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

[TwoSix]

Link please?
(Couldn’t find it.)

 

[Alzrius]

Link please?
(Couldn’t find it.)

I believe it's the "black book beta" release of his Legends & Labyrinths game:

Legends & Labyrinths – Black Book Beta

To pull something of a silver lining out of the 8-Bit Funding version of Legends & Labyrinths getting a final axe to the head (as painful as that remains for me): I am now free to share the Black

thealexandrian.net

 

[Stalker0]

There's never really down time.

Adding "in your campaign".


Many campaigns have downtime. Hell the archetypal fantasy LOTR has downtime where characters rest and recuperate. It is perfectly fine to setup a plot that is non-stop 24/365 action. It is also perfectly fine to have a plot that takes place in ebbs and flows over the course of months and years instead of days and weeks.

So again, the fact that one of these "very reasonable campaign areas" breaks the game was a major problem in 3.5, that the next two editions have spent efforts to address.

 

[Stalker0]

Is that because the game as a whole is broken or because the magic item creation rules are broken? The magic item creation system in 3e was transformational in how 3e D&D could be played compared to AD&D.

Its mainly just high levels in general. High level 3.5 is extremely broken in many ways.

Now every edition goes off the rails at some point, but I've played (and DMed) high level 3e,4e, and 5e, and I can say this is an area the game has gotten much better at over time. Running high level 5e is still work, but its nothing compared to running high level 3e....and that is a GREAT thing. That's design working as intended, improving the historical issues with the game.

 

[Stalker0]

Use magic device didn't become reliable until mid level. With a 14 charisma and at 5th level, the rogue would have a 50/50 shot of using that wand.

Which if you are using a wand in battle is a big deal. but if your between battles it might not matter a lick. I use the old cure light wounds wand, eh so it takes me a bit longer to heal you up, big deal. Casting a buff, ok it takes another round before we smash in the door and go to work.

Failure for wands is often a non-issue. Not always of course, there are plenty of wands I would never attempt without a very high UMD, but plenty that is no problem.

 

[Stalker0]

No. Not heavy amounts of urgent time pressure. Just the occasional situation arising during the course of any given day, like happens during an RPG session. Once the wizard has sat out multiple sessions or had his scribing ruined by deciding to stop and join the group, the player will self-edit and stop trying to scribe scrolls unless he is assured of that time. Which does occasionally happen.

So what your saying is....DMs should punish players for using their class abilities or feats.

If the default assumption of Dnd is that downtime is so incredibly precious that to allow players more than a few hours of it at a time is "breaking the game"....than why even include magic item creation in the first place? Either make it not cost time, or just remove it.

But it IS in the game, so the assumption is....players should get to use it. Not every moment of every day, but certainly enough to justify its inclusion.

 

[Mecheon]

I've always rejected that argument, because it's quite frankly stupid game play. The wizard, cleric, or druid can do so many different things(but not all at once), that if the player of the spellcaster is going out of his way to cover what the rogue can do instead of doing something else with his limited spell slots, he's just being a jerk and doubling up on coverage in the process.

A smart, thoughtful player isn't going to take spells that invalidate the rogue. He's going to identify actual holes in what the party can do and cover those instead.

Not everyone is smart thoughtful players, though. A class should be viable on its own, you shouldn't have to be dependent on another character feeling merciful and not playing at their full potential. Rogues are a bit of an unfair one to bring up given they touch on the spell system so they can punch a bit above their weight class, I'd moreso look at fighter or monk

A druid can invalidate the existence of the fighter class with its summoned bear. That is a level of power creep that shouldn't exist, and its right there in the PHB. That's why I'm not sure if the splatbooks are the problem. As far as I see? The massive power inbalance is right there at the start, and most of the splatbooks design things between the extremes of 'druid' and 'monk'. Sure there's weaker stuff than Monk (Samurai infamously being as poorly designed as it is and Truenamer just not functioning), but no class really outdoes a stock druid. And sure, there's Rainbow Servant cheese, but you kinda just are so powerful with just stock cleric/druid/wizard alone

Also, having played in and DM'd 3e from the day it came out until late 2019, and to high levels(15-20+) more than a dozen times, I never had trouble challenging parties with high level casters in them, or with keeping the martials having fun at the same time. It took some thought and effort when creating encounters, but it wasn't all that hard to do.

I never experienced a nightmare.

I think you got lucky with your group, because I know of plenty of people who just gave up when it came to 3.5e's monster creation. Even WotC's own adventures weren't built tough enough to handle the full potential of what the three could do

Heck, most of the adventures weren't even prepared for a wizard with Fly on the party

 

[GrimCo]

We always managed just fine without a rogue

We did also. Mostly by me playing bard. 3.5 bard was great "second best at everything" class. 3/4 caster, spontaneus caster, had good spell list, could use wands, had heal spells, 6+int skills, bardic kowledge feature, bardic music, and on top of everything else, it was decent backup fighter with chainshirt+ rapier and shield.

Full classed rogues were pretty rare, but i liked to combine 2 levels of rogue for bunch of skill points, sneak attack and evasion, then warlock rest of the way. Darkness, devils sight, spider climb and then sneak attack with 2wf.

We usually had downtime between sessions. Sometimes even in session, we would finish something, then characters had few weeks "time off". Our DM did run living world, part of it wast that sometimes our characters had stretches of time with nothing to do. Typical campaign lasted few years of in game time.

 

[VHawkwinter]

Link please?
(Couldn’t find it.)

Legends & Labyrinths – Black Book Beta

 

[VHawkwinter]

I believe it's the "black book beta" release of his Legends & Labyrinths game:

Legends & Labyrinths – Black Book Beta

To pull something of a silver lining out of the 8-Bit Funding version of Legends & Labyrinths getting a final axe to the head (as painful as that remains for me): I am now free to share the Black

thealexandrian.net

That's the one I meant, yes.