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.

 

[VHawkwinter]

It finally gave martials options that aren't just - charge, grapple, full attack.

Yes, it does give them more in combat variety than the usual charge; grapple; full-attack. My objection is the encounter powers framework, not the existence of variety. But my many of my friends who really liked fighters didn't like the often supernatural focus of ToB, they wanted their fighters to get variety through like, a realistic HEMA technique system. They complained the encounter powers made them too much like Wizards.

If your game stayed under say level 10, it fixed problem of linear fighter, quadratic wizard.

I always took that problem to be that the martials approach uselessness outside of solving problems with murder. Which ToB IIRC mostly doesn't change. It's not like it's a big book that gives martials options to solve problems without combat, which seems to be the big thing people complain Wizards can do that Fighters cannot.

 

[VHawkwinter]

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.

One time I built a Cleric, traded spontaneous heals for something else (domain spells maybe?), trade turning for the ability to damage undead, and the build was otherwise combat reflexes, dex 16, with a reach weapon, plus summoning feats. Summon lots of low level mobs to be little movement barriers or "hazardous terrain", and hit people with a reach weapon. Buff yourself if there's time.

It was a highly effective combatant, and that was avoiding divine meta magic cheese or nightsticks.

Definitely overtuned relative to fighter, even if you were avoiding exploits.

 

[koumpou]

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.

the most bonkers i have had was with a wizard/fighter/psion on an epic campaign, i had multispell so i could cast two swift actions in a single round then the arcane spellsurge spell that runed any standard action spell into swift action for good measure, so the full round would go, full attack+greater celerity greater swift action for another full attack +temporal acceleration as a swift action to get dazed into it then one enemy cast celerity greater which i countered with my own celerity greater and a full attack then followed by the enemies full attack which got countered by my robilars gambit giving me an attack opportunity for every attack the enemy hit me with. then the enemies round and all that again and again until we run out of wishes/reality revision to pull ourselves back to full hp mid combo