StarDestroyer.Net BBS

If you ever pen 'n paper RPG'd a lot, you probably had at least one character who generous DM's turned into a ridiculously overpowered, game-unbalancing figure.

What was he/she/it like?

Either the Spellfire warrior from the first D&D game here, which took the head off of an Ancient Red with one blow, recreated a Netherese Mythallar, and slew an undead army, or the Paladin of Ao.

Yes. He had powers from Ao.

That I actually gamed with, rather than creating as an intellectual exercise?

Probably my Superpowered Oni Wilderness Scout/Earth and Air Warlock from Rifts. Not insanely powerful overall, but by the game rules he was in, he was absurd. The most silly thing was the fact that he was a walking no-limits fallacy, immune to any quantity of energy inflicted damage. The second most silly thing was the fact that his combat bonuses exceeded those of war-like Deities. The third most silly thing was the fact that he had by fourth level 11 attacks per melee(twelve when using energy rifles, fifteen when using them in his chosen power armor, with the ability to shoot two rifles at once like this).The fourth most silly thing was the fact that he was as durable as most giant robots or tanks, even if you hit him with something that could hurt him. The last and almost trivial absurdity was my Physical Prowess(Dexterity basically) score, which ended up being a fourty-three.

The sad thing is that I could create a more powerful bastard character without trying, but hadn't been willing to push my luck to far, even though I created him as a reaction to my first two characters dying ignominiously. I even downplayed my bonuses for the longest time, only claiming a +15 to my combat attributes, and revealing my true abilities when the GM tried to have me killed.

Chmee wrote:If you ever pen 'n paper RPG'd a lot, you probably had at least one character who generous DM's turned into a ridiculously overpowered, game-unbalancing figure.

What was he/she/it like?

My theif, the group has a house rule that whenever you roll at least 20, you get to keep all four dice. Suffice to say I had two 23s when all was said and done. Dexterity and Charisma.

I then proceeded to work those for all they were worth, using ultimate feats and Swashbuckling adventures I proceeded to make one of the most overpowered characters ever. He had weapon finesse, combat instincts, and Dashing & Daring. By third level, with a level of fighter, he had an attack of +8, an AC of 22 (unarmored!), and could regularly utterly fuck up anyone in a round or two.

The DM knew exactly what was going on, how I was doing it, and even helped to a degree. But man, you should have seen how it is he bugged out when I finally put him into action that way. It was just insane, he could hit like no one's business and avoid so many and thanks to that feat he could counter attack.

Wicked character, add in a solid rest of the stats and the character was just unholy to play with. I have so much fun with that character.

Hm..... considering I only have one character that qualifies -

In D&D, a level one (Technically, level two but the game ended that session after exp was given out.) fighter with mostly 13s and 14s in stats (17 in strength). He had a greatsword, which he tended to stick into things.

consequences wrote:That I actually gamed with, rather than creating as an intellectual exercise?

Probably my Superpowered Oni Wilderness Scout/Earth and Air Warlock from Rifts. Not insanely powerful overall, but by the game rules he was in, he was absurd. The most silly thing was the fact that he was a walking no-limits fallacy, immune to any quantity of energy inflicted damage. The second most silly thing was the fact that his combat bonuses exceeded those of war-like Deities. The third most silly thing was the fact that he had by fourth level 11 attacks per melee(twelve when using energy rifles, fifteen when using them in his chosen power armor, with the ability to shoot two rifles at once like this).The fourth most silly thing was the fact that he was as durable as most giant robots or tanks, even if you hit him with something that could hurt him. The last and almost trivial absurdity was my Physical Prowess(Dexterity basically) score, which ended up being a fourty-three.

The sad thing is that I could create a more powerful bastard character without trying, but hadn't been willing to push my luck to far, even though I created him as a reaction to my first two characters dying ignominiously. I even downplayed my bonuses for the longest time, only claiming a +15 to my combat attributes, and revealing my true abilities when the GM tried to have me killed.

Rifts has a lot of no-limits bullshit rules in it like that, which is one of the reasons I absolutely despise the system.

I won't mention Rifts because of how over-powered half my characters were...

