D&D General Is power creep bad?

[James Gasik]

Keywords on their own don't do much. They only were interesting because they keyed off powers - and 5e at launch had a commitment to not having that level of customisation.

That's not necessarily true, we have keywords like Heavy and Finesse already. You could have added "Deadly" (crits on a 19-20), "Shieldbreaker" (for things like flails) that negate the benefits of a shield, "Impact", that can push someone a square back, "Armor Piercing" for arrows, bolts, daggers, and rapiers, that get a benefit when attacking someone in medium or heavy armor, just to make weapon choice matter a bit more.

 

[Krachek]

If power creep is retrained into Skilled and skill Expert difference we are safe!

 

[Neonchameleon]

@DND_Reborn there's some nice selective quoting there - but when you get to the point that you are claiming that taking an ASI is not overwhelmingly more popular than skilled there's no point continuing this. You are free to your own opinions, you are not free to your own facts. Goodbye

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Keywords on their own don't do much. They only were interesting because they keyed off powers - and 5e at launch had a commitment to not having that level of customisation.

I disagree. 5e already has things like versatile, finesse, and reach. You could easily add in brutal N, high crit, defensive, the various "loading" properties (e.g. "load bonus" instead of "load minor"). I do of course believe that the weapon groups also added something, but that's a separate issue that would, as you say, require actually making such rules matter to the baseline classes. But even there, 5e has the ghost of such options, with both fighting styles and feats that specifically benefit from certain options (e.g. great weapon fighting, Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, Shield Master, in theory Sharpshooter and/or Tavern Brawler). It easily could've been implemented in a fairly natural way, one that would've allowed significantly deeper options without adding much more complexity, given, y'know, we already have feats etc. that effectively trigger based on what group a weapon belongs to.

 

[Krachek]

It is an interesting debate but overall PCs win 99.98% of encounters vs 99.99% if you take power creep into account.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'd prefer they stay near the base level, but on some level the mere act of adding in additional 'good' options is a form of powercreep, so I don't think we can actually get away from it until they stop printing content. That said, they could be a bit more careful than they have to date been about powercreep.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'd prefer they stay near the base level, but on some level the mere act of adding in additional 'good' options is a form of powercreep, so I don't think we can actually get away from it until they stop printing content. That said, they could be a bit more careful than they have to date been about powercreep.

How? By not printing anything?

Seriously I can't think of any games with less power creep than D&D 5e that have had regular updates. There's a lot more good stuff - but very little new stuff I'd call actively OP.

And compared to any previous D&D edition? There's no contest

 

[Older Beholder]

Power creep isn't about trusting the players. Trusting them to do what? Not use it?

Yes, or to not abuse options that feel over powered at least.

There are options in all the books including the PHB that people will consider overpowered, but if you trust your players not to make coffee-locks, Sentinel/Polearm master builds, etc... they're not an issue. The trust comes in being honest in what you think is actually broken or not.

Personally I don't see that much power creep in the game, (or Tasha's specifically) and even then it's only a bad thing if you're playing with people you don't trust and/or who try to exploit every rule they can.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yes, or to not abuse options that feel over powered at least.

Again, not about trust. If a feature exists in the game that is OP and you allow it, players are going to use it as it is. If it is OP as it is, then you are stuck with it. They cannot "abuse" these options because they are just using them as intended.

Personally I don't see that much power creep in the game, (or Tasha's specifically) and even then it's only a bad thing if you're playing with people you don't trust and/or who try to exploit every rule they can.

Not about exploiting rules. It is about using a feature as it was intended by the designers being overly powerful compared to the base features of the game.