Characters your mister cavern never approved of

[OgreBattle]

The very first time I played D&D3e I wanted to play as a Shield Guardian who protected a child sorcerer. The idea was rejected as I would be controlling two characters, and the rules for advancing constructs weren't really there (also i had the vague feeling that "man, for being a guardian robot this thing seems to have weak defenses... but it's cool!)

After that I just rolled up an Elf Ranger with Whirlwind attack ("Wow it sounds cool! But.. it seems kind of weak, maybe that's just 'cause I'm new to the game...") that never really accomplished anything because the lvl 12 Wizard could handle everything by himself.

What are some characters you wanted to play but got rejected?

[RadiantPhoenix]

I once had a DM not let me play a human because I was, "obviously up to something", or something like that...

One DM freaked out when I said my first level DFA could breathe fire, but eventually he okayed it.

[name_here]

The guy who intermittently DMs for me has the rule that we can't use anything from a book he doesn't own, mostly because he has rather high opinion of our ability to dumpster-dive something ridiculous.

[Antariuk]

After being invited to a new group to play the Jade Regent AP in Pathfinder, I created an Aasimar Sorcerer and, after actually reading some crap about Golarion, went with Shoanti heritage (the wild barbarian tribes who roam the "90% of all APs start here" country). Since the blurb mentioned tattoos several times, I made a Tattooed Sorcerer.

The GM rejected my character because the Tattooed archetype apparently only applies to the not-quite-but-almost-Gypsy people with their own tattoo traditions, but could under no circumstances be applied to the other people from the same fucking country. I actually had to read even more awful Golarion stuff to see the difference. Listening how the GM criticised the other characters the same way, it became apparent that he was an utter and hopeless Golarion fanboy. I left the group after that first session.

EDIT: I just remembered that I also made the Sorcerer the social guy because nobody else covered that role. At first level, I rolled Diplomacy with +15, without even trying all that hard. The GM was ok with this, but not with me being a tattooed Shoanti, oh no.

[shadzar]

anything that properly doesn't fit with D&D like Annie and Tibbers as one character because it isnt an armchair general game. ONE player, ONE character.

you have to find the right group to use strange nonsense. what is strange nonsense? NEVER in a FR game i played was there EVER any firearms thought FR has them. so no gunslingers unless they are using a slingshot and some sort of rapid fire.

i am still waiting for someone to properly define Mister Cavern, until then i will just assume it a pseudonym given to the bad DMs people around here have had in the past.

i have NEVER had a competent character disapproved of because i always make something that fits within the world design and don't try to import Glitterboys into D&D from Rifts.

Only once did i crate a character that NEVER got to be played due to it being a Ley-line walking OPC Lizard Mage in Rifts that ended up being more powerful at the level than the DMs character, because sadly after how ever long they had been playing, they didn't know how things worked and thus the game died as they all went to try to read the game to figure out how things worked in it. so my character nevr got off the ground because they just dumped the game of Rifts entirely at that point as the UBER rifts knowledge person felt small when i had read the book ONCE to make the character and knew more about the game than anything he had done in years.

also destroyed a game of 3.x once when i built a "by the group" character that fucked up the whole game after one session because they too didnt understand D&D or 3.x. but i dont like to talk about that because it isnt nice to talk about incompetents that are not present to defend their own stupidity. i think they kept playing and enjoying it, but i told them i wasnt interested in the way they played so have at it and have fun. not that i was really interested in 3.5 anyway.. they jsut needed a seat filler for that time and i was elected as the employee to fill it since they paid for the table space to play it.

[Hicks]

The only rejection was my second character, a Monk in a 2e Ravenloft game because although 1e was "compatible" a monk is too much work.

My wife bans me from playing any character who uses animate dead, 2e magic jar, any illusion spell, the diplomacy skill, any charm/dominate spell, any remote viewing spell, and the intimidate skill in her games; any character using any of that is auto-vetoed.

[Hicks]

Shadzar: Mister Cavern is a synonym for Dungeon Master used on this forum. It comes from an D&D clone published and played extensively in the Czech Republic.

[erik]

I once made a Call of Cthulhu character who was a 106 year old Frenchman named "Male". I was trying to out-absurd another player's character who was abusing making an old character for extra skill points. Male did not see play, instead I made a "Shaggy-like" investigator.

