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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ValhallaGH" data-source="post: 4996455" data-attributes="member: 41187">I find myself in pretty serious disagreement.  For a couple of reasons.1) Iron Heroes: that book ramped up PC power to the point that for the first 10 levels, the party had to be considered at least one level higher when designing encounters.  Otherwise, things died too quickly to be fun fighting.  (Example: A 2nd level character that, on a critical hit using all damage boosting options and rolling maximum on dice, dealt 152 damage.  That's enough to one-shot some CR 12 monsters.  At level 2.)  After level 10 the power curves lined up again and you could treat them as a fairly normal D&D party of their level (although one that lacked a Cleric / Druid).Next to Iron Heroes, Trailblazer is a bunch of puppies pretending to be dire wolves.2) Other than a small boost to low-level survivability* (the party can actually fight an appropriate number of orcs without at least one PC death), the actual power level hasn't been increased.  The spells are the same, and the feat options are less broken.  Multi-classing has been smoothed, and all the classes are closer across the entire power curve, but the curve itself is just about the same.  What few differences exist are covered by the changed experience progression table (especially the encounter budgeting table, which is awesomely effective).3) The main increases in PC power, in D&D 3.5, are in the spells available as the characters progress.  (I refused to see this for my first few years of play, but now I understand.)  Trailblazer uses the exact same spells as 3.5, and access is gained at the same rate as the Wizard.  Further, multiclass casters do not gain spell slots from multiple classes; all their spell slots must be divided amongst their various casting traditions.  If anything, this actually reduces the power of spellcasters in Trailblazer; since they push the power curve higher and faster than any other PC class, this (very slightly) reigns in said power curve.4) The last big point of PC growth is magic items.  Trailblazer removes (or recommends the removal of) most of the PC item creation ability, limiting players to what the DM makes explicitly available.  This is a moderate power reduction, preventing the party from having highly unusual items with powers that are difficult to counter without excessive DM fiat.  Something of which I approve.Overall, I'd say that any flaws with Trailblazer have to lie within the rules that they are modifying, not within the work of Wulf and Glass.  Which is why I recommended the TB monk to the OP.*I've been treating the Con score hp as a one-time bonus to total hp, unmodified by later changes to Con.  This is simpler and reinforces the low-level survivability that is the stated intent of the bonus.  Used that way it is both simple and effective.</blockquote>

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