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I was one of those annoying kids, so to speak, and have played through every one since Red/Blue/Green.
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Get off my lawn!
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Over at WOTC's "What is a Player to Do?" forum, it is not uncommon advice to disrupt a game when the DM has banned a concept/race/class that the player is intent on playing.Anyone who suggests this as a tactic desperately needed to be spanked more by their parents.
I have a friend like that. He now asks women to kick him in the groin.
it's not that i ban stuff. i even allow stuff most DMs normally wouldn't, such as homebrew races, third party content, 3.5 material, custom items, magic item reslottings, waiving of such things as race, weapon, or class restriction on a feat, trait, archetype, spell and the like or a class armor restriction as well. the thing is, for what i do allow, i have the guideline that i ban characters that meet the following criteria. however, exceptions are made if the concept makes sense
1. the character is too hyperspecialized in one specific trick, weapon, or tactic. for example, the fighter who overinvests in one weapon, buys only a single powerful copy of that weapon and neglects to understand the need for alternative weapons. if the fighter carried the golf bag, i would be fine
2. the character is pieced together from too many elements that are either too confusing or create too much synergy. whether or not those elements are from the same book, while i will waive alignment restrictions to allow a barbarian/monk or paladin/assassin or allow a rogue/ninja. you better provide a complete copy of the relevant reference material, and i have the right to request replacements of such things as PDF printouts or word documents detailing the homebrewed material
3. the character requires excessive tweaking or reskinning to pull off. a little bit of reskinning or tweaking to pull it off is fine.
4. the character is an obvious pop culture reference or is so generic they don't add much to the campaign, some references are fine in small volumes. just keep the drizz't clones and axebeards to a minimum
5. i allow recycling of names for characters as long as the character doesn't have the same combination of first name, middle name, last name, nickname and titles. now, if the character has a reason for bearing the same names, it better make sense, such as being the child or parent of the character, or being a hardcore fan of the character. the fan angle requires the character to have a reputation and is allowable proportionate to the reputation. respellings and google translate are not means to get around recycling unless the character comes from a compatible culture
6. the character must have a name fitting for their culture, a related culture, an allied culture, or a culture in the same vicinity. if you want to write a Japanese name on your sheet in Romaji for a Korean character, it's fine, but expect that Italian Noblewoman with the Japanese Surname to be required to have a good reason. being married after a diplomatic appointment is fine. ethnic confusion is also valid as are Aliases
7. the character involves obscure rules and loopholes built around synergizing a particular trick into an i win button.
Over at WOTC's "What is a Player to Do?" forum, it is not uncommon advice to disrupt a game when the DM has banned a concept/race/class that the player is intent on playing.Anyone who suggests this as a tactic desperately needed to be spanked more by their parents.
Yeah. Either discuss it like adults or walk.
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I've pretty much banned summoners as the one player in my group who wants to play one doesn't know when to reel it in. Also the magus, I just don't like the class. It seems a little too crammed full of abilities and too clunky. As gm I can't be sure when my players are trying to pull a fast one on me. I know how it works, I know how well it can work, I like the theme, I just don't like how it fits with party dynamics.
Yeah, there always seems to be that one player in EVERY group (including one of my own I ran). The Summoner is like a dick magnet, besides all the weird wording problem and etc. with it.
It makes me feel bad because as a result it's been banned in just about every game I've joined, and I think the class is really damn cool.
i allow summoners with the following tweaks
Synthesists are limited to bipedal forms, and when being healed, may choose to apply the healing to their suit or to their self. in exchange, to qualify for a given feat, they must personally have the prerequisite attribute rather than using their eidolon to cheat requirements. Eidolons are not transperent, they are literally visible and because they are visible, can draw attention. effectively, synthesist suits benefit from more variety of healing effects
Eidolons are limited to being forced to be modeled after a fantasy creature from either Pathfinder, 3.5, or another Verse as long as the creature isn't too ridiculous, evolution choices are restricted to those of the base creature and of similar creatures
Broodmaster, instead of Divvying up their Eidolon stuff, gets a number of Eidolons Equal to half their level (minimum 1) plus their charisma bonus. each eidolon's effective summoner level is equal to half the summoner's level (as per master summoner). a Broodmaster may call all their eidolons at once in the same minute
Examples of Good Allowable Eidolons
Nymph
Angel
Genie
Jaguar
Doll
Demon
Wolf
Bird
Dragon
Pokemon
Cyclops
I banned pathfinder.
Two of my players were over it, as was I. We play a much cleaner, smoother fantasy system now, and give other things a go. Great times!
