F-111 Interdictor Long (200+ squares) distance ally teleporter. With some warlord stuff. Broken in a plot way, not a power way. Thought Switch Higher level build that grants upto 14 attacks on turn 1. If your allies play along, it's broken. Elven Critters Crit op with crit generation. 5 of these will end anything. Broken. King Fisher Does an excellent job at keeping an enemy disabled in a few ways. Strong. Boominator Fun catch-22 booming blade build with either strong or completely broken damage depending on your reading. Very Distracting Warlock Lot's of dazing and major penalties to hit. Overpowered. Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square. Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong. Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked. Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic. Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation. Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses. Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. Sir Robin (Bravely Charge Away) He automatically slows and pushes an enemy (5 squares), while charging away. Hard to rate it's power level, since it's terrain dependent. Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof. Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it. Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways. Battlemind Mc Prone-Daze Protecting your allies by keeping enemies away. Quite powerful. The Retaliator Getting hit deals more damage to the enemy then you receive yourself, and you can take plenty of hits. Heavy item dependency, Broken. Dead Kobold Transit Teleports 98 squares a turn, and can bring someone along for the ride. Not fully built, so i can't judge the power Psilent Guardian Protect your allies, while being invisible. Overpowered, possibly broken Unnamed Avenger|Runepriest/Hammer of Vengance Do lot's of damage while boosting your teams. Strong to slightly overpowered. Charedent BarrageA charging ardent. Fine in a normal team, overpowered if there are 2 together, and easily broken in teams of 5. Super Knight A tough, sticky, high damage knight. Strong. Super Duper Knight Basically the same as super knight, only far more broken. Mora, the unkillable avenger Solid damage, while being neigh indestuctable. Overpowered, but not broken. Swordburst Maximus At-Will Close Burst 3 that slide and prones. Protects allies with off actions. Strong, possibly over powered with the right party.
It sounds like your DM isn't that familiar with what's actually in dragon so there is not much you can do if you stick with him. I personally don't have a problem with DMs who ban things if they know what they are doing and will ban things when I DM, but it doesn't sound like that is the case here.
A lot of dragon material is written by Wotc people. Sometimes, like with the cleric article in dragon mag 400, its written by Wotc staff to fix stuff designers messed up the first time they published the class after they realized they didn't make the class powerful enough. They intentionally tried to fix underpowered stuff through dragon with new powers, class features, feats, and paragon paths rather than improve underpowered things with errata. There has hardly been any errata to fix underpowered classes.
A lot of classes are kind of screwed without access to dragon, with clerics, seekers and higher level avengers probably being the most noticeable cases. Shamans get a couple of their best paragon paths from dragon as well so its a big boost to that class, though the class at least has other options. Runepriests only support is from dragon. There are probably other ones out there as well, but those are the ones that jump out at me. There are also patch feats like some of the expertise feats that they stuck in dragon rather than a book.
Meanwhile classes like warlord, ranger, rogue, fighter, and wizard don't need dragon to function well and have more print support than a class like the runepriest, avenger, or seeker on top of that. So if you do stick with him pick classes that don't need dragon to function well.
Perhaps your DM thinks extra source material (such as from Dragon or the other books) are nothing more than "extra goodies" for players to use in order to become even more powerful. From what I've read on the forums (from experienced CharOpers/players who understand the system well), a great deal of the "extra" stuff actually fixes problems instead of adding to them with "extra goodies". So if your DM is showed this, he/she might change their tune.
Speaking as a DM... I've banned all Dragon magazine material from all the campaigns I've run, for a number of reasons. (Though I try to leave open the option of a 'case by case basis' for allowing Dragon material, none of my players feel inclined to take me up on it.)
First: There is a LOT of it, meaning hunting down and double checking facts is difficult at best. I'd rather trust my players, but I've dealt with one player who blatantly cheated before (though I was a player at the time, not the DM), so I feel it necessary to at least glance over the rule the player is using.
Second: What Dragon content I have gone out of my way to read (usually when working on random character builds for the fun of it), a lot of it has been either so weak as to be useless or powerful enough that it eclipses a lot of other options. There's very little middle ground, from what I've seen.
Third: My groups tend to consist of at least one or two players that are new to 4e or new to gaming as a whole, so adding Dragon on top of several player's guides can add an overwhelming number of options. And that's belittling my players: One of them flat out begged me to stat their character for them.
So. Short version: Banning content is not inherently bad, so long as it's done for good reasons. I don't know if my group is particularly easy going or not, but no one has ever complained about the lack of Dragon or Essentials content after I explained my reasons for banning it. And then followed up with the case-by-case basis exception that no one has ever taken me up on...
Not even for backgrounds. Dragon background options are some of my favorite Dragon options. Though that bit is probably because we use a slightly tweaked approach to backgrounds.
Gunmage, a homebrew arcane striker. (Heroic Tier playtest ready.) GDocs link. (More up to date.)
Second: What Dragon content I have gone out of my way to read (usually when working on random character builds for the fun of it), a lot of it has been either so weak as to be useless or powerful enough that it eclipses a lot of other options. There's very little middle ground, from what I've seen.
That's usually because the strong stuff is "fixes". And the weak stuff is everything else.
So. Short version: Banning content is not inherently bad, so long as it's done for good reasons. I don't know if my group is particularly easy going or not, but no one has ever complained about the lack of Dragon or Essentials content after I explained my reasons for banning it. And then followed up with the case-by-case basis exception that no one has ever taken me up on...
