NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5182073" data-attributes="member: 4937">One of the advantages you have in building a business model that sells games rather than game supplements is that you don't have to trash your system to make a profit.  IMO, much of 3.5 on was published with power creep deliberately built in as a selling point of the material.  This is a tactic that the WotC RPG picked up on from the CCG division.  With each product WotC releases for its CCG lines, they publish a few deliberately overpowered items amidst the 'chafe'.  These few items excite the player base to purchase the product line in order to get the play utility of the overpowered items.  The real selling point is a small percentage of the material.  With many of the D&D books from 3.5 on, I saw deliberate power creep being put in to the game with the intention of encouraging sales.  Of course the problem with that is if you were one of those tables that bought into the system expansion wholeheartedly, by the time of late 3.5 you were probably disgusted with the system, it's complexity, it's lack of balance, and so forth and eager for the 'new hotness'.   But on the other hand, this approach to sells burns out all but the people who, as you say, enjoy the " geek thrill from purchasing and collecting RPG material for my system of choice".  You are ultimately contracting your player base.   It's the sort of business model that killed me on MtG; it's ultimately killed me as a customer of their RPG line as well.I hope Paizo is smart enough to realize how bad power creep would be for their business.  The basic rule of publishing new core material is that you can't publish anything that enhances an already strong strategy.  You may only publish new material that makes an existing weak strategy stronger (or opens up a new strategy altogether), and then only if you playtested to be sure you haven't over compensated.  If druids, clerics and wizards are recognized as being 'the top', you can't publish anything that signficantly enhances their existing core strategies or which fully solves their existing weaknesses.  I understand your trepidation at an 'Advanced Player's Guide'.  I hope Paizo is smart enough to know that you can't always give the players what they say that they want.  You have to find ways to make them want what you are able to give them.  For example, I think there is ALOT of room in Pathfinder for expanded feat selection that opens up breadth and space without significantly creating power creep.  Maybe its just that I've been playing longer, or maybe its just that one of my strengths as a DM is rules smithing, or maybe its just that I'm too poor to satisfy my geek urges by buying 80 books, but I never allowed this to happen at my table in the first place and I strongly encourage all DMs to adopt the stance you've been so eloquently outlining here and elsewhere.  Opening up a system to 40 or 50 player's books is insane, and can't lead anywhere good. I saw this coming in 3.0.  I picked up the 3.0 DMG and went, "What the #$!@!", when I saw PrC's.  A chill of trepidation went down my spine, and I said to myself, "I hope they realize just how bad of an idea this is."  I know what Monte was trying for, but the implementation absolutely sucked and with official no rules and guidelines to ensure balance things went to heck in a hurry.  Of course, my idea of a 'bad idea' was something bad for the game.  From WotC's perspective though, it was immediately clear that they recognized the market value of PrC's and they moved the PrC out of DM books and into player books.  Really, that was the beginning of the end of the system.  It wasn't long before I was hearing about various 'optimized' builds of multi-dipped synergized PrCs, usually either full-caster progression PrCs that ALSO got nifty powers on top of the already powerful Wizard build, or else full BAB progression PrCs that got the equivalent of a bonus feat every level rather than every other level.  And from there, as the stuff proliferated, it just got worse.  It was all I could do to hold back the tide.I'm not doing alot of business with Paizo right now, but they are one of two publishing companies I fully respect (the other being Green Ronin) and I really really want to see them succeed.</blockquote>

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