History GameBreaker / TabletopGames

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Digimon}} Card Game'' for the most part remained a relatively balanced game for many months of its conception, until that is the release of [[https://digimoncardgame.fandom.com/wiki/BT6-016 Jesmon]] in Set 6: Double Diamond. While Jesmon by itself allows you to play any of the Sistermon cards [[https://digimoncardgame.fandom.com/wiki/BT6-082 Blanc]] or [[https://digimoncardgame.fandom.com/wiki/BT6-084 Ciel]] from the hand or the trash, doing so also gives it a sizeable power boost and piercing, allowing itself to attack the opponent's security (the main life source of a player) while also getting rid of a Digimon on board. These effects are already powerful on its own, but combine this with an inherited effect from [[https://digimoncardgame.fandom.com/wiki/BT6-015 SaviorHuckmon]] allows it to attack again simply by having one of the aforementioned Sistermons on board, which Jesmon can do easily. So this effectively means two Digimon from your opponent are gone, you attack the security twice, and if you add on cards like [[https://digimoncardgame.fandom.com/wiki/ST1-07 Greymon's inherited effect]], [[https://digimoncardgame.fandom.com/wiki/BT3-097 A Delicate Plan]], and Digivolving Jesmon into [[https://digimoncardgame.fandom.com/wiki/BT5-086 Omnimon]] after attacking, and you can end most games in just one turn without any repercussions. This archetype single-handedly defined the Red meta and other metas to come in Japan for months that ''Creator/BandaiNamcoEntertainment'' had no choice but to [[https://world.digimoncard.com/rule/restriction_card/ limit SaviorHuckmon to just one copy per deck]], and even then Jesmon still remains a powerful force to be reckoned with.

* ''Skytear'' had a commitment to balance right from its kickstarter pitch, and generally succeeds, but three cards in particular slipped through the cracks: "Twist Allegiance", which allowed controlling an enemy champion for a single action; "Grapple", which pulled an enemy champion in close; and "Battlecry", which pulled all affected enemy champions in close. The common thread here was pulling enemies in (or with TA, simply making the enemy walk right to you), since in a game where positioning is already crucial and the ability to shove enemies back is at a premium, dragging a champion three hexes into the enemy's jaws was a death sentence. Twist Allegiance and Grapple were quickly banned, but Battlecry posed a problem, being a Champion's [[SignatureMove Ultimate]]. [=PvP Geeks=] were forced to bite the bullet and issue "Avalanche" as a new Ultimate for Brylvar in an early expansion. All three banned cards were given errata for use in casual play, but will never be unbanned in tournaments as the developers also have another promise that "The text on a card is never wrong".

* ''Skytear'' had a commitment to balance right from its kickstarter pitch, and generally succeeds, but three cards in particular slipped through the cracks: "Twist Allegiance", which allowed controlling an enemy champion for a single action; "Grapple", which pulled an enemy champion in close; and "Battlecry", which pulled all affected enemy champions in close. The common thread here was pulling enemies in (or with TA, simply making the enemy walk right to you), since in a game where positioning is already crucial and the ability to shove enemies back is at a premium, dragging a champion three hexes into the enemy's jaws was a death sentence. Twist Allegiance and Grapple were quickly banned, but Battlecry posed a problem, being a Champion's [[SignatureMove Ultimate]]. [=PvP Geeks=] were forced to bite the bullet and issue "Avalanche" as a new Ultimate for Brylvar in an early expansion.[[note]]The reluctance was due to their other commitment to avoiding having any but the most basic expansions be necessary for competitively viable play, but Battlecry was just too disruptive. As a result, Battlecry can be played in a tournament deck at TO's discretion, but is ruled by errata to have Avalanche's text (and is never allowed in top-level tournaments, due to another promise that errata would never change the words on a card).[[/note]]

