D&D 3E/3.5 Top 20 most broken character builds 3.5

spiderfate · Oct 11, 2011

A few of us DM's are trying to come up with a rule combination disavowed list. The kind of character builds that break the game or severely over balance the party. For instance stacking all the different feats and magic items that enhance inspire courage, which ends up giving outrageous bonuses.

kitcik · Oct 11, 2011

spiderfate said:
A few of us DM's are trying to come up with a rule combination disavowed list. The kind of character builds that break the game or severely over balance the party. For instance stacking all the different feats and magic items that enhance inspire courage, which ends up giving outrageous bonuses.

A few thoughts on this:
1) Most truely "broken" builds require dubious rules interpretations. Maybe by a lawyer's reading they are RAW, but they are clearly not RAI. You shouldn't need a list of these - just ban them as they come up.
2) Any (reasonably well played) full caster will overbalance a party where other party members are Tier 4 and below. You have to consider how far you want to take this.
3) I actually agree about Inspire Courage. We have an 8th-10th level party and our 9th level bard is throwing off +6/+8 Inspire Courage, which makes encounters either very easy or based on inititative. I would prefer this did not occur until much higher levels.
4) One "broken" build that does seem to be RAI and does not involve complicated multiclass / substitution level / feat combos is straight-up Planar Shepherd PrC. That is an easy one to ban. So are certain anthropomorphic animal races from Savage Species, like Bat and Balleen Whale.

emoplato · Oct 11, 2011

I said this in another thread but never allow anyone to take the symbiotic template. It just was never explained to a point where a person can advance in it within reason even though a typical player could pick it up easily.

spiderfate · Oct 11, 2011

i just found one. the candle of evocation. you could summon an efrreeti get three wishes and on the third wish get another candle of evocation. Unlimited wishes.

Trance-Zg · Oct 11, 2011

Wizard 5/ incantatrix 3+(you get metamagic effect)

persistent spell feat.

maximize spellcraft with every possible/impossible way

emoplato · Oct 11, 2011

Cancer Mage(Festering Anger)/Hulking Hurler, Brutal throw and Area attack feats with the area attack and overburdened heave two hand throwing tricks. Lets throw a cliff side and kill everything on the field.

xigbar · Oct 11, 2011

Well, Pun-Pun, obviously. Secondly, a "broken" build is only broken if the player knows how to use it.

Dandu · Oct 12, 2011

Things involving Taint Scholar, Dweomerkeeper, Beholder Mage, and Illithid Savant tend to get a little out of hand.

cjosephs1s · Oct 12, 2011

Broken builds? I'm probably going to be about the only one with this point of view but a build is never broken. Even the example of the three wish thing isn't broken. Any good DM will nerf wishes and look exactly at what the player is asking and usually thwart even the craftiest of players so they don't get what they exactly intended. Yeah you get another Candle but its on the 9th layer of Hell. go fetch! lol

Players get creative with characters to build them more powerful than perhaps originally thought. They min/max sometimes. They munchkin here and there and stack bonuses where they can. The game is designed that way. Keep in mind when players do buff something outragouesly they leave weaknesses. For example in the campaign I play (its gestalt) I have a Fire Giant fighter 14/14. Granted he can kill most living critters with a couple crits but he can't make a reflex save to save his life. The undead we just faced killed him in one round of combat from Intelligence drain. Lot of good being able to crit for over 130HP did me. Now many of you would say doing that much damage is broken yet after one round of combat I was killed by a CR appropriate critter so I say its not broken. Hes just good at what he does.

Your the DM, outsmart your players. Look at what their bonuses are going to be at higher levels. Will they still be outrageously high for their level? Throw more challenging monsters at them to even the playing field. Add templates to your critters. In a previous campaign my DM found a nasty template that did 1/2 physcial damage back to my Warblade. Ouch! If a character is broken its only because you let him be. No character is sooo insanely powerful that nothing can kill them or make them quake in their boots just a little. Trust me, we've tried to make them using Gestalt campaings with feats from any d20 source and our DM still kills us (I had a Astral Deva/monk level 11 with an AC over 50 and saves over+20 and he still died from a CR appropriate monster)

Broken? HAAHAHA!!!!!!!! I laugh at broken and then find a way to kill it and so does my DM.

Dandu · Oct 12, 2011

Are you saying that there are no builds that will severely disrupt a game or imbalance the party because the DM can always adjust the situation as needed?