Share your tabletop stories of powergaming

AD&D 3.5:
Well, there’s ye olde huge lump of lead with reduce item cast upon it dropped upon your foes. There’s plenty of ways to use and abuse Polymorph. But my favorite abuse of the rules was that of the humble skeleton.

Say you’re a level 7 Wizard. You’ve just gained the ability to cast Animate dead, and with two castings, you can have 28 skeletons running around. Very nice for triggering traps and such, but they can get expensive to replace. So, how can you make skeletons work for you?

Simple: under the goods and services price table, prices are listed for messanger services. It costs 1 copper piece to move a message one mile. Now, a skeleton has a move speed of 30 feet per round. Looking on the table, a person can walk 24 miles, or 2.4 SP worth of messanger service, a day. Now a skeleton can run flat-out all day long (*4 speed), and doesn’t have to stop to rest (3 speed). A skeleton orderd to run to a destination 288 miles away will get there in one day, for 2.88 gold pieces worth of service. 2.8828 = 80.64 gold per day. The skeletons will pay for themselves within two weeks, and will continue to earn you 80 gold a day as long as they are running messages.

Neither sleet nor hail nor snow nor ice nor any kind of cold damage, come to that, nor dark of night nor very enduring bandits* will stop the Undead Postal Service.
*Don’t ask us about clerics.

Not

Well, my 20th level character in our “Shandar” quasi 3.0 game managed to take about 150 feats, was able to cast any kind of death or time spell up to about level 30 (at a minimum), had many thousands of HP, AC well above 100, and had divine abilities enough to smack around whole armies and put every standard DnD god out of business. But he was primarily a kick-ass warrior.

Of course, this was quite normal in Shandar, you were supposed to munch it foolishly. My GM took (still takes) a perverse pleasure in letting people screw themselves over with foolish mistakes.

We have one pair brothers who have this nasty tendency to blow away their PC’s. One of them decided to take a god close look at the Runes of God-Binding. as in, they were built powerful enough to bind Gods, permanently and forever, with no chance of escape barring help from the outside.

He started tracing the runes with his finger. After he got about 2 inches, he was sucked inside. Hell if a problem getting him out. Had t burn one of my mystic Godfire ability points to create a soul for the Godbinding runes and ask it to let him go. I wound up with an adoptive son, who happened to turn into a 10-foot wide emerald when he took a nap. I fed him enemy gods. :wink:

The other brother got himself killed after the game was essentially over. We were trying to move the population off of one dying planet to another. Unfortunately, he tried a dangerous magical experiment that involved drawing on the mystic wards designed as a giant barrier against cannibal universes. He, along with his entire temple (he was a God) went up in a flash of light. Everyone laughed at him. He laughed at himself. In the next campaign, he did essentially the same thing 12 times. :wink: ironically, his divine powers revolved on his protege, who had spent much time and effort trying not to become a God. His reaction? :“Well $%#!”

For some other amusing highlights, I kept going around and killing undead Gods. They all thanked me for it. I got a date with Beshaba (she and Tymora along with a very few other managed to survive the collapse of Faerun which became Shandar) and got to witness a total conversion chain reaction.

Long story short - there was a city that was trapped in a permanent stasis field when Faerun popped the cork. We eventually dropped the field and evacced the citizens before they were taken as slaves. Now, we manged to do this by essentially thinning out the temporal stasis field inside. IE, the insides were working but there was still an impenetrable shell of frozen time. Later on one of our uber mages dropped the most powerful spell he could inside the thing (had to kill some REALLY nasty things). This was actually more heat that the stonework could handle. In about 3 rounds, the entire inside had melted, vaporized and expanded into raw photons all neatly contained inside the time field. We, thankfully, fled. Most of our enemies did not.

Eventually, we simply used it as a giant cannont (open a pickprick hole in the top) and shot the load at a passing universe who was trying to eat us.

Very cute! :smiley:

(Of course, any DM worth the title is gonna ask you about clerics).

Taran, them’s some nasty tricks. I was considering picking up a feat from The Complete Divine for my upcoming necromancer character – practiced spellcaster or something–based on the advice of ENWorlders, but given those atrocious tweaks available through that book, I think I’ll forgo it entirely.

Daniel

Hm, we had some kinda infinite money or XP solution nearly every other week oh-so-recently, but I’ve forgotten most of them… blast.

There’s the endless-teletype ploy, of course. Not a big combat thing, but with two sets of ring-gates and a mobius strip of parchment and some sort of erasable writing medium, one can pass entirely secure messages between two locations all day long.

Hmm which ed rules was this under? Under 2nd ed (I think it’s in the Complete Priest’s Handbook) it takes 3 clerics to create holy water. The spells are OTTOM- create water, purify water, and bless.

