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

[Alzrius]

The designers wanted players to feel better when they picked better feats, spells, and prcs.

It also meant yhey wont be criticized for making OP or UP product.

No, that's a myth that's sprung up around people fundamentally misunderstanding Monte Cook's now-infamous "Ivory Tower Design" comment.

 

[the Jester]

Not just yes, but holy cow, yes.

Especially in the later books- the baseline fighter could not compete with a bunch of the other classes. Many spells in the PH were rendered obsolete by better, later options. Feats... you won't see a feat as terrible as Dodge in any later books. And so on.

It was not just a wider variety of options. Many of them were straight up better options than the base game offered.

 

[the Jester]

About "late 3.5 material was 4e playtest" well as far as I am aware this is only true for the book of 9 swords, I found no officia statement about other books where this was the case.

Check out Dungeonscape. I never saw an announcement that it was testing 4e ideas, but it is very obvious. It has incredible encounter building advice (that was only partially ported into 4e), the first iteration of creature types, 4e-style traps (encounter traps).... all stuff that 4e modified by release, but basically made it in.

 

[GrimCo]

cleric was a powerhouse, luckily, most people found it boring or played them as a healbot, so in most instances it didn't break much.
Most usages for cleric I was was a 1 level dip for domains and devotion feats powered by turn undead.

but probably worse was wizard+incantatrix+persistent spell+metamagic effect+"craft +20 spellcraft item".

Clerics as healbots were mostly due to expectations from other players at the table. I played it once like that, found it boring. Rest of my Clerics, and there were quite a few of them, were melee powerhouses.

Cleric with divine metamagic and persistent spells are menace by level 8 with some planing. You can rock for 24h Vigor, Righteus Might and Divine favour. Add some Nightsicks for good effect and CODzilla is born. There were few other builds for melee clerics and they all made better front liners than fighters. And you could heal if you really wanted ( or just buy CLW wand and give it to bard so he can be useful )

Like I said, big 3 (wizard, druid, cleric) were OP from the start. Splatbooks with few gold nugget options just made them stronger. Sad thing is, in 3.5, there isn't a single tier 1 martial class. At best, they are strong tier 3 classes and those are martial adepts from Bo9S.

 

[Tigris]

No, that's a myth that's sprung up around people fundamentally misunderstanding Monte Cook's now-infamous "Ivory Tower Design" comment.

Thank you! Thats exactly also what I wanted to post.

This was a lit more about situational feats than msking bad fests by choice...

 

[Minigiant]

No, that's a myth that's sprung up around people fundamentally misunderstanding Monte Cook's now-infamous "Ivory Tower Design" comment.

Thank you! Thats exactly also what I wanted to post.

This was a lit more about situational feats than msking bad fests by choice...

I didnt say they made bad feats and spells on purpose.

I said they made tiered feats and spells on purpose.

Low tier feats and spells have a purpose. They however weren't good for most campaigns and tables.

The point is they put the monster feats and the niche campaign feats in the same bucket. And they acknowledged the fun of learning which ones fit your campaign AND having access to them.

So there wasnt really power creep by design.

 

[Argyle King]

This came up in another thread, and I need to check my memory since it's been literal decades.

My memories of 3.5 was that the player-facing options in the splatbooks really added power when someone was trying to optimize. Especially some prestige classes. This isn't saying all the material was more powerful, but some of it definitely could be either used or cherry-picked.

Someone else mentioned that all the most powerful options were in the core books (so that includes the Mystic Theurge and other DMG content, not just the PHB).

I really remember the splatbooks adding to power creep, and that someone intentionally optimizing a character with full access to the splatbooks would be able to create someone significantly more powerful than if limited to just the core books.

What are your thoughts?

Thoughts:

I agree with what was said in the other thread about some of the most egregious 3.5 options being in the PHB.

However, I also agree that splat books offered some broken options. (Though, to be fair, some of the splat books also contained options that sounded cool but actually sucked in play.)

I remember being banned from playing a 3.5 Bard anymore because of taking the Seeker of the Song PrC.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This came up in another thread, and I need to check my memory since it's been literal decades.

My memories of 3.5 was that the player-facing options in the splatbooks really added power when someone was trying to optimize. Especially some prestige classes. This isn't saying all the material was more powerful, but some of it definitely could be either used or cherry-picked.

Someone else mentioned that all the most powerful options were in the core books (so that includes the Mystic Theurge and other DMG content, not just the PHB).

I really remember the splatbooks adding to power creep, and that someone intentionally optimizing a character with full access to the splatbooks would be able to create someone significantly more powerful than if limited to just the core books.

What are your thoughts?

My thought is that the question asked here, and the statement to which I responded, are two different things. Or, at least, I think a LOT of the people who respond to this question are not answering the question you intended to be asking.

Because reading this, it sounds like: Is there ANY amount of power gained by ANY characters by using splatbooks? And of course the answer to that is "yes" and should be "yes". Anyone who says "no" is either not entirely sane, not thinking logically, or having an agenda.

But the thing I said, and which is not what is asked here, is that MOST characters DO NOT get meaningful power from MOST options in splatbooks. Like the overpowered things are, at best, maybe 10% of the total content. You have to trawl through a dozen different books to assemble enough things for it to be more powerful than options from the PHB. Is it possible? Most certainly! The Planar Shepherd actually manages to out-do straight Druid, for example; it is one of the only prestige classes to do so.

That's not the same, though, as saying that most splats were plagued with massive power creep, which is the claim I originally responded to negatively.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thoughts:

I agree with what was said in the other thread about some of the most egregious 3.5 options being in the PHB.

However, I also agree that splat books offered some broken options. (Though, to be fair, some of the splat books also contained options that sounded cool but actually sucked in play.)

The single most powerful feats in all of 3.5e--Leadership and Natural Spell--are both available in the PHB. Leadership is the single most banned feat, period.

But, just as you say, there absolutely, unquestionably are features in later books which are more powerful than the average power level of things in the PHB. Nobody should be surprised by this.

I remember being banned from playing a 3.5 Bard anymore because of taking the Seeker of the Song PrC.

The hilarious thing is that that isn't even the most powerful thing a 3.5e Bard could do. It's far weaker than a Bard/Lyric Thaumaturge/Sublime Chord, and that's not even the MOST optimized thing. And, yes, many of these things do use components from other books.

But anything except the most absolutely juiced, bent-rules, ridiculous nonsense will never make a hyper-optimized Bard more powerful than a competently-optimized Wizard using only material from the core books (PHB and DMG, as some PrCs only appear in the DMG).

 

[Horwath]

The single most powerful feats in all of 3.5e--Leadership

heh, Leadership is like nuclear weapons, either all got that feat, or we agree that none will take it.

and Natural Spell--are both available in the PHB.

Luckily we all liked PHB2 version of druid that explicitly prohibits use of Natural spell feat.
and honestly, I think that to date, it's the best version of Wild shape in any edition.