I ban Gunslingers, and have so far banned Ninjas and Samurai, simply because there's so far been no setting in my homebrew for them to hail from. I'm toying with an idea of letting them be made available, though, as the players in my game are finally exploring beyond their comfort zone and I may let them come from a Hobgoblin culture. (I run a houseruled version of Hobgoblins that differs a bit from the PF version).You could just call them something else instead of Ninja or Samurai?
Blackclad Assassin and Honorbound Blade... then people don't have the mental restrictions on them perhaps?
Not a bad idea, really. I might try to run it by my guys, though two of them have said they really don't have any interest in Eastern styled games or classes in the past. Thanks for the input!
I tend to ban Gunslingers, not because of perceived OP-ness but because the gun rules are a headache. The Bolt Ace is entirely fine to me.
Monks: I didn't like them when they first stained the game and only see them as viable in a Far East game. Unfortunately, some modified archetypes are valid in the world. Dang it.
Gunslingers: I could see them working with hand crossbows, but the very notion of guns requires such a rework of the rules that I would waste too much of my limited free time. Want to shoot guns? Play Boot Hill.
Summoner; Master and Synthesist: Too many negative opinions and posts.
Any Class or archetype that allows a players to have more than a single 'extra' character. Every time I have seen this happen, the player winds up crippling the flow of the game. A recent game of friends (3.0) was choked by a character (player) with a pack of attack dogs. As I heard it, the first fight took some 2 1/2 hours! Working 50+ hours a week eats too much of my time to waste on someone hogging the limelight, whether they mean to or not.
I guess this last would apply to any Class that serves to cripple a game, with all but the first having been suggested or insisted upon by players and/or GMs I trust the judgement of.
To Aralicia: Love your layout!
Yet again ... You can play a bard one through twenty without playing or singing a single note of music ...Gunslinger is only "banned" because none of my campaigns have guns. We have run a Gunslinger character, however, who used a hand-crossbow in place of a gun, and it worked fine.
The only other class we don't use is Bard. Neither myself nor most of my players have ever been able to suspend our disbelief to envisage Sir Robin's Minstrels hopping along and playing during the middle of a fight - it just seems...off.
How? I'm not being asinine, here: I have virtually zero experience with bards, and I am seriously interested in knowing how to have a character like that (unless you mean a storyteller-type or somesuch?).
I don't *hate* the bard, it's just that they never seem to fit in any of my campaigns...and like I said, I can't get Sir Robin's Minstrels out of my head! :)
For one, Perform: oratory and Perform: Comedy are options.
For two, only two Bardic Performances even rely on the Perform skill: Countersong and Distraction. And both of those are of dubious value at best, especially Distraction (Countersong is of some value against Harpies and similar ilk).
You need precisely ZERO ranks in any Perform skill to use the Bard effectively, though the ranks themselves help because of Versatile Performance...but you still don't need to sing or dance to activate any ability that matters.
None of the ones used in combat (primarily Inspire Courage) require an actual performance of any kind.
How? I'm not being asinine, here: I have virtually zero experience with bards, and I am seriously interested in knowing how to have a character like that (unless you mean a storyteller-type or somesuch?).
I don't *hate* the bard, it's just that they never seem to fit in any of my campaigns...and like I said, I can't get Sir Robin's Minstrels out of my head! :)
Look at the available bard archetypes. I've run an archaeologist played as kind of an Indiana Jones, and as GM used a detective and a street performer as major NPCs in an urban campaign - all are bard archetypes yet none even have class features that requires music or singing as even a part of playing it (those were replaced with different features). The street performer does throw comedic and insulting barbs at his "victims" so is an entertainer, but that's nothing like singing to me. There are many more bard archetypes that similarly have absolutely nothing to do with music, and all are bards.
That's part of the reason why I love to design custom archetypes. To me a class is just a package of mechanics, the flavor part, like the name of the class is just flavor, which means you can easily reflavor it, replace some of its class features to something altogether different having no connection whatsoever with the "mother" class the archetypes is built from.
Consider the samurai class, if you chuck the entire Asian baggage that comes with it along with its name, then look at the class features - honor, challenges, mounted combat, resolve, replace the katana exotic weapon proficiency with something else. I can easily see an American Great Plains Sioux or Cheyenne mounted warrior fitting those class features perfectly. Native Americans had a kind of honor in the tribe and their beliefs, and a kind of resilience that resolve fits perfectly. They might belong to an order, like the dog soldiers. I think samurai is far better fit than some barbarian archetype to represent a native mounted warrior.
A class is not what the name says it is (not necessarily anyway), the only part that really matters is the mechanics built within, and if you're creative you can make almost anything out of those mechanics and doesn't have a need to be anything like what the flavor says it is. Flavor can easily be replaced.
