D&D General Is power creep bad?

[Reynard]

To have "power creep" you would have to have a balanced baseline to begin with. I don't think that's true with D&D (any edition) because it isn't designed with strict balance in mind. It is designed with a certain kind of fun in mind that doesn't depend on precise balance. The right player can take the core PHB and create a character that puts any Tasha's built PC to shame.


The bigger issue, I think, is when they start adding options farther and farther outside the "norm" because they are trying to fill a book but have used up all the archetypes and races that fit the baseline assumptions. When those "weird" options get added they tend to overshadow the core, not because they are necessarily more powerful but because they are "special." You can make a race with inherent flight that is objectively weaker than a core race and it will still create problems in some games.
The solution for this is something even worse than nerfing things that many players can't countenance: the GM curating available options.
T

 

[EzekielRaiden]

….still not getting it.

This conversation is like eating pizza crust first, it gets sauce everywhere and accomplishes nothing!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't think that's true with D&D (any edition) because it isn't designed with strict balance in mind.

Out of curiosity, have you ever been able to explain why WotC skipped straight from publishing 3.5e starting in 2003 to publishing 5e starting eleven years later? There's this gap of like seven or eight years where they didn't do anything at all. It's a mystery that still nags at me today, almost like there was something there, something overlooked...perhaps something...dangerous. Subversive.

But I try not to let those thoughts disturb me. D&D is not and cannot be balanced, and nothing has ever challenged that notion. Ever.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This conversation is like eating pizza crust first, it gets sauce everywhere and accomplishes nothing!

Okay. So if you actually want to converse with me in the future, I will explain.

First- I tend to not respond to people who simply want to argue. Some people enjoy that, I don't. Pretty simple. There are many people here who like to argue. I suggest replying to them.

Second- When it comes to analogies and metaphors, it's pretty simple. I'll give you an example.
Xeno: Money is the engine of litigation.
Achilles: What? Money isn't an engine! My god, man, money is completely different than engines! Engines convert power into motion, whereas money, assuming you're talking about fiat currency, is only a medium of exchange issued by the government without any commodity behind it. Here, allow me to further illustrate my knowledge of these concepts ....
Xeno: You must be fun at cocktail parties ...

If you still don't get it after that example, and the prior quote, I will make it explicitly clear- no analogy or metaphor is perfect. None of them is even close. The reason is pretty simple- if the match was perfect, then it wouldn't be an analogy or a metaphor. Therefore, it is always a trivial issue to argue with someone by attacking the fit of an analogy, and that never accomplishes anything. When someone is offering an analogy or metaphor, they are attempting to communicate something about the underlying issue; while you don't have to agree with the underlying idea of what they are communicating, it s better to at least understand it rather than attack the analogy, because, again, that never accomplishes anything.

Third- If you want to understand a point I am making, you can always ask. I tend to answer questions.

Good? Good!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have a few theories on why DMs hate power creep so much:

Theory 1: A lot of Dungeon Masters have a "my monsters vs. the player characters" attitude. They are on Team Monster, and it's up to them to create interesting challenges and goals for Team Heroes. Power creep makes their job more difficult, because they have to consider more and more angles and contingencies with every new splatbook.

Theory 2: A lot of Dungeon Masters do not write their own adventures or campaign settings. They instead rely on published material, and that published material might not have been written with power creep in mind. This puts the DM in a position of having to rewrite or adjust these published adventures to fit their players' characters, which defeats the purpose of buying published materials in the first place.

But for my part? I voted "Meh, whatever." I don't have a problem with it. I write my own adventures and I write my own campaign setting, and I give my players all sorts of special powers and boosts at 1st and 2nd level. (First-level characters get to start with their choice of a feat or a magic item from Table F, for example.) And as far as balance goes, I can always add more monsters to an encounter or extra poison to a boobytrap. I can always add or remove gems and magic items from treasure hoards. And I can always give those ogres some full plate and a shield. (shrug) No matter how many toys and tools and abilities the characters get, I will always have far more.

Also, most people talk about power creep in the context of combat, and combat is only about 1/3 of the game at my table. I haven't seen any complaints about social challenges or exploration being ruined/unbalanced by power creep. I feel like the more combat-heavy your game is, the more of an issue power creep will be.

Exploration has absolutely been ruined by power creep. It started in the PH with the ranger and the outlander background.

 

[Helldritch]

Exploration has absolutely been ruined by power creep. It started in the PH with the ranger and the outlander background.

And Bards... don't forget bards... These should've never existed in the first place.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Let me ask you a question….

How do you like inflation?

Now, the same reason we don’t like high inflation is the same reason we don’t like powercreep. It’s a treadmill you don’t want to get on.

Can there be changes to power that are clearly beneficial while still being increases? Does the term "power creep" presume negative impact?

If yes to both, does that not imply that it fails to consider things like redressing outright errors (the published game actually being different from what the authors knew it was supposed to be), correcting accidental faults (the published game failing to meet the goal, despite having all the intended content as it was supposed to be written), or accounting for differences between designer expectations and player realities?

If yes to the former but no to the latter, does that not automatically imply that "power creep" cannot always be a bad thing?

If no to the former, doesn't that make it impossible to publish any new rules for players?

 

[Micah Sweet]

If the game is going to add options, some power creep is inevitable - a character built (well) with PHB+supplement available will always be at least as powerful as one built with PHB alone. So if we want more options, we pretty much have to accept that there is going to be creep. And since I'd rather have those options than not...

That said, while the overall power will creep, and while I consider that a byproduct of a good thing, what I don't consider a good thing is where individual options creep in power. So if a splatbook publishes a subclass that is strictly better than subclasses in the PHB, that's a bad thing IMO.

(Thinking on it, one thing that would be really good would be if WotC maintained a discipline of adding options in inverse proportion to the power-level of the class they're building on. So rather than Wizards always getting the lion's share of the good stuff, instead the new "X's Something of Everything" books should focus more heavily on options to boost the Ranger and Monk. That way, any power creep that does occur serves the useful purpose of bolstering weaker options, rather than giving more to the already-haves.)

Don't wizards have the fewest new subclasses for exactly that reason?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Out of curiosity, have you ever been able to explain why WotC skipped straight from publishing 3.5e starting in 2003 to publishing 5e starting eleven years later? There's this gap of like seven or eight years where they didn't do anything at all. It's a mystery that still nags at me today, almost like there was something there, something overlooked...perhaps something...dangerous. Subversive.

But I try not to let those thoughts disturb me. D&D is not and cannot be balanced, and nothing has ever challenged that notion. Ever.

To expand your point, perhaps from a corporate point of view, D&D can't be balanced in a financially successful enough way.

 

[Reynard]

Out of curiosity, have you ever been able to explain why WotC skipped straight from publishing 3.5e starting in 2003 to publishing 5e starting eleven years later? There's this gap of like seven or eight years where they didn't do anything at all. It's a mystery that still nags at me today, almost like there was something there, something overlooked...perhaps something...dangerous. Subversive.

But I try not to let those thoughts disturb me. D&D is not and cannot be balanced, and nothing has ever challenged that notion. Ever.

Point taken: there was that one time when WotC completely misunderstood their audience to the point of creating their biggest rival since the debut of the World of Darkness, because they embraced the rather curious notion that people wanted to make sure everyone got exactly the same number of chocolate chips in each of their same number of cookies when pretending to be (not-Keebler) elves.