Hussar said:
Yet, looking down the forums here, we see thread after thread about how the Complete Books classes are weaker than core. Tome of Magic was heavily panned for the same reason.
Just because some companies got into the arms race, why is the assumption that all of them do?
Of course, just as there are weak supplements, there are plenty of other supplements hwich have added prestige classes, feats, spells etc which, if not "broken" are at least "very good". I'll agree that casting them aside out-of-hand as "Baaaaaaaaaaroken!" is a bit unfair.
Part of the problem, IMHO, comes from the fact that the 11 base classes are not created equal. If you sit down to create your new class, what do you base it on, power-wise? Should it be equal to a sorcerer, a fighter, a cleric, a druid? Is your spell in the same power bracket as Burning Hands, or Tenser's Floating Disk, or Magic Missile, or Sleep? Some people would argue that one is notably better than the other, so if you balance all new material as being equal to one base class, feat, spell, etc, then those below it are going to become worse and worse with every iteration. Being the worst of 11 base classes isn't so bad: being the worst of around 30 is a bit more of a pest. ;-)
Since we've got a Magic example going on already: I understand that some sets (like Fallen Empires) rounded down the power of cards when in doubt, whereas others (like Alliances) rounded up: the end result being that some sets were all but ignored by players in tournaments, but others were big hits. When you don't stick to the same consistent rules as you add to your game's depth of options, some options are going to shine out as "better".
This is, of course, a no-win situation: supplements with too weak rules won't sell, supplements with too powerful rules will be branded "power-gaming". An RPG which has no supplements is basically dead: ergo, striking the right power balance on a supplement remains a difficult process.
Hussar said:
While I haven't played Magic in years, weren't some of the most badly broken cards in the original few sets? Something to ponder.
OT: This is a very valid point. Certianly, the "power nine" of Magic, the cards which are seen as the best ever, are all from the first set: and very few cards from newer sets get full-on banned, compare dto a ratehr sizeable list of older cards.
I once read a Magic article which basically implied that the first set of Magic included purposefully "better" and "worse" cards in an attempt to teach players what made a card cost-effective or powerful: and that after that learning curve, later sets went for a more "ordered" power curve. Once you've seen different cards do drastically different things for one red mana, you learn what one red mana is worth, or so the theory goes.
I suspect this is perhaps sprinkled with a dose of revisionist history: it seems a lot more likely that the "best" cards were knowingly better, but it was assumed their rarity would counterbalance this and players would be unable to get a hold of that many of them. Of course, the designers of Magic had no idea how successful it was going to be (Wasn't 6 months worth of the first set of cards sold in 6 weeks?) and when the game suddenly becomes a global phenomenon, with a secondary market thriving off sets of all ages, those cards are no longer rarities you'd never hear off till you saw in play: they're uber-powerful geek weaponary, dissecter online for their combo potential. and people can basically "buy the best deck". These days, Magic designers knowthat cards they design have to be not only for casual play but are part of a professional tournament scene, and thusly can't afford to include any "crazy" cards.
