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

[concjo]

Banned - Sudden feats (empower, quicken, etc.)
All Orb Spells
Teleport only allows you to wizards mark one location to use more as a word of recall and G. Teleport works as normal teleport
no Greater Mirror Image
Any UA or PHBII variants for wizards
We don't try persistent cheese
savage species for the most part
Prestige - Occult Slayer, incantrix, abjurant cheese, etc. All of them are subject to DM approval

 

[aboyd]

I operate from a whitelist, banning "everything else."

I allow core books, complete series, PHB2, Spell Compendium. Nothing else. No Book of 9 Swords, no Frostburn, no Dungeonscape; nothing else. Of the books allowed, I only ask that Abrupt Jaunt wizards are capped to line of sight, and can only do it as many times a day as they have levels in the class (so a one level dip doesn't net you lots of teleports).

Also, I run my games like E6, but my level cap is 14. So that effectively bans all 8th & 9th level spells, as there is no one who can reach a high enough level to get them. I do allow gods to cast them, so it's possible they would be in the game in some limited capacity. I've never had to deal with it, though.

I do allow the original polymorph. I never had trouble with it -- no one has abused it, ever. And it actually was never errata'd, so I'm fine with it.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Having played a sorc who used Polymorph frequently (his underlying theme was "change" lots of transmutation spells), I found two things to be true that don't seem to be mentioned much whenevr people savage it on the internet:

1) You still have a d4 HD, if you try to go Rambo on an encounter, you won't like the results a good portion of the time. The more I pounced ahead into the fray, the more I found myself isolated and "target friendly."

2) Great as polymorph is on the caster, it's actually best on an actual melee class or rogue, who can further benefit from the form with combat feats or sneak attack. Just saying, I have a higher tolerance for powerful buff spells than I do other types (buffs you can share, I mean). The most optimal use of polymorph was always "cast it on someone else." Of course, I was a sorcerer, so I had the machine gun-like spell slots to cast it on lots 'o people.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

*snip*

Why ban Dance of Ruin though?

2) Great as polymorph is on the caster, it's actually best on an actual melee class or rogue, who can further benefit from the form with combat feats or sneak attack. Just saying, I have a higher tolerance for powerful buff spells than I do other types (buffs you can share, I mean). The most optimal use of polymorph was always "cast it on someone else." Of course, I was a sorcerer, so I had the machine gun-like spell slots to cast it on lots 'o people.

Polymorph a high level rogue or assassin into a Hydra.

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.

*yawn*

Sounds interesting. YMMV of course.

Oh and I would advise your parties pack a cleric (not in their pocket).
Does your divine spell limitation extend to staves as well? I presume it doesnt include non-wand magic items, does it?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Why ban Dance of Ruin though?

It just seems way out of line with other damage spells of that level.

 

[Sekhmet]

It just seems way out of line with other damage spells of that level.

Thats the spell Vrocks can channel, right?
Doesn't really seem to be a necessary ban, imo. Bullrush/grapple/RingoftheRam, whatever being as common and available as they are.

 

[Dandu]

Entangle, Grease, Web...

Why have all my solution to other people's problems involved Grease as of late?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

My BoVD is at a different house, I can't check the specific aspects of the spell right now. I recall it doing significant damage in a very large area, when most level 2 area spells suck.

 

[Dandu]

I can't just give you the text over the internet, but if I were to homebrew a Dance of Ruin spell, it would have the following features:
Close range (25 ft+5 ft/2 lvl)
Spread centered on caster
Casting time of 1 full round
2d20 points of damage, reflex save for half

Wider range than a Fireball, but it costs you a full round to get off which means the caster will probably find himself under fire.

It deals 21 points of damage on average, reflex save for half. This does not scale with level. It is equal to fireball at CL 6, and starts to fall behind afterward.

It has a wider area of effect, but fireball has a wider range.

Honestly, it seems tame.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It seems tame at level 6. And yet it's available at level 3-4 iirc...

Thanks for your "hypothesizing" what such a spell would do, though. Pretty sure you could have given the damage and area parameters w/o getting crystalkeep'd.

And 1 full round action is hardly a penalty for a spellcaster anyway. I can't recall the last time a spellcaster got hit with slow and was like, "aww crap, I'm useless now."