Do you use or not use specific rules because of fears of munchkinism?

[Chiaroscuro23]

Do I worry that someone will find a way to exploit a loophole in an otherwise good rule and therefore forbid all uses of that rule? No.

Do I believe it's important for WotC to find and root out such loopholes for tournament play? Yes.

Players often take abilities which are powerful. Sometimes they are clever combinations to yeild power. I got no problem with that. They don't bring me Pun-Pun and his ilk, and we're fine. Social countermeasures are more than enough to deal with Pun-Pun.

 

[gizmo33]

IMC rules have to be balanced. Balance to me means that the rule doesn't restrict the set of sensible choices made for building a character. "Sensible" probably depends on the DM/players preferences for their campaign. For example, some DM might think that the optimal fighter in his campaign would be an archer, and therefore the feats for archer might be "better" than other feats.

I find the "munchkin" term to be vague and unhelpful here (I agree with the Monte Cook article). As best as I can tell, the munchkin issue is a personality problem, and not something that can be solved by changing the rules. As soon as a player chooses to be a fighter, and then chooses the magic sword for his treasure, he's min-maxing. What's the problem?

 

[Glyfair]

That's interesting. I like point buy because it avoids the inequalities of random rolls. If one player rolls, say, eight more points than the others, he's effectively creating a PC with an unpenalised LA.

Having said I like point buy, I haven't actually used it yet. Is it open to abuse in some way I haven't considered?

It was really just an example. I was more thinking about some proposed "build your own class" point buy systems.

In fact, the thread that started this train of thought for me was about the PHB II character rebuilding rules. A few people seemed interested in the idea, but it sounded like they wouldn't use them because they were worried about them being used to min-max a character. To me, that seemed off. I'd much rather use them and just veto any obvious, intentional abuses.