The new, shiny "Stuff I Have/Would Ban" thread!

[Pseudonym]

* Iron Armbands / Bracers of Archery

These haven't come up in our game, but why do you feel +2 damage per tier to be ban worthy?

 

[fuzzlewump]

Rather than ban Iron Armbands of power, I just made any bracers of level 6+ count as iron armbands of power, or bracers of archery, or both. That way, everyone still gets the +2 damage if they invest in bracers, but still get to choose interesting/different bracers. I did this because I have no problem with a plus to damage.

Staff of ruin is removed, and instead any headslot item of level 6+ is +2 item bonus to implement damage rolls. That one I just completely made up, so that casters had a way to get +2 damage like meleers and archers, but with the flavor of head slot = increased mind power.

 

[Destil]

* Bloodclaw Weapons
* Iron Armbands / Bracers of Archery
* Expertise feats (I drop monster defense instead)
* Anything that gives benefits beyond the limitations in PHB2, so pretty much no backgrounds from FR, Scales of War, or a few other Dragon articles

This is my short list, though it hasn't come up. The general rule is Power Source Books, PHB1&2 and ECS are in bu default (as well as non-FR specifics from FRCS, since I have a swordmage), but everything else is DM approval required.

I'm rather unhappy with double weapons in general as well, and if it comes down to it I'll rewrite half of 'em and most of their supporting rules to let them in. In fact superior weapons on a whole are a bit annoying and I'd rather clean the entire weapon list up, but it wouldn't affect the game at all and thus so far I haven't made any effort towards it.

 

[Obryn]

These haven't come up in our game, but why do you feel +2 damage per tier to be ban worthy?

Because it's too obvious and boring. When these are available, they overshadow everything else you would put in that slot. For the price, they're unreasonably strong.

Note, though, that I haven't banned the bracers that give +2 damage to basic attacks only.

As for why I'm banning anything, there are pretty much two reasons...

(1) I get new players on occasion, and I'd rather cut the worst abuses off right from the get-go. That way, it's clear ahead of time and I don't need to worry about taking it back later.

(2) I am a rules-monkey myself, and help my players make great PCs. I want to stay away from suggesting these, so figure I'll just ban them ahead of time to remove the temptation from myself.

-O

 

[Saeviomagy]

My general rule is that if it's not in the original 3 books, it's banned. Individual items, rules, feats and powers may be allowed on a character-by-character basis.

A lot of things I'll just automatically say yes to, but there's just so many things that radically swing the game's balance that making "yes" a blanket rule with exceptions is just not feasable. Hopefully this way people will feel happy when they are allowed to use something, not unhappy when they cannot.

Incidentally, if I ever get to the point where I feel the expertise feats are a necessary fix, I intend to quietly reduce monster defenses instead.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

These haven't come up in our game, but why do you feel +2 damage per tier to be ban worthy?

For me it has to do with damage stacking. I think the order of effectiveness should go: Powers-Feats-Items. I think all items should provide ONLY temporary or circumstantial modifiers or small constant bonuses that are smaller than feat bonuses. Any modifiers that apply constantly should be feats, any powers that do daily type damage should be power only.

Since Weapon Focus applies a +1/+2/+3 bonus with a particular weapon type, any item bonus should provide a smaller bonus than that or a more limited bonus than that.

Iron Armbands/Bracers of Archery provide a bigger bonus that works in MORE circumstances than a feat.

But more than that, it's also due to stacking. As far as I can tell, the original design philosophy was that Level+Class Features+Enhancement bonuses should be the core of your characters damage and that any damage after that should be very small and not stackable. They wanted your characters class to be most of your character.

Unfortunately, there are already too many untyped bonuses or bonuses of types that stack with everything else anyways. I think the formula should work like this: (the with the bonuses separated by Tier like: Heroic/Paragon/Epic)

(1[w]/2[w]/3[w])+enhancement+(up to +2/+4/+6 from feats)+(up to +1/+2/+3 from items, or +2/+4/+6 if it involves a sacrifice of some sort)+(up to +4/+8/+12 from powers/class)

Unfortunately, this is basically true other than the item portion. It is possible to get +24 from items instead of +3. I posted this in another thread, but the key to fixing this is to make ALL items that give bonuses give item bonuses. Then reduce Iron Armband/Bracers of Archery to +1/+2/+3 and then change Bloodclaw to 1 for 1 or 2 for 1 with two handed weapons, and Reckless to only give a bonus on damage equal to the enhancement bonus instead of double. Also, change all of their bonuses to item bonuses. You can either use a Bloodclaw weapon OR Iron Armband, but both won't stack with each other.

