Material allowed ingame by a DM

[PigKnight]

If I go to long without playing with a group I just play with myself. It's pretty hard to find adventures because I don't trust myself to not make it too easy and the random generators in the DMG are kinda clunky to use.

 

[Greg K]

For myself, I only allow certain things. Not including official variants (DMG) and third party variants that alter/replace rules system (e.g., spontaneous divine magic for all clerics (UA), Fewer Absolutes (Sean K Reynolds), replacing Magic Item Creation with a variant from Mystic Eye Games Artificer's Handbook, and the addition of combat maneuvers from Book of Iron Might (Malhavoc)) or DM only supplements (Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary), player material that I allow

WOTC
PHB: Customizing a character. I am big on class variants (and, in some cases, base classes) that help create specific archetypes from both real world culture and certain fantasy books and novels provide that they fit the campaign setting and its cultures. AD&D sources that I draw ideas for 3e variants from are David Howery's revised 1e Barbarian from an issue of Dragon, Complete Fighter's Handbook kits, Complete Thief's Handbook, Complete Bard's Handbook and certain kits from Dragon Magazine.

DMG: variant spell lists and 0/0 level multiclassing at first level. The former is mandatory for clerics at first level, based upon deity and predetermined by me during campaign creation. For non-clerics, the player can talk with me and we will discuss it. As for multiclassing, the player needs to talk to me, I may have an alternate class or class variant that covers the concept or the concept may, possibly, not be viable in the campaign.

Unearthed Arcana: specific class variants and environmental race variants, certain alternate class abilities. Some things are limited to specific deities or, initially, to certain cultures based on the campaign. Such limitations are predetermined by me at campaign creation.

Cityscape web enhancement 1: The wilderness/urban skill swap.

Complete Champion: the spellless Paladin and Ranger variants

Oriental Adventures: The Shaman (slightly tweaked) replaces the PHB monk

certain feats, spells, equipment and magic items from various other books not listed from the banned WOTC books.

Banned (Not allowed at all): BoED, Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, Psionics Handbook, Expanded Psionics Handbook, Complete Psionic, Races of Stone,

Third party Sources

Green Ronin:
Cavalier's Handbook (not including the class itself)
Holy Warrior's Handbook*
Psychic's Handbook**
Shaman's Handbook
Witch's Handbook
Note: the Unholy Warrior's Handbook and the Thaumaturge class (Armies of the Abyss) are in use, but DM only. Some classes are specific to certain deities or, at the start, cultures in the campaign.
*The player does tailor the abilities. the holy warrior's are prebuilt and assigned to specific deities.
** not all powers are in use.

Malhavoc
Book of Iron Might: Fighter Fighting Styles at first level.

[Monkey God/Highmoon
Equipment and material from both Frost and Fur and From Stone to Steel. What is allowable is, generally, culturally determined.

Hong's Knight: Hong's Knight variant of the OA Samurai. Knights are limited to certain cultures I allow material to be drawn from Green Ronin's Cavalier's Handbook and, for mounts, Avalanche's Noble Steeds)

Skirmisher Publishing
Experts 3.5: The Specialist class

Avalanche Press
Noble Steeds: for horses

 

[Ahnehnois]

[MENTION=5038]Greg K[/MENTION]
Why ban Races of Stone? Doesn't seem noteworthy to me.

 

[Greg K]

[MENTION=5038]Greg K[/MENTION]
Why ban Races of Stone? Doesn't seem noteworthy to me.

When I looked through it, nothing fit the campaigns that I run.

 

[Celebrim]

It varies considerably with DM. I only allow a very exclusive list of things, about 40% of which is homebrew and the rest of which is in the original 3.0 player's handbook. The only book that I've almost completely adopted other than the 3.0 player's handbook is Green Ronin's 'Shaman's Handbook', which replaces the core Druid class in my campaign. The Holy Warrior class from Green Ronin's 'Book of the Righteous' was also hugely influential, though the current homebrew class resembles it only in the most broad outline.

The earliest hard and fast ban was "No PrC's." That was the first house rule I implemented in 3.X.

