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D&D 3E/3.5 What do you ban? (3.5)
- Thread starter Alexander123
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Did I miss something, or is it that everybody's cool with Divine Power, Forcecage, Gate and Creation spells ?
Divine power isn't so hot without DMM: persistent, since you have to spend precious rounds during combat buffing.
Forcecage has that annoying expensive material component, which adds up fast. It can potentially trivalise melee encounters though (eg: DM uses 2 death giants, I forcecage one of them, the party gang-tackles the other, then readies actions while I dismiss forcecage.
As for major creation, it's one of those spells which players in my games like to joke about, but never get around to abusing.
Has anyone used elminster's effulgent epuration and elminster's evasion (now instant refuge) before? They seem like very strong spells on paper, but I have no experience with how they actually fare.
Eldritch_Lord
Adventurer
Celebrim said:
I don't think it really adds all that much complexity; in my experience, players usually have two or three damage points they tend to use that they pre-calculate (e.g. normal attack vs, tanky opponents for the accuracy, PA -4 against slow tough monsters for extra damage, PA -BAB to one-shot mooks) or have a normal routine they use to figure out an opponent's AC (e.g PA for 2 more each round until you keep missing, then go back one notch). If your players tend to change up their PA numbers on the fly a lot during combat, I can see why that would be a bit of a time sink.
Shock Trooper isn't broken on its own, it really only breaks things when you can (A) multiply PA damage to ridiculous levels or (B) ignore AC, either because you can soak hits or because you have other alternate defenses. Unless you're a PAing ubercharger or a Frenzied Berserker with a cloak of displacement and a normal AC of 5, I find that most PCs can't afford to drop their AC by more than 4 or 5 points because the return just isn't worth it.
Effulgent epuration is very nice, because by the time you hit 9th level spells (or even more so in low epic) you should have so many defenses and immunities that the majority of enemy casters you face have to focus on one strategy such as metamagicked orb blasting or ridiculous-save-DC SoDs to have a chance (and the one-shot-wonder NPC casters can easily afford to focus all their resources on that). If your enemy is counting on a Mailman build or an implosion/disintegrate spec to challenge you and you can just say "no" to 1 targeted spell per CL, there's not much he can do.
Also, the only dispels you really care about (besides disjunction) are targeted. With EEE, your buffs are safe.
Instant refuge is nice, but I don't think it's worth a 9th-level slot. You can achieve the same thing with Craft Contingent Spell; the only thing the spell does is save you a bunch of cash on your contingent greater plane shifts, which, while useful (55K is a noticeable chunk of change), probably would be better as a 7th or 8th level spell with a bigger cost.
Celebrim
Legend
In the long history of ridiculous attacks on my statements, this has to be the most ridiculous one. If there is one that exceeds it, I have thankfully scrubbed it form my memory.
Yes, it is deception by trickery. I'm pretending to play a monster that wants to kill the PC's and preserve its own existance, but in fact I'm actually playing with the goal of having the monster die and preserving the existance of the PC's. That is deception. If you don't think that is deception, why don't you come out and tell the players that your deliberately misplaying monsters.
Yes, it is deprivation by trickery. I am depriving the PC's of their oppurtunity for honest victory. We we go into combat, we are moving into something that is largely a tactical subgame. In this subgame, the assumption of the player is that they are obtaining victory through creative play and tactical accumen - not because the DM is throwing the subgame.
This is illusionism. This is fooling the players into believe that they are in a life and death struggle, while pulling your punches so as to reduce the chance that it will actually be a life and death struggle.
Yes, this is acting dishonestly. Why don't you try playing this way while revealing to your players that you are doing it. "Well, this Ogre Barbarian would maximize his expected damage if he power attacked for 3 here, but I'm not going to because I know you only have 13 hit points and you'll probably die if I do so and the blow hits." Go ahead and see how well the game would play if you were actually being honest about what you are doing here.
Let's say the party finds itself needing to slay a clan of ogres who have been molesting travellers. Almost always they will do their best to murder the ogres in the most brutal and effective manner possible, and they are supposed to be the good guys having some amount of human feeling and commitment to mercy. How much less reasonable is it for a monster, without mercy, loving bloodshed, and with its life on the line to not do everything in its power to resist the PC's? I mean, these are somewhat stupid selfish creature, and it might be reasonable if their defence was somewhat uncoordinated or if one or more tried to flee at the others expense if the battle was turning against them, but how reasonable and true to the character of the ogres is it for them to hold back and pull their blows? And how reasonable is this when the actual reason for the holding back and pulling the blows is to ensure the death of the ogres? Yes, that is treating the players with kid gloves. I don't see how you think it isn't.
