OK, I have changed my ruling slightly on 5. Rather than a Monk's unarmed strike hitting your hand for damage, the hand (only) of a Monk is called to your hand. It is severed at teh wrist and has no special properties.  The Monk whose hand you just called is likely to come looking for you... Alternatively the entire Monk is summoned. Roll for reaction, and hope you didn't call a Level One...

But if you are the GM you can, and often should, say "No" at any time.

Quote from: Dumarest;1008461Either there are no loopholes to exploit in the games we play or my players aren't asshole who would try that crap because they aren't trying to best the game or prove some point. I also don't allow someone to just show up with an unusual character he's concocted without talking to me about it in advance.

From other conversations, I think like myself, you have the latter case. My players want to build characters to match a "cool" concept, not that are ridiculously powerful. In fact, my players have fun picking out disadvantages that are way more disadvantageous than any I would put into a random table. (Disadvantaged underground, for example.)

My players also like to build their characters together. They'll think about concepts and stuff beforehand, but then they'll talk together to cover bases or give someone a niche in which they are really interested. Sometimes they'll play off each other--one time one player made a character that hated another character's species in a formal sort of way, to the point where the character took the hated species' language, so as to insult them more efficiently.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1008724The question is why the hell are you playing a game that makes it possible for a player to  manipulate the rules to become infinitely powerful?

How many systems outside of d20 even have this problem to begin with? Maybe some editions of Shadowrun?

Quote from: Cave Bear;1008239Now, this psychic warrior has taken the Call Weaponry power at 1st level. Here is the power's rules:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/callWeaponry.htm

How do you rule in the following situations?
1. The psychic warrior calls an elvencraft longbow (from Races of the Wild) to their hand.
2. The psychic warrior calls a splash weapon, such as a flask of holy water, to their hand.
3. The psychic warrior calls an improvised weapon, such as a lantern, to their hand.
4. The psychic warrior calls a siege weapon, such as a ballista, to their hand.
5. The psychic warrior calls a monk's unarmed strike to their hand.

1: They are an elf? No? Then no.
2: Sounds ok.
3: That starts to stretch things. Depends on whats called. and how often.
4: This will be hilarious as they are either pinned,  or possibly killed as it lands on them. Or something bad happens if they didnt take into account space.  Or any other logistics problems with trying this stunt.
5: ummm. No. Its not a weapon its an ability. If you allow that then they can call things like spells, especially Mordenkainen's sword. Just no. No. and no.

The more it looks like the player is trying to create an "I win" button the less likely Im going to agree to it.

Also as a general rule its idiotic to even consider allowing a walk in character thats pumped to the max unless everyone else is too. This s why as a DM I have walk ins roll up a character on the spot or look over the character and go No, yes, No, drop this down a few points, etc.

I ran into this problem full tilt when I allowed an open session of Rifts and got some players with characters absurdly overpowered to the point all they were there for apparently was to just show off how godlike they were. I had to take two aside and explain to them that they needed to tone it down ASAP or Id have to remove them or call for rolling a new character.

In that case the crux of the problem was that two of the characters were from Phase World and I should have said NO the second "Phase world" and "my character" were used in remotely the same sentence.

I also had one player create a rather overtorqued PC for Call of Cthulhu once. But was able to circumvent that as, well, its Call of Cthulhu and no matter how good your PC is. Those things from beyond are magnitudes more powerful. The PC could pulverize some of the lesser critters though.

We also had one player come in and try to pass off a Barbarian+Monk combo that used both classes unarmed defense bonuses combined. I then pointed out that its right there in the book that you cant do that. The DM added a "Sorry no we arent using option human generation and sorry no you cant start with a magic item you cant afford to buy. But if you want to take a docking in EXP for a level or two then hmm, sure go for it since its just a +1 hammer. Once you've garnered 2500 exp you can start levelling normally. Till then half your EXP gained goes to paying it off."

Sometimes its just a simple matter of the player misreading the rules. Multiclassing seems to draw this one out alot.

