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I've been playing D&D for the best part of twenty years now and in that time I've gone from playing the usual chaotic good, half elf ranger with a magic sword to characters where the backstory has been more important than the stats. I've played a half demon, a wandering peddler and even a one-armed man for the sake of characterisation and had a better rpg experience as a result.

But there are people who seem to insist on min-maxing, powergaming and comming up with character builds that do nothing but make their characters deadly in terms of their reading of the rules and annoying in the eyes of the other players.

The one that stands out for me was a 2nd Ed D&D game where one of the players wanted to play a class that he had cooked up himself. The class was supposedly some form of Shaolin monk who had been living in isolation until comming out into the world for the sake of the adventure. The class used the cleric's THACO score, had access to wizard spells, fought with the abilities of a monk and also had their bonus to armour drawn from her wisdom score. In addition the character had been blind from birth, but the guy "balanced" this by giving her 360 degree psychic vision that functioned regardless of the available light, smoke or magical effects and so on.

Now has anyone come across a more unbalanced character than that?

Since I've been a DM for years I have always found ways to combat the silly things people have done to min-max their characters. Thankfully I don't normally come across such behavior normally. Anyway as far as the most silly thing I have come across it was a rogue one of my friends had made. He set his feats up so that he could crit on a 15-20, got backstab damage on anything pretty much, and had reflex/ac so high nothing could hit him. I threw some undead and constructs at him and he wasn't too happy.

*edit*
This was a 3.5 forgotten realms character.

The Foot wrote:Since I've been a DM for years I have always found ways to combat the silly things people have done to min-max their characters. Thankfully I don't normally come across such behavior normally. Anyway as far as the most silly thing I have come across it was a rogue one of my friends had made. He set his feats up so that he could crit on a 15-20, got backstab damage on anything pretty much, and had reflex/ac so high nothing could hit him. I threw some undead and constructs at him and he wasn't too happy.

*edit*
This was a 3.5 forgotten realms character.

I played alongside a similar character build in the first 3rd ed game I was involved in.

The guy was playing a drow rogue who had a massive bluff skill and of course crazy Dex; then he took a feat that allowed him to make a bluff check in combat and if he succeeded make a backstab attack against his target. The problem was that he wanted to make the check and use the feat in every round of combat and multiple times against the same opponent simply because the rules didn't make it explicit that he couldn't. Most of the group came to the conclusion that trying the same trick against the same opponent or someone who just saw you do the same thing wouldn't work, but the guy was convinced that he could all the same.

In the finale of the campaign he tried to sneak attack my cleric using the same trick and got upset when I simply said that my character knew him too well and wouldn't believe anything he said no matter what he did. Sorry, but you can't use a feat to overcome the fact that someone knows you're a consumate liar and cheat!

In my Iron Kingdoms game, I decided to let my players build whatever crazy stuff they wanted.
I let them take whatever feats from whatever setting they wanted as long as they could justify it in some way. It was my last hurrah with 3.5 so I thought what the hell, let's see what they cook up.

Well. I got:
-A wizard who multiclassed into Warcaster and took some meta magic lunacy from Forgotten Realms that meant he was spitting twinned maximised scorching rays and some unbalanced flame AOE spell at everything. He could kill one big thing a round or wipe entire regiments, and this was at level 10-12. I've never seen such an insane damage output.
-A trollkin bear warrior (mutated into a full blood troll rather than a bear, visually, but we used the bear warrior rules). He got out of hand when the arcane mechanic made him some meckanical strength boosting items. He was able to get to Str 50, so I allowed him to do some pretty crazy stuff (like ripping the spine out of a crippled helljack).
-An arcane meckanic who got blighted, and so built himself an Iron Lich body to run around in.
-A human warlord who had a wyvern mount and a meckanical lance. He used to flying charge things and then sting the crap out of them.
-A gun mage with the rifleman class. Stupidly powerful.

This party took down the Tarrasque in I think 4 rounds at level 13. It had been chasing them for quite a while (I explained the presence of the Tarrasque in IK as being an avatar of the devourer wurm, which they had royally pissed off by killing the lord of the feast more than once.)
so they had time to prepare, but still!
That's what happens in 3.5 if you don't feat-police.

A Dawn caste Solar, fully kitted out in celestial battle armor with a grand daiklave and a bunch of melee charms is pretty ridic. I made a no more power armor rule after that game.

Dawn Caste seem to be broken no matter what you do with them.

