Li Shenron
Legend
Darklone said:
Mmm... where was the power hopping? I think Miasma was the only thing that truly needed an errata.
How do you define "power creep", and why do you think it's bad?
- Thread starter FireLance
- Start date
Mmm... where was the power hopping? I think Miasma was the only thing that truly needed an errata.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
FireLance said:
Not power creep, since it's within a campaign.
Strong potential for power creep.
It would unbalance any core material present within the campaign, for instance, monsters. How do you balance regular Monster Manual monsters within the campaign if the PCs are getting extra power? Can you be sure that method will remain balanced? What if you use adventures not specifically written for that setting and the PCs steamroll their opponents? Does the blame lie on the setting for restricting access to core rules and advntures, or the DM for not modifying said adventure?
Having said that, if you could separate from the core rules you could avoid power creep. That is difficult. I know the Dark Sun setting tried to do this fairly successfully (it was generally messed up in terms of balance, but that was only within the setting, except for it exporting even more powerful psionic powers outside the setting - it had its own Monstrous Compendium and you were not supposed to use other monsters in the settings; it also had different rules for magic items and the like; finally it was 2e, which paid less attention to balance anyway, so any unbalance was less noticeable once you ignored the ability score inflation).
I don't know if it's really possible to do that today. Who wants to have to buy a whole new set of core rules for one setting? (Well, actually, some settings like Arcana Evolved do exactly this - not that I'm calling AE overpowered, as I have very little actual experience with it. Of course, AE is d20 Fantasy, not DnD.)
This is within a campaign. (I think that's a bad example; fighters are weak, but giving them more feat slots wouldn't solve their problems, and it's a ridiculous situation as well. This is almost a case of a bad DM messing up their campaign.)
Yes.
Note that WotC attempts to fix problems in the core rules, so maybe this should be called "power modification" rather than "power creep". The example isn't specific enough to use the term "creep", in other words.
A better example would be the escalation of 3.0 save DCs. WotC released Greater Spell Focus in a couple of books. They released prestige classes that could crank the save DCs in other books, and allowed the abuse of stat-boosting spells in yet other sources (I believe that was actually Sage advice). The combination of save DC-enhancements was definitely power creep.
I think power creep is a bad thing. DMs don't always buy splatbooks in order to increase the power of NPCs or their PCs; in fact, often they're not trying to do so, but are trying to gain access to rules that have good flavor, are cool, do different things, etc. Power creep is often "stealthy" in that the DM might not even notice it before it causes a problem, and furthermore a player who uses extra material to "beef up" their PC isn't necessarily trying to crank their PC's power or otherwise hurt game balance; maybe they just thought the Incantatrix was cool and didn't really think of the balance implication. (We're not all game designers, and I find it odd that DMs are expected to analyze every part of every splat book they or their players buy or allow for game balance problems (and are criticized if they don't immediately notice the problems), yet are criticized if they create their own house rules.)
WotC should, IMO, try to prevent power creep, and should explain why it allows rules that look overpowered in some cases. (The reception of the PH II was largely positive on these boards, in part because many people feel fighters were too weak, so they're not upset at the power creep. For those DMs, the new fighter feats would be "power modification" instead. The reception of save DC-cranking abilities in 3.0 were another story.)
DMs have to bear some of the blame, too. Sometimes power creep is barely visible, but if a DM was allowing 3.0 Greater Spell Focus and the Incantatrix or Spelldancer into their campaign and then complained that even giving monk NPCs special +3 insight bonus to save rings still resulted in them getting flattened by the PCs, perhaps they should look at their own method of analyzing game balance, and try to fix the problem by banning or modifying the overpowered material.
JVisgaitis
Explorer
Power creep is when designers release new rules for a system and make them better then the last set of rules. You get this a lot in Warhammer. The later armies were much more powerful and had a lot more going for them then the ones that were released first.
This isn't as apparent in D&D as you have a core set of rules already in place and there isn't adding of huge chunks of rules in later on down the road. New PrC's, Feats, and Base Classes that are more powerful then core material are examples of power creep.
This isn't as apparent in D&D as you have a core set of rules already in place and there isn't adding of huge chunks of rules in later on down the road. New PrC's, Feats, and Base Classes that are more powerful then core material are examples of power creep.
JVisgaitis
Explorer
Oops, forget to mention if I think it's bad or not... I do think power creep is a bad thing. People who have been playing older armies or characters are usurped by the latest greatest thing and the balance of the game is pretty much ruined. In Warhammer, there was always a certain group of people who would buy the latest army as they were typically the best.
