Most overrated "broken" things?

[rgard]

The beauty of the Ur Priest is for you to summon an Effreet and steal his 3 wish/day thing and use it on yourself. Multiple times. But that's its only schtick. The whole world hates an Ur Priest and all the religions try to kill one on sight.

Sublime Chord is probably a better accelerated casting prc.

True, but never got there as the prc was used with MT. Just got the spells and caster level. Glad you mentioned sublime chord, forgot about that one. I may use it in one of me 1E to 3.5E conversions of my characters.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Someone]

In my opinion, "broken" means "challenges the DM in new ways."

I've found several definitions of "Broken". It can mean:

- A concept I don't want in my games. See this thread for examples.

- An option that is better, even marginally, that other similar options, but still mechanically balanced. Suppose a one handed exotic weapon that deals 1d12 damage: it's better than the bastard sword, yet the extra damage is an average of 2 points over a longsword, which is more or less reasonable for a feat.*

- An option that changes traditional gameplay, but are in itself balanced in general power level with other options. Warlocks are the prime example, as casters that don't need to rest and can cast an unlimited number of spells*.

- An option that gravely disrupts gameplay. The Frenzied berserker drawback of attacking party members enters this cathegory*

- An option that is too good not to use. The old 3.0 haste spells was the prime example*

- An option so powerful that a character with it is grossly more powerful than other, near identical characters without it.

*Pretend you agree with these for a moment. The examples are just that, not another reason to derail the thread.

 

[boolean]

To get this thread slightly back on track - I find all the threads on how the warblade is "broken" kind of funny - because compared to the other classes in Bo9S it's the least powerful - especially compared to the crusader. Yet no one really says anything about the other classes (or at least much more rarely)

Part of this may be due to the Warblade appearing in the Bo9S preview on the WotC site. It was the first (and in many cases only) martial adept class most people saw.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the other thing about the warblade is he looks at the fighter and says, "Anything you can do I can do better." The Crusader and Swordsages are powerful in a different way.

Its the old example of the bard vs fighter. The fighter may be completely dominant in combat, but the bard just might not care since the fighter is so social inept. But if you have 2 fighters, and one is just plain better at combat then the other, the lesser character starts to feel it.

 

[Mort]

I think the other thing about the warblade is he looks at the fighter and says, "Anything you can do I can do better." The Crusader and Swordsages are powerful in a different way.

Its the old example of the bard vs fighter. The fighter may be completely dominant in combat, but the bard just might not care since the fighter is so social inept. But if you have 2 fighters, and one is just plain better at combat then the other, the lesser character starts to feel it.

Depending on books allowed - I don't think the warblade will outfight the fighter nearly as much as may appear on paper and certainly not as much as most people think. Sure if you have a core book fighter vs. a standard warblade the warblade will be better, but that's not a fair comparison since the Bo9S is itself an expansion.
Compare a warblade to a fighter with access to the complete books, PHB II and access to Bo9S stuff and it should come out much more even (note I haven't done an actual comparison and would gladly be proven wrong - but just from seeing the warblade in play, I doubt I would be).

 

[Someone]

Compare a warblade to a fighter with access to the complete books, PHB II and access to Bo9S stuff and it should come out much more even (note I haven't done an actual comparison and would gladly be proven wrong - but just from seeing the warblade in play, I doubt I would be).

I've seen some of such comparisons in the Wizards' boards. Generally they use heavily twinked fighters oriented either to full attacks, or a devastating charge, in which case they may outdamage the warblade. Since the warblade can use his maneuvers reliably, and the fighter must either start his turn adjacent to the enemy (for full attacks) or away form it (for charges), my personal conclusion is that the warblade is roughly equivalent to a fighter with an extra move action available every turn.

 

[Thurbane]

I think the other thing about the warblade is he looks at the fighter and says, "Anything you can do I can do better." The Crusader and Swordsages are powerful in a different way.

Its the old example of the bard vs fighter. The fighter may be completely dominant in combat, but the bard just might not care since the fighter is so social inept. But if you have 2 fighters, and one is just plain better at combat then the other, the lesser character starts to feel it.

That's pretty much how I see it, too.

 

[Felon]

I think the other thing about the warblade is he looks at the fighter and says, "Anything you can do I can do better."

Yes, this is a pretty good way of putting it. I think it was pretty bad design to do things like give the warblade access to the fighter's weapon specialization niche and then lather on barbarian hit dice and skill points. They really should have just let it carve its own identity.

 

[Nifft]

Eh, the Warblade doesn't have the bonus Feats to actually pull off a Fighter's tricks.

For example, the famous Chaingun Tripper needs a few feats:
* 3 necessary: XWP (Spiked Chain), Combat Expertise, Improved Trip
* 4 nice: Combat Reflexes, Weapon Focus (Spiked Chain), Power Attack, Weapon Spec (Spiked Chain)
* Follow-up PrC -- Exotic Weapons Master (2 levels): Exotic Flurry, Exotic Trip

Warblades have exactly one of those feats on their bonus feat list (Combat Reflexes). What a Human Fighter can do at level 1, a Human Warblade must wait until level 3 to accomplish. When a non-Human Fighter has all 7 of these feats (6th level), a non-Human Warblade has only 4 of them (including Combat Reflexes). If you consider Power Attack to be necessary rather than merely nice, and many folks do, then the non-Human Warblade has to wait until 9th level.

(Note that I'm not saying Fighters are as strong as Warblades, just that a Warblade cannot do everything that a Fighter can do. The Warblade is not strictly better than the Fighter. But boy I'd rather play the Warblade... )

Cheers, -- N

 

[zlorf]

Spike chain was annoying It was more annoying when we were playing that you can be retripped when getting up from prone as AOO. It has it place in the game. Someone said it makes combat longer. So does, blink, displacement, mirror image, invisibility, AC, slow DM's, so players, kids...and so on

I don't understand how the spiked chain could ruin someone's entire gaming experience.

If you have such a problem with it, then you really arn't in any position to comment on whether it's broken or not, since your opinion will clearly be bias because of your non-nonsensical hatred of the weapon.

I mean really, you just need to chill out.

Anyhoo, one of my players ran a spiked chain fgt/swsh build in a campaign i ran once. He was a machine, and the player loved running him. Everyone just called him "Chains." Regardless, in response, i did what any good DM would do, i adjusted the difficulty.

Thats the thing about "broken" characters. If you are a good DM, you can adjust the campaign to fit the characters needs, and to provide them with a decent challenge. Maybe I'm just not one to whine over things there's no need to whine over.