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Gnomes, dwarves and halflings.
Leshy, goblins, poppets and shoony.
Gnomish flickmaces.
Elves called Anthony, or Justin or Frances.
All banned.
We dont ban anything yet.
Doorknob is good, but i would not say it ban worthy.
Just curious what made blinded for 1 turn on crit such a nuisance in your encounters?
some creatures have ways around hidden's concealment by "not targeting", with aoe and the like so its not always as bad
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I ban the combination of Ancestries and Heritages that are both Uncommon or Rare. I ban Diverse Lore. I remove Wall of Stone shapeability. I consider that most humanoids know what illusions are and as such are not fooled by Illusory Object if they see the casting. I limit some options so I don't get them too much (I like to stay quite close to traditional fantasy so only a portion of the party can take weird Ancestries).
Exemplar Dedication as it stands right now is a "no and don't even ask" total ban. We'll see if errata changes that. Exemplar itself is allowed.
The Greater Phantasmal Doorknob, though I don't have a rush of players trying to use it.
Not a ton otherwise, really. I think there was one rare spell someone wanted that I didn't let them have because it was out of line with the power level of that game, where the players are largely new/casual and we tend to be somewhat flexible on the rules for a more narrative game. It just felt like too much in that setting.
But I don't actually say "no" very often in PF2 and I think that's a plus for the system (compared to my extensive PF1 ban list), so I really hope printing obviously problematic stuff like we're seeing recently isn't a trend.
We dont ban anything yet.
Doorknob is good, but i would not say it ban worthy.
Just curious what made blinded for 1 turn on crit such a nuisance in your encounters?
some creatures have ways around hidden's concealment by "not targeting", with aoe and the like so its not always as bad
Fighter + Bard combinations critting so often that it becomes a problem. Greater Crushing has similar problems, especially when combined with the Doorknob. That turns a Fighter into one of the best debuffers in the game on top of everything it's already doing and is stepping a lot onto other classes roles.
It gets to be too much.
I agree about the doorknob, there should be a save associated like for all critical specializations.
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Jerks.
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I have yet to fully ban anything wholesale, with the expectation that your choices should fit the setting or story that we’re playing with. My players are particularly good about “characters first, opitimized second” so they tend not to take incredibly overpowered options just because they’re strong.
If I ban anything, it’s going to be some sort of overly broken build or a rare option that doesn’t fit the story we’re doing c and in the latter case it’s almost always more of a “justify this and we’ll go from there.” rather than “you can never do this, ever.”
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I did have a player ask me if they could take teleport in an Extinction Curse game once though. I told them I would read ahead in the adventure path and decide if it had the potential to derail the plot or cause other forms of disruptions.
I denied the spell the next day after finding loads of potential for campaign disruption.
I've also have at least one GM that blanket bans teleportation effects. Really pissed off the Desnan cleric in our party once. In a show of solidarity, the entire player group banned the GM's ban and allowed the cleric to take their translocate Desnan cleric spell anyways. GM was pissed at the group veto, but couldn't really do anything about it.
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Guns and the gunslinger class. We just don't want that element in our fantasy.
I think that is it.
Investigator mainly, hate the Pursue a Lead and That's Odd.
One of my DMs bans Tailwind Wands
I kinda do this... but instead of banning them I weakened the heightened effect and put another two heightened tiers.
It is exceptionally powerful in the hands of an organised party for its cost and tends to devalue a whole heap of class options.
I didn't do this because it was powerful though, because I ran two campaigns and it was a boring mechanical choice with no RP attached.
Another similar change I have made is reducing the amount of extra dimensional storage across the board. Because I found players got type 1 bags of holding and stopped caring for higher tiers and bulk became a thing of the past so early. I tend to change this depending on campaign though.
I don't think I have actually banned anything else though, rarities get played around with and some options are disallowed for lore / theme reasons but they are fairly few and far between.
