What do you usually ban in your games?

[SAI Peregrinus]

I really only have one rule:
Short version: "You don't use Disjunction, Dragons don't use Disjunction."
Long version: Optimize & min/max all you want. As long as it's from the allowed books (normally all WotC and a good bit of the 3rd party stuff) for the appropriate edition (no, you can't use your D20 future character in my D20 modern game.) Just remember, I'm almost certainly better at optimization than you are. Attempts to Ascend will be stopped by Pun Pun. Non-infinites are normally OK.

As for the issue of power disparity between characters, that's a matter of adventure design. If a player wants to be a pure skillmonkey, I'll make sure the adventure has bits that can't be overcome without that player's skills. It's my job as a DM to find ways to challenge all the players.

That said, I want to challenge all the players. If you make a character too specialized I'll exploit that. I may say "no" to things on a case by case basis, but in general I don't ban things outright. Sometimes I'll also alter costs, eg candle of invocation costs 26000 instead of 8,400 gp. Lesser candles of invocation (without the gate function) cost 8000 gp.

[Chrononaut]

We-e-ell

What I CHANGE in my games includes
PF skills (this is a technical nerf to rogues but fuck half ranks and tracking all that)
PF CMD/CMB instead of 3.5's hodgepodge.

The game I'm DMing at the moment is very high powered (Gestalt Monster classes/Classes) and thus far I have banned outright only a few things hard up, and was surprised to note that people didn't even KNOW 'Incantatrix Beholder Mage' was a thing. Thus far setting specific things I have banned and let pretty much all of dragon/obscure books in with no real problems. And even with that I occasionally nudge someone with "this template in Ghostwalk lets you be a vampire" or "you know a Steel Dragon is basically a Silver with much nicer LA, right?" i.e. I break my own rule in player interest.

One of my players is even playing a homebrew mindbender because he took me aside and said "Dominate breaks the game, can I play a geas/suggestion based version of this?" so I guess I have the best players.

I did have one guy pick up VoP unbodied/cloistered cleric into cerebromancer try and solo a 'do not fight' encounter against three aboleths who was actually almost completely immune to everything they could throw at him, until the savant showed up and Ghost Locked him, which kind of demonstrated that I do have system mastery to him. (He made a much less munchkiny character afterwards)

So yeah, I guess my players don't really know their options (except the aforementioned mindbender who challenges himself by playing 4th tier classes around tier 1-2 guys and still contributes) so giving them everything on the table doesn't do much.

[Tr011]

I kind of get more and more into the controlling DM in the last month. It's because several players try to get as good as I let them do. So if I say Half-Ogre/Half-Minotaur is ok, they go for it, even if in the party is a Dwarven single-classed Fighter. That part is hard IMO and I don't like me for doing it, but I don't know what to do. I said six weeks ago, that if one of the players want to play his Half-Ogre Barbarian 1/Fighter 2 I wouldn't disallow it because I don't like disallowing. Then he handled the next encounter vs. 6 warforged on his own while the other guys cowered behind a wagon.

Things I banned completley:
Shivering Touch (for being simply OP in competition with similar spells)
Leadership (because they can roleplay getting NPCs to their side instead of taking a feat for it)
Traits/Flaws
Nymph's Kiss

Oh and Able Learner is now a normal feat, neither level 1 nor beeing human/doppelganger only.

[Mithril Leaf]

In the game I'm DMing (admitedly this is the first proper game I've DMed) I've banned things that have been proven to be false rulings, such as dragonwrought kobolds qualifying as true dragons and the like. Additionally when players try to use broken things, they get it working once. After that, it's time for a ban. Not tried using dust of sneezing and choking yet, but I'll let them get away with it once.

[Unbeliever]

@Tro11

I take it a gentleman's agreement, or a statement to the effect of "I leave it up to you guys to balance yourselves within the party, here's the upper bound on what I think is acceptable, more or less" won't work?  That's our approach, and it works reasonably well.  Such things are an art, not a science, so the balancing isn't perfect, but it avoids really stark differences.

[kitep]

We ban drinks on the table   

We ban mixed groups of good & evil.  I want the players fighting the NPCs & monsters, not each other.

But no one in my group really powergames, so we don't ban much.  I actually let them ignore rules to help power-up their characters.

