D&D General I'm a Creep, I'm a Powergamer: How Power Creep Inevitably Destroys Editions

[Minigiant]

Any power creep is due to designer discipline, and independent of the actual rules.

Lack of discipline and Lack of inclusivity.

The power creep happens because the designers both refuse to broaden the game seriously AND do not discipline themselves when dealing with the old.

There is a reason why power creep in TTRPGs is usual in the original or traditional chassises and styles.
It's not modern Gacha Power Creep where the new ideas wholly replace the old.

TTRPG power creep is usually designers not stopping themselves from the old favorite dog new toys and that dog mixing and matching.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fate Core comes to mind.

Really, any game that isn't based on a continuing stream of supplements will fit the bill.

Fair enough. Not really a thing for the traditional RPG model then. That explains why I don't know much about it, since I tend to ignore games designed like FATE.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Okay, I have to ask since you mentioned that date.

Unearthed Arcana?

As I always say, there were two good things about that book.

First, the polearms! Appendix T. Or, as Derek said upon seeing it, "Wait, my Cleric can't use a lucern hammer.*

Second, that they used such a terrible binding that the pages fell out before most people could read and use it.


*As a side note, I've always wondered why Gygax dropped the e. It's named for Lucerne, in Switzerland.

We were so crossed up about the Lucern..e…hammer that my cleric of Tyr used one. We thought it was a two handed hammer like a maul…

Edited for spelling

 

[GobHag]

fixing things and introducing new options does not necessarily require power creep. Power creep simply frequently is introduced by it due to lack of discipline by the designers


I can move on when I feel like it, it does not take the death of the edition by power creep to get me there. Likewise I can just ignore the powercreep supplements and keep on playing after the edition’s death.

Ignoring the power creep supplements has been second nature for me since the 80s. I always instinctively rejected them. My rule of thumb is to get at most one supplement in addition to the core, so Xanathar for 5e but not Tasha, so far this has been working well

And I instinctively embrace them because as I said, I like it.

Hell I consider Tasha a great supplement as a whole for 5e.

 

[occam]

Reading this thread, it occurred to me, my favorite system, Hero System, is essentially immune to this. Everything is points. The only way to get "MOAR POWAR" out of something is to put more limitations on it, which, by definition, limits it. Effectively, it prevents power creep from occurring in the first place. In previous editions, they did put new powers in sourcebooks occasionally, but in the current edition, all powers are in the Core Books. That's why they're weighty tomes, you literally don't need anything else, ever.

Having played primarily point-based systems for a number of years (in the '90s), I find the idea of them being immune to power creep amusing. I quite enjoyed breaking GURPS with creative choices of disads, and came away from my Champions experience with a sour taste when my GM told me he wouldn't allow the PC I'd created because it was OP. (To be fair, it was, but it was a legal build on the point budget, Champions just had ways to buy things that could be combined into ludicrously OP total packages.)

The premise that point-based RPGs are immune to power creep because of some inherent balancing of powers/ads/disads/etc. is an illusion. (And frankly, regarding Champions and its ilk, Mutants & Masterminds, etc., balance in a supers game is arguably undesirable. The Avengers, Justice League, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc. are not teams of balanced characters.)

 

[Umbran]

Fair enough. Not really a thing for the traditional RPG model then.

One example does not a generalization make.

 

[occam]

I think I recall that the person who raised the example noted that it was the choices of what to publish as supplements was the core factor, and not the system itself. They tended to publish entirely new archetypes, rather than build on existing ones, basically.

So, 4e didn't experience it much, but could have.

As someone who quite enjoyed 4e, I would argue that it did. Not in the classes themselves, for reasons mentioned, but mainly in the godawful proliferation of feats. There was a reason, after all, that Lair Assault existed as an "ultra-challenging" alternative to D&D Encounters; by 2011, enough material had been published for 4e that system mastery could make an enormous difference between PC capabilities at the table. Still not as extreme as 3e, but one of the things I greatly appreciate about 5e is the (so-far) relatively restrained approach to feats.

 

[RealAlHazred]

The premise that point-based RPGs are immune to power creep because of some inherent balancing of powers/ads/disads/etc. is an illusion.

I don't know. You can try to tack on limitations, but the GM doesn't have to allow them. The classic example is "Power doesn't work against orcs" in a modern supers game. Part of the problem back in the 3rd and 4th edition days was inconsistency with regard to values. A skill you have to develop as a point-based GM is effectively determining values and then sticking to them. If you can do that, you solve a lot of your problems.

 

[Distracted DM]

*As a side note, I've always wondered why Gygax dropped the e. It's named for Lucerne, in Switzerland.

Maybe he thought it was named after something different, without the e, in his game world :'D

 

[mamba]

Okay, I have to ask since you mentioned that date.

Unearthed Arcana?

Skipped that one, Xanathar is really the first time I did go with a book outside the core three that was not a setting or adventure book