Examples of Power Creep?

[Darkness]

2) Is there a race that has come out that has been more powerful than one in the 3.5 Phb? (taking ECL into account)
Warforged, Elan, anything with mental stats bonus like the underdark humans >> PHB races

I know the question is about the PHB specifically, but I think that's not optimal, as the MM is a core book too.

 

[Markn]

Just for ***** and giggles

Navar,

How much splatbook stuff have you or your players used? Have you ever had a warmage in your group using the CA version? I ask only because to me the warmage is pretty self explanatory in which you combine the warmage with 1 level of wizard to undo a lot of the warmage's drawbacks. For example, the warmage can only use scrolls, wands, etc of spells that are on his list. Well, taking 1 level of wizard puts EVERY wizard spell now on his list (whether he actively knows them or not). Doing this only causes the warmage to lose Sudden Maximize (which he could take as a feat at any other time) and loses 1 9th level spell. Not much of a drawback to reduce the big penalty of the class.

 

[Navar]

The Golliath is a great example. The problem is that in a fight at mid levels he suffers from the loss of the hit die, and what every fighter suffers from weak will saves. He increases the strengths of the fighter, but he also increases their weaknesses. I think that he compairs of a Dwarf or Half-orc (martial class) at most levels. This is just my 2 cents though.

 

[Seeten]

I find a lot of this funny. How can you have playtested anything from complete adventurer, unless you designed it? If I had a Scout in a campaign, it'd be level 1, for goodness sake.

It seems people are pulling combos from out their *** and adding in an anecdotal, if you use feat x(which requires 9 feats) with ability y(that requires you be a level 17 wizard, who gets only like 6 feats in its whole career that arent metamagic/item create) which doesnt hold water even at a casual glance. What are you DM's doing? Honestly. If Jack says to me, "He, I want to go 5 levels of Thief, 3 levels of barbarian, 10 levels of Frenzied Berserker and then 2 levels of mage for true strike and wraithstrike, not just me, but the whole gaming group would LAUGH HIM OUT THE DOOR. Not just is it stupid to the point of silly, its an insult to the DM's intelligence to ask. Lots of the feats and class abilities arent designed to work together because they are on polar opposite character types, and they shouldnt be on the same character at all.

Peer Pressure. Use it. Power Creep, as in everything getting bigger and better does NOT exist in 3.5. Those who say it does have never read Rifts supplements, or played Warhammer Fantasy Battles. There are inane combos that are grossly overpowered, mostly because they shouldnt exist together on the same character, and that is where you come in, with the little thing known as common sense. If only it were more common.

 

[Navar]

Navar,

How much splatbook stuff have you or your players used? Have you ever had a warmage in your group using the CA version? I ask only because to me the warmage is pretty self explanatory in which you combine the warmage with 1 level of wizard to undo a lot of the warmage's drawbacks. For example, the warmage can only use scrolls, wands, etc of spells that are on his list. Well, taking 1 level of wizard puts EVERY wizard spell now on his list (whether he actively knows them or not). Doing this only causes the warmage to lose Sudden Maximize (which he could take as a feat at any other time) and loses 1 9th level spell. Not much of a drawback to reduce the big penalty of the class.

Tons/all of them. I get them as soon as they come out and TRY to power game them. If you are a warmage and take 1 level of wizard you are getting spells 2 levels behind the wizard. He will always be more powerful, and your caster level will be behind him by 1 level. (ie when you gain access to 3rd level spells he is casting 4th level spells.) This won't help at every spell level, but at most it will let the Wizard do more damage per encounter.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I think mostly power is very relevant to campaing style. Is it wilderness game, dungeon game, city game, very much fights or social situations kind of game etc.

Social min-maxers are for me kind of worst to balance in game where social situations are important, if these situations are mostly resolved by roll of a dice. It's easier to make challenging fights, than keep game beliavable and interesting so that super diplomatic and charismatic character could find much challenge in normal situations.

Sure there are many combos that can make character more powerful compared to core rule opitions. Sometimes those combos are kind of meant to be (powerful prestige class), and sometimes it's just weird combo aka FR+Eberron+Miniature's Handbook etc. And of course it gets even worse when books of multible publishers are added. But IMO it mostly gets worse in sense how weak, and boring and not worth it most of those new classes/spells/feats are.

