Examples of Power Creep?

[FireLance]

Overpowered must refer to the base, the core rules without optional material at all.

If I can trip with a spiked chain an improved trip at +4 and enlarge person at +8 then that's a basis to work from. All other things equal that means I'm wining 80% of the time and they're not falling prone 20% (that's the opposed roll math).
If I add Jotunbrund at another +4 then that's a total +12 now. So that's really starting to be a very hefty effect. All other things equal that's a 91% versus a 9%.
If I add a feat called sidestep that allows me to trip then get completely out of the way denying any form of counterattack then we have a problem.

The DM can "adapt" - he can throw really big things, incorporeal, four legged or even all the those combined. But the combination of PC abilities has forced his hand. Many standard MM encounters just aren't up to par with the PC. That's where you begin to draw the line of overpowered. Your characters just stomp all over plain Monster Manual creatures with impunity.

Fair enough, but I don't see this as a problem. As a DM I always adapt the challenges to fit the mix of characters, anyway.

More options simply means that the character gets pretty good at one thing, at the expense of his ability in other areas. Certainly, I can make a great tripper, but how does he do in a grapple? Against flying opponents? Against ranged attackers? Against spellcasters? In my mind, it's just a strategy of narrowing focus for higher payoff at the expense of higher risk. I've found it's generally more efficient to cover all bases, but if a player wants to be really good at one thing, I'll let him, and I'll give him the chance to exercise his schtick, but I can still find other ways to challenge him and the party.

I won't deny that there are some particularly problematic options, like the Frenzied Berserker, the shivering touch spell and over-the-top caster levels for spells such as blasphemy and holy word, and I manage those by just not allowing them.

 

[hero4hire]

Look how many Charging Feats you can stack together to do some god awful damage?

Combine Leap Attack, Powerful Charge, Greater Powerful Charge, Flying Kick. (to name a few) With a Monk

Multi-class to Psychic Warrior throw in some Psionic Feats like Unavoidable Strike to make it a touch attack...You got yourself some serious damage!

Oh and I forgot Psionic Lion's Charge, to use with his Flurry Attack.

 

[Jdvn1]

3.5 is a power creep from 3e.

 

[Darkness]

3.5 is a power creep from 3e.

And 3e is a "power creep" from 2e.

More seriously, it's only power creep if it makes the core (and things from other earlier supplements) less desirable in comparison. 3.5 uses the 3.5 core and supplements, not 3.0.

You could argue that 3.5 is not completely backwards-compatible with 3.0, but that's an unrelated point to the topic at hand.

 

[Jdvn1]

Well, I was joking too.

A lot of people want to run their games like 3e and still have a 3e mindset. It's not a huge difference, but I see the rules meshing a little differently in 3.5.

Anyway, OAD&D is the only true system. Everything else is a power creep.

 

[Krieg]

And 3e is a "power creep" from 2e.

Don't you mean power leap?

 

[Kelleris]

I'm of mixed opinion on this. I do think that the average character power goes up from the core rules when you start using supplements, but it plateaus quickly. After adding 3-4 wide-ranging supplements (say, all the Complete books) to the core rules, I don't think any number of additional supplements done the way they've been doing them will do much more harm. So power creep in supplements, but it levels off quite quickly, and it hasn't been going up since in my estimation.

Still the problem with broken combos, but there's little that can be done about that, and it's already been pointed out that this is not power creep if we're going to speak precisely.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

PRESTIGE CLASSES

a) The best PrC in the DMG is probably the Archmage, although you could make a case for some of the others. The Hulking Hurler tops that, as does the Ur Priest. Evidence of DMG-Warrior-Divine bar raising. However, the bar lowered to DMG or sub-DMG levels with Arcane and Adventurer. Possible creep, but quickly corrected.

b) The average PrCs in the supplements are dragged down considerably by classes that would be sub-par in the first 10 character levels, still more when you actually have to qualify for them. Overall, the supplemental PrCs have a lower average. The warrior types are much better but still sub-par by the time they become available. No creep.

I disagree. Players generally leave behind the lame PrCs and go for powerful ones like the Hulking Hurler, if the DM isn't banning things from the book left and right. (This is what happens when you print too many PrCs... you get a load of crud.) IMO it's "corrected" by the DM banning the broken PrCs.

IMO adding even a few overpowered things (eg Sudden Metamagic, Divine Metamagic, and a messload of broken PrCs) counts as power creep.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Overpowered must refer to the base, the core rules without optional material at all.

If I can trip with a spiked chain an improved trip at +4 and enlarge person at +8 then that's a basis to work from. All other things equal that means I'm wining 80% of the time and they're not falling prone 20% (that's the opposed roll math).
If I add Jotunbrund at another +4 then that's a total +12 now. So that's really starting to be a very hefty effect. All other things equal that's a 91% versus a 9%.
If I add a feat called sidestep that allows me to trip then get completely out of the way denying any form of counterattack then we have a problem.

The DM can "adapt" - he can throw really big things, incorporeal, four legged or even all the those combined. But the combination of PC abilities has forced his hand. Many standard MM encounters just aren't up to par with the PC. That's where you begin to draw the line of overpowered. Your characters just stomp all over plain Monster Manual creatures with impunity.

You can of course bring in bigger nastier monsters, similarly overpowered NPCs that use the same tactics but really, in the end, you're just watching the numbers and number of abilities scale.
Some people love to do exactly that, watch the numbers scale. I don't but to each his own.

You're right, tripping is better with various options included (including, in this case, FR material, which appears to have a slightly stronger average than core in both 3.0 and 3.5). 80/20 is already very nasty - and very optimistic. 91/9 is better, but still very optimistic. Tripping, with a +8 or a +12, is a very powerful technique against human-sized opponents, as it should be - but D&D expects a certain mix of encounters every bit as much as a certain mix of treasures, and those encounters include many creatures that are normally untrippable and are only barely trippable with a maxed-out tripper. Good luck tripping a storm giant, for example, much less a dragon 200 ft. above you.

The fallacy in your argument is that you declare ALL core options to be equal in power and utility and that anything that rises above them is inherently power creep.

A class, feat or race that is better than a substandard core option, or focuses a very specific core option, is not power creep.

A class that rises above the core druid would be a power spike - frankly, I see no evidence that even this has happened. Repeated classes that rose above the core druid and subseqeuntly above each other would be legitimate power creep. That's certainly hasn't happened in 3.5 - a sustained pattern of more powerful options stacking on each other.

We have the hurler, with his limited but extreme powers of rock-chucking, but Complete Arcane didn't trump it with the mental hurler, whose psychic rock attacks are based off his Int score and who also gets full spellcasting progression and 4 sp/level.

In fact, the options you've called "broken" come exclusively from four books - Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, the Miniatures Handbook, and the Player's Guide to Faerun. All "1st generation" 3.5 books. If any real power creep were going on, Complete Adventurer, Races of the Wild, Sharn City of Towers and Lost Empires of Faerun would be the four most powerful books in D&D - they aren't.

 

[Psion]

I disagree. Players generally leave behind the lame PrCs and go for powerful ones like the Hulking Hurler, if the DM isn't banning things from the book left and right.

I've yet to see a player ask to play a hulking hurler. Most players I have seen, if they go for PrCs at all, go for ones with cool images/concepts.

I think there is a certain min/maxer breed that follows the pattern you describe, but it's not universal.