New Fallacy - splatbooks are overpowered

[Sinfire Titan]

Example: When is the last time you had a DM allow Incarnum? I do, but I used to read that book as a bedtime story.

Much truthiness in this statement.

[veekie]

In fairness, most of those issues were officially handled with errata. But another aspect of the issue we are not discussing is that a DM has complete control over what material is allowed in his game AND how it's implemented. Most DMs take the lazy way out and simply cry "Borked!!!1!!!oenoeneone" rather than read it and understand it. Example: When is the last time you had a DM allow Incarnum? I do, but I used to read that book as a bedtime story.

For that, consider how long it'd take to understand how Incarnum works and what you can do with it(which of course requires examining Melds).

[Karlton]

I for one allow everything with the official WotC seal on its front cover, but I do remind my players that I will only play as nice as they do. I have yet to see any one of them try to pull off an infinite caster level loop, a hulking hurler with a +1 returning moon, or even a caster abusing Polymorph.

Two of them do like to play psychic characters, but as I never bothered to learn the rules for psychics I let them run their characters as they see fit, but I require that they can explain anything they do in 25 words or less if I feel the need to verify the legality of their actions. In fact, thanks to that requirement alone, I have had less trouble with psychic characters than with regular casters, because players feel less obligated to read up on the rules than their psychic counterparts.

Other DMs in my meta seems to agree that splatbooks are overpowered simply because they are used. Their logic goes somehow along the lines of; "If people choose options from splatbooks, it is because these options are better than the options presented in Core. And as Core is the power baseline, anything better is too powerful. Ergo, splatbooks are overpowered.". Incidentally, the most vigilant splatbook-haters in my area are the worst optimizers..

[kurashu]

In fairness, most of those issues were officially handled with errata. But another aspect of the issue we are not discussing is that a DM has complete control over what material is allowed in his game AND how it's implemented. Most DMs take the lazy way out and simply cry "Borked!!!1!!!oenoeneone" rather than read it and understand it. Example: When is the last time you had a DM allow Incarnum? I do, but I used to read that book as a bedtime story.

For that, consider how long it'd take to understand how Incarnum works and what you can do with it(which of course requires examining Melds).

Hence my qualifier. I got the book because it seemed cool, put it down when my head started spinning and then finally powered through it and wanted to see if my players liked it. Now that's it been months since we last played, I'd need a refresher on it (as with anything). But how many people are willing to put that work in? Laziness overcomes much.

[veekie]

How many people have the time though.

[littha]

Personally, I generally take whatever people want to throw at me. 3rd party? homebrew? go ahead. I have yet to have issues with any of my players (other than making really crappy builds on occasion) because I am the only willing DM in the area and if they ruin the game I wont have a problem finding a new group but they will (there are about 20 players and 1 DM... I can only run 6 at a time)

[Unbeliever]

As I've mentioned before, I allow anything 3.5.  Incarnum, Tome of Magic, Eberron, etc.  Bring it all.  If something seems broken to me I either gently ask that we avoid using it or try and hammer out a house rule around it that make us all happy.  Really, a lot of us don't use the  most powerful options b/c we're bored with them.  3.0 stuff is allowed by permission, just b/c it leads to some wonky interactions with other, updated, rules.

To echo the OP, the thing is, pretty much all this splatbook stuff, with some notable exceptions, isn't really overpowered.  It's just a headache.  Incarnum is kind of neat, but also a whole new subsystem.  But, it's certainly not OP.  If it's something like that, I'll usually ask a player for a primer on the basics, or, as is more often the case, offer such a primer myself if I'm the player.  Hell, I kind of do the same thing with most of my builds to prevent any "how the hell are you doing that?" questions during the session.

[caelic]

The fallacy, I think, lies not in the idea that power creep exists--it does.

The problem is that that power creep exists because of the inequities of the core rules.

If a splatbook introduces a new prestige class that makes wizards more powerful, that's a problem precisely because wizards are already overpowered.

If a splatbook introduces a new spell/feat/item that, when coupled with existing material, produces an overpowered synergistic effect, that's a problem because the system is designed in such a way that overpowered synergistic effects are common.

I'd call it the "Turbocharger Fallacy."  If you bolt a turbocharger onto a high-performance sports car and then complain that the turbocharger makes the car too fast, you've missed the point completely.  The car is fast, not because of the turbocharger, but because the car was designed to be fast.  The turbocharger simply exacerbates an already-existing condition.

3.5 is unbalanced, not because of splatbooks, but because it was designed in an inherently unbalanced fashion.  The splatbooks are simply the turbocharger highlighting the existing imbalance.