Other than the ridiculous Modern D20 cyberpunk campaign I played in where were actively encouraged to make absurdly broken characters because we were going to face challenges that would be equally broken (The final boss of Part 1 of the campaign's hit points were an equation. I don't know the full equation but one number involved was the maximum damage the entire party could inflict in a single round. Cubed. Needless to say, we did not win by beating/stabbing/shooting/burning him to death.

I've actually seen almost no crazy unbalanced characters, but I've heard that the 3.5 Warlock is completely broken. The guy who GM'ed one of my games expressly banned Warlocks after someone in another game he ran had a Warlock that could fly and drop gigantic AoEs that did like 10d6 damage at will, with no limit. He dealt with it by having an enemy spellcaster put an anti-magic field around him while he was flying so he fell to his death and decided no more Warlocks ever.

Wow...those are some messed up character builds.

I had the experience of DMing for a barbarian/sorceror who refused to wear armour and relied upon the fact that he could inflict massive amounts of damage quickly in the hope of decimating his enemies before they could retaliate.

The character wasn't broken or an attempt at powergaming, it was more that the player was going through a period where he would create gimped characters for the sake of the backstory and challenge they represented to play.

A theme of the campaign was that the PCs had the potential to shape the world around them as they created their legend and their magical items became attuned to their auras and increased in potency with them. I gave this PC a two-handed sword that inflicted extra cold damage and then as he advanced in levels exploded a blast of cold damage when he managed a critical hit. In addition he had a custom spell that allowed him to imbue his weapon with offensive spells as well so he hit like a freight train.

I tested him to the limit though when he had to fight a duel against a vampiric fighter. The undead was tough enough to soak up the massive damage of his initial attack and then hit him back. But the reality sank in when the vampire kept regenerating enough HP each round to stay in the fight and keep hurting the PC who had little in the way of armour.

In the end he was forced to use vampiric touch on his own familiar to stay in the fight.

He won, but the battle made him think seriously about the strengths of his character.

I had an Epic level (I know, I know) Wizard who could cast IIRC 4 spells per round if he wasn't Time Stopping. We had a smoke break and fired up the random number generator one of my roommates wrote every time I decided it was time to cut loose. I also did this while in medium armor without spell penalty. I could also hurt myself to up the DC on any spell I cast. There was literally nothing the DM could find in a book that could kill me, and when he contrived something to do it to end the madness, the other unbalanced character with us was able to make up for it. He was basically just a Monk without any other prestige classes or anything, except he spent his ENTIRE gold allotment on Luckblades. 40-something * 3 wishes goes a long way toward putting down anything in your path.

Currently, in one of the two games I play in, I have characters that single-handedly cause the CR of our encounters to be 2-5 higher than what the party should be at. I have a 5th level Duskblade who one-shots (big) single monster encounters. I dealt 46 points of damage in one hit to a werewolf at 3rd level, and I dealt over half damage to a Revenant last night. Looking at the SRD stats of the Revenant online now, I see that the DM advanced the one last night as well.

In the other game I play in, I'm a 9th level Beguiler. Anything we fight is either Undead or I've knocked it unconscious with subdual damage within a round or two. Due to Whelm being subdual and not actually typed, I can actually outpace the wand-happy wizard as far as dropping opponents goes because I don't need to worry about energy resistance. Combine that with Spell Focus, Improved Feint, Conceal spellcasting, and the Spell Enhancer spell, and high Int, my DC is through the roof. And his UMD is so high that it's almost impossible for me to fail to activate a magic device.

Back in 3rd edition, one of our guys made a character who dual-wielded falchions that were keened. He had improved critical and a few things from an AEG book on them, giving them some stupid 11-20/x3 crit range. I can't even remember what class he was at this point. The falchions were really more deterministic of the character than his class.

Is this nonsense even possible in Dark Heresy at all? Just doesn't seem like the characters are tough enough to stand up to the enemies that exist you could possibly throw at them.

daedalus-templarius wrote:Is this nonsense even possible in Dark Heresy at all? Just doesn't seem like the characters are tough enough to stand up to the enemies that exist you could possibly throw at them.

I couldn't imagine how, what with everyone being too busy barely not shooting themselves in the face with their 25% chance to hit. It would be like trying to find a way to abuse Alternity, except that it's possible to eventually become good at things in Alternity.

I love how full-auto makes guns more accurate though. There might be some room for abuse there.

daedalus-templarius wrote:Is this nonsense even possible in Dark Heresy at all? Just doesn't seem like the characters are tough enough to stand up to the enemies that exist you could possibly throw at them.

