D&D General What builds have actually broken a game?

[Dessert Nomad]

Now. Imagine that, in a party that also has a shepherd druid casting conjure animal (the 5.0) versions. Swarms of nearly unkillable giant owls.

It's not really the single build that can break things, it's party synergy

At the start of the campaign, the GM definitely liked to do waves of moderate encounters across the exploration day in order to wear away hit points and spells; the twilight cleric bubble combined with healing spirit as needed pretty much made slow hit point ablation a non-issue.

I think this reinforces my view that there aren't really overpowered builds in the 5e sphere, in the sense of combining multiple pieces in weird, specific ways to blow up a table. The examples that come up are single options that are significantly stronger than other options, most of which have had errata issued or were significantly changed from 5.0 to 5.5. Original recipe healing spirit on its own is what makes slow hit point ablation a non-issue, when you can use a 2nd level spell slot to heal every party member for 70 damage you have huge out of combat healing at level 3 and essentially unlimited healing once 2nd level slots aren't a big deal (like level 6 or so). And the 5.0 conjure animals spell is just broken, either the DM runs it raw and picks annoying bad animals (not really fun) or you have a huge persistent cloud of little things that soak hits, do damage, and maybe debuff. (shepherd druid does make them better, but 'one subclass using their signature spell that it's obviously designed around' doesn't qualify as what I'm thinking of as a 'build').

I definitely agree that party synergy is much more powerful than assembling 'powergamer builds' in a vacuum, and I'm surprised online stuff about optimization almost never mentions it. Something as simple as 'everyone can sneak well' changes a lot about the campaign and how the party will approach most problems, and something like 'we have a warlock with devil's sight, a wizard who took mostly no-need-to-see spells, a druid who wildshapes for blindsight, a fighter/ranger/paladin with blind fighting, and a rogue with skulker' can really punch above it's weight.

 

[Desdichado]

Builds don't break games. Power gamers break games.

 

[TwoSix]

I definitely agree that party synergy is much more powerful than assembling 'powergamer builds' in a vacuum, and I'm surprised online stuff about optimization almost never mentions it. Something as simple as 'everyone can sneak well' changes a lot about the campaign and how the party will approach most problems, and something like 'we have a warlock with devil's sight, a wizard who took mostly no-need-to-see spells, a druid who wildshapes for blindsight, a fighter/ranger/paladin with blind fighting, and a rogue with skulker' can really punch above it's weight.

Online optimization discussion tends to feature RPGBOT-like builds that are overall breakdowns for a single PC, I assume because the primary audience is relatively novice players who want to "play something powerful".

Experienced players I'm sure are aware that comboing with the other PCs, especially making sure you have enough control and support on top of raw damage, is the stronger play, but they also are probably experienced enough to know that "winning" isn't really all that.

 

[Clint_L]

My current home game is brutal to balance for combat encounters as the party has a barbarian, paladin, battlesmith automaton, and monk for the front line, backed up by a bard, rogue/warlock, ranger, and the artificer. I have to be really inventive with my minions and terrain, and actually think strategically, which I kind of suck at when I'm also tracking everything else.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Online optimization discussion tends to feature RPGBOT-like builds that are overall breakdowns for a single PC, I assume because the primary audience is relatively novice players who want to "play something powerful".

Experienced players I'm sure are aware that comboing with the other PCs, especially making sure you have enough control and support on top of raw damage, is the stronger play, but they also are probably experienced enough to know that "winning" isn't really all that.

I think a lot of online optimization discussion is done by people who are entirely or mostly theorycrafters and don't play much if at all, and if they do play it's often at lower levels than the builds they talk about or is in arena type formats where impracticalities don't really show up. I think that's also why DPR calculators figure so prominently, it's easy to plug character info into a calculator and say 'look, this build gets 75 DPR, that's way better than the 58 DPR the other one does!' while ignoring everything else.

A lot of the 'optimized' characters I've seen can only do their thing once per day and only if they get the right amount of prep time and know ahead of time 'this is the one big fight' and several other things line up just right. They seem like something that would be painfully dull to play, because you don't have a lot of broad abilities and don't have a way to cope with unexpected stuff. And I'm not talking about 'DM builds an encounter just to mess with you', just ordinary stuff like not knowing if what you're fighting is the end boss or just a warm up encounter, having to deal with odd terrain or mechanics, and the like.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm going to jump on the Twilight Cleric bandwagon.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Builds don't break games. Power gamers break games.

I'm going to jump on the Twilight Cleric bandwagon.

I would say Twilight cleric disproves the first statement. None of my players are powergamers, but when someone played a twilight cleric it completely dominated. It's broken out the box. It might be that in amongst a bunch of powergamed builds, a vanilla twilight cleric appears less broken.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've seen an "Omniscificer" at work before, in 3.5e/PF1e. With sufficiently-stupid degrees of skill bonus and the right feats, an artificer can replicate any spell, for free, with a single standard action. It was a gestalt game, so high power was expected, but this guy was off the charts. Functionally, yes, that character did break that game; his ability to solve any problem in, at most, two rounds meant that the GM had to resort to outright mechanically-underhanded dirty tricks just to have a chance against us.

It made my optimized, but primarily thematic, Druid/Wizard/Geomancer/Planar Shepherd (Syrania, flavored as "Mount Celestia") feel like a perfectly reasonable, well-balanced character.

So...yeah. I've seen how broken builds can ruin games in the overpowered direction.

