One of the earliest 'broken builds' I remember seeing was for 3.5E which involved playing a cleric, taking the metamagic feat which let you spend turn attempts in lieu of actual spell levels for metamagic-upgraded spells, and carrying around a pack full of a magic item that gave you extra turn attempts.
My response to the smirking player (who was thankfully not a part of my group, thank God) telling me this, was that trying that in my game would result in being told 'no'. Firmly.
One of my big complaints with PF1E (and to an extent 3.5, though PF1E definitely has it worse) is the expectation you will build for high competence. If you don't, you'll have trouble in encounters. It's a lot harder to build meme builds or experiment in PF1E.
That would be divine metamagic, back in the day I did that for fun in a one shot and I only did it because someone in the group was insistent that the feat wasn't broken. You could just look at it and know that it was bullshit but for that particular game we were told to just do broken shit and to not worry about it. You didn't even need the magic item to make it work because extra turning gave you 4 extra turning charges and you could take it multiple times. So by 3rd level a human cleric could have divine metamagic, quicken spell and extra turning and your build is already online. Eventually you'd want to make room for power attack or something but that was just for fun.
I don't remember much from the game but I do remember quickening a righteous might and braining some demon round one, getting blasted with some kind of special ability for 100 points of damage and then quickening a heal immediately after before beating the piss out of the thing that did that. That wasn't even the worst nonsense you could pull off with it either, there was some other metamagic that let you make buffs last 24 hours and just truck around buffed to shit every day. I'm sure someone has a very specific build out there where levels and shit are balanced perfectly.
Needless to say, the group banned divine metamagic afterwards and I was declared CORRECT, which is the secret win condition for every 3.5 player.
I've honestly never had dudes attempting to play 3.5 le reddit busted builds. Thankfully most at my table have been lore nerds and they deviated to sort of underpowered prestige classes. The last campaign I ran was farting around Dragonlance and I had gotten a copy of Holy Order of the stars. It's chocked full of "hybrid " style prestige classes that add a splash of level 1-3 spells to martial and a couple of utility abilities or sacrifice spellcasting a bit to add martial abilities and utility. That campaign is in a vacation though but the characters are sitting at level 6-8.
If i ever decide to run 3.5 again from scratch I'll probably just roll with the 3 variant generic classes from the DMs guide 2. You have Warrior, Spellcaster and Specialist. Each one comes off as a bit underpowered vs their players Handbook counterparts at the start but they get more feats to build into stuff. Plus they can freely set their class skills to their liking.
Class specific skills like Backstab etc are broken down into feats. On paper it comes off as a sort of 2e Skills and Powers system but in 3.5.
It looks like it'd be fun + a change of pace.
5e fuckers will actively refuse to take suggestions and would rather reinvent whole games using a jankier d20 build than to just try something fucking new. I've never seen people able to get them to really try anything new at all, which is damning.
The d20 glut was just the same thing for 3rd edition. People prefer the systems they know. Once you rip the band-aid off and they try something that isn't a D&D clone, it's easier to get them to try even more systems.
One of the earliest 'broken builds' I remember seeing was for 3.5E which involved playing a cleric, taking the metamagic feat which let you spend turn attempts in lieu of actual spell levels for metamagic-upgraded spells, and carrying around a pack full of a magic item that gave you extra turn attempts.
One of my broken builds was gnome illusionist/thief in original AD&D which I've probably mentioned before. At least in the campaign I was playing, the combo of stealth mechanics, standard stealing shit, and reasonably potent offense magic was game-breaking.
As a GM my usual deal with game-breaking was if it was clever, you'd get to do it at least a session but if it truly was game-breaking, I'd change the rules to unbreak it, usually after a discussion with everyone as to why or why not this particular build/meta was actually game-breaking.
Everyone else in my small group GMed themselves to some extent and we'd share players or show up in each other's games and game-breaking was kind of a hobby in and of itself.
(We also played Illuminati in full cheat mode where the only penalty for getting caught was you'd have to give back whatever you cheated for. My personal favorite cheat was lying about the rules.)
