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Hlaine are you related to silver? you share a last name.

A lot of it depends on the power level.

Darksun in D&D doesn't have as muhc cheeze as say 3.5 faerun.

All the splatbooks for some games make them beyond silly.

It's basically the GMs job to make the game fun.

The silliest thing in Deathwatch is that marines can throw each other further than they can walk...

Depends totally on the game. The most unbalancing characer I ever saw enter a campaign was in a Rifts campaign where a new player brought in a Dragon character (perfectly valid character choice in that game), BUT when that character appeared it pretty much started to dominate the game. Opponents became too hard for the rest of us to be challanging to the dragon. Many adventures then became "the dragon and his pets" kind of thing. Eventually old characters were getting abandoned and new characters were being made that were a similar power level to the dragon making it even harder on people who still wanted to play their original characters. Caused a ridiculous power spiral in the game that the GM did nothing about and eventually the campaign crashed and burned.

Generally I have an issue with Rifts for that reason, beacause it is hard to balance much of anything in that game unless you are *very* restrictive in what you allow people to play. When you have character options that run from a street rat who barely survives being homeless to Godlings or alien creatures that have godlike abilities balance is hard to come by.

Beyond that I've seen the usual min-maxing that happens. After 34+ years of roleplaying I've seen it all and come up with ways to deal with it quite effectively. One trick ponies set themselves up to eventually be useless in some game situations.

Sadly D&D 4th edition seems to be built to reward the min-maxer pretty significantly now that it is so much more combat focused. Other systems mitigate it much better and make it harder. Really hard to Min-max a character in the standard Call of Cthluhu rules. You might be able to have more skills, but doesn't make you any tougher, or harder to kill or impossible to drive insane.

Skriker

Balance is something Rifts has never seemed particularly concerned about. The main book is more about somewhat grim and gritty wasteland explorer types, but you could have the Rogue Scientist with a pop-gun and no armor who has a couple science skills of possible value next to a Glitter Boy with a relic suit of power armor, in perfect condition, that can take on a small army and literally is untouchable to anyone without MDC weapons.

Or an example I saw recently, which is one almost-human race that is SDC creatures (soft and squishy like humans) but does MDC damage (1 MDC = 100 SDC) with their melee attacks. So two of these aliens, naked, in a fight would vaporize each other as their doing 100-600 damage punching to someone that has maybe 60-80 combined SDC and HP.

At character creation, assuming no melee focused choices.

Yeah, Rifts needs a strong GM. Gotta be able to pick out a rough power level and stick with it, otherwise it's too nuts.

3.5e Hulking Hurler. If he ran into anything, he dropped a bridge on it. Then a building. Then a chunk of mountain.

Really any game that has available power disparity in character creation really needs the GM to keep on top of things. Rifts is just the *biggest* example.

Never really got into D&D 3.0 much because all of my early experiences with it involved lousy GMs who did nothing for balance and I kept finding myself playing as the only truly 1st level character as one of the basic races and everyone else were half-daemons/half-dragons/some other race that is better at first level and then I was pretty much a corpse pretty fast because the GM had to fill the adventures with things that were a threat to characters that were effectively 4th level or higher.

I like my players to feel like they all have a chance to have an impact and make an impression on the campaign and tell my players exactly what to expect in the campaign so that they can plan out their characters effectively. Doesn't matter if they have completely different power/ability/skill sets, as long as they get the chance to use them and the abilities balance out over things. You need to be upfront with your players too. If you want to run a completely combat focused game, don't let your players make a bunch of negotiators, social giants and the like. No one will be happy. Same the other way, if you have a social/roleplaying focused game you need to make sure everyone is able to take part in that as well up front. That guy who has been permenantly installed in the 10ft tall powered armor suit is going to miss out on most of the latter game while the social schmoozer with 30 contacts, no cyberware and no magical ability will be relatively useless in a combat focused Shadowrun game.

Skriker

Well it requires a lot of different sources for rules, but in DnD 3.5 there is a class called the Erudite, who is a Psion, but he can Manifest Magic spells as psychic powers. There is a psychic power that lets a high level Erudite give any power to a lower lever one. It is possible, through loopholes, to make a Lv. 1 Character with every single spell in the game. Needless to say, that's fairly significant.

Also, I made a version of this that multiclasses with Monk. When fully buffed he can deal over 60,000 damage per round.

Of course Magic in general is just insane in 3.5.

Back in '87, we had a real hard ass for a DM named Ron. If he gave you a ring of many wishes, you would be so screwed if you didn't word it just right. Clint's dream was to get a +5 Holy Avenger and an 18-00 STR for his barbarian which would be like a 20 or so in 3.x.
He ended up with a ring of many wishes and he spent a week preparing his wish just right. Ron Saw no problems with it and reluctantly allowed Clint to have a +5 Holy Avenger, 18-00 STR, 18 DEX, and an 18 CON.
Ron's wife, Terry, decided to try to DM one week, she moved the game's timeline a couple of years in the future, so we were all 16th level and adjusted our stats accordingly. She "randomly" rolled treasure for us, one of the guys ended up with a Throwing Axe of Sharpness and another guy ended up with a Throwing Hammer of Sharpness (she was obviously oblivious to the rules). We railroaded her and Ron was biting his lip to keep from saying anything. I guess he wanted to show her how hard it was to DM.
Anyway, she sent a half dozen orcs after us. We sneezed on them and killed them. Then she got flustered and sent a huge army of Orcs after us. The guys with the throwing weapons cut swathes through the horde and they retreated. She got pissed off so she sent a herd of dragons after us. The guys with throwing weapons were decapitating dragons out of the air left and right. I was pretty disgusted because all I had was a regular bow and a Light blade long sword. Terry got so pissed off, she stormed off to her bedroom. Ron took over.
Clint told the guys to save the big red dragon for him.
The dragon bathed him in a gout of flame, but he made his saves. He swung his cherished +5 Holy Avenger at the dragon and decapitated it. And the dragon fell on top of him, breaking his spine. After we cleared out all of the bad guys or they retreated, our cleric healed Clint.
Ron was always out to screw us. He had a rule that if you heal someone, you have to set their bones before you heal them or they'll be messed up. Sure enough, our cleric forgot to set Clint's bones and he ended up crippled, with worse stats than he had before he succeeded with his wish. The sword was also broken in the crash.