Most notable:

Uziel - Gargoyle in WoD, one of the first "free" gargoyles who started the gargoyle rebellion. Currently in V:tM, he's about 400 years old and is still searching for his original identities (he's never found the Tremere who made him). The Tremere are actively hunting him and the Camarilla use him as a hit-man (Uber-stats and about 25 dots of disciplines) - he's effectively another of the Camarilla's Theo Bell level "clean up" men. And he has proven his ability to take down a Tremere Chantry by himself.

Can't recall name -Monk (martial artist from Cathay) in WHFRP - went UNARMED toe to toe with Vampires and demons and walked away the victor, did Hero type shit (arrow cloud deflection, running on water). He was just fucking awesome.

Galandir (One half of Alamir and Galandir, Almighty and Powerful EEEELLVESSSS) - High Elven warrior in WHFRP - Alamir and Galandir gained such a reputation in the old world that the City Guards of places like Marienburg refused to go near any situation they were involved in. They were true Elves - sociapathic towards the lesser lifeforms of man - Alamir moreso - he'd knife to death a person at a bar for just trying to talk to him. Galandir usually needed a reason, but not much of one. Together their total "innocent" human bodycount (from barfights and people trying to collect on bounties) was well into the thousands. We were also capable of out-shooting [insert name of GWs Robin Hood rip-off] and probably would have out-shot a movie Legolas... And then the GM made us put them away...

Not one of mine but someone in an Inquisitor game tried to bring a Grey Knight that had fallen to Chaos and become like a new Horus.
We knew the GM must have had something up his sleeve when he allowed the guy to play.
A haywire grenade followed by 6 space marines of various chapters teleporting in and bushwacking him did the job. It took a lot of time out of the game but damn it was funny to watch the guy smacktalking after being hit by the haywire grenade.

SirNitram wrote:Either the Spellfire warrior from the first D&D game here, which took the head off of an Ancient Red with one blow, recreated a Netherese Mythallar, and slew an undead army,

And he did the last two in the same action, no less! I've got to say the Cult of the Shattered Peak would be pissed as hell at us for that one.

Well, I think the most insane was my old gang leader in Necromunda...he started out as a Juve when the gang first began the "Most Wanted In The Underhive" tourny at the local GW store.

He was amongst those in the gang that took on an infestation of 3 gene-stealers. By the time he became gang leader, he had BS 6, WS 5...three attacks...he could infiltrate, shoot two pistols at a time and alternatively fire off one shot per attack with one weapon, he had a 4+ save in hand to hand, a 6+ dodge save against everything, flak armour, two plasma pistols, a needle pistol and a powersword...he managed to lead the gang to victory over a four gang alliance led by a double patrol of Arbites that were out to take them down.

I had a character in the same game is Nitram's in the end he was a 20th level wizard/3rd level archmage chosen of mystra spellfire wielder with over 35 Intelligence. It was insane the number of spells hie cold cast, and was fully capable of taking down a great wyrm red dragon in one round, with no direct damage and no chance for it to save.

And for me, it would have been my ol' D&D paladin, a human of insanely single-minded devotion to do-gooder principles that drove other party members to distraction ... a DM finally put him in possession of a living sword designed to kill immortals, a weapon so devoted to killing what it perceived as evil that it would plane shift or teleport to follow its target (sometimes taking the paladin along for the ride, other times leaving him in the dust), inspiring the paladin's Kill-a-Demon-Lord-a-Day campaign. After depopulating a few nearby planes of their immortal evil-doers, the character was promoted to Shield Bearer for his deity (Odin) and gifted with demigod status .... pretty much unplayable at that point, but a fun element to drop into games I DM'd for lower-level players.

Most memorable battle: the slaying of Zendor the Taunter, probably the best villain ever invented in our circle of DM's ... man we hated that guy! He had a helm that let him project his image from vast distances, allowing him to taunt us before delivering a mild electric shock and disappearing.

Chaosium/Whitewolf's "Stormbringer" game, 1 it uses the Call of Cthutlu rules but with daemonic abilities you can get quite sick. 2. It went down hill when I rolled 00 for starting race, and got Melnibon'e (evil dark elf chaos servants, sexual sickos).