Worst of all: it is 2d20, so it feels identical to every other 2d20 game, so if you've ever played one, then beware! Also, unlike other games with a metacurrency, 2d20's momentum and doom (I was introduced to it through Conan, don't know the terms in the other versions), are a hostage situation in a way that the LS-DS tokens, Edge, and Artha of Star Wars FFG, Shadowrun, and Burning Wheel, respectively, aren't.
If only Fallout 2d20 felt like Conan or Infinity. Those two used the system really well and the meta currencies added a nice back and forth in encounters while in Fallout 2d20 it just felt like a way to punish the players for existing because of how weapon damage outpaced armor.
I mean, we are playing a game that is all about rolling dice at the end of the day. I think its fine to have a gimmick like this, especially since I checked that module, the cards are not all pre-determinated, it seems you can make your own aswell. They just give pointers of what the cards could do. And most are to introduce some boosts to the NPCs and the PCs to change how the combat flows, which in 4e tactical combat is kinda of its thing.
I don't like card gimmicks in general because it adds a pointless layer of complexity, means you have to cart more shit to a meat space game), oftentimes but not always makes managing assets more annoying than it needs to be, and it too often is used as a selling point by the company to make you buy more shit. 4e did this. Gammaworld 7e did this. Daggerhearts is setting up to do this.
The only times I've been talked down on this is when it's used in the vein as index cards. Some simulationist games really need them as a reference point. Flying Circus for example does this with its plane kits, and that's a time where I can agree with it.
It's been 11 years since it first came out, it's not unreasonable to assume that the 5e guys ain't shut ins.
I just find that a 3.5 grog moving on is a bit difficult, but doable in bursts. They'll prefer 3.5 but are willing to play ball after finding a game that clicked. I can't even get there with a 5e player.
4e effectively has no crafting. or well, not in the sense of powergamers.
You need to have residuum equal in level to the combined level of the enchantment you want to put on the gear plus 20%, and the GM can still tell you to eat shit if they don't like what item you're trying to craft.
There is no "spend time break the economy".
Technically you need a feat to do it but its so worthless from a break-the-game perspective I usually just let my players move enchantments between gear without the 20% penalty.
Fine you've created your infinite engine of producing whatever, however as you said about the timekeeping thing with the necrocult you've either not participated and the adventurers saved the day without you, or got held back so long waiting for you that the world has already ended. And even if that timekeeping isn't about the time purely spent crafting, it can also be shut down simply by not having the time to gather the resources.
That's why the homunculi were in the magic sack. you don't have to sit at home polishing your wand, you're up in the thick of it with everyone else. while you are adventuring, while you are traveling, while you are sleeping your automata are always crafting.
There's definitely an expectation of building with high competence in pf1e, although I don't know if I agree that it's harder to play around with meme builds.
The issue with "building for competence" I've seen is that its never general purpose competence. Players will build to dominate the current situation they find themselves in so they have enough wiggle room to meme build or the PL further.
When then the situation changes they'll "get bored" and want to roll a new character broken for the new situation. if you don't let them they'll get pissy because of how punishing PF is supposed to be to non-optimized builds.
I will agree that the experimentation part is completely fucked for players without as much experience but that's because the system has so many useless options or dead ends of progression for someone to fall into without reading guides and forum posts, some of which also get shit wrong in their interpretations of things or direct players to random splats for shit that doesn't make sense in your campaign and still need to be told "No", especially with some of the weird shit they were releasing in the last couple years of pf1e.
This is the issue with PF and what causes so many players to be munchkins. Being an obnoxious powergaming munchkin is incentivized by the system and encounter builds.
I'm sure this isn't every PF1e player, but its been common in every PF1 player I've had at my table.
The only time a player will build not for what the internet says is best, its to an annoying "but that's just my character" asshat.
If I encounter a bad players I can almost certainly ask "What's your usual pathfinder build?" and then get back their PF1e character, a story about how it was so OP it broke an encounter if not the game, and then get a follow up of "And there's this build I want to try, I saw it on a forum..."