I've pretty much banned summoners as the one player in my group who wants to play one doesn't know when to reel it in. Also the magus, I just don't like the class. It seems a little too crammed full of abilities and too clunky. As gm I can't be sure when my players are trying to pull a fast one on me. I know how it works, I know how well it can work, I like the theme, I just don't like how it fits with party dynamics.
*Thumbs up*
I am the only person in our circle of friends (of which many are part time DMs) who does allow summoners. They require oversight from the game master. I like the dick magnet comment, they do seem to attract a certain group of players.
So far I have had only a few players try the summoner, and the results were mixed. On player who is a bit notorious as an optimizer played one, and I enjoyed his character, but the eidolon ended up being the primary combatant for the party for a long while. He overshadowed both the monk and the fighter in the party in a big way, and it eventually lead to a situation where the summoner or eidolon was singled out by the bad guys in most fights. He was eventually targeted by an NPC wizard and focused down because the eidolon was cutting a swath through his henchmen, which lead to his death, and the player elected to roll up another character (turns out he felt bad for "showing up" the fighter, but couldn't force himself to pull his punches).
My group has a pretty good range of power gamers and method actors. My takeaway from the experience is that summoners are probably excellent in the hands of a method actor, but in the hands of a dedicated optimizer they just can't help but be tweaked into something innately overbalanced. That just seems to be what happens when you give someone a pool of points and let them pick put their mechanics.
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I don't like banning anything: You need to trust that your players want to play the game and not disrupt it. If you don't have that trust, you'll have far, *far* worse problems than you'll ever get from an obscure PrC or feat combo.
My first response when I'm not sure about something is to allow it and see what happens: First party, second party, third party, 3.5 (incl. Dragon Magazine), homebrew, it's encouraged. (Though in the case of third party and homebrew, I do require to have a copy of the material for myself, which in most cases the player can easily provide since we do everything digitally.) Having an interesting and exciting experience is far more important than having perfect balance. If accidental disruption does happen, though, I do one of two things.
First, give the weaker characters in the party a boost. Let them have a few free bonus feats, or apply a free template to themselves. Let them rebuild their characters a bit and help them optimize better.
Second, if I can't boost the other characters to the level of the problem character without causing total narrative breakdown (like in the case of infinite action loops and such), I try to work out a houserule fix, making sure to work with the player so something crucial to their character concept doesn't accidentally get hit in the crossfire. (Unless their character concept is "I want to utterly decimate anything I want instantaneously and with no risk because I'm just that awesome" in which case I shouldn't be trusting them to play in my games anyway.)
That said, there are a few things I will just flat-out veto.
- Leadership/Thrallherd. If you want a cohort/faithful minions, talk to me and I'll see if I can work it into the story. Making this sort of thing available through feats and class features causes all sorts of mechanical and pacing problems, mostly because doing these things this way makes too many expectations of entitlements to what the feat/class feature provides. If a player takes leadership at 7th level, then they generally expect to get their cohort exactly as they want it in exactly the circumstances they want, as soon as they hit 7th level and take the feat. I don't really blame the players for this because such expectations are healthy and conductive with other abilities you gain through character advancement: You'd be rightfully upset if I told you that you couldn't take advantage of your +1 to BAB until you left the dungeon and trained in town for a few weeks.
- 3.5 content that has been subsumed or updated by PF. No getting 3.5 versions of monsters (e.g. Nightmares) through Planar Ally/Planar Binding. No using 3.5 versions of spells, classes, or powers that have been updated (e.g. Polymorph, Divine Power, Wish). Supplemental material that wasn't updated is fair game. (For now, mixing of Path of War and Tome of Battle material is allowed. I'm still figuring out how to blend them together best, since it's only spiritually an update. I'll probably end up dumping the ToB classes and adding some methods for PoW classes to get ToB maneuvers.)
- Spell to Power. If you want to play a spell point-based caster, ask to play that. If you want to play a character who can use spells and powers, play a Cerebremancer. This variant is problematic because it allows you to use all the various psionic toys with spells they were never, ever intended to be used with. It causes nothing but problems and opens no possibilities that aren't already available through other avenues.
- Archivist is *not* banned, but you're limited to the Cleric, Druid, Bard, Paladin, Ranger, Healer, Shugenja, and Adept lists, as well as all domain spells. Homebrew or third party divine spellcaster lists may also be used with permission. More accurately, all the various methods of converting any arcane spell you wan into a divine spell so you can scribe it in your prayerbook are banned. Otherwise, I think it's a fine class.
- Artificer is banned for now, at least until I figure out how to make it function appropriately with the new PF crafting and magic item rules.
