D&D 3E/3.5 What do you ban? (3.5)

[Alexander123]

I am interested in knowing what you ban in your games. I usually have disjunction banned. I also have a gentlemens agreement about PAO.

I am interested in knowing whether you ban/nerf the planar binding spells, and why. I have heard that abuse is possible with them although I haven't actually tried them myself. If you can throw some light on the kind of abuse that is possible with these spells I would appreciate it.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I nerf a bunch of spells/powers, the ones I outright ban are:

Alter Self (PH)
Wraithstrike (SpC)
Shapechange (PH)
Power Word Pain (RotD)
Ray of Stupidity (SpC)
Dance of Ruin (BoVD)
Greater Metamorphosis (XPH)

I nerfed Gate, Shivering Touch (a penalty that can't drop you below 1 now), Wings of Flurry, and Wings of Cover. Polymorph got limited in what you can transform into (only MM1 creatures, among other little changes). Enervation got effectively nerfed because i treat multiple castings of it as "same spell/source" and don't allow them to stack, just overlap.

Feats, I banned:
Epic Spellcasting
Holy Warrior
Persistent Spell

Classes, I ban the Archivist. I think that's the name. The really stupid base class that can learn ANY divine spell, even from the partial casting classes (Paladin, etc...) and PrC lists. Holy crap is that dumb.

Magic Items, I only ban Nightsticks and Amulet of Second Chances. Former because it's incredibly abusable and there's alternatives now to get more turn undead uses without needing a nightstick. Latter because I think it'd create a massive headache to try and re-do an entire combat turn, though at its price I don't think the item is overpowered. Just a logistical nightmare.

Monsters...umm...I avoid the later monster manuals because they seem overpowered. I ban Savage Species. And I ban whatever the hell race Pun Pun uses to assume supernatural abilities.

That's just the stuff I have written down, there's been lots of things friends have mentioned to me in casual conversation where I was like, "yeah, I'd ban that." Like the Lucid Dreaming skill, if my friend's description of using it to take over people's minds while they sleep is accurate.

 

[Fallenibilis]

As im not DMing yet im haven't Nerfed or Baned anything but my DM as Baned and Nerfed a few things.

Baned-
Everlasting Rations and anything simmilar
Duskblade (he just doesnt like the class)
Psionics
Persistant Spell
Power word pain
Elves Racial ability to trance along with their immunity to sleep spells

Nerfed-
Healing Belt made it cure light wounds instead of cure moderate

 

[Celebrim]

It would be very tedious to go into all my class, race, feat and spell changes - to say nothing of the various tweaks to the base resolution rules which are designed to disfavor certain approaches and spellcasters in general.

However, there are outright bans on all the following:

1) All PrC's.
2) Virtually all spells not in the SRD, and most particularly on divine spells.
3) Virtually all classes not in the SRD.
4) Any wand containing divine spells.
5) The Druid class.
6) The Monk class.
7) Spiked chains.

In general, there are changes to virtually anything that gives complete immunity, from the Elves immunity to sleep to Deathward and Mindblank. You can gain buffs that give you virtual immunity, but true immunity I try to write out of existance. Shapechanging that would allow you to gain larger bonuses on anything compared to similar spells of that level, or which would effect your maximum hit points positively (such as by Con enhancement), or which would allow spellcasting while in anything other than a humanoid form, or which have long durations and effect things other than primarily modes of movement and environmental adaptation have been rewritten. Any spell that causes death on a failed save instead brings the target to negative hit points, allowing at least one round of intervention. Several tediously broken spells - glitterdust, ray of enfeeblement, etc. - have been slightly nerfed to give them effects more appropriate to their level. Many breaking changes brought on by 3.5 simply haven't been adopted in favor of leaving things in their 3.0 state.

 

[Sekhmet]

I am interested in knowing what you ban in your games. I usually have disjunction banned. I also have PAO banned although I have kept the other polymorph spells.

I am interested in knowing whether you ban/nerf the planar binding spells, and why. I have heard that abuse is possible with them although I haven't actually tried them myself. If you can throw some light on the kind of abuse that is possible with these spells I would appreciate it.

Planar Binding is pretty rough. A common use of the spell is to summon Imps for their Commune ability, which more or less gets you access to pertinent information regarding anything. This can trivialize many non-combat scenarios.

Summon a Glabrezu and take his monthly Wish spell. Don't call a specific Glabrezu, just "Glabrezu" in general, and you should get a new one every time you summon, so you can do it multiple times a day. If you fail to overpower his spell resist, he's only CR13.

So, right before that, if your party can't kill a CR13, summon an Archon and request he help you with your next encounter against a demon or devil, something they're happy to do (so it should succeed).

Bind a Succubus and have her seduce the local King/Lord/Magistrate/High Priest and you have blackmail against them, which again can trivialize a lot of non-combat encounters.


Summon an Efreeti for unlimited wishes for only a 6th level spell at no real cost to the player. Take a piece of it's flesh before it leaves, make a simulacrum of it, and you've got three wishes every day for the rest of your career.

Can nab you Permanency. Erinyes have always-on True Seeing. Lillends have Identify. Planetar casts Raise Dead. Noble Djinni can also grant three wishes, but you can just demand their servitude (which is one of their core traits, similar to the genie in the lamp idea).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Alot of these reasons for planar binding, etc... being broken always just seemed like tremendous abuses that no sane DM would stand for anyway, so I just never bothered to ban them.

 

[Alexander123]

Celebrim, why did you ban the Druid Class?

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

I have yet to ban anything for any of my groups. Before we play, I sit them down and tell them that anything they can do, the NPCs can do and that shenanigans won't happen unless the PCs use them first. I run fairly high-power games, so any self-nerfing that happens isn't all that extensive (most of my parties keep using shapechanging, wraithstrike, DMM, etc., the only one they forgo being disjunction), but I've found it works out better if you let the players choose what's "too much" as long as you can handle the consequences.

For one campaign, I was running two parties of five PCs each in the same world, and they all decided to use some template hacks to get around +10 LA worth of templates for free; the major baddies went through the same procedures, in game and out of game, and all was well. In another, the PCs and NPCs got into an escalating wish war, when the PCs bound a bunch of efreet for cheap wishes, the bad guys found out about it through their connections in the City of Brass, and the efreet started offering the bad guys wishes to stop the PCs.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I have no universal ban/nerf list. If I do ban or nerf something, I do it for campaign-specific reasons (IOW, "There are no Dwarves/Druids/necromancy spells in this game because of _____").

Beyond that, I'll permit just about anything...as long as I get a look at it first.

 

[Dandu]

I don't ban anything except infinite loops.