sniff sniff...Do I smell 2nd edition mistakes?

[DungeonMaster]

83d6 damage at ECL 18. That's 291 average damage, and maxes out around 500.
Now, you'll only get one throw per round with it, your to-hit is merely OK (+25 with an absolutely miniscule range increment, so you'll usually be taking heavy minuses), and you won't be any more reliable at effectively one-hit-KOing most CR 18 creatures than a spellcaster of the same level.

Are you actually trying to justify these rules? Have you ever read "area-attack" two-handed hurl trick?!? You substitute a reflex save vs. your 10+ your attack roll . The warhulk allows you to use your STR bonus for ranged attacks...
Just a plain ogre - not even running around for a funky race - a plain ogre fig1/barb1/Hurler3/Warhulk7 will have a Str of 21+4 rage+14warhulk= 39. +6 enhancement (belt of giant str or minhb belt) +5 inherent makes that 50. Carrying capacity at medium load is 34,048 lbs. Your reflex DC to avoid the damage is 42. Splat. Very very broken splat.
His range can be doubled by taking plain old far shot let alone other non-core.

Now the rogue has a better attack bonus (+27) than the hurler, gets to try 12 times to attack, targets a flat-footed AC, and deals 2d8+6+10d6 damage with each attack. (average 50 per attack) He can ramp up 600 damage if he hits every time, and since he has a better chance to hit than the hurler, who apparently almost never misses, he's presumably doing about 550 of it at least. Without wraithform. Using, in fact, nothing non-core. Wraithform lets him go from 550 to 600 and IT'S what's broken?

No. Not even close to the hurler. You're comparing Greater magic fang to wraithform? That's a +5 to hit vs. Ignoring anything but Dex and Deflection. The great wyrm red doesn't care about a +27 to hit. In fact what he's worried about is when you rob him of his +39 natural AC bonus, from the wraithform spell. That's significant.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that we have a 5th-level wizard who blew two feats on Spell Penetration and its Greater form just so he could use this spell against a great wyrm to prove it's broken. He has a grand total of... wait for it!... +9 against spell resistance. He needs an 18 to affect the dragon (15% chance). That's a "good chance?" The dragon has at least a 5% chance of failing any saving throw; does the wizzy have a "good chance" of negating it with any save or die spell?

We're not even talking about a 5th level wizard, we're talking about an actual equal level wizard to the CR, you know, using the spell? And that 5th level wizard hasn't exploited the wealth of caster level increase from non-core books yet.

And what dragon lets a wizard make a melee touch attack on him, anyway?

The kind of dragon that can't help the non-core spell being written without foresight of I don't know, the spectral hand spell? (!)

The "whole gamut" of broken PrCs, items, spells and abilities of which you've identified four serious possibilities (hulking hurler, Ring of Blinking, polymorph and metamagic rods), three of which are core?

What do you want? True necromancers that at 16th level can control 240 HD worth of undead? Miasma spells that suffocate you without save? 16-to-1 power attack ratios? Impossible to save DCs? Caster level increases through the roof? It's all possible. If we can't agree wraithform is a broken spell then we're likely not going to agree on the rest.

I don't understand your next bit about "niches". The hurler does not fill a niche. Neither does the wraithform spell. No one "needs" a 10 billion damage PC or worse yet monster. No one "needs" a spell that allows you to ignore armor and natural armor and ... These are mechanics taken steps beyond "need". I would place it more under "greed" or "incompetence" personally.

2e's problems were much simpler. They weren't as stupidly over the top.

Agreed.

And they were much, MUCH more poisonous - the bladesinger was flatly better than other party members. The elven multiclass was flatly better than his companions. The kitted character could be flatly better than the un-kitted character. All of this from 1st level up through 20th, with no delay, no difficult start, and no specialization that gave others their niche.

No, disagreed fundamentally. The kitted character vs. unkitted is in no ways worse off than the core class using core rules vs the non-core PRC munchaholic using non-core rules.
Prestige class have no "difficult start", no moreso than 2E tradeoffs. Reality is a kit was never broken because it was designed as an integral peice. level/level/level class system is a munchkin's wet dream. It's very poorly designed - at the outset and a poor choice is reflected with even greater force upon the PC.

3e's unbalanced stuff may be more unbalanced vs. the monsters (insofar as anything can be "unbalanced" against "Rocks fall, everyone dies."), but it isn't as unbalanced between PCs.

So we're all broken disparate mish-mashes therefore we're all happy?
You compare a core fighter using core feats vs. vanilla build frenzied berzerker. Saying "well the core fighter can take those non-core feats and PrC too" is admitting the power-creep.

 

[Orius]

Reality is a kit was never broken because it was designed as an integral peice.

Huh?

