A concern for the creators

[sithramir]

I've been buying the last couple of 3.5 books because I was hoping to do away with the 3.0 books at last and have a nice updated broad set of options to play a world in. I've been happy with a lot of the ideas they put forth but am quite displeased with the "quality".

Now I think they provide excellent quality in terms of "flavor" giving new ideas and options. Don't get me wrong and I'll give my praise now to WotC for all their hard work. However, i've noticed that they seem to just be throwing things without the thoughts of the repercussions of what they are throwing in. Too many unbalanced things just get thrown in again unbalancing all the things I feel they worked to fix.

For instance, the Retributive Amulet. This amulet not only gives 2 Sacred AC that will stack with all the other ac types, it actually halves any melee damage you take. It does this for a mere 56,000 gps. Now, a great deal you say? NO! It actually takes the other half of the damage and returns it to the dealer! It's quite insane.

Now I want to not make this a complete rant and now pose my question to you all. Does anyone else feel like something is wrong? There just seems to be so many abusable things that it becomes very problematic for a DM.

A lot of my players love to "powergame" and so do I as long as we get a good role playing sessoin in still. But, the problem is, that certain things start to ruin the fun in my games. We do all the role playing and then suddenly a battle breaks out and my monsters either get beat down easily by the certain mix of powers or items or destroy the group because I made them able to fight the powergamers but too powerful for the people who made an interesting but less powerful character.

Now maybe a lot of the blame comes to people who make powerful characters and I obviously make up to the others with more role playing options, an adventure where they specifically shine with their unique skills, etc. But it seems too easy to powergame with all the overlooked powers, spells, or PrC's. Some of them just blatantly take the fun out of the game.

Is D&D going in the right direction now? Or is perhaps WoTC and other publishers going overboard in their attempt to please the crowd with bigger better spells, feats, PrC's, etc to make more people buy their books?

 

[Nightfall]

Sith,

My advice just ignore WotC stuff and get Malhavoc Press instead. With BoEM, BoHM and now BoIM, you have enough to please the DMs AND the players.

Oh yeah and Eberron rocks.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

But any DM/GM has the final say on what can and cannot go into his particular campaign/world. If you see certain items, spells, etc. ruining the game for you then don't allow them to exist in your setting. What WoTC provides, as well as other publishers, are tools for our use. Every DM/GM has the full right to modify as they see fit. We are not forced in any way to just accept things as they are presented. Just because something exists doesn't mean it has to be provided by you -- even if the players want it.

If you like power gaming so much, maybe then you need to power up your encounters so that the players don't walk through them like knife through butter.

 

[Anax]

The retributive amulet must be in The Complete Divine, or something? The splatbooks (even in their new hardcover format) have always been a breeding ground for overpowered items and abilities--which is a good reason to treat anything in them as totally optional (assuming you've done something like give blanket permission to have items and powers out of the core books.)

That said, there's a lot of even more overpowered stuff out there. As a whole, I treat anything in the PHB, DMG, and MM as "probably balanced", anything in a campaign setting I'm using as "likely balanced", then take a good close look at things like the Psionics Handbook or Deities and Demigods before deciding if it's generally balanced or not. Anything in the splatbooks, I assume is unbalanced until someone tells me they've looked at something, want to use it, and think it's reasonable. Anything from a third party publisher, I pretty much assume is going to be completely worthless. (This isn't universally true, and some publishers are better than others. But if a player asks me "can I use X from Y book" and I've not even heard of Y book, I'll say "send me email describing it in your own terms, and if that sounds like it might be okay, I'll take a look at the full details and we'll talk about it."


So there are various levels of sanity out there, and the new splatbooks aren't especially worse from what I've seen and heard than the old splatbooks were. There are a lot of neat toys, and things are obviously not playtested nearly as well as the stuff in the core.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The retributive amulet must be in The Complete Divine, or something?

Not in my copy, unless I'm blind. Sithramir, where are you finding this? It doesn't sound familiar to me at all.

 

[Moulin Rogue]

Book of Exalted Deeds?

Wherever it's from, if anyone out there has the Artificer's Handbook it might be interesting to build this amulet under that system and see what the gp cost looks like.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

I believe it's in Book of Exalted Deeds.

 

[Nightfall]

I'm reasonable sure Meepo is right.

 

[Tuzenbach]

WotC isn't interested in perfect products, but sales first. Afterall, it was sales that made "Magic" the driving force which enabled WotC to scoop up D&D like a dried piece of poop.

If a WotC book has "major issues" attached to it, WotC knows this. They put it out on purpose so people would want "fixed" versions of what they just spent $38 on. It's all marketing, unfortunately, and far too many of us care too much about gaming to NOT buy into the scheme.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

WotC isn't interested in perfect products, but sales first. Afterall, it was sales that made "Magic" the driving force which enabled WotC to scoop up D&D like a dried piece of poop.

If a WotC book has "major issues" attached to it, WotC knows this. They put it out on purpose so people would want "fixed" versions of what they just spent $38 on. It's all marketing, unfortunately, and far too many of us care too much about gaming to NOT buy into the scheme.

That's an "interesting" interpretation.

And by interesting, I mean really, really wrong and paranoid.

Not just wrong and paranoid, but actually insulting to the WotC design team. Disagreeing with their rules is one thing, as that's a matter of taste. Pointing out something that is outright incorrect is fine to, as every designer makes mistakes sometimes.

But to say it's wrong, and that it was done on purpose is to say that the WotC design team is dishonest and creatively and morally bankrupt - and that's very, very far over the line.

Patrick Y.