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So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).
My other group broke the game because the DM messed up. He gave us a version of potion of love that has no save and "dominates" things (by making them obsessed with the user). So naturally the party barbarian throws it at an elder brain and ends up making the entire illithid hive his love slaves (the amount of tentacle hentai jokes that followed were the icing on the cake).
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Enlarge Person.
I'm not kidding. I played a lvl 1 cleric and the wizard on my party used to cast enlarge person on me. The GM didn't know how to deal with big size and stopped GMing. He wasn't new to the game.
The Wizard also broke the game with a caltrops spell. Don't ask.
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So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).
I don't get how the badger gets rage, even with an injury. He isn't a bloodrager, and valet doesn't share class features. What am I missing?
I think that the bad guy was supposed to run away and that I messed up with the script.
As for the Enlarge Person, I remember the GM telling us he was going to nerf the reach rules because they had no sense.
So he quit the game. Again.
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Just posted something about this, actually. Deadhand stylist master of many styles monk, with deadhead master at 6th level, because you don't need to meet the prerequisites for the feats. So a 6th level character dealing 8 negative energy levels with one punch from pummeling style is pretty darn scary. I only got away with it because everyone else is overpowered as well.
I think that the bad guy was supposed to run away and that I messed up with the script.
As for the Enlarge Person, I remember the GM telling us he was going to nerf the reach rules because they had no sense.
So he quit the game. Again.
He told me I made too many AoO.
I had a dexterity of 7 and no combat reflexes!
Improved Trip.
Same GM, different game: The GM had problems whenever we did something different than to charge and hit. I had built a TWF ranger with Improved Trip. He said I was giving too many AoO to the party and that I was OP. This time we managed to get until level 5.
And then he quit. Again.
So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).I don't get how the badger gets rage, even with an injury. He isn't a bloodrager, and valet doesn't share class features. What am I missing?
The badger in the bestiary has bloodrage, but animal companion badgers just have regular barbarian-style rage. Not sure which of those a "badger familiar" would be.
So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).I don't get how the badger gets rage, even with an injury. He isn't a bloodrager, and valet doesn't share class features. What am I missing?
badgers have the blood rage ability, they take damage in combat, they fly into a rage. valet gives the familiar all your teamwork feats, in this case amplified rage.
The badger in the bestiary has bloodrage, but animal companion badgers just have regular barbarian-style rage. Not sure which of those a "badger familiar" would be.So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).I don't get how the badger gets rage, even with an injury. He isn't a bloodrager, and valet doesn't share class features. What am I missing?
Presumably the former hence the held cut self action
The badger in the bestiary has bloodrage, but animal companion badgers just have regular barbarian-style rage. Not sure which of those a "badger familiar" would be.So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).I don't get how the badger gets rage, even with an injury. He isn't a bloodrager, and valet doesn't share class features. What am I missing?
Oh, I missed that badgers get [blood]rage for being badgers. Thanks!
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Just posted something about this, actually. Deadhand stylist master of many styles monk, with deadhead master at 6th level, because you don't need to meet the prerequisites for the feats. So a 6th level character dealing 8 negative energy levels with one punch from pummeling style is pretty darn scary. I only got away with it because everyone else is overpowered as well.
So first off, sorry for the slight de-rail, but I haven't really been keeping up with everything pathfinder for the last year, and already I feel like I'm forgetting some of the stuff I already knew, but I though Master of Many Styles only let you take the actual style, as in Deadhand Style, not Deadhand Master. I thought the starter feats were the only actual style feats, and the follow up feats were actually just combat feats. Anyone willing to clarify for me?
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You are correct Deighton. Master of many styles lets you skip prereqs for the feat with the word "style" in it, but not the others.
And how are you getting 4 unarmed strikes as a master of many styles at level 6? You don't get flurry, so you can't add hits with Ki, so you're looking at a single hit without haste. I suppose you could take TWF, but that's still not 4 hits.
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I broke a Ravenloft campaign before it really ever started once. This was AD&D 2nd Edition and the GM was homebrewing an adventure where some evil warlord intended to ritually sacrifice a specific woman in order to open a vortex to Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread. Our party tracked the warlord to his keep and arrived just in time to see him dragging the struggling lass across a narrow bridge to the sacrificial altar. The GM's plan was for our party to be trapped in the vortex after failing to save the damsel. From there, the campaign would officially begin in Ravenloft.
