Nuclear weapons of D&D Rules

[Quartz]

When I was GMing, I never had a problem with destroying players' magic items. A good turnover keeps things interesting. The issue of the 'favourite weapon, enhanced over the campaign' is a good one, but if it's simply had the magic stripped from it, the item is still a weapon and can be re-enchanted; if totally destroyed, well, that's a well-known plot-hook, isn't it?

But it's important that the players understand this and are happy with it.

 

[Agent Oracle]

When I was GMing, I never had a problem with destroying players' magic items. A good turnover keeps things interesting. The issue of the 'favourite weapon, enhanced over the campaign' is a good one, but if it's simply had the magic stripped from it, the item is still a weapon and can be re-enchanted; if totally destroyed, well, that's a well-known plot-hook, isn't it?

But it's important that the players understand this and are happy with it.

It's allways painful when a player looses somethign of great value to them... but Disjunction comes at a point in the game where any player should have several "emergency backups"

Though, by far, the creulist thing i can think of would be hitting a bag of holding with a disjunction spell.

 

[Particle_Man]

I have decided that my Warlock will not take the feats to make wands or staffs or scrolls.

I also think that grapple favours the big monsters unduly much to be used unless you want a "character is out of the fight while others act" scenario.

 

[Agent Oracle]

Frankly, i've never seen a player who could actually USE the craft feats... since making anything of actual value takes so flipping long that it cannot be done in an active campaign.

 

[Chimera]

Frankly, i've never seen a player who could actually USE the craft feats... since making anything of actual value takes so flipping long that it cannot be done in an active campaign.

Only in "Rush! Rush! Rush!" campaigns where certain players insist that you can't stop to breath or where the GM's plot requires constant fast action.

I've grown to hate those kinds of games and resent those kinds of players.

I just completed playing a Wizard who made many scrolls (had 17 spells on scrolls at the last session of the game) and most of the group's magic arms & Armor (because the GM was really cheap and spotty when it came to that sort of thing). Yeah, there were times when I said "I need a full month to make things". Most of the players had no real problem with that, though one of them whined heavily about it. Me, I never quite understand that feral sense of urgency that makes people upset when you ask for a month of downtime in-game.

 

[iwatt]

Only in "Rush! Rush! Rush!" campaigns where certain players insist that you can't stop to breath or where the GM's plot requires constant fast action.

I've grown to hate those kinds of games and resent those kinds of players.

I just completed playing a Wizard who made many scrolls (had 17 spells on scrolls at the last session of the game) and most of the group's magic arms & Armor (because the GM was really cheap and spotty when it came to that sort of thing). Yeah, there were times when I said "I need a full month to make things". Most of the players had no real problem with that, though one of them whined heavily about it. Me, I never quite understand that feral sense of urgency that makes people upset when you ask for a month of downtime in-game.

Ditto on all points.

It really shafts the wizard's palyer when you start running a Jack Bauer campaign. I rememebr a DM who did that to my brother, who had statted up a wizard with sribe scroll and craft WI and I was playing a cleric with craft weapon's and armor. Right after we took the feats we started up a series of disjointed story arcs that "had" to take place one after another. And the arcs weren't even connected (The DM would buy a new moule and want to run it ASAP).

 

[paradox42]

Though, by far, the creulist thing i can think of would be hitting a bag of holding with a disjunction spell.

I actually did this, running a BBEG ultra-powerful necromancer against the PCs who had just unknowingly spoiled a magical ritual of his to trigger a large magical event. He actually hit one of the party's Portable Holes (they had 4 at the time- did I mention this is an Epic game?). I took what I thought was the kind route, of saying that the extradimensional space collapsed back into Material space and thus dumped the entire contents of the Portable Hole back into normal reality.

Of course, since the contents in question happened to be the dragon PC's hoard, and she was flying at the time, she was rather upset. But they did manage to gather up nearly everything and stow it in backup items after they chased the necromancer away. Actually, the bigger problem for them in that episode was that the Disjunction ruined all their carefully-layered buffs, all at once, no checks, no saving throw. The Sorceress (who was in Ghost Form and had Shapechange on when it hit the other party members) considered herself very lucky to have escaped that, and immediately took a powder into the ground for strategic repositioning.

 

[shilsen]

As the mage in the party, I have avoided the Poly Self/Other into some better form in Shilsen's campaign, simply because I find it annoying that as things were written pre-the recent changes that the hands down orders of magnitude most effective tactic was to spend all your time as something else. Since you could get enormous boosts to stats, ac and attacks. So Shil has avoided using this tactic against us as a courtesy and because we both agree its kind of cheezy.

Yup. If Rackhir's PC had wanted to use Polymorph, I would have had to house rule it heavily. Since he hasn't, I haven't bothered to and I never have an NPC use it.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Sounds like textbook MAD deterrent policy to me!

As for grapple: I'd love to see a mechanic that doesn't use the touch attack, but to be perfectly honest I don't mind it by the RAW. It's slightly time-consuming, but once you learn the rules, it gets a bit easier. Certainly, an opposed check + damage would be too good, unless you removed the consequences of being grappled, in which case why bother with the mechanic in the first place?

 

[hong]

I find grappling works fine as a mechanic. The problem for me is that grappling bonuses can be completely crazy, even within the same ballpark-CR area. You have scrawny wizards with a grapple check of maybe +5 at 10th level, and you have multi-tentacled monsters with +50 at CR 10. Even your bog-standard CR 10 brute monster can have a grapple check of around +25-30, way more than a 10th level fighter. This makes it difficult to run grapples that aren't a walkover for one side (typically the monsters), and makes magic to escape grapples (dim door, freedom of movement) a necessary part of your loadout at higher levels.