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After playing multiple editions of D&D and then Pathfinder for years, I have to say I am getting fed up with the 3.x series (3.0/3.5/PF). Gonna say now that I am gonna suck at breaking up points with paragraphs and will probably be all over the place. Odds are this will be a wall of text.
You could at least have the courtesy to TRY. Saying "I will make a mistake so I'm not even going to bother trying to do right" is kinda rude.
I know I will get flak for this but I hate playing optimized and uber powerful characters. Ok so, when I make character I hate looking at builds online. I say if you can't do it yourself, or maybe help from people in the room, then don't. You gotta figure out what you want to do yourself and you have to go through the mistakes sometimes to do that. Then I get the players that always look up builds online so I am expected to as well.
I signed up for an RPG, not a video game. I hate the MMO mentality in table top games where you have to have the right build or you suck. Yeah I know blasty wizards suck but I don't care. Maybe I WANT to play one or play a rogue or monk or whatever. Not interested in people saying stuff like "They are so inefficient and suck compared to other classes." I try to shut those people up immediately at the table. That's not the game I play.
I want to immerse in the world, not just play a formula. Now then, sometimes I end up making an overpowered character like my witch that was shutting down fights in one round, even against bosses. I retired the character cause not having a challenge is not fun. I find if you can just stomp your way through anything, then what's the point of even having fights in the game? They stop being a challenge and all they do is eat up game time you could be using for roleplaying. If a fight is pointless, take it out.
Other things I notice is something I initially said I don't want to hear which is class imbalance. I am one of the people that say the sorcerer is far more powerful, for players, than a wizard. Ok so a wizard can know all the spells, fine. But you have to prep each one. To get a good variety to be ready for "any situation" you maybe pick two or three spells on a level and prep each twice. Say you pop those two of a spell and the target passes the save each time. Then you get the sorcerer than can just spam his spells cause he didn't need to prep. Sure he gets less known, but you're not gonna really be using all the spells in the book as a player. I find Sorcerer is better for players and wizards are better for villains. Mainly because the players or "heroes" are always reacting. The villain gets to set things up and prepare while the players have to react. M
y biggest problem, however, is constant massive dungeon crawls where the town is just a hub to sell things and prepare for the next crawl. I am here to play D&D/Pathfinder, NOT Diablo. I make a dynamic character with odd characteristics and appearance. Game starts, get in the hole and do fights that take up entire sessions for three months, then start the next chapter. That is extremely boring.
Next problem, skills. I hate the skill system. Go in a hole, kill monsters, level up, put a point in linguistics and you learn a new language because....why? You spent a couple days or less in a cave. How are you suddenly totally fluent in reading,writing, and speaking a language from another plane spoken by creatures that have totally different structures in their vocal chords and mouths? This was seriously a conversation. "Hey guys I speak Thasalonian now." "How? When did you learn that?" "It was written on that vase and I took the language when I leveled, so now I am fluent in it." "Ok, I'm done today. I'm driving home to contemplate the BS. Anyone need a ride?" Seriously, that was one of the stupidest things I had ever seen in a roleplaying game. Spontaneous language without magic. What happened to having to actually spend time training and learning? What happened to having to actually think about puzzles and riddles instead of just rolling a dice and have the DM tell you the answer?
I have read and run pathfinder adventure paths and while the stories were nice, the rules and mechanics in them had logic that made me feel braindead. I was supposed to prompt the players when to roll perception and things like that. If the game is designed for me to hold their hand, it isn't worth it cause they are not learning independent thought. See giving hints is one thing. I HATE telling the players flat out what they need to do. Come on people, think. I have to say that if people constantly need me to tell them what to do and when, how did they get out of high school?
This one is more personal but I hate players that read all the lore of the world and have their characters know it too. If you can't separate information you gained while playing and what you gained from reading books, you're not that good at this game. I don't know but I have never had a problem separating that kind of information.
Oh I do also hate "magic shops" as they should be robbed constantly or horribly corrupt and when players just try to go shopping for anything and buy any spell without any research. What is the point of educated casters like wizards if you don't have to actually research your spells? Why should they know of every spell they are allowed to cast now if they have not spent a second of research in the adventure or shown any interest at all in education?
Was that so g+! d*%n hard?
I'll point out a couple of things but honestly my first bit of advice would be "Find a new system" if this one frustrates you so much. Even if half the things you're complaining about are adventure design (not the system) or player/GM behavior (also not the system).