[skydragonknight]

Is the power creep a good thing, a bad thing, or neither?

I see pros and cons here. There are major pros when it's simply a matter of versatility...this can create more varied and customized characters. However, when it's a flat power increase, stock encounters are no longer even remotely challenging. That dragon that was supposed to be the boss? Shivering Touch. It can be extremely frustrating as a DM to deal with it.

Heck, even the splatbooks that help Team Monster, like the additional Monster Manuals, help the most powerful classes (Druids, Wizards) who use shape-changing spells. Helping the monsters to create a more challenging game inadvertently promotes intra-party inbalance. Creating new monsters and then saying these monsters are not available to shape-shifting players might not be considered fair either. The other option - not helping the monsters - leaves them as a challenge only to lower tier classes, if even them.

[veekie]

Power creep isn't a good thing I think, though theres difference between vertical creep(straight out increases in power) and horizontal creep(increased versatility). D&D is a level based system. As such, it already has set standards of power for each level and CR(even if it doesn't follow these standards well). Hence, moving away from the power level as defined by level(or having never started at the PL baseline in the first place, see casters), is a bad thing.

Even for mundanes, vertical power is already at a pretty high place, so if you're giving them more OPTIONS rather than getting them even more to-hit and damage, that can be acceptable.

[Whisper]

Gimme a break. Dark Heresy (40K RPG) does just that, it's probably worstly balanced (wanna go barbarian-style melee with a pointy stick? You totally can! You'll just be shot to pieces by all the futuristic ranged weapons out there. Meanwhile psykers are still twisting reality on a whim), and still plenty of people love it.

Yeah, okay, after changing the subject twice, you've found another unbalanced game that people like. Well done. You could have just pointed out that people like D&D. What I, on the other hand, was talking about is how and why D&D is broken, not whether people like it or not.

This is why we have tiers. Because Tiers are largely a function of the stories that generate them. Fighters are in the Conan tier. Wizards are in the Rand al'Thor tier. You can't make them work together because the stories they are from don't work together.

That's why people don't like ToB, for example. Not because it's overpowered, but because it takes Conan out of the Conan story, and forces them to play the Stone Monkey instead. Now, playing the Stone Monkey is a fine thing, but it's a fine thing in a Stone Monkey story. People who play fighters want to play Conan in Hyperboria.

Wrong, that's why we have levels. No matter how you look at it, Conan isn't that high of a level because on his own words, even at his prime he'll start having trouble if he has to face more than a dozen faceless mooks at once. In D&D a 20th level fighter can effortestly defeat pretty much any number of lv1 warriors.

Exactly. Different stories. Different magnitudes. Conan is not written as the mightiest warrior of his age, but he's certainly fairly close... and he can't fight twenty dudes, not because he's "not skilled enough", but because he's written into a more-realistic story where no one can. A D&D 20th lvl fighter is on par with a less-realistic story, where martial prowess suffices to cut one's way through hordes of faceless minions. But it's still not the same as the wuxia stories that equate to ToB, or Raymond-Feist-esque power levels of the wizard.

It's a complete red herring to say that Sparrowhawk was Conan at some point, because he wasn't, and even if he was, that's not the point. The point is that Sparrowhawk, Conan, Rand al'Thor, Anasurimbor Kelhus, all come from stories with different notions of the possible, and thus different ceilings.

Conan can't cut his way through 100 warriors. Not because he hasn't practiced enough, but because he comes from a story where the limitations of human muscle and bone don't allow someone to be that good. Kelhus comes from a story where the Few can burn entire armies to ash... but they can't fly. Rand al'Thor can twist reality into a pretzel in all sorts of ways. Sparrowhawk can become a dragon. Characters exist within contexts, and those contexts have rules.

Conan comes from a place with a lower ceiling.

D&D borrows from all sorts of stories, stories with different ceiling heights. And so, since the game designers never thought about this, they ended up with a ceiling that is higher for some and lower for others.

To fix this, one would either need to fix the ceiling height, or have a bunch of ceiling heights, and let the GM pick one for his game.

[skydragonknight]

So Conan is E6?

[Sir Giacomo]

Hmmm.
I always had the impression that most broken builds out were mainly made of non-core material (not counting the basic mechanisms like having hit points and saving throws, for instance). Just check out the GOD guide or other handbooks here.