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Most of my bans are opening bids for negotiation. I start off disallowing most Uncommon and Rare options, and most things from AP backmatter.
Some Uncommon options will be auto unlocked based on the game -- basically I use "Common for the game setting" not straight up "Common in AoN".
Beyond that, I'll unlock Uncommon options very easily -- be from a place where they're common, give me some sort of backstory reason why you have access. Basically, make your character concept as concrete as possible so that I can unlock a whole swath of things, but also know what shouldn't unlock. (Like if you are from Minkai, then you aren't also from Nex.)
Ancestry unlocks vary and depend on the particular game and if thematically we're doing a "you're all from this one village" or "you are a team of professionals from across Golarion that have been assembled for this one mission" but Uncommon ancestries are usually an easy sell.
After that, I like to go with the "one cool thing" concept -- every character gets to have one cool thing about them. Lots of things are on the table for this, but one of them is you can have access to a Rare option. (If it's a small Rare option like a Background or a single spell I'll probably give you some other related stuff too. This is meant as a springboard, not a straitjacket.)
But generally, the baseline assumption for the game is Common, and if the player wants more than that for their character, I just want them to have a reason for it and sell me on it. I'm an easy sell -- but you have to make the pitch.
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Investigator mainly, hate the Pursue a Lead and That's Odd.
Forgot about Investigator. Totally banned. Not much point having a plot or…anything really with one of these around. I blame the concept of the Pathfinder Society for the whole Investigator shenanigans.
Which is a pity, because I liked the Robert Downey Jnr Sherlock Holmes combat scenes kind of Investigator, but not the “I see, understand and winkle out all knowledge” meta. As well as the people who tend to play them, like the people who tend to play all the races I ban in my list above play them in such a way I…do not like.
We do ban third party materials as it's a pain to vet it for problems.
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I don't really have a blanket ban on anything, I think. Rare options are generally "tell me how you plan to fit it into your character and the adventure we're playing" unless explicitly made open for the purposes of a particular game. I suppose I technically ban Unique content, but I hardly feel it counts given the way unique this are inherently lore-laden content that should be a significant part of the story, not something a character buys at the market or picks up in character creation.
Overall there aren't really any character options I would consider a major problem. I don't feel like I would ever ban something because I didn't like the way people played it--if I'm having that problem, the problem I'm having is a player, not the options they chose, and it wouldn't sit right with me banning somebody who loves those character options from playing them to keep them out of a problem player's hands. Although then again maybe I've just never found an option consistently played in such an annoying way to give me the GM trauma yet.
I guess if alignment were still a thing, I'd ban evil characters, but that's not really a mechanical thing. No wangrods in the party, regardless what initials your alignment says, but OTOH I'm cautiously open to designated-evil/unholy options remaining available if they're not inherently antisocial by nature, but I've never in-practice had to reflavour an antipaladin option to give to a 'dark but still vaguely heroic' knight character up to this point so that remains purely hypothetical.
Heh, i’m adding wangrods to Ravingdork’s jerks.
@Sibelius: I take your greater point about the difference between players and options, but to me it seems certain options attract certain behaviours, and I can use the removal of those options as a filter for players. But generally, the tone of the campaign world is also important to me, and those things I remove or “ban” help to maintain that tone.
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A lot of stuff I used to ban got thankfully nerfed in the last errata wave, so right now the list is pretty small:
- Champion Archetype: Getting a full scaling champion reaction has been blatantly overpowered since the game’s launch and it still is. Yes you don’t get the later improvements like persistent damage but most of the reaction’s power is its base features, and I can personally attest that combats where half or more of the party has champ reactions just become a slog to GM for or play in.
- Greater Phantasmal Doorknob: Free Blind on a crit is just too damn strong.
- The new Exemplar dedication: Getting another martial’s full damage boosting feature at level 2 is just absurd. All other martial archetypes have either a much reduced version of their damage booster that has drawbacks or just don’t include it at all. This is like if fighter dedication gave you +2 to hit, Barbarian dedication gave you a full scaling rage, or Ranger Dedication gave you a scaling Hunter’s Edge. Very much hoping this gets errated soon.