Ah ok. so nothing numerically fucky, just it uses an RP currency system, and the RP currency doesn't work with the theme because while a Star Trek crew will be working together to fight the romulans or on an away mission to deal with the threat of the week, that sort of natural collaboration comes less readily to a game of gritty survival
I just find that a 3.5 grog moving on is a bit difficult, but doable in bursts. They'll prefer 3.5 but are willing to play ball after finding a game that clicked. I can't even get there with a 5e player.
The reason PF1 and 3.5 players tend to be like this is there's a large online subculture of theorycrafted meme builds. It's like nobody just plays those games. 3.5 maybe to a lesser extent, being old enough that maybe some people really are just playing the game instead of having online spergwank contests.
My favorite PF1 build wasn't the actual PC, but the rapecoon. It wasn't gamebreaking -I think we were at level 18 at that point- but essentially I had a strength based vivisectionist with a mauler archetype tumor familiar. Mutagens count as spells for the share spells ability for a tumor, so with the Improved Share Spells feat he would pop a mutagen and divide the duration in half with the raccoon. So he had a medium sized roided out raccoon with 30 Strength and 3/4 BAB for 9 hours a day as his flanking buddy.
Yet another way the Internet ruined everything. It's like people can't even be creative with their game-breaking any more. No, they just have to wreck it with some bullshit meme they saw on the Internet by some soybeard faggot.
The big problem with all of those theorycrafted builds is that they run right into a brick wall the minute it comes into an actual game and especially in a campaign. Most of them require a character to be at least 12th level and most of them assume that every combat will be very similar to every other combat. Every single time someone who has played a character from 1 to whatever level is going to mudhole stomp whatever over-engineered guy with a cool trick up his sleave.
The cool two handed max damage fighter/barbarian is going to lose against the fighter that invested a tiny bit into a good longbow and has a potion of fly he found 5 levels ago.
The alchemist who can throw 6 bombs a round and do a bunch of damage to something 30 feet away is going to be out of bombs after 2 combats and can't do shit against something that fights from 300 feet away.
The summoner with a flying pounce eidolon (fucking all of them) is super cool until a wall spell gets put up, or it's entangled, or it fails a save against a fear spell and runs off for 10 rounds.
The juiced up enchantment sorcerer might get slapped with some high DC strength poison the rogue has been hanging on to and fucking melts before he can do anything.
The duel wielding super sneak attack knife build that can greater invis as a swift and sneak attack 8 times gets his shit pushed in by someone that dropped a couple levels in barbarian because uncanny dodge does, in fact, come up.
These are all things I've seen when running or playing. I think that holds true for any game too, just knowing what your character can do by playing the fucking game means a lot more than poking at rules over and over. Or you can play a wizard and do both. Its... not a perfect system...
The big problem with all of those theorycrafted builds is that they run right into a brick wall the minute it comes into an actual game and especially in a campaign. Most of them require a character to be at least 12th level and most of them assume that every combat will be very similar to every other combat. Every single time someone who has played a character from 1 to whatever level is going to mudhole stomp whatever over-engineered guy with a cool trick up his sleave.
I've seen theory crafted builds in the real world and breaking sub-5th level games.
Pozzo due to their love of niggers, also love other violent worthless creatures - specifically goblins. I was a player (because I had schedule issues so couldn't attend regularly) and someone wanted to run PF (which I wanted to say no to, but see above) and they wanted to run We Be Goblins.
I forget the exact build and options but one of the guys picked some artificer thing with mutagens and ended up with, as a 2nd or 3rd level, someting like 32 strength and 28 con. He technically was vulnerable to mind controlling spells, but as it was a low-level adventure none of the enemies had that. I missed it, but I guess there was a flesh golem boss the party was supposed to try to stealth kill and whittle down or avoid, and his hulked out goblin straight up tanked it and out damaged it.
And the who made the character said he could have fixed the mental vulnerability by losing some of the STR bonus but "as they're a first time DM he didn't want to make something unbeatable".
There was also shit like level 4 goblins having something like +32 stealth. That was just out of the box.