When I'm playing, I ban myself from polymorph/shapechange abuse, using suck-or-die spells all the time, raising caster level through the roof, uber-charging, and a few more things I can't think of at the moment.

[Kethrian]

We ban drinks on the table   

That's why Dragon Magazine 282 is so nice!  Food and drink that ends up on the battlemat are now monsters!  Fear the Lurking Dorrito, the Gummi Bears, the Pizza Slice, the Watermelon Jolly Rancher, and the Pepsioid!

[FlaminCows]

Since this thread is repeating itself a bit, I'll take a slightly different approach: I ban the Dodge feat.

Usually banned rules involve ideas like "this is too powerful" or "I don't trust my players", but banning Dodge is different. Dodge gets in the way. The Dodge feat adds +1 ac, a practically irrelevant modifier, and it adds it to only one enemy, which means more bookkeeping. Furthermore, it is a prerequisite for other, more interesting rules (and I don't mean Mobility, I ban that too), which I say you can get without the banned prerequisites, thus freeing the players to more fun choices, even if that means they become more powerful.

I don't ban sourcebooks, even ones I don't know, because I trust that anybody playing with me would be able to apply discretion and common sense rather than legalism and competitiveness in a co-operative game. I don't even ban third party sourcebooks, which sometimes have neat ideas that haven't been seen before in any actual games because people are so quick to disregard them for being third party.

In conclusion: I believe the game is about fun, and building characters is part of it. I strongly believe that the players can be trusted to know the rules for their own character better than I do, so long as it lets their character interact with a game in a fun way. It shouldn't be an antagonistic relationship, with the DM providing the rules and the players trying to make the most powerful thing possible within it. Ideally, the limits on a character should be placed by the players themselves.

_{Here comes the fine print: no, I'm actually not that free-wheeling, and lots of things are vetoed for being overpowered or for getting in the way of the fun of other players. But its the thought that counts.}

[Jackinthegreen]

We ban drinks on the table   

That's why Dragon Magazine 282 is so nice!  Food and drink that ends up on the battlemat are now monsters!  Fear the Lurking Dorrito, the Gummi Bears, the Pizza Slice, the Watermelon Jolly Rancher, and the Pepsioid!

The spilled Mountain Dew just turned into an army of quicklings!

[Nytemare3701]

Since this thread is repeating itself a bit, I'll take a slightly different approach: I ban the Dodge feat.

Usually banned rules involve ideas like "this is too powerful" or "I don't trust my players", but banning Dodge is different. Dodge gets in the way. The Dodge feat adds +1 ac, a practically irrelevant modifier, and it adds it to only one enemy, which means more bookkeeping. Furthermore, it is a prerequisite for other, more interesting rules (and I don't mean Mobility, I ban that too), which I say you can get without the banned prerequisites, thus freeing the players to more fun choices, even if that means they become more powerful.

I don't ban sourcebooks, even ones I don't know, because I trust that anybody playing with me would be able to apply discretion and common sense rather than legalism and competitiveness in a co-operative game. I don't even ban third party sourcebooks, which sometimes have neat ideas that haven't been seen before in any actual games because people are so quick to disregard them for being third party.

In conclusion: I believe the game is about fun, and building characters is part of it. I strongly believe that the players can be trusted to know the rules for their own character better than I do, so long as it lets their character interact with a game in a fun way. It shouldn't be an antagonistic relationship, with the DM providing the rules and the players trying to make the most powerful thing possible within it. Ideally, the limits on a character should be placed by the players themselves.

_{Here comes the fine print: no, I'm actually not that free-wheeling, and lots of things are vetoed for being overpowered or for getting in the way of the fun of other players. But its the thought that counts.}

^This, Fine print and all. Things that are banned are banned by consensus, with only the player who was JUST about to use it usually complaining (they always agree later though, and we know it's just a petty outburst)

[RobbyPants]

Since this thread is repeating itself a bit, I'll take a slightly different approach: I ban the Dodge feat.

Usually banned rules involve ideas like "this is too powerful" or "I don't trust my players", but banning Dodge is different. Dodge gets in the way.

