Complete Series

[Grogtar]

Definatly watch out for Quill Blast from Complete Divine.

Its not broken, per se. But it will royally and truly screw most bad guys. Clever use of this spell allows people to defeat things twice their CR with relative ease.

Nasty to the power of 10.

 

[Testament]

Complete Warrior: Hulking Hurler is fine. Its the improvised weapon rules that are silly. By them, once STR cracks 18, you're better off ditching your weapon and grabbing the biggest piece of iron you can carry (light load) and sharpening it.


Complete Divine: Divine Metamagic, Divine Spell Power. These are just insane feats, especially Divine Metamagic: Persistent. Yes, it eats at least 4 feats, but when you grab Nightsticks or the like, and have 3 persistent spells a day...

Ur-Priest and Void Disciple are stupid-powerful PrCs, and Radiant Servant is Cleric, but better! Quill Blast is a completely insane spell, as is Curse of Lycanthropy.


Complete Arcane: Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is insane when used as an NPC who just unloads all their wardings in one combat. Fatespinner bears some watching, its a bit too easy to get into, and has a lot of benefits. The Orb spells, Arc of Lightning, and Blast of Flame are in the wrong school.

And then there's the Thought Bottle. Its a frickin' save game feature that gives you 500 XP wishes!


Complete Adventurer: Ignore the errata for Leap Attack, and keep it at 2 for 1 with a one-hander, and 3 for 1 with a two hander. Divine Insight makes Clerics the best skill users in the game potentially. And ban Wraithstrike now.

 

[gabrion]

Fatespinner is potentially broken.

How so?

Well it isn't broken like the hurler or anything, but effectively adding +15 to the DC of a save or die spell 1x/day and forcing a reroll upon success is pretty crazy IMO.

A few other things to look out for...

1) Ur Priest (CD)-Lotsa people call this 'broken' for its fast spell progression, but that just makes it unbalanced, not broken. What really breaks UP is the (8th level ?) ability to steal supernatural abilities. All such a character has to do is own an efreeti bottle and *poof* free wishes.

2) Extraordinary Spell Aim (CAdv)-Watch out for characters who try to use this in combination with AMF.

 

[evildm]

Thanks guys, that's a TON of handy info. I'll definitely keep this stuff in mind when looking over the books.

 

[Testament]

1) Ur Priest (CD)-Lotsa people call this 'broken' for its fast spell progression, but that just makes it unbalanced, not broken. What really breaks UP is the (8th level ?) ability to steal supernatural abilities. All such a character has to do is own an efreeti bottle and *poof* free wishes.

The other problem is how fast it can stack up its caster levels, especially when you build it as an Ur-Theurge.

 

[Mistwell]

I cant imagine not just allowing....whatever, and dealing with things on a case by case basis personally. I could never play in a "core only" game.


That being said...my knowledge of those books isnt total, but I'd say your only real worry is going to be:

Lots of stuff in Complete Divine. Especially the feats Divine Metamagic, Domain Spontaneity, ...and it seems like there was another but i forget it.

Anyway the one allows a Cleric to use a metamagic feat with no cost other than turning attempts (hello 24 hour Divine Power), and Domain Spontaneity allows a Cleric to cast all the spells from one of their domains in the same manner they cast cure or inflict spells (good bye any reason to have a Wizard in the party).


Also a small thing in Complete Arcane...the "Orb" spells and a like Flame Blast one and Arc of Lightning are labled Conjurations with Spell Resistance: No, but in reality are Evocations that should be subject to spell resistance (Accept the Acid Orb, that makes sense).


Beyond that, I dont remember anything from any of them. Complete Arcane especially has some nice prestige classes and spells and feats, as does Complete Warrior.

You are right on Divine Metamagic. It's broken, and needs errata to make it come back in line with similar abilities.

On the rest, I disagree.

First, Domain Spontanity takes NOTHING away from the Wizard. Did you not notice that wizards don't cast spontaneously? Did you notice their spell lists are almost completely different? Did you notice it takes a turn attempt to convert the spell? Did you notice it only allows spells from their domain (hence one a level)? It's not even a particularly good feat. It hasn't found it's way into ANY of the "broken" builds on the WOTC optimization board. If it really had big utility, you would see it CONSTANTLY. It's not broken, in the least.

Second, the orb spells. How are the orb spells really different from Acid Arrow? With metamagicing, you could basically replicate almost all of the orb spells with acid arrow. All the orb spells do are expand on an already accepted and balanced spell from the core books. People talk about them as if they are broken, but once you see them in play I've never heard anyone actually complain about them as being over powered (much like a lot of people did with the Warlock before seeing them in play).

 

[Legildur]

....How are the orb spells really different from Acid Arrow? With metamagicing, you could basically replicate almost all of the orb spells with acid arrow....

I think you may have identified the problem with the orb spells right there. I don't usually play a wizard or sorceror, but if a spell can achieve the same thing as a metamagicked version of a different spell, then surely you have just made the metamagic feat redundant for that spell? There are probably other examples where that already occurs within the core rules, but I thought your observation was interesting.

 

[Testament]

? With metamagicing, you could basically replicate almost all of the orb spells with acid arrow. All the orb spells do are expand on an already accepted and balanced spell from the core books. People talk about them as if they are broken, but once you see them in play I've never heard anyone actually complain about them as being over powered (much like a lot of people did with the Warlock before seeing them in play).

I can't speak for others, but my issue with the Orbs and Blast of Flame is that they're not conjurations. You're creating energy and using it to deal instant damage, and that's what evocations do. Conjuration attack spells, like Melf's and I-Cloud deal set damage dice over a duration. They don't do it all at once with 1 for 1 scaling. That's why in my home games they're Evocations (with the exception of Acid Orb), which allow SR.

 

[Saeviomagy]

My suggestions:

1. Use complete warrior. It's awesome. The only thing to do is: IGNORE THE RULES ON IMPROVISED WEAPONS. If you do that, the hulking hurler insanity just goes away. It's gone, along with a bunch of other stupid exploits. If someone hits someone with a big, blunt item, go to the club table in the PHB, increase it in size until it's appropriate, then apply a -4 for improvised weapon and you're done. If it's not blunt, change the damage type appropriately. DO NOT SCALE DAMAGE LINEARLY WITH WEIGHT.

2. Use complete Arcane. Again, it's awesome. Remove: Magebane weapons, the caster level penalty for mageslayer feats and the thought bottle. Done.

3. Use complete adventurer. Awesome. I don't think you even need to remove anything.

4. Use complete divine. Remove: many feats, most of the PrCs, most of the spells, relics (ie - all the items). In short - complete divine was Dave Noonans "I love clerics" munchkin diary. You're probably best off just dropping it - there's really very little that's useable. If it's not broken, it's boring. Also - watch the level of power on cleric stuff in any book he's contributed to. I can't be the only one that's noticed.

 

[Li Shenron]

Otherwise, instead allowing "full books except this and that..." you can start by letting your player that you'll consider material from those books. Make the player propose a feat, a spell, a magic item, and then allow/disallow as you see fit. Also, as long as each player uses one or two things at most from one supplement, it's more likely that it won't disrupt the game (but if you allow the whole book it's more possible to build dread combos).