The problems of overpowerdness of the splatbooks/non-core rules are numerous. Just to name a few:
- I guess they are hardly playtested at all in their interaction with the rest of the core and the other non-core rules, in particular not at the higher levels. See, for instance, the persistent spell/metamagic/nightstick example brought up above.
- they favour core caster classes, since I guess all the new material adds new spells and thus way more options for spellcasters (as opposed to more feats for, say, fighters, which are much rarer than new spells, and also will have to fit in a more limited number of feat options available).
- they introduce many new classes and prestige classes which, of course, to appear more attractive to players to play them (and buy the books), will have a certain power creep (example the ToB warblade)
- they introduce completely new game mechanisms which are more powerful than the mere core rulesset like intermediate spell actions (removing the low-level vulnerability of wizards, for instance, a typical core balancing factor) or new kinds of magic (like Psionics)

So, whatever brokenness or imbalancedness can be attributed to the core rules, it is certainly made worse by the non-core rules.

- Giacomo

[littha]

or Oriental Adventures

  That isnt even a 3.5 book, how can it power creep over the PHB?

I got half way through that post wondering how anyone could be this stupid, then I read the username and all was revealed.

[Unbeliever]

^ I hate to pile on, but +fucking 1. 

I'll just call out one section as an exemplar:

- they introduce completely new game mechanisms which are more powerful than the mere core rulesset like intermediate spell actions (removing the low-level vulnerability of wizards, for instance, a typical core balancing factor) or new kinds of magic (like Psionics)

For "new kinds of magic" to represent power creep, they need to be MORE powerful than the Core, regular ol' arcane and divine spellcasting.  And, that's quite a tall order.  Binders, Shadowcasters, and Incarnum are all examples of "new kinds of magic" that, compared to the stuff in the PHB ... suck.  Psionics is, I guess, debatable, but it's probably way behind arcane spellcasting, if only (and I don't think that's the only reason) for the same reason that Sorcs are weaker than Wizards.

Now, the immediate action thing and stuff like it I can get behind.  As I can get behind Giacomo's statement re:  spellcasters getting more toys than non-casters.  However, again, you can't make much of a general statement.  Immediate action spells exist in Core, they just aren't called out as such, and aren't devastatingly effective (viz. Feather Fall).  Whether they represent "power creep" in any real sense depends on the content of the spell itself. 

[Sir Giacomo]

Ah I see, littha, only because OA is not 3.5 apparently you found my whole post lacking. And haven't OA elements like Iaijutsu Focus been transferred to 3.5? Sigh. Will delete it in my post.

@Unbeliever:
I did not maintain that there are no splatbooks that contain weaker or similarly powerful game elements as that in core.
Only that when taken together, more broken results/imbalances ensue.

Quite likely there are combinations of core rulebooks and some splatbooks that hardly change the playing field of the core rules.

But the tendency is clearly in favour of spellcasters, because nearly every additional rulebook outside core provides new options for them, while leaving non-casters behind. The (clearly non-core) power to actively act (not just a preset contingency or with a readied action) outside your turn with immediate action magic, also at low levels, is only one such thing.

- Giacomo

[Tiltowait]

Giacomo is ridiculous. Just as the sky is blue.

If you joined a game in which all sources were allowed and made a spellcaster as powerful as possible, you would be drawing the vast majority of your options from core with non core adding very little in the way of additional power.

If you joined the same game with a non spellcaster the only things you'd be taking from core are basic building blocks stuff. Power Attack for damage and to qualify for damage feats, Endurance to qualify for Steadfast Determination so you aren't taken out with one Will save...

This is because it's easier to outperform weak things than strong things, so non core improves weak things more than it improves strong things.

For anyone else that means that non core fixes and not creates balance problems.

The person that claims splatbooks improve casters a great deal and barely help anyone else while at the same time discounting the Warblade which is a substantial improvement over the Fighter is the person who has opened his mouth and removed all doubt. Crusader vs Paladin is a similar parallel. Same for Swordsage vs Monk... that explains everything.

[oslecamo]

Psionics is, I guess, debatable, but it's probably way behind arcane spellcasting, if only (and I don't think that's the only reason) for the same reason that Sorcs are weaker than Wizards.

Meh, don't count psionics out of the race so easily. The whole system is infamous because several of the powers allow extreme versatility by themselves. It's even easier to get extra actions, psicrystals can arguably be mined for lots of extra feats (something even a wizard is always starved for), which can then be quickly retrained (along with your powers) depending on the situation for almost free, and the fact lower level powers can be pumped with power points to emulate stronger spells allow for all kind of shenigans with ML boosters.

Then there's the detail that there's rules for converting arcane magic into psionic powers, and the erudite can basically learn as many powers as he pleases, and things just get crazier and crazier from there.

[Sinfire Titan]

Hmmm.
I always had the impression that most broken builds out were mainly made of non-core material (not counting the basic mechanisms like having hit points and saving throws, for instance). Just check out the GOD guide or other handbooks here.