Othertimes it is a matter of the player deliberately misreading the rules. Sorry. no. Polymorph does not allow you to give someone 20s in all stats, or even one stat.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1008765How many systems outside of d20 even have this problem to begin with? Maybe some editions of Shadowrun?

It depends entirely on how hyperbolic we consider the term 'infinitely powerful'. The only thing that comes close to that that I know of is Pun Pun, where in a supposed game of fantasy adventurers but at 1st level you can attain the power level of the 'gods' of the game system. Pun Pun, however, is actually just a white-room construct designed to prove a point (a rather unimportant one at that). It literally takes collusion from the DM to achieve. So it genuinely has no purpose except pointing out the loose rule boundaries on full expansion 3e D&D.

Beyond that, there's probably some rules bending in some game where a literal reading of some rule lets someone create an infinite action loop. Which is a long way from infinitely powerful, but if taken literally could readily collapse a game.

Going lower down the totem pole of power, there are plenty of rules sets which have poorly defined resolution mechanics or ones which allow very powerful enemies to be defeated because they don't specifically have immunity. I think TSR-era D&D has some trouble with rock-to-mud/mud-to-rock combos spaced one initiative segment apart which can no-save (er, no save specifically specified by the rules) take out most non-fliers. Also some martial arts moves in like Oriental Adventures that are meant to be used on NPCs and not monsters, and thus ping off opponent's strength score. Or low-level psionic abilities (especially in 2e) which completely hose high level monsters who happen not to have been built with an eye to the psionic rules.

Eventually we're just bleeding into the realm of 'the rules do a poor job of explaining what would happen in this given situation. If you then decide that that means it goes in the player's favor, that's really powerful.' There's plenty of those situations flying about, but so what?

I'm taking "infinitely powerful" as hyperbolic, i.e. "so powerful it makes everyone else look like a chump and appropriate-tier monsters look like gnats." It doesn't take much rule-bending or DM collusion for a 3.5 Druid to throw bears at everything, rendering the Fighter null and void. There is a lot in general you can do with 3.x by cherry-picking feats, class levels, and spells to be bizarrely powerful without going to the asinine levels of rule-bending needed for Pun-Pun.

From what I remember, there's stuff in the 2e expansions that breaks the game pretty hard if allowed. Dart fighters are also a bit OP.

Yeah, but there we are sliding into simply 'overpowered,' or simply 'painfully obvious best option.' Those are no fun, (everyone feels the compulsion to play CoDzillas instead of fighters, or all fighters use darts instead of the type of fighter they wanted to play). That's... just too low a bar to set, in my mind (there are so many examples that listing them becomes pointless).

I would suggest we at least set the threshold such that it makes nonsense out of some part of the game. Example: in 3e, the half-ogre, warhulk, Hulking Hurler builds could carry dozens to hundreds of boulders, could have effectively +infinity to hit (or close enough for game purposes), and do more hp damage than anyone had. They effectively 'break' the game looking anything like you expect D&D to look like, with AC and HP mechanics being a dominant factor in mechanical game success.

Hmm, well speaking for myself, I make a point of fixing the rules I don't think make sense, including the "merely" overpowered, too-good, etc., by making changes to have things match more like what I think is appropriate.

Since the games I play tend to be pretty well edited and playtested (and don't have super-powerful magic/psionics, and if/when they do, I tend to limit or remove them from my campaigns), there haven't been all that many of those issues.

Perhaps the silliest such thing in TFT was the "halfling thrower of doom" especially if you stacked all the rules in Advanced Melee so you had a halfling with thrown weapons talent throwing handfuls of throwing stars at specific body part targets. But that's mostly prevented by converting the "racial" halfling +3 missile bonus into free knowledge of the thrown weapons talent so it doesn't stack. I didn't have to do that though because I had ZERO players who ever chose to actually play a halfling, and I didn't make such builds as NPCs.

