the players at the table to keep power level relative, I can see that being legitimate, but banning things because you don't wanna bother reading them is bad...
You need to READ more carefully. If a Player wants an option, all they have to do is ask, then we read and approve or deny. Nothing is banned because we don’t “wanna bother reading them”.
And we don't ban things as we can't handle them, we ban things that will cause issues at the table or that don't work thematically with our campaign. Thus, no guns.
I don't allow Nymphology or Book of Erotic Fantasy. Not because I have anything against sex or sexuality in a campaign, but because they're just bad books that contribute pretty much nothing beyond bad humor and worse art.
I generally turn my nose up at third-party stuff on principle, actually. it's just easier to keep track of the "Official" material, and at least pretend it's balanced against itself.
Within those guidelines, I let in pretty much anything... except Tome of Battle. I have a thing against letting in classes that are strictly and obviously better than their counterpart classes.
Highly Underpowered Archetype/Class? Geisha, Monk, Rogue, Ninja
You ever tried to beat a geisha bard at Diplomacy? =)
banning things because you don't wanna bother reading them is bad...
I can "read" a character class in a few seconds. Understanding the themes and ideas underpinning the class, its interaction with every other rule in every other book in the game and how best to allow the class to both shine and be challenged in games. That's a more significant undertaking.
Usually it takes a couple of campaigns for me to really master how to run a game for a particular class. By now I've got a good grasp on everything in core. If you want to play a wizard, I can work with you to really fit in into the game. On the other hand if you want to play an oracle, I'll do my best but it's not going to work as well because I can't give as much support as the GM.
That said, I haven't banned anything in my latest campaign and I'm working on wrapping my head around the alchemist since one of my players is playing one for the first time in our group. It's worth it for me, because I know it'll make my next games better and more varied since I'll have increased my knowledge.
However I would also completely understand if someone chose to run a core only game, because that's what they know. It would probably be a better game because of it. In fact one of my players just ran their first pathfinder game (their second ever game as GM) and used core only (with no casters as a house rule). It made it much easier for them and it was a really awesome game.
So I disagree. It's not bad to ban something because you have insufficient understanding and saying "don't wanna bother reading them" is I feel understating the effort involved in a GM introducing a character class to the game.
I don't allow Nymphology or Book of Erotic Fantasy. Not because I have anything against sex or sexuality in a campaign, but because they're just bad books that contribute pretty much nothing beyond bad humor and worse art.
Not to mention that, in my admittedly very limited experience, most of the players who want to run characters using those rules don't have the maturity to handle the material. Every player I've seen/heard of using those books seemed to be interested in using them to be disruptive and/or go into uncomfortable territory for everyone at the table.
As for the larger question, I allow everything by Paizo and Dreamscarred Press as a rule. If a character starts getting problematic, I'll pull the player aside and have a quick talk with them.
banning things because you don't wanna bother reading them is bad...I can "read" a character class in a few seconds. Understanding the themes and ideas underpinning the class, its interaction with every other rule in every other book in the game and how best to allow the class to both shine and be challenged in games. That's a more significant undertaking.
Usually it takes a couple of campaigns for me to really master how to run a game for a particular class. By now I've got a good grasp on everything in core. If you want to play a wizard, I can work with you to really fit in into the game. On the other hand if you want to play an oracle, I'll do my best but it's not going to work as well because I can't give as much support as the GM.
That said, I haven't banned anything in my latest campaign and I'm working on wrapping my head around the alchemist since one of my players is playing one for the first time in our group. It's worth it for me, because I know it'll make my next games better and more varied since I'll have increased my knowledge.
However I would also completely understand if someone chose to run a core only game, because that's what they know. It would probably be a better game because of it. In fact one of my players just ran their first pathfinder game (their second ever game as GM) and used core only (with no casters as a house rule). It made it much easier for them and it was a really awesome game.
So I disagree. It's not bad to ban something because you have insufficient understanding and saying "don't wanna bother reading them" is I feel understating the effort involved in a GM introducing a character class to the game.
Well, that mentality is different from "I don't wanna read it, therefore BANNED" to "I have yet to get a chance to read it, I would rather not allow it as of right now."
Of which I am guilty of the latter, however the former just reminds me of terrible DMs with uber god power complexes.
I have also played in games where the DM allowed too much and we ended up imploding that universe because the players stopped having fun, especially when there was a huge gap in player experience causing some of the more economical and enlightened minded players to completely dwarf the others at the table.