But the two points of yours that really kind of bother me in relation to your point about "hand holding" are when you talk about skills, and when you talk about magic shops getting robbed.
It's like in one breath you say "Hand holding is bad!" and in the other you're like "I want the game to hold my hand and do the work for me instead of coming up with explanations that fit my specific character (reasons why your character now knows Thassilonian = Your Job) or setting (since the game is meant to be compatible with every setting)".
I mean I understand some of your gripes but the way you presented them really gets on my nerves.
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The problem is Hama if everybody you know plays Pathfinder exclusively then you are stuck.
I don't have time to start a new group and I like the people I game with we have been playing together since the 90's.
When our current GM can't make the game, I have been testing the Rolemaster beta out on our group and I have just bought SR5 so I will be running that for off games as well.
I am slowly weening my group off Pathfinder exclusiveness. There have been games that didn't gel like the WH40k RPG.... not sure why. I have the Dr Who RPG keen to try it out but half the guys I ply with aren't fans.
It's not just you. Lots of people have problems with Pathfinder. Some of us put up with those problems and play anyway, others don't and find some other game that doesn't irritate them. Whichever you choose, I hope you have fun doing so.
This is pretty much the best advice you'll get: find something or some way to have fun.
Much of the problems you seem to be having are not locked to the Pathfinder or 3.* system, but crop up in how GMs and players interact. you don't have to play dungeon crawls or use towns like a selling hub. You say you've run adventures -- I suggest talking with your players and seeing what their interests are and what they want to do and doing that.
As far as instant learning with skills and so forth, there are ways that one can replicate training time if one cares to. It is a point of some discussion here on the boards, with those who prefer not having to spend downtime to do what they believe they've already trained to do while others would like to see more effort spent learning. Again, this is something to talk about with your table and see what they want to do.
Players using OOC knowledge is troublesome but not locked to the system as well. It's pretty easy to get around as well, with something as simple as "I'm sorry, you learned that where?" or "Can I see your sheet?"
If you feel the problem is Pathfinder (and given your comments I don't think it is) then there are a multitude of gaming systems out there. Grab one, learn it, and introduce it to your friends/players. You may have to be the prime GM for a while until everyone is on board, but you may be able to find something more to your liking.
Best wishes.
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To be honest, I get tired of Pathfinder as well. My group handles boredom by getting creative.
And, well, let's face it... the APs are boring. They're Diablo-style dungeon crawls, pretty much; and PFS is basically trying to replicate an MMO. The result? I find both to be exactly what I don't want.
But, maybe that's me.
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Can someone TL;DR that?
Scroll down 2 posts and read Rynjin's.
At any rate, sounds mostly like the OP is having issues with the GM and other players not having similarly calibrated expectations. Given a few of the examples, it sounds like the OP wants more immersive RP while the others may prefer a more videogame-like experience.
As for optimization, that's going to happen no matter what the system, although the extent of power differential between un/optimized PCs is dependent upon the system itself.
Was I the only person that ran around and talked to the folks in town, repeated in Diablo (I & II, haven't played III yet)? I mean you got Sean Connery as your trusted advisor, who doesn't love that.
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Can someone TL;DR that?
Basically, the OP is complaining that his game is too similar to a video game in that people over-maximize their characters. He doesn't like the way that towns feel more like a shopping mall than an actual setting, and that the only time players interact with townsfolk is when they're buying items.
He then goes on to critique some of the suspension-of-disbelief aspects of the game. Skills upon level up can be odd; if you kill enough things, you get better at picking locks! Magic shops would likely be robbed. That sort of thing.
The first part sounds more like a group problem, honestly. The players are what determine maximization and the like, not the game system. The second part is valid to some degree, but I think it's one of those things that's easiest to address as a part of the system, and either devise your own way to deal with skills as a group, or to simply ignore it.
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Tired of D&D clones though TriOmegaZero.
Fair enough. You might look at Minimus.
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5e is out and free. It's supposed to take D&D back to 1st/2nd edition play style without any of the possibilities to min/max or power game like you can 3e and Pathfinder.
How can you feed the beast if you do that?
So where is the free PDF?
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It's not just you. Lots of people have problems with Pathfinder. Some of us put up with those problems and play anyway, others don't and find some other game that doesn't irritate them. Whichever you choose, I hope you have fun doing so.
This. Exactly this.