In general my philosophy is, "Unrestrained spellcasters are broken past a certain level even in core 3.0. Therefore, spellcasters need little additional support and actually minor nerfs. Conversely, even compared to restrained spellcasters matial classes require additional support for high level play and need minor buffs and much support. PrCs are inherently broken, but all classes need greater support for becoming a 'prestige class' through built in options and more powerful character defining feats."

I consider my current homebrew the most balanced fantasy RPG I've ever played. I'm very happy with the results. No class nor combination of classes has managed to out shine the others in play. All attempts to break my game, some of them quite creative* have merely resulted in interesting balanced characters.

*(One player tried a fighter/feyborn spending both starting least fey magics on Enlarge Self, with the goal of out performing a basic Fanatic build. It was fun and powerful, but didn't actually outperform the Fanatic. I've also have a Sidhe with Misanthope (Human) which is the most creative abuse of the Empathy skill you could probably manage, but ultimately he's just managed to gain some circumstantial social skill points. Fun, but not broken. None of these builds occurred to me when I wrote the rules, and both surprised the heck out of me, but my inherent conservative nature when evaluating rules is again and again proved. I can basically support just about any character you can imagine, without the problem 3.X has of trying to support every mechanical concept you can imagine.)

Some players coming from 3.X hearing about my rules invariably go into revolt because they embraced 3.X power creep as the solution to the core rules problem of only 'spellcasters got good stuff' and think therefore by banning 3.X's extensive mechanical diversity I'm creating a game which you break by playing a full spellcaster and which has limited support for player creativity. I feel little could be further from the truth. 3.X power creep created run away constraints on player creativity because of the need to hit some minimum bar of effectiveness that was always rising because of the ever rising expectations of power at a given level. I know where those critics are coming from, but I think they game they try to create may have some balance to it but is inherently unstable and easily knocked over when unspoken table agreements are broken.

On the other hand, while I'm very protective of my rules, I'm also very willing to smith out any option that a player makes a good case for that I don't currently support and am continually searching for good mechanics for things I know I don't yet support well. What I am very unlikely to consider though is a demand for a particular mechanical implementation - "I need/want this specific mechanic.", as opposed to, "I need support for this currently suboptimal or uncreatable concept."

 

[Greenfield]

How exactly do you phrase these restrictions? I'm curious because IME even power gamers will accept restrictions if presented firmly (but not aggressively) as such. Sometimes a player will sigh and briefly bemoan not being able to use their pet class or race, but being a player is after all much less work and responsibility than being a DM, which most players realize.

Maybe you just have really bad luck in this regard...or maybe I have very good luck.

How did I phrase it? Almost a recitation:

"We're running a Greco/Roman setting. Your character should come in at level x, with wealth appropriate from the table in the DMG. We do stats using a 32 point build based on the table in the DMG, and hit points are rolled, with a half dice value minimum for any one roll. We use Player's Handbooks 1 and 2, DMG 1 and 2, the MMs, the completes, and the three environment books, Stormwrack, Frostburn and Sandstorm. We use a few things from other sources, but they need to be cleared on a case by case basis."

From that I get: Rolled stats, max hit points, Psionics, Races of the Wild, Savage Species, Fiend Folio, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, Libris Mortis, Heroes of Horror, with gear almost exclusively from MIC, and one player's character had a Artifact weapon.

One pair of players were told the valid sources when invited, then had to be reminded of them for three separate iterations of the characters. One guy's Dex score had to have started at a 19 before race/item/class/level bonuses were applied. (I had to reverse engineer his character to find out if it was close to legal).

It wasn't.

They didn
t return after the third generation of the PCs got rejected. He didn't like that he couldn't have a Half Vamipre, Dire Necromancer with neat magic weapons and gear, and a Vow of Poverty at the same time.

 

[N'raac]

They didn't return after the third generation of the PCs got rejected. He didn't like that he couldn't have a Half Vamipre, Dire Necromancer with neat magic weapons and gear, and a Vow of Poverty at the same time.

Probably just as well. Combat goes really slow when you have to remind players that you ROLL the dice, not just pick a number to add to your bonuses, and it seems likely they'd have difficulty with that one as well...

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

From that I get: Rolled stats, max hit points, Psionics, Races of the Wild, Savage Species, Fiend Folio, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, Libris Mortis, Heroes of Horror, with gear almost exclusively from MIC, and one player's character had a Artifact weapon.

