[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Thurbane]

I think that saying CPH wasn't balanced against the game is a little extreme. Yes, it had the disclaimer that the specialty priests in there wouldn't be as outright powerful as the PHB cleric, but I don't think that makes the book inherently unbalanced, as such.

I actually found this to be one of my favorite supplements - it meant those "plain vanilla" clerics who all had the exact same powers and spell selection regardless of whether they worshipped the God of War or the God of Field Mice gave way to priests who had distinctive abilities based on who or what they worshipped. Actually, specialty priests are something I really miss from 2E. Unless you you take a prestige class or variant base class, all 3.X clerics are again "plain vanilla" again, with the exception of their domains.

But I digress, that's waaay offtopic for this thread.

Are the examples you give really any worse than some 3.X supplements - Divine Metamagic, Warlocks and some Psionic classes and abilities come to mind as poorly balanced against core only, IMHO.

 

[Glyfair]

Many of the people who comment on said previous editions, detractors or otherwise, do so because many players simply dropped the game with the advent of 2E, so they can't comment from experience.

<Raises Hand>

Now, I was drifting away from D&D throughout the AD&D period (from the PHB release to 2Es release). I was hoping that 2E would change the things that were causing me to drift from D&D, but it didn't. There were things I liked (such as the general idea of priest's spheres), but the stuff I didn't like was either not changed, or not changed enough. It took 3E for that to happen.

 

[Hussar]

I think that saying CPH wasn't balanced against the game is a little extreme. Yes, it had the disclaimer that the specialty priests in there wouldn't be as outright powerful as the PHB cleric, but I don't think that makes the book inherently unbalanced, as such.

I actually found this to be one of my favorite supplements - it meant those "plain vanilla" clerics who all had the exact same powers and spell selection regardless of whether they worshipped the God of War or the God of Field Mice gave way to priests who had distinctive abilities based on who or what they worshipped. Actually, specialty priests are something I really miss from 2E. Unless you you take a prestige class or variant base class, all 3.X clerics are again "plain vanilla" again, with the exception of their domains.

But I digress, that's waaay offtopic for this thread.

Are the examples you give really any worse than some 3.X supplements - Divine Metamagic, Warlocks and some Psionic classes and abilities come to mind as poorly balanced against core only, IMHO.

Add to Complete Priests, Faiths and Avatars. An FR supplement that allowed priests to wear armor, use swords and cast fireball as a priest spell, while being able to summon fire elementals at 5th level that never disobey the summoner (Priest of Kossuth). How's that for unbalanced?

The Complete Priest took a reasonably balanced class, the cleric, and nerfed it into the ground. Want to wear armor and use a mace? Ok, you get two major and three minor spheres. Wooo.

Complete Ranger allowed me to create the Beastmaster - within a level or so I had an entire ARMY of animals trotting around with me. The Complete Wizard gave witches a death ability with no save as well as a dominate monster ability with unlimited uses and no save. All the witch had to do was point at something.

That's off the top of my head.

Compared to kits like that, nothing in 3e comes even close from any single book. Sure, you have Hulking Hurlers, Pun Pun and whatnot, but, they require several books and some pretty crooked interpretations of the rules. The number of classes and PrC's that are truly broken can be counted in single digit numbers. Not bad considering there are over a thousand PrC's from WOTC alone.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

there are over a thousand PrC's from WOTC alone.

And this perfectly encapsulates one of the three main reasons that people cite to explain why they don't play 3e.

 

[Ranes]

Wow! People don't play 3.x because of the number of PrCs? I don't get it. I mean, I don't care much for PrCs but I also just disallow them, as is my perogative. Over a thousand, eh?

"We encourage you, as the DM, to tightly limit the prestige classes available in your campaign." DMG 3.5, p176

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Nah, it's because of the sheer volume of "official" material and the insane expense incurred in obtaining it.

(I do understand the counterarguments against that, and I realise the vanilla d20 fantasy system is arguably free; don't shoot the messenger.)

 

[Numion]

And this perfectly encapsulates one of the three main reasons that people cite to explain why they don't play 3e.

Doesn't sound plausible. I've played in Core Only - No PrCs campaign, and it worked like a charm. Why would anyone feel the need to buy everything from WotC?

And care to explain the other two 'main' reasons? Wait, lemme guess, one is 100000000s of feats? Is the third .. spells? Monsters? Magic items? Core classes? What?

 

[WizarDru]

Nah, it's because of the sheer volume of "official" material and the insane expense incurred in obtaining it.

(I do understand the counterarguments against that, and I realise the vanilla d20 fantasy system is arguably free; don't shoot the messenger.)

I'm not sure what the message is, exactly. Are you saying that people are listing 'too much optional material' as a reason they don't want to play D&D? I didn't know stuff like Oriental Adventures and Magic of Incarnum were driving people away from the game system.

 

[brehobit]

You know what I say to that:

It's Still D&D To Me
(with apologies to Billy Joel)

​

Wow, that was amazing.... Best laugh in days....

Mark

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

And care to explain the other two 'main' reasons? Wait, lemme guess, one is 100000000s of feats? Is the third .. spells? Monsters? Magic items? Core classes? What?

Well, feats and other stacking modifiers, the amount of prep time it takes to create a character or NPC in general; sometimes this is linked with irritation about the amount of page space occupied by statblocks.

The third is AoO's and/or the amount of time it takes to resolve a combat -- same objection, imo.