If you have any questions about combat, flanking and grappling (ick) they are SO much better in 3.5.
You can email me at the address in my profile for specific questions. 
Alaghi. Alaghi, alaghi, alaghi. For those unfamiliar to this race, they’re basically yeti. Now, they have some bad class restrictions, but they make up for it in a number of areas.
A properly rolled alaghi can have 20 strength.
With this 20 strength, and rolling 20’s, he can do around 120 damage with his bare hands. At level one.
This actually happened - my DM didn’t foresee the potentially unbalancing effect an alaghi would have, so he let me have one. I rolled 20 strength and 18 constitution.
So I got a druid who could crush every single villain in the campaign in a single blow.
If there are overpowered characters in the campaign, the DM will, in fact, has to counter them with intrigue, and make it sort of a Garik-like campaign.
I consider the Hulking Hurler absurd.
Details found here. Essentially, it’s a PrC that wasn’t tested very thoroughly, and is horrifyingly abusable as a result.
It’s also hilarious, at least to me.
You got to it before me, but that link doesn’t begin to cover it. This link is much better since it goes into many more details. Just to sum up those pages, it wouldn’t be that difficult in gameplay gets to the point that the character could do on average hundreds of millions of points of damage. No, that’s not a typo.
The best I can come up with off the top of my head is a Lizard-man monk. Their natural armor (IIRC +4) combined with 18 wisdom and dex will make the monk AC 22 AT FIRST LEVEL, WITHOUT MAGIC. I dont’ recall off the top of my head if bracers of ACx apply to monks, but that would be a cheap way to get it even lower than that.
Similarly, a Lizard-man character in full plate and large shield is AC 25, without magic (with a +1 dex bonus), since armor stacks with natural armor. And that’s before you give him a magical shield and mail…
Tcha. My human psion/sorcerer could reach AC 19 at first level with no spells or abilities, at least against one foe at a time (Inertial Armor + 18 Dex + Dodge). When he was prepped, he could hit 20 (Lesser Natural Armor), with part of each hit taken as subdual (I forget which ability did that, but it was a 0-level psion thing). It was all about protecting his pitiful little pool of hit points. He was 8th level when I dropped out of that campaign, and his stark-naked AC could range anywhere from 10 to 31, depending on the circumstances. It made combat math a pain.
Er, how do you have a 1st level psion/monk? That’s got to be at least a second level character by definition, no?
Psion/sorceror, I meant, but the same question still applies.
:eek:
If any of my players even try it, I’m quitting throwing in the towel.
He was psion-only for his first two levels, then sorcerer from there on out. Most of his later AC boosts came from arcane spells instead of his psionics. That’s why I described him as a psion/sorc.
In more general terms, I think there’s an optional rule that allows a dual-class 1st level character. The character is effectively 0-level in each class, so a psion/sorc built that way would only have access to cantrips and psion talents (0-level abilities), and not many of those. He’d still have standard feats and such for 1st level, though, so he could theoretically reach the same AC.
That hulking hurler build is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.
Yes. In Savage Species there’s an “Incarnate Construct” template, allowing any construct to become a living creature viable for a PC. You lose spell immunity, and you’re stck with 3 Charisma, but it has a level adjustment of -2, meaning that an IC with three class levels would be acceptable in a party where everyone else is first-level.
I had an idea for a flesh golem character who beacame a wizard because of the mage head and brain used in his creation. You roll for Constitution and Intelligence normally, so there’s nothing stopping you from having a golem wizard with 18 Int.
In 3.0, at least, there are rules for split-class first level characters. Basically, you get half of each of the classes’ abilities and spells (So instead of being 1st/1st, you are sort of “0.5 / 0.5”). IIRC it seems to work out to a bit MORE than half, so they seem to be more powerful than regular 1st-ies, but not so much as to be imbalancing (with the odd exception that I’m sure someone will point out :))
Y’all got nuthin’
Gully Dwarves were invented decades ago, and there is still nothing more ridiculous and irritating. I’d let any of these into my campaign before I’d let another kender in. You only have to DM a kender once to know what I’m talking about…
I know exactly what you’re talking about, even though I was only a fellow player. A friend’s favorite character is a Kender named “Tulin Thistleknickers”. The worst part was, he was always incredibly lucky. During one critical battle, he pranced right down the middle of the road, unarmored, wearing bright clothes in primary colors, and singing loudly and off-key, and didn’t get a scratch, while the rest of the party (a ranger, a thief, and an illusionist, if I recall correctly), careful concealed and camoflaged in ambush to either side, nearly got trounced. I saw all the rolls myself, and I’m still not sure I believe it.