Pretty much everything else has at least some campaigns or oneshots where I’d allow them, though it’s dependent on that case.
@Red Griffyn: one the one hand I think you miss the point of why I “ban” most things on my list - it is less about mechanics and more about theme and tone.
Even if you “tweak” an Investigator, the whole point of the Investigator is to sniff out clues and solve puzzles, uncover mysteries and unlock hidden knowledge. People who play them are almost entirely guided by the premise of the class to play them that way, regardless of how you approach their actual abilities. It’s exhausting. I’m all for adventurers sniffing out clues, solving puzzles, uncovering mysteries and unlocking hidden knowledge. But to have one character lifting every rug and cracking open every dusty book is maddening.
However, I completely agree with your later point:
You don't have to be afraid of minor homebrew tweaks and that should be your first line of defense if you truly think something is too OP to allow. Outright banning an option is the tactical nuclear option and you're probably doing a disservice to your players if you don't even try to listen to the why/what they want out of it.
I have found in my time playing PF2 that PF2 GMs are incredibly hidebound, much more so than PF1. The resistance to tweak and homebrew is ironclad, which I think is due to a misunderstanding of the term “tight math”. I firmly believe that the math is tight, and have personally lionised the ruleset across various threads as being both incredibly elegant and robust.
The ruleset can withstand tweaks and bumps and outliers. It’s why I actually wouldn’t ban the Exemplar archetype on the basis of its outlandish damage buff potential. I’d ban it (and the Exemplar class) because they are outlandish thematically, but given the right party, adventure and campaign I would totally allow them to be used, though some heavy reskinning would likely be necessary to make them fit and guide players toward a more agreeable thematic approach.
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Generally don't ban much of anything, except a few very campaign specific things. There are some unspoken agreements at most of the tables I play to not be obnoxious with certain spells, which admittedly is incredibly vague but has generally worked out for us fine.
Can't really imagine ever banning a class, because they represent such a big conceptual space for defining characters and there's little mechanical value in banning them anyways.
I find a lot of tonal concerns over classes tend to be self-inflicted, so I personally as a GM just don't worry about it. Like if someone wants to play an Exemplar and I don't want to GM a campaign about demigodhood I just... don't do that? I'd rather let my player play the fun and interesting class they want and just not make a big deal about it (it's not like there aren't half a dozen ways to play characters with innate divine power) than wring my hands over narrative issues that literally can't exist unless I choose to insert them into the story and ban things as a result.
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I tend to follow the rarity guidelines. Common is allowed, uncommon and rare with permission. Uncommon is generally good to go unless there's a compelling reason for it not to be allowed, and rare is generally not allowed unless there is a compelling reason for it to be allowed.
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My strictest GM had a pretty good set of explanations as to what/why things were banned.
Group 1:
Knowledge-check ("free") power.
Things that, once you figure them out, are nothing but passive boosts to power in a way where the hassle/cost does not at all match with their benefit.
No long-term game system (I guess any system where "splat books" are in the vernacular) can survive this kind of knowledge-check power creep. If that's all an option is, then it's banned. ("The spell is fine, but if any of yall try to cast it from a wand, that wand will explode.")
Even though pf2 was explicitly designed around safeguards to prevent this issue happening again, mistakes will always be made.
Investment slots work well. Consumable talismans can be potent, but are certainly high-cost enough that their abuse is not much a worry. Then, spellhearts came into the picture... yeah. No opportunity cost, 1 time gp tax boosts in power is exactly the concept space that this problem lives within.
So, no Grtr Phantasmal Doorknob at that table. This is also where Tailwind wands fit.