I did a similar thing in my current set of house-rules. I put a soft cap on how many levels of Fighter, Monk, or Paladin you can take (2, 2, and 3 levels, respectively) without DM permission. Other than that, they are referred to the Warblade, (Unarmed) Swordsage, and Crusader respectively. I figured it was easier to simply leave the classes there for dipping and to use the published ToB rules than to rewrite three core classes.

Regarding crap feats like Dodge, I rewrote a lot of them. A lot of the project was simply re-written feats.

[Unbeliever]

...
Regarding crap feats like Dodge, I rewrote a lot of them. A lot of the project was simply re-written feats.

That's been sort of my approach.  Like Dodge just became "+1 dodge bonus to AC" in part b/c I've become anti-bookkeeping in my old age.  I'm also comfortable removing crap feats from their "suck pre-req" role. 

[b100d_arrowz]

When I first started I fell into the trap of "Teh Tatooed Monk is teh OP and breaks teh game  " However after building a semi competent fighter for their first encounter... not so much  Now my players and I have an agreement, anything they want to use I have available to me. So they avoid any true game breaking mechanics to prevent the BBEG from getting comparable game shattering power.

[Wereling]

Now my players and I have an agreement, anything they want to use I have available to me. So they avoid any true game breaking mechanics to prevent the BBEG from getting comparable game shattering power.

This is pretty much how I run things. Fortunately I run with a pretty close group of friends, and it's never really been an issue. "Whatever you get to use *I* get to use" is usually enough of a threat for me that it takes care of everything.

[JaronK]

I switch things around based on the type of game I want to run.  Sometimes I run an all commoners game... no other classes allowed.  Sometimes I want people to all make stealth classes so we can do a covert ops type game.  The only thing consistant across all games is that I want my players to all be at the same power level, and all the players have to be appropriate to the starting point of the game.

JaronK

[Prak]

I think the only thing I flat out ban in all of my games is Vow of Poverty. I have my reasons, and they are many, and opinionated:
1) The feat is over powered, in that if you are too lazy to actually pick your equipment, here's a list of shit that will make you quite effective, especially when used with at least three classes.
2) The feat underpowers your character, in that the benefits actually do not match up to Wealth by Level. It might possibly provide a class on par with classes that are actually effective if it were just given to the monk wholesale.... but I digress.
3) The feat essentially ruins D&D, especially when combined with the Vows of Peace and Non-violence. D&D is a game about breaking into peoples' homes, killing them, and taking their shit home in santa sacks. Vow of Peace/Non-violence/Poverty make a character unable to participate in this level of the game, with a very small number of exceptions (construct or undead opponents, but they still can't acquire loot).
4) The Vow feats are fucking stupid. Lets start with the fact that they are more Lawful than Good, conceptually, then add in the fact that they arbitrarily add Christian morality into a game about fire breathing, flying lizards, men who can fire force missiles from their cocks, and many myriad pantheons.

I am, seriously, quite likely to allow almost anything else, at least circumstantially, but I will never allow vow of poverty.

[ImperatorK]

You have a bit of a contradiction there, Prak.

[Prak]

Between the first two? Yes, I know, that was intentional. The feat overpowers those who are too lazy to pick their equipment (sorta), but it underpowers the characters which have it relative to others, because it's essentially a feat that gives you sub par equipment choices flavoured as divine power. Also, it's possible for an choice to be overpowered relative to other choices of the same type (you're essentially an idiot for choosing Weapon Focus over VoP if you can, for instance), and still render a character underpowered.

[Libertad]

4) The Vow feats are fucking stupid. Lets start with the fact that they are more Lawful than Good, conceptually, then add in the fact that they arbitrarily add Christian morality into a game about fire breathing, flying lizards, men who can fire force missiles from their cocks, and many myriad pantheons.

I am, seriously, quite likely to allow almost anything else, at least circumstantially, but I will never allow vow of poverty.

I don't know what sourcebook that spell's from, but I bet it's in the Book of Erotic Fantasy or a James Desborough product.

But on VoP, I think us 3.5 fans should be grateful for what we have:

I mean, look what Pathfinder did to Vow of Poverty!

And the designer considers gimped class features the height of roleplaying!

[zook1shoe]

there are people out there that will take the Vow feats because its appropriate to their character's RP.

Yes, i agree they can be disruptive, but there's quite a bit out there that is MUCH more disruptive.

i personally don't like most of them, but i'm more of a numbers guy