Yes, because that's not what I said either. I said PA was important to melee characters who wanted to deal more than 50 damage in a single blow - thereby triggering a massive damage save (ei, 'Save or Die'). We could call this the 'Great Axe' strategy. But that is only one of many potential strategies for a melee character. As just an example, another strategy would be to maximize the number of attacks you make in a single round - doing less damage per blow but perhaps more damage total. Another strategy might be to maximize not the maximum damage but the average damage that your blows did, without regard to whether you regularly provoked a massive damage save in the target. All that was I think clear from my context, and in this context I think it ought to be fully clear why limiting power attack in this way was good for the players on the whole. To say nothing of the fact that my other concern is making sure that 'sword and board' is a very viable strategy as well.
Please don't try to tell me about my rules. Superior Cleave under my rules is a feat that allows you to take a 5' step after dropping a target. The real limit here isn't movement rate, but the number of attacks of oppurtunity you can make (but there are feats to fix that). And there are also ways to fix the problem of chaining the cleaves together, for example Avalanche Attack.
Secret Technique (Cleave) means that any attack triggered by you Cleave feat automatically threatens a critical hit if it succeeds.
Improved Precision means that any time you threaten a critical hit, you may add your base reflex save to the roll to confirm the critical hit.
The way you do this is if you have a corridor tightly packed with mooks, you take your +2 Brutal Greataxe or some such and you start flailing on targets till they drop, then you take your 5' step down the corridor and Cleave which automatically threatens a critical that you are very likely to confirm. That does triple (quadruple if your weapon is Brutal) damage, which is the equivalent of a full round attack. That drops the mook and you take another step, and activate cleave and do the same thing. And you can keep doing that as long as you have attacks of oppurtunity left. If the cleave doesn't quite drop the mook, you can use the next attack in your iterative attacks to try to drop it so you can continue the chain. And that's to say nothing of what might happen if you have other feats that let you move and attack.
Well, there you have it. And the important thing to remember is that it's really hard to dispatch higher HP enemies with things like Lightning Bolt and Cone of Cold as well, because monsters tend to have more HD than CR and they tend to have CON bonuses and direct damage spells are dice capped in 3.X. So your 10 die lightning bolt doing average 35 damage before we discuss saving throws and energy resistance (to say nothing of mooks with the Heavy Infantry feat forming a shield wall) is unlikely to be any more effective than the above plan and probably a good deal less effective
What is this? Aren't you reading? Does it sound like I'm trying to take things away from melee combatants? The only tables that give more to the melee combatants than mine are tables that turn melee combatants into spell casters (via for example Tome of Battle) and even then its questionable that on a relative scale (what you are expected to face in my game compared to what a game that features heavily optimized characters from multiple splatbooks are expected to face) that I'm giving less options to them.
In stock unmodified 3.5 most melee builds involved two-handed weapons. Those that didn't involved the interaction of a few broken feats like Robilar's Gambit. The reason for having power attack do 1.5 damage per point is to keep it in line with the strength bonus you get from a two-handed weapon and prevent it from being the clearly best build. It's worth noting that at the same time I talked about what I had taken away, I was also talking about what I'd given back - the 3.0 rules allowing power attack to be used with light weapons which allowed for Weapon Fineese + Power Attack combos.
I think the problem here must be the recent cosolidation of the boards. This is now the house rules forum. We are talking about what has been banned and many people are responding, "Well, I have banned only a small list, but I've tweaked downward alot of things that could be broken." I would imagine a lot of people have adopted the damage bonus from power attack with a two-handed weapon is 1.5 rule because it just makes sense. Maybe it is true that in stock 3.X (particularly limited to the SRD), the only viable melee build is Power Attacking with a Two-Handed sword or Guisarme something of the sort, and if the only tweak you made to the whole rules set was adjusting Power Attack downward then you'd be taking away the only thing melee had. However, whether that is true or not, it should be plenty clear that for most of us with a banned list, banning or nerfing something isn't the only adjustment we've made.
The thing taken away (double damage on power attack when wielding two-handed) wasn't perfectly balanced. And despite your obscene references, I honestly feel that no one could read my posts in this thread and think that all I'm doing is taking things away unless they had a chip on their shoulder that predisposed them to see that regardless of what was in front of them.
... no. No it would not be.
cheat (cht)v. cheat·ed, cheat·ing, cheats
v.tr.1. To deceive by trickery; swindle: cheated customers by overcharging them for purchases.