Also one of the guys in the group who moved away who was the usual DM, was building a module he wanted to publish (not in a make money sense, more in a give to others sense) and used us for playtesting. He was making a "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" donut steal. He had introduced module-specific skills that were basically "Use Alien Device" "comprehend Alien language" (basically replace "Arcane" with "Alien"). So all the characters were of course garbage at these things but its fair and balanced because it was skill you could put points into when you leveled up, brah!
instead of doing the sensible thing like "All non-(Alien Race) take a -50 penalty to checks to use equipment with the Alien keyword because fuck you that's why unless they are given a bonus feat of 'woke to the greys'"
In summation, fuck Pathfinder - any edition, Pozzo, and PF grogs.
forget the exact build and options but one of the guys picked some artificer thing with mutagens and ended up with, as a 2nd or 3rd level, someting like 32 strength and 28 con.
I think the only way that's possible, str wise, is to start with a 20, splash barbarian, do mutagen and have an enhancement like bull's strength slapped on you. Don't know where the fuck the con is coming from. Good rolls? Burning an awful lot of resources to pull off a cool trick once a day, so I guess if you want to be that mutant who wants to be effective once that's cool I guess.
I'll grog as much as I want.
That fighter with a bow who started at 1 is going to felt that goblin.
What you've described is definitely shit. But if the DM wasn't willing to adjust anything and the players are this ridiculous, find a new table? Or is it for some reason they only try this shit in PF? Which I somehow doubt since most systems can be broken, it's just a matter of "are the people at this table here to just play some broken shit or actually play a game?"
I think the only way that's possible, str wise, is to start with a 20, splash barbarian, do mutagen and have an enhancement like bull's strength slapped on you. Don't know where the fuck the con is coming from. Good rolls? Burning an awful lot of resources to pull off a cool trick once a day, so I guess if you want to be that mutant who wants to be effective once that's cool I guess.
I'll grog as much as I want.
That fighter with a bow who started at 1 is going to felt that goblin.
I regret not keeping better notes on exactly what fucking horseshit he got up to, but I didn't want to play Pathfinder so I just took my pregen character sheet when I was there and just stayed in my lane.
1lvl fighter with a bow ain't finding a goblin with 32 stealth before he's in range. I recall the goblin hulk was super fast too, so he wasn't outrunning shit either.
What you've described is definitely shit. But if the DM wasn't willing to adjust anything and the players are this ridiculous, find a new table? Or is it for some reason they only try this shit in PF? Which I somehow doubt since most systems can be broken, it's just a matter of "are the people at this table here to just play some broken shit or actually play a game?"
I mean I did eventually, but
Firstly, people are all "no no Pathfinder is a perfectly fine system, all this theorycrafting bullshit you ahve to be level 18, no one actually does this" and have provided real-world, in-person examples of "No, this shit does happen and affects all levels" and sort of mind set of PF players to break the game not play it.
(And I mean technically 5e but I ONLY run 5e as one-shots with Pregens so that isn't a stone in my craw anymore)
I was playing a megadungeon before I learned my "Only pregens" lesson and the guy who made the Goblinhulk had a Warlock with fly and a 600ft eldritch blast at lvl 5 using just the shit from PHB. (the joke was on him; the megadungeon explicitly prevented shit like Fly and dimension door)
Secondly, to demonstrate of how this sort of mindset afflicts every PF grog (and again, anyone doing PF1 at this point is a grog) that I have ever played with or interacted with in IRL.
And while I talk mostly about the most recent of PF mutant I encountered this was very similar in 3 groups of Pathfinder players accross the country.
So when you ask "Do they only try this in PF" they try it with other systems too, but the universal constant I have found with people who want to break the game not play it is they all love PF because it enables and encourages - nearly mandates - this sort of behavior. (in the words of a friend "I'm not sayin everyone who owns a Mustang is an asshole, but when I've seen an asshole out driving they are always driving a mustang")
Those theorycrafting munchkins are NOT the exception.
Just because you like Cher and Madonna and don't suck dicks nightly down at the local gloryhole doesn't change the fact that most of your fellow fans do.