And I've seen how GMs with woefully inadequate understanding of game balance can ruin games too. I've even seen how someone being painfully underpowered can ruin a game, because everyone else slowly begins to resent them for HAVING to come to their rescue and HAVING to define all plans around keeping the nearly-incompetent ball-and-chain alive, while said player refused to change behavior or replace the character because that would be "unfaithful" or some other nonsense.

Yeah. I've seen it, with my own two eyes. It's not fun.

 

[ECMO3]

People often talk about power-gaming builds that come in and break the game, either trivializing encounters to the point that the DM has to account for them, or being so effective the rest of the party becomes practically spectators. But I don't actually see them turn up, even when I play a lot of games in Adventurer's League format (one-shots, character rebuilds allowed between sessions, no house rules) that is well suited to trying out and/or using weird broken builds. My experience is that simple builds used well tend to cause more DM headaches than weird multiclasses grabbing special feat combos - a fighter with a vicious weapon action surging or a rogue that automatically makes DC25 sleight of hand and DC 20 deception and stealth checks tend to throw DMs for a loop more than the 'X levels of this, y levels of this, z levels of this' combinations.

So what are some complex builds you've seen someone use that actually blew up at a real table? To qualify, it needs to be valid under 5.0 or 5.5 rules (with errata included). It must have been used in an actual game with a different DM than the player (in-person or online is fine, solo isn't). It has to actually work with someone reading the rules RAW. It should specify what rules sources it uses, and those should not be straight homebrew. It should be excessively overpowered compared to a simple-but-effective build with a similar idea. The character should be able to function through a typical adventure, and the brokeness should be able to occur in normal circumstances.

I'm asking this because I don't think this is really a 5.0/5.5 problem - 3/3.5 had a lot of trouble with super-combos and their base classes were weak compared to other options, but it doesn't seem to be the case now. To me it seems to be more of a 'gaming legend' thing, but I'll be interested to be shown wrong.

Some examples of what doesn't qualify:
Things like Paladin with 1 level of Hexblade (5.0) or 1 level of Warlock + Pact of the Blade (5.5) - that makes a character that can focus Charisma instead of dividing between Strength or Dex. It's certainly useful, and some people don't like it story-wise (especially since Hexblade is notoriously lacking in narrative) but it's not something that just throws off encounters or makes the game just about that PC.

Coffeelock (take sorcerer and warlock with the invocation that allows you to go without sleep to get unbounded sorcery points) could qualify, but the 'I rest for 8 hours to take 8 short rests instead of one long rest and keep converting my warlock slots to sorcery points and never ever take a long rest ever' is not RAW and is something I wouldn't expect a real DM to keep allowing.

I've never seen a PC that was broken in all 3 phases of the game. The closest I have seen is a 20th level Champion Fighter wearing a ring of resistance for almost every damage type and wielding a Vicious Maul that was played shortly after the 2024 rules came out. I think he also had a Belt of Giant Strength if I remember correctly. He was "broken" in the combat pillar from about level 15 on. The key pieces that made it broken were Topple, 4 attacks a round, heroic inspiration every turn and Indomitable. It caused two houserules at that table - maximum of 2 magic rings worn at a time and you can only topple creatures one size larger. I was a player at that table but after witnessing it in play I chose to nerf the 2024 Indomitable and change it to the 2014 version in the games I DM. That PC was "broken" in combat and good at the other pillars too, but not "broken" in the other pillars.

I have also seen several high charisma, high wisdom Fey Wanderer Rangers with a Bard or Rogue multiclass who broke the charisma skill check system with over a +20 on charisma skills, but they again were good/great but not game breaking in other two pillars.

I've seen plenty of other supposedly broken PC builds, including multiple Twilight Clerics, Gloom Stalker Bugbear Assasins, Ancesteral Guardian Barbarian Swashbucklers and Wizard-Warlocks using upcast Conjure Minor Elementals on 4 attacks a round. Some of these were made by players who intended to build the "ultimate" character but none of them were game breaking once we started throwing dice.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've never seen a PC that was broken in all 3 phases of the game. The closest I have seen is a 20th level Champion Fighter wearing a ring of resistance for almost every damage type and wielding a Vicious Maul that was played shortly after the 2024 rules came out. I think he also had a Belt of Giant Strength if I remember correctly. He was "broken" in the combat pillar from about level 15 on. The key pieces that made it broken were Topple, 4 attacks a round, heroic inspiration every turn and Indomitable. It caused two houserules at that table - maximum of 2 magic rings worn at a time and you can only topple creatures one size larger. I was a player at that table but after witnessing it in play I chose to nerf the 2024 Indomitable and change it to the 2014 version in the games I DM. That PC was "broken" in combat and good at the other pillars too, but not "broken" in the other pillars.

I have also seen several high charisma, high wisdom Fey Wanderer Rangers with a Bard or Rogue multiclass who broke the charisma skill check system with over a +20 on charisma skills, but they again were good/great but not game breaking in other two pillars.

I've seen plenty of other supposedly broken PC builds, including multiple Twilight Clerics, Gloom Stalker Bugbear Assasins, Ancesteral Guardian Barbarian Swashbucklers and Wizard-Warlocks using upcast Conjure Minor Elementals on 4 attacks a round. Some of these were made by players who intended to build the "ultimate" character but none of them were game breaking once we started throwing dice.

CME is mostly theorycraft imho.

Easily countered, outclassed by others gish builds.

Eberron fighter may be an exception.