I tend to drive Dms nuts with wanting to play bizarre things. They believe me that I’m not doing it for the munchkin factor, but because I think it would be an interesting roleplaying experience. Regardless, no DM yet has let me play a myconid or vegepygmie.

I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, certainly you want to change or disallow the Dweomerkeeper. Divine Metamagic should probably go, at least if your campaign includes Persistent Spell. But other than that…

The duration for spikes should probably be 1 minute/level, not 1 hour/level. You’d do well to ban miasma. Arcane Disciple can get pretty rude (it’s a feat that gives wizards access to cleric spells from a single domain). But other than that…

Pious Templar and Holy Liberator are still excellent 3-level dip classes. Contemplative is still a great way to grab a third domain. Church Inquisitor can be taken by a third-level Cleric. Ur-priests are ridiculous as ever. But other than that…

Aw hell, who’m I kidding? There were some good ideas in that book, but it was not well playtested and not well edited.

Entirely secure? In a world with Clairvoyance? It is to laugh! :wink:

That’s interesting, but not terribly cost-effective: the gates are immobile and expensive (1000 gp each), and a single Dispel Magic can take them out. For much cheaper (i.e., labor costs), you can set up a couple of spellcasters who know sign language to scry one another simultaneously. Doesn’t work all day long, but you can get some communication through at least, for a cost of a pool of water and maybe a tofu scramble for the workers.

If you’ve got a bit more money to spend, shell out the 70K for a crystal ball with Detect Thoughts. Unlimited and almost undetectable communication with anyone you know, regardless of their location. The only way I can see to “hack” the communication is for the hacker to cast detect thoughts on either the scryer or the scryee.

Looking at the 3.0 SRd, they’re, in fact, more expensive, but entirely mobile. And Dispel Magic would only negate them temporarily, as permanent magical items. 3.5 SRD says the same.

And while they’re expensive, they can be used endlessly in this fashion - and with more sets of rings, one could form a relay-chain of information - a currents events ticker, in a manner of speaking.

The scrying signers trick relies on a world that has a sign language (not a default D&D option) and doesn’t work all day. And the costs are more than you realize - see NPC Spellcasting in the DMG, for the going rate for Scry spells. You’d be paying them that fee every day, rather than the one-time fee of the gates - and the solution scales poorly. :slight_smile:

D’oh! I was looking at the Teleportation Circle spell; I just checked Ring Gates, and you’re entirely right. My bad.

On the other hand, it’d be a pretty big organization that could write more than 100 lbs. of information in a single day; why is the mobius strip necessary?

Still, now that I know what ring gates are, they are superior to scryers in almost every way except for initial startup cost. Thanks for the education!

Daniel

The mobius strip bypasses the weight limit factor entirely for the transfer of information. As you say, it’s unlikely that an organization passing information between two points will need to use more than 100 lbs of parchment a day anyway, as that would be a lot of writing - but consider the scaled-up version. Where this information circulates between every city in a country. Daily tax takings, judgments issued, troop movements - being able to pass along even the most insignificant details could allow one to be a very informed monarch at a very low price.

And in times of war, significant volumes of info might pass, as well.

But the nice part is if there’s some tiny creature or small object that needs to ride along one day, you have the entire 100 lbs to work with.

I created a monk who in the game, successfully wished for the powers of the Cat Lord.

She wound up knocking beholder heads together.

Capacitor

Exactly how did you word the wish? If I were DMing that, unless the wish was worded with incredible detail the player would have gotten ‘You now have all the powers of the Cat Lord. He wants them back and will coming to kill you.’ or ‘You have all the powers of the Cat Lord. In fact, you are now the new Cat Lord. You retain no memory, possesion or ability from your former life. The current adventure no longer interests you and you wander off to do Cat Lord things.’

I came up with a rather neat trick earlier. It’s not quite power-gaming, but it comes pretty close. However given that I was an 18th level mage going solo against a god, I figure I’m allowed a little powergaming…

This is quite a high powered trick - it needs a 6th level spell. My mage had a golem servant. He also had a rather nice spell called Gestalt - this takes two living creatures and merges them. The resulting creature has the best points of both. Unfortunately, golems aren’t living. So I cast polymorph other on it, turning it into something living (pick your favourite creature). Now, I cast gestalt, turning the two of us into one creature.

The point of this? Golems have spell immunity. This doesn’t prevent me casting spells on it, because it can lower this. However, once we’re gestalted this means that I have spell immunity. This is kindof handy.

I then combined this with a shapechange to a great wyrm blue dragon and an arcana form, but that’s another story…

You know, this level of munchkinism reminds me of tales told by an ex-Navy seaman who came back from a tour of duty on an aircraft carrier. He and his mates played a lot of D&D, and this was back during 1st edition days.