IMHO, your reasons are not good. You can handle the "overwhelming choices" aspect by suggesting that people limit themselves to essentials, or PHB1 only (here's the tab in the builder to do so) without banning the material. And when you say "banned, except", what that usually means is "banned, unless you beg nicely." And as a player, why should I go through the hassle of figuring out what you'll allow, the hassle of creating backup builds, the hassle of mashalling strong arguments and begging... when I can just play a Fighter/Ranger/Warlord/Wizard and not have to care?
"Nice assumptions. Completely wrong assumptions, but by jove if being incorrect stopped people from making idiotic statements, we wouldn't have modern internet subculture." Kerrus
Practical gameplay runs by neither RAW or RAI, but rather "A Compromise Between The Gist Of The Rule As I Recall Getting The Impression Of It That One Time I Read It And What Jerry Says He Remembers, Whatever, We'll Look It Up Later If Any Of Us Still Give A Damn." Erachima
First: There is a LOT of it, meaning hunting down and double checking facts is difficult at best. I'd rather trust my players, but I've dealt with one player who blatantly cheated before (though I was a player at the time, not the DM), so I feel it necessary to at least glance over the rule the player is using.
It's sad to me that you feel this is a good reason to ban official material. If someone is determined to cheat, they will. There are a million ways to do it outside of character creation.
That being said, if everyone at the table is cool with it, then that's fine. But the people here who know the math, who know which classes are strong and which need all the help they can get, will always advocate the use of Dragon content because the devs have relied heavily on it to balance the game.
First: There is a LOT of it, meaning hunting down and double checking facts is difficult at best. I'd rather trust my players, but I've dealt with one player who blatantly cheated before (though I was a player at the time, not the DM), so I feel it necessary to at least glance over the rule the player is using.
It's sad to me that you feel this is a good reason to ban official material. If someone is determined to cheat, they will. There are a million ways to do it outside of character creation.
That being said, if everyone at the table is cool with it, then that's fine. But the people here who know the math, who know which classes are strong and which need all the help they can get, will always advocate the use of Dragon content because the devs have relied heavily on it to balance the game.
This. The three classes that can really make an argument for being game-smashing by being amazingly powerful (Ranger, Warlord, Wizard) are all PHB and don't need Dragon content to hit that level. It's minor bennies for them, compared to the ludicrousness that is Battle Captain, or most Wizard dailies, or Offhand Strike and co. Every other dumb thing I can think of is book-contained, too. I don't remember any significantly broken things in dragon, especially not ones that didn't get patched out (Punisher of the Gods used to be silly, now it is not). If you want balance at the table, the smart thing is to allow as many options as possible, not less. It decreases the chances that the OP stuff will be brought to the table by accident.
Mountain Cleave Rule: You can have any sort of fun, including broken, silly fun, so long as I get to have that fun too (e. g., if you can warp reality with your spells, I can cleave mountains with my blade).
Speaking as a DM... I've banned all Dragon magazine material from all the campaigns I've run, for a number of reasons. (Though I try to leave open the option of a 'case by case basis' for allowing Dragon material, none of my players feel inclined to take me up on it.)
Most likely due to the reasons stated by Kilpatds. Coming up with a list of stuff you want to use and making extra builds for it are things that people who live in char op would do. Being ticked off that they can't have options is also an attitude common in char-op. So basically your players are likely not char-op people. Not saying bad players, but they likely don't spend a lot of time on their builds.
First: There is a LOT of it, meaning hunting down and double checking facts is difficult at best. I'd rather trust my players, but I've dealt with one player who blatantly cheated before (though I was a player at the time, not the DM), so I feel it necessary to at least glance over the rule the player is using.
Are you not using the Character Builder or Compendium? Cause that is the solution to 9/10ths of this problem. The alternative to banning things if you are really concerned about this is to just ask your player to email you where their powers are from. That might be slightly bothersome to the player, but an understandable annoyance if you want to read all their powers.
Second: What Dragon content I have gone out of my way to read (usually when working on random character builds for the fun of it), a lot of it has been either so weak as to be useless or powerful enough that it eclipses a lot of other options. There's very little middle ground, from what I've seen.
I've seen this argument before. Mostly in my FLGS about invokers being either useless or broken. It was stupid in the store and it is stupid here. Like others have said most of the "strictly better" stuff are math fixes and the vast majority of it isn't weaker it just doesn't have power creep injected in every muscle like anything new from 3.5 did.
Third: My groups tend to consist of at least one or two players that are new to 4e or new to gaming as a whole, so adding Dragon on top of several player's guides can add an overwhelming number of options. And that's belittling my players: One of them flat out begged me to stat their character for them.
The thing about options is they are just that. Options. Letting them take what they want and suggesting to the new players where they might want to look is just being helpful. No reason to ban things.
Its like new players and hybrids. Should a new player start by playing a hybrid? Probably not. Should they be banned from playing them? No. Explain to your player why hybrid is generally a bad plan and most people will either discuss with you how to get what they wanted from hybrid on a single build or they will go balls-deep into figuring out how the system works (which is good in the long run).
So. Short version: Banning content is not inherently bad, so long as it's done for good reasons.
There are very very small lists of reasons that are good for banning dragon. Your list and that list have nothing in common.
Currently working on making a Dex based defender. Check it out here Spoiler:Show
Need a few pre-generated characters for a one-shot you are running? Want to get a baseline for what an effective build for a class you aren't familiar with? Check out the Pregen thread here If ever you are interested what it sounds like to be at my table check out my blog and podcast here Also, I've recently done an episode on "Refluffing". You can check that out here