Powerful does not equal broken. The Summoner can be “broken”, esp the synthesist.
And those three classes only reach the heights of their power at higher levels, where not much game play is done. True, there are some spells which if the RAW is stretched beyond RAI are indeed “broken”.
Broken means not working as the devs envisioned. There, the Summoner qualifies, but the Wizard does not, since the Wizard works exactly as he’s supposed to.
"Functioning as intended" apparently means "making other classes obsolete" So far the closest I've got to a traditional fantasy wizard using a d20 system was the Black Company magic system.
|
I try to avoid 3rd party stuff, never know what'll interfere with the game if you let players start going that way.
Doesn't mean there isn't third party stuff I wish Paizo would develop (like Ranged Flanking.)
I was pretty anti 3rd party in my games for a pretty long time, but then I started easing up a little and discovered that there is of good stuff out there. Paizo was technically a 3rd party publisher throughout the life of 3.5 and they introduced a lot of amazing stuff at that time. If I've got to bust out the banhammmer, I try it make it more of a ban scalpel, excising only material that's going to be specifically problematic or inappropriate to the game.
Some 3rd party publishers get the same credibility as Paizo at my table (Dreamscarred, Abandoned Arts, Legendary Games) others get a lot of play time but need to be run by me before being brought into a campaign (Super Genius / Rogue Genius is a great example: while I think they've got a lot of good stuff, sometimes their material breaks expectations of the campaign world; Godlings don't fit in a setting with distant gods who don't interact directly with their worshippers, and dragonriders can mess up a wilderness exploration if the party isn't expected to have level 1 access to flight).At the end of the day, I'm all about my players having the broadest array of options and the coolest goodies to think from; they're good people and I find my game is better if I extend a little credit in the trust department. If it turns out something really is going to be an issue in the game, I'll know that and learn from it instead of letting a vague prejudice cause me to miss out on something awesome.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think there's any point in banning entire books. Just ban the text from them.
The artwork is fine though.
You ever tried to beat a geisha bard at Diplomacy? =)Highly Underpowered Archetype/Class? Geisha, Monk, Rogue, Ninja
no i haven't, but i am aware of the high price they pay for that diplomacy bonus.
i don't need to list the price they pay because i am sure everyone whose read ultimate magic knows about it
Still new to it, and while I like the mythic stuff, at the same time I can see why you might wanna hold off on it. EPIC level stuff is easy, since its already kinda built in Epic-tier, nearly 24-7.
Mythic stuff is enhanced normal play, which can lead to potential balance headaches when facing non-mythic stuff 1/3rd or 2/3rds of the time.
Not completely game wreaking, but potentially requiring a lot more work on the GM side of things.
Epic is easier....?
Wha?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm almost entirely in the "use it all" category, and I tend to just weed out specific instances of abuse. Most of my players have been playing for a long time, and like trying out new things instead of just playing the same few classes over and over again, so I try and leave it as open as my game setting allows.
I have bought every book and a good deal of 3rd party content(Frog God and Rite being my favorite).
My default position is:
1: Everything in Core, Advanced, and Equipment is good to use.
2: No one class can have more then one archtype, even if they qualify. Multi-archtypes seems silly and used only for optimization. Each class in a multi class can have an archtype.
3: Magic and Combat get a general "yes," but I want them to get my approval first--particularly with spells and feats.
4: I hate summoners and really dislike the magus. I have never said yes to a summoner. I have with the magus, and I had to mask my annoyance. It was a good back story and I wanted to support the player.
* the other main DM has basically the same rules. I am in his campaigns and he is in mine. He has let summoners in, but he talked with the player and put severe limitations on the class. He HATES 3rd party as much as I hate the summoner and never allows it, but......
5: If I am running a campaign that is primarily 3rd party, then I open up the 3rd party classes from that publisher. But those are reserved for specific campaigns.
6: Race book is off limits unless you are using it for the core races.
These rules have organically grown as we have played over the years. They are not my impositions on the group. We all get along. We all trust each other. We all have a tendency to optimize. We all have a blast.
FYI: For rolling characters I have the first column be the 20 point buy and the second column be 4d6 reroll 1s. They choose the highest. That way they can plan their character before we play, but there is still randomness if they roll good enough.
@leem: Rogue(Scout, Sniper). Thematically it makes sense.
