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

[Maxperson]

I voted “Yes”, mainly because of the sheer volume of spells that were available for the PHB’s full casters.

What. Just because my 20th level wizards could, even if totally surprised, cast Celerity or Greater Celerity as an immediate action to gain a standard action and possibly move, use Sudden Maximize on Time Stop, spend the first of my 5 rounds dazed in said Time Stop in order to not be affected in actual combat, then spend 4 rounds casting spells to prep for the fight...

If needed I could get the hell out of Dodge, or cast three defensive spells and then on the 5th and final round if I had room, I would often cast Summon Elemental Monolith.

The Celerity spells were awesome. There's nothing like going first no matter what as a wizard.

 

[Horwath]

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.

we had simple solution back in the days for bad and really bad feats.

Really bad feats: you could take 3 of those for a single feat slot
bad feats: 2 for 1 slot
rest: 1 for 1 as normal.

 

[Argyle King]

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.


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).

It's been a while, but I vaguely remember the issue being that I had an ability where I made a performance check; then any spell caster that could hear me had to beat my performance check with a spell check to be able to cast. I can't remember how (it'sbeen nearly 20 years,) but I think this also eventually also applied to spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, etc. So, effectively, I could cancel enemy spellcasters, draconic breath, etc.

Later, I also picked up an ability (I think through a feat) that creatures normally immune to mind effects (i.e. Undead) were still influenced by my music.

We played into Epic levels for that campaign. At a certain point, I could even effect deities (normal immune to mind control) with my abilities.

 

[Argyle King]

What. Just because my 20th level wizards could, even if totally surprised, cast Celerity or Greater Celerity as an immediate action to gain a standard action and possibly move, use Sudden Maximize on Time Stop, spend the first of my 5 rounds dazed in said Time Stop in order to not be affected in actual combat, then spend 4 rounds casting spells to prep for the fight...

If needed I could get the hell out of Dodge, or cast three defensive spells and then on the 5th and final round if I had room, I would often cast Summon Elemental Monolith.

The Celerity spells were awesome. There's nothing like going first no matter what as a wizard.

For extra goodness, you set up a Demiplane where time flows differently.

Time Stop --> Teleport to Demiplane --> Full Rest --> Return to encounter with a full compliment of spells

 

[Maxperson]

Just a reminder 3.5 was so bad a single book could power creep all on itself, without interacting with others. The Muscle Wizard exploit to get Infinite Strength is entierly within Book of Vile Darkness - 1 level of cancer mage, followed by contracting Festering Anger disease.

So don't put that disease into the game with a Cancer Mage.

 

[Maxperson]

Nevermind.