From the handbook in question:

0: As level 5 example
1: Wall of Smoke, Grease, Expeditious Retreat (swift)x2, Targeting Ray, Silent Image, Blockade x2
2: Web, Glitterdust x2, Cloud of Bewilderment (sculpt metamagic for free), Rope Trick, Invisibility, Create Magic Tattoo, Fog Cloud
3: Haste x2, Corpse Candle, Stinking Cloud, Dimension step, Mage Armor (greater), Phantom Steed x2
4: Dimension Door, Solid Fog, Bloodstar, Wall of Sand, Assay Spell Resistance x2, Celerity x2
5: Teleport, Cloudkill, Wall of Stone, Wall of Good, Friend to Foe, Evacuation Rune, Shadow Evocation, Transmute Rock to Mud
6: Freezing Fog x2 (One enhanced with sculpt spell), Tunnel Swallow, True Seeing, Antimagic Field, Dispel Magic (Greater)
7: Stun Ray (Extend for free), Choking Cobwebs (CS) (Sculpt Spell for free), Summon Monster VII, Brilliant Aura, Reverse Gravity
8: Maze, Plane Shift (Greater), Deadly Lahar (CS - huge cone slow effect), Chain Dispel

26 out of 55, less than half of the spells are non-Core. Of them, Chain Dispel, Expeditious Retreat (Swift), Cloud of Bewilderment, and Deadly Lahar can be replaced with Core spells with no noticeable decrease in power. Furthermore, the reason the handbooks list non-Core builds (builds that utilize non-Core PrCs and feats) do so because they have no real choice in the matter: Core PrCs and feats suck.

However, this does not mean non-Core material is broken. It means it is either better designed or worse designed than Core material.

- I guess they are hardly playtested at all in their interaction with the rest of the core and the other non-core rules, in particular not at the higher levels. See, for instance, the persistent spell/metamagic/nightstick example brought up above.

The Core classes were playtested for years, but were not playtested properly. The non-Core classes, starting around the XPH-era, were playtested more appropriately, despite only a year's worth of playtesting actually happening.

There are some sections that were not given playtesting because the playtesters did not find those sections interesting (which is how we ended up with stuff like Planar Shepherd, Shadowcraft Mage, and Tainted Scholar). However, by and large the non-Core sources were given better playtesting.

- they favour core caster classes, since I guess all the new material adds new spells and thus way more options for spellcasters (as opposed to more feats for, say, fighters, which are much rarer than new spells, and also will have to fit in a more limited number of feat options available).

This I agree with. The amount of support casters received is unfair, including spells that either replicate entire classes or negate entire splatbooks (Soulmeld Disjunction will forever be the one spell in all of D&D that I refuse to admit exists).

- they introduce many new classes and prestige classes which, of course, to appear more attractive to players to play them (and buy the books), will have a certain power creep (example the ToB warblade)

While power creep exists, only a handful of sources provide bad examples of power creep. Classes that played off of Core support often resulted in significant amounts of power creep. For example, the Archivist is powerful because it has universal access to the Cleric and Druid spell lists, a pair of spell lists that have been expanded upon hundreds of times over. Had the Archivist been restricted to Core Cleric Domains only, it wouldn't have been nearly as much of a game breaker as it is now simply because it's options would not have expanded as dramatically.

Classes that received little to no support are significantly more balanced. As much as I feel Incarnum could have used support, the MoI and DrM soulmelds are more than enough to make a balanced class.

- they introduce completely new game mechanisms which are more powerful than the mere core rulesset like intermediate spell actions (removing the low-level vulnerability of wizards, for instance, a typical core balancing factor) or new kinds of magic (like Psionics)

Immediate actions existed in Core, they just weren't codified properly. It was expanding those options without those expansions being universally applicable that caused the problems. Immediate actions for Spellcasters were usually new spells, whereas the precious few Immediate actions a Fighter could use were restricted to feats.

Whenever a system receives partial support like that, it causes problems. The Swift and Immediate actions themselves were not bad ideas, it was how narrow the support was that caused problems.

[SorO_Lost]

I recall doing a date check on some psionic stuff a month (or three) ago. At the time of publish, Complete Psionic had several tricks in it totally unmatched by spellcasting. A month later, Magic got Celerity in response to Anticipatory Strike and there are a few other powers, like dual casting (arcane fusion/fury) took forever to get out while Schism and Linked Power dominated actions per round for a bit.

Psionics certainly played it's part in the drift, it pushed, then magic pushed back, then someone printed Spell to Power and broke reality.