Okay. I appreciate the advice - I'll go have a look at the archetypes. With nobody interested in the bard in my group, I'd never bothered looking through them, but that "archeologist" one sounds perfect for a Mummy's Mask campaign.
Thanks, guys...
As above, bards don't have to be musicians.
I've used the oratory bard with NPCs - a deep cover agent, a 'false priest' type stirring the populace into a frenzy, without ever singing a note. The herald of an orcish army might have percussion, singing, dancing, and oratory as skills, but there'd be no resemblance between his performance and a court minstrel even though the orcs find it pleasing.
I think of the bard as being the sort of 'oral tradition' equivalent to the 'lettered' wizards. Traditional magic, passed on in songs, riddles, various artistic expressions.
Similarly, there should be no reason to assume a tavern minstrel is a Bard and not an Expert.
The archetypal form of each class is only that.
How? I'm not being asinine, here: I have virtually zero experience with bards, and I am seriously interested in knowing how to have a character like that (unless you mean a storyteller-type or somesuch?).
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You can play a bard as a military drill instructor who yells at the party (perform: Oratory) to make them fight better.
If you know warhammer 40k, you could play a bard like a commissar, telling the soldiers to hold the line or else. It totally fits. They fight harder (bonus to hit and damage) and they are less likely to break and run (bonus to saves vs. fear)
Or imagine a Scottish piper who marches along with the army playing his bagpipes to raise the moral. There you got a musician bard who is not Sir Robin's Minstrels.
I allow pretty much anyone to play anything they want in my campaigns. Our homebrew campaign setting is a sort of "Industrial Golarion" and even uses the "Guns Everywhere" rules.
The one exception is the Summoner, only the Unchained variety is allowed now that it's out, and none of the archetypes are available without explicit GM permission. Mainly because they're a bookkeeping nightmare and a few of my less-experienced players can hardly remember their base attack bonus.
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I almost always ban Paladin as a GM. My experience with them as a player has been overwhelmingly negative, and I've never seen a group have more fun because one was present. They tend to cause as many problems as most CE thieves imo.
This post makes my current Paladin sad. ;n;
I've seen enough horror stories to understand the frustration with the class, but I really don't think there's anything innately wrong with it and the problem is with the players.
I almost always ban Paladin as a GM. My experience with them as a player has been overwhelmingly negative, and I've never seen a group have more fun because one was present. They tend to cause as many problems as most CE thieves imo.This post makes my current Paladin sad. ;n;
I've seen enough horror stories to understand the frustration with the class, but I really don't think there's anything innately wrong with it and the problem is with the players.
Indeed, I've probably played paladin more often in the last several years than any other class, and I've always enjoyed the challenge of playing one. I have never encountered the horror stories I see online concerning paladins, so it must be a player problem.
For my own campaign world, the only classes beyond core allowed are cavalier, inquisitor, slayer, and brawler. This is largely for reasons of flavor and simplicity. I don't think of it as "banning" because, as I personally see it, anything beyond core is optional and I simply choose not to take those options. There might be cases where a class arguably fits with a given specific campaign or concept and in that case it's not like I'd fight the player who wanted to take the "banned" class; I think the only classes I'd hardcore never allow in my own world are gunslinger and vanilla alchemist and that's because there's no firearms or major explosives in the world, and that's not a thing for my own campaign for which I'm not willing to make exceptions (I want to explore magic as the technology of war, and I find gunpowder gets in the way of that).
If I were running a Golarion-based campaign, I probably would allow all classes, and likewise what I might allow or not would depend on a given campaign or feel. I don't have anything personally against most classes, for me it's always about what fits.
I will also leave classes out depending on what books my players want to use. I realize to most of the typical board users, who normally represent veteran gamers and habitual book collectors, this may be hard to understand, but I've actually had players new to the system request core only as they did not want to be overwhelmed by options.
I ran a short game purely on experiment where no Core class was allowed, and it played well, everyone seemed to enjoy it - in fact it hardly felt different than any game with Core classes included. This was one of the few games where anything was banned, and again I ran it only to see if there was a difference. There weren't any.
If my players are still together after we finish the current campaign (they want to cap at level 20 and a couple of them have hinted they might "retire" from gaming then) I'd like to run a campaign of non-Core and 3PP classes only. I doubt I get to do that, but a guy can dream.
I'm thinking of running a Steampunk game sometime in the future with no magic. Psionics and the Thunderscape classes, along with any Paizo non-magical classes and Path of War stuff.
Seems like it could be fun.
Master Summoner is the only thing I do not allow in my games. Well, aside from third party material. None of that crap allowed. I try to direct less seasoned players away from the more complicated classes, simply for the fact of slowing down the game. If someone wants to play the eastern flavored classes (Samurai and Ninja) there needs to be some really good roleplaying along with it.
My banlist is relatively small, and as far as classes go there are only three banned archetypes: Synthesist Summoner, Master Summoner, and Teleportation Subschool Wizard.
