D&D General Is power creep bad?

[TheSword]

I have a few theories on why DMs hate power creep so much:

Theory 1: A lot of Dungeon Masters have a "my monsters vs. the player characters" attitude. They are on Team Monster, and it's up to them to create interesting challenges and goals for Team Heroes. Power creep makes their job more difficult, because they have to consider more and more angles and contingencies with every new splatbook.

It’s up to the Dm to create interesting challenges for Team Heroes, irrespective of whether DMs are on Team Monster or not.

I could be the PCs greatest cheerleader and supporter and still be expected to make the session interesting and challenging. This is the case without a DM vs Player attitude… in fact it’s much harder when the DM is Team Player because then the DM is less likely to brush of character death as tough luck.

One of the problems is that power creep is often asymmetrical. So I can be Team Player but within the Players one might be making the game trivial in some respects. I actually don’t think power is a problem - I frequently run with higher points buys or free feats at first level. The bigger issue is grandstanding and overshadowing.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, both yes and no. The power creep did ended the 3.xed but PF took it and pushed it even further with good products. In a sense, PF was a 3.75ed. It took off when 4ed failed to rally most gamers. When 5ed got out, PF finally fell (but not their campaign world) as was expected of an edition that had outlived its normal life. But yes, so many bad books in the late life of 3.xed. It was a shame.

Boy howdy did Pathfinder push the power envelope forward. Even I, who doesn't care much about balance, couldn't play that game. 3.5 was at my upper limit of imbalance.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm not sure how the options presented in the core books of a given edition can be power creep?

I scratched my head over that one, too.

 

[Bill Zebub]

If the whole point of exploration is to have some logistical difficulty by asking questions such as "how much food can we take? How far can we travel given the amount of food we have + whatever we can muster from the land we're going through?" or having risks such as getting lost, then these options ruin exploration.

Yeah, I was thinking about exactly this question. I agree that some of the options in the game basically erase the 'challenges' of exploration, but I'm not sure I care. I don't particularly enjoy managing logistics. It's kind of like saying that a quiver of infinite arrows "ruins" the challenge of managing arrow inventory. Thank god!

I mean, I suppose you could say that managing hit points and spell slots and Ki is also just bookkeeping, but it's with a flavor I find more interesting.

I'd love to see 5.5 introduce exploration mechanics that make the challenge more interesting.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, I was thinking about exactly this question. I agree that some of the options in the game basically erase the 'challenges' of exploration, but I'm not sure I care. I don't particularly enjoy managing logistics. It's kind of like saying that a quiver of infinite arrows "ruins" the challenge of managing arrow inventory. Thank god!

I mean, I suppose you could say that managing hit points and spell slots and Ki is also just bookkeeping, but it's with a flavor I find more interesting.

I'd love to see 5.5 introduce exploration mechanics that make the challenge more interesting.

I think it is about what tone you like your fantasy heroics. Managing arrows is good if you want something more desperate and less super heroic, where you aren't just fighting the bad guys, but living in a world that doesn't care if you live or die. It isn't 5E, for sure, but it is a totally valid flavor of fantasy that a lot of people enjoy.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They could put it in a Xanathars or -- it'll never happen, but I'll say it anyway -- an actual DM facing book.

I miss those.

That's the new paradigm though, the one that got tons of praise and cheers when 5e launched. Publish very few books, and make most books interesting to all possible buyers, be they players, DMs, collectors, whatever. Eliminate market segmentation as much as possible: (nearly) every product must be for everyone! And of course never publish more than two or three option books a year, preferably less. Making few products designed to be everything to everyone is the way to go.

But of course because 5e was and is successful, these choices are all unequivocally positive and are the only reasons 5e has succeeded.

This is a little off topic but I wonder if the hesitancy of the newer cohort of players to take up the GM mantle is related to the absolute desert of GM support in 5E?

Man, I gotta say, while I was snippy with you earlier (and for that I apologize), it's really gratifying to see other people calling out how much 5e fell down in this regard. It's been incredibly frustrating seeing both the official books do so little, and then simultaneously seeing a dominant player culture of responding to requests for help with "you're the DM! Figure it out yourself!" As though that were even remotely helpful to someone looking for advice on how to do that.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think it is about what tone you like your fantasy heroics. Managing arrows is good if you want something more desperate and less super heroic, where you aren't just fighting the bad guys, but living in a world that doesn't care if you live or die. It isn't 5E, for sure, but it is a totally valid flavor of fantasy that a lot of people enjoy.

Yeah, ok, fair enough. For example, I find it disappointing that darkvision and the light cantrip eliminate the fear of running out of torches.

 

[Ondath]

Yeah, I was thinking about exactly this question. I agree that some of the options in the game basically erase the 'challenges' of exploration, but I'm not sure I care. I don't particularly enjoy managing logistics. It's kind of like saying that a quiver of infinite arrows "ruins" the challenge of managing arrow inventory. Thank god!

I mean, I suppose you could say that managing hit points and spell slots and Ki is also just bookkeeping, but it's with a flavor I find more interesting.

I'd love to see 5.5 introduce exploration mechanics that make the challenge more interesting.

I've had tables where these are incredibly tedious, and I've had tables where the players planned what to bring to the dungeon for 30 minutes and drew and their own maps and had massive fun. It really depends on the style of play you want to have.

Now, if only 5E had kept its promise from the playtest that it was going to be a modular ruleset that can reasonably emulate any kind of game you could run with the previous editions, we could perhaps have the variation we needed. It seems like the new design direction is instead solidifying the kind of game that can be run with 5E, which is closer to this theatretical experience where every encounter adds something to the story and allows different players to show off their unique characters. It's a style of play I definitely like in my games at least to a certain extent, but I also like having other elements, and these other elements being left out in favour of this neo-trad/OC style feels like a missed opportunity. And with that, the temptation to design an OGL game that actually delivers on the modularity promise increases evermore...

 

[TheSword]

This is a little off topic but I wonder if the hesitancy of the newer cohort of players to take up the GM mantle is related to the absolute desert of GM support in 5E?

I thought there was a whole Guide to the art of DMing? Several dozen pre-written adventures to assist people who aren’t practiced at writing their own. About a billion blogs giving advice on every topic conceivable. Live filmed examples of gaming sessions, most of which are far more like a typical gaming session than the production values of Critical Role. Not to mention forums like this one, Reddit etc that can provide an answer to pretty much every question going… and in most cases, more than one answer.

What support do you think is lacking?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Let's take a look at Natural Explorer:

It's not that powerful. The worst thing about it is that it takes what should be the ranger's time to shine and fast forwards through it.

This is a little off topic but I wonder if the hesitancy of the newer cohort of players to take up the GM mantle is related to the absolute desert of GM support in 5E?

I'd have said it was a mix of that and that 5e is the 2.5th hardest edition to DM in D&D's history. It's a complex game that lacks tools to help the DM and guide them.