TTRPGs: broken mechanics vs. abusive players

[ThorinTeague]

Here's an example. In 3.5, Control Winds was a 5th level druid spell that let you raise the level of "wind" by one factor for every 3 caster levels, and had a massive range (in the miles). Combine that with a pearl of power that boosts your divine caster level by 4, and you could make a calm breeze into a hurricane by 11th level.

So I did that! And I flattened a town that an enemy of the party was hiding in to flush him out. After the session, the DM asked me if I could not do that trick anymore because he just didn't have a logical way to counter it, and it would make the game less fun to try. So I said "Of course, no problem", and didn't do that anymore.

Was I being a problem player? I don't think so. It was a bog standard PHB spell, a pretty common magic item, and once you saw how the spell worked, an obvious tactic to use. Using something built into the core books with a minimum of outside synergies and yet was able to cause campaign shaking problems, to me, points to a problem with the books. If I had continued to use that combination because it's "legal", despite being aware of the problems it caused in the campaign, then I would become a problem player.

I can't speak for everybody but for me, this is the kind of stuff that I like my players to be doing. Better yet, cast creatively, as opposed to just stacking a bunch of buffs. Cast reduce on a bolder and slingshot it into an anti-magic field. Cast light on the front of a shield and blind your enemies... Dancing lights can be placed in midair beyond the edge of a cliff in the hopes that enemies will want to check it out, and then take a little tumble off the cliffs... etc. There's so many possibilities of different ways to cast stuff. I think conjuring usually places your conjuration in any square in a 30' radius. You can use this to place the conjured creature on the other side of a barrier, which can sometimes have uses. These are features not bugs IMO.

 

[MichaelSomething]

5E is very well balanced if you run the game by its assumptions. Why do so many ignore those?

I thought people wanted long adventuring days instead of the encounter based designed of 4E? I thought GM were sick of the Christmas trees of 3E? I thought people made characters based off their fiction instead for optimization? I thought DMs wanted to be empowered to change the game to suit their personal taste instead of being dependent upon WOTC to enforce a "tyranny of fun" upon them???

 

[Fenris-77]

Salty? I think I taste some salt. No, before anyone gets upset, 5E seems built to salt pretty much everyone's snacks, one way or another. Run without gamey white-room nonsense, 5E works just fine. It's not my fav, but it's functional and mostly does what it says on the tin.

 

[ThorinTeague]

Speaking of Palladium I'd say the concept of MDC is Rifts is broken. Not because it exists, but because one starting character may have them and another may not.

For those unfamiliar with Rifts/MDC...it was basically a higher value version of HP. I believe it was a 1-100 or possibly 1-1000 ratio. So you might have a starting party where one character had 18HP and another 1200.

Perhaps broken isn't correct here depending on your definition, but I'd say it was.

Mdc was 1:100, but nothing but an mdc weapon could penetrate and damage mdc. They may have changed the particulars for 2nd edition.... Haven't been privvy to that scene for a long time.

 

[ThorinTeague]

Run without gamey white-room nonsense,

I'm not sure I know what that means....

 

[Alzrius]

Here's an example. In 3.5, Control Winds was a 5th level druid spell that let you raise the level of "wind" by one factor for every 3 caster levels, and had a massive range (in the miles).

Are we thinking of the same control winds spell, with a range of 40 feet per caster level, and affects a cylinder with a radius of 40 feet per caster level and is 40 feet high?

 

[Justice and Rule]

Mdc was 1:100, but nothing but an mdc weapon could penetrate and damage mdc. They may have changed the particulars for 2nd edition.... Haven't been privvy to that scene for a long time.

Weren't MDCs meant to be like "roughly" 100, where they could vary slightly from 100? I have never played the game, but I remember someone telling me that.

 

[ThorinTeague]

Weren't MDCs meant to be like "roughly" 100, where they could vary slightly from 100? I have never played the game, but I remember someone telling me that.

I don't remember that but it's been a small eternity for me. I haven't played Rifts since 2000, and haven't DM'd it since the early 90s.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is not a simple question.

First of all, there are rules issues that are extreme border cases, that mostly require someone actively hunting for them to encounter them. That's usually, really bluntly, a player problem, especially since it requires taking advantage of extreme odd combinations to work (but that produce unexpected and undesirable results when they do). Frankly, my opinion is that players who actively hunt out these are playing in bad faith, or alternatively playing a particular way that even pretty gamist players like myself find incompatible with what we're trying to do.

Second there are rules issues that exist because the system has so many complex moving parts that attempting to eliminate all of them is mostly impossible. Many more sophisticated superhero games are like this, because the tools to represent everything appropriate to the genre provide the tools to do some things that likely would never occur in a hero (aka PC) in the genre, by putting them together in an unusual way. These can't really be avoided mechanically for the reasons I reference, and players simply have to be encouraged to Not Do That, if necessary by outright saying no.

Finally there are rules issues that exist either because the designers have a very narrow perception of how things will be used, and/or didn't think things through at all well. Players not trying to do anything untoward can stumble into these, and in some cases the rule can be sufficiently broken it requires effort to engage with it at all without causing problems.

And one has to forget that "broken" can swing both ways. Its possible to have abilities that theoretically are useful but that in practice never really are because of other mechanical elements in the game. People will get snarky and say that this is just people not wanting to play in character, but often they're rules structures that are not presented as being useless--and thus theoretically shouldn't be making the character be useless--but still is.

 

[Jd Smith1]

If the DM didn't houserule-fix the spell such that your exploit couldn't work again (or better yet, identified and shut said exploit down before it first arose), IMO you'd be well within your rights to keep using that trick forever; and it wouldn't make you a problem player in the least.

I will, and have, booted players for that exact attitude.