I mean I did eventually, but
Firstly, people are all "no no Pathfinder is a perfectly fine system, all this theorycrafting bullshit you ahve to be level 18, no one actually does this" and have provided real-world, in-person examples of "No, this shit does happen and affects all levels" and sort of mind set of PF players to break the game not play it.
(And I mean technically 5e but I ONLY run 5e as one-shots with Pregens so that isn't a stone in my craw anymore)
I was playing a megadungeon before I learned my "Only pregens" lesson and the guy who made the Goblinhulk had a Warlock with fly and a 600ft eldritch blast at lvl 5 using just the shit from PHB. (the joke was on him; the megadungeon explicitly prevented shit like Fly and dimension door)
Secondly, to demonstrate of how this sort of mindset afflicts every PF grog (and again, anyone doing PF1 at this point is a grog) that I have ever played with or interacted with in IRL.
And while I talk mostly about the most recent of PF mutant I encountered this was very similar in 3 groups of Pathfinder players accross the country.
So when you ask "Do they only try this in PF" they try it with other systems too, but the universal constant I have found with people who want to break the game not play it is they all love PF because it enables and encourages - nearly mandates - this sort of behavior. (in the words of a friend "I'm not sayin everyone who owns a Mustang is an asshole, but when I've seen an asshole out driving they are always driving a mustang")
Those theorycrafting munchkins are NOT the exception.
Just because you like Cher and Madonna and don't suck dicks nightly down at the local gloryhole doesn't change the fact that most of your fellow fans do.
Oh I'm not disagreeing that the grognards who still insist on playing pf1 as if it's the be-all end-all best system ever at this point aren't mostly doing this shit. I assumed this nonsense at your table was happening years ago. At this point the pf1e "community" is a wasteland of idiots who will never move on, kind of like those guys still playing quake 2 or starcraft 1, and like shitters, and are surprised they can't find new players.
Hell, I like PF1 and I'm not so deranged as to say it's the bestest system ever.
(Everyone knows that's Savage Worlds.)
Again, though, a lot of this shit really boils down to GMs not putting their foot down. I would really like to see this We Be Goblins level 4 character with a +32 stealth, though.
Although reviewing the goblin PC race entry... someone REALLY wanted them to be sneaky. They get a +4 size bonus to Stealth, and a +4 racial bonus on top of that. Add four ranks (for a level 4), presume your Dexterity is 23 (max 18 at chargen, +4 racial bonus, +1 at 4th level) so your modifier is +6.... you're up to +18. If Stealth is a class skill, that adds +3 to the check, you're up to +21. I guess magic items could make up the difference (cloak of elvenkind grants a +5 competence bonus). The big issue is bonus stacking; you'd have to make sure the bonuses were all different sources (insight, competence, untyped, etc).
Again, though, a lot of this shit really boils down to GMs not putting their foot down. I would really like to see this We Be Goblins level 4 character with a +32 stealth, though.
Although reviewing the goblin PC race entry... someone REALLY wanted them to be sneaky. They get a +4 size bonus to Stealth, and a +4 racial bonus on top of that. Add four ranks (for a level 4), presume your Dexterity is 23 (max 18 at chargen, +4 racial bonus, +1 at 4th level) so your modifier is +6.... you're up to +18. If Stealth is a class skill, that adds +3 to the check, you're up to +21. I guess magic items could make up the difference (cloak of elvenkind grants a +5 competence bonus). The big issue is bonus stacking; you'd have to make sure the bonuses were all different sources (insight, competence, untyped, etc).
Don't forget shit like... I forget the PF term, but circumstance bonus from being in cover/shadow.
i might have the number slightly wrong but it was absolutely ridiculous for below level 5 characters. Again, this was a pregen and I didn't really care to play PF so I only paid attention to the numbers the DM said I needed.
so maybe 32 was just the rogue (which might have been a ninja?)
Oh I'm not disagreeing that the grognards who still insist on playing pf1 as if it's the be-all end-all best system ever at this point aren't mostly doing this shit. I assumed this nonsense at your table was happening years ago. At this point the pf1e "community" is a wasteland of idiots who will never move on, kind of like those guys still playing quake 2 or starcraft 1, and like shitters, and are surprised they can't find new players.