Aaaaaactually, it's being open playtested right now.
Not when he made the statement it wasn't. The beginning of this thread is slightly older than the play test.
And really, someone declaring a book that they couldn't possibly have read as evil (or at least part of an evil trifecta) perfectly sums up the original post.
I have bought every book and a good deal of 3rd party content(Frog God and Rite being my favorite).
My default position is:
1: Everything in Core, Advanced, and Equipment is good to use.
2: No one class can have more then one archtype, even if they qualify. Multi-archtypes seems silly and used only for optimization. Each class in a multi class can have an archtype.
3: Magic and Combat get a general "yes," but I want them to get my approval first--particularly with spells and feats.
4: I hate summoners and really dislike the magus. I have never said yes to a summoner. I have with the magus, and I had to mask my annoyance. It was a good back story and I wanted to support the player.* the other main DM has basically the same rules. I am in his campaigns and he is in mine. He has let summoners in, but he talked with the player and put severe limitations on the class. He HATES 3rd party as much as I hate the summoner and never allows it, but......
5: If I am running a campaign that is primarily 3rd party, then I open up the 3rd party classes from that publisher. But those are reserved for specific campaigns.
6: Race book is off limits unless you are using it for the core races.
These rules have organically grown as we have played over the years. They are not my impositions on the group. We all get along. We all trust each other. We all have a tendency to optimize. We all have a blast.
FYI: For rolling characters I have the first column be the 20 point buy and the second column be 4d6 reroll 1s. They choose the highest. That way they can plan their character before we play, but there is still randomness if they roll good enough.
my issues with some of those
about number 1. the three most overpowered classes in the entire game, the unholy trinity, are in the core rulebook.
about number 2. banning more than one archetype per class? some archetypes are made to be used together, such as bladebound and kensai on a magus, scout and ninja on a rogue, quingong and any other Ki based archetype paired onto a monk, such as Zen Archer, Master of Many Styles, or Sensei, or something as humble as martial artist and master of many styles. a lot of Archetypes aren't more powerful than the base class, with few exceptions in the form of fixes, they are generally weaker due to being more narrowly specialized
about number 3. a lot of the feats are so lousy, i have to beef them up to par. like allowing dervish dance to work with any light or 1handed weapon with the light blades or heavy blades weapon groups and removing the off hand restriction on the same feat to allow options, or houseruling feats that affect specific weapons to apply to whole related weapon groups. i also merge light blades and heavy blades weapon groups into simply "Blades". and spears and polearms. into "polearms". spells often get tweaked as well, depending on if there is a 3.5 equivalent as precedent, or altering an aspect of the spell.
about number 4. i have allowed summoners, i just place the restriction that there eidolon has to resemble a setting appropriate creature from a setting appropriate type or subtype and choose evolutions accordingly and advise that any evolution swaps make sense for the creature and are not a free Re-Spec as WoW would put it. the magus is pretty sweet with certain builds, but i simply dislike it's focus on one specific tactic that seems inherent to the class.
about number 5, if you want to use third party, i will consider it if you buy me a copy of the 3rd party content or at least provide me a current printout, tell me what plans you have with the material involved and tell me what your characters intended purpose and role, both during, before and after the adventure is
about number 6. i allow the advanced race guide and even allow 12 point custom races with an advanced trait or few, thing is, with custom races, i need a writeup of the race with a description, list of racial traits, and have the right to tweak or veto specific combos. now, i will allow a race with a bonus to 2 physical stats and a penalty to charisma, a small race with a strength bonus and a 40 foot speed, or a medium race with enhanced reach, if legitimate reasons are given and the group doesn't mind the custom variant character. if they choose a published race, i'll request a few details on why that race, or if they use the race builder, i'll watch over them to make sure they build something that isn't super elf or mega dwarf. races tailored to certain classes or professions? sure if it's within reason. hybrids? sure.
i tend to allow the players to pitch lots of ideas, and i review each one, and yes, character sheets do get thrown in the recycle bin, but the characters that do get accepted after 3-5 drafts. tend to be quite fun, even if a little bit creepy to others sometimes.
I have a simple guideline;
Does it slow down combat? Does it slow the game itself?
If yes then it's gone.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Like I said. These are organic rules that work for our group, and we have been playing for years. I am sure every group has their own "system." I am not debating if these are superior, just stating what works for us. It is interesting to me to see how others play the game.