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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Archimedes314" data-source="post: 3891686" data-attributes="member: 41463">It's not an arms race unless your players are immature. Thing is, every single book has some measure of power creep. However, only the "absolute power" in terms of abstract numerical bonuses needs to change with power creep, the DM is always able to keep the "relative power" (which is the only thing that has any in game significance) between the PCs and NPCs/Monsters the same. The DM has to do this even if he's playing core only, the PCs increase in level and the DM must compensate by using encounters of higher CR (this is game-mechanically the same situation as the PCs becoming more powerful by any other means). And as the players become more experienced they are going to increase in tactical and optimization sophistication, for which the DM must also compensate. Only a poor and uncreative DM would need to "steal" his players tricks, rather, a good DM would utilize options of equal efficacy to those utilized by the players, often leading to more varied and tactically interesting combat encounters. Not to mention the fact that simply including traps and other non-combat encounters is enough to make those players focused solely on combat numbers take a step back and realize that this isn't what the game is all about.Now this is not to say that there are not genuinely problematic abilities. Sometimes there are things that benefit one subset of characters disproportionally, leading to players of those characters stealing the show, as it were. There are also abilities which, generally through loopholes or oversight on the designers part, simply grant absurd levels of power (such as the festering anger disease in the Book of Vile Darkness).While humorous, those characters, at least the third edition versions, explicitly break the rules in places (my knowledge of second edition sources is both too rusty and too limited to comment on those versions). They are not power-gamers/optimizers/whatever you want to call them; they are munchkins. Furthermore, it is basically a giant strawman. The fact that a player has an interest in making mechanically powerful characters does not mean they do not care for role-playing, the consistency of campaign worlds, or the fun of other players. A good optimizer only makes characters that at an appropriate power level for their group. I know that there are players who do not follow this stricture, and I have played with them, but to judge a whole category of gamers based on the worst of their lot is just silly.</blockquote>

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