Shieldhaven
Explorer
I think the problem of power creep is brought into focus by comparison to another game a few of us may have played - World of Warcraft. When introducing a new bit of crunch, there are basically three possibilities.
1. The feat, spell, whatever, is a little too weak.
2. The f/s/w is spot-on in its power.
3. The f/s/w is a little too powerful.
In D&D, if the game designers publish a rule that they later discover is overpowered, they have the option of publishing errata, which people may or may not even know about (since awareness of the Wizards website is less than 100% of all book-buyers, I would imagine). By contrast, the designers of an MMO have the option of annoying the players to some extent by just changing the rule the next time they release a patch. The only time the D&D designers can release a truly far-reaching patch is in changing to a new edition of the game.
For both the D&D designer and the MMO designer, possibilities 1 and 2 are total non-issues, because they can just publish more text later. But that points to another problem that the D&D designer faces - even an errata cannot take an option away, and the flexibility of options is, in and of itself, a kind of power creep.
These factors, taken together, essentially mean that power creep is inevitable within an edition of the game. DMs are then faced with an unenviable choice: declining to purchase more books, creating their own errata to rules they believe are overpowered, or running a game with RAW that is too high-powered for their tastes.
This does, incidentally, tell me that a 3.75 or 4.0 edition is inevitable, but then that isn't a bad thing in my estimation.
Haven
1. The feat, spell, whatever, is a little too weak.
2. The f/s/w is spot-on in its power.
3. The f/s/w is a little too powerful.
In D&D, if the game designers publish a rule that they later discover is overpowered, they have the option of publishing errata, which people may or may not even know about (since awareness of the Wizards website is less than 100% of all book-buyers, I would imagine). By contrast, the designers of an MMO have the option of annoying the players to some extent by just changing the rule the next time they release a patch. The only time the D&D designers can release a truly far-reaching patch is in changing to a new edition of the game.
For both the D&D designer and the MMO designer, possibilities 1 and 2 are total non-issues, because they can just publish more text later. But that points to another problem that the D&D designer faces - even an errata cannot take an option away, and the flexibility of options is, in and of itself, a kind of power creep.
These factors, taken together, essentially mean that power creep is inevitable within an edition of the game. DMs are then faced with an unenviable choice: declining to purchase more books, creating their own errata to rules they believe are overpowered, or running a game with RAW that is too high-powered for their tastes.
This does, incidentally, tell me that a 3.75 or 4.0 edition is inevitable, but then that isn't a bad thing in my estimation.
Haven
MoogleEmpMog
First Post
FireLance said:
Houserules can be ill-advised (I don't think this one is, btw, although it makes fighters even worse than they already are at higher levels), but I'd never call them power creep.
FireLance said:
This seems like an odd rule to be setting-specific, but it's not really power creep.
FireLance said:
Houserules can be ill-advised (and this one probably is: a strange combination of overkill and not solving the problem), but I'd never call them power creep.
FireLance said:
This is the only one of the four that's arguably an example of power creep. In this case, it's a beneficial example, because high-level fighters need high level feats to solve the inherent problems with the class.
I'm inclined to say this *is* an example of power creep. In Magic: the Gathering, releasing a set where the weakest card is actually pretty good, and the best card is just as good as in the previous set, is an example of power creep. The total power level of the set is higher, and if it is taken as the standard for the following set: bam, power creep.
In Magic, which has by and large avoided this problem by being perhaps the most heavily developed game in the world, this is objectively bad. Power creep obsoletes previous sets, and even on a per-set basis some cards are intentionally weaker than others to support the draft format.
In D&D, this isn't really the case. Power creep would still obsolete previous books, but the goal is to create even power levels between characters, not uneven ones. If one character type is weak, producing additional options that make it more powerful, although power creep in the Magic sense, is a beneficial change. On the other hand, producing new options that make, say, a druid more powerful is probably an example of bad power creep, because the druid already outshines most other types when played to the hilt.
Psion
Adventurer
Your #4 is about the only one that comes close to what my definition to be.
My definition would be "advancement of the average baseline level of capability of a party due to increased option availability".
Is it bad? Yes it's bad. Because it puts an un-needed complication on the prospect of importing new material into the game. Book of Nine Swords seems cool to me, but I don't feel I can allow it because it makes current character types inferior choices.