That wand is/was more important to the GM though, because once the trick is known, all the wand-power gain puts a huge "pressure" on all PCs to take Trick Magic Item. (which is not there for the spellhearts)
Banning things like Tailwind Wands removes that psycho-pressure to take such feats. It allows PCs the room to breathe without needing to stretch themselves to fit the "meta" for power options.
I wonder if he would also put in Human Adopted Ancestry in there too, as holy crap I hate/love that for the exact same reason. All my PCs have it now, because Ambition + Mutltitalented are that stupid good.
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Group 2:
Options that mess w/ the campaign and the ability to tell a story. Might have been his first time GMing an Investigator, but I doubt he'd ban the entire class in a future campaign. However, once That's Odd got used in the under Otari section, he read Investigator a bit more and banned That's Odd, Red Herring, and I think one more feat.
This is also where you get a lot of uncommon alch item/spell bans. No Undead Detection Dye, etc (campaign dependent).
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Group 3:
Things are too disruptive to the actual at-table gameplay to allow.
This is also where/why That's Odd was rather immediately banned.
Abilities/effects that order the GM to do stuff are thankfully rare, but this is the first sub-set that comes to mind.
It's honestly wild to me that That's Odd is a common feat in a common class, because wt actual f where they thinking. When I was brand new, I had no idea how much of an outlier it (and Investigator) really are. Outright stating that every single room the GM's got to come up with something is not okay.
That specific GM further elaborated with something to the effect of:
Players will take the class/feat with the on-paper expectation of getting to use that ability, so a GM nerfing it below what is written is not a good compromise (and what it can do will get argued about later, for sure).
GM-forced actions reverse the player-GM dynamic, where the player can gain resentment for GM inaction. I don't want you to feel like I'm nerfing your ability when I forget you have it, and I don't want to worry that I'm not performing your ability well enough. You are supposed to be the one acting out your PC's abilities, not me.
Effects like that set up the table with a hostile GM/player relationship. Instead of being collaborators, the player and GM now are opposing forces. Banning it is the least bad way to handle that situation.
(It's been over a yr, vague memory here)
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I don't like G&G classes in my games. The only other thing I ban outright is the Extending rune. The level of cheese is too high for me.
I do restrict uncommmon or rare ancestries, but I just ask for a compelling story reason to allow it.
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Banning things like Tailwind Wands removes that psycho-pressure to take such feats.
What psycho-pressure?
Like, just don't take them. No one is holding a gun to your head and the game works perfectly fine without them.
If you are being pressured into it by other roleplayers, or are so caught up on eaking out every possible advantage that you miss the point of the game, then it seems to me that you have larger issues to deal with wholly unrelated to the rules of the game.
I have literally never seen anyone take Extending in any game I've ever played. That's hilarious. And as you say, incredibly corny.I don't like G&G classes in my games. The only other thing I ban outright is the Extending rune. The level of cheese is too high for me.
I do restrict uncommmon or rare ancestries, but I just ask for a compelling story reason to allow it.
I was surprised to hear Extending caused enough problems to get banned as well. I've taken it on two different characters (Ouroboros Flail comes with it by default as well) but only ever used it once because of the high action cost.
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I have literally never seen anyone take Extending in any game I've ever played. That's hilarious. And as you say, incredibly corny.I don't like G&G classes in my games. The only other thing I ban outright is the Extending rune. The level of cheese is too high for me.
I do restrict uncommmon or rare ancestries, but I just ask for a compelling story reason to allow it.
Had a player who used one in a PFS game once where it seemed ridiculously OP.
Turned out the player hadn't realized it took an action to activate -- he thought you could just "extend" every attack for free. When used *correctly* it isn't an issue.
I have literally never seen anyone take Extending in any game I've ever played. That's hilarious. And as you say, incredibly corny.I don't like G&G classes in my games. The only other thing I ban outright is the Extending rune. The level of cheese is too high for me.
I do restrict uncommmon or rare ancestries, but I just ask for a compelling story reason to allow it.
