Can you do inifinite damage?

[Tolen Mar]

Ok, I'm in the mood to share a story here.

A month or two back, we were playing an Iron Heroes game set in Ravenloft. So I decide to go to my FLGS and see if they have a copy of the revised edition so I don't have to keep stealing my DM's copy and cross-referencing the 'net for the changes.

Anyway, I'm standing in the 'D&D' section of the store, when these kids come in. The sad part is they are half my age, I had an old fogey moment as I watched them go back to the game room. All but one of them.

He comes over to where I'm standing.

Now when I say half my age, I mean it. I have DnD books older than this kid (second edition). The conversation goes something like this:

Kid: "What are you looking for?"

Me: "Iron Heroes."

Kid: "Oh. I play standard DnD myself."

Me: I just kinda grunt in agreement.

Kid: "I was in this one campaign where..." He then starts to tell me about his FR game, while I continue scanning book titles. "You been playing long?"

Me: almost laughing. "A while. I'm in two games right now, that's why I was hoping to find a copy of the rulebook."

Kid: "Then you know about building strong characters."

Me: "A bit."

Kid: "Can you do inifinite damage at level 1?"

Me: "..." OMG its one of those kids. "Yeah, if the DM lets it happen."

Kid: "We use standard rules, plus this book, and this one.." He lists a couple of sourcebooks. "And you can do it, even if you have a bad DM."

Me: "Yeah, sure." And I walk away.

I knew I would never convince him that only a DM who allows the right technicalities and loopholes would let such a thing happen, so I walked away. I wasn't in the mood to have a big detailed rules argument right there in the store.

Now, why he picked me is anyone's guess. Maybe I was the first he saw (the store wasn't exactly crowded), maybe he's bored the clerk to tears already and thought I'd be a perfect target. I bring this up because I've not had a conversation like that since I was his age.

And here I am, having just that conversation out of the blue.

Hehe...So any similar stories out there?

 

[Galethorn]

Well, I ran a homebrew scifi campaign where one of my players--16 at the time--wanted his Synth (e.g. robot) PC to have a large, single-shot plasma-cannon built into his arm as a backup weapon. This struck me as cheesy rather than awesome. All I could think was 'damned kids.' That said, this was last year when I was 19.

 

[Tolen Mar]

If we're not careful, we're going to end up with the old geezer thread.

"When I was your age, we gamed without those fancy PDwhatzits, and our computer was as big as a room. We used imagination back then. Both ways. In the snow."

 

[Herobizkit]

Well, I ran a homebrew scifi campaign where one of my players--16 at the time--wanted his Synth (e.g. robot) PC to have a large, single-shot plasma-cannon built into his arm as a backup weapon. This struck me as cheesy rather than awesome. All I could think was 'damned kids.' That said, this was last year when I was 19.

I'm 31, and I think that's awesome.

In the same vein, I allowed (nay, encouraged) one d20 Modern/Future player to have his character lose an arm so he could have it replaced with a Mega-Buster.

If you have to ask what a Mega-Buster is, boo on you.

It helps that he was a Tech Mage.

 

[Oryan77]

I wasn't in the mood to have a big detailed rules argument right there in the store.

You should have stayed and talked to him more about it. A grown man should be able to give his opinion to a kid without arguing with a kid

Obviously this kid was a wargamer/munchkin type of player. I probably would have tried to spend at least a minute explaining to him about ways to play D&D differently and how he's not exactly correct. You may have been able to enlighten the kid to a whole new way of thinking about how to play D&D. A lot of people don't even know that you can roleplay characters instead of thinking of it as a wargame. Several players I've gamed with said I taught them some very interesting ways to look at playing D&D. You could have had an apprentice. Or he could have called you Dusty Old Bones, Full of Green Dust and kicked you in the shins

 

[Creamsteak]

I once played in a game where a character had a +5 (everything in the dmg) weapon. I actually mean everything. That was what they called it. It was both holy and unholy, fire and ice, everything bane, etc. I only played once with that group, but it was a memorable experience. People are welcome to their own fun though. Games like that fulfill something for certain people.

 

[Victim]

Infinite damage is trivial without a time constraint. With an unlimited amount of time, any character can do infinite damage.

 

[Dragonblade]

Kid: "Can you do inifinite damage at level 1?"

Me: "..." OMG its one of those kids. "Yeah, if the DM lets it happen."

Kid: "We use standard rules, plus this book, and this one.." He lists a couple of sourcebooks. "And you can do it, even if you have a bad DM."

My curiousity would have gotten the better of me, and I'd have asked the kid how exactly he can do "infinite" damage. Since I'm pretty sure if it was possible, I'd have figured it out.

Most likely they have misinterpreted a rule somewhere.

The only build I have ever heard of that might come close is a broken Hulking Hurler build where you can hurl rocks the size of mountain tops for something crazy like 400d6 damage. I definitely consider myself of the powergamer persuasion but a line has to be drawn somewhere and that build is just ridiculous.

 

[DragonBelow]

Infinite damage is trivial without a time constraint. With an unlimited amount of time, any character can do infinite damage.

Right, give a warlock one of those sustenance ioun stones and he's on his way to infinity, except he's mortal, hmmm... make him a lich warlock!

 

[Simm]

I seem to recall a very unusual, and even more broken, pun-pun build that could be puled off at level 1. That would have an arbitrarily high strength score and could theoretically do infinite damage.