No, that is all from the most recent group of PF1 grogs I've found. The groups I encountered before were sweaty tryhards trying to make OP build, but not to the level of trying to utterly abuse the system. Presumably because reddit wasn't as popular as it is now.
One of the most recent group complained they couldn't just google "4e builds" and get a list of 3 dozen OP selections. I explained to them I viewed that a positive point in favor of the system, which they didn't like.
The first group of PF1 people who at the time I could only call grogs by nature of them doing the "shitting on 4e but never played it" stuff mentioned (though again, to be fair the oft-repeated complaint at the time was 4e being a cash grab and they weren't wrong on that front) were also very sweaty try-hards. I don't remember too much about them because I was told "No no just 3.5 but better, 3.75e!" and also playing a pre-gen. The sessions I was at were mainly about everyone arguing about what order buffs should be applied so the main combat guy could get the biggest attack bonus and while I did like "Big number get bigger!" sort of things at the time them trying to get the largest numerical advantage in combat it was like 80% arguments about build/action optimization, 15% OOC bullshitting and popculture references, and 5% actually playing. I eventually got tired of no action and was saved from needing to extricate myself by the game exploding due to drama unrelated to gaming.
(tl;dr: the DM was marginally employed and was on the lease with a highschool friend who was one of the players. Just picture "32 year old Pathfinder DM who works part time at the comics/games/trading cards section of the local independent bookstore like he has since highschool, and has a ponytail" in your head and this guy looked like that; I probably didn't even need mention the pontail. Anyway, I guess he was worried that his buddy was going to marry his long time girlfriend and then they'd get their own place and he'd be fucked for a living situation. His solution to this looming problem was to start fucking the girlfriend so his buddy would see she wasn't marriage material. I guess the secret came out during a fight. and well, no more games after that. I got into this group because I was workfriend with one of the other players who clued me in about what went down, and I guess the master strategy was to have the Player discover his girlfriend was cheating on him but to try to keep the 'with whom' from being being discovered. anyway.)
The second group also wanted big numbers, but the mentality was all about breaking the economy and "avoiding direct combat" despite how combat-optmized their characters were when they did actually fight something.
Multiple people from the group, at multiple times during the game and after, told me about how the DM had planned a sea-going pirate adventure but one of the players realized it was more profitable to sell their ship and buy/run a farm (so know when people ITT bitch about "mudfarmer simulator" I think of that story). To the DM's credit he ran with it for a while, and then just killed the game as the script had clearly been lost.
My first session was econosperg as the party was trying to get enough gold together to bribe the big-bad's second in command into killing the big bad for them.
Then third session they got pissed when I did a not-unreasonable in-character and in-allignment action.
To try to keep this from being too spergy: there was an imprisoned demon being used as a battery for some device to power the big-bads macguffin. The demon had been there for a very long time, was gaunt from starvation, and begged to be killed rather than endure in its prison. Once we figured out that standing on a circle would cause the Demon to be blasted with energy (which also ran the device), my lawful-good paladin said "Okey dokey" turned the extraction dial to max, and blasted the demon to oblivion.
This was the most obvious sort of long-term trap where I'm sure this was going to come back to bite the party in the ass as killing the demon would free it (back to hell but still) but there was no obvious danger to the party, and paladins are about smiting not torture. And clearly the Big Bad was using this Demonic Energy converted for his evil plans. And I was fucking tired of the party pussy footing around, I didn't come to play Real Estate broker I came to smite evil shit.
Oh lordy did the party and DM get pissed that my lawful good Paladin would smite a demon instead of leaving it to suffer or torturing it further.
I think the DM was mostly pissed I considered my options for only about 3 minutes and acted instead of agonizing over how it could be a trap for an hour.
And when building my Paladin they also were basically telling me what to do and what options to take. I'm not sure I can fully explain it properly, but when doing this it wasn't in the vein of "experienced players aiding someone unfamiliar with the system" it was orders to someone holding them back; "You will take this, you will do this, spend points so your stats looks like this, take these spells" and the only explanation given was these options had the best power progression.
