D&D (2024) D&D 2024 Rules Oddities (Kibbles’ Collected Complaints)

the unchanged aspects such as the 2014 builds / subclasses, how are they not negatively affected?

Okay. We've had this discussion before. So I don't want to get into it too deep.

Here is the quote, you were referring to by Chaosmancer:
If I took the entire math of the entire dungeon's and dragons system and multiplied everything by 10... there is no power creep.

In this hypothetical, there are no unchanged subclasses. The entire system was, as per the hypothetical, inflated by 10.

Remember that the definition of power creep requires a change in viability to an unchanged unit. We discussed this recently, we discussed how you couldn't really measure that.

Heres the definition of power creep word for word;

"The situation where successive updates or expansions to a game introduce more powerful units or abilities, leaving the older ones underpowered."

Context is important here. The phrase "introduce more powerful units or abilities" excludes mere "buffs" to the existing. And the phrase "leaving the old ones underpowered" means that unchanged aspects must have a change in power level so as to "lack power" relative to the new stuff, per the definition of underpowered.

In the context of Chaosmancer's hypothetical, power creep isn't possible. The hypothetical fails multiple aspects of the definition.

Now, in the thread as a whole, people claim that a raise in average power constitutes power creep. That only works IF the relative viability of an unchanged aspect is negatively affected; it "becomes underpowered." And that change negatively impacts the relative power of an unchanged "unit." Under no reading is "higher average power level" sufficient by itself.

I hope this clarifies things for you.


Source: power creep - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
 
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Heres the definition of power creep word for word;

"The situation where successive updates or expansions to a game introduce more powerful units or abilities, leaving the older ones underpowered."
fine, for the sake of argument let’s go with that

Context is important here. The phrase "introduce more powerful units or abilities" excludes mere "buffs" to the existing.
sounds more like an omission in the definition than something that is deliberately being excluded.

And the phrase "leaving the old ones underpowered" means that unchanged aspects must have a change in power level so as to "lack power" relative to the new stuff, per the definition of underpowered.
yes

In the context of Chaosmancer's hypothetical, power creep isn't possible. The hypothetical fails multiple aspects of the definition.
the hypothetical also fails to reflect the actual case, so it is not all that relevant what the conclusion for the hypothetical is

Now, in the thread as a whole, people claim that a raise in average power constitutes power creep. That only works IF the relative viability of an unchanged aspect is negatively affected; it "becomes underpowered." And that change negatively impacts the relative power of an unchanged "unit." Under no reading is "higher average power level" sufficient by itself.

I hope this clarifies things for you.
not really… we are not talking about the hypothetical, there are unchanged parts, namely everything in 2014 that is not also in 2024, monsters in the various adventures, subclasses in other supplements, 3pp content, etc.. So given this, pointing out that a case that does not apply has a certain result does not really get us any closer to the answer of whether 2024 has power creep.

To me it very obviously does, some broken spikes like Smite were fixed, but that should have been done years ago, the vast majority of changes are buffs
 

it means more than ‘are still mechanically supported but are too weak to make any sense’ however
The average went up because they buffed a lot of the weak stuff.

But if are weak in 2024, then they where already weak in 2014.

I.e. purple dragon knight. Too weak to make sense in 2014, still too weak to make sense in 2024.
 
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fine, for the sake of argument let’s go with that

If you have a better definition, we can use that one. But operating without one causes this issue where people can be talking from entirely different starting points. You kind of lose all ability to have productive conversations without a common understanding of the starting point.

If the definition is "just increases in power over all" than any single buff of any thing within a game becomes power creep if not counteracted by an equal nerf. In that case, the phrase loses it's functional meaning and just becomes synonymous with "buff."
 

I get to decide what I get to count in my posts thank you.

No, not when you are trying to show the impact of the spell.

Sure but at high level you have plenty of room for this .... and a longbow is not far behind.

Yes and that is 1 attack .... unless you are just giving up all your mastery for all your other attacks.

