ITT: Tell us about that one kind of character specialization/combat style/whatever-have-you that...

ITT: Tell us about that one kind of character specialization/combat style/whatever-have-you that, while valid and fun for a lot of people, you find unpleasant, distasteful, or unenjoyable.

Tell us why you don't like it.

Be a passive-aggressive little shitstain when someone doesn't like your favorite thing.

Speaking as a DM, fucking illusionists. It puts so much pressure on the DM to work out the reactions of the enemy to the illusion. They're very polarising; some fights they'll basically win/avoid alone, some fights they'll do fuck-all. They annhilate certain enemy types, and do jack shit to others.
They're just so black-and-white in terms of effectiveness.

As I love to meticulously concern myself with the "feel" of things unarmed martial arts monks are kind of a sore concept.
When they are a thing, they kind of make regular warriors feel less competent for relying on the "crutch" of weapons but on the other hand feel more boring because they can't have weapons.

And I dislike characters where having a "pet" is the main thing. Summoners, beastmasters, Pokémon trainers. I don't like when the companion overtakes the actual character in importance and it seems like the character is only there by virtue of being the one with connection to the creature. It is also less satisfying to interact with animals than with persons from a roleplaying perspective.

Bow guy. Don't get me wrong, I love bows. But I feel like they should be a lot more common and part of the arsenal of literally anybody who intends on killing something.

I even like characters to whom bow proficiency is a central attribute. But swaths of ridiculous abilities and a built in forester theme (lookin at you DnD, also hunters from wow) cheapen the purity of the bow as just a weapon.

Mind control powers such as Dominate/Suggestion/Charm, and to a lesser extent CHA skills that are high enough that they might as well be the same thing. Now, I do like the concept of mind control powers, but they really really really should not be available to the average player.

Crafting, especially anything to do with steampunk. Steam-powered flight is the last bastion of my disbelief. I can take wizards flying around setting things on fire, or barbarians summoning their ancestor spirit and jumping twenty feet to cut someone in half one-handed, or rogues going invisible behind a bush, but if you try and tell me that a rickety rattletrap of bronze and coal can produce enough power to lift itself off the ground I just can't accept it.

>Druids, or any class based around shapeshifting.

The whole "I turn into a flea to sneak into the badguy's keep XD" bullshit aside, I find classes based on shapeshifting to be sorta lame because it always feels to me like the person playing them never really made a character, but rather is just swapping out pre-made characters on a whim (the animal/monster stat blocks) to fit the situation. Something about that just rubs me the wrong way, even if it's not particularly overpowered or anything.

>Psionics in standard fantasy.
I've had people screech at me that "PSIONICS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PART OF DND REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" multiple times, but no matter how much I hear it, I still can't bring myself to think they actually belong in typical settings with swords and magic. Aside from often times having a completely different "magic" system that operates seperately from every other caster in the game, they just feel super sci-fi to me... or worse, like retarded anime bullshit. Keep that shit in Warhammer and Pokemon where it belongs.
Yes, I'm super salty about Mystics just releasing in a UA for 5e. They're basically fill every niche in the game except skill-monkey and then do it BETTER than the classes meant to fill those niches because MUH PSYCHIC POWERS!"

I play a character who uses mind control powers as part of one of his magic schools. So far the GM liked it because my character is a buffer/debuffer and not some grunt who just smashes things (like the rest of the group). But the other players hate/fear him because they believe that he uses his powers against them (which isn't the case).
But yeah those skills can be very powerful and a GM should think twice before he allows a player to use such powers.

>I find classes based on shapeshifting to be sorta lame because it always feels to me like the person playing them never really made a character, but rather is just swapping out pre-made characters on a whim (the animal/monster stat blocks) to fit the situation
I play a druid character, and I still made a personality and goals for that character in addition to swapping out stat blocks, so I can't say I know exactly what you mean.

And yet mechanically you're still just selecting a stat block each fight and your actual character stats don't matter much, unless you're playing a caster-druid... but then you're just gimping yourself and playing an inferior wizard or cleric most of the time.

