Has anything ever broken your game?

[Shade]

Although they didn't completely break my game, these have all put serious strains on my abilities to challenge the players...

• Fortification property for armor...this stuff effectively eliminates critical hits and sneak attacks from the game at a relatively cheap price at mid- to high-levels. I had to house rule heavy fortification to 75%, moderate to 50% and light to 25%.
• Enlarge person. This is brutal at low levels when used by warrior-types with a level of sorcerer. And it bugs me to no end that only enlarge person exists, not enlarge monster to level the playing field. In my next campaign, I'll probably replace the spell with the expansion power from the XPH.
• Mantle of Egregious Might. This spell from the Book of Eldritch Might has made the party's wizard-type's spell DCs nigh-unbeatable. Combine that with the greater magical flow enhancement spell from the same book, and it is deadly. I really like the BOEM spells, but I'd have to seriously consider allowing many of them without alteration in a new campaign.

 

[LiKral]

A Githyanki broke my first campaign. The player found out a way to, within the letter of the rules, use at-will telekinesis to do ludicrous amounts of damage by throwing whole quivers of arrows at once. This broke all my combat challenges, because anything that could challenge the cheesy githyanki would obliterate the rest of the party. Everyone got pissed off because they were completely irrelevant, and (after a lot of bad feeling) they quit.

Afterwards it turned out that they didn't feel they could complain, because the Githyanki's player was my boyfriend, despite the fact I had repeatedly asked if they were cool with the fact that they really couldn't do much in combat. I felt so annoyed afterwards because I really wanted to nerf that cheesy Githyanki, but didn't feel that I could go against the whole rest of the group, even though I was the GM. After all, if they were having fun, why should I spoil it? It turned out they were not having fun in the slightest, but were the kind of people who did not like to confront people negatively face to face. They were all 'We love your game!', 'It's great!'

I lost a lot of good friends over that when it finally melted down. It was really a communication problem rather than a rules one.

Lessons learned:
Nerf powerful characters.
Nerf romantic partner's characters even more, otherwise you get 'GM's girlfriend syndrome'
Nerf the characters of any confident players, and buff the shy/new player's characters shamelessly. Otherwise the confident players really hog the limelight.

 

[Yig]

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.

Do you consider wizards to be broken ?

By that logic fighters are also broken since they can only fight.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Archers, Chasms, spiked pits (make a spell that creates them, maybe balance vs. Evard's?), archers, flying enemies, Will saves, Reflex saves, lots of archers, areas of caltrops (another spell)...small spaces...

He was referring to it in the context of a pre-built module that, apparently, didn't contain those things...


Nothing has ever broken my game. I'm careful of what I allow in, however.

 

[HellHound]

Arms & Armor 3.0 had a weapon enhancement that stunned the opponent for 1 round if the weapon scored a crit.

We saw it in play on a keen scimitar in hands of someone with improved critical.

We were dealing with major NPCs being stunned after 40% of attacks against them. With 3.0 haste, the guy would move in and then full attack, looking for crits.

It was ugly. Ruined a good adventure, honestly. So we had to scrap the enhancement, and I was VERY glad to see Imp Crit & Keen not stacking in 3.5, along with the haste nerf.

 

[LordVyreth]

I ran into some problems with incense of meditation. The party had to fight a major gladiatorial battle and their cleric used the incense before the fight. At the time, there were three clerics of his faith in the party: the cleric, his cohort, and a friendly NPC. Which means that there were three characters tossing maximised spells at the baddies every round! What was supposed to be a long battle interrupted by a major siege of the city instead was finished in two rounds.

 

[Odhanan]

Nothing.

 

[Psion]

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

Well, for one, flexible spells like symbol and emotion were divested, letting the sorcerer get less mileage out of their limited spell slots.

 

[Thanee]

2e Shadowrun's Tactical Combat Computer was waaaaayyyyyy broken.
For a little cash, ...

That's a bit of an understatement, IIRC.

Bye
Thanee

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Me. I'm broken.

That made me sad.