Anyway that one I had the life experience and maturity to politely excuse myself from the game after the 5th session and it was back to trying to buy their way out of the quest.
There was also a group of PF1 protogrogs that was on IRC that was people from a non-gaming forum I frequented and that fell apart after a couple sessions due to forum drama; i guess the DM shittalked a popular poster in Private Messages that got leaked and flounced off rather than deal with factional ire.
There was (effectively) no combat on that one; we had an orientation challenge where we had to get by a wardog and we all agreed killing fluffy would not be in our best interests, so we just ran by and almost lost two people.
But it was all social interactions and diplomacy/detect lies as we tried to find out who robbed the guy who was hiring us; basically Baby's First "Its not a traditional adventure" and was working out about as well as you'd expect.
But the OOC was three guys who were familiar with PF talking about how broken you could make feat progression once we started leveling up.
(The only other thing I remember from that one is one of the guys was really insistent on playing an amputee, at the time I wasn't aware people trying to use TTRPGs as a way to transport people to their Magical Realms but looking back on it the guy was very clearly playing his amputee character one handed [wordplay intentional].)
But that wasn't IRL to be fair.
Those are just the groups.
I've encountered more people who identify as PathFinder players (and by that I mean, someone who will pitch Pathfinder as the system the group should play to varying levels of strenuousness. I had a guy who showed up to an Online Game, advertised as 4e, and his sole contribution to session 0/character building session was to try to get the game moved to PathFinder instead until he was told to build a 4e character or leave. He left.) and they seem to have mentalities that would put them right at home with either of these three groups. And like I said, you try to get them into other systems and they are just pissy and mopey that their Konami Cheat codes don't work and they aren't granted invincibility and unlimited power-ups.
I have ONLY encountered these sort of rabid types with Pathfinder (actually, correction, I had one person who tried to get me to change from a 5e megadungeon to run something in FATE instead.). I know @Adamska said he's encountered 5e people like this and I'll believe it, I have heard 2e grog stories I also think are probably largely true, but - again from my experience but this from multiple places in the US - they are small compared to PF evangelists trying to ensure they can do their bullshit so they can break the adventure.
anyway, I've drifted a bit from the key points I was making which is:
1) Shitty reddit meme builds DO show up in real life, and not all of them can be headed off simply by banning splats. Its not as rife as trawling Reddit/Substack would suggest as many of the more meme-worthy examples require specific (often wrong) interpretations of the rules, but it does happen and its not just high level play they ruin.
2) Games like PathFinder that prioritize powerscaling attract these sorts of people disproportionately, at least in my experience, and that powergaming mindset utterly infects their play even if they aren't bringing Le Reddit Meme build to the table. And they bring that mentality to other systems.
3) Its not every PathFinder player, but a high percentage of them spend more time trying to work the system than roleplay their characters. They will almost always have a theorycrafted build they want to play to see how the character performs mechanically than any desire to actually participate in an adventure with said character.
4) again, its not every PF player but its a lot of them, want to be able to do pull their powergaming meta bullshit they've spent years learning and get angry when they can't do it. They justify their munchkinning in PF1e by "Well the GM can do X.." which to me just means you're playing the system not the adventure, and to me that means the system sucks.
In a final bloviation that's tangential to this, is I think the real issues is feats, and in 3.5/PF feats got away from what they were supposed to be, which was a mechanical away to make a character unique and reflect specialization in training or unique talents.
(The best thing about B/X classes is every fighter is the same. The worst thing about B/X classes is every fighter is the same.) And instead it turned into an overbroad pool of options with most useless and a few being disproportionately powerful, and being created at different times by different people the potential intereffects not being considered.
One of the things I respect 5e for doing is putting in "GMs can just say 'fuck you, no feats, just bump a stat every couple levels'". And while I've never played it I think PF2e made a step in the right direction by providing more guided feat progression and having your race and class "rank up" as charcters progress and provide options.
Hell, I like PF1 and I'm not so deranged as to say it's the bestest system ever.