>Rangers that don't have any points in survival skills
>Space Marines not concerned with heresy

>Missing the point this badly. laughinganimegirls.jpg

>Gishes, not the characters themselves, but the people who play them.
If you're unfamiliar what a "gish" is, it's a character who's good at both melee and magic. I have no problem with the characters themselves, but the people who play them never seem to understand that being good at two things means you're not going to be as good at either of those things as a character who specializes in one. If I see another homebrew "fix" for Eldritch Knight, or Bladelock, or a homebrew "Magus" class, I'm going to start kicking those people from the games. No, you don't get to be as good at magic as a Wizard and as good at melee as a Fighter. Your class is balanced in it's default form. If you don't like that, play a different character. Fuck.

In standard fantasy settings I am somewhat annoyed by anything oriental (monks) or psionic.

The only edition of D&D I know is 2e, where you have limits on the maximum or minimum size.

>Missing the point this badly
I'm making my own point. A character is defined by what their goals are. You're thinking of a stat block. I still created one, and when it doesn't make sense or is impossible to polymorph, I use it. But that's not what a character is.

why?

Also goes for If what you meant to say by "never made a character" was "never statted out your character" it's still a meaningless statement.

Most people have trouble understanding how single minded a Space Marine is. If he sees something he don't like, he blasts it. Especially if he's planetside laying waste to bitches and he sees some random fucker doing something bad, he wrecks that random fucker, simple as 1 2 3

I used to hate monks, but it's somewhat easier to accept with the realization that almost every culture in history has had some form of unarmed combat tradition. If you fluff the monk techniques as actual techniques and Ki as some kind of stamina or focus instead of "LOL ANIME CHAKRA NINJA POWERS!" they become alright. Besides, given the caster clusterfuck DnD is, I'd never ban an actual martial class.

Psionics are still trash no matter how they're fluffed though.

Any character who tries to use a spell in a way other than intended. Exceptions are stuff that is actually a bit clever, like fire on grease spell (that's not even clever and actually written into the spell description, but whatever). But what I mean is something like my friend who would use the obsidian steed (stone figurine that can turn into a horse) and would shove it into peoples mouths and use it to blow up their head, or drop it on them from above while invisible. It was kind of clever the first time he did it to kill a minotaur skeleton but it just got retarded after that, especially when he used it to solo a bunch of high level wizards by dropping it on them while he was "invisible."

Pretty much the same thing with all casterfags who get all like "well my spell can automatically do this and this and I am ignoring a lot of shit or using questionable interpretations of the rules"

Like the jack ass who used invisibility to use sleep on an enemy. Fuck you faggot that's a spell affecting another person you lose invisibility after casting.

There are other builds i hate but that is the main one. I don't even mind OP casters, either, even though I never play one.

>But god forbid you try to tell them that or ban the class.
Explain to them as clearly as possible that the idea behind Unearthed Arcana is that, by the developers' own admission, it is playtest material in unrefined form, unpublished in any official expansion, and that even if it was, it's the DM's prerogative to only stick to the Player's Handbook and no other expansions at their discretion.

It's not for a player to find some random home-brew, Unearthed Arcana, or even expansion books on the internet to add to a campaign, it's the DM's job to determine what is in the campaign's rules or not.

>actually using the phrase 'standard fantasy'
>"hurr durr dis type of magic is gud, but dis uvver type is le bad XDDDDD"

Jesus Fuck, please kill yourself.

They just feel a bit forced and out of place. They don't appear in most fantasy source material (fiction etc) but there is an assumption that they are standard to DnD.

I feel the same about non-core races.

None of this stuff bothers me enough to actually ban the stuff from my games, but I do sigh from time to time when someone makes me come up with a place in my setting for some new weird thing.

Are we talking about, like, wrestling/cestus/boxing traditions in the west? I still find all of those a bit goofy; they're designed to be tested against someone else trained in the same style, not in battle (let alone a battle against a fkin dragon or whatever). The same could be said of eastern martial arts to be fair.

As for psonics, I actually quite like them, I just want them to stay in their own settings where they make sense.

More than anything I think I get mildly aggrieved by the players who pick these things rather than something that fits into the established setting, because it just sort of feels like offputting special-unique-snowflakery.

Rogues, Thieves, Knaves, and all Charlatans or Crooks.

Absolutely cannot fucking stand them.

I feel super stoked that no one hates my favorite shit.

