D&D General D&D 3.5 - splatbook power creep or no?

[Not a Decepticon]

If it's to be a D&Dlike, a 3.x D&Dlike is the main one I would have interest in playing. I might also consider 2.5 Forgotten Realms, just because I've never tried 2e with all the splat books and I like Forgotten Realms, out of curiosity. But plain AD&D and B/X and OSE didn't really do it for me any more than the other ones. Better than 4e and 5e I suppose.

Otherwise though, give me something like a nice GURPS, Mythras, Rolemaster 4e, or Shadowrun 4e.

But I suspect we probably have little if any overlap in games we enjoy.

All I know my experiences with 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e were so bad they effectively put me out of the hobby for nearly a decade.

Or just pick the books that you like, and remove one or two problem items within them.

But again, it means having to throughfully research every book for problem items, which vastly increases my work as a DM in a system that already expects DM to do a lot of work.

 

[Tigris]

Curious, does your answer to the poll vary across those two interpretations?

In other words, was there both power creep due to some options being more powerful than the core books, as well as significant optimization improvement for whatever reason, including more flexibility like Druids getting new forms to wild shape into.

I did not answer the poll because for me the poll question and the thread name are different.


For me:

1. No there was no powercreep, as per powercreep definition, since later options were in general not more powerfull than original ones.

2. Yes because there where more options, naturally overall power did increase. (But the difference is way smaller than between a PHB druid and monk).

 

[Maxperson]

Then I have now to go through every book and ban all things t hat could lead to broken combos like this one, tedious and unfun job.

Not really. One simple announcement in session 0 about disallowing broken uber combos like Pun-Pun and the Cancer Mage thing and they'll know that if they try it, it will fail. Then you don't have to go through anything. You just nix stuff that they try, if they're the kind of people who would make a bad faith attempt at doing it anyway.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

So, catching up with the thread, here is how I would put it: the problem with the supplement treadmill does not stop at power creep or the mere necessity of system mastery. There is role creep as well. Core already had broken, invasive full casters such as the druid, but the supplement line made class-role annexation easier and easier: the best barbarian is a druid, the best paladin is a cleric, the best gish is a prestige-class scaffold instead of, say, a duskblade. Straightforward archetypes become bait for people who do not know better. Worse, this is often not even recognized as a design failure. Quite a few posts are openly delighted by it, sharing anecdotes about how assorted mechanical doodads with no coherent vision behind them happened to combine into a win condition.

For a clear-eyed DM, that is the real lesson. The edition was not guided by a strong enough vision to justify treating every printed option as presumptively fit for play. That matters more than whether later material was, on average, stronger than the PHB. A DM has every right to pick, choose, rewrite, and refuse material, because at least the DM is trying to preserve a coherent game.

 

[GrimCo]

I did not remember those Ex powers. But most of the rest of what you mention is limited to swordsage, right?

Majority of maneuvers and stances are Ex. Only few of them are Su and those that are Su, are on the Swordsage discipline list. Desert wind and Shadow Hand if i'm not mistaken. It's been over decade since i last played any of the martial adepts, so i would need to check it out. Teleport one is Swordsage only. it's 50ft, but you can spam it ad infinitum out of combat. Stance that gives you blindsense and scent is Ex. With feats, you can get access to disciplines that are class exclusive.

Utility comes from creative use outside of the combat. It's solid buff, but to be honest, martials had very low floor when it comes to out of combat utility.

Now, i completely acknowledge that Bo9S is heavily inspired by anime and wuxia. But, as fan of both, have zero issues with it. It's one thing that 5e martials lack. They went lazy way and just added subclasses with spells, instead of abilities that are borderline supernatural but aren't outright spells.

On the other hand, Crusader was probably most interesting of the bunch. They went fully into whole "you have what God gives you divine inspiration" with how they get manouvers. You prepare deck of them, shuffle, then draw 2-3 at the start of the encounter and draw one each turn. When you expand one, it goes back into deck. Even if you only have 5 prepared and combat lasts 10 rounds, as you spend, they get back into deck and you draw, so they are self replenishing with no cost (except you don't know what you'll get, but Crusader has some of the most powerful ones, so whatever you draw, it's probably at least good).

