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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5505903" data-attributes="member: 78116">Because the original PHB was very broken. This is the entire point and why your "power creep" argument doesn't actually apply to what happened. In addition to this you aren't actually reading what I wrote fully, because the argument about "adjusting" was that they knew everything their characters could do. They had their thing they would do, they were fully familiar with rules subtleties like immediate reactions/interrupts and similar. In other words they knew what they wanted to do and how they intended to actually do it.If you take a group of new players, threw them into epic tier - yeah they would struggle simply due to the complexity of epic tier (another common complaint, arguably for another thread though). That's expected. Take the same group of people over months of playing the same character they know inside and out and they perform significantly better. This isn't even my opinion, this is a pure statement of fact that if you do something for longer and are more familiar with it - you do better with it.And yet on CharOp on the official forums time and time again new stuff is constantly still compared to options in the original PHB.You should ponder that.What relevance does early heroic have to do with paragon and epic play? Because it doesn't.You are aware that they re-released Keep on the Shadowfell with a free PDF that heavily tones him down right? That the same original encounter is still actually dangerous to PCs with current rules. This is why the encounter is nowhere near as absurd, because they have provided errata via the free web release.Which isn't actually the case at all.Which doesn't matter in this argument because of the argument I already made before. Give PCs a consistent time in epic tier to sort out how their characters work and the experience is entirely different. If I throw a bunch of people who don't know how to swim into the deepest part of the pool do I declare the pool dangerous? Or is the fact they didn't know how to swim yet the more important point?Quite frankly, my experience in running 2 entire epic campaigns matters a lot more in this argument than a random one shot encounter in terms of consistency.Answer me honestly: What do you think a random one shot epic encounter actually means in this argument? Compared with months of play, with varied levels across a whole tier, with many more monsters and hours more playtime? Because my experience with epic tier problems and how ineffective monsters at that time wasn't just my own.Heroic adventures have very little relevance to the debate here - early paragon is the same. When you get to around mid paragon and then epic, that's when PCs started to really pull ahead of monsters easily. Especially because most of the PHB EDs especially are actually some of the best in the game and still are.I have actually already addressed this and already stated what I did.Wow, so let's summarise:Your ONE epic encounter experience CLEARLY proves that there was no problem. Clearly months of play with the same players building their characters over time and getting very used to how the tier of play works is ENTIRELY not more valid than one random epic tier encounter.Apparently I don't know how to make epic tier combats challenging - <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/280134-running-epic-tier-campaigns.html" target="_blank">despite handing out widely regarded advice on precisely how to do so. Whoops</a>! Actually I can make epic combats challenging - what I got out of completely terrible monsters to challenge the most ridiculously char Oped style party by the end of that campaign was not easy. But this argument pretty much fails spectacularly so let's continue.Are my PCs tactical geniuses? No, they aren't but they had very solid tactics and employed them. But this is because pre-MM3 simple tactics would effectively win you a combat quite often. You didn't need to be a tactical genius to know come and get it would lock down most creatures next to the fighter, then just hit them with AoE powers that hit enemies only (or let you deliberately avoid the fighter). Considering other DMs have similar experiences to me, posted in the thread I linked and there are certainly other examples - you are quite literally one of the only people I've seen claim monsters pre-splat books were somehow better. No, they really weren't. They were terribly designed at paragon/epic from day 1 and there is no point in being in denial over this.This isn't actually true if you read what I wrote. I said that the party finally got pulled back by MM3 - but they were also hit by the errata. Yet time and time again I've pointed out the new monster design of MM3 and beyond was the key difference.If the errata fixed the broken elements - yet the game did not become harder - what does that tell you? It tells me the stuff that got errata'ed wasn't the true problem. Of course it's easy to say that now but back then, all I was hoping for was more errata. It's worth noting that it is still important to mention. I didn't have a warlord at the time, but other parties with warlords got hit by the nerf to lead the attack massively. But again, the Warlord - PHB class. Lead the Attack... where is that? Oh! The PLAYERS HAND BOOK.In some ways, I actually think some of the errata isn't so needed anymore (but that's another argument entirely).Lead the Attack + Deadly Trickster.Enjoy having three (four if you're an elf) rerolls a day and never missing with Lead the Attack - then just never missing anyway making sure every solo battle is 100% trivially. Did I mention that same build will get lead the attack twice a day as well? I didn't? Consider it mentioned.How does that compare with infinite damage and attacks? Or a bloodmage + bloodpulse?How is that not "huge" with a single power you can basically use all day, every day? It's like you don't truly appreciate just how broken the PHB actually was and are viewing it through the rose tinted glasses of all this stuff having the snot beaten out of it by errata.Because it doesn't compare to doing hundreds of points of damage easily with bloodpulse, stunning every monster (or dazing them) in a close burst 20 and granting infinite attacks.And this is why I dismiss your argument because there is quite literally nothing like that in the game now. But there was on release and plenty of it. In one book.Again, there is a REALLY good reason so much errata is in the PHB. Not to mention that because there was only one book with major player options - then later the PHB2 and martial power (IIRC) most of the PCs picked things from the PHB (as they all had this). So most of those broken options came up very frequently, which when PCs only have one book to source from is what you'd expect.<a href="http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19629930/The_Orcuslayer,_or_how_Cascade_of_Blades_broke_4.0_even_3_days_before_it_was_released&post_num=7" target="_blank">You are aware that Character Optimization at the official boards before 4E was even released figured out how to one shot Orcus</a> - the games first level 30+ creature - a ridiculously high percentage of the time with a simple Elven Ranger build don't you?They did that only with the PHB. They did this, before 4Es wider release. Something to think about.This doesn't change the fact that the original characters straight out of the PHB were so powerful they would wipe the floor with them then. I again point to Orcus being trivially one shot by an Elven Ranger by himself. If they had not been errata'ed, they could still probably wipe the floor with the current lot better than everything now with power creep.</blockquote>

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