Some systems have more of a reputation for being exploitable than others. I'm not familiar enough with Dark Heresy, but it does sound like it might be difficult to do this...

3.0/3.5 DD& could be bad by default, but generally got worse if you didn't keep an eye on weird interactions with 3rd party supplements.

I'm pretty sure my chance to hit with my nomad is usually around 85-90%, also in melee I hit... a lot. Although if I threw a daemon herald at myself, I'd get torn to pieces. If I was maybe a level 16 death cult assassin... probably would still die but would do better.

I guess the thinking for full auto is just the amount of bullets you are throwing out makes it more likely you'll hit something.

I think I've seen several systems where buts fire raises the chance to hit. As d-t says, it's modeling the idea that you'll hit something. In some systems it's a lot easier to resolve than giving out tons of attacks at a minus to hit, and roughly the same effective odds.

Sure, but I would think that would increase the overall chance to hit something, but reduce the odds of an individual bullet hitting, because it's basically spray-and-pray. Either we were doing it wrong, or it was increasing the overall chance to hit something, AND the odds of individual bullets hitting.

Well if you roll poorly, you might not hit with any bullets and then you've wasted like 10

But yea, full auto adds +20 to hit, then for every success an additional bullet hits, up to the maximum fired.

Semi-auto adds +10, and every 2 successes an additional bullet hits... which seems strange, as I'd think that semi-auto would be at least as accurate as full auto, if not more so.

Dark heresy: I've got a techpriest with bionic legs with jump jets in them, massive bionic enchancements, arms that can fold into two arms, for 4 in total and he's decked in carpace, uses a crazy drill and eviscerator in combat and can swing 4 times in combat. His strength is near 100 and is toughness is 80 something.

Funny thing is, he got all butt-hurt when I used a guy with counter attack against him. Basically owned him with two counters. So he's not that overpowered... hmmm...

daedalus-templarius wrote:Well if you roll poorly, you might not hit with any bullets and then you've wasted like 10

But yea, full auto adds +20 to hit, then for every success an additional bullet hits, up to the maximum fired.

Semi-auto adds +10, and every 2 successes an additional bullet hits... which seems strange, as I'd think that semi-auto would be at least as accurate as full auto, if not more so.

You could always add your own house-rules.

While I was GMing a Death Watch thread our tech-marine got to a point where he could never fail a tech, knowledge or drive test....ever

Also in a call of Cuthulu game I managed to exploit enough plot devices and items the GM gave us to always know what was going on and always be in control of the situation..... until he hit me with that Pinto....

Cheesecat wrote:

daedalus-templarius wrote:Well if you roll poorly, you might not hit with any bullets and then you've wasted like 10

But yea, full auto adds +20 to hit, then for every success an additional bullet hits, up to the maximum fired.

Semi-auto adds +10, and every 2 successes an additional bullet hits... which seems strange, as I'd think that semi-auto would be at least as accurate as full auto, if not more so.

You could always add your own house-rules.

I was thinking of using the new Black Crusade rules actually, -10 for full-auto, +0 for semi, +10 for regular, all half-actions.

Now to try to figure out melee stuff...

When a person fires anything on full auto when it isn't braced with a tripod or what have you, they are lucky to hit anything. Of course with technology being pretty advanced and what not in the 40k fluff maybe they have a way to compensate for it.

daedalus-templarius wrote:Is this nonsense even possible in Dark Heresy at all?

In Dark Heresy? Not really. It's difficult to do.
In Rogue Trader? It's easier, but still not such a problem.
Ascension-level Dark Heresy and Deathwatch? Hell yes! When you start stacking Solo-Modes and Squad Modes and then combine them with Demeanours and Relics... it can get nuts.

In our last game of Deathwatch the GM was afraid of attacking my Black Templar because he feared the 40-60+ damage I could cause per hit (after reductions for Toughness). And I was fighting a Keeper of Secrets in melee! Counter-Attack is a beautiful Talent.

In a 4th ed I've had too kill a dwarf Swordmage with 37(38)(39)/38(39)(40) AC at level 17 >.< the next lowest AC in the ground was a fighter with 34. Swordmages...

Half Dragonborn- Half Angel Warforged Paladin.

Nuff sed.

As a GM speaking, the best way to avoid an unbalanced character is

1) Start off in a low magic world.
2) If it is going to break the adventure, don't allow it.