Now I need to know what it is so I can make fun of it.

Nope, you fags will just have to hope someone hates my shit. I ain't sayin' a damn thing

people who can't let others have fun annoys me. I'm not trying to be an ebin troll here, it genuinely frustrates me when dm's and other players expect you to do stuff they would do, and simply can't react when you do stuff your own way. they throw tantrums or tell you that you're being a douche or blah blah blah, to me when you get triggered about someone being unique, it tells me that you just aren't very good at improvising and got tilted that they threw you off guard.

Don't be like that. Join in the jeering. You share yours and I'll share mine.

Characters who are always goddamn summoning. Mostly summoners, for reasons obvious.

Purely from a mechanical standpoint. It bogs the map down with extraneous combatants and slows combat rounds.

Agreeing with the fuck-off-psionics sentiment too, though, from a fluff standpoint. Magic is the domain of fantasy, psionics are the domain of sci-fi. It's weird.

I already jeered. Now I'm just cooling my heels, waiting for somebody to try something.

To be honest, mind control in combat is probably the least offensive application of it, no pun intended. What annoys me is when someone uses it as a bludgeon to substitute for stealth ("I charm the guard."), intrigue ("I charm him into telling us what he knows.") or just having to think in general ("I charm him so I don't have to make any persuasive arguments.").

Doesn't help that spells are trivially easy to both cast and refresh, and that a lot of the relevant spells are accessed surprisingly early. Seriously, consider the implications of a world where half the spellcasting classes are able to Charm people as early as level 1. Shit's horrifying.

Mystic UA came yesterday, and today I already homebrewed a psionic monk archetype for 5e.

Loathe me if you will

>20th Fighter vs 20th Wizard
>Wizard always wins
>Balanced in its default form
go away

There's also the insane versatility that most D&D-style shapeshifters have. The sheer number of creatures they can turn into is nuts. I'm personally a fan of approaches like that of Exalted's Lunars. They can shapeshift, but they need to perform an arduous ritual where they spend an extended time hunting and devouring an example of what they want to turn into, before permanently gaining it as a new form. So no infinite variety, and each animal-form is a part of their personal story.

Gotta love how butthurt psi-weebs get when someone doesn't want to run an anime campaign. Wishing death on someone because they don't think a character is as cool as you do. Really, user?

Psionics in DnD are fine.

But you're right, the UA was atrocious. We didn't get mystics. We got classes that already exist but with psi-powers tacked on. There's no reason to not play a psionic character now, and that's kinda shitty because it invalidates older content and stales game variety. Not a good first-impression for 5e fans who already seem to have super negative opinions of psionic characters to begin with.

I always kind of wished they would go further with high level fighters. They basically are still just regular dudes in good shape, when by level 20 they should essentially be Hercules.

This. I've been in both shoes, and I know the pain. On the one hand, you don't want to invalidate a character, and it really sucks when the wizard you just rolled is worthless, but on the other hand a 15th level party ignoring encounters because of one casting of a first level spell just fucks with your mojo.

Is it just the way they open up to dickish/lol random characters, the law breaking or stealth? Just curious.

Fukkin' this. Every time a player makes "bow guy" I want to punch him.

Ninja.

I've yet to have an enjoyable game with a ninja. Either because they're edglords, or they get themselves or someone else killed.

The dipper. You know this fuck. He picks a class as his "Main", then takes a level or two of everything with powerful, front-loaded abilities.
In the early-midgame, he's OP as fuck, since he is stacking abilities allowing him to do all kinds of bullshit. Then by mid-late game, he turns into a total bitch who whines constantly because his Barbarian1/Cleric1/Fighter3/Druid2/Ranger1/Monk1/Sorcerer2 or whateveris a worthless piece of shit.

>Lets play a game in which we fight as a party!
>I make a solo assassin

Paladins. At least the classic ones. I've never seen one that wasn't played by a disruptive shit, and I believe that the primary appeal of the class is as an excuse to be a moralizing twat.

Summoners. I get it, summon spells are great, they are the blast that keeps blasting, they hold down the line, awesome. But the rest of us are pulling out our entertainment while your army of minions is slogging through rolls for the next ten minutes.