* GameBreaker/{{Gamebooks}}

* GameBreaker/TabletopRPG
** ''GameBreaker/DungeonsAndDragons''
** ''GameBreaker/{{Pathfinder}}''
** ''GameBreaker/{{Rifts}}''
** ''GameBreaker/TheWitcherGameOfImagination''
** ''GameBreaker/TheWorldOfDarkness''
* ''GameBreaker/{{Warhammer}}''
** ''GameBreaker/Warhammer40000''

* ''Skytear'' had a commitment to balance right from its kickstarter pitch, and generally succeeds, but three cards in particular slipped through the cracks: "Twist Allegiance", which allowed controlling an enemy champion for a single action; "Grapple", which pulled an enemy champion in close; and "Battlecry", which pulled all affected enemy champions in close. The common thread here was pulling enemies in (or with TA, simply making the enemy walk right to you), since in a game where positioning is already crucial and the ability to shove enemies back is at a premium, dragging a champion three hexes into the enemy's jaws was a death sentence. Twist Allegiance and Grapple were quickly banned, but Battlecry posed a problem, being a Champion's [[SignatureMove Ultimate]]. [=PvP Geeks=] were forced to bite the bullet and issue "Avalanche" as a new Ultimate for Brylvar in an early expansion.[[note]]The reluctance was due to their other commitment to avoiding having any but the most basic expansions be necessary for competitively viable play, but Battlecry was just too disruptive. As a result, Battlecry can be played in a tournament deck, but is ruled by errata to have Avalanche's text.[[/note]]

** ''GameBreaker/{{Warhammer}}''
*** ''GameBreaker/Warhammer40000''

* One of the unlockable classes in TabletopGame/{{Gloomhaven}}, the [[spoiler:Plagueherald]], was shown to be ''extremely'' broken on first release. This class specializes in inflicting two status effects: poison and curse. Cursing an enemy causes a special card to be shuffled into the shared enemy attack modifier deck which, when drawn, immediately nullifies that attack - and since the deck is shared, cursing one enemy means this can affect a different enemy. This class also has a card that causes enemies to take 3 damage every time their attack is nullified, and the ability to spread Muddle over an ''enormous'' area of effect. A Muddled enemy draws 2 cards from their attack modifier deck instead of 1, and applies the worst of the two. What really took this class over the top is that in the initial release of Gloomhaven, there was ''no limit'' to the number of curses you could put into the enemy deck. This card played well could effectively make the entire party invincible and waltz through the dungeon while enemies killed themselves trying to do anything, despite the fact that this class's weakness is supposed to be its low HP. This became so absurdly broken that the second edition of Gloomhaven went out of its way to nerf it into oblivion, not only weakening many of their key cards (with it getting drastically more direct changes than any other class and not a single buff in sight), but also reworking the entire way the Curse status effect works, including capping the total number of curses that can be put in the deck to 10. '''And the class is still one of the best in the game in the second edition''', which goes to show just how insane it really was.

* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheEternalStruggle'' (formerly known as ''Jyhad''), a collectible card game originally created by Wizards of the Coast (based on ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' by White Wolf Publishing, who now owns V:tES), was remarkably well-balanced until the ''Ancient Hearts'' expansion. Along with several minor balance issues, it introduced the action card "Return to Innocence", which allowed one to essentially destroy an opponent in a single action, at the cost of losing an acting high-level vampire card. In itself, overpowered, but not necessarily game-breaking. However, combined with the "Soul Gem of Etrius" card from the Unlimited release, and certain high-level vampires such as "Etrius" vampire from the preceeding ''Dark Sovereigns'' expanion, it became far more troublesome. Decks designed to take advantage of this combination were practically unbeatable until the combination was nerfed by a card text errata issued much later.
** Fortunately, the game-breaking nature (and lack of challenge) of this combination resulted in very few people actually using it; and in group play, all other players ganging up on anyone who did. Since V:tES never developed the high-stakes tournament play that other [=WotC=] games did (like Magic: the Gathering), as well as being balanced primarily for extended group play, rather than high-speed one-on-one combat, players tended to eschew high-powered combos in favour of more creative story- or theme-oriented decks.
** Monocle of Clarity: Ask a player a yes or no question which he must answer truthfully. If the question regards a future event, the player MUST play in accordance to that answer. Sounds harmless, right? Step one: Ask player "When I use my monocle next round, will your answer be ''yes''?" Step two: Tailor your next question according to the previous answer. "Will you let my bleeds go unblocked ''for the rest of the game?''" if he said yes, and "Will you block ''any'' of my bleeds ''for the rest of the game?''" if he said no. Your opponent is screwed.
*** A similar technique will allow you to prevent anyone from ever attacking you, to make yourself the only one allowed to vote on any votes, to prevent anyone from introducing any new cards, and [[RealityEnsues to be promptly shown the door and told to never return to the game again]].