Some years later when playing Deadlands we found a bag and inside the MC said we found mail. Everyone misinterpreted it at the body of my unplayed stupid CoC character. Confusion and a bit of terror was had by all.

[virgil]

Holy crap, the stuff I've been denied; after that wizard, I was barred from spellcasters for awhile, monks for this one campaign. I've had my wizard barred from wearing bucklers. I've had iterative attacks banned, as well as solid fog, forcecage, antimagic field, animate objects, animate dead. I've seen one cleric be barred from all summoning, buffing, and holy word. Illusions were never explicitly banned, but the DM(s) went out of their way to interpret them in the least useful manner possible when I used them; including one NPC that kept running toward an illusory wall I made, use a free action to touch it and autodisbelieve, then keep running without interruption. Another DM retroactively added tremorsense to some monsters to make them ignore my illusions.

In this one Exalted game, I wanted to make a speedster-based solar with writing charms; describing myself as someone who wanted to give a review of ALL the restaurants in Creation. They thought it was stupid, so I had to make something else; went with a pickpocketing master of disguise. That same game, my wife was barred from participating in any real social activity because she had Manipulation 5, Appearance 4, and Charisma 1; citing that any NPC would instantly dislike and ignore what she had to say.

[Seerow]

I recently got turned down from being allowed to play a Bard with Perform (Tesla Coils) as his instrument of choice.

[Grek]

3.5 edition, a Psion who used a combination of Control Object and Psionic Minor Creation to produce animated origami animals coated in black lotus extract. Apparently murdering people with paper cranes was too stupid to be allowed.

[zugschef]

My dex-based swordsage for an epic campaign and a swift hunter build for a campaign without full casters (apart from some bbegs) caused the gaming group to dispand permanently before we ever played.

[RadiantPhoenix]

One of my MCs (and most of the rest of the gaming group, actually) flipped out when I tried to take the Greater Teleport [Fiend] feat on my Spherelock.

[virgil]

My dex-based swordsage for an epic campaign and a swift hunter build for a campaign without full casters (apart from some bbegs) caused the gaming group to dispand permanently before we ever played.

Reminds me of the epic campaign I joined in on, where everyone had multiple artifacts but me; so I made a wizard who used shapechange into a shambling mound to get a huge pile of temporary Con. The campaign disbanded permanently before the session started because of the arguments that erupted over that, and I wasn't even involved in them other than making the character itself.

[NineInchNall]

Let's see. I once wanted to play a Master Transmogrifist, but the dumpster diving potential worried the DM too much, so nope. The class is still on my list of things I want to play, despite the four caster level loss, because mix-'n'-match shapechanging sounds so damned fun.

Before we knew much about what's what, a DM prohibited Mystic Theurge, because omfgwtfDUALCASTING.

I wanted to play a celestial using a Savage Species progression, but that got the axe for being too crazy-go-nuts. (It wasn't. It was an avariel, which is pretty much the worst thing ever.)

I've been pretty much barred from ever playing a character with diplomancy of any sort. So no Ventrue, no D&D mage with Enchantment access, no Psion (Telepath), no Shadowrun mage, no WotG courtier or scholar, etc. People don't like it when you make heavy use of those abilities, for some reason. (It's a whole lot easier to adapt to an NPC's death than it is to that NPC's turning into a stooge for the PCs.)

I made a couple of Tome of Battle characters for myself and my brother. Those got banned, because ya know, maneuvers are "more powerful than spells." (I then made a Druid. With a fleshraker. That was okay, because magic.)

Most of the character refusals I've experienced have been due to subsystems' being banned (no psionics!) or to odd race choices. Submit a mineral warrior water orc Barbarian and watch it get refused. Submit a human Druid and all's good. That's probably why I eventually settled on two go-to builds for 3.5 games: human Druid and (rock) gnome ScM. PHB races, PHB base classes, and mostly PHB feats (all but two on the gnome). They are almost shoe-ins for any game ever.

[ubernoob]

I wanted to play a vow of poverty psion that was permanently stuck in the body of a raven (not an actual raven, but like a magic jar mishap). I found some rule to let me do it too, but the DM said it was retarded. In hindsight, that character concept was kind of retarded.