(Everyone knows that's Savage Worlds.)
Again, though, a lot of this shit really boils down to GMs not putting their foot down. I would really like to see this We Be Goblins level 4 character with a +32 stealth, though.
Although reviewing the goblin PC race entry... someone REALLY wanted them to be sneaky. They get a +4 size bonus to Stealth, and a +4 racial bonus on top of that. Add four ranks (for a level 4), presume your Dexterity is 23 (max 18 at chargen, +4 racial bonus, +1 at 4th level) so your modifier is +6.... you're up to +18. If Stealth is a class skill, that adds +3 to the check, you're up to +21. I guess magic items could make up the difference (cloak of elvenkind grants a +5 competence bonus). The big issue is bonus stacking; you'd have to make sure the bonuses were all different sources (insight, competence, untyped, etc).
4 skill ranks, +3 from class skill, +4 from size, +4 from favored class bonus if a rogue, +6 from dex mod, +2 from colorthief trait, +5 from the cloak of elven kind, +2 untyped from the stealthy feat, +4 from the camoflauge rogue talent and you can get a +34 not factoring in anything else that might let you take 20 and of course not being invisible somehow or getting another +2 from favored terrain and another +4 size bonus from reduce person(this means a +40 before invis). And you could probably make this even more ridiculous with the chestpiece that gets you an untyped bonus in fog and some other shit but you shouldn't be able to get that by lvl 4.
Yes this is fucking cancer but congratulations you've invested basically everything into stealth and don't have anything else to contribute and even while pf1e was "vogue" I wouldn't play at a table with this person.
anyway, I've drifted a bit from the key points I was making which is:
1) Shitty reddit meme builds DO show up in real life, and not all of them can be headed off simply by banning splats.
I still go with "just don't fucking play with these people" and if someone can't explain why they want some random splat no matter the system, and use it in a way that's actually interesting and not just stacking bullshit bonuses, they don't get it when I'm DM'ng. It's not that difficult.
One of the things I respect 5e for doing is putting in "GMs can just say 'fuck you, no feats, just bump a stat every couple levels'". And while I've never played it I think PF2e made a step in the right direction by providing more guided feat progression and having your race and class "rank up" as charcters progress and provide options.
PF2e made a lot of steps forward, but it still suffers from having so many fucking sets of options from different categories to build a character(ancestry feats, class feats, skill feats, general feats), that someone who isn't some super experienced wizard with the shit can unintentionally make a character that is utterly fucking useless when most of the decent options could have just been baked into the race/class and the worst that only seem to exist to heighten the illusion of choice, just be thrown out.
While I complained the other day about 5e's lack of any kind of worldbuilding that's worth a shit, Paizo can't seem to get it through their heads that they can release setting/campaign guides, comics, novels, etc. without having to treat everything like a splat with a bunch of character creation shit thrown into it but at least I can ignore that when I'm running the game.
I think the DM was mostly pissed I considered my options for only about 3 minutes and acted instead of agonizing over how it could be a trap for an hour.
This is insane to me. As a DM/GM I am thrilled when players don't spent 20 fucking minutes debating something. Obviously you don't want PCs just Leeroy Jenkinsing their way through things all the time or having one guy do something the party doesn't want, but this is such an open and shut case that I cannot wrap my head around a DM not being excited at rolling with the decision.
1) Shitty reddit meme builds DO show up in real life, and not all of them can be headed off simply by banning splats. Its not as rife as trawling Reddit/Substack would suggest as many of the more meme-worthy examples require specific (often wrong) interpretations of the rules, but it does happen and its not just high level play they ruin.
Every game I've played has at least one person doing this. It's always different degrees of how bad it is but there's always at least one. Christ, I'll admit to doing it too years ago, (I'll take my lashings) but I've posted before that I think there's this issue with D&D that encounters can feel so swingy that people would rather err on the side of making some OP reddit build that's streamlined for X than just make one that feels Fun™ but also has poor stats or wrong feats or whatever.
The answer of course is making everyone roll characters from scratch in session -1/0.