* The [[MatterReplicator Aqueduct]] in ''TabletopGame/SettlersOfCatan'''': Cities & Knights'' is a potential game breaker. It allows a player to draw ''any'' resource they choose if they receive no production on a turn. If a player only has a few numbers to draw from, the Aqueduct is even ''better'', because it allows the player to take advantage of many custom draws, charging for whatever item they wish to build. Combined with a 2:1 port, a player can gun for commodities too, further increasing their advantage. This is taken UpToEleven when a specific resource in the game is [[BrokeEpisode extremely scarce]], because the player with the Aqueduct may be one of the only ones who can get it easily.

* The lack of balance in early sets of ''TabletopGame/LegendOfTheFiveRings'' is kind of understandable; the development of card games was in its infancy, and designers on the whole didn't really have a handle on the whole "balance" thing. Free "corrupt" gold that accelerated your production to a ludicrous degree if you were lucky enough to get a bunch of it on early turns, an event (Iris Festival) that destroyed every single Shadowlands card in play when Shadowlands was one of the playable factions, a 0-cost action (Breach of Etiquette) that, when played on a Lion clan player on the first turn, resulted in them being totally unable to buy any personality in their deck... these were all merely symptoms of the times. By the time Lotus Edition rolled around, there was no excuse. Lotus Edition was an entire arc of GameBreaker against GameBreaker: no-risk duel decks that constantly refilled their hands and collected rewards as they sliced your guys down vs. pirate decks that created ludicrous amounts of gold by "raiding" even though they could play any one of their very powerful personalities as a follower for a paltry 3 gold vs. Khol Wall, which became synonymous with "cheese" vs. Ratling decks with exponentially-growing horde armies vs. ninjas with confusing mechanics that never actually worked right, and effects that killed personalities near-unconditionally were cheap and numerous... every game was a test of "Whose ludicrous tech goes off first?" It reached its nadir with the "Test of Enlightenment" set, where many of the personalities included had abilities that might as well have read "Battle: Kill, like, five guys. Don't even bow to do it." The fact that the next block, Samurai Edition, was going to be much weaker than Lotus was considered a major selling point.

** Of course, Samurai Edition's power level was only a major selling point to part of the fanbase. Legend of the Five Rings suffered for most of its run from a notoriously ''BrokenBase'' between partisan of a fast-paced game with high-power cards that could swing the game around in one play, and partisans of a slower, more chess-like game of lower-powered but incremental card plays. The later group tended to throw the "broken" label at any edition favoring a faster-paced game and more powerful effects, regardless of actual balance between the different cards, factions and strategies (the former group, not to be left out, generally considered slower-paced, more incremental editions like Samurai as "boring").