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Not really. One simple announcement in session 0 about disallowing broken uber combos like Pun-Pun and the Cancer Mage thing and they'll know that if they try it, it will fail. Then you don't have to go through anything. You just nix stuff that they try, if they're the kind of people who would make a bad faith attempt at doing it anyway.

this requires me to have extensive knowledge of the system to know about all of them, which requires much deeper knowledge of the rules and/or association with community that does this research. Which leads to one of my personal gripes with 3.5 - how the game is unplayable unless you know every nook and cranny of the rules. It less rewards system master and more punishes lack of it.

 

[Maxperson]

this requires me to have extensive knowledge of the system to know about all of them, which requires much deeper knowledge of the rules and/or association with community that does this research. Which leads to one of my personal gripes with 3.5 - how the game is unplayable unless you know every nook and cranny of the rules. It less rewards system master and more punishes lack of it.

Look. You don't have to like 3e. A lot of people didn't, but you are making a mountain out of a molehill with this particular complaint. You need zero knowledge. Why? Because...

Player: "So I'm playing a Cancer Mage and now I have this disease(can't remember the name) that gives me infinite strength."

DM: "No."

It's not like they can sneak it past you and into play. They have to tell you what is happening first and you just say......................no.

Players aren't allowed to break the game unless everyone has agreed to play that way.

 

[VHawkwinter]

All I know my experiences with 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e were so bad they effectively put me out of the hobby for nearly a decade.

I'm sorry you had a bad time with them. I'm not saying you need to like them. I'm simply saying I didn't enjoy the other D&D editions.

But again, it means having to throughfully research every book for problem items, which vastly increases my work as a DM in a system that already expects DM to do a lot of work.

I wouldn't advise trying to dig through the massive collection of 3.X books for an inexperienced 3e GM at all.

Yes, I have a pretty extensive list of what I would include and not, because I ran some manner of 3.X (not exclusively, ran other stuff too) for all of the 19 years it was in print through Wizards or Paizo (in 2008 I ran the PF1 Playtest). But there's no reason you should feel compelled to build your own list to match out of the gate if you were going to run 3.x. (Or my outline for a more extensive rework)

Which is to say: A new GM could start from someone else's curated list (mine being one such example; I'm sure countless other people have made lists of what they consider to be 'Just The Good Stuff', and they're probably all somewhat different to match different tastes).

But you could also start with a 'Just the good stuff' patched PHB/DMG without the expansion content. Maybe PHB + 3.Y houserule document + look at one of those 'problem spells in the PHB' or 'feats to points' type lists - I've seen many over the years, including in ENWorld threads. Eclipse: The Codex Persona (shareware) is a reasonable one for Feats to Points, and you could easily keep 3e's classes while using Eclipse instead of feats, and use 3.Y (free houserule document) to give you AD&D type spellcasting. That would remove the 'trap options' in the feats, while narrowing the gap between classes substantially (Fighter could still use more skills and ranks, and Monk would still be a bit weak, but class balance would be pretty reasonable there and it's a small amount of content). That is a much smaller amount of work if you're wanting to improve the balance of 3e without introducing a mountain of books to curate.

3.x doesnt need to be a mountainous curation task for a newbie, but it does have its problems. I prefer it over the other D&Ds in spite of those problems, due to this or that reason which varies for each alternative to D&D, of why I liked playing/running the alternative less or not at all.

But if you're fully happy with some other edition or system, there's nothing wrong with just playing what you like.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Look. You don't have to like 3e. A lot of people didn't, but you are making a mountain out of a molehill with this particular complaint. You need zero knowledge.

Why such odd way to phrase it, as if I was deliberatelly bashing 3.5?

Player: "So I'm playing a Cancer Mage and now I have this disease(can't remember the name) that gives me infinite strength."

DM: "No."

It's not like they can sneak it past you and into play. They have to tell you what is happening first and you just say......................no.

Players aren't allowed to break the game unless everyone has agreed to play that way.

That requires me to understand every nook and cranny of rules to know that when player says a combo they do it is actually broken and not all of them are as simple and obvious as Cancer Mage with Festering Anger.

 

[VHawkwinter]

The edition was not guided by a strong enough vision to justify treating every printed option as presumptively fit for play. That matters more than whether later material was, on average, stronger than the PHB.

Even with a cohesive vision, there's just too much content to assume it'll all play nice together.

A DM has every right to pick, choose, rewrite, and refuse material, because at least the DM is trying to preserve a coherent game.

I think in this regard 3.x is like GURPS. Trying to throw in everything is just a bad idea. Start with a small core of stuff you like and slowly expand it over time.