I have not but my friends only want pathfinder. They don't like change and are afraid of offending the GM. Tired of D&D clones though TriOmegaZero.
Believe me, I appreciate your conundrum. Thankfully, many of my friends are pretty open minded, but a few have very little interest in anything not Pathfinder. I used to have the same problem with D&D.
If you do manage to convince your friends to try something new, you might try Savage Worlds, Fate, BareBones Fantasy, or Dungeon World.
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Ok so for a good chuck of the adventure, I partially enjoyed it. It began dragging and tonight was the last straw. It took us about three hours to walk through two rooms in a building because they had a couple monsters in them. I had plans for things I was going to do today to get things interesting, but we got railroaded into a quest. We teleport into a room to try to get the jump on someone. This was around 9PM real time. The room had two enemies and a summon. That fight took over an hour at least for some reason. We take a couple steps out of the room to the one across the hall. Three monsters were in there that we had to fight and before I knew it the time was 11:08 PM and I am nodding off due to being bored. I stood up, declared I was too bored to continue and went home.
Back when I played AD&D 2nd, we never had a fight take more than around ten minutes. They were challenging but not just busywork so we would gain experience and gold. Even boss fights took maybe half an hour at the most. Now, they take the majority of the session and we play from about 7PM to Midnight on Saturdays.
You're comparing 2 systems that are vastly different. 2nd Edition didn't have the combat mechanics that PF does. It was a lot more hand waving and DM says than actual rules. Any time you add rules and mechanics, things are going to take a little longer. However, I've had plenty of fights in 2E take longer than 10 minutes, or a half hour. Many of them weren't challenging so much as being bogged down.
Your problem honestly sounds more like a group/DM issue. If your combats are taking that long, it sounds like people are taking too long to have their turn in combat. If everyone knows what their character can do, what their spells can do, what actions they plan on taking in combat. If you want to get through it quickly, people need to pay attention and act quickly. Dither, and it goes slow. At my table, I use 30 second sand timers for each player. That's how long they have for their turn. Sand timer runs out without you doing anything? You just lost your turn.
Also, you talk of rail roading in an Adventure Path. This confuses me. You're playing an Adventure PATH. The whole point of an AP is to travel along the PATH of the adventure, and complete it. And sometimes along that path, you're going to have multiple combats in a row. It happens. From the APs I've read through, there's also ample time for roleplay and other things. All of this is trumped by the fact that, as people sitting around a table, you ultimately decide what you want to do. If your group wants more RP time then let your DM know that.
Pathfinder is what you make of it. Yes, there's lots of mechanics involved in the game. But rule 0 trumps all. The DM can use or ignore as much as he chooses to run a game. Have a talk with your DM, air your grievances, maybe even swap out DMs for a while. But storming out of a game in a huff isn't any decent sort of solution. Maybe you should give running a game a shot? If you want a game run your way, the best thing you can do is run it and show everyone else how its done.
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Jaçinto you mention that the players don't want to upset the GM. Why not offer to GM yourself? Invite the current group, GM included, to a different time/day game you are running. Demonstrate how you think the gaming should go.
The free D&D 5e rules might just be the thing to get people to try something new, despite their current preference for PF. Alternatively, just stick with PF and institute some house-rules needed to meet your expectations. One thing I did was give xp whether there was combat or not, so players didn't have to feel they have to go kill something to level up.
One thing I would caution you is to make sure that things you find enjoyable are also enjoyable to your players. Just because it makes sense to you to roleplay out a character learning a new language, it won't be for some players, it is just a needless hoop they feel they have to jump through. Get everyone on board and realize that just like exciting combat encounters should be kept to a minimum to stay interesting, so should doing things like making players roleplay out purchasing a new magic weapon. Some is better than none, but less is better than more.
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Because PF is a marked improvement over 3E and so much better.lol
He said 3e not 3.5. I mean let's not be ridiculous.
I don't dislike 5e. I'm just not waving my hat in the air like I just won the lottery. It has a lot of cool things and I'm going to playtest it soon.
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Hey Jacinto, there's quite a lot of stuff to take in with your rant, and you have some legitimate beef. I'd like to address a few of your issues if you don't mind, but TriOmegaZero basically hit the nail on the head with that first response.