Yes, it is deception by trickery. I'm pretending to play a monster that wants to kill the PC's and preserve its own existance, but in fact I'm actually playing with the goal of having the monster die and preserving the existance of the PC's. That is deception. If you don't think that is deception, why don't you come out and tell the players that your deliberately misplaying monsters.
Yes, it is deprivation by trickery. I am depriving the PC's of their oppurtunity for honest victory. We we go into combat, we are moving into something that is largely a tactical subgame. In this subgame, the assumption of the player is that they are obtaining victory through creative play and tactical accumen - not because the DM is throwing the subgame.
This is illusionism. This is fooling the players into believe that they are in a life and death struggle, while pulling your punches so as to reduce the chance that it will actually be a life and death struggle.
Yes, this is acting dishonestly. Why don't you try playing this way while revealing to your players that you are doing it. "Well, this Ogre Barbarian would maximize his expected damage if he power attacked for 3 here, but I'm not going to because I know you only have 13 hit points and you'll probably die if I do so and the blow hits." Go ahead and see how well the game would play if you were actually being honest about what you are doing here.
Let's say the party finds itself needing to slay a clan of ogres who have been molesting travellers. Almost always they will do their best to murder the ogres in the most brutal and effective manner possible, and they are supposed to be the good guys having some amount of human feeling and commitment to mercy. How much less reasonable is it for a monster, without mercy, loving bloodshed, and with its life on the line to not do everything in its power to resist the PC's? I mean, these are somewhat stupid selfish creature, and it might be reasonable if their defence was somewhat uncoordinated or if one or more tried to flee at the others expense if the battle was turning against them, but how reasonable and true to the character of the ogres is it for them to hold back and pull their blows? And how reasonable is this when the actual reason for the holding back and pulling the blows is to ensure the death of the ogres? Yes, that is treating the players with kid gloves. I don't see how you think it isn't.
Yes, because that's not what I said either. I said PA was important to melee characters who wanted to deal more than 50 damage in a single blow - thereby triggering a massive damage save (ei, 'Save or Die'). We could call this the 'Great Axe' strategy. But that is only one of many potential strategies for a melee character. As just an example, another strategy would be to maximize the number of attacks you make in a single round - doing less damage per blow but perhaps more damage total. Another strategy might be to maximize not the maximum damage but the average damage that your blows did, without regard to whether you regularly provoked a massive damage save in the target. All that was I think clear from my context, and in this context I think it ought to be fully clear why limiting power attack in this way was good for the players on the whole. To say nothing of the fact that my other concern is making sure that 'sword and board' is a very viable strategy as well.
Please don't try to tell me about my rules. Superior Cleave under my rules is a feat that allows you to take a 5' step after dropping a target. The real limit here isn't movement rate, but the number of attacks of oppurtunity you can make (but there are feats to fix that). And there are also ways to fix the problem of chaining the cleaves together, for example Avalanche Attack.
Secret Technique (Cleave) means that any attack triggered by you Cleave feat automatically threatens a critical hit if it succeeds.
Improved Precision means that any time you threaten a critical hit, you may add your base reflex save to the roll to confirm the critical hit.
The way you do this is if you have a corridor tightly packed with mooks, you take your +2 Brutal Greataxe or some such and you start flailing on targets till they drop, then you take your 5' step down the corridor and Cleave which automatically threatens a critical that you are very likely to confirm. That does triple (quadruple if your weapon is Brutal) damage, which is the equivalent of a full round attack. That drops the mook and you take another step, and activate cleave and do the same thing. And you can keep doing that as long as you have attacks of oppurtunity left. If the cleave doesn't quite drop the mook, you can use the next attack in your iterative attacks to try to drop it so you can continue the chain. And that's to say nothing of what might happen if you have other feats that let you move and attack.
Well, there you have it. And the important thing to remember is that it's really hard to dispatch higher HP enemies with things like Lightning Bolt and Cone of Cold as well, because monsters tend to have more HD than CR and they tend to have CON bonuses and direct damage spells are dice capped in 3.X. So your 10 die lightning bolt doing average 35 damage before we discuss saving throws and energy resistance (to say nothing of mooks with the Heavy Infantry feat forming a shield wall) is unlikely to be any more effective than the above plan and probably a good deal less effective
What is this? Aren't you reading? Does it sound like I'm trying to take things away from melee combatants? The only tables that give more to the melee combatants than mine are tables that turn melee combatants into spell casters (via for example Tome of Battle) and even then its questionable that on a relative scale (what you are expected to face in my game compared to what a game that features heavily optimized characters from multiple splatbooks are expected to face) that I'm giving less options to them.
