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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
D&D 3E Design: The Unbalanced Cleric
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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 7903580" data-attributes="member: 58197"><p>Caster cheese in 3E was not the fault of splatbooks (though they certainly did not help). It was quite possible to massively cheese a plain-vanilla PHB cleric (or druid, or wizard) with no more than spell selection and feat picks.</p><p></p><p>Much like wizards, the path to the Dark Side begins by throwing out the conventional idea about how you "should" play such a character (healing spells for clerics, blasting spells for wizards). Instead, one loads up on stackable buffs, "save-or-lose" spells, battlefield control, and utility magic. Because 3E casters had so many spell slots and no limits on their ability to stack ongoing effects, their power could easily spiral out of control as they went up in level. And on top of that, they could make cheap consumable magic items to supplement their regular slots, using item creation feats... which, again, were plain-vanilla PHB stuff.</p><p></p><p>I don't blame the designers for this - they were rebuilding the whole system more or less from the ground up, and they did a pretty fair job of balancing the spells they expected people to use. Healbot clerics and blaster wizards are decently balanced in 3E. But there were definitely some lessons learned for 4E and 5E there.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 7903580, member: 58197"] Caster cheese in 3E was not the fault of splatbooks (though they certainly did not help). It was quite possible to massively cheese a plain-vanilla PHB cleric (or druid, or wizard) with no more than spell selection and feat picks. Much like wizards, the path to the Dark Side begins by throwing out the conventional idea about how you "should" play such a character (healing spells for clerics, blasting spells for wizards). Instead, one loads up on stackable buffs, "save-or-lose" spells, battlefield control, and utility magic. Because 3E casters had so many spell slots and no limits on their ability to stack ongoing effects, their power could easily spiral out of control as they went up in level. And on top of that, they could make cheap consumable magic items to supplement their regular slots, using item creation feats... which, again, were plain-vanilla PHB stuff. I don't blame the designers for this - they were rebuilding the whole system more or less from the ground up, and they did a pretty fair job of balancing the spells they expected people to use. Healbot clerics and blaster wizards are decently balanced in 3E. But there were definitely some lessons learned for 4E and 5E there. [/QUOTE]
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