My players and myself mostly use core stuff, because interestingly, it seems to be, where the best things are. And some stuff from elsewhere, so here are our most popular feats, weapons, classes, races and spells.

Weapons:
Composite Bows
Great Sword

Classes: Fighter, Ranger 3.5, or Fighter 4/Ranger X
Prc: Eldrich Master (Dragon Magazine), Blessed of Mesos (no-one plays sorcerer if both of those classes are disallowed)

Races: Human, Half-Celestial, Half-Dragon

Feats: Power attack (both editions), Cleave, Improved Favored Enemy, Improved Critical, Luck of Heroes (both editions), Karmic Strike (both editions), Improved Initiative

Spells: Varies, though it's wonder, if spells Magic Missile, Greater Dispell, Teleports, Dimensional Anchor, Harm/Heal, Horrid Wilting and Polymorph Other (Baleful, I just like that original name more) won't eventually appear if there is high enough level caster in party.


See, my players like their power-gaming simplied. Not going through too many books and all.

 

[Markn]

Two more examples

Here are two more (just throwing them out as I think of them)

Ice Knife from CA is a level 2 spell. It deals 2d8 damage on a successful hit with no save on the damage. It also does 2 points of Dex damage if the enemy fails a Fort save. However, if he misses it still explodes dealing 1d8 damage in a 10' radius burst. Pretty good either way. Not too many 2nd level spells with that versatility.

Rogue/Wizard. If you were to build a rogue/wizard using the PHB and using anywhere from 3-4 levels as a minimum in the rogue build I could build something that would be far more potents by exchanging 1 feat. Practiced Spellcaster from the CA. This single feat allows the player to increase the caster level of a single class to match its hit dice to a max of 4HD. Thus a 5th level sorcer/4th level fighter would cast as a 9th level sorceror for damage dealt, duration and to pentrate spell resistance. Simply put this makes multclassing far superior with this feat. Now, do I think this is power creep? No, a feat like this should exist in the PHB to encourage multiclassing as a multiclassing wizard is not very good but it still proves my point. Feats, PrC or spells in the splatbooks contain power creep.

 

[Crothian]

Complete Adventurer also has some good options for unusually multi classes. These options are not what I would call powerful, but they are more powerful then a character could be built without them. Some like the Monk Sorcerer feat can be used to really boost the power of a sorcerer.

 

[Navar]

sneak attacking with it can happen but only to 30 feat, that limit is on sneak attack ability so even though the spell can go farther the snaek attack would not apply to all enemies. Still, a potent combo.

The biggest power creep is BoED. To me there are more things of power in there then any other book. Saint, Vows, exalted feats, some of the new santcuify spells are really strong,. I played a character with options from that book for one session and then had him get killed becasue the options were just too good.

So at best you can get is a level 4 wizard. So you are loosing 2d6 of sneak attack damage by taking the levels you need to cast the spell. So at level 5 you can attack 6 foes (if they all happen to be lined up) and do 3d6 to them. (the best slashing weapon a medium rogue is profescient with does 1d6 damage) At level 6 the damage is the same. With your +2 BaB you have to roll to attack them all. How is this broken. At highter levels (when a straight wizard would have better spells) it gets even less effective.

 

[Navar]

Here are two more (just throwing them out as I think of them)

Ice Knife from CA is a level 2 spell. It deals 2d8 damage on a successful hit with no save on the damage. It also does 2 points of Dex damage if the enemy fails a Fort save. However, if he misses it still explodes dealing 1d8 damage in a 10' radius burst. Pretty good either way. Not too many 2nd level spells with that versatility.

Rogue/Wizard. If you were to build a rogue/wizard using the PHB and using anywhere from 3-4 levels as a minimum in the rogue build I could build something that would be far more potents by exchanging 1 feat. Practiced Spellcaster from the CA. This single feat allows the player to increase the caster level of a single class to match its hit dice to a max of 4HD. Thus a 5th level sorcer/4th level fighter would cast as a 9th level sorceror for damage dealt, duration and to pentrate spell resistance. Simply put this makes multclassing far superior with this feat. Now, do I think this is power creep? No, a feat like this should exist in the PHB to encourage multiclassing as a multiclassing wizard is not very good but it still proves my point. Feats, PrC or spells in the splatbooks contain power creep.

This doesn't prove my point. All this does is balance multiclassing. A straight fighter or sorcrceror is still more powerful than your multiclass example. Prracticed spellcaster just helps.