I'm actually pretty chill, so it's not what you are playing that'll piss me off, but how you are playing it. I generally am ok with most things if you aren't being a dick about it

Players like what;
Describes tend to get kicked out pretty quick from groups i run or am part of.

The behavior from players i hate the most? Insisting we become murder hobos and act like 'PCs'. Don't get me wrong, i love PC solutions, but when you are trying to rob the king we just met, while he's giving a quest so he can pay us a ridiculous amount, i fucking hate you. My character probably fucking hates you too and they(whatever alignment or side he swings for, and if his in character personality would be cool with it) will kill or arrange for the killing of your ass for being a danger to the party. If i happen to be a paladin, you best believe the king will need a new carpet.

I really shouldn't have to explain the reasoning.

Those "Psionics have always been part of D&D" people aren't even right. OD&D is completely bereft of them. It's just fighter, mage, cleric, dwarf, elf.

>The same could be said of eastern martial arts to be fair.
user, all martial arts throughout the world that have survived to this point have been used in war.
That is exactly why they survived to still be taught. Hell, sumo wrestling is one of the world's oldest martial arts, and was originally all about using weight, leverage, palm strikes and hip tosses to get a man on the ground so you could shank him proper.

one edit ima make for you
>all martial arts throughout the world that have survived to this point have been used in war (or have been made into competition to replace war)

most accurate sentence for you user. i twitched a little.

I have no patience for people who think that the limits of the abilities of mere mortals is defined by the rank and file of humanity, and thus regular people can't perform incredible acts with "magic", prosthetics, and the like.
I fundamentally disagree with people who feel that a player party MUST get along IC at all times. No, your character should at times disagree with others, and has the right to voice that disagreement. Hell, you even have the right to act in ways contrary to the party.
But at that point, if your pc is at such odds with the party, why are they still there? You should retire them graciously.
I honestly have no great love for mages and casters of any sort. I feel that too much of how they are styled in many games means they either have the silver bullet and everything is cake afterwards, or they do not, and are nearly impotent. Or the game is busted and they always can do an outsized amount of work. I'm not opposed to using magic, just class roles that rely on Absolutely Safe magery. I need to be in the thick of it, I need to ride the dragon, see my foes fall and watch the essential light fade from their eyes. I want my enemies to know I am there, and I am death, and I risk my life to take theirs.
It's exciting, dammit.

>Bow guy. Don't get me wrong, I love bows. But I feel like they should be a lot more common and part of the arsenal of literally anybody who intends on killing something.
Not if the setting has crossbows. The whole point of crossbows is that pretty much anyone can use them, while bows take a lot of training and skill to use well. If adventurers believe it's essential to have some kind of ranged weapon, but they don't plan to use it much, they'll go for a crossbow.

>or have been made into competition to replace war
They started off as legit combat forms, tho.
Boxing has it's roots in pankration and savate, wuxia in kungfu, the chinese military cc teachings and the many regional martial methods.
If your dipper wasn't shit, he'd be good at first, better later.
>Paladin (Mystic Fire Knight)6/Crusader2/Swordsage (Unarmed)1/Marshal3/Warlord (Bushi)2/Aegis X
>good magic, good synergy, lotsa support power, lotsa direct fighty power
>become the protagonist

The mystic is disgusting. both in flavor and mechanics. main character syndrome - the class.

This is true, but it's still an important hing for my autistic brain to point out.

Honestly, I have no one thing I hate...except maybe rogues because fuck rogues, but generally speaking you can tell what does and does not belong in a campaign. Look if it's a slavic-gealic-norse hodgepodge western type campaign I don't feel like monks have a place. If there are no "gods" then clerics don't makes sense. If it's a low magic campaign don't come to me with a wizard. That sort of thing.

I still don't really get what you're trying to tell me here, as the person you originally replied to. Pankration developed as a sporting event. Savate came from streetfighting (ie had fundamental reasons not to include weapons because weapons may not be available and anyway will get you locked up much longer).

As for wuxia, that heavily involves weapons (still doesn't really fit in a fantasy game not specifically designed around it but at least doesn't have the particular stupidity of eschewing weapons).

So I still don't really get how you're arguing that there are any 'legit' unarmed martial arts where 'legit' means 'a viable alternative to weapons and armour'.