I don't, however, feel that it is necessarily intentional. Game design is sometimes not as informed as it could be, and there is always the chance for some surprising unintended conclusions (e.g., the uncareful wording of ardent power level availability and the practiced manifester feat makes the class an unusually good multiclass choice... much better than it should be.) I always thought the idea that making newer books more powerfully was intentional was a bit cynical. I think there are some publishers that do it, but it can happen unintentionally.
My definition would be "advancement of the average baseline level of capability of a party due to increased option availability".
Is it bad? Yes it's bad. Because it puts an un-needed complication on the prospect of importing new material into the game. Book of Nine Swords seems cool to me, but I don't feel I can allow it because it makes current character types inferior choices.
I don't, however, feel that it is necessarily intentional. Game design is sometimes not as informed as it could be, and there is always the chance for some surprising unintended conclusions (e.g., the uncareful wording of ardent power level availability and the practiced manifester feat makes the class an unusually good multiclass choice... much better than it should be.) I always thought the idea that making newer books more powerfully was intentional was a bit cynical. I think there are some publishers that do it, but it can happen unintentionally.
Sejs
First Post
Power creep is a system-wide escalation of power, across the board, over time. Subsequent books have to be bigger and better than their predecessors.
See the progression of RIFTS from book to book as a good example. CS Grunts became Super CS Grunts, Juicers became Super Juicers, Power Armor became Super Power Armor, etc, etc.
As for why it's bad: power creep, given a long enough time line to accrue, makes earlier material marginal-to-obsolete. Older material just can't hang with the newer material. You either stay current, or you die.
See the progression of RIFTS from book to book as a good example. CS Grunts became Super CS Grunts, Juicers became Super Juicers, Power Armor became Super Power Armor, etc, etc.
As for why it's bad: power creep, given a long enough time line to accrue, makes earlier material marginal-to-obsolete. Older material just can't hang with the newer material. You either stay current, or you die.
Celebrim
Legend
Power Creep is two basic problems.
First, the overall increase in the size of numbers across the board.
The problem with this is that it makes the game harder to track for no real increase in playability. Diablo was a game deliberately designed to power creep, with numbers getting bigger and bigger but the overall play experience staying roughly constant. This is not so much a problem in a CRPG where the machine can keep track of the numbers and were the goal is not playability but 'replayability', but it is a problem in a traditional pen and paper game. If compared to a previous version of the game, every has twice as much hitpoints - including the monsters - and everyone does twice as much damage in the average round, if all the AC's are twice as high but so also are the bonuses to hit, then we've doubled the numbers for no better reason that some munchkin thinks bigger numbers are inherently cool. It's like doubling wages but then doubling the price of everything you pay for. That's just inflation, not an improvement. And at best, it makes it harder to do the math to make change and carry around enough bills to pay for things. At worst, it throws off game balance and reduces the enjoyment of game experience because not everything got scaled evenly, and for example, combats last fewer rounds and are more dependent on luck (usually the throw of the initiative die is the deciding factor).
Second, an increasing gap between the power level of starting characters and the most powerful characters in the game world.
This one is particularly annoying because it creates all sorts of subtle problems with versimilitude. In first 1st edition you already had this problem in that your average 12th level character was probably the match for any 300 normal inhabitants of the world. But first Forgotten Realms and then later 3rd edition in general really took this problem to the extreme. As the assumptions about what 'high level play' meant increased to greater and greater power levels, the disparity between a high level character and an ordinary citizen became extreme to the point of ludicrousness. How do 0 level humans survive in a world where even 18th or 28th level characters can be regularly challenged? How do 1st level characters even survive on a world where their exist CR 28 challenges? Are epic characters a dime a dozen and continually saving the world from horrors of cosmic proportion somewhere out of sight? Why do nations bother to maintain armies at such great expense when those armies are helpless against even single 20th level characters? How do ordinary villages survive when the CR 15 monsters comes out of the woods and there is no one above level 5 in the neighborhood? If high level magic is so common why does most of the world look like a medieval village? Why is it that when you reach 10th level everyone is a 5th level fighter or higher, but back when you were 1st level people needed your help? If every bartender out there is a 9th level fighter, what good is an 'adventurer'?
Settings like that invalidate the basic assumptions of what low level play is. If you start out in such a setting (whether Dark Sun or the Forgotten Realms), the concept of a 1st level hero becomes ridiculous. In order to make your character survivable, much less useful, you have to start play at third level or fifth level or some such. And that is power creep.