First: The metagame. Sorcerers vs Wizards, Rogues SUCK, Monks are Useless, Casters are better than martials etc. Those are some commonly referenced ideas, but honestly the problems aren't as bad as the internet makes it out to be. I have in my group nigh unstoppable rogues, a sorcerer and wizard in the same party who shine at doing different things, martial characters who enjoy playing their weapon-swingers. A good GM accounts for the strengths and weaknesses of a party, and a good group of players let their team-mates shine.
Second: Round-Length. This is probably my biggest beef with Pathfinder, that turns just take longer the higher level you go. There's very good reasons why Level 6-10 is called "the sweet spot" of the game. It's that wonderful time where complexity and challenge are at their best. Where combats tend to be between 10 minutes to 1/2 hour (depending on the challenge). I recommend running or playing in low-level games or using e6.
Third: Roleplaying (or lack thereof), this to me sounds more like a group issue. I've had incredible RP heavy sessions of Pathfinder, and still do regularly. Where nary a combat die is rolled, and skill checks rule the day. I also utilize puzzles and mysteries regularly. This isn't a system issue, it's a play style issue. You won't find a solution by running FATE, or Star Wars: Edge of the Empire if your group has a heavy combat mentality. My recommendation here is to talk to your roleplaying group and ask if the ratio of RP to combat gets changed or find a new group and create a group dynamic that fosters Roleplay.
Pathfinder is not a perfect system. It has flaws and wrinkles, handles some aspects of the game better than others. If you're feeling burned out try something new and different. These are games after all, and if you're not having fun then find something else to play.
Kind regards,
DM_aka_Dudemeister.
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I MAKE RPG systems. Then have my players test them for me, between PF campaigns. They are a group of open minded maniacs pretty much up for anything. I think this is because I am a very generous GM who works with them to tune characters just how they want them, even if they are a bit odd. Hard to dislike somebody who puts tons of effort into your enjoyment.
Happy players = players up for just about anything.
So what have we learned here?
1. Make up a system. Just for the kicks.
2. Be nice to your players and they probably will entertain you when you ask them to play something else.
Back when I played AD&D 2nd, we never had a fight take more than around ten minutes. They were challenging but not just busywork so we would gain experience and gold. Even boss fights took maybe half an hour at the most. Now, they take the majority of the session and we play from about 7PM to Midnight on Saturdays. I don't want an easy fight, but I don't one that just takes all day either.
See, there is a rule I tend to apply to action movies and would say it works with action focused APs and even some video games. Space out your fights and make them relatively short. Excitement doesn't last that long before the mind gets used to the situation and gets bored. Stacking long fight on top of long fight just makes the non-combat scenes what we look forward to as now you have made the dialog the interesting "rare" bit. Take a page from Die Hard 1. Space out the action and keep it short, and let there be character driven story to guide you from scene to scene. Just having an action scene link to another feels repetitive and lazy. If your brain goes on autopilot during a session, there is something wrong.
I am aware people say to find a new system. Problem is that this is a small town and we are the only group of adults that play anything. Quitting, like I did tonight, means I gave up all face to face role playing in this town.
Hope my paragraph spacing is better this time but I was probably still all over the place.
Pathfinder is definately a combat heavy game. But again what you are talking about is more encounter design then it is game system. And actually my guess is that this is more about your gm then the game or the adventure.
I am not familiar with the specific adventure, but generally paizo aps give GMs information and setup and its their job to fill in the blanks. They dont hand you boxed text or preset conversations. So if the gm doesnt emphasize roleplaying opportunities (which are almost always there except in very race circumstances) they get glossed over because the players dont realize or ignore the fact that there was an opporunity to roleplay.
In one pathfinder game I play in, there have been some action heavy sequences ( a kobold invasion of our city for instance, or a session that was mostly taken up by a protracted battle with a long set up dragon) but MOST sessions are far more roleplay then they are combat. That is something the GM has to do. He has to make npcs interesting, and the players then have to buy in and engage them. Paizo AP's have the foundation for that, but if the gm isnt working on it, it wont happen.
So while Pathfinder isnt great for the kind of narrative roleplaying you want, it can be done.
One of the way's i've encouraged it in the past is via adopting pieces of other game systems into the one we are playing. I did this with star wars saga edition, but you can do it with pathfinder using their hero points system. I included the fate concept of aspects. Each character had 2 or more 'aspects' that were double sided (both positive and negative). If the players used the aspects at appropriate times to 'complicate' their lives (read: Roleplay out an interesting situation) they could gain a fate point. They could then use those fate points (hero points in pathfinder) to do cool stuff.
