How much "Tier 1 Awesome" do you get to use in your games?

[Basket Burner]

So you forgot your abilities, and a weak enemy very slowly killed you for it. That's a bit more believable.

[Kajhera]

Yeah, accidentally battlefield controlling things into being less than accessible for both sides is the other situation where battles tend to drag on.

But another point is I don't mind not participating in a battle, if it enables the person who can tear me apart in a round, to do that to my enemy instead. I don't think that's effectively the same as me dying. I still have a move action and swift action after all, or move and standard if I can find an applicable paladin spell. If I had a belt of battle would definitely be distinct.

[Endarire]

I proposed that one of my friends DM while I run a solo game using 3.5 core-only rules.  The module was Bastion of Broken Souls.  I planned to be a TN Human Diviner5/Red Wizard10/Archmage2 with my cohort as a Diviner5/Red Wizard10.

Once I described what I planned to do (be plane shifted to Ysgard, use astral projection to visit the adventure site, craft a staff of holy word and UMD it to caster level 47, craft a staff of moment of prescience...) then my DM no longer needed to run it.  I just had to roll to determine initiative on the final boss, and if I won initiative, I won the module.

He never did run that module.

[Kajhera]

The real question is, did you reanimate Ashardalon under your control as an intelligent undead; and marry his kobold daughter, despite being a gnome?

[Halinn]

I just had to roll to determine initiative on the final boss, and if I won initiative, I won the module.

Contingent Time Stop

[spacemonkey555]

I just had to roll to determine initiative on the final boss, and if I won initiative, I won the module.

Contingent Time Stop

Core-only craft contingent spell? Neat trick. 

[Halinn]

I just had to roll to determine initiative on the final boss, and if I won initiative, I won the module.

Contingent Time Stop

Core-only craft contingent spell? Neat trick. 

Oh, right. Maximum sixth level on contingency. I've never actually played a paranoid wizard.

[Eldritch_Lord]

My stance: Bring it. Party consisting of a Cleric, 2 Wizards, a Psion, a Bard, and two optimized non casters? Great. Want to use tricky stuff? Go ahead. Tricky stuff will be used against you, regardless. Want to use TO material? Lol no.

So feel free to run around as invisible fliers and so forth at lower levels and spam save or loses. That's fine. Explosive Rune bombs, Shrink item bombarding etc... you can do it, but by doing it you concede they exist. By making them exist, you ensure they will be used against you as you'd be stupid not to use such tricks if available. Generally, the thought of the party suddenly taking die or die damage is enough to dissuade such thoughts if it gets that far at all.

DMM: Persist... what, you mean there are Clerics that don't have this? I do tend to ban FR material on principle though. Do we really need more Wizard wank?

Come to think of it, just about everything on my ban list is things that make Tier 0s or greater. 1-3, completely fine with that. Anything lower... I hope you know what you're doing.

This is my stance precisely, with the exception that I allow FR material (and Eberron and Dragon stuff as well), since I see it used more in my groups to get Doomspeak for a debuffer bard or Sword of the Arcane Order for a mystic ranger gish, for instance, than Incantatrix for a primary caster.  The fact that I'm the most CO-savvy person in the group who was around on the WotC boards when most of the famous TO tricks were developed stops my players from trying to pull broken builds or TO stuff from the internet, and my gentleman's agreement of "Anything you can do, NPCs can do too, and there's more of them than there are of you" stops anything else too cheesy.

[Ryu Hayabusa]

Tier 1? Not a whole lot. I aim for tier 3 to 2.5. I want capable characters, but I prefer to hold the arms race at bay. The nastiest tricks get banned and others discouraged as appropriate.   Beyond that, if the PCs use it, it gets used back on them. This leads to us figuring out what we want to use and what works for us.

Understanding what parts of 3.5 you like and the power level you want to aim for is good, trim away  things too strong and too weak and work from there.

[RobbyPants]

In three different one or two person game (all with the same DM), I've played a conjurer, druid, and dread necromancer. All of them were semi-self nerfed just because I knew there were some things he just flat-out wouldn't be able to handle.