My very pragmatic, LN gnome fighter ruined his plans by shooting the woman with his crossbow, killing her and causing her body to plummet off of the bridge before the warlord could sacrifice her. I justified the gnome's actions by saying we all knew what the warlord was planning and my PC decided killing the woman was the best way to prevent more death and chaos from being unleashed on the kingdom.
There were a dozen ways the GM could have saved his campaign, but he just let the dice roll determine our fate and then got mad at me and ended the entire adventure.
I wouldn't say break but one of my players jumped through a scary lightning vortex portal that had just disgorged an angry combination of Brethedan and discovering that its wounds were healing and that it had engulfed several of their friends. Upon discovering that the Portal worked both ways, the Brethedan left. The person on the other side of the portal made an amazing diplomacy role and managed to make friends with it. The Brethedan and the party member leave. (All of this has taken place through notes)
Meanwhile the rest of the party has been arguing going through the portal and eventually decide to go through. They arrive on the otherside and find a set of tracks that go a few feet and then vanish. I now have to map an entire world for next week as they chase after the party member who managed to make friends with the Starcraft Overlord of enemies. The journey took them IRL months and they just about murdered the PC responsible, and forced me to keep writing more and more stuff while the plot traveled on in the other world.
I love when my players do the unexpected, but I hate the effort it takes to keep up.
I was able to render a number of encounters ineffective with a heavens oracle, not with Awesome Display or Colorspray as might be expected, but with Moonlight Bridge. It overcame pit traps, defeated difficult terrain, allowed combat with flying creatures, even saved the fighter from drowning. Its now a running joke that our GM's go through preprinted modules and correct for bridges. Also got leverage out of being 6" above the ground with Lure of the Heavens, though not as much.
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Mostly right Deighton:
The ability is "Starting at 6th level, a master of many styles can choose to instead gain a wildcard style slot. Whenever he enters one or more styles, he can spend his wildcard style slots to gain feats in those styles' feat paths (such as Earth Child Topple) as long as he meets the prerequisites."
So he need to meet pre req on all the other feats in a style chain but he has the benefit to change them every time he swift into a style.
Wild empathy focused druid that can run at the dungeon and cuddle it to death.
I had a friend that played a high-ish Cha druid before I started playing. He pissed off the GM with the amount of times he just "derailed" combat.
One casting of Magic Jar was enough to take out a whole encampment of giants. When the giant I was in got killed, I would just jump into the next one. The DM just declared the whole encampment of about 100 giants dead.
So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).
You can only ready an action after combat begins.
I've played an optimized gnome fighter 1/monk 1/ninja 2/paladin 4 known as Megan the Gnome in an experimental arena combat. She immobilized enemies by asking them impossible questions with Bewildering Koan and summoned an astral deva with bracers of celestial intervention. That's right: a level 8 martial duplicating a 9th level spell to summon a CR 14 angel, all entirely PFS-legal. I'd call that a fairly broken build.
That is incredibly cheeky. I just figured out how she works, wonderful!
I once DMed for a goliath ranger that used to carry the horses sometimes. She was also in charge of hunting and gathering and setting up camp. I don't know why she didn't make everyone else pull their weight! Hahaha!
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I've played an optimized gnome fighter 1/monk 1/ninja 2/paladin 4 known as Megan the Gnome in an experimental arena combat. She immobilized enemies by asking them impossible questions with Bewildering Koan and summoned an astral deva with bracers of celestial intervention. That's right: a level 8 martial duplicating a 9th level spell to summon a CR 14 angel, all entirely PFS-legal. I'd call that a fairly broken build.
I remember that! Yeah, it was completely broken. I never had a chance.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Back in 3.0, our group of bard, monk, druid, and sorcerer needed to take out a village of frost giants living in a snow filled mountain pass. My druid mined the path leading up to the village with fire seeds (mine version), while the bard identified areas in the surrounding mountains that could be destabilized with precision castings of disintegrate.