** Saeryn of the Legion of Everblight has a feat that keeps every warbeast in her battlegroup from being targeted by melee attacks for one round. Which by itself just sounds incredibly powerful, but it really becomes ridiculous in the details. It effectively means that Warbeasts are also immune to free-strikes which are all melee. The Legions specialization in fast, often flying, warbeasts means that they are completely free to position themselves INSIDE enemy ranks without issue. Which synergizes perfectly with one of her spells which creates a large AoE around a friendly Warbeast which Auto-hits any enemies caught inside.
** Epic Lylyth (Shadow of Everblight) is rather infamous for absolutely crushing new players. In any army that largely ignores stealth, she provides Snipe to everything in her battlegroup, and a free additional shot. Combined with Ravagors which have a powerful, already long-ranged attack which leaves a damaging AoE and continuous fire effects and Bolt Throwers which push targets back. eLylyth's strategy is to completely shred the opponent from across the board while completely ignoring many forms of defense against ranged combat.

*** Mazu'kon is a 6-cost ally with 6 ATK and 6 HP in a game where allies with such stat are very, very rare. Then it has Ferocity, bypassing the rule where an ally cannot attack the turn it enters play. Then if it gets killed by conventional means, it can bring out a duplicate of itself immediately.
*** Daedak the Graveborn is a 4-cost ally which, when killed, will perform LifeDrain whose power depends on how many resources his controller has. Players usually will have more resources the longer the game drags on, so the later the game, the deadlier he becomes. Problem is, if he gets killed, he'll shuffle himself into his controller's deck so that he can be drawn again later, so playing him early game is still not a bad idea.
*** Zodzu, Herald of the Elements is a 5-cost 5 ATK/5HP Shaman ally, which is already pretty good, but if you have another Shaman, he'll proceed to deal 3 damage to any target and heal your hero for 3.

* In the Marvel themed deck building game Legendary, ComicBook/{{Deadpool}} has a card called "odd ball" which gives him a power bonus equal to the number of previously played cards with odd card values. It itself has an odd card value, meaning that playing 3 Odd Balls gives Deadpool at least a +6 bonus. By stuffing the deck with them a player can devastate villains and almost assure a win; the only solution found so far is to simply ban Deadpool.
** That's nothing. In Legendary Villains, Electro has a card ("Supercharge") that gives you +1 attack for every card you discarded before playing it. All of Electro's other cards have a mechanic ("Dodge") that lets you discard them to draw a new card. If you can manage to get rid of enough of your starting cards, and buy nothing but Dodge cards and Supercharge throughout the game, you can end up in an infinite loop, dodging cards and drawing more Dodge cards. You can keep this going for as long as you like, until you decide it's time to play Supercharge and get the actual attack bonus. It does require a lot of time, and specific tailoring of your deck, but effectively gives you infinite attack. The flavor text is "Unlimited power!!", implying that this strategy may, in fact, be the intention of the designers.

* One of the unlockable classes in TabletopGame/{{Gloomhaven}}, the [[spoiler:Plagueherald]], was shown to be ''extremely'' broken on first release. This class specializes in inflicting two status effects: poison and curse. Cursing an enemy causes a special card to be shuffled into the shared enemy attack modifier deck which, when drawn, immediately nullifies that attack - and since the deck is shared, cursing one enemy means this can affect a different enemy. This class also has a card that causes enemies to take 3 damage every time their attack is nullified, and the ability to spread Muddle over an ''enormous'' area of effect. A Muddled enemy draws 2 cards from their attack modifier deck instead of 1, and applies the worst of the two. What really took this class over the top is that in the initial release of Gloomhaven, there was ''no limit'' to the number of curses you could put into the enemy deck. A well-played [[spoiler:Plagueherald]] could effectively make their entire party invincible and waltz through the dungeon while enemies killed themselves trying to do anything, despite the fact that this class's weakness is supposed to be its low HP. This became so absurdly broken that the second edition of Gloomhaven went out of its way to nerf the [[spoiler:Plagueherald]] into oblivion, not only weakening many of their key cards (with it getting drastically more direct changes than any other class and not a single buff in sight), but also reworking the entire way the Curse status effect works, including capping the total number of curses that can be put in the deck to 10. '''And the class is still one of the best in the game in the second edition''', which goes to show just how insane it really was.

