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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 1999649" data-attributes="member: 3424">A gestalt character is certainly more powerful than an ordinary 3.5e character, but that's the whole point. They are there for players who want more powerful characters, and for DMs that allow them to. Naturally, if there are other players, they should have gestalt characters as well, or the balance between PCs goes out the window. In any case, you don't have to use gestalt characters if you don't want to.This isn't a problem in itself, as most PrCs are fairly well balanced, and allow for greater customization of PCs without significantly increasing their power relative to others of the same level. And of course, you don't have to use PrCs if you don't want to.I agree with you that your sample cleric is a problem, but I disagree as to what the problem is, and the cause of it. I do agree that characters in 3.5e can do more cool things than characters in previous editions. However, whether or not a 3.5e character is more powerful than a 1e/2e character, and can easily defeat opponents that a character of equal level in previous editions would have a hard time doing is not an issue. You might as well ask why it's so easy to defeat a werewolf in Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy series, and so difficult to do so in the White Wolf Storyteller system. Or, to give a slightly more relevant example, why is it easier to defeat a mummy in D&D 3.0e than in 3.5e? The simple answer is that the designers decided to make the mummy tougher and increase its CR from 3 to 5. So, you would expect a group of 3rd-level PCs to defeat a mummy fairly easily in 3.0e (CR equal to level), but the same group of 3rd-level PCs would find a mummy to be a tough fight in 3.5e (CR two higher than level). Hence, the real issue is not how easily a character in any edition can defeat a specific creature, but how well the characters fare against the challenges they face, whatever they are. This is another aspect of balance: character level vs challenge rating. The sample cleric is a problem because he can easily defeat creatures that should be challenging encounters for a party of his level, not because he can defeat them easily when characters in previous editions could not.And the cause of the problem is not because 3.5e is more quantitative. Every significant variable in the example you raised was quantified in every edition: caster level, spell resistance, saving throws, etc. In fact, the quantification of CR helps us to express what is wrong in more concrete terms: the cleric is out of balance because he is easily defeating challenges that should be difficult for a character of his level. What has changed is the interaction of the quantified variables (e.g. spell resistance is no longer a flat chance of spell failure, but dependent on the caster level) and the ability to modify the quantified variables (e.g. new ways to increase caster level). What has gone wrong here is stacking gone out of control. If the Good domain power, the bead of karma, the Hierophant's Spell Power ability and the orange ioun stone all provided Competence bonuses to caster level, then the problem would not be as bad as only the highest bonus would apply.I happen to take a more philosophical view. In any field of human endeavor, and especially in a field that is so dependant on creativity and imagination like role-playing, you have to keep bringing in new and fresh ideas, or you're going to get stagnation. You can either come up with the ideas yourself, or you can pay someone to do it for you (i.e. buy a supplement). Whenever there are new ideas, you're going to get good ones and bad ones. I think that one of the great things about the 3.5e system is that it is well-balanced enough that I can spot the bad ideas and change or ban them almost immediately. And even though I don't like them, maybe the ideas are only bad for my game. Perhaps they work great in someone else's game. In any case, I generally find that I get enough use out of the other ideas that I don't mind one or two bad ones, and buying a supplement and going through it to tweak or weed out the ideas I don't like is a lot less effort than coming up with all the ideas that I do like myself. Of course, YMMV.</blockquote>

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