A couple induced avalanches later, the entire village was either buried or exploded trying to run. I summoned some earth elementals to glide through the rubble and kill any surviving giants they found. Presto, a big long combat sequence reduced to a few skill rolls.
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broke the scenario with a shovel once.
Scenario has some cultists dumping something in the river from their temple. Instead of going into the temple, my 18 strength but still encumbered because they bought the entire players handbook druid started digging where he figured the pipe would be and waved to the temple people. So instead of having to go in, they all came out for a more even fight.
When we got the cultists, we left 2 alive. Fed the toxin to the first one and asked what the cure was. Forgot to dilute it first... whoops. After his face melted to a skull the second cultist was very talkative anyway.
The whole party having stealth synergy and dark or low-light vision.
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I think the weirdest character I ever had was an herbalist named Hama. She was a young Varisian woman who, through an incurable genetic disease, became a quadriplegic during her young adult years. Though she was kept alive by her fellow villagers, she was often abused, and even those who treated her better, often did little more than was absolutely necessary to keep her alive.
After years of this hell, her heart darkened and her sorcerer powers spontaneously emerged. She used her newfound power to possess the bodies of others via magic jar.
Her village never truly recovered from her wrath.
She would go on to adventure in the bodies of powerful characters and creatures, using alter self and similar abilities to resume humanoid form while keeping most of her host's strength. She also used a shawl of the crone to mislead those around her into believing that she was a weak, defenseless old woman. She surrounded herself with powerful, but gullible adventurers, which she frequently manipulated through guile into serving as useful pawns while she sought out her own goals.
At one point, she murdered her cat familiar to summon a consular imp familiar, who protected her true body and further corrupted her soul with promises of true mobility and of everlasting beauty. The imp secretly fed her the secrets of lichdom, knowing full well that his idea of "beauty" was very different from Hama's, and that the transformation would further drive her towards madness as well as an eternal damnation in hell.
She uses her Silent Spell and Still Spell metamagic feats to cast most of her spells while paralyzed (or when being discreet).
For spells that can't benefit from those feats, such as magic jar which is too high level for such metamagic, she must first change her form into something that doesn't suffer from her paralysis, such as a shadow via shadow projection. Turning into most creatures would still leaver her paralyzed, which is why a shadow is ideal--it has no flesh.
So she basically possesses people through her shadow, which is really only true until she finds a healthy body from which she can cast spells normally.
As a merchant, she managed to get her hands on a mammoth, which is the body she possesses most of the time. Once within its body, she casts alter self to take humanoid form (dumping the beast's stats, but having obvious benefits). Once in humanoid form, she can use a command word to activate her greater hat of disguise, which lets her stay in said humanoid form indefinitely.
Her real body, as well as her circlet of persuasion, headband of alluring charisma, and Osirian spirit jars, are magically shrunk and stowed away in her arcane locked locket via a binding effect. This way, she can better hide the secrets of her vulnerabilities while keeping them close at hand (should someone dispel her magic jar effect or something similar). Furthermore, minimus containment says nothing about the target being unconscious, so should she be forced to return to her body, she can cast spells from inside the locket (such as to project her shadow or renew magic jar).
Since magic jar says you use your mental stats and skills, her circlet of persuasion grants its benefits even though he host body is also wearing a headband item. Kind of a slot work around.
I've given this concept a lot of thought. Ultimately, she was a helpless young quadriplegic sorcerer possessing a mastodon, transmuted into an old woman, possessing the strength of a giant, who sometimes posed as a skilled warrior, trying to become a lich.
She was basically impossible to kill and totally trivialized numerous encounters. Everyone who has ever played with her absolutely HATES her. She has completely broken (as in caused dissolution/disbanding) of no less than three campaigns.
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During The Skinsaw Murders module of my wife's Rise of the Runelords campaign, my wife was out of town for a week. I temporarily took over as GM. The party was sailing from Sandpoint to Magnimar, so I pulled out an old plague ship adventure where an evil cleric had killed everyone else aboard another passenger ship and reanimated many of them as zombies. My PC bowed out (he took the overland route to Magnimar), and Matt, the teenage son of two other players, created a character to fill the gap.