Synthesist is just plain weird and I'd rather not have to deal with it. You can nail most of the concepts with the options provided by DSP Psionics anyways, so I'm not even going to bother trying to make this workable. I actually quite like the Master Summoner archetype, but it's just too problematic on a number of levels with the sheer number and duration of its summons. As for the Teleportation Subschool Wizard, I really felt that the CRB was already way too generous to Conjuration specialists, and this archetype was just gratuitous overkill.
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I almost always ban Paladin as a GM. My experience with them as a player has been overwhelmingly negative, and I've never seen a group have more fun because one was present. They tend to cause as many problems as most CE thieves imo.This post makes my current Paladin sad. ;n;
I've seen enough horror stories to understand the frustration with the class, but I really don't think there's anything innately wrong with it and the problem is with the players.
I'd say at least 80% of the problems are really the GMs. I'd say more then that to be honest, but I'm probably biased since I don't give Paladins a hard time in my campaigns.
In a topic on the oracle, this community expressed a lot of criticism of the shaman class. Now I wonder. Do you people have a 'banned class list' for your games? Would you recommend to do so? And if yes, which classes or archetypes would you ban?
Currently, in our games, we ban the following:
- Synthesyst Summoner (too obviously broken)
- Gunslinger, except for the 'Bolt Ace' Archetype (no gunpowder in the campaign)But perhaps a more expansive list would enhance our experience? I would, of course, be most interested in why a class should be banned.
It varies by the game, really. In my Skulls and Shackles game, I broke things down into:
Very Appropriate classes have an extra attribute point for)
Acceptable classses (perfectly fine but don't really fit perfectly)
Needs A Good Background (give me a reason in game for this character)
Forbidden classes (These classes which would cause conflict with the group or otherwise not work so well.) This includes things like clerics of abadar, paladins, and the eastern themed characters that didn't really work in the game.
We ended up with a gillman rogue, kobold barbarian, human swashbuckler, human magus and a human cleric of norgorber / wizard (necromancer).
I'm in the early stages of planing a no-magic game which will severely restrict class choice (fighter, rogue, swashbuckler, gunslinger, barbarian, brawler, etc.)
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have so far banned Ninjas and Samurai, simply because there's so far been no setting in my homebrew for them to hail from.
I see comments like this a lot, but I wonder why the monk doesn't get included too. The monk is as Asian inspired as anything.
have so far banned Ninjas and Samurai, simply because there's so far been no setting in my homebrew for them to hail from.I see comments like this a lot, but I wonder why the monk doesn't get included too. The monk is as Asian inspired as anything.
True, but I slipped up and allowed a Monk in the game before I got hold of the book with the Samurai and Ninja in it and didn't want to backtrack on it. I won't make that mistake again.
Forbidden classes (These classes which would cause conflict with the group or otherwise not work so well.) This includes things like clerics of abadar, paladins, and the eastern themed characters that didn't really work in the game.
While I completely agree that of the existing eastern themed classes (samurai, ninja, kensai, etc.) don't fit a pirate campaign, and its probably easy enough to reflavor an existing pirate archetyped character as being any nationality, even from Tian Xia, however, the largest pirate navy in the historic feudal period were Chinese and Japanese pirates. And many historic Japanese pirates were ronin samurai especially as archers.
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I banned systems, but if you can play a class without that system, you can use the class. Specifically, I banned arcane and divine magic. Most arcane and divine casters can use sphere casting from Spheres of Power though, so they remain playable.
I don't get what you're saying... What kind of systems do you ban?
Forbidden classes (These classes which would cause conflict with the group or otherwise not work so well.) This includes things like clerics of abadar, paladins, and the eastern themed characters that didn't really work in the game.While I completely agree that of the existing eastern themed classes (samurai, ninja, kensai, etc.) don't fit a pirate campaign, and its probably easy enough to reflavor an existing pirate archetyped character as being any nationality, even from Tian Xia, however, the largest pirate navy in the historic feudal period were Chinese and Japanese pirates. And many historic Japanese pirates were ronin samurai especially as archers.
Oh, certainly, but I was really looking for a Treasure Island sort of pirate feel, plus fantasy. We still had tons of options and people are having a great time.
My point is that the classes allowed were based on theme, not a perception of their power.
I banned systems, but if you can play a class without that system, you can use the class. Specifically, I banned arcane and divine magic. Most arcane and divine casters can use sphere casting from Spheres of Power though, so they remain playable.I don't get what you're saying... What kind of systems do you ban?
Arcane and divine magic. Literally, the magic system pages from the core rule book. There are 3rd party products that exist to replace arcane and divine magic. Therefore, a wizard using that 3rd party casting system is okay.
I have never seen a player problem with a Paladin. Not from the player in question, anyway.
There's something about the class that transforms the GM and several other people in the party into dicks though.
