what do you do when a +3 bloodclaw weapon is more powerful than a +4 artifact

[Oni]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but haven't there always been some overpowered magic items in every edition of D&D? Why not just ban or alter the offenders and be done with it?

 

[LostSoul]

evilbob, are you the DM or a player in this group?

How do the other people in your group feel about this issue? Have you talked it over with them?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Dude, you gotta just play a different game. If you genuinely feel you need to go through every book with a fine-toothed comb to pick out everything that might possibly throw things out of whack, playing a game with this many supplements does not sound like your cup of tea.

However, if you genuinely want to play D&D, and only wish you could feel like you did when you first played it... there is the simplest (and yet hardest) solution.

Use only the first Player's Handbook.

That's it. Nothing from Dragon, nothing from Dungeon, nothing from the AV, MotP, PH2, the Power books etc. etc. The more of these things you use to expand your game, the more the possibility of cracks will form. If you honestly felt your 4.0 game was very good way back when... force yourself and your players to go back there and play it that way again.

Is that hard? Absolutely. But it's no different than any other game that has expansions... at some point, the expansions morph the game away from what it was you originally liked, but trying to get your head around not using them just seems like an anathema.

I used to play the board game Talisman. Loved it. When the first expansions of the City and the Dungeon were released, I thought "Awesome! All-new stuff to add to make the game even better!" And for a bit, it was. Then they added more expansions, with more stuff. And soon, I found I didn't like the game as much anymore. Diminishing returns I believe it's called. So what I've done now, is whenever I play Talisman... I pretty much only take out the original game... leaving the expansions out of it. It's damn hard, cause I keep thinking "Man, I wish I could play the Chaos Warrior!"... but I also realize that Chaos Warrior was one of the facets that eventually made the game unwieldy.

And it's the same thing across the board. The World of Warcraft developers have to keep tweaking every single class, every few months... because there is just no way to keep 10 classes each with 3 specs, each with solo-play, PvE 5/10/25 man, PvP battleground, & PvP arena formatting all balanced off of each other. It's not possible. They are "updating their errata" (to use an rpg term) every single day to every single class... because there is just too much in the game to be able to balance right out. And heck... they put a lot of their patch changes into a full on open beta-test on their Public Test Realms for players to try and break... and then after months of thousands of players beta-testing the changes, they finally release the new patch to the entire public... AND STILL often have to then release another patch that fixes problems immediately discovered in the patch they just playtested for a couple months.

That's what having an expansive game gives you.

And if needing to keep tweaking things in your D&D after book after book after book gets released... you either have to live with that idea, forsake the new books altogether, or play a different game that has not expanded beyond its original (and most likely, most balanced) rulebook. It's up to you. But there's no sense howling at the moon that expansion is causing problems, because I've yet to see a game that this didn't occur.

 

[Obryn]

- It's hard to limit your selections (or ban items) when "everything is core."

Core has more meanings than the way you're using it here. It doesn't mean "You must use all this stuff." It does mean, "This stuff is generic enough to be used in all campaigns."

- 3.5, for its flaws, was a very different animal (and production model) than 4.0. For one, the core books were published - and revised - a while before the supplement machine really got rolling. And supplements weren't produced every month at a breakneck pace (until toward end - and that's when things started to really fall apart in the same way).

I think you're dramatically underestimating the time each supplement is taking to write. As an example, the Artificer Playtest was in one of the very first 4e Dragons. The Eberron Player's Guide just got released today. From all appearances, each book is being developed and written for at least 6 months - probably shorter for adventures, but longer for major releases.

They're not writing one book every month. They started writing the supplements before 4e was even released. PHB2, for example, was already well underway when the core PHB was printed, IIRC.

While I agree in principle that more playtesting is always good, playtesting will never catch all the bugs that a forum full of rules lawyers will.

Yes, it had flaws, and yes, they were exploitable, but most of those flaws seemed to come more from a difficulty in expressing rules in language, whereas 4.0 flaws seem to be more mechanically based. Is this a byproduct of an improved language system, or were the 3.5 flaws also mechanically based but just disguised by the language? Those are fair questions, but it doesn't seem like that to me.

Would you care to explain that? I don't understand the distinction you're making here.