One pair of players were told the valid sources when invited, then had to be reminded of them for three separate iterations of the characters. One guy's Dex score had to have started at a 19 before race/item/class/level bonuses were applied. (I had to reverse engineer his character to find out if it was close to legal).

It wasn't.

They didn
t return after the third generation of the PCs got rejected. He didn't like that he couldn't have a Half Vamipre, Dire Necromancer with neat magic weapons and gear, and a Vow of Poverty at the same time.

Wow, I...I don't know what to do with that. Any chance these players were teens, or children?

If not, I think you just have terrible luck. I'm sorry you had to put up with that nonsense.

Also, what N'raac said. I'm kind of amazed you didn't eject them yourself.

 

[Greg K]

They didn't return after the third generation of the PCs got rejected.

Your better off if they can't follow directions.

For my 3e games, Before they can even create characters, we go through a process. I give them a house rule document which includes information on supplements in use and which items. I also give them a setting overview document (1-3 pages) which includes the starting classes and class variants available to each race/culture including a choice of favored classes.

a) they have to tell me their character concepts and backgrounds that they are considering. I give them another 1-2 page document. When they settle on their concept, they come to me for approval. If necesarry, I will make suggestions for appropriate cultures, organizations, etc or changes to better fit the character into the setting.
b) upon approval, we discuss how they plan to build the character mechanically (ability scores, class/class variants, skills, feats). Just a rough idea using allowable sources.
c) the next step is the player start building the character mechanically. They are expected to stay in contact if the plan to make changes, have questions, or other issues arise.
d) I look over the character for final approval. If everything goes right, I only have to make minor suggested tweaks, if any suggestions at all.

If the character is so far off from what we discussed, I talk with the player to see what happened. I may give them a second chance to rebuild the character based on what we discussed.

If they try to show up at the "last minute" and spring the character on me thinking that I will allow them to play the character, because we are near game time, they will be shown the door (Has not happened to date).

Fail on the third attempt (assuming I gave it), they don't get to play.

 

[Celebrim]

How did I phrase it? Almost a recitation:

"We're running a Greco/Roman setting. Your character should come in at level x, with wealth appropriate from the table in the DMG. We do stats using a 32 point build based on the table in the DMG, and hit points are rolled, with a half dice value minimum for any one roll. We use Player's Handbooks 1 and 2, DMG 1 and 2, the MMs, the completes, and the three environment books, Stormwrack, Frostburn and Sandstorm. We use a few things from other sources, but they need to be cleared on a case by case basis."

From that I get: Rolled stats, max hit points, Psionics, Races of the Wild, Savage Species, Fiend Folio, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, Libris Mortis, Heroes of Horror, with gear almost exclusively from MIC, and one player's character had a Artifact weapon.

One pair of players were told the valid sources when invited, then had to be reminded of them for three separate iterations of the characters. One guy's Dex score had to have started at a 19 before race/item/class/level bonuses were applied. (I had to reverse engineer his character to find out if it was close to legal).

It wasn't.

They didn't return after the third generation of the PCs got rejected. He didn't like that he couldn't have a Half Vamipre, Dire Necromancer with neat magic weapons and gear, and a Vow of Poverty at the same time.

Yeah, been there. Well, not there exactly, but in the general area. I'm not sure I've known a serious DM who didn't have that issue at some point.

I use a process very similar to Greg K. Players pitch a concept as much as a character sheet. I've had a character pitch as a concept that he wanted to ride a dinosaur and shoot laser beams from his eyeballs. I had to think about that one for a while before saying, "Ok, I think we can manage that but it's probably not a suitable concept for a 1st level character. However, we could start you with a character that could eventually acquire a dinosaur steed and shoot lasers from his eyes. Let's discuss some options for where you come from based on this idea about where you are going." My first inclination was to just say, "No."

This was the same player that (after this character met an untimely end) pitched as a concept the blue hobgoblin fighter/feyborne that could grow into a giant mentioned in a prior post, and who got that approved. My first inclination was to just say, "No." but I eventually approved it after working out a background that actually worked.

But I'm in the great advantageous situation of having a long house rule document where I've basically said, "I'll approve pretty much anything made with these rules and absolutely nothing that isn't in it." That leaves me only worried about wacky concepts, not broken mechanics.