Conjurer
This was in the two-player game, with a Hexblade. I never took Alter Self or Polymorph, just so I wouldn't outshine him in melee. I seldom used damage-dealing spells when I got to a high enough level that I could, just so he could do the killing. I did tie stuff up mercilessly with Glitterdust, Web, Grease, Stinking Cloud, Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, and the like.

So, I never pulled out all the stops, but I basically maintained enough versatility to make most encounters fairly easy.

Druid
I wanted to try a Shapeshifting VoP druid for the helluvit. It actually worked out pretty well. At low levels, I was quite self-sufficient. At high levels, I had enough power with my spells alone that I was doing just fine. Like the last character, I didn't have huge amounts of vertical power, but I could do about anything I wanted with a bit of creativity.

Dread Necro
This one was awesome through a combination of spells, PrCs, and magic items. I pulled off Scry & Die more than once. I built a few undead murder machines and carried them around in an Enveloping Pit with a scaffolding built in. This one was the most powerful by virtue of getting to the highest level.


At the end of the day, there was a lot of stuff I just didn't do because I knew it would piss the DM off. As it was, he had a hard time keeping tabs on everything I could do. The most egregious example I can think of was with my dread necro: he put me up against a dragon that had dread necro levels and five hidden huge skeletons. I opened up with two Destructions (Belt of Battle) and the dragon rolled poorly enough to die on the second one. At the time, I didn't know he had dread necro levels or I wouldn't have tried this, fearing for Death Ward. Sadly, the DM totally forgot about that spell despite me casting it daily for the past several sessions.

[Slaughterhouserock]

I rarely play Tier 1 classes as I prefer the BSF-types, but when I do, I tend to be reserved unless the situation demands otherwise.  Most of the people I've played with over the years have little to no concept of what it means to optimize, so I try to stick to their level.

[JaronK]

I've had different experiences in different games.  I had one where my Dread Necromancer could barely animate anything (necromantic items were nearly impossible to find, Onyxs were in short supply, and all the best monsters had some restriction on raising them), which was frustrating as heck.  In that same game, the DM allowed a Planar Binding wish loop, but only with the express agreement that it would be used to do something awesome, not powerful (the result was a custom Soarwood Carriage that weighed almost nothing, allowing us to travel in style and then basically float the thing over major obstacles.  Also, it worked as a boat and was augmented with Haunt Shift).

JaronK

[LordBlades]

For my group, it depends on the game.

We've run a few full cheese games. Strongest one was : DMM Persist Cleric, Druid(me), Spellthief/Wizard/Unseen Seer/Incantatrix, Wizard/Incantatrix and Psion.
We've also run some less powerful games. The current party is Crusader, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer and Binder(I was running a totemist but had to drop for a while due to work engagements  ).

We accept pretty much anything that falls into the power level for the game we want to run (with the mention that anything you use is fair game for the enemy as well; don't bring a charger that does tons of damage if you're not OK with being charged for tons of damage as well).

Where we usually draw the line is crazy action economy (stuff like Celerity or Schism is OK, planar bubbles to the Far Realms not really) infinite loops(we sometimes allow them for plot reasons, but not to get more powers to the PCs) and other TO stuff.

[MrWolfe]

Really varies by group and GM. I've been playing on and off with the same group for a couple of years now. A few players swap in and out and sometimes someone else takes over as GM for a while, but mostly it's been the same core of people with the same GM.

That guy is good, and lets us get pretty crazy--with the understanding that anything we can do can be used against us. I think the most insane we've gotten was in our Shadowrun campaign, where we managed to take out an elite corporate strike team (Renraku, for those who know what I'm talking about) and steal their VTOL helicopter/jet thing on our first adventure. We put mechanical arms on it and flew to Hong Kong, where we robbed a high-security bank by dosing the entire downtown business district with time release hallucinogens.

Currently we're playing Pathfinder under a new GM and the experience is very different. He keeps nerfing the PCs and putting us in horribly over-powered encounters. Granted, he's seen what we can do when given free reign and is probably a little scared--but the end result is us struggling to survive.

In one case, if you fail, you're out. In the other, as long as one member of the party is still in the game you can be fixed in fairly short order at no major loss than a couple of gp at most.

veekie: You just described death.

