Has anything ever broken your game?

[Li Shenron]

I've never had a game broken in 3.0 or 3.5 either, but I think we could have broken the game if we wanted to. I'm still playing a 3.0 Sorceress/Incantatrix in CotSQ and she doesn't know top spells such as Haste or Polymorph Other, and also she didn't focus in bumping her spells DC as high as possible; would it have been otherwise, there are good chances that she might have dominated the combat scene too much.

OK, this part I'm curious about. How did the sorcerer become any more unplayable than it would have been under 3.0?

He probably meant "unplayable" in the underpowered sense, not overpowered! You know, the 3.0 Sorcerer had those few key powerful spells which 3.5 toned down, and it had more use out of SF/GSF than the other casters. Plus, there were several multi-function spells which were separated into more spells in 3.5.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

In 3.0 a Red Wizard of Thay, instakill focused, haste using wizard. Hyper pumped DCs on all his spells. The player can be quite crunchy at times and doesn't know when to tone it down. Was really frustrating for me and the other players. Still, it was my first 3rd ed game and I did a lot of things I wouldn't do again.

The crisis of breath/brainlock psion wasn't great either.

 

[Gold Roger]

Played with a Frenzied Berserker in our group for two sessions, then the player had him run into a unbeatable army to kill him out of boredom. Nobody disagreed with that decision. The fights in those sessions basically came down to "watch the short slaughter the FB is fabricating, then run and cast your debuffs on that sucker". I'm shure a FB is balanced in the right party and build with a high will save, but in our games, it was a mess. That's as close to a broken game as it came for me.

 

[tetsujin28]

The FB doesn't have great saves, other than Fortitude. That's one of the ways to get him. The other is ranged weapons

 

[amethal]

Nothing has ever broken our game, although the party's afflicted wereboar barbarian requires me to put a bit of thought into designing encounters (which is a good thing, in my opinion).

Don't see how sorcerers are so under-powered as to be unplayable in 3.5, although I suppose they suffered the most from (potentially) having their spells known re-written on transition to 3.5.

Our party's sorceress is now 13th level, and does fine.

 

[amethal]

The FB doesn't have great saves, other than Fortitude. That's one of the ways to get him. The other is ranged weapons

Especially the heavy catapult.

From out of sight on the other side of a hill .....

The frenzied berserker tends to hog the limelight, so I'll only allow the class if everyone in the party takes it. Somewhere there must be a group of players gullible enough to fall for it

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Since anything the players do I can do (as a DM) nothing could ever " break" my game.

 

[beaver1024]

OK, this part I'm curious about. How did the sorcerer become any more unplayable than it would have been under 3.0?

How about the fact that they completely messed with arcane spells? Since sorcerers can't do anything else but cast spells, the character was broken beyond repair.

I also normally don't bend over backwards to ensure that the encounters are suited to any one particular character but in the case of the sorcerer I was doing it so much that my players including the sorcerer player got really annoyed.

 

[Belen]

Yes, my old powergamey-munchkin players. Now that I have a new group, the game is not broken.

 

[francisca]

Um, let me see. Nope. I've been able, to this point in time, to keep the games from getting broken. I put 80% of that on the shoulders of my players, who are interested in having fun, not exploiting the letter of the rules. The other 20% I attribute to my common sense style of DMing and use of Rule 0 when needed.