Just Plain Broken

[Arkhandus]

Hmm, that's a good point on Air Walk. I was thinking of that too when I read it, but the way I'm parsing it, despite the ability to just walk up the air like a hill, it does not preclude jumping and landing at the same height. The specific line I'm looking at is "The subject can tread on air as if walking on solid ground." I'll admit that it looks like you could go either way with RAW--I've allowed jumping off Air Walk before because it was harmless, but if I had to play in a game with SWS, I would rule as you did.

Of course, instead, you can just have the party mage use Telekinesis or something to float a long wooden board or something up high, so you can run across it and jump over the target.

Not sure if it'd work, but it's an idea that came to mind.

 

[Arkhandus]

re: Warmaster's Charge
See what I mean about preparation. How do your cohorts and you for that matter know where the GRease spell has been cast? Still doesn't deal with the summoned critters and the REALLY big problem. The setup for that manoeuver is just plain horrendous.

I dunno, the party's mage probably has Arcane Sight under Permanency or something at that level, sees the Grease's magical aura as clear as day, and lets the rest of the team know over his Rary's Telepathic Bond. -_-

 

[Rystil Arden]

Of course, instead, you can just have the party mage use Telekinesis or something to float a long wooden board or something up high, so you can run across it and jump over the target.

Not sure if it'd work, but it's an idea that came to mind.

That's true.

Per your posts above, particularly 138 part 1, let's try to avoid personally attacking others here, even when they start it. I know it's harder to deal with when the other person is ignoring this and continuing to make attacks, but it doesn't really help to respond in kind.

 

[Arkhandus]

For the dweomerkeeper if the PC decides to destroy the economy using Wishes.

A strong spell? There isn't any. As I said, I don't believe most things are broken. I believe some are strong, but manageable or requires a high opportunity cost. The only thing that I would think is broken is Planar Shepherd because it actually uses the same mechanic as the Sahrukh that allows Pun-Pun to occur, and the Sahrukh itself.

I have DM'd anything goes campaigns. It is not as bad as people make it out to be.

And that is your problem. You reject any kind of objective measure of balance and broken-ness, and only accept a rare few particular classes/creatures as broken without any logical reason why you ignore the other ones that also cause great problems. You will never accept that anything is broken, unless it fits your extremely narrow definition of broken-ness as "anything that duplicates or resembles Pun-Pun." It is impossible to have a rational discussion with you as long as you reject anything less than Pun-Pun as being broken.


And Wish isn't broken, since it normally incurs a heavy cost. Dweomerkeeper is broken because it ignores the standard, built-in balancing costs of existing spells. Infinite free Wishes really can do some significant stuff. And within the rules as written, most uses of Wish will not cause any adverse side-effects for the caster. Especially if he words things a lot less stupidly than "I wish for a mountain of gold!"

Any caster with an Intelligence of 19+ should have the intelligence to word a Wish properly so as not to suffer wierd, unfortunate consequences when he's staying within the normal boundaries of the spell's limits. By the rules, he only suffers nasty consequences if he tries to Wish for something beyond the normal limits of Wish. Houseruling it differently does not change the actual printed rules, so a houseruled version does not prove that X or Y is, or is not, broken.

 

[Nifft]

Of course, instead, you can just have the party mage use Telekinesis or something to float a long wooden board or something up high, so you can run across it and jump over the target.

Suddenly, the Carpet of Flying is useful!

Cheers, -- N

 

[Cameron]

And that is your problem. You reject any kind of objective measure of balance and broken-ness, and only accept a rare few particular classes/creatures as broken without any logical reason why you ignore the other ones that also cause great problems. You will never accept that anything is broken, unless it fits your extremely narrow definition of broken-ness as "anything that duplicates or resembles Pun-Pun." It is impossible to have a rational discussion with you as long as you reject anything less than Pun-Pun as being broken.


And Wish isn't broken, since it normally incurs a heavy cost. Dweomerkeeper is broken because it ignores the standard, built-in balancing costs of existing spells. Infinite free Wishes really can do some significant stuff. And within the rules as written, most uses of Wish will not cause any adverse side-effects for the caster. Especially if he words things a lot less stupidly than "I wish for a mountain of gold!"