In stock unmodified 3.5 most melee builds involved two-handed weapons. Those that didn't involved the interaction of a few broken feats like Robilar's Gambit. The reason for having power attack do 1.5 damage per point is to keep it in line with the strength bonus you get from a two-handed weapon and prevent it from being the clearly best build. It's worth noting that at the same time I talked about what I had taken away, I was also talking about what I'd given back - the 3.0 rules allowing power attack to be used with light weapons which allowed for Weapon Fineese + Power Attack combos.
I think the problem here must be the recent cosolidation of the boards. This is now the house rules forum. We are talking about what has been banned and many people are responding, "Well, I have banned only a small list, but I've tweaked downward alot of things that could be broken." I would imagine a lot of people have adopted the damage bonus from power attack with a two-handed weapon is 1.5 rule because it just makes sense. Maybe it is true that in stock 3.X (particularly limited to the SRD), the only viable melee build is Power Attacking with a Two-Handed sword or Guisarme something of the sort, and if the only tweak you made to the whole rules set was adjusting Power Attack downward then you'd be taking away the only thing melee had. However, whether that is true or not, it should be plenty clear that for most of us with a banned list, banning or nerfing something isn't the only adjustment we've made.
The thing taken away (double damage on power attack when wielding two-handed) wasn't perfectly balanced. And despite your obscene references, I honestly feel that no one could read my posts in this thread and think that all I'm doing is taking things away unless they had a chip on their shoulder that predisposed them to see that regardless of what was in front of them.
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Celebrim
Legend
The trick with shock trooper is to do so much damage that your foe doesn't really get the oppurtunity to take advantage of your AC penalty because they are dead. That's the major problem with trading AC for damage directly. Power Attack is inherently pretty balanced because if you trade too much 'to hit' away for damage, you risk missing entirely and actually reducing average damage. The point of shock trooper (and things that emulate it) is to reduce combats to a single round when possible, especially when facing only a single large foe. That gets us to the problem 'initiative FTW' and single or two round combats that has long plagued high level D&D.
The other problem with shock trooper is that many foes don't really care what your AC is anyway. If you are charging an opposing spellcaster, chances are that your AC is fairly irrelevant anyway. So it is pure win in that case.
Celebrim
Legend
Did I miss something, or is it that everybody's cool with Divine Power, Forcecage, Gate and Creation spells ?
Divine Power: It's short duration prevents it from being overly abusive, as it pretty much has to be cast in combat or just before it. My game has a more balanced version of Persistant Spell that would give it a long duration, but only at the cost of a 9th level spell slot. I generally don't worry too much about balancing 9th level stuff. They never turn up in my campaign anyway, since I'd normally pull the plug on a campaign at about 15th level. In any event, over reliance on long duration spell buffs opens you up to Dispel Magic grief.
Forcecage: The big problem with forcecage is the absolute immunity. In my game all the force spells essentially are walls with high DR. This increases the number of things you can do to get around the problem.
Gate: Like I said, I don't worry too much about the 9th level stuff. But looking at the spell, the only problem I see is the 'double HD of a single creature' 'restriction'. The problem I see there is that you can command creatures with higher CR and ECL than your own, which could be problimatic. Granted, the spell costs 1000 XP so using this more than a few times is going to severely restrict your character growth, but I think that before it gets to the point where anyone in my game cast Gate I'd probably come up with some slightly more restrictive restriction on the spell than 'less than 34 HD'. Still, any 9th level spell with a 1000 XP cost is going to have to be quite powerful indeed.
Creation: Except as an attempt to defraud someone, I can't actually think of a lot of obvious abuses of these spells. I can imagine a few extra restrictions I might add - can't use them as material components, created objects radiate conjuration magic, etc. - but on the whole these seem balanced.
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GreyLord
Legend
I don't have a problem with Divine Power, Force Cage, Gate, or Creation.
By the time that one can cast Divine Power, there are other more useful spells they could cast. Even when they first gain access to it, it's a one trick pony...and with a whole dungeon or landscape to worry about...the question they have to wonder is WHEN they are going to cast it. If they cast it when they encounter the BBEG, that's probably the best time for them to cast it. It still takes time to cast while everyone else is fighting, and if they are trying to be a melee character...that means they probably are going to be avoiding being hit during that round, or taking hits during that time anyways.
At those levels typically things like Freedom of Movement are more useful to the party as a whole anyways in many instances, and even when they find equipment that makes it unnecessary or less necessary, they normally have more important spells to worry about then something trying to replicate what one of the melee characters can already do effectively. Clerical spells can be a limited but essential resource. These can be replicated by other things...but then there are other spells of just as much use. Once they have enough levels to cast it before are at the start of most battles, most have access to other spells with more powerful effects that they'd rather cast in that time.
