Most overrated "broken" things?

[Mistwell]

Felon, you are exaggerating. A lot. The overwhelming majority of prestige classes from the Book of Exalted Deeds are taken by almost nobody. They are, in fact, mostly UNDER powered. It was only a minority that are overpowered.

 

[Felon]

Yeah, Mist. I'm the first guy who suggested there was anything broken in the BoED.

Heck, I'm not even the first in this thread....

There are precious few PrC's that could be called underpowered. Fist of Raziel, OTOH...or the Anointed Knight....or the the Champion of Gwynwhatever...or the Defender of Sealtel....or.....aw, to heck with it. I'm tired of providing exhaustive evidence for my positions just to have somebody jump and go "I disagree" or "I agree" with the other guy. If I can't a real discussion going, then what's the point?

 

[Moon-Lancer]

vop is pretty strong. I played a level 5-13 druid vop. I coulden't say what was stronger, the druid or the vop, but he had awesome saves, awesome ac and spells. rarely got hit, but was the only one to die in the campaign. We fought a ghost lion thing and everyone else couldn't touch it so i went to solo it and it had a x3 crit i was not expecting, although i did get its hp low enough so it wasen't a tpk. It was our cr too.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

I agree 100% that mt, spiked chains, warblades ect... are not what i would call broken. Broken is something that makes the campaign fall apart or stops the game cold while people argue about the rules hole. basically I don't think strong should mean broken.

I do think half the time something is broken its because someone misunderstood what was written or didn't read it to begin with.

 

[brehobit]

Warblade -- right up there with Warlock.

Cheers, -- N

Warblades are probably the weakest of the Bo9S classes. But still, IMO, much better than any core warrior-type. Again, for the levels I generally play (1-8 or so). Also, dips into WB are a huge bonus to a fighter (a 1 level dip at level 9 is silly-gross).

So are they broken? Assuming we lose some of the actually broken maneuvers (there are only 2 or 3 like White Raven Tactics) they aren't broken. Just unbalanced with the core classes.

 

[Nifft]

Warblades are probably the weakest of the Bo9S classes. But still, IMO, much better than any core warrior-type. Again, for the levels I generally play (1-8 or so). Also, dips into WB are a huge bonus to a fighter (a 1 level dip at level 9 is silly-gross).

Compare with a 1-level Barbarian dip...

A lot of effort has gone into fixing Fighters so they don't suck (starting around levels 6-9). If a dip into Warblade is what the Fighter class needs, let 'em have it! Yay multi-classing, yay fixed Fighter class.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Dykstrav]

In my experience, the most overrated "broken" thing would easily be the warlock. I've never gotten a chance to play one. Every DM I've run across just flat-out hates them because they don't fit the sacred D&D convention of using their powers X/day (despite the fact that they get what essentially amounts to a teensy spell list and a single attack per round). But at least the people who complain about the warlock have stopped complaining about how "broken" the monk is because they don't need weapons and armor to be good in a fight...

A close second would have to be Tome of Battle material. It keeps getting the "just plain wrong for D&D" complaints because of the powers per day thing, and maybe because the Lord of the Rings didn't have a warblade in it. Whatever- I'm not an anime or video game fan either, but I still think Tome of Battle does a decent job of being fantasy-themed martial arts.

I used to hate the spiked chain with a passion, but that's because I had four people out of parties of six wanting to make the same half-orc chainfighter build. There was a span of about two years where it seemed like every party had to have a half-orc chainfighter. (Which, incidentally, seems like a local phenomenon.) But that trend gradually died out so now I'm neutral toward it.

Oh yeah... And psionics still gets a bad rap in many ancient gaming circles because of the way psionics were presented in the first edition Player's Handbook. Apparently an entirely optional system in a book published thirty years ago makes psionics unsuitable for any D&D game. But in those circles, psionics are still those zonky powers with no thematic connection to the fantasy genre or any sense of balance or purpose... Whatever.

Sorry, I'll stop being a bitter curmudgeon now.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I consider Abjurant Champion to be broken. It won't bring the game to a halt but good BAB, full caster progression and d10 hit dice is just too good.

 

[DrStalker]

Player character monster races with racial hit die. In my experience such characters end up less powerful than a human using core classes; there are probably some powerful races there but between racial hit-die (which are usually a medium BAB and don't contribute to spell caster levels) and level adjustments they seem fine to me.

I don't like psionic casters as written, but my objection there is more with the way they "feel" than a fear they will be overpowered. I've never had a chance to see 3.X psionics in play, other than NPCs with psionics which is completely different to players having them.

 

[lobsterGun]

Spiked Chain is far too much mo-better than the rest of the exotic weapons to not be considered anything other than broken.

However, spiked chain by itself *isn't so broken that it deserves to be banned from games, so it makes a fine addition to the list of overrated broken things.



*Caveat: Combine spiked chain with a few feats (improved trip, combat expertise, deft opportunist, karmic strike, etc) and the combination becomes potent, but that's more the fault of the synergy than the chain alone.