And if giving up weapon mastery on every attack except the one you nick is what you are doing to make HM better, then you are giving up a ton.

No, you are giving up Vex, as you said. That isn't "a ton" to me, compared to the ability to have a weapon mastery when I switch to my bow.

To start with an 18 Dexterity you would be dealing 2d10+8+6 with GWM, but the incorrect math is not relevant.

Suggesting this changes anything at level 8 is what is wrong. At level 8 you can still be doing 4d6+20 with Dual Wielder.

And at the point were talking about above (Swift Quiver) you have gotten a minimum 4 feats. He can get Dual Wielder, XBE, GWM and still have a 20 Dexterity at 8th level.

SO, you propose starting with one set of spells and abilities at one level, then changing at a later level. Fascinating. You know that sort of perspective would lead to someone perhaps using the right tool for the job, and not just casting Hunter's Mark all the time, but only casting it when it is relevant and helpful.

So what was the problem again? Oh right, that because of a level 17 and level 20 ability you are forced to always cast Hunter's Mark at all levels of play and never use the right tool for the job, that was your claim. Weird how that directly opposes your own argument here...

Just like you have to build a Ranger to take advantage of Hunter's Mark.

All your examples are at least as build-specific as mine, and you are hand waving things like multi target damage or switching hunters mark, which eats into that damage a lot.

I'm not handwaving multi-target damage. You want to cast Conjure Barrage and hit a lot of enemies? Hunter's Mark doesn't prevent that, in fact with the new casting rules the Ranger can cast BOTH spells on the same turn if they felt it was useful. Switching Hunter's Mark could potentially eat into damage, but if we are talking an archer... you likely aren't using your bonus action for damage unless you are specifically using Hand Crossbows, and then you have a few options, some of which are functionally identical to Hunter's Mark. And if you are dual-wielding, I've already shown that 4d6+modx4 < 6d6+modx3, so even switching doesn't actually lower your damage compared to not having the spell cast at all.

It will be more effective some times, but it won't be a majority of the time unless you dumped Wisdom.

And not everyone plays a Spellcasting Ranger, as we have discussed.

Ok you just didn't think it was worth mentioning until I showed you that your position was incorrect. Convenient!

I knew this would be a bitter and fraught discussion anyways, no need to go catching myself on fire before hand just so that later you couldn't accuse me of ignoring it.

You said Gauntlet of Giant Strength, not Belt. Belts are not Gauntlets. Had never heard of the dagger before, but good to know it is a rare item and unique to a specific adventure.

I am using actual characters I played from level 1 through high level and pointing out how those same builds would work using 2024 rules and I did it specifically because you said "no one plays like that"

You are the one throwing up these hypotheticals to try to prove your point.

I am using the actual characters.

You are using the actual characters, except modifying them using specific rules, but not all the rules only the ones you like.

I would use actual characters, but the only Ranger whose character sheet I have was level 6 or so when that game died, the high level rangers were played by other people, and were made before any revised ranger or tashas. Or were multi-classed, people at my tables tended to like rogue/ranger

And while I might have phrased it that way once, I have been more than clear that the larger point is the majority of people do not play rangers in your highly specific and as far as I can tell utterly unique style. Which has only lost the appearance of casting other spells because you feel compelled to never do anything except cast hunter's mark.

No it isn't. If that were true the most OP builds in the game would all be good class designs.

I am not freaking out, I am just pointing out that focusing on one concentration spell out of 40 and attaching 4 individual class abilities to it is poor class design.

And your best way of doing so is has been to show that other spells are still better or to show highly specific level 20 builds. So... what is the end goal here? Conjure Woodland Beings is a better spell, so should the Ranger's 13th level ability be that they can't lose concentration on that spell? SHould it be that they get a +1 to hit and damage when using a Heavy crossbow?

Any "better design" you seem likely to propose due to your focus is purely going to make other, more powerful options, even more powerful. You've done nothing but try and prove that Hunter's Mark is bad damage at high levels.