I got enough money to buy my own space/time traveling undead slave rowed war galley which I bound a daemon to. I bound a daemon to a teddy bear, to all of the party's gear, (except my bow, which has air elementals bound to it). Which is pretty well normal for Stormbringer, it's when I used my time travel abilities to come to Call of Cthutlu and well kill a Starspawn, use it's psychic essense to bring up something really horrible, and bind that into a weapon.............


yes, the whole party except for me lost all their san (being a time traveling sorceress who thinks nothing wrong with human sacrifices in the name of more power, or in the name of sexual pleasure, whose met and been formally introduced to outer beings and chaos gods...)

It's when you run into a fantasy world, and your character has a LeMat Pistol, that uses the son of Narlytopeth as AMMO.

literally my introduction to the Call of Cthutlu party was.

aged professor: Look this is Sharell-nan she's a time traveler from the distant past. (evey one takes san loss)
1. player notices the ears an takes a little more san loss.
2. My character tries to make amends and improves everyone's favorite weapons.... (major san loss ensues, especially now that the pistols, and flashlights are TALKING)
3. Now I am very, very tired from enchanting elements and least daemons into a few items.
4. We see a deepone, I throw my teddybear at it... Teddy rapes the Deepone. (everyone but the professor is in deep shock)

My most badass character was created for a Regents of the Unseen University game - a mostly comedic game with the PCs as the faculty of a wizard university in greyhawk. I was the dean of Transmutation.

Wizard 7/Mage of the Arcane Order 10/Master Transmogrifist 10/Archmage 3

Permanent shapechange with an item, plus MT abilities allowed him to become most of the ridiculous monsters in the ELH and keep all their powers; beyond that, the ridiculous spellcasting ability...

Obviously, at that level the game wasn't really about combat, but the faculty was crazy powerful.

Uraniun235 wrote:

consequences wrote:That I actually gamed with, rather than creating as an intellectual exercise?

Probably my Superpowered Oni Wilderness Scout/Earth and Air Warlock from Rifts. Not insanely powerful overall, but by the game rules he was in, he was absurd. The most silly thing was the fact that he was a walking no-limits fallacy, immune to any quantity of energy inflicted damage. The second most silly thing was the fact that his combat bonuses exceeded those of war-like Deities. The third most silly thing was the fact that he had by fourth level 11 attacks per melee(twelve when using energy rifles, fifteen when using them in his chosen power armor, with the ability to shoot two rifles at once like this).The fourth most silly thing was the fact that he was as durable as most giant robots or tanks, even if you hit him with something that could hurt him. The last and almost trivial absurdity was my Physical Prowess(Dexterity basically) score, which ended up being a fourty-three.

The sad thing is that I could create a more powerful bastard character without trying, but hadn't been willing to push my luck to far, even though I created him as a reaction to my first two characters dying ignominiously. I even downplayed my bonuses for the longest time, only claiming a +15 to my combat attributes, and revealing my true abilities when the GM tried to have me killed.

Rifts has a lot of no-limits bullshit rules in it like that, which is one of the reasons I absolutely despise the system.

Yeah, I know, but I usually didn't go in for absurd overpowered characters outside of Palladium.

I would get absurd overpowered effects from characters that shouldn't have been nearly that capable in a WoD campaign. My favorite was the deranged Ventrue with average physical attributes, who'd spent all of his freebies on backgrounds. This guy's personality evolved into the most combat happy berzerk nut you could imagine, but the dice always fell in a way that came out with him covered in the viscera of others. His bodyguards on the other hand, any of which should have been able to fold spindle and mutilate him without effort, tended to get miserably shafted as they tried to follow the boss into the horrific mess he created.

I haven't had any absurdly overpowered characters, though my Star Frontiers character, one Dan Griffith, was pretty impressive. It all began with the stat rolls, you roll D100 for all stat pairs and then consult a chart as to what you get, but we skipped the chart and what you rolled was your score (100 being max stat range in the game anyhow, but instead of max 70 we had max 100 from the get go). Then you can play around with the pairs and move up to 10 points from one side of the pair to the other (e.g. Strength/Stamina pair score of 70, you can have it a 70/70 or 60/80 or 80/60 or whatever combo that adds up to 140)

My scores were 95 (Strength/Stamina), 100 (Dextreity/Reaction Speed), 72 (Intuition/Logic) and 89 (Personality/Leadership) and when we later added Physical Appearance, I got 80 on that. Given that most weapon skills in Star Frontiers work off the Dex score, my character was a real killer right off the bat, and if anybody got close enough to get physical with him, he could basically maul them. I got some pretty incredible things done with that character, and he is by far my most favorite of them all so far. And he never really became invincible, he could die just like anybody else, he just didn't.