-O

 

[thecasualoblivion]

There are a small handful of items in the game that are flat out broken and are best removed, and Bloodclaw weapons are one of them. The three weapons that most guilty are Bloodclaw, Reckless and Radiant. Bloodclaw are the worst, and the only one I've banned. Reckless I've changed the level to 5/10/15+, and Radiant I've left be. Radiant is bad, but tolerably so. If I can stand 4 out of every 5 Staffs being Staves or Ruin(and I can), I can stand Radiant weapons.

Bloodclaw is the only item from heroic levels I've outright banned. I'd ban the Ritualist Ring(though houseruling it to exclude item creation is probably enough) and ban Opal Ring of Rememberance and the really bad Solitare, but that would be as far as it goes.

 

[Mallus]

It's hard to limit your selections (or ban items) when "everything is core."

It's only hard to ban items when you game with unreasonable people. Reasonable people recognize when something is causing a problem, and work to fix it.

But even without those issues there comes a time when enough is enough and I'm tired of being the one who has to go through everything and figure out what's broken so I know what to look out for.

You don't have to vet the entire rules system. You just need to game with people who understand that everyone playing shares in the burden of keeping the game running smoothly. People like that can simply tackle problems as they come up.

 

[Goumindong]

Quite frankly, if it ever became a problem in my game, I would just institute one simple house rule: no repeats.

If one character has a magic item, nobody else can buy, find or make another one of the same type.

This is a great house rule, though i would except "simple +" weapons. Especially to foster a "low magic" feeling. As each item becomes unique the instant it enters play each item starts to hold more value to the players.

 

[Obryn]

You don't have to vet the entire rules system. You just need to game with people who understand that everyone playing shares in the burden of keeping the game running smoothly. People like that can simply tackle problems as they come up.

I agree 100%. Gaming requires a social contract of sorts, and agreeing to cooperatively fix problems is one of the foundations of it.

Also, if this is the issue, I might need to reconsider my advice to try a rules-light game. If your players argue about minutiae in a rules-heavy game, I expect they'll also argue in a rules-light game given the openness of the rules to free interpretetaion.

In that case, I would echo the poster above who suggested sticking with a Core-Only game. (Core being, in this case the PHB, DMG, and MM.)

-O

 

[AllisterH]

There are a small handful of items in the game that are flat out broken and are best removed, and Bloodclaw weapons are one of them. The three weapons that most guilty are Bloodclaw, Reckless and Radiant. Bloodclaw are the worst, and the only one I've banned. Reckless I've changed the level to 5/10/15+, and Radiant I've left be. Radiant is bad, but tolerably so. If I can stand 4 out of every 5 Staffs being Staves or Ruin(and I can), I can stand Radiant weapons.

Bloodclaw is the only item from heroic levels I've outright banned. I'd ban the Ritualist Ring(though houseruling it to exclude item creation is probably enough) and ban Opal Ring of Rememberance and the really bad Solitare, but that would be as far as it goes.

This is me as well. I think the OP needs to get more comfortable with the "just say no" aspect of being a DM.

As well, I find the Char-Op boards to be a great resource for DMs as they actually are quite helpful in telling you "these items will be a problem, we houserules/banned them in our campaigns" -(I don't think many people realize this aspect of the char-op board. Many assume that the denizens of said board regularly abuse the system breaking faults but IME, most of the denizens are actually quite happy to use the banhammer)

The most abusive items in AV for example
Radiant, Reckless and Bloodclaw (From least to most-the last one especially)
Staff of Ruin
The specific combo of Orb of Ultimate Imposition, Cunning Weapon and the Phrenic Crown (this is more of a design issue as there should have been a "no stacking of penalties" rule a la the "no stacking of bonuses")
Iron Armbands of Power
Solitaires (- really, there's no reason NOT to have one if you have the cash - this is the only section of the AV which is flat out problematic/broken)

evilbob, if you actually ban these things, you will probably see a lot more variation in character's stash of items....For example, if you actually ban radiant, reckless and bloodclaw, you still have over 100 weapon properties (and funny enough, the next most used weapon property would be from the PHB - Vorpal)

 

[Caliban]

My personal feeling on the bloodclaw weapon is that the power should be usable only once per round, instead of at-will.

That limits it to only one attack getting the bonus. It's still good, but it doesn't make multiple attack powers do overwhelming damage.