I have never seen a player problem with a Paladin. Not from the player in question, anyway.
There's something about the class that transforms the GM and several other people in the party into dicks though.
Indeed, paladin is always a GM problem, not a player problem, but if you're like me in giving paladins some latitude separating absolutes from what makes sense, then the problem goes away.
Kind of like samurai and ronin, lots of GMs are close minded in seeing what constitutes reasons for samurai becoming ronin. Bushido code never has been absolute, there's lots of gray areas. For example the majority of ronin, become ronins simply because his lord no longer needs him, as in the current war is over, and the lord doesn't want to pay samurai during peace-time, and is seldom because a given samurai is somehow not honorable or the cause for his dismissal. Yet many samurai RPG mechanics (including PF) treat a ronin like a fallen paladin, which as stated is seldom the reason a samurai has become ronin.
Close-minded GMs are the problem.
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I'm sure there are some problem paladin player's too. It's just not the default.
I'm sure some are, but I've never experienced that, and have experienced problematic GMs and many issues about alignment, especially regarding a paladin.
I've banned good aligned characters and related classes before (paladin), and plan to do it again in the future. They ruin the tone of my Gothic Horror games.
It depends on the campaign. I have banned the Magus from my low-magic campaign because of the whole: "I don't need to find a flaming sword when I came make one on my own - on the fly!"
I've limited the group to 1 paladin because of both how powerful the class is and for setting reasons. (Only 1 Champion[paladin] is ever alive at a time.)
I've learned to ban the Master Summoner the hard way...
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Kinda-sorta. I'm shifting away from the idea of ban lists and towards the idea of inclusion lists, so as to tell players what they can have, rather than what they can't. The reasons I ban are thematic, and are aimed mostly at spellcasters. I have a specific vision on what magic should be, and not everything in Pathfinder fits that vision. Witchcraft and shamanism are the faces of magic in my setting, not arcane or divine magic. This means Witches, Shamans, Sorcerors, Oracles, and Druids fit outright, as do directly related classes, but a lot of others don't. The main issue is that magic comes from dabbling in mysterious forces or being born to those mysterious forces, and not from plain old book study or a god, and if I refluff everything outside that to be like Witches, Shamans, Sorcerors, Oracles, and Druids, I essentially have a bunch of different mechanical setups that all go into filling the exact same theme. I'm not really sure I want that, so for the moment spellcasters outside those five are excluded. The Alchemist is not excluded (I don't consider it a spellcaster, though I do consider it a magic user). Alchemist derived classes, namely the Investigator, are likewise not excluded. Non-spellcasting Rangers are allowed.
I am considering implementing a mysterious form of rune magic to encompass the arcane classes I have excluded, plus the Cleric, Warpriest, and Inquisitor, all of whom make perfect sense as classes focused on magical writing, as do the Wizard and Bard. If I do this, the runes will predicated on the understanding of specific concepts, not on a magical language, so they can be written in Arabic or Chinese calligraphy as easily as Nordic runes. Also would explain why prepared casters are a thing. The runes must be prepared in the morning, for they require a patient and steady hand and time, and are then used later. If I go with that explanation for Vancian magic, all non Rune Mage spellcasters would become spontaneous casters, and Druids would fall into the Rune Mage category as the intermediaries between that which is civilized and that which is wild. Under this system, Paladins would be excluded from the game for thematic reasons, as Warpriests handle my envisoned role for them just fine, and the the whole theme of a God directly empowering a champion of good does not fit my setting at all.
I have banned certain players from playing certain things, but haven't wholesale banned anything. I allow- encourage, even- any 3rd party and custom-made material, if the player can sell me on it. I want people to be excited about playing their characters.
Players who have created things of their own need to present me with a clean "final" document of it, and have to sell me on it. They have to tell me why it's so compelling and make me want to allow it. If they start with theme and background fluff, and how I can use it in a setting, they're doing it right.
Some start with mechanics and go on about their character build, and how it's all "totally balanced." I generally stop them, tell them they're doing it wrong, and give them a second chance to sell me on it. If I think the mechanics are broken, but I know why the player wants to play it, I can make something better that fits their desire. The fluff needs to make me want to do that, though.
I started collecting a ton of 3rd party material because one of my first groups had (no joke) literally memorized every entry in the monster manual, and had no qualms launching into appropriate tactics regardless of character knowledge. Re-skinning helped a little, but more than a few times they pieced it together from the mechanics it displayed. So I got a few... new... monster manuals, and livened up the game immensely. Then NPCs started having class abilities no-one recognized. After a while, I let the players have access to those things, and while there were a few dickish experiments, it's really been better than just using core-only. I've extended this to Pathfinder, and found it to generally be the same.
So... I don't proactively ban anything. I do reactive bans to things I think players can't handle, and ban players who are being dicks.