My son took it and loved it. He was around 9 at the time. The idea of a 3' Kobold with a 5' greatsword that could extend to 60' to swat flying things out of the air was absolutely amazing to him.
I've never seen anyone else use it. As a GM I didn't find it that problematic considering the other runes you could put in that slot. It's situational and action heavy, but does give you an option aside from "draw a bow" or "hope one of your casters has Air Walk".
It's goofy and that may not suit some folks, but there's no balance issues with it IMO.
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I have literally never seen anyone take Extending in any game I've ever played. That's hilarious. And as you say, incredibly corny.I don't like G&G classes in my games. The only other thing I ban outright is the Extending rune. The level of cheese is too high for me.
I do restrict uncommmon or rare ancestries, but I just ask for a compelling story reason to allow it.
My son took it and loved it. He was around 9 at the time. The idea of a 3' Kobold with a 5' greatsword that could extend to 60' to swat flying things out of the air was absolutely amazing to him.
I've never seen anyone else use it. As a GM I didn't find it that problematic considering the other runes you could put in that slot. It's situational and action heavy, but does give you an option aside from "draw a bow" or "hope one of your casters has Air Walk".
It's goofy and that may not suit some folks, but there's no balance issues with it IMO.
And it is awesome for Animal Barbarians.
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Banning things like Tailwind Wands removes that psycho-pressure to take such feats.What psycho-pressure?
Like, just don't take them. No one is holding a gun to your head and the game works perfectly fine without them.
If you are being pressured into it by other roleplayers, or are so caught up on eaking out every possible advantage that you miss the point of the game, then it seems to me that you have larger issues to deal with wholly unrelated to the rules of the game.
That kind of argument doesn't really function, IMO.
You cannot demand that players pretend power does not matter when it most definitely does.
This phrasing is inexact, but I think it gets the point across:
"Players make PC investment choices based both on the PoV of its thematic/cool appeal (emotional appeal), and based on its appeal via a PoV of game mechanical utility/power (logical appeal).
These two desires are both in harmony and tension with each other."
In other words, no one wants to take something that's cool as hell, but worthless in practice. The motivation to add PC power is there, all the time, in all PC-investment choices.
Telling someone to suck it up and "just don't take them" is akin to telling someone "just don't be hungry."
It's willfully ignoring that the entire play of the game is expressed in many little success/fail outcomes. No system is perfect, and sometimes the least bad option for everyone's fun is to ban a specific wand.
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There does come a point where the option's power becomes "you'd have to be an idiot not to ____."
If a player has the meta-knowledge to know that they can spend 1 skill feat and get all day passives that are otherwise worth Ancestry Feat slots or more, the decision-making of that "choice" is wildly imbalanced. So much so, that it may be a false choice for many people.
This meta gaming also starts an arms race with the GM. Power is power, and it does matter. If the players use a ton of these "free" power sources, then the GM likely will need to compensate. Which can destabilize (or break) the game's combat (rocket tag, etc).
And this also creates an imbalance between the players. If one player is metagaming to gain all that power, then the other players ARE under psycho pressure. Like it or not, people feel obligated to "pull their weight", and will need to actively decide *not* to do the same as their peers. Monkey see the power of the meta golem, Monkey *might* resist the temptation to do the same.
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Long duration buffs are (mostly) fine in the form of slot-cast spells.
For invested casters, that's an intended perk of that PC archeytpe as they out-scale the spell rank. This perk is explicitly that which is denied/payed for by wave casters.
But when put into a wand, the only cost is easily out-scaled gp. As such, many spells (could) enter into the "idiot not to" territory.
Trick Magic Item has a detail that means that this is not an issue most of the time. The devs know that TMI only allows for 2A spells, and so almost all >= 8 hr effects are locked inside spells w/ more than 2A cast times. You see some cast times of 1min, or 10min. However, even the minor aids like Pocket Library are 3A. Tailwind really is an outlier.