House rules in the game he played included the practice of brain-eating. If you ate the brain of your fallen foe, then you gained all of his experience points, hit points, special abilities, magic resistance, and whatnot.

So, the parties were principally made up of 50th level munchkin-gods, with thousands upon thousands of hit points, hundreds of millions of XP, and every spell level, resistance and special ability in the book. And the adventures consisted of hunting down and slaying every entity listed in Dieties and Demigods so that their brains could be eaten.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the stories of all the infighting between uber-munchkins over who got to eat Cthulhu’s brain, or whoever the unfortunate god of the day was…

:rolleyes:
If you think that’s pathetic, then The Story of the Head of Vecna will bring tears to your eyes.

Since the OP brought up Warhammer.

I used to play Warhammer fantasy. I played Dark elves. It was generally a fun versitilte army to play. But every one in a while I came across an idiot powergamer. So for the second game I would bring out my cheese army. Which consisted entirly of witch elves. It hard to explain since not may people know the game, but they were among the best values in the game. the average soldier unit ended up costing around 8 points with one attack and 3 strength. Witch elves cost 11 points had three attacks, strength 4 and were immune to fear. Much better they were vulnerable to attack since they fought basically nekid, but where a huge shock force when they got to attack.

In addition I spent all my character points on Witch Elf heros,( except for the required general who took as little as possible and sat in the background). They had a natural strength 4, plus one for which elf poison. I also gave them halberds. With frenzy they had 6 strength 6. attacks with high skill for 135 or so points. for comparison a Dragon has 7 strength six attacks with low skill for 450 points. Now the dragon has much much better defense and more wounds before it dies. But all I had to do was use a bit of stragtegy,

Then I invented what I call the speed-bump attack method. I would put a scrawny little unit of just 5 normal Witch elves in front of a unit with 5 Witch elf heros in the front row, and 15 normal witch elves to take arrow hits and the like. The speed bump eves would walk out in front of their toughtest unit. Then it would get charged. With their crappy defense they got wiped out instantly, but under Warhammer rules if there is no one left they can’t pursue, so the just sit there. About that time they started to realize their mistake.

My hero unit charged in, hehe. I then casualy mentioned the the entire front row was heros and I had 30 strength 6 attacks. And to sum up the story, There is no unit that can handle that kind of attack and survive to hit back without huge luck. I usually had their unit rolling at a -12 to -18, which makes a roll to stay impossible on two die immpossible.

And if was those annoying dwarves that never ran anyway, I still had 30 strength 6 attacks the next round.

Cheesy as hell, but it was undefeated against the best powergaming armies people could put together.

Someone mentioned Black Templars- this is a good point.

In Warhammer 40k, Black Templar and Space Wolf space marines possess infantry squads which can take power weapons/powerfists (powerful melee weapons). These are nicknamed ‘hidden powerfists’ because unlike powerfists on characters, the squad powerfists can’t be singled out in close combat.

Which makes them great for taking out big things (Greater Daemons, Dreadnoughts, etc). And there are VERY FEW abilities in the game which allow you to single out a specific unit.

I’m surprised the BT player picked the 6+ coversave vow- most people choose the ‘always hit on a 3+ in assault’ or the ‘fearless’ vow.

My best friend loved to have an Avatar flanked by 2 Wrathlords. The Wrathlords are pretty much immune to most infantry weapons, and I can’t target the Avatar because it counts as a ‘HQ’ unit. I ALWAYS have to take powerfists against him because otherwise if he gets into assault he’ll tear my guys up.

Hmmmm. I think it’s been errated or clarified (in 3.5, at least) that one can’t lower spell immunity.

Also, regarding the earlier bag of puppies / cleave /whirlwind attack trick - I believe there’s a Sage-Advice clarification that nerfs that one as well.

Yep–these days, it’s impossible to do without an epic feat. Whirlwind attack now says:

Daniel

Don’t know if anybody’s ever played Rolemaster, but here’s one I remember from back in the day.

A couple of friends of mine got in argument over which caster was better: the Sorceror or the Illusionist. So they both rolled up 20th level characters and had a duel.

The Sorceror cast one of the Destruction law lists that does an E crit, but it didn’t kill the Illusionist. On his turn, he said “I drop a mountain on you.”

He cast a Phantasm X spell, and used one level of sight and 9 levels of feel. Each level of feel squares the base damage you do on the Naked Fist table. He had his Directed Spell skill maxxed out, which came out to be in the 120’s. Even if he crapped out and rolled 2 pts damage, to the power of 9 it becomes 512. 3 to the power of 9 is almost 20K…

The Sorceror got squashed instantaneously.