Agreed. I can't ever play them because it feels so asspull-y

I like the concept, but they work much better as a DMPC or NPC because then the asspullery is kinda inherent anyway.

>3.x
Please die.

Anything just focused on putting out martial damage, honestly. Pure damage casters are usually fine because they're limited in how often they can do that damage. When someone plays a martial made to do as much damage as possible, all they want to do is try to get into fights because that's all they're good at, and it doesn't cost them many resources. It lessens RP and forces the party into fights they could have RPed around.

Even worse, a DM is most likely going to build encounters around a character like that. A poor DM will just inflate HP values to make up for your increased damage, and even a decent one is going to have to add a couple more mooks to keep a decent difficulty level. This sorta nullifies your extra damage, making me wonder what the point was in the first place.

>PEOPLE LIKE THINGS I DON'T
>THEY SHOULD DIE

Good solid logic.

I am guilty of this, very guilty.

I once played a sorc who wanted to become a dragon disciple but didn't for the reasons to follow. Instead he became (a vanilla) Eldrich Knight, and our parties main tank and melee fighter.

But tat's because i but the sorc for close range giggins, and only took spells that made him better at melee. Sure, our ranger could do more damage quicker, and our pali never died while providing heals, and our wizard had all the spells so he could nuke the world, but he became what all god eldrich knights should strive to be, terrifyingly versatile and impossible to kill. He also ended up the only halfway decent at stealth.

He never really excelled at anything though, his magic damage game was fucking lame (i used my learned spells for utility, Armour class, and flavor stuff), and god forbid he have a special attack beyond 'sword sword sword, flaming sword' but that kind of limitation is fun.

But, as i'm finding out, my playstyle of 'not be a whiny dick' is rare to Fa/tg/uys. some even get hostile at you for talking about it. So i guess, keep trying and try not to judge before they actually play it out.

Because i like Gishes, a lot, and it makes me sad people have had bad experiences.

I hate recon characters.

It's always split of the party.
GM's attention always have to be divided.
It doesn't help that if the recon character is discovered, it's in character to be forced to handle things alone.

Basically, regular 3.pf players doing things anywhere else. DnD as a whole to a lesser extent.

They just think of their vharacters as builds, and spend SO MUCH TIME chattering about what they COULD do or where their BUILD will take them or who would WIN in a hypothetical fight, and just drone on-and-fucking-on about theorycrafting whiteroom bullshit while EVERYONE ELSE waits on them to react to the scene IC or take THEIR FUCKING TURN.

Seriously, I fucking hate these people.

Hackers in any science fiction setting. It requires me to add an extra level of interactivity over what I've already prepared in order to make their skills useful.

Counterargument.

Sometimes when I am put on the spot I am not really able to formulate a sentence the way I like it, so I tell the GM what I want to do
>I walk to the guard "Greetings! My name is PC-Name. How goes it?" And try to get to know him a little, make some small talk about the weather and the caravans. I try to keep him distracted by letting him talk while the rest of the party slip by... would that be a deception?

>OD&D is completely bereft of them.
No it isn't you dingus, they're in Eldritch Wizardry. Basic is, though.

That there is smooth talking and distraction, which would be in the deception family to me (deception by omission).

>Paladins

Rogues, warlocks, necromancers, paladins I mistrust on principle. I dislike it a lot when people try to get rich behind the party's back or are generally edgy/evil and don't want to help the party. I also don't like stuck up assholes who smite on sight. It's disruptive and annoying

Anything that involves stunning or preventing actions every single turn. Something like a whip fighter that keeps tripping you everytime you stand up. I'm cool with "you lose" spells like Hold Person but doing the exact same disabling action every round is so annoying.

Because irl, unlike gaming, you aren't a 1 trick pony.
You learned hand to hand fighting on top of how to use a weapon, and used both on a battlefield. In close quarters, judo, pankration, wrestling gives you the ability to get your enemy on the ground.
Monks in D&D are not rooted in real life, but the legendary mountain monks of China, who could achieve reality breaking feats with training and ki unlocking meditations. If you are looking for that irl, of course you will be disappointed, it's like expecting to be able to warp reality by wiggling your fingers and speaking gibberish for 6 seconds.