I love the adventure paths, but why is it that the universe so orders itself that there is a lovely little sheltered area suitable for low level characters and then an orderly progression all the way up to low Epic level? Why don't the villains from chapter 2 invade the area of chapter 1, and the ones from chapter 3 invade the area of chapter 2 and so forther rather than wait around for high enough level adventurers to come around and kill them? In some ways, I think Red Hand of Doom and Dragonlance do a much better job with handling the problem of power disparity between high and low level, because in a since in those campaigns the bad guys do exactly that.
Eberron is another good example of a setting that tries to deal with those issues. It reduces the assumption about what high level play is down to a more managable level. It makes assumptions about how common magic changes the face of society, and so forth. I'm not saying that every setting should look like Eberron, but I am saying that cannonical Forgotten Realms is ridiculous IMO as is the assumption that an Epic campaign can exist in the same conceptual space inhabited by 1st level adventurers..
First, the overall increase in the size of numbers across the board.
The problem with this is that it makes the game harder to track for no real increase in playability. Diablo was a game deliberately designed to power creep, with numbers getting bigger and bigger but the overall play experience staying roughly constant. This is not so much a problem in a CRPG where the machine can keep track of the numbers and were the goal is not playability but 'replayability', but it is a problem in a traditional pen and paper game. If compared to a previous version of the game, every has twice as much hitpoints - including the monsters - and everyone does twice as much damage in the average round, if all the AC's are twice as high but so also are the bonuses to hit, then we've doubled the numbers for no better reason that some munchkin thinks bigger numbers are inherently cool. It's like doubling wages but then doubling the price of everything you pay for. That's just inflation, not an improvement. And at best, it makes it harder to do the math to make change and carry around enough bills to pay for things. At worst, it throws off game balance and reduces the enjoyment of game experience because not everything got scaled evenly, and for example, combats last fewer rounds and are more dependent on luck (usually the throw of the initiative die is the deciding factor).
Second, an increasing gap between the power level of starting characters and the most powerful characters in the game world.
This one is particularly annoying because it creates all sorts of subtle problems with versimilitude. In first 1st edition you already had this problem in that your average 12th level character was probably the match for any 300 normal inhabitants of the world. But first Forgotten Realms and then later 3rd edition in general really took this problem to the extreme. As the assumptions about what 'high level play' meant increased to greater and greater power levels, the disparity between a high level character and an ordinary citizen became extreme to the point of ludicrousness. How do 0 level humans survive in a world where even 18th or 28th level characters can be regularly challenged? How do 1st level characters even survive on a world where their exist CR 28 challenges? Are epic characters a dime a dozen and continually saving the world from horrors of cosmic proportion somewhere out of sight? Why do nations bother to maintain armies at such great expense when those armies are helpless against even single 20th level characters? How do ordinary villages survive when the CR 15 monsters comes out of the woods and there is no one above level 5 in the neighborhood? If high level magic is so common why does most of the world look like a medieval village? Why is it that when you reach 10th level everyone is a 5th level fighter or higher, but back when you were 1st level people needed your help? If every bartender out there is a 9th level fighter, what good is an 'adventurer'?
Settings like that invalidate the basic assumptions of what low level play is. If you start out in such a setting (whether Dark Sun or the Forgotten Realms), the concept of a 1st level hero becomes ridiculous. In order to make your character survivable, much less useful, you have to start play at third level or fifth level or some such. And that is power creep.
I love the adventure paths, but why is it that the universe so orders itself that there is a lovely little sheltered area suitable for low level characters and then an orderly progression all the way up to low Epic level? Why don't the villains from chapter 2 invade the area of chapter 1, and the ones from chapter 3 invade the area of chapter 2 and so forther rather than wait around for high enough level adventurers to come around and kill them? In some ways, I think Red Hand of Doom and Dragonlance do a much better job with handling the problem of power disparity between high and low level, because in a since in those campaigns the bad guys do exactly that.
Eberron is another good example of a setting that tries to deal with those issues. It reduces the assumption about what high level play is down to a more managable level. It makes assumptions about how common magic changes the face of society, and so forth. I'm not saying that every setting should look like Eberron, but I am saying that cannonical Forgotten Realms is ridiculous IMO as is the assumption that an Epic campaign can exist in the same conceptual space inhabited by 1st level adventurers..
Similar Threads
