Is Power Creep Real? If so, how do you fight it?

[Mycanid]

Power creep is inherent with the publishing of more and more books. It's about having just a few options per book which are better or cheaper than average. A character using a couple of those options is ok, but things may get nasty in the hands of a player who picks the "slightly better" stuff from each book and combines them. If everyone does that, the game is still ok, but if only some player does it then the game may become unfair, like running the same race with very different cars.

And of course power creep is not blatanly visible, otherwise it would be "power flood". You certainly see it better in higher level campaigns, with PCs that have lots of spells, feats, classes or items.

How to limit the problem is straightforward:

- don't allow using too many books for PC creation in the same campaign (or to the same PC)
- don't be to quick in pushing the campaign to high level
- explicitly agree with the players not to exploit the material too much

I agree with the last three points especially - excellent summary Li!

But (slightly OT) ... what happened to your old avatar? Thought it was more distinctive. There are many with your present avatar. Ah well - just my 2 cents.

 

[Hussar]

Power creep is inherent with the publishing of more and more books. It's about having just a few options per book which are better or cheaper than average. A character using a couple of those options is ok, but things may get nasty in the hands of a player who picks the "slightly better" stuff from each book and combines them. If everyone does that, the game is still ok, but if only some player does it then the game may become unfair, like running the same race with very different cars.

And of course power creep is not blatanly visible, otherwise it would be "power flood". You certainly see it better in higher level campaigns, with PCs that have lots of spells, feats, classes or items.

How to limit the problem is straightforward:

- don't allow using too many books for PC creation in the same campaign (or to the same PC)
- don't be to quick in pushing the campaign to high level
- explicitly agree with the players not to exploit the material too much

I should start running a lot more high level campaigns. I know that when I ran the WLD, I pretty much allowed any book the players wanted with only a few exceptions. Yet, I was still whacking PC's right, left and center. The strongest PC by far was the orc barbarian - straight SRD character. Actually, thinking about it, I would likely have to give the nod to the cleric by the end of the campaign, but, again, the cleric was SRD only as well. The other characters, cherry picking from books far and wide, were rarely better in any way than those two.

YMMV of course.

 

[VirgilCaine]

The strongest PC by far was the orc barbarian - straight SRD character.

My group has an NPC full orc Barbarian whose original player (now moved away) rolled really well for stats (55-point buy or so), but you could reduce his 12's in mental scores to 8's and still have his ridiculous 22 (base) Strength and 18 Constitution, which are the backbone of his character.

You could even drop the 15 Dex to 8 and it would not hurt him much.

He can pretty easily hit AC 30, and could hit AC 40 on less than a crit if the PCs actually stacked some bonuses up, like high-level potions of Divine Favor or potions of Heroism or whatnot.

He does d12+16 with his Greataxe while raging (22 base +2 level points+2 gauntlets of ogre power+ 4 rage = 30 Str). If I were using 3.5 DR (I run 3.0 with some 3.5 material), only the strongest DR would phase him.

The Druid in Brown Bear form kinda pales in comparison to him.

 

[Hussar]

Oh yeah, Thugdar, the orc barbarian was death on toast. Regularly pumping out 40, 50 points of damage per attack with the ALL POWER ATTACK ALL THE TIME tactics and boosted through the roof by the bard. If he critted something, it was going down hard.