** ''GameBreaker/TheWorldOfDarkness''

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' Daemons of Chaos feature the Great Unclean One. For 600 points, it is possible to field a Lord-level mage who has T6, 10 wounds, 4+ armour, 5+ ward, and regeneration. In larger games, you can field ''several''.
** Prior to 8th edition, which was designed to {{nerf}} them, daemons were arguably the most broken army ever released in the game's history. EVERYTHING in the army had at least 5+ ward save and caused fear (Lord units causing terror). This basically meant the enemy was, unless it was Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts who all have immune to pyschology, going to spend most of the game running scared. The rare case your enemy doesn't run, he's dead anyways, since the magic the army can throw around will wreck, the worst case being an utterly broken spell that a Lord of Change has access to called Glean Magic that causes you force a target enemy wizard to use ALL their spells on targets you chose, and they can't be dispelled, and the icing on the cake being that Glean Magic was incredibly cheap, especially for what it does. And that's not even getting to how all the units in the army were incredibly strong and the only things that wouldn't being running away due to fear or terror will get torn to pieces in melee. There's a reason the 8th edition nerfed this army and why it was so hated for how overpowered it was.
** Slann Mage-Priests can be built to nerf the opposing wizard's effect on the game, some of their magic items make miscasts an accepted fact of life, removing the ability to cast with Irresistable Force, forcing stupidity tests every turn. Saurus Old-Bloods can easily be kitted out to crush spammed infantry thanks to the Carnosaur mount.
*** Lizardmen in general have been bumped one step closer to gamebreaker thanks to 8th edition's broken magic system making Slann one of the few wizards to bypass all the negatives of the new magic system and the added emphasis on large infantry bricks make Saurus Spear Warrior units into one of the nastiest basic troopers in the game. But with the two together you face waves of tough infantry guarding non-squishy wizards that are blasting all of your army into Hell/pieces/ashes. Then they got nerfed pretty heavily in the 8th edition army book; they're still very scary, but you can no longer buy Slann that get free dice for everything, the miscast-guaranteeing effects are gone, and the resistance to miscasting is reduced to an option allowing you to add or remove one point from the roll. Of course, they still have some of the scariest wizards and basic infantry in the game, but that just makes them "tough", rather than "the annihilating fury of vengeful, presumably dead gods" as they were previously.
** Vampire Counts character Mannfred Von Carnstein (Lord edition) can raise ridiculous ammounts of undead if left unchecked. How ridiculous? In a single magic phase he can produce 40 zombies if not dispelled or rolling miscasts.
*** Whats worse is that those 40 Zombies with the Spammfred build is with roughly average to just below average rolls... According to the 7th edition rules.
*** Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts in general can be considered overpowered for their ability to continuously summon more and more and more cannon fodder to overwhelm their enemies with.
*** That was really all Tomb Kings had going for them until the newest armybook.
** Dark Elf assassins can cause victims to roll a toughness test on 3D6 or die. Considering that except for Daemons most characters have a Toughness of 4, that means trying to roll below 4 on 3 six-sided dice.
*** And they are Weapon Skill 9 characters for ninety points each.
** Dark Elves also have the War Hydra. 175 points for a S5, T5, W5, 7 ATTACKS. Oh and as a monster it also has D6 S5 auto-hits at the end of every combat. And it has a Breath Weapon that's strength is equal to it's number of remaining wounds (which equals a one use only 2d6 auto-hits, which will usually be S5). And it has 2 beastmasters which have 3 S3 armor piercing attacks. And it has a 4+ armor save and regeneration. A single one of these can wreck entire units. And you can take 2 in a 2K game with enough rare points left over to drop a Bolt Thrower.
** Most armies in general have a few gamebreakers at any one time, the exceptions being Ogre Kingdoms or Orcs & Goblins.
*** Ogre Kingdoms now have the Thundertusk. 250 points for an absolutely huge monster (4 attacks, 6 wounds, S6, T6, riders with 3 S4 attacks each), it has Thunderstomp, which means D6 S6 auto-hits per round of combat. It also has a S3(6) stone thrower AND all enemies within 6 inches of it Always Strike Last. One of these at the center of your line means your charging line means your enemy better have the gods of luck on their side, or their entire line is going to collapse.
** The current Lore of Life is disproportionately powerful. Let's put it this way: under the 8th edition magic rules, throwing large handfuls of dice at spells is possible but discouraged, because an irresistible force (or, any two dice coming up 6) automatically produces a wild-magic miscast effect, which is likely to lead to something unpleasant happening to the wizard. "Throne of Vines" allows you to discount this on a 2+, or ''five times in six''. And spells are resolved before you roll on the miscast table, so if you get irresistible force ''on'' Throne of Vines...yeah. If you think that's nasty, combine it with "The Dwellers Below" from the same lore, which can cripple ''entire units'' by killing large numbers of them with no saves allowed. The main balancing factor? The large handfuls of dice needed to cast it are likely to lead to an irresistible force, the resultant miscast and your mage's head exploding. Unless he's able to ignore miscasts on, for example, a 2+...
** The successor game, ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'', tries to avoid this by not caring about game balance to begin with, to the point where units don't even have points values, but some of this still crept in as early as the changeover PDF's. High Elf Repeater Bolt Throwers, for example, are ambiguously written so it's not hard to read them as firing 72 shots per turn. Also, with no restriction on the units you can bring at all, fielding 36 Dark Elf War Hydras or an entire wheelbarrowful of Nagashes is mechanically fine; the expectation is that it'll be balanced by you being thrown out of the gaming group, which is kind of an awkward basis.
*** So far averted with Match Play, the point system of Age of Sigmar, so far its been halted as Games-Workshops most balanced system to date.