Pathfinder
Level 1 Human Cavalier with various traits that reduce armor check penalties who took shield prof - Tower and Mounted Combat and Look Out as his teamwork bonus feat.
He had Scale Mail and a Tower shield for armor had carried a longsword and a lance for weapons.

At level 1 he had 20 AC 12 touch and 18 Flat footed.

He had armor check penalty of -12 (total) But ignored it on ride checks relating too his mount. *shudder* Excuse me while I fail to kill you with a CR 4 monster because when GM'ing I cant roll above average. >.< And every time I hit the mount he would beat the DC for avoiding the attack on his mount. I just hope he doesn't get Ride-by-Attack or I'll never get anything done with him charging everything and walking past....

*sigh* Atleast in 4e D&D you can just throw in a solo creature with a few minions and give the party hell and it still be fun for everyone.

My current D&D 3.5 character is a Human Bard. Chaotic Evil, and a human supremacist, not to mention the only human in the party.

However, he has this thing called the "War Fiddle" which uses a Perform(String Instrument) check to hit, ignores Armor and Shield bonuses to AC, and deals d6+Bard Level sonic damage at 40 foot range. It's also a +2 Masterwork Fiddle(figuring in Masterwork, it's a +4) so, bonuses all together, it has +12 to hit against enemies who don't get their armor.

Cambak wrote:Pathfinder
Level 1 Human Cavalier with various traits that reduce armor check penalties who took shield prof - Tower and Mounted Combat and Look Out as his teamwork bonus feat.
He had Scale Mail and a Tower shield for armor had carried a longsword and a lance for weapons.

At level 1 he had 20 AC 12 touch and 18 Flat footed.

He had armor check penalty of -12 (total) But ignored it on ride checks relating too his mount. *shudder* Excuse me while I fail to kill you with a CR 4 monster because when GM'ing I cant roll above average. >.< And every time I hit the mount he would beat the DC for avoiding the attack on his mount. I just hope he doesn't get Ride-by-Attack or I'll never get anything done with him charging everything and walking past....

*sigh* Atleast in 4e D&D you can just throw in a solo creature with a few minions and give the party hell and it still be fun for everyone.

Sounds to me as though someone needs to have a run-in with some rust monsters and magic-users.

You know, Hold Person is a really great spell...

Your Friend Doctor Robert wrote:My current D&D 3.5 character is a Human Bard. Chaotic Evil, and a human supremacist, not to mention the only human in the party.

However, he has this thing called the "War Fiddle" which uses a Perform(String Instrument) check to hit, ignores Armor and Shield bonuses to AC, and deals d6+Bard Level sonic damage at 40 foot range. It's also a +2 Masterwork Fiddle(figuring in Masterwork, it's a +4) so, bonuses all together, it has +12 to hit against enemies who don't get their armor.

W.T.F.

War Fiddle? Really?!
Wow. That's some crazy gak right there

I think I found your character, Doctor, with his weapon.

Your Friend Doctor Robert wrote:My current D&D 3.5 character is a Human Bard. Chaotic Evil, and a human supremacist, not to mention the only human in the party.

However, he has this thing called the "War Fiddle" which uses a Perform(String Instrument) check to hit, ignores Armor and Shield bonuses to AC, and deals d6+Bard Level sonic damage at 40 foot range. It's also a +2 Masterwork Fiddle(figuring in Masterwork, it's a +4) so, bonuses all together, it has +12 to hit against enemies who don't get their armor.

That's a lot of house-rulin' going on there. So yes, if your DM lets you make up new items that ignore existing rules, you will be OP. lol

Well, I expect my Human Druid/Master of Many Shapes with Vow of Poverty/Nymph's Kiss should be pretty cheesy. In fact, I named her Brie Frumadj(pronounced Fromage) to reflect this.

Jon

A few come to mind.

These are all 3.5 just as an FYI.

1.) Sorcerer/Spellfire Channeler
2.) Half Dragon Strength Cleric
3.) AC maxed druid

All of these characters made it roughly 14th level and were some of the most ridiculous PC I've ever seen.

The sorc could pull off a one shot blast of over 30d6 damage. And then could go back to being a nasty direct damage spell slinger who could absorb incoming spells.

The Dragon ended up getting a wish to make his base size large and it quickly went downhill from there. He wielded a huge greatsword and could regularly one shot bosses with his +str cleric ability.

The Druid was just impossible to hit. At level 15 I think his AC was 49. Not to mention having his saves boosted constantly.

Probably the CE rogue with a borderline personality dissorder and an attention span in the goldfish range I play... Oh wait, not that kind of unbalanced...

Just folloing on from what has been said about 4th ed it dose encorage a bit of Min Maxing, but the way it dose it justifiys that in that you are a hero who excels in one area. If you think about it an avrage human is in the 9-11 range for all stats, and as a PC you can only have one stat under 10. This, to me, is not min maxing of the old days, and the system dose not have the truly broken cross class combos that you used to get.

Now the main ways to brake the system is by finding loopholes that any half decent DM will stamp on (such as the commoner rail gun or lamassu bluff).