Verboten! What do you NOT allow in your campaigns?

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Books outside the core rulebooks. Until I have enough to digest their contents (mmm. Yummy paper). After that might allow some/all/altered versions of what's in the book.

Generally, if it's a 'normal' heroic campaign - no evil. Mostly find that too divisive. IME evil PCs result in all manner of shenanagins, that I could live without.

 

[Psimancer]

Man, you guys are harsh!

In the campaign I am running, if you want it and it is not core, it needs to be written up and submitted in hard and soft copy.

The players & I then work on it so that it is balanced from both a players and a DM’s perspective, but I have final say.

But pretty much, anything goes.

If you want a lot of stuff, you need to do a lot of writing!

Nothing banned yet…

(Although, I'm not a fan of either Monks or Spiked Chains)



Oh, and I’m the rules lawyer of the group… so, little chance of someone slipping something really bad into the game!!!
.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

The first, only, and most important entry on my universal permaban list is:

Lone wolf characters. These are the ones who have no real past, no real future, no interest in the other PCs, no common interests with the other PCs, no intention of being friends with or working with the other PCs, and nothing that they particularly care about. Hand me a character that looks like that, and I'll hand it right back to you and tell you to try again. I'm not interested in trying to find ways to wedge that character into a group, and I'm not willing to deal with the consequences of that character not fitting into the group, so I'm not going to let it show up in the game.

Fortunately, since we all started collaborating during character creation and coming up with characters that will group together well in the first place, we haven't had too many lone wolves.


The only D&D-specific blanket prohibition I have is that anyone who wants to go into a prestige class of some kind has to give me advance warning (at least 1-2 levels before planning to take it, and preferably more) so I can look it over and decide whether I want to include it or not. And honestly, if I could even count on the majority of PrCs being well-designed, fairly balanced, and interesting, I might not even worry about it. But so many PrCs are so bad (in my opinion, obviously) that I just don't allow any of them in my game until I've checked 'em out.

--
i've got stuff i don't like, but i handle them case-by-case
ryan

 

[Vamprey]

No Beholders. Dumbest monster to ever grace the pages of any book anywhere IMO.

No gnomes (at least none of the trickster/illusionest/tinker types).

No psionics for PC's and most races (restricted to illithids and githyanki).

No Profession skill per se - use others skills that are appropriate i.e. survival instead of Profession: Hunter. Still use the mechanics for income generation but the actual skill is IMHO ill conceived and can be achieved with other skills such as craft etc.

 

[Dark Dragon]

System: Depends on the group...Now I'm DMing a 3.5 high-level FRCS group and allow nearly everything that is fine with the rules (3.5 core rules, 3.0 splat books, FRCS, PGtF, MoF, MM 2, Monsters of Faerûn, ELH). We don't have the psi handbook, so psi powers are not a big deal (except for illithids and other creatures with psi abilities: these abilities do not interfere with an antimagic field or SR, psi is not magic IMHO/IMC). We have some minor rule changes (Miasma allows a Fort save, MoF deity related spells can only be cast by a cleric of that deity, wild shape as written in MotW, Mordenkainen's Disjunction is a better Greater Dispelling).

Banned spells: Know Protections, Know Vulnerabilities, Power Sight. These give quite statistical informations about a creature and that does not really fit into a fantasy game, IMO.

Polymorph / Shapechange: No templates, no advanced creatures. When the party fights a death tyrant (undead beholder), the wizards can't use shapechange to morph into a death tyrant.

No evil PCs, I'm evil enough

 

[sellars]

The first, only, and most important entry on my universal permaban list is:

Lone wolf characters.

I agree completely. In one of my groups we have one that *always* plays this lone wolf character. I play in that campaign, and I find it really annoying. If I was the DM in that campaign, I'd make clear that strength comes in numbers and that cooperation is in a lot of cases vital for survival.

 

[MonsterMash]

In my current Wilderlands campaign I've got the following restrictions:
No monk PCs
No Greyhawk pantheon (I've got plenty of historical and fictional pantheons so not required)
No drow - not even as monsters/NPCs
All content outside the Core rules and PgttW has to be approved before use
Bardic knowledge and historical knowledge is regional - a bard does not know everything about everywhere. Makes Gather info a useful skill

But there are a whole heap of human subraces available for PCs

 

[robberbaron]

Nothing that isn't in Books 1-3 or the SRD - I don't intend to buy any more books. OK, I allowed Fullblades after some player whining, but that is it.

Half-Orcs. Orcs don't breed with humans (they will mate with them given the chance but the races are not genetically compatible).
Uruks are as per Half-Orcs in the book but are only distantly related to Orcs.

Gnomes don't have any special Illusion abilities.

Players can munchkin as much as they like, but I reserve the right to do the same with the NPCs.

 

[Whisper72]

As a general rule, the players keep to the PHB. If they want something special, I must have the book, and must approve of it specifically, elsewise no-go. Since I have none of the splatbooks, BoVD etc., this makes things very simple.

I will allow campaign specific stuff. I.e. when playing in FR, natch all stuff from the FR books I own (most) goes, now have the ECS, so stuff in that will be allowed in any future Eberron games etc. But I will NOT allow FR feats/stuff into Eberron or somesuch unless _I_ decided to put it in in the first place...

 

[Big Jake]

Like many already said: No evil. No evil PCs. No evil spells.

Other than that, I try to be extremely accomodating to the players. I pretty much agree to most of what the players want for their characters, as long as it matches how they role play the said character. My latest reject to a player was when he wanted to get the Saint template from the Book of Exalted Deeds. Its not that I don't allow Saints, but his character was SO not a Saint. It hurt his feelings a bit (he really thought it would be cool... LA and all), but we found some other alternatives that he liked.

We use stuff from a lot of different sources. My current campaign uses:
DMG, PHB, MM, MMII, Fiend Folio, City Works, Seafarer's Handbook, Dungeon articles, Dragon articles, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness (for DM use mostly... we've converted some of the spells to non-evil ones), Necromantic Lore, Miniatures Handbook, a lot of the Forgotten Realms books (mostly player-owned), Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, Draconomicon, Traps & Treachery, Path of Shadow, Path of the Sword, Spells & Spellcraft, and D20 Modern. And I know I forgot some others.

My current game has:

Female human were-rat Rogue/Guild Master
Female human druid (this is her first time with D&D... keeping it simple)
Male yuan-ti fighter/dervish variant (uses a hand-crossbow)
Male drow ranger/fighter with the Vow of Poverty
Male drow wizard (working towards archmage)
Male bugbear (after reincarnation) fighter/warmage/havoc mage/eldritch knight

Instead of limiting the players to my ideas for a campaign world, I bring their ideas into my game world. It is challenging to bring it all together at times. As it turns out, my game world (this time) is somewhat like the Eberron setting. High magic. Not many "pre-set" alignments for races.

Who knows what I will do next time. I'm thinking about a city-based adventure with no armor and very limited choices of weapons. I like to throw in a point-buy system every now and then, just to make people think about their character concepts.