I generally find in game rewards encouraging the kind of game I want works wonders in most groups.
If I were you I would run a more narative pathfinder game, using similar transplant ideas. I would be caution on changing existing rules. Like I know you dont like that you can level up and gain things you werent working on, but I would leave existing things alone (if you have a group that doesnt like change) and instead add things in ecouraging the kind of game you want.
I've played in pathfinder games that were almost all political intrigue and roleplay, the players just need to know ahead of time and create characters that conceptually and mechanically fit well in that system.
I hated 2E.
I loved 1e
I loved 2e corebook only with the grandfather 1e clause (basically the clause stated from TSR allowed any 1e stuf to be grandfathered into 2e).
:)
That said....
ON the original post
It sounds a LOT like it's the style of play that you are dealing with that you hate. There do seem to be a LOT of people on these boards (I very rarely meet them in real life, maybe those types and the types I play with don't even mingle in the same stores, areas, or places...as it's VERY rare for me to meet much less play with the particular type I am describing) that enjoy the style of game you describe.
They enjoy the entire powergame character that min/max's and miraculously has a DM that never challenges them and never tosses something outside of their very narrow focus. It's a style of gaming that you see tossed around here, and I suppose there must be people out there that play that way and enjoy it, and have others that cater to those types of interests.
IT sounds like that's the type of game you are in...though luckily I really don't encounter those players.
In that light, it isn't really PF's fault, it's more that it's the group you are playing with and their playstyle.
Perhaps if you looked to find another group with a playstyle more to your liking?
I know on the internet it seems that the min/max powergame optimizer builds player dominates the scene, but at least in the locations I've been in (thus far in 48 of 50 states, and around 8 nations in Europe) a majority of those I've been around do NOT play in that style. I imagine that in most places, it should not be hard to find players that play with an older style of gaming that tends more towards the original 3e (before the abuse years), 2e, or 1e game styles, or other gaming styles that are similar.
There are some things you mention which are more PF specific and would be more of a system difficulty. Dungeon crawling has been around since the original D&D. 2e seemed to focus more on the travel and journeying rather then dungeoncrawling, which maybe what your group focused on when you played 2e. I imagine there are PF groups that also concentrate on that type of gaming (though I could swear WotR AP also was more of a journey type AP, with a moderate amount of Dungeon crawling) rather than the dungeon crawl, but the dungeon crawl is something I think you may find inherent with most groups that play a D&D or PF type of game.
With round length, at higher levels that definitely can take a while, especially with some fights. That is something I don't think you can solve really quickly by changing to a group with a different style.
With that in mind, if you don't have to stick with PF, others have suggested some other systems for you to try. Perhaps you could stick to games which only have levels lower than 10 in PF, or perhaps you could try one of those other systems (I hear savage worlds...I think that's what it is called, is good, as well as FATE).
Good luck, and sorry to hear of your difficulties with the group. It sounds like it's more the playstyle than the Pathfinder with a majority of your complaints, though a few also deal directly with the PF system itself. Hopefully you can find a solution.
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To OP:
Almost all your complaints are group related not game system related. I have seen groups with all the stuff you seem to want and without the stuff you seem to not like (although you do sound a bit scattered in your ranting). All of those groups played using PF or 3.x system. Sometimes with significant house rules sometimes without.
You can have short combats, training, immersive role play, puzzles, heavy environment NPC's, etc... Many groups do.
I don't think your issue is actually with PF. The issue is you, the other players, and/or the GM want to play a different style of role playing experience.
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I kind of agree with MagusJanus. The APS feel very linear imo. The npcs need to be reworked as even a minimally optimized party will defeat them easily. A good example is rise of the runelords. Where your fighting Ogres in a fort made for humans without any changes to the fort. Another npc in the same ap who had no crowd control spells yet the pcs were supposed to fight her in a closed area. So no it's not only the players and DMs fault. Two aps I have run and two I played in and both feel just too similar. The latest the last I run. I spent more time reworking and rewriting the npcs and aome of the modules. Which kind of defeats the purpose of the aps in the first place.
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I kind of agree with MagusJanus. The APS feel very linear imo. The npcs need to be reworked as even a minimally optimized party will defeat them easily. ...
This is 2 totally separate issues.
1) Most of the AP's seem fairly linear. Some could use a bit more linearity since some groups can't seem to figure out what the should be doing or what is going on at all. Depends upon what your group likes.
