How Balanced is Dragon/Dungeon Material

[Markn]

How balanced have people found the Dungeon/Dragon material? Up to this point we have not used that material in our games and my gut feeling is that it is not on par in terms of balance with the books that are released (PH, PH2, Martial Powers, etc). My feeling has been that some of the powers/feats are more powerful.

Any feedback on people who have been using the material would be appreciated.

 

[Regicide]

How balanced have people found the Dungeon/Dragon material? Up to this point we have not used that material in our games and my gut feeling is that it is not on par in terms of balance with the books that are released (PH, PH2, Martial Powers, etc). My feeling has been that some of the powers/feats are more powerful.

Any feedback on people who have been using the material would be appreciated.

It often is not wholly consistent with the books making it seem like the authors don't have a firm grasp on the system. There are often mistakes. They never get errata. Even if balanced, more options means, for power gamers, more power.

There is more than ample material in the published books. I don't allow the online stuff.

 

[keterys]

It seems to have about the same ratio as the rest of the material. That is to say, every source (PH, AV, PH2, Dragon, etc) has a few outliers that are notably more powerful and/or notably less powerful.

Dragon's no exception, but it has a lot of good stuff. It does not seem unbalanced to add it, assuming you already allow all that other stuff (like the Player's Handbook) just keep the same eye on the material.

 

[chaotix42]

Dragon material gets errata Regi, why would you say it doesn't? For instance the summons in last month's Dragon had their attacks changed from vs AC to vs Ref.

Otherwise I agree with keterys - Dragon has lots of great stuff for players and DMs, but not everything is perfectly balanced (surprise!). For instance a few items from Dragon mag have been made rather obsolete by items from the Adventurer's Vault - boots that grant you a free move action as an encounter power (AV), and boots that allow you to move your speed as a minor action as a daily power (Dragon). There are some questionable feats too, but taken as a whole I think Dragon will really enrich your game.

 

[Mengu]

Agree with what the others have said. A lot of the material in Dragon is a bit too specific for my tastes, and as such I consider them weaker than some of the other options. But there is also some very nice and flavorful material that can help define a character.

So keep an eye out for the power level, 95% of it should not be OP. Just ask your players to check with you before they pick something. If they find a feat in Dragon that you might find disruptive for your game, you reserve the right to say no.

But I'd also make sure they're not shooting themselves in the foot picking up a specific feat that's hardly ever going to come into play in your game, like some bonus against undead, when you know they'll be fighting undead once in a blue moon.

 

[keterys]

To touch a little more deeply on Dragon for a second...

It almost assuredly has less time in design and development for tweaks and changes, so it might be considered less safe than books in that sense.

It almost assuredly has less moving pieces, so is easier to balance in that sense - for example, AV had so much going on and is so densely packed that it was almost guaranteed to let loose a few gamebreakers.

Dragon material is given heavy feedback by readers on the WotC forums and they incorporate that feedback as errata into the final version published at the end of the month - this is a much faster and more rigorous feedback loop than is given for any of the published books which only make changes in truly egregious cases.

Dragon material published at the end of the month doesn't really have a ton of time for updates, so profits least from that arrangement.

Books get full and official errata channels so the truly bad stuff does get fixed eventually. At least in theory. *warily eyes a number of save penalty items and, say, Careful Attack*

So, there are some stinkers - yeah, Cannith Goggles are clearly just wrong - but I'd contend that a very healthy slice of every rules dense book so far has some clearly wrong stuff (Consecrated Ground, Guileful Switch, Spitting Cobra Stance, etc)

 

[Markn]

Thanks for the input guys. I always reserve the right to say no on an individual power/items/feats. However, my players tend to say - You allowed feat X for Bob, why not feat Y for me. I have found it easier to either allow an entire source or disallow an entire source. So far, we are allowing every published WotC book and I keep an eye on things that are abused from those books. By the same token I have disallowed Dragon so far but I think I will give it a try.

 

[Engilbrand]

We allow just about anything. I think some 3rd party stuff is allowed, too. I love Dragon. Does it have as much time to get checked out? No. Does that necessarily mean that it's broken? No. I could theoretically create a power right now that is perfectly balanced. Will I always be able to do that? No. Are the designers better at creating balanced things than I am? Absolutely!
I love the stuff in Dragon. It's full of awesome new things. There's such a small margin for things to be "unbalanced" in this edition that I don't even think that it's worth worrying about.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Thanks for the input guys. I always reserve the right to say no on an individual power/items/feats. However, my players tend to say - You allowed feat X for Bob, why not feat Y for me. I have found it easier to either allow an entire source or disallow an entire source. So far, we are allowing every published WotC book and I keep an eye on things that are abused from those books. By the same token I have disallowed Dragon so far but I think I will give it a try.

If you're allowing all the books, then you may as well let the dragon stuff in (with some specific exclusions, like backgrounds). There's stuff in the books that's far worse than anything in dragon.

 

[Byronic]

Am I the only one that thinks Martial Power is more OP then Dragon?