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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7725127" data-attributes="member: 4937">There are a variety of points raised here.   Magic has such a long and complicated history, and the design team uses power creep and power decay in very complex ways to create ever evolving and dynamic balance, that I really don't prefer to use it as a broad example to illustrate simple points.   In magic playing with just "commons" on purpose is called "Peasant", and it has its own set of metarules (actually several sets) and its own metagame.   One of the reasons that players, even those with a lot of cards, enjoy "Peasant" is that there hasn't actually been nearly as much power creep in Peasant over the course of magic history as their has been in the wider game.  It's usually the rare cards that have pushed the boundaries.  Cards like Dark Ritual, Lightning Bolt, Hymn to Tourach and so forth are still very viable and important Peasant cards.   In fact, what's actually happened is over time is all the different strategies available to the deck builder in the larger metagame have become available to a "Peasant" deckbuilder, but with much greater constraints.  The result is that there is a greater variety of viable decks and strategies compared to almost any other meta.  But commonality isn't a real constraint on the metagame as a whole.   Originally Garfield thought commonality would be a balancing feature, but of course people did put together decks with 20 black lotuses, 20 ancestral recalls, and 20 black vices.  Using commonality as a constraint would be kind of like looking at rarity of magical items as a constraint on power creep.   Adding a sword +10 hackmaster to the game, even if on the random treasure tables it was an unlikely result, would still be power creep.   So when Unearthed Arcana added +5 Field Plate or +4 Full Plate to the game, that was straight up power creep.   Conversely, if someone added a longsword +2 flametongue to the game, this wouldn't be power creep because weapons like +5 longswords, +3 frostbrands, and so forth already existed.   Sure, a +2 flametongue would be straight up better than a +1 flametongue, but it would just be exploring new design space, not invalidating the already existing and arguably overpowered +4 sword of sharpness as a weapon - to say nothing of 'combo pieces' like a hammer of thunderbolts.  A +2 flametongue is balanced, and therefore not powercreep.  A +5 flametongue on the other hand breaks certain 'rules' about what sort of item is valid implicit in the available magic items, and would be powercreep.It's I think pretty silly to complain about a sword +2 defender as 'power creep', simply because the only weapon you own is a sword +1.  Getting a sword +2 might be a big upgrade for your character if all you own is a sword +1, but its not "power creep".  I think the "commonality" situation with collectible card games is equivalent to the "supplement" problem with RPGs, but the easiest way to explain that is reverse the complaint.   Imagine that you can't use a rule unless you own the supplement.   Two players of the game are talking, and one says, "The game is very unbalanced.  There has been a lot of power creep."   The other player says, "What do you mean?  I find the game very balanced."   After some inquiry, it comes out that the second player has never purchased the supplements that introduced the power creep because he lacks the funds to do so.  Later, the second player buys a supplement, and says to the first, "Oh, I see what you mean.  The Monk and the Thief are so much more powerful in this supplement.  And the level cap on Dwarf fighters and Halfling fighters has been basically doubled.  Look at all this power creep!"   But the first player then responds, "What do you mean?   That supplement is one of the few that is actually well balanced.   Monk and Thief were very underpowered, and the original rules steered you away from playing Dwarfs and Halflings because they had no ability to contribute the end game.   It wasn't really viable to play a Monk or a Thief until that supplement came out, and I'd be happy to allow it in my game... it's what they did with Paladins and all the broken spells they introduced for M-U's that gave them solutions to any conceivable problem that was what I was talking about when I said there had been power creep."There are actually conversations about D&D in other threads very similar to that (though typically not about 1e), where people fight out over whether you should use supplements or stick to core, or which supplements you need to introduce in order to balance core.There are a number of examples in the weapons table as well, where the weapon is strictly worse than a weapon in the same class (ei, both are martial weapons or both are simple weapons).   I consider this bad design, but the upside of that is that it leaves design space to explore, were you can have an optional rule that gives those previously subpar weapons situational utility.   As long as you were careful, that wouldn't be power creep - that'd still be balanced with other weapons with other sorts of utility.   Of course, a good fraction of power creep happens when designers trying to open up new creative design place, get too generous with their supposedly situational utility.</blockquote>

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