2) Yes, the encounters are too easy for an optimized group. My understanding is they are designed for a 4 PC group, using 15 point buy, with no more optimization or system mastery than shown by the iconics. In other words, beginners.
Most groups seem to use 20 or 25 point buy, allow 3rd party stuff, weird races from the ARG, have more than 4 players, even greater than standard item availability, greater than WBL chart treasure, and/or are clearly not beginners.
So yes. The encounters need scaled up if you want a serious challenge.
To be honest, I get tired of Pathfinder as well. My group handles boredom by getting creative.
And, well, let's face it... the APs are boring. They're Diablo-style dungeon crawls, pretty much; and PFS is basically trying to replicate an MMO. The result? I find both to be exactly what I don't want.
But, maybe that's me.
Boring to you maybe. Right now my spouse 5-Star V Michael Lazar, is running Dragon's Demand, Reign of Winter (Otherwise known as "It's Amazing We're Still Alive" group), and Wrath of the Righteous via Google Hangout. All three groups are pumped up every time they go. He also did a table of the sanctioned part of "Rasputin Must Die" at Origins, Burnt Offerings at Dexcon, and they were also quite pumped.
If the AP's you play are "flat and boring", then it's mostly on your GM, and probably at least partly on your group.
Pretty much this. My group repeatedly tells me how much they love our Kingmaker game and how it's a highlight of their weeks, and how much they're looking forward to when I run Savage Tide again once Kingmaker's over.
And I end up just as eagerly looking forward to one of my players' Age of Worms game where I'm a player. In last night's session, we got one combat in, which ended in chasing the enemy off rather than actually killing it, and then spent the rest of the session arguing and debating and roleplaying about how to progress with the clues we'd acquired.
2) Yes, the encounters are too easy for an optimized group. My understanding is they are designed for a 4 PC group, using 15 point buy, with no more optimization or system mastery than shown by the iconics. In other words, beginners.
Most groups seem to use 20 or 25 point buy, allow 3rd party stuff, weird races from the ARG, have more than 4 players, even greater than standard item availability, greater than WBL chart treasure, and/or are clearly not beginners.
So yes. The encounters need scaled up if you want a serious challenge.
This so much. The Paizo team has time and time and time again stated that this is how they write the APs intentionally. And they expect that GMs with more capable, experienced, or larger groups will be willing and able to scale things up as needed to suit their party.
... The biggest one is that this principle leads to the idea that anything published by Paizo abides by this rule; that is, that Paizo has made sure to rigorously playtest and "balance" everything they release. This leads to "primacy of RAW"-thinking that suggests that because you can create some outrageous combination using the existing rules, that must be okay. How could it not be, after all? Paizo published it, so it must be balanced. ...
I don't think I've ever met anyone with any experience that thought "Paizo published it, so it must be balanced" was true. Not saying there couldn't be a few people like that out there, but I've never met them.
However, I will say that it is almost always closer to that ideal than what players typically make.
Before the ARG came out, I had seen several people try to make the PF equivalent of war forged. Nearly everyone of them is horrifically more powerful than any other player race. Just for grins I plugged their creations into as close as I could come with the ARG race creation guidelines. The cheapest was (best I could figure) about a 28 race points.
Now I don't think many of us would say the ARG race creator is guaranteed to produce balanced classes. It clearly is not. Having said that, I think anything with 28 race points is pretty clearly likely to be quite a bit more powerful than anything with about 10-15 race points.
I've watched several players try to sell me on their remake of the Artificer class. If any of those had ever been allowed in a game, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have had anything except artificers (and maybe one melee paladin or barbarian) in the group.
I usually only allow Paizo published material when I am GM.* I know it isn't balanced. But it usually isn't too far off and it is a known 'thing' that I can usually handle. If I can't handle it, I can come on these forums to get some advice on how to handle it. If it is still a problem, I will talk with the player about altering things (I've only had to do this once).
With 3rd party stuff or even worse, with player created stuff, this isn't the case. It is usually badly worded so I can't tell what it means or how it interacts with existing rule mechanics. It is usually significantly more powerful. It is harder to get assistance with handling it. Players are even more likely to get angry that you don't like their creation and want to nerf it.
*If someone wants something, they can ask. About 2/3 of the time I allow it as is or with minor modifications.
I have 1 player who often wants something weird from 3rd party stuff just for the heck of it. I almost always allow his requests because they are usually significantly less powerful than the standard build stuff.