Ok, I’ve got a better one, who I planned to use as a villian once but never got around to introducing:
Start with a Tauric Scorpion/Human (Tauric is a template from Savage Species that lets you meld an intelligent being and something unintelligent into one. Centaurs are a good example). Add seven Cleric levels, including the spell giant vermin. Mix in ten levels of Vermin Lord (from the Book of Vile Darkness) and serve, add a dash of archery, and serve!
There’s a lot going on here. Visually, we have a man-scorpion with an immense bow and a lethal stinger with which to envenom his arrows. He’s covered with small scorpions, so densely that they absorb damage for him, and he can cast giant vermin on any one of them to make it into a menace. At will he can sprout buzzing insect wings, he’s covered in chitinous plates, and his mouth is hideously disorted with venom-dripping mandibles.
What that picture doesn’t tell you is that the small scorpions covering his body form a hive mind that he controls. Not only can he recruit passing flies to do spy and sentry duty, imbuing them with intelligence equal to his own along with unquestioning obedience, but sufficiently large hive minds gain the ability to cast sorcerer spells. With both kinds of magic and an endless swarm of loyal, genius followers, the potential for havoc is essentially limitless.
The original version of this character was a scorpion/Illithid and an Ur-Priest (also from the Book of Vile Darkness, basically a divine caster who gets his magic by stealing it from the gods). That’s probably unnecessary and uncalled-for, though.
This isn’t so much a weird character as it is a weird abuse of the 3.5 rules, and my own personal creation. I call it:
The Animal Factory
Ingredients:
- One ninth-level druid, captive.
- One source of experience points for the druid. Perhaps a dungeon full of critters?
- One source of motivation for the druid. Perhaps a forest and a torch?
- One trusted henchman.
Method:
- Have druid cast Baleful Polymorph on you. Voluntarily fail the saves. This permanently turns you into an animal, changing your type. Become a froggy–why not?
- Now that you’re an animal, have the druid cast Awaken on you. This changes your intelligence to the result of a 3d6 roll, gives you +1d3 Charisma points, and gives you two extra HD. Your type changes to Magical Beast, but who cares? These changes are instantaneous, meaning they cannot be dispelled. The charisma and hit dice additions aren’t bonus, they’re just changes to the score.
- Rinse and repeat: have the druid cast baleful polymorph to turn you back into an animal, then awaken on you to give you more HD and Cha, as many times as you’d like. Don’t be greedy: do this ten times, ending up with 20 extra HD and about 20 extra points in your Cha.
- Have the druid cast Dispel Magic on you, dispelling the polymorph and returning you to your natural shape. You’re still a magical beast, which means that you’re immune to spells such as Charm Person or Dominate Person, but you have your old form back, plus all the instantaneous benefits of the multiple Awakens.
Note the henchman, who is present to beat the hell out of the druid if he tries anything funny, and the XP source, to replenish XP lost through casting Awaken over and over.
Note that in my campaign, I don’t allow spells to change a character’s type :).
Daniel
The way I would adjudicate that is having the process completely unhinge the henchman’s mind. At the very least, I’d have him lose control of his form and become a chaos beast.
If the player was particularly high level, or if this kind of behaviour was common, I’d have the henchman transcend his mortality and become some sort of crazed, Chaotic Evil animal demigod with a hatred of the PC.
My players learn early on not to pull the “rules lawyer” thing with me. 
One of my players in playing her CN half-elf rogue exactly like a kender. All my players are dreading what’ll happen when she finally gets a chance to try out her “use magical device skill.”
I assume you mean the PC would have this happen, right? The henchman doesn’t get any bonuses; he just beats the hell out of the druid and sets the forest on fire if the druid doesn’t cast the right spells on you. No way would any self-respecting munchkin give that much power to a flunky :).
But your response would be pretty brilliant. One of my least favorite things about third edition (and also one of its greatest strengths) is the rigidity and clarity of its rules: this leads to making magic unmysterious and scientific. Bringing back the risk, especially by turning munchkins into tragic mad wizards, is a fantastic idea.
Mostly I came up with the Animal Factory as a particularly nasty example of why having type changes is a bad idea. Animal growthed enlarged druids shapechanged into dire apes and wielding huge spiked chains is another example.
My favorite weird character from one of my games was a fire-happy wizard who was on the run from some shady characters, and who wanted to polymorph himself into a pixie. I told him the stats were fine, but my middle-Eastern-to-Asian-themed campaign didn’t have room for pixies in it, so he changed the description to a dragonfly-spirit, a cross between the iridescent insect and a child. He spent many months of campaign time in this shape before he was caught out by an enemy’s polymorph and turned into a turtle.
Daniel