Forcecage is another that can be powerful, but is also limited. Nice spell, but I've never had any problem with it. They use it, overcome an encounter, and go on to the next thing.
With Gate, by that point I expect the Wizard to be the Fury of Destruction, annhilation, and with so much knowledge that the entire world probably already is awed by the Wizard's power. Hence, I really have no problems with the spell.
Actually, I have very little problems with any spells, and if one actually was unbalancing I'd use my imagination and Rule 0 to put the munchkin in their place.
Which brings up another point, Any one of those spells are actually far out done by what I've seen Munchkin players able to pull off at the same power point (aka, the level where the cleric gains access to the spell). In fact, the power a few of them can make their characters be able to do at that point would probably crush the Cleric before they could cast their spell in some instances. (hence why I normally only allow a 3 class maximum, with class planning if they want any of the prestige classes...so I CAN FOREPLAN any munchkin thinking they might be messing around with).
By the time that one can cast Divine Power, there are other more useful spells they could cast. Even when they first gain access to it, it's a one trick pony...and with a whole dungeon or landscape to worry about...the question they have to wonder is WHEN they are going to cast it. If they cast it when they encounter the BBEG, that's probably the best time for them to cast it. It still takes time to cast while everyone else is fighting, and if they are trying to be a melee character...that means they probably are going to be avoiding being hit during that round, or taking hits during that time anyways.
At those levels typically things like Freedom of Movement are more useful to the party as a whole anyways in many instances, and even when they find equipment that makes it unnecessary or less necessary, they normally have more important spells to worry about then something trying to replicate what one of the melee characters can already do effectively. Clerical spells can be a limited but essential resource. These can be replicated by other things...but then there are other spells of just as much use. Once they have enough levels to cast it before are at the start of most battles, most have access to other spells with more powerful effects that they'd rather cast in that time.
Forcecage is another that can be powerful, but is also limited. Nice spell, but I've never had any problem with it. They use it, overcome an encounter, and go on to the next thing.
With Gate, by that point I expect the Wizard to be the Fury of Destruction, annhilation, and with so much knowledge that the entire world probably already is awed by the Wizard's power. Hence, I really have no problems with the spell.
Actually, I have very little problems with any spells, and if one actually was unbalancing I'd use my imagination and Rule 0 to put the munchkin in their place.
Which brings up another point, Any one of those spells are actually far out done by what I've seen Munchkin players able to pull off at the same power point (aka, the level where the cleric gains access to the spell). In fact, the power a few of them can make their characters be able to do at that point would probably crush the Cleric before they could cast their spell in some instances. (hence why I normally only allow a 3 class maximum, with class planning if they want any of the prestige classes...so I CAN FOREPLAN any munchkin thinking they might be messing around with).
lordxaviar
Explorer
I have read a lot of the replies and think you guys are rough, I dont ban anything, depending on circumstances some things just arent available or dont exist, gunpowder on Oerth,
as for spells... as a DM I can alter any spell to fit what i believe it can or can not do, so open season.
as for books, I try to use all 3.5 books... exceptions... optional rules like unearthed arcana.
Classes,, dont have players who get crazy at min max so i dont have to worry about the crazier out of hand ones..
ban annoying players...lol
as for spells... as a DM I can alter any spell to fit what i believe it can or can not do, so open season.
as for books, I try to use all 3.5 books... exceptions... optional rules like unearthed arcana.
Classes,, dont have players who get crazy at min max so i dont have to worry about the crazier out of hand ones..
ban annoying players...lol
angel8fingers
First Post
I will not allow a charachter to take the epic feat Permanent Emanation in conjunction with Anti-Magic Field. Will allow it with Anti-Life SHell though. My ruling is that the spell has to be subject to SR. My rule of thumb is, if you would'nt want your DM to do it to you; don't do it!
Sorrowdusk
First Post
Triadspell is ban-worthy? I always found it so lame that it wasn't even worth taking. I compared it like this: If I take a 5th level Summon Monster, I can get 1d4+1 monsters from the 3rd level list. Or, I can use Triadspell to get three 3rd level Summon Monster spells, which gives me 3 monsters from the 3rd level list. That might seem like it's kinda even, except that using Triadspell costs me 4 rounds of casting.
Maybe I have it wrong, but I just don't see the awesome in it. Help?
EDIT: Nevermind. I typed "triadspells broken" into Google and it referred me to posts here on En World... written by me. Apparently, I am very, very, very tired.
You Know You Might Be A Redne-er Tired , when you try to google how a spell can be broken...and find your own posts.
