What's the most broken PC you've ever seen?

[Darth K'Trava]

Touch attacks in 3e is one big difference.

Thirdly, with readied/delayed actions, more iterative attacks, and more options to min/max, it is much easier in 3e to consistently wipe away those last few HPs from the BBEG before he can blink. With 3.0 Haste, the Cleric has the potential to make the kill singlehandedly.

Or have another party member waiting to make the final kill once you dragged down those hitpoints.... we did that. Woulda worked had the spell connected.....

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

what happened to jeremy's sultans of smack?

The hulking hurler requires you to have really really big things to hurl, but in the right game those can always be there, and I'd say 4562 average damage or whatever it was is at least...20x better than 3.0 harm, except for that plethora of monsters with hit points in the 100 thousands .

As to that harm deal, my characters are about to reach level 6 spells .

Harm still beats the Hulking Hurler. Especially if you consider that the HH is multiclassing to the point where he is ONLY good at throwing things. The Harm casting Cleric is a Cleric...already a monster.

 

[Victim]

Well, so long as its not a requirement ...



I think it had something to do with touch attacks, which are an addition to the 3.0 ruleset, in place of a normal attack, as well as the ability to hold a charge should you fail to connect with a melee attack.

Another change that favored Harm in 3.0 was the addition of monsters with 100s of HP. In 2e, a really tough monster like GW dragon might have 120 HP. In 3rd, that become 600 HP. Suddenly Harm did 5x damage while many spells stayed the same or gained 15 or so extra points from dice.

All the reasonable arguments were posted quickly in the old arguments, but people still disagreed.

In terms of pure numbers, we had a pretty unreasonable paladin. Smite charges for 600 damage, dragon mount for attacking flyers at high speed, Share Spell used with Shield Other so he could use the dragon's 300 HP. He had a ring of evasion complementing his huge saves. His dragon had huge skill numbers too - we called her the ultimate skill item. The player learned to hate and fear energy drain, ability damage, and similar effects since they bypassed his double HP and mega saves.

 

[shilsen]

Most broken PC? Recently it would have to be one that a raging troll barbarian criticalled with a large greatsword. I think the PC was broken into three pieces.

 

[domino]

The player learned to hate and fear energy drain, ability damage, and similar effects since they bypassed his double HP and mega saves.

Especially, because if the DM was anything like me, that character would get targeted with twice the amount anyone else did, for that exact same reason.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Absolute worst I've ever seen: 3.5 cleric with a penchant for caster level increase and holy word, blasphemy and company. This is the most broken and poorly designed spell in the history of D&D. Just up your caster level and you can kill roomfuls of titans, balors and pitfiends with a standard action (or a free action if you use a metamagic rod of quicken or divine metamagic).
Try this: 17 cleric/ 3 heirophant spell power + orange ioun stone + prayer bead of karma + ankh of ascension + death knell's spell + create magic tatoo + divine spell power feat.
That's a caster level of 20+3+1+1+4+4+1+4= 39.
Everything with less than 29 hit dice dies without save or SR unless their SR is 40+. Throw in some spell penetration and you make that check 44+. In a huge radius. That can be made bigger with a core metamagic rod of widen. All dead. *poof*.
Second wing of the infernal armies. *poof*. All dead. No rolls.
Entire groups of NPCs several levels higher than the PC. *poof*. All dead.

3.5 wizard or cleric with "shivering touch". Way more deadly than 3rd edition harm ever was. Starting at 5th level to boot. Paralyzes your great wyrm on average in one shot.

3.5 Hulking hurler. Nothing in D&D has ever done enough damage to destroy planets. Until now. Raises the bar on poor math skills in design.

 

[Crothian]

So, Holy Word is too powerful only becasue the many options of other things allow you to boost your CL to near double what it is. I'm not sure the Holy Word is the problem there.

 

[Victim]

Especially, because if the DM was anything like me, that character would get targeted with twice the amount anyone else did, for that exact same reason.

Well yeah. Especially since part of the premise was fairly rare high level characters, so our guys were pretty famous. If everyone knows he's nearly immune to spells that can be resisted, of course they'll nail him with Enervation instead of Finger of Death. That and the fact that the player really hates those effects. And my wizard with like 144 HP after Endurance ate Power Word Stun ALL THE FREAKIN TIME. Well, not that much actually, it just felt that way since I usually got stunned for the huge boss fights.

Now however, the paladin has lost his precious dragon and most of his smite damage (only like 170 or so) while Mind Blank wards against Power Word Stun (and my wizard has enough HP to ignore it if she hasn't been damaged yet). Muahahahahaha!

Our Shifter was pretty nasty too. Shifter > Tomb of Horrors. His one downside was truly horrid AC, especially when in offensive mode. While he had tons of HP, he needed them all - "I sruvived 240 damage in one round, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

 

[DungeonMaster]

Crothian, we've learned since 1E you shouldn't design spells without a cap. If you do you should look carefully at the ruleset and see what adds to them. Caster level increases are not typed in 3.5, they all stack. This is the most broken spell ever in the history of D&D as written.
Well perhaps not. There's always 3.5 wish that allows you to wish for any item regardless of GP value - it only costs XP, but if you can get wish as a SU ability then that negates XP costs... wait a minute... Yeah. Any character in 3.5 with a ring of 3.5 wishes or the ability to get a monster (pit-fiend?) to wish for him is automatically the most broken character ever. Just wish for more rings of wishes. Infinite wishes. This didn't work in 3rd edition incidentally.
Holy word 3.5 is however the most destructive spell in the history of D&D! If not the most broken.

Besides, it's the character not the spell and that's a valid character.

 

[Diirk]

Well in a real game not many people will take 3x Spell Power on Hierophant, because the Hierophant PrC doesn't boost your spells per day.. only your caster level.