[NineInchNall]

Similarly, I wanted to play a psion/thrallherd who spent all his time in the form of his primary thrall's cuirass or something via metamorphosis. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, until it was pointed out to me that you can't manifest powers in the form of an object. This made me sad. You can do it with greater metamorphosis, but that costs xp, making it impractical for daily use.

*sadface*

[TiaC]

Similarly, I wanted to play a psion/thrallherd who spent all his time in the form of his primary thrall's cuirass or something via metamorphosis. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, until it was pointed out to me that you can't manifest powers in the form of an object. This made me sad. You can do it with greater metamorphosis, but that costs xp, making it impractical for daily use.

*sadface*

You could, however, turn into one of the symbiotes that take the form of armor

[JonSetanta]

Gestalt Half-Titan Psion/Monk in an Epic one shot.

A higher level gestalt Sorcerer/Paladin Half-Demon bastard turned him to stone midair and he died when he fell.

D&D is cruel.

[NineInchNall]

Similarly, I wanted to play a psion/thrallherd who spent all his time in the form of his primary thrall's cuirass or something via metamorphosis. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, until it was pointed out to me that you can't manifest powers in the form of an object. This made me sad. You can do it with greater metamorphosis, but that costs xp, making it impractical for daily use.

*sadface*

You could, however, turn into one of the symbiotes that take the form of armor

The problem there is that the power lasts 1 hour/level when taking the form of an object, so you could easily spend the whole day in that shape. When taking the form of a creature, on the other hand, it only lasts 1 minute/level, which is impractical unless you're using some sort of infinite power point exploit. And if you're using an infinite power point exploit, you're not likely to get DM approval.

All in all, I give the "no manifesting in object form" rule a big, fat

[Blasted]

The only ones that I've had limited are on occasions where I wanted to put too many rules into use in a game where we're just coming to grips with the rules.
I've never had one actually banned post hoc, but I've banned a couple.
In my current PF game I've banned master summoners, because having > 10 lantern archons flying around was slowing the game down for everyone. I've banned most monks and some other concepts for being bad. I think having characters unable to contribute is not fun for anyone. I've also banned non core concepts, not because of abuse, but because I don't have the time to check for stupidity. I'm happy to have some players who are use to the rules do it, but I'm running a new group, so it's an everyone or no one thing. I'm not going to play favourites.

[Seerow]

The only ones that I've had limited are on occasions where I wanted to put too many rules into use in a game where we're just coming to grips with the rules.
I've never had one actually banned post hoc, but I've banned a couple.
In my current PF game I've banned master summoners, because having > 10 lantern archons flying around was slowing the game down for everyone. I've banned most monks and some other concepts for being bad. I think having characters unable to contribute is not fun for anyone. I've also banned non core concepts, not because of abuse, but because I don't have the time to check for stupidity. I'm happy to have some players who are use to the rules do it, but I'm running a new group, so it's an everyone or no one thing. I'm not going to play favourites.

So you play Core only with half of core banned?

Wow that sounds pretty awful. Like what's the point of even playing the game at that point?

[erik]

So you play Core only with half of core banned?

Wow that sounds pretty awful. Like what's the point of even playing the game at that point?

So after removing all the non-fun options, what is the point of playing with the remaining fun options? Hrm.

Now, I think it might be better to hand out power-ups to weak concepts, but it ain't my game to run.

[Koumei]

I was in a game where someone else was denied the Warlock (the usual reasons of "weird splat book class", "At will spellcasting?", "Seems too evil"), and I was automatically given the green light for a Druid with Natural Spell or whatever it is that every Druid takes at level 6 so they can be a spellcasting bear.

And hilariously shadzar, I've been allowed to play a Lizard Mage in Rifts. Yes, I was allowed to just roll to determine his level for both spellcasting classes just like it says in the book, so I started with the casting ability of something like a 5th level Line Walker and 6th level Techno-Wizard. With the knowledge of how to create Rune Weapons, and thus starting with a few, just as it says in the book. I had jokingly requested it when the MC said "Yeah anything is allowed", and was told "Yeah okay, that's pretty cool - you could provide the space ship everyone will need."

ITT I realise I'm generally allowed to play any character I want and the only times I can recall being asked to choose something else was because of overlap (which is what happens when everyone rocks up with an idea independent of each other).

[hogarth]

The only times I've had a PC concept rejected are where the GM says something like "no psionics" or "Core PC races only", not because of particularly outre character concepts.