When the party boarded the adrift ship (the cleric didn't know how to sail), five zombies shambled toward them and Matt's character tripped them all. He had created a polearm trip specialist with Combat Reflexes. And he re-tripped them when they attempted to stand (not allowed in the current rules, but I didn't know that). With most of the zombies immobilized, the rest of the party quickly overwhelmed the evil cleric.
One unexpectedly easy adventure did not break the campaign, but I was embarrassed at being caught unprepared. Nevertheless, my wife let me take over permanently as GM three months later when her health declined.
After that, I became the usual GM and my wife proved her reputation as grandmistress of derailments. For example, in Tide of Honor in my Jade Regent campaign, the party was supposed to lead a rebellion against a corrupt oni-controlled government of Minkai. Nope. They had the true heir to the throne, and decided instead to force the current government to acknowledge that by becoming popular folk heroes before any big reveal. It was a beautiful plan, but I had to metaphorically slice apart and rearrange the module to fit that plan. It would have broken the game if I had not learned flexibility during my Rise of the Runelords missteps.
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I broke a campaign by handing the rules interpretation to a player and let the players rag him for mistakes. This is now a feature of how I run, but players know this coming in. No grief from the rules lawyers as they get pegged next game.
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PFS Scenario (Unnamed so as not to be spoilerific)
Party encountered a controller alchemist that was fond of stink bombs (and GM was a specialist having his own, controller based alchemist character with stink bombs). So fight drags on as much of the fight has a large portion of the party unable to attack. Finally Alchemist hits his retreat condition and opts to throw his last stink bomb at the largest grouping of players (my character was not in that grouping at the time, but my character had already been nauseated so the alchemist wasn't exceptionally worried about me). After re-nauseating most of the rest of the party, he moves to the door heading opposite the way we entered. Having used his standard action, and moving, he did not have the move action required to open the door.
My mind is already going 1000 MPH as a flash of genious hits me and I start looking at one of my abilities and what it takes to activate it. (Ultimately SU that does not identify action required, so defaults to Standard action) "CRAP" Crap I think to myself knowing that I can't do it while still nauseated.
Next player goes, They are nauseated, so move up next to the retreating enemy and done. Then GM looks to me and says "You're turn, you are no longer nauseated". My face beams with an ear to ear smile.
I asked the GM, how does the door work?(opens inward or outward, swinging door, round door knob, turn handle style, pull handle with no latch mechanism) GM responded "It opens inward, with a normal door knob/latching mechanism". "Metal Door knob", I asked. "Yes." replied the GM.
My Oread, with Alternate racial ability "Ferrous Touch", proceeded to walk up to the door, and reach out and touch it. Turning the door knob into a metal spike that drove through the end of the door into the adjoining door frame/wall. Effectively spiking/pinning the door closed.
The Alchemist was then left with no real offensive threats and no escape path as the door the party had entered was being blocked by another player!
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One casting of Magic Jar was enough to take out a whole encampment of giants. When the giant I was in got killed, I would just jump into the next one. The DM just declared the whole encampment of about 100 giants dead.
A "Giant Encampment" with ~100 Giants, and the GM figured you could kill them all without ever risking getting 190-300'(level depending) away from the 'Jar' or risk the Giants encountering the Jar or your body an smashing them?
I once had a GM say that paladins can't use UMD without falling because "you are lying to the item by pretending to be another class". Didn't exactly break the game, but made me kinda want to do so.What, was he worried you'd hurt the items' feelings or something?
9_9
It's the PRINCIPLE of the thing!
One casting of Magic Jar was enough to take out a whole encampment of giants. When the giant I was in got killed, I would just jump into the next one. The DM just declared the whole encampment of about 100 giants dead.A "Giant Encampment" with ~100 Giants, and the GM figured you could kill them all without ever risking getting 190-300'(level depending) away from the 'Jar' or risk the Giants encountering the Jar or your body an smashing them?
Reach Spell makes it about 800 feet and the giants had a distinct lack of spellcraft. A small gem stone and a (seemingly) dead body well hidden and kind of far away are not likely targets for a very confused giant encampment.
I think he declared them dead out of frustration and not being able to come up with a reasonable way of stopping it. If I recalled correctly their only caster was a cleric who lacked spellcraft.
