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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5046160" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>@KD</p><p></p><p>First of all as Nifft and I have stated before Orb Wizard was ALWAYS broken. It was always TOTALLY broken, not even a little broken. Yeah, there are more ways to do the brokenness in AV1 and some feats can be combined with various things to increase your to-hit and OoIC does make it auto-hit once a day but basically infinitely broken things don't really get more broken and more ways to do the same thing =/= power creep.</p><p></p><p>BRV fighter WAS in some people's opinions OP at low levels. Epic tier and even paragon tier BRV actually gets pretty lackluster. It was more of a dependency on the situation as you could easily build encounters that made a BRV fighter practically worthless. However it was a serious DM inconvenience that it was easy to create a character that could steamroller a lot of melee centric encounters. So it was fixed. It is thoroughly fixed at this point and is now in some ways actually BETTER at higher levels than it was before. It certainly plays better.</p><p></p><p>As for skill bonuses... Generally speaking once you hit a certain point with a skill bonus its pretty pointless to jack it up even further, although there are some exceptions specific to certain builds and in general a really outrageous Arcana skill bonus can be justified for some characters. Stealth beyond +16 (actually you CAN do better with just PHB but you got the major bonuses) does what for you? At that point you're at least into paragon and so you have another +6 or more (and even higher with ability score boosts) from level which means you're into the +20's range. There is simply no low paragon tier creature that is going to see you EVER unless it rolls 17+ and you get a 1. Yup you can jack that even further using AV1 and PHB2 stuff but its pointless. Even the most stealth focused character imaginable would be idiotic to burn more feats and valuable items on a higher bonus. For all practical purposes you are just infinitely stealthy. Infinity +N is still infinity.</p><p></p><p>The same is pretty much true for the other skills. Most of them will only ever be used either vs standard DCs where anything past a +10 static bonus is almost guaranteed success or in a skill challenge where again the DCs are standard. There are a few cases where you could use them in combat opposed and then you might gain some marginal extra utility from certain ones but you're way past the point of diminishing returns even with what's available in the PHB.</p><p></p><p>As far as situational feats and even to a certain extent static bonuses from feats and items on attack/damage rolls the vast consensus is they undershot in the PHB and the increases here were yes in a sense you could say "power creep" but more like "this is the way it was intended". They were just obviously conservative starting out while they got some experience with the system. It would have been a LOT worse to have dumped lots of extra bonuses into the core rules from day one when they had a lot more limited experience with the system. </p><p></p><p>The few things that really did cross the line like Bloodclaw and Reckless have been nerfed down to acceptable levels. Yes high level characters CAN stack up a pretty impressive damage output, but its hard to say that's bad. There were ways to do it even with PHB1 (there was a ranger build that was doing like 200 point hits at level 30 with just PHB stuff). Considering at that level your opponents have often 1000+ hit points, not really a big problem. With ALL the books and fully decked out as the errata stands now a similar build might do maybe 250 damage on a hit and there are a couple more ways to repeat the attack than there were before. </p><p></p><p>There are still one or two things that I think will cause problems like OoIC and IMHO the Astral Seal and whatnot but they're pretty few and far between and don't blow the doors off things. Most PCs are going to be just a BIT more effective at dealing damage and have some cool new options, but they aren't game breaking or really way out of line with what was possible to start with. I'd call that "option creep" myself and while you might consider it bad it has a really nice upside in making the game more fun for the players.</p><p></p><p>And that's the final thing. The game is more fun for everyone with the various power books and PHB2 etc in the mix. PHB1 alone was OK, but play was a bit limited. There's no danger of melting your game down to use all the books. Certainly not even faintly close to what would happen if you did that in 3.x or 2e or 1e. Its just not comparable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5046160, member: 82106"] @KD First of all as Nifft and I have stated before Orb Wizard was ALWAYS broken. It was always TOTALLY broken, not even a little broken. Yeah, there are more ways to do the brokenness in AV1 and some feats can be combined with various things to increase your to-hit and OoIC does make it auto-hit once a day but basically infinitely broken things don't really get more broken and more ways to do the same thing =/= power creep. BRV fighter WAS in some people's opinions OP at low levels. Epic tier and even paragon tier BRV actually gets pretty lackluster. It was more of a dependency on the situation as you could easily build encounters that made a BRV fighter practically worthless. However it was a serious DM inconvenience that it was easy to create a character that could steamroller a lot of melee centric encounters. So it was fixed. It is thoroughly fixed at this point and is now in some ways actually BETTER at higher levels than it was before. It certainly plays better. As for skill bonuses... Generally speaking once you hit a certain point with a skill bonus its pretty pointless to jack it up even further, although there are some exceptions specific to certain builds and in general a really outrageous Arcana skill bonus can be justified for some characters. Stealth beyond +16 (actually you CAN do better with just PHB but you got the major bonuses) does what for you? At that point you're at least into paragon and so you have another +6 or more (and even higher with ability score boosts) from level which means you're into the +20's range. There is simply no low paragon tier creature that is going to see you EVER unless it rolls 17+ and you get a 1. Yup you can jack that even further using AV1 and PHB2 stuff but its pointless. Even the most stealth focused character imaginable would be idiotic to burn more feats and valuable items on a higher bonus. For all practical purposes you are just infinitely stealthy. Infinity +N is still infinity. The same is pretty much true for the other skills. Most of them will only ever be used either vs standard DCs where anything past a +10 static bonus is almost guaranteed success or in a skill challenge where again the DCs are standard. There are a few cases where you could use them in combat opposed and then you might gain some marginal extra utility from certain ones but you're way past the point of diminishing returns even with what's available in the PHB. As far as situational feats and even to a certain extent static bonuses from feats and items on attack/damage rolls the vast consensus is they undershot in the PHB and the increases here were yes in a sense you could say "power creep" but more like "this is the way it was intended". They were just obviously conservative starting out while they got some experience with the system. It would have been a LOT worse to have dumped lots of extra bonuses into the core rules from day one when they had a lot more limited experience with the system. The few things that really did cross the line like Bloodclaw and Reckless have been nerfed down to acceptable levels. Yes high level characters CAN stack up a pretty impressive damage output, but its hard to say that's bad. There were ways to do it even with PHB1 (there was a ranger build that was doing like 200 point hits at level 30 with just PHB stuff). Considering at that level your opponents have often 1000+ hit points, not really a big problem. With ALL the books and fully decked out as the errata stands now a similar build might do maybe 250 damage on a hit and there are a couple more ways to repeat the attack than there were before. There are still one or two things that I think will cause problems like OoIC and IMHO the Astral Seal and whatnot but they're pretty few and far between and don't blow the doors off things. Most PCs are going to be just a BIT more effective at dealing damage and have some cool new options, but they aren't game breaking or really way out of line with what was possible to start with. I'd call that "option creep" myself and while you might consider it bad it has a really nice upside in making the game more fun for the players. And that's the final thing. The game is more fun for everyone with the various power books and PHB2 etc in the mix. PHB1 alone was OK, but play was a bit limited. There's no danger of melting your game down to use all the books. Certainly not even faintly close to what would happen if you did that in 3.x or 2e or 1e. Its just not comparable. [/QUOTE]
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