How to avoid ridiculous player character builds

[kingius]

Here's what I'm doing in my campaign and so far it's kept player character power levels about balanced:

Restrict players to the Player Handbook, Rules Compendium and Miniatures Handbook ONLY. This applies to classes, feats, skills, spells (basically everything).
Disallow all forms of multi-classing; pick your class and when you level up in this class only.
Placed absolutely no magical shops into the campaign world.
The amount of money that shops and market stalls and merchants can offer for any magical item is a tiny fraction of what the magical item is worth.

I would recommend taking such steps in your own campaigns to keep things balanced.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I just let them propose whatever they want from wherever they want, and if it's ridiculous or unbalanced, I say no.

 

[Nytmare]

I just let them propose whatever they want from wherever they want, and if it's ridiculous or unbalanced, I say no.

Yeah, but limiting things like this from the get go means that you don't have to spend as much time researching things you don't know or worrying about stuff that slipped through the cracks.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Placed absolutely no magical shops into the campaign world.
The amount of money that shops and market stalls and merchants can offer for any magical item is a tiny fraction of what the magical item is worth.

This part isn't balanced. It's unbalanced. 3rd Edition has built-in assumptions about how much magic item wealth PCs have, and this is breaking it tremendously.

You've effectively grafted on something that works (source restriction) with something that doesn't work (low-magic without compensation).

 

[Ahnehnois]

Yeah, but limiting things like this from the get go means that you don't have to spend as much time researching things you don't know or worrying about stuff that slipped through the cracks.

Well, things will slip through and you'll need to fix them regardless of what you do in advance. And as far as time spent researching things, I think "I don't understand this" is a perfectly good reason so say no. It's on the player to create a character whose mechanics I can understand, as well as approve of.

 

[Umbran]

Having some restriction to what books they can build from is fine. But, "No multiclassing," is probably a non-starter, for me. That limits PC concepts too much.
I do, however, generally tell players that they cannot assume that any particular Prestige Class will be available. Some may be, but you'll generally have to discover them in-game, not plan to become one before game start.
Some of my game worlds have magic shops, others don't. However, I tell players they cannot generally expect specific items will be available. You can probably get a magic sword. But a magic sword with exactly the set of special abilities you want? Unlikely. Generally, I advise them to not plan builds assuming that particular items will be available.

Also, I do something folks may consider really weird - I actually talk to my players about what they want their characters to be able to do! I discuss character advancement and goals, in a cooperative manner, rather than a controlling one. So, I help steer my players into builds that they'll find cool, but won't be unbalancing for the party.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Restrict players to the Player Handbook, Rules Compendium and Miniatures Handbook ONLY. This applies to classes, feats, skills, spells (basically everything).
Disallow all forms of multi-classing; pick your class and when you level up in this class only.
Placed absolutely no magical shops into the campaign world.

The PHB classes aren't generally regarded as being well balanced. According to the Tier System, the Vancian caster classes - wizard, cleric and druid - are tier 1, while fighters and monks are tier 5. It's sometimes said that the martial classes are more dependent on magic items, as they need magic weapons and armour (particularly the latter) to be competitive.

Personally I think a better way to balance 3e would be to ban the PHB Vancian casters, and allow the use of the Tome of Battle martial classes.

 

[Crothian]

I do two things. The first is I don't play with players that want to abuse the system. Second, I run a game that just because your character is super powerful doesn't mean he will always be successful because I include challenges that have to be handled outside of the super power characters expertise.

 

[Tuft]

This part isn't balanced. It's unbalanced. 3rd Edition has built-in assumptions about how much magic item wealth PCs have, and this is breaking it tremendously.

You've effectively grafted on something that works (source restriction) with something that doesn't work (low-magic without compensation).

In my opinion, restricting magic items is the single decision *most* likely to cause *severe* imbalance between spell-using and non-spell-using characters in your game.

If a fighter is able to purchase a fligth object, it puts him on equal footing with the wizard with his fly spell. If a wizard picks up a similar item, he just saves the spell slot he would have dedicated to that spell. Guess which character loses the most by your decision?

Congrats, you've just severely depowered the non-caster PCs while just mildly inconveniencing the caster PCs...

 

[Tuft]

It's sometimes said that the martial classes are more dependent on magic items, as they need magic weapons and armour (particularly the latter) to be competitive.

I would say that utility items, such as Winged Boots, Cloak of the Manta Ray, Quickrunner's Shirt, etc, are even more game-changers. After all, you can adjust for the party's to-hit and AC by selecting the AC and to-hit of the monsters you throw at the party. Throwing a +X sword at the fighter can be eaten up by a +X increase in average monster AC, but throwing a pair of Slippers of Spider Climbing at him, and he can probably do stuff he would never be able to do otherwise...

Never give the fighter access to that kind of stuff, well, then you reserve that entire half of the playing-field for the casters, no matter what "tier" they belong to.