Well, the GM gave me a couple of resurrections in the form of fudging results, but from the really serious ones I always got out without cheating (GM: Right: That's a Dex/RS check with a -90 modifier, let's see it! Me: *roll dice* Will 03 do? GM: *mutters under breath*) The other guys had a lot more divine intervention saves than I did, often just because they did stupid stuff without thinking it through, and it got especially blatant near the end where they took it for granted that their chars would not be killed off or they'd leave the campaign (after over ten years of play, in real life, there's some serious emotional investment after all and starting over with a noob char in a company of essentially legends would not work). Consequently, the campaign just died a quiet death last year, as I refused to put up with anything and the GM had also dead-ended with the plot options. anything else would have just killed all the good memories too.

Edi

In a homebrew Star Wars D20 system, we had several characters blow up into out of control goons.

One of mine was a guy named Dak Barhopper, who, at the conclusion of the game, possessed rank in the Imperial navy and commanded a fleet of 3 Imp Star II's, 3 Vic II's, and 6 dreadnaughts. The sad part is my fleet was considered undermanned compared to some of the other fleets the game.

The worst was a Dark Side campaign we ran - there were four of us, and we each developed into obscenely powerful Dark Jedis who challenged the New Jedi Order to a duel in the Senate Chambers on Coruscant.

When I was in grade school I had a GM who really took over-powered RPing to the next level. In short order I went from being a level 1 Bard to effortlessly batting aside Greater Gods. And the most powerful stuff I got was just handed to me by practically random NPCs. The stuff I had to work for wasn't that good.

When guys from the future came in spaceships to challenge me (this was supposed to be a fantasy campaign), I finally told him that the campaign was over and I wasn't playing anymore. We started again with the intention that it would not be so overpowered, but after a while I had a "Wand of Super-Lightning" that had a variable power setting. On 6% it caused a multi-megaton nuclear explosion that wiped out a city. Eventually, I turned it up to 100% and cracked the world like an egg.

We used to 'customise' the customized rules. Anyway, some friends of mine had 'uber' warriors with 'uber' magic. 'Crystal Knights'.

Anyway, a splinter group I was with developed the 'Ravenwood Knights' to combat these 'uber' assholes. Instead of 'crystals' to fuel our abilities, we went the religious route and our magic stemed from the 'earth' itself.

Mostly Ranger's, the Ravenwood Knights were a bastardization of the Numerians, Allanon and the Jedi. Warrior monks. Mostly light infantry. Swords, Bows and magic. Earth magic. Fire (colored), give and drain life and the such.

Well, we had a homebrew system once that was semi-sane, if you didn't try to get ridiculous. One time I whipped up an archer/mage character, and spent all my time and money practicing archery and enchanting the fuck out of my bow & arrows. By the time we got midway into the first campaign, I was launching the equivalent of tactical nukes out to the limit of my (enchanced) visual range. Then I learned to make arm-mounted automatic crossbows, and the MIRVed SRBM fun started....

In Neverwinter Nights, I had a Sorcerer 28 Paladin 2 Red Dragon Disciple 10.

Can this count Pokemon?:oops: I had a Dugtrio that never exceeded level 40, yet killed EVERY enemy it came up against that wasn't a flying type barring one(ranging from levels 10-65) in ONE hit from "Dig". Go figure

Master of Ossus wrote:In Neverwinter Nights, I had a Sorcerer 28 Paladin 2 Red Dragon Disciple 10.

That is such blatant abuse of the Divine Grace ability it isn't even funny. And red dragon disciple going with paladin?

Firali Bastille. started as an elf, and eventually became the gm.

gm: everyone in the multiverse dies.
me: I bring them back.