I'd have to disagree--at lower levels, death SUCKS. My current 6th level character died last session. I was out for the rest of the adventure--including the boss fight--and getting rezzed wiped out all but a few hundred of my gold and all of my prestige points with the adventurer's guild--including what I got for that adventure.

I've been saving up both since 2nd level and now it's all gone.

[Tiltowait]

More than I actually use most of the time. I have a very good DM. If I go all out my character is going to be near invulnerable, even to optimized opponents. Usually though I'm content to make explosions large enough to kill anything that manages to annoy me with defenses good enough to deal with them in the meantime.

[shriekingdrake]

I have to say about half of my groups like the power.  We often play with condensed skills, feats at every odd level, and just about everything else, even materials in the magazines.  The only things we consistently ban are some of the infinite loops, most of the "time" based spells and abilities, pun-pun cheese, etc.  Druids and wizards are just fine.  There is some limitation on some items like nightsticks to limit DMM, but otherwise it is pretty no holds barred.  Our DMs tend to adjust the play so that each player's character is challenged to his or he ability.  For us DnD is less a contest or sportint event and more of a game designed for all to have fun.  We reward humor and acumen, as well as insight and innovation.  But the guy who wants to play a monk or bard can have just as much fun as the guy who wants to play a druid or cleric. 

[midnight_v]

I think I've had 3 that I remember... and this is to say Tier 1 playable not anything weird or broken perse. These happened before I reaallly knew what was up with the game.
1st:

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I had an elven (generalist acf) who played the necromancer. I was level 4 and my brother wanted to send me to his new "super hard" dungeon that parties kept wiping in, so I rolled a elf/wiz(things I never played) well I was level 4 and had a scroll of animate dead and very little other gear. I had a few summon monster spells "low level" and what happened was I walked into a room with 2 "ogres" or large lizard folk "blackscale" I think  with monkey griped huge clubs. I cast Glitterdust blinding them both.
Ghoul's Touch: paralyzing 1
Coup de grace with a Fell Animating acid splash.
Round 3 I used the ensuing Zombie to kill his partner ( who kept missing due to blindess/nausea)
After the fight used a scroll of animated Dead on the other one.
I let them walk into rooms ahead of me and used "invisibility" and/or Gaseous Form along with summoned undead to survive.
At the end he said... "Wow, you weren't challenged at all"
I said No I had to think through a lot of those situations.
He reiterated: "You character was never in any real danger: The MINONS were controlled well, but he was barely ever touched and even then only by traps etc.
It was very telling

2nd: A gish

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Now understand that this isn't very impressive from our perspective but yeah it was a gish build.
I'd made him as a character that was going to be introduced into an ongoing game at level 10.
I might have a had a metamagic reducer or something but basically, I came in when the party was losing to thier "mirror match" antagonist team that they'd fought against the whole game.
I cast:
round 1: Quickened Ray of Enfeeblement (on the guy in the full plate), Evard's Black Tentacles.
Round 2: Cast: Summon monster 4 "Allip" (which couldn't be grappled)
 The team had always thwarded them by being equal to them and a classic D&D team, but ... after that the world was totally different.

3rd: Druid with Abberation Shape.

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Interesting thing ... Abberation wildshape isn't "BETTER" than regular wildshape. I just wanted to do some body horror, so i ran this.
The thing wasn't the druid, it was the animal companion. It was my first druid, and  we were on a ship being attacked by something a giant squid or some such. He kept making my make balance checks for my Animal Companion.
I wasn't an alien cosmology animal so finally I said "let it die" in a flat voice like the girl from aliens.
It became a meme because every 24 hours I'd summon another animal companion and... "let it die" after it got tedious to me to make checks.
having an infinite disposable minion was tier one fun.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Less than my DM is willing to allow.  He is, if anything, an enabler.

[KellKheraptis]

I have actually been able to play my Neo-Trancer to fabulous effect, amidst a group of similar T0-2's.  Also, mad kudos to Tiltowait, for using the name of the Wizardry 5 Hadoken!

[Tiltowait]

I have actually been able to play my Neo-Trancer to fabulous effect, amidst a group of similar T0-2's.  Also, mad kudos to Tiltowait, for using the name of the Wizardry 5 Hadoken!

More than just 5.