Whatever. Tying 4 separate class abilities, including 3 high level abilities to Hunter's Mark, a weak 1st level spell, is bad class design.

Hunter's Mark is not a weak 1st level spell. Not by a wide, wide margin. It is just a highly efficient spell.

As I said earlier the 1st level feature on its own is not terrible and that is the only one of those 4 that gives access to HM.

The other 3 are terrible though and putting them in there is poor class design.

Which is perfectly fine as your opinion. I only really agree with you that the 20th level ability is bad design. The 13th level ability is just odd to me, I don't think it is bad as much as it just doesn't seem terribly relevant.
 

it means more than ‘are still mechanically supported but are too weak to make any sense’ however

The classes were improved. If you insist on using unimproved classes because of whatever specific reasoning you have, you don't get to complain that the improved versions are better.

WotC supposedly did when they emphasized compatibility that much, those who want to mix and match do, which according to polls is about half of the players using 2024

And they can! You can absolutely play a 2014 Monk next to a 2024 Monk. If that makes you feel bad because you chose to use that option, that doesn't mean that the 2024 Monk shouldn't exist. Because for us monk fans the 2024 Monk is a breath of fresh air after how utterly terrible the old monk was.

WoTC didn't offer backwards compatibility because everything was equally balanced between the old versions and the new versions. They offered it because they knew people would not want to change.

It isn't power creep that the Monk with better rules and implementation is better than the monk without, that is just change. The difference is "is the gap between the lowest performing classes and the highest performing classes bigger or smaller" and since the "weakest" 2024 class is the rogue, which is much improved from the 2014 version, and the strongest wizard exploits are either the same or curtailed.... there really isn't a strong case for any power creep.
 

WoTC didn't offer backwards compatibility because everything was equally balanced between the old versions and the new versions. They offered it because they knew people would not want to change.
I think they actually mostly offered it to stop people getting extremely annoyed that they'd bought a bunch of books, especially adventures they hadn't run yet, and they were now being invalidated.

That was one of the big annoyances with 4E - an awful lot of people had gone pretty hard on adventures and products for 3.XE, but particularly adventures, including 3PP ones like Paizo. Then 4E comes along, and because the system is different enough, all those adventures are 100% useless for it. I know DMs who that alone was enough to make them pretty appalled with 4E.

And it hasn't been true every edition with D&D - 1E adventures were largely usable without modification in 2E, for example. That's what they're doing here.
 

The classes were improved. If you insist on using unimproved classes because of whatever specific reasoning you have, you don't get to complain that the improved versions are better.
is improved an euphemism for more powerful?

If things are considerably more powerful when the goal was compatibility then I can complain whether I take them or not, as it runs counter to actual compatibility, ie using them alongside each other rather than both of them just having somewhat similar mechanics

And they can! You can absolutely play a 2014 Monk next to a 2024 Monk. If that makes you feel bad because you chose to use that option, that doesn't mean that the 2024 Monk shouldn't exist. Because for us monk fans the 2024 Monk is a breath of fresh air after how utterly terrible the old monk was.
but it does disagree with compatibility if this is about power and not just better design

It isn't power creep that the Monk with better rules and implementation is better than the monk without, that is just change. The difference is "is the gap between the lowest performing classes and the highest performing classes bigger or smaller" and since the "weakest" 2024 class is the rogue, which is much improved from the 2014 version, and the strongest wizard exploits are either the same or curtailed.... there really isn't a strong case for any power creep.
only if you measure power creep as the strongest class not being stronger, a mixed group is still stronger
 

Power creep is table-dependent.

If the game increases the average power level without increasing the maximum possible power level, that's only power creep at a table where players aren't interested in optimization. At a table where all players optimize their characters, increasing just the average power level does nothing, because no one is playing a character of average power.
Only if one looks just at the table level.

However, other than at that specific table, it doesn't matter.

What matters is the overall collective effect on all tables taken together.
 

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