Kits were never integral to 2e. First, they were completely optional. Most of the splatbooks even had a disclaimer at the beginning that everything in the splatbook was optional and subject to DM approval. They were never in the core books, even if the first kits in the Fighter's Handbook were released a few scant months after the release of the core books. Some of the splatbooks were written in-house, but others were written by freelancers, so there's a lot of variation among the various kits out there. Compare a kit from say the Priest's Handbook, which is generally considered to be underpowered, to something (like the infamous bladesinger) from the Complete Book of Elves, which is considered horribly and completely broken. Skills and Powers had kits that were integrated into the PO system, but PO too was optional, and those kits weren't necessarily compatible with splatbook kits. And finally, there was the 2e tendancy to front-load everything at first level, where at least prestige classes require some leveling in core classes first.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Rolling to hit for four rounds and finally killing the monster vs. dealing less damage but hitting many times over four rounds and finally killing the monster? No problemo. As for your fear of shivering touch and wraithform... I don't use D&D spellcasting when I GM, because I consider it clunky and somewhat broken, but if I did, these spells would be low on my nerf list.

I'm sorry I just read this. We're on different wavelengths MoogleEmpMog. You don't use D&D spellcasting yet claim the non-core spells balanced, you don't mind too much all things dying in one blow.
Ok.
And somehow the complete book of elves is the height of game imbalance and poor design?
For kicks I want to know exactly what is your beef with the complete book of elves because frankly I havn't a clue what's wrong with it and I own it and read it every year or so.

If you mix gestalt and ordinary characters, with no LAs assigned to the former, then it will be even worse than 2e multiclassing.

You're making it sound like this is something about "being fair among players". It isn't. A bard/rogue isn't as good as a monk/druid irrespective. It is worse than 2e multiclassing, orders of magnitude worse. And they're willing to repeat it.

The problem with 2e multiclassing (aside from racial level limits) was that it combined strong (elf wizard/fighter) with weak (human fighter). Not that it was strong in the first place. If everyone played kits that were similarly broken, it didn't matter at all.

Those um, racial level limits were, um core rules? Dumb yes but not further off is level for level multiclasing in 3E. You can make a 10/10 wizard/cleric powerful in 3E if you try really hard. Or you can do one level dips to gain all sorts of fancy advantages.
I want to see what you mean by broken 2E kits. I'm curious.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Kits were never integral to 2e. First, they were completely optional.

I meant integral as in "all in one place". You don't do anything BUT the kit. In 3rd edition and 3.5 you can pick and run with levels of anything. It's about 99 orders of magnitude more abusive possibilities.

 

[Orius]

As for Alternity, I'm guessing they didn't get enough customers to support the line itself, and they'd rather allocate their company's resource to other places like the newly acquired Star Wars RPG license.

I always thought that they ended Alternity to build support for the d20 system instead.

 

[hong]

what is your beef with the complete book of elves because frankly I havn't a clue what's wrong with it and I own it and read it every year or so.

That might be your problem right there.

 

[Orius]

I meant integral as in "all in one place". You don't do anything BUT the kit. In 3rd edition and 3.5 you can pick and run with levels of anything. It's about 99 orders of magnitude more abusive possibilities.

And yet most people seem to agree with that multiclassing with a large number of classes hurts characters more than it helps them.

 

[DungeonMaster]

From the POV of myself and my various DMs, the 2e Options books were so imbalanced as to be 90% unplayable. The worst of the 3.0 supplements are ~40% unplayable by my standards.
Sure, some particular concepts in 3e work vastly if your splat them up. But there are plenty of core only characters that hold their own.

This is odd, because my experience is the complete opposite to this. We used all the 2E supplements and had, well, 60 pages of material that wasn't rules and 60 pages of stuff that was. In the worst case you could use half of the book without problems of game design.
In 3E you have the race,feat,prestige class, spell combo that is nothing short of a goldmine for WotC and company and nothing short of a total nightmare for a DM.
You could NEVER say in good faith today "Anything in that book goes" when refering to a non-core book.
I have honestly yet to find a single non-core supplement to 3rd edition or worse, 3.5, where I would include everything within it's pages or even anything close to 50%.

 

[Dark Jezter]

For kicks I want to know exactly what is your beef with the complete book of elves because frankly I havn't a clue what's wrong with it and I own it and read it every year or so.

Elven plate mail, stapling shot, double arrow shot, elf-only mithril artificial limbs, flavor text that described elves as being superior to all other races in every single way, and the frighteningly overpowered Bladesinger class kit. Just to name a few.

Even the author of the book eventually recognized just how bad it was and apologized for it.

 

[DungeonMaster]

That might be your problem right there.

Elaborate please. My head hurts from hulking hurlers breaking planets with one blow, dervishes whirlwind attacking 30 things in one round, persistant divine power at 7th level and infinite XP loops with thought bottles.

Somehow "honey leather" just doesn't really stack up.