I think that puts their bonuses back in line with the rest of the game and in particular, the rest of items.

 

[FireLance]

Well, as I posted recently in another thread:

I would rather tweak items than ban them, either by limiting the frequency of use (e.g. allowing the bloodclaw property to be used 1/round or 1/encounter) or tinkering with the numerical bonuses (e.g. take 1 damage for +2/+3 damage with heroic-tier +1/+2 weapons, take 2 damage for +4/+6 damage with paragon-tier +3/+4 weapons, and take 3 damage for +6/+9 damage with epic-tier +5/+6 weapons).

I would only ban game elements that I had a fundamental conceptual problem with (and so far, I can't think of anything that I would ban offhand). For everything else, it is simply a matter of adjusting the mechanical expression to something that I am comfortable with. As an aside and IMO, one of the key improvements introduced by 4e is making the 1/encounter frequency so pervasive in the game. This has made balancing the game much easier because the benefits that are not significant enough to be restricted to a 1/day usage but which are too good to be used at-will (or, even if there are multiple uses in a day, too good if they are used two or three times in a single encounter) can be made into 1/encounter abilities.

 

[dvorak]

Grasping Weapon (AV2)
Weapon: Polearm, Spear
Enhancement: +2 attack rolls and damage rolls
Critical: None
Property: You can use this weapon to grab targets, adding the weapon’s enhancement bonus to your grab attack. You can still use this weapon to attack a target you’ve grabbed with it.

Power (Encounter): Free Action. Use this power when you hit with the weapon. Pull the target into an unoccupied space adjacent to you. The target is grabbed (until escape).

Badge of the Berserker (AV2)
Item Slot: Neck
Enhancement: +1 Fortitude, Reflex, and Will

Property: When you charge, your movement made as part of the charge doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

These two items would receive my vote; at the very least modified. Power (Daily) for the Grasping weapon and/or remove spear aspect and then include Power (Encounter) for the Badge.

The ability to negate anything between a party member and the BBEG becomes anti-climatic. Of course I don't DM so it is moot.

 

[CapnZapp]

Banning things isn't being a bad DM - it's being responsible. Less is more.

Making Dms out to be "bad" because they ban things is just this irritating player entitlement that rears its ugly head where WotC want to wrestle away control over campaigns from DMs to arrive at a position maximized for profit: "go ahead and buy all our books; if your DM doesn't like it, tell him or her we said it was okay!"

So threads like this is very useful - chances are if enough DMs ban an item, it suggests it really IS broken.

That said, it would be really nice if you could add a reference so we could see at a glance where each thing comes from (without having to look it up in the compendium).

Items
* Bloodclaw Weapons (AV1)
I haven't read up on the discussions, but I'm guessing the issue here is temporary hp? Perhaps it could be allowed if you got x1 (x1.5 for two-handers) instead of x2 (x3)...

* Reckless Weapons (AV1)
This really ought to have given a to hit penalty as well. Lots of games have fallen into the trap of paying for more damage with weaker defense; and its abusable in all of them - you simply use this only when you stand a good chance of not being attacked. Then you get extra damage for free.

* Iron Armbands / Bracers of Archery (AV1)
Would you consider halving the benefit, to not make them a must have?

* Phrenic Crown (AV1)
Is this really broken in itself, or just in combination with the broken build of the Orbizard? (Which Wizards haven't fixed YET)

Feats
* Dragonmark feats (I'd allow them for the "correct" races if I were running Eberron, though.)
No opinion. Disallowing these outside of Eberron is completely uncontroversial in my opinion.

* Any non-default-setting gods and their Channel Divinity feats require pre-approval, but in practice this mostly amounts to...
* Righteous Rage of Tempus, yes, even post-errata
OK - I'll have to check out any threads on this one - I really thought the "update" fixed any egregious brokenness?

* Kind of the Expertise feats, though since everyone gets the bonuses from them at 5/15/25 levels in my campaign, I'm not really taking anything away from my players.
Agreed. It's not the bonuses that are niggling, it's how WotC pretends those feat slots would be used for anything else, like these feats weren't utterly superior to everything else.

Powers
* Wiz 5: Grasp of the Grave (Dragon 372)
Hadn't noticed this one. Getting to auto-daze anybody at level 5 do sound powerful. Care to elaborate?

Backgrounds
* Anything that gives benefits beyond the limitations in PHB2, so pretty much no backgrounds from FR, Scales of War, or a few other Dragon articles
A given.

 

[Baumi]

I only banned Double-Weapons except Staffs and Spiked Chains (need feats for them and are still weaker than the other ones). The new ones from Eberron seems also ok, but the original Double-Weapons made to many other weapons (-combinations) obsolete.