Set the tone for the adventure at the begining, and don't make your encounters dumb. If there are 4 PC fighting 4 enemies, and your rougue is doing max damage/critting every time, his opponent, might call out that he is in trouble and now the Rogue has 4 opponents instead of 1 and his shenanigans are nullified.

Explain to him that his "super awesome cool power" might better be used in limited capacity, otherwise he is going to atract such attention in each encounter.

You always take down the guy who can do the most damage, and if it is him, then well he can expect alot of attention form the bad guys.

But remember: your job as a GM is to have fun, and to make sure your player characters are having a good time.

If you are going to get butt-hurt because the "Ultra-Cool Vampire Mage" at the end of your adventure is turned into a bright red smear in the 2nd round of combat, and that is a surprise to you....

You might not be as good as a GM as you think you are.

Both of these are in Living Forgotten Realms 4e.

First is a Dwarven fighter. Besides ridiculously high defenses, in the 40's like clambake mentioned, he has a low level banner that has an encounter power that sucks everything within 3 squares to it at the beginning of his turn for the entire encounter. There are a few fighter powers that also pull enemies in. He has feated into powers that make it so that if he makes an op attack the target is slid, then slowed, and that any target he slows is knocked prone. He is a one man tar pit and destroys encounter tactics for DMs. Get an enemy anywhere close and they get sucked in. Try to get away and you are slid, slowed, and knoked prone. Attack him and you'll most likely miss. Try to grab the banner and that grants an op attack and you are slid, slowed, and knocked prone. Try to attack his allies and you grant op attacks (he is a fighter) and you are slid, slowed, and knocked prone. The only way to keep him from bogging down an encounter is to stun or daze, but he has an encounter that allows him to make a save as soon as either happens, and the Superior Will feat that lets him make a save against them at the beginning of his turn even if it is normally a stun or daze you can't make a save against.

The other is an assassin with a two-handed hammer (mordenkrad). He spends most of the encounter invisible* and insubstantial. After he attacks he can go back into such a state. He would be a glass cannon except since he cannot be seen he rarely can be attacked and even if he is he is insubstantial so only takes half damage. That isn't really the bad part, it is the damage. The amount of damage he can put out in a turn or two is stupidly high. At last years GenCon at the P3 (17-20) he killed the BBEG in one turn. With an action point he did over 700hp of damage. Sure he rolled two crits in a row, but even when he doesn't he still does in 200-300 on average.

*On the invis, he found a power that says one counts as Invis but cannot be detected by any means so blindfighting or tremorsense don't work, and even if a power says you can see invis things, he isn't actually invis so they don't work either. We've looked into it, it is true.

This isn't a home game and you have to follow the rules as written so you can't house rule it out.

We have been playing a home brew game and some of them are only used to LFR and as such are frustrated they don't get showered with any magical item of their choosing, level up regularly, have to be in civilization to retrain, and that retraining isn't unlimited. Had one guy who just showed up and had changed his race overnight. He said "I use my [Deva Racial]" and the DM said "But your a Shadar-Kai", to which he replied, "Well I think this race is more optimized". This wasn't a week in, but several months into the game.

Looking at some of these characters I really can't see how you could enjoy building such OP monsters

Or indeed how it is even possible to make such characters

SilverMK2 wrote:Looking at some of these characters I really can't see how you could enjoy building such OP monsters

Or indeed how it is even possible to make such characters

Its the mentality of some.

Similar to min/max WFB/40k lists.

http://www.goblinscomic.com/06252005/

daedalus-templarius wrote:Is this nonsense even possible in Dark Heresy at all? Just doesn't seem like the characters are tough enough to stand up to the enemies that exist you could possibly throw at them.

My Dark Heresy cell consists of

A Guardsman with 60 WS and 57 BS

An Assassin with 60 Perception

A Tech Priest with the Servo Harness from a Techmarine(meaning she has a Plasma Pistol, Flamer, and two heavy tearing arms)

A Navigator(Using homebuilt rules instead of Rogue Trader) who has Psy rating 3 and an obscene amount of Psychic Powers

A Cleric who runs around with a Thunder Hammer

And a Guard Medic NPC to keep us fully healed.

AND THIS ISN'T ENOUGH!

See, our DM regularly throws us up against Flesh Hounds of Khorne, entire swarms of plague zombies, Ork Nobs, and the like.

The last time I played Death watch I managed to make my devastator BS87 or something like that at character gen.
I have also played a homebrew D20 version where our Librarian rippd apart a space hulk with a vortex Doom cause he kept critting the sustain roll ....