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Like it or not, move speed is a core combat stat that has high value. An Ancestry Feat will get you +5 spd, and most of the time that'll cost more via a Heritage access.
Tailwind provides a combat boost that all PCs can benefit from in every combat.
The only other spell I see that's at all in the same classification as Tailwind from the R4 and under spells is False Life/Vitality (no surprise that it is another Player Core spell, before they learned not to do this).
While +10 tHP is an always beneficial effect with significant impact, it is NOT in the same tier of value to the player as Tailwind is.
The Temp HP only lasts until the player is damaged once. In comparison, Tailwind will boost the player all 8 hrs as if that simply was their normal speed.
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Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.
Arguments like
Like, just don't take them. No one is holding a gun to your head and the game works perfectly fine without them.
Are *very* triggering to hear when you've got that experience, lol. Which I suppose explains the word count of this post.
We never take tailwind wands. I understand the desire to optimize in that fashion, but I don't see the necessity. It's so easy to build movement in this game, you rarely need something like a tailwind wand. I would not care if PCs bought them as they are overkill the vast majority of the time and even when they might be useful, they are marginally so.
I'm mostly okay with uncommon stuff, with the exception of ap back matter (from a different AP than the one I would be gming). Any common options I'll allow, though some I'll ask if the player wouldn't mind picking something else if it makes a lot of work for me (dubious knowledge, investigator, etc). If they really do want to use the common option, I will allow it.
I do tend to see how pfs handles things and adopt that stance in games I run, but also characters I play. It feels a lot safer to me to build and get hyped for a character that should be allowed at any table without having to hope they'll allow a specific option.
Personally I would be really annoyed if I built a character using only common options and someone disallowed it because they found it overpowered or something. Feels really stupid that we have this rarity system in place, and then people go out of their way to ban even more than that. Pick one, having both is dumb.
Other then the aforementioned jerks and wangrods, nothing. I use the rarity rules but so long as it fits with the theme of the adventure, then it's fine. When you run into combo or build issues it's usually a player issue not a rules issue. If I had a stable group I'm sure there would be no problem as everyone would be on the same page.
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My strictest GM had a pretty good set of explanations as to what/why things were banned.
Fair reasons.
The counterpoint being I'd really like the game system to do most of that for us so we don't have to. When you have a group of GMs it is nice to have the system as a referee.
Abilities and powers inevitably change the world. Some of it is more or less inevitable. Some of it is a good add to the story. But it is always better to see opportunity cost and alternatives. It is just more interesting. I think there is room for improvement with the invested items rules.
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wrt That's Odd:
My read on it, and the way I've run it, is that the player should be told an area they might want to investigate (if any—there may not be one, and it shouldn't proc in every room), but not have any idea why they want to. In Malevolence, which I ran with an investigator in the party, the investigator player would often disregard That's Odd because it was as likely a haunt as useful information, a hidden wall, or treasure. That's Odd can also risk making the investigator overly confident they found everything important in a room when they haven't.
The skill still presents some issues despite this. The danger of finding a hazard may not even appear in a less player-hostile game; one of the most important things keeping that's odd in check is the risk of checking out something you actually didn't want to and getting smacked for it, imo. That being said—also imo—That's Odd doesn't do terribly much that a thorough player searching every room won't. If anything, as I said above, I've seen it make players less willing to act.
The main annoyance of it, really, is creating a flavorful-yet-unrevealing description of the proc.
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Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.
For what it's worth, I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've played - back in the old PF1 days, the meta items were very real in my experience. Everyone had a wand of CLW to ensure they could get up to full health in-between combats, for example. Wands of Tailwind are objectively a boost in power for very little cost, but I've never seen one in a game - it's just not that relevant a boost to care that much about for most of my players. That isn't to say that they're not meta at the tables you're playing at - these things vary across a wide number of factors. But I wouldn't make recommendations for others to change their gameplay on the assumption that wands of tailwind are absurdly meta personally.