- Spelldancing and Metaphysical Spellshaper. Effectively unlimited metamagic reduction is too tempting to abuse when making yourself immune to the downsides (fatigue and ability damage) is so trivial to accomplish. Incantatrix is allowed so long as you don't break its uses/day limit.
- Illithid Savant, Beholder Mage, Hathran, and any class that uses the Taint mechanics. Just no. If you've got your heart set on something similar to these, ask me to homebrew something myself and I'll see what I can do. (An Arcane counterpart to the Ur-Priest could be interesting, but 10 free action spells per round and spontaneous casting of every spell ever are just eww.)
- Polymorph Any Object. Somehow survived the change to PF unscathed. Open to all the madness you could pull off with the 3.5 polymorph line. There's no use of this spell that isn't covered in a much saner way by other spells, or isn't horrible, horrible nonsense.
- Embrace/Shun the Dark Chaos. If you want to retrain, ask and I'll say yes. This method opens up far too many avenues for abuse, like shuffling out elven racial proficiency feats, or abuse with Vow of Poverty. I used to ban Psychic Reformation too, but I think DSP's rewrite makes the power acceptable.
- Body Outside Body. It really should have been designed with a whitelist of what the clones *can* do, rather than a blacklist of what they *can't*. Like PaO, it's hard to imagine a non-disruptive, legitimate use for this spell that isn't covered much more sanely by something else.
- Ice Assassin. As many free, superpowered minions as you want! Simulacrum does basically the same thing with more restrictions and is thus allowed, but don't be a jerk with it.
- You cannot gain Epic Spells by any means. Only epic feats listed as fighter bonus feats are permitted.
...and I'm assuming you'd also ban Epic Leadership and Legendary Commander, despite being fighter feats, if someone could figure out some RAW way to use them without normal Leadership.<stuff>
- You cannot gain Epic Spells by any means. Only epic feats listed as fighter bonus feats are permitted.
Of course: I meant to say that Leadership and all similar effects are banned, like Thrallherd. This includes things like Dragon Cohort too, and I think there's one feat somewhere that lets you get intelligent undead minions.
Sounds like you have a great set of 'ban' policies overall. I agree that it really is a question of trust. The players and GM have a responsibility to help make the game more fun for everyone, and part of that is using powers and abilities (both of PCs and GM powers) in ways that help the game. GMs ban stuff when they can't trust the players to use it responsibly.
Thanks! When evaluating if I should ban something from my games, I ask two questions.
Can this thing be used in a non-disruptive way?
If yes, how easily can these uses be emulated by other abilities?
If the answers are "Yes and not very easily" then I'm willing to allow it (with the player promise that it won't be abused) no matter how poorly designed it is. If the answer is "No" or "Yes, but very easily (perhaps more easily than using the questionable ability)" then I'm willing to kiss it goodbye, but a surprisingly few number of abilities qualify for this.
Advanced Class Guide. Featured/Other Races. The vast majority of the population is Core Races. As for ACG, it's imbalanced as it currently stands (as I write this, it isn't yet released).
Are you saying that you are prematurely banning the book, or that as it stands you would rather not use material that is not yet finished and released because you would have to deal with ramifications of changing things up later?
The former sounds terribly petty, the latter makes sense to me.
Myself, I also do not like to include any races beyond those designed to be playable. I don't allow for wyvarans, that weird four armed thing, or any of the other monstrous races that have super high RPs.
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I don't ban anything at the moment, but certain options are only allowed to mature players.
Are you saying that you are prematurely banning the book, or that as it stands you would rather not use material that is not yet finished and released because you would have to deal with ramifications of changing things up later?
The whole point of the ACG is that it introduces nothing new but rather expands on hybridizing the old so players have more options of mixing together two classes that they like.
They aren't introducing a new magic system, just different ways to do the same things that you already could.
Also dipping after this post because in pretty much all cases I defer to the wisdom of TOZ.
I guess I do disallow books that I haven't had a chance to read through. If something is in really high demand of my players I will at least give it a chance to read through, otherwise you basically become North Korea.
I ban all players.How do you feel about dice
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I ban all dice with more than 1 side.
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I don't really ban anything. I tend to trust my players and when they create something that’s really powerful I take it as a personal challenge to create an adventure that challenges them. If I am running an AP or module I tend to just max hit points and bump AC by 3,4, or 5....and then I use tactics that are challenging instead of any recommended tactics.
Of course when I run a PFS scenario I run as written and just let the characters steam roll things when they need to.
I don't ban anything, because I can trust my players to:
1. Not ruin the game for everyone else by making a horribly bad or good character
2. Agree to give up something they have chosen if it breaks the game
I understand that this wouldn't apply for most groups.