I toned it way down for the rest of night.
But as Raving Dork's Hama demonstrates, Magic Jar is truly brutal.
On the flip side of things, I got screwed using Magic Jar (well technically Marionette Possesion) once when fighting a certain Redacted Mark Seifter trying to untangle my mess of spell effects
So I built an orc bloodrager recently, my DM allowed me to have a badger familiar and I've basically used to to bust up the character. I gave it the valet archetype, took Amplified Rage so I could hit 30 strength while raging (The badger holds a permanent readied action to cut himself upon combat starting). I also took ranks in ride, so my badger is intelligent, also gets my ranks in ride, and rides me, so he can use the ride skill to negate hits (lol).You can only ready an action after combat begins.
False
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I broke a boss fight with a Lyre of Building.
We were going down a tower, seeking for the BBEG. We found it in the last (first?) floor. It was trapped in a floor with a small hole to the next one and a Forbiddance spell. The hole was too small for it to pass. Not too small for it to attack us with a bunch of tentacles.
With Bardic Knowledge I identified it as a Qlippoth. It was huge, intelligent, had a nasty Aura of Confusion and tentacles. No way we were going to go toe-to-toe with it!
We retreated to the second floor. I used the Lyre to make another hole in the floor. It took about half an hour, but it was worth it. From the second floor we were out of reach from its tentacles, so we proceeded to nuke the hell of it. There was nothing it could do about it but dying.
Not very epic, but yes efficient.
I was the GM there.
I must admit that my first instinct was to think a reason for that plan not working. But it was a good plan. I'm not against that kind of shenanigans from time to time. They deviced a clever way to get an easy win, so I rewarded it by giving them their easy win. If it works, it works.
Btw, IIRC, it just had 15ft reach, but not tentacles. It was already nasty without tentacles, don't add more than it had xD
I mean, the GM was kind of asking for it, but I once got 9th level spellcasting on a level 2 summoner. How, you ask?
Well, the GM allowed templates. And for the mythic subtype to be added as a template. Well, one of the abilities that can be added as a mythic ability to a mythic monster is,
In place of a mythic ability, the monster may gain a universal monster ability, such as rend or pounce, either from an existing Bestiary or from this section.
Now, the examples given are perfectly acceptable use of this option. However, Spell-Like Abilities and Spells are both "universal monster abilities, from an existing bestiary." And I abused that. I now have at-will wish as a SLA and the ability to cast wordspells, cleric, and wizard spells as a 20th level oracle.
...The GM okayed it.
So, that's the story of how my level 2 summoner is one of the most powerful characters conceivable. You can actually see the results here.
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A way to make a normally unobtainable black blade, which I put together only because people were saying it wouldn't work.
I didn't break the whole game, but I did break two encounters.
First, we were given no information about the campaign and told to make characters for it. I made a cleric with heavy armor proficiency, worshiping Sarenrae to emulate Leona from League of Legends. The home brew campaign turned out to revolve around us being on a ship, so at first I thought I was doomed (no ranks in swim, 14 strength, heavy armor) and then the first encounter happened. He had homebrewed these shadow skeletons that were on a cursed ship that brought a storm cloud with us.
To combat the darkness I cast light on my shield before combat, and during combat I happened to shield bash. The skeleton melted. He thought that it would never come up but when making the shadow skeletons he gave them a weakness to light effects, including items with light cast on them. I also happened to have the sun domain, which gets bonuses when channeling to harm undead. Completely ruined the encounter.
The other was an Oread Monk of the Sacred Mountain. I went to spar with one of the yeti's we had befriended,who happened to be a monk. The yeti monk was built to specialize in the trip combat maneuver. At level 4, a Monk of the Sacred Mountain can't be knocked prone if he stays in his square. Everything he had was focused into that (I think he beat my cmd by 20 or something ridiculous like that) and so he had nothing but punching me from then on, and I just did more damage during the match.
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This one time we took over an airship (with incredibly good combat rolls) and promptly crashed it. The captain, a mind flayer (yes, D&D), was downstairs preparing to come up and crush us. He died in the crash while still buffing. We were 2nd level.