* ''GameBreaker/Warhammer40000''

** ''GameBreaker/CardfightVanguard''
** GameBreaker/{{Gamebooks}}
** ''GameBreaker/MagicTheGathering''
** GameBreaker/TabletopRPG
*** ''GameBreaker/TheWitcherGameOfImagination''
** ''GameBreaker/Warhammer40000''
** ''GameBreaker/YuGiOhCardGame''

* In the Marvel themed deck building game Legendary, Deadpool has a card called "odd ball" which gives him a power bonus equal to the number of previously played cards with odd card values. It itself has an odd card value, meaning that playing 3 Odd Balls gives Deadpool at least a +6 bonus. By stuffing the deck with them a player can devastate villains and almost assure a win; the only solution found so far is to simply ban Deadpool.

* The ridiculous lack of balance in early sets of ''TabletopGame/LegendOfTheFiveRings'' is kind of understandable; the development of card games was in its infancy, and designers on the whole didn't really have a handle on the whole "balance" thing. Free "corrupt" gold that accelerated your production to a ludicrous degree if you were lucky enough to get a bunch of it on early turns, an event (Iris Festival) that destroyed every single Shadowlands card in play when Shadowlands was one of the playable factions, a 0-cost action (Breach of Etiquette) that, when played on a Lion clan player on the first turn, resulted in them being totally unable to buy any personality in their deck... these were all merely symptoms of the times. By the time Lotus Edition rolled around, there was no excuse. Lotus Edition was an entire arc of GameBreaker against GameBreaker: no-risk duel decks that constantly refilled their hands and collected rewards as they sliced your guys down vs. pirate decks that created ludicrous amounts of gold by "raiding" even though they could play any one of their very powerful personalities as a follower for a paltry 3 gold vs. Khol Wall, which became synonymous with "cheese" vs. Ratling decks with exponentially-growing horde armies vs. ninjas with confusing mechanics that never actually worked right, and effects that killed personalities near-unconditionally were cheap and numerous... every game was a test of "Whose ludicrous tech goes off first?" It reached its nadir with the "Test of Enlightenment" set, where many of the personalities included had abilities that might as well have read "Battle: Kill, like, five guys. Don't even bow to do it." The fact that the next block, Samurai Edition, was going to be much weaker than Lotus was considered a major selling point.

