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The PBMC Metacompendium / Job Diversity
« on: March 22, 2018, 02:05:59 PM »Quote
My argument is not meant to be a negative rant, but rather a positive exhortation to all those who play d20 to recognize the wonderful flavor possible when you embrace diversity. Play with every splatbook, web enhacement, dragon or dungeon you can get your hands on! YES, there will always be broken builds in d20 - but limiting supplements won't get rid of that imbalance. ALLOWING MORE supplements and sources will create opportunities to be powerful, yet not limited in choice - to be able to create a truly CREATIVE character who can hold his own.
Broken is all up to the group. My argument is that if the group is fully informed and knows what it's doing, that it will see that things like the Half-Minotaur AREN'T broken, whereas things like DRUIDS are.
An example:
NineInchNall, the author of the Shadowcraft Mage Handbook, and I are old pals. We are playing in a PbP game on another forum, and the DM there allowed only PHB, Completes, and Races. I wanted to make a non-caster, and without ToB found myself crippled. Non-casters need a variety of good stats; casters need only one. Non-casters need a lot of supplements to make their meager class abilities work for them; casters need only the SRD. Non-casters need a large range of PrCs; casters don't need PrCs at all, but can do just fine with one or two if they feel like it.
I asked to play a Dragonfire Adept - it's my thing, you know.
The DM's reply?
"I'm worried it would be broken."
NineInchNall was meanwhile happily statting out a 10th level SHADOWCRAFT MAGE - a character who is constantly invisible, can cast spontaneously cast ridiculously heightened evocation and conjuration spells SILENTLY all day long, and is generally a huge pain in the butt.
But the DM was worried about ME. Because I wanted to play something that had "at-will" abilities.
My point, in essence, is that limiting supplements does NOT prevent broken-ness; limiting supplements simply screws many players out of fun, playable options for the kinds of characters they like to run. Templates are the same way - it may sound overpowered for a +1, but give me another caster level ANY DAY and I'll show you REAL power.