Any caster with an Intelligence of 19+ should have the intelligence to word a Wish properly so as not to suffer wierd, unfortunate consequences when he's staying within the normal boundaries of the spell's limits. By the rules, he only suffers nasty consequences if he tries to Wish for something beyond the normal limits of Wish. Houseruling it differently does not change the actual printed rules, so a houseruled version does not prove that X or Y is, or is not, broken.

If it does not destroy the game by itself, how can it be considered broken? Come now, in a game with a Int 8 Wizard, Wiz 8 Cleric, Cha 8 Sorcerer and 14 Str Fighter, would the Fighter be considered broken in your opinion? That is what you are saying with half the stuff here, particularly DMM.

 

[Arkhandus]

It doesn't have to be game-destroying to be broken. It just has to be terribly unbalanced. Unbalanced enough to mess with the game too much, or make the rest of the PCs comparatively sucky and worthless, to where their players don't have fun any more, or to where the DM gets fed up with trying to deal with the unbalanced PC.


Just because your group is 'mature' enough to use broken rules or purposely choose not to, does not mean that the broken rules will not cause problems in groups where munchkins rule, or where DMs can't get the group to comply or 'give back' any broken rules bits in exchange for balanced stuff because the DM didn't realize they would be so broken beforehand.

Not all groups of D&D players have the rare luck of all being selfless, group-fun-oriented, highly-mature, laid-back roleplayers who don't bother with powergaming. Most groups have at least one or two individuals who are more or less the opposite of that (sometimes the DM!), and can't necessarily keep playing if they just boot the troublemaker(s). Especially not if those troublemakers are their good friends otherwise!

So we have to deal with the rules, and that means that the rules should be reasonably balanced in the first place, so that we can avert potential problems that don't necessarily break the game themselves (as Pun-Pun or the Planar Shepherd does), but can break up the group.


Anyway, your example with the wiz, clr, and ftr has no correlation to our arguments that some rules material is broken.

 

[IanB]

It should be noted that how hard it is to jump over a colossal dragon is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not the maneuver is broken.

If it is broken in combat with medium creatures, then it is broken. It could instantly kill the USER, no save, when used against anything else, and it would still be broken if it was broken against medium creatures. Unless you're talking about an incredibly narrow scope of events, how *often* something is broken is not terribly relevant to the question of whether it should be allowed in a game. Anything that is broken as often as "any time you are fighting medium or smaller creatures" needs to be fixed, period.

 

[Shadeydm]

And that is your problem. You reject any kind of objective measure of balance and broken-ness, and only accept a rare few particular classes/creatures as broken without any logical reason why you ignore the other ones that also cause great problems. You will never accept that anything is broken, unless it fits your extremely narrow definition of broken-ness as "anything that duplicates or resembles Pun-Pun." It is impossible to have a rational discussion with you as long as you reject anything less than Pun-Pun as being broken.


And Wish isn't broken, since it normally incurs a heavy cost. Dweomerkeeper is broken because it ignores the standard, built-in balancing costs of existing spells. Infinite free Wishes really can do some significant stuff. And within the rules as written, most uses of Wish will not cause any adverse side-effects for the caster. Especially if he words things a lot less stupidly than "I wish for a mountain of gold!"

Any caster with an Intelligence of 19+ should have the intelligence to word a Wish properly so as not to suffer wierd, unfortunate consequences when he's staying within the normal boundaries of the spell's limits. By the rules, he only suffers nasty consequences if he tries to Wish for something beyond the normal limits of Wish. Houseruling it differently does not change the actual printed rules, so a houseruled version does not prove that X or Y is, or is not, broken.

Regarding wishes, personally I view wish distortion as something that comes about when you are forcing another person or creature against its will to grant you a wish. YMMV

 

[Shadeydm]

If it does not destroy the game by itself, how can it be considered broken? Come now, in a game with a Int 8 Wizard, Wiz 8 Cleric, Cha 8 Sorcerer and 14 Str Fighter, would the Fighter be considered broken in your opinion? That is what you are saying with half the stuff here, particularly DMM.

Ok you have totally lost me here, no clue where you are going with this or how it relates the the discussion.