*** Andre didn't get a Backlash Deck (think of it as an in-game sideboard a la MagicTheGathering), but he got a 100 card deck. In a game where you win by depleting your opponent's deck, and the typical deck is 60 cards, this is already a problem.

** Making these even more broken is when multiple Plot Quests are used in conjunction. Being able to play a new intrigue after playing one is made even better when you score two points every time. Gaining additional resources when you take a certain action is even better when you get owner benefits on a building too.

*** So far averted with Match Play, the point system of Age of Sigmar, so far its been halted as Games-Workshops most balance system to date.

** GameBreaker/ChooseYourOwnAdventure and other Gamebooks

** ''GameBreaker/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

** GameBreaker/{{Gamebooks}}

** Vampire Counts character Mannfred Von Carnstein (Lord edition)can raise ridiculous ammounts of undead if left unchecked. How ridiculous? In a single magic phase he can produce 40 zombies if not dispelled or rolling miscasts.

* 1000 Blank White Cards is entirely made out of cards created by the players. As such, anyone can make potential game breakers. Finding game-breaking combinations of cards is how the game is usually won. In most games, some cards with ridiculously powerful(or boring) effects are banned:

** Cards that target a specific, named player. Let's say that there are three players, Person1, Person2, and Piggy. Any player could make a card that says "the person to your left gets 350 points" but no card could say "Piggy gets 350 points"

*** A similar technique will allow you to prevent anyone from ever attacking you, to make yourself the only one allowed to vote on any votes, to prevent anyone from introducing any new cards, and to be promptly shown the door and told to never return to the game again.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
** A portmanteau term, "[[Franchise/{{Godzilla}} CoDzilla]]", was used to refer to extremely overpowered Cleric and Druid builds through 3E. In addition to incredible magical power on par with the big magic classes like Wizards and Sorcerers (sometimes ''even better'', and unlike Wizards they don't even have to plan their spells out), CoDzilla got way better combat and utility abilities on top of that. Clerics could wear heavy armour in a total {{Aver|tedTrope}}sion of SquishyWizard, plus better base attack progression. Druids were even more broken, as the ''Wild Shape'' class feature combined with the ''Natural Spell'' feat let them take on incredibly powerful combat forms while retaining their ability to pump out magic. Here's a given example: a Cleric with the Strength domain can boost his Strength by his caster level for one round, plus Righteous Might, Divine Power, Divine Favour and charging with a two-handed weapon, could conceivably kill 99% of the game's monsters in one hit, and ''this is far from the most optimised Cleric build''.
** Monte Cook ''[[CreatorsPet really]]'' [[CreatorsPet likes Wizards]], and in 5E, boy does it show. LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards applies, and while a low-level Wizard with paltry HP and a limited spell selection can be a challenging play, by mid-level Wizards with creative players are effectively [[StoryBreakerPower walking cheat codes]]. By high levels, the party has effectively been relegated to the role of audience for the Wizard while they {{Curb Stomp|Battle}} {{Physical God}}s.

** Monte Cook ''[[CreatorsPet really]]'' [[CreatorsPet likes Wizards]], and in 5E, boy does it show. LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards applies, and while a low-level Wizard with paltry HP and a limited spell selection can be a challenging play, by mid-level Wizards with creative players are effectively [[StoryBreakerPower walking cheat codes]]. By high levels, the party has effectively been relegated to the role of audience for the Wizard while they {{Curb Stomp|Battle}} {{Physical God}}s.