I remember an old article about two character types for TFT, the "Flinger" and the "Blob."  Our TFT ref's reaction was "Amusing, but no."  Actually, nobody even thought of trying them.

Because, you know, we're not utter rampaging fuckmortons.

Depending on circumstance and the loophole in question:

1. "Hey, good catch! It works this once, then the game's fantasy physics closes this loophole in the space-time continuum, and I add a house rule to our list."

2. "This one's too weird/disruptive, I'm house ruling it right now."

3. "No, and get lost."

Honestly though, I don't think I've had to make a single RAW v. RAI call like this since DMing 4e. As a player I did once take advantage of the forced surrender rule via some item combo, and then gave it up.

Stormbringer made it possible to roll up a Melnibonean Noble-Warrior-Sorcerer-Priest who could then summon and bind demons to his weapons and armour, and do the same for his buddies. This would result in armour of effective invulnerability and weapons of kill-it-all.  You had to have good dice rolls to get such a character, and it actually fit within the game. It was also "balanced" by the chance of rolling up a blind, crippled beggar.  There were also ways that such a character could meet his end.

Having played my share of Warhammer and other point based army list games I am familiar with the sub-game of stretch the allowed options to the absolute limits. It can be a fun intellectual exercise, but no longer interests me. The old trick of piling the tabletop full of "naked in the rain" troops with a base points cost of -1 for example to allow you essentially unlimited points for the good stuff.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1008806I remember an old article about two character types for TFT, the "Flinger" and the "Blob."  Our TFT ref's reaction was "Amusing, but no."  Actually, nobody even thought of trying them.

Because, you know, we're not utter rampaging fuckmortons.

Heh.

I dug up "The Flinger and the Blob" from The Space Gamer and read it just now. Seems like it worked for the author because he was playing solo and so had a cooperative GM and opponent in himself, including a couple of bent rules. Those are not "the ultimate fighters" in TFT, and would be wiped out by uncooperative opponents even if the GM didn't limit the number of thrown weapons they could have at the ready, and/or not let their adj-DX-zero target engage anyone. Missile weapons would wipe them out, getting engaged would wipe them out, opponents with decent armor would wipe them out, opponents who use cover and/or win initiative would wipe them out, etc.

We did use the "armored physicker" design a couple of times in the 4-PC programmed adventures, though it was of dubious use because the "Blob" is not very useful even if you do let him engage enemies.

We had a few rare characters with specialized thrown weapons, but they were special auxiliaries rather than "better than real weapons" fighters. I think the ones with flaming oil flasks were the most feared, but that also made them priority targets who tended to die quickly from arrows and falling and setting themselves on fire.

I got the feeling that the Flinger and the Blob were mostly "Hey, look at the goofy shit you can do within the rules, isn't this wacky?"

I don't expect many people actually used them.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1008835Stormbringer made it possible to roll up a Melnibonean Noble-Warrior-Sorcerer-Priest who could then summon and bind demons to his weapons and armour, and do the same for his buddies. This would result in armour of effective invulnerability and weapons of kill-it-all.  You had to have good dice rolls to get such a character, and it actually fit within the game. It was also "balanced" by the chance of rolling up a blind, crippled beggar.  There were also ways that such a character could meet his end.

Weren't some of those ways the outcome of trying to summon and bind demons and then rolling badly?

It's a conversation you see in GURPS circles from time to time: that there is purportedly one particular tactic, or skill at a certain level, which is invincible in battle.  I find the premise tiresome as well as moronic.  Quite aside from that these scenarios tend to focus around fat, dumb and happy mooks clustered in a neatly group and wedded to straight-ahead attacks (an OPFOR that needs less by way of an invincible spell/skill combo than two blokes working a Gatling gun), I'm playing GURPS, not Squad Leader.  Every Johnny One-Note needs to eat, sleep, bathe and use the jakes from time to time.

But anyway ... one of my aphorisms is that the phrase "Nice try, but no" is one of the chief weapons in any GM's arsenal, and a GM unwilling to use it at need is hamstringing himself.