SC is not that bad. Yes some spells in it are unbalanced. Yet those same spells players use the NPC can too. It seems the SC rub DMs who need to control everything at a table the wrong way.
I agree. There are some spells I don't allow, but for the most part the spells are ok.
Agreed and seconded. More options for me are also good.I like to have options at my disposal.I completely agree. Options are *good*.
I think I'll agree with this, with one modification: More good options are good. I'm happy to sift through material and take out the ones that don't fit my campaign or character, but I'd rather not have to sift through them and take out ones that are too overpowered or too underpowered.
Note:
Mostly, by nerfing them. What all the people complaining about SC miss is that banning it results in more problem spells, not less.I cast Celerity and silence you before you can even say that the Spell Compendium is balanced!
That book is a game balance/editing joke.
Pretty sure Celerity was PHB 2 not Spell Compendrium. What page is your version of Spell Compendrium? I can't find in mine.
Did you mean Celebration? But that has nothing to do with how fast you act.
~reads carefully and takes some notes~
I ban everything. I even ban core rulebook. You're not allowed any options. No options. You don't even get a character sheet.
Silliness aside, I start with a default state of 'everything is banned but you can ask for it'. It means people don't have a sense of entitlement to have things, even core options. Of course, with core it's almost guaranteed that I say yes unless it's something I see as a thing disruptive to the game, setting or campaign.
my problem with splat books was interaction. meaning a splat book was written with only considering the core books and not other splat books. most were fairly balanced or slightly unbalanced but when they interacted together you had a recipe for disaster. For instance, Prc X or feat X from splat book 1 was fine or slightly over powered to core but when combined with prc y or feat y from splat book 2 the whole system unraveled and became a broken mess. And this is where the majority of major power play peaked from. take base class x/y and take 2/3/1/4 levels of prestige w/x/y/z = invincible player. Or the same with feats from 10 different splat books. while the prestige classes by themselves were fine, when you combined them with other classes not even considered by the designers the whole game became broken and just absurd. the whole 3.5 splat book broken combos is what made me dump 3.5 as soon as i found pathfinder. It's also why i will only EVER allow a player to take 3 base classes and 2 prestige classes ever, no exceptions. while some players liked all the options *cough..BLOAT* as a DM i found myself scouring rules and future class abilities of players 90% of the time and not working on adventures.
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I know this has been said before but in the end it's up to the DM to allow or disallow. One of the things I both like and dislike about 4E is that it fixed while nerfing multicallsing at the same time. Which is one of the reasons I think some dislike so many options in 3.5/Pathfinder. It's too easy imo to twink out a character by mulitclassing. If your going to have someone who takes as a multiclass class1/class2/class3/class4 only to get more bonuses and feats than as a DM imo your not doing your job right. Yes it is annoying to have to keep track of all the material yet if your not willing to do the work as a DM do not DM in the first place.
Too many want to be a DM without having to do the workload as a DM than go and blame the system. Did 3.5 have a lot of rules yes. Yet at the same time being a DM in this system is not easy and does take some effort.
One of the better rpgs that had a built in system to discourage taking new and more powerful things as books comes out used to be Torg. Out of the entire group I was one who stuck by his original character class. Everyone was taking stronger better options. Yet I still was stronger and did more than those charcters because the systems rewards you if you stick with one charcter and build on it. The other characters were ble to do more damage than me yet I hit more often.
Maybe I should create this myself, but I'd really like a form for GMs to fill out and give to the players before they run a campaign.
When and where will the game meet?
How long will the campaign run?
How many players will there be?
What materials are allowed/disallowed?
What house rules are you using?
and so on . . .
Maybe I should create this myself, but I'd really like a form for GMs to fill out and give to the players before they run a campaign.
When and where will the game meet?
How long will the campaign run?
How many players will there be?
What materials are allowed/disallowed?
What house rules are you using?and so on . . .
I always give my players a campaign guide. It solves a lot of issues before they start.
I know this has been said before but in the end it's up to the DM to allow or disallow. One of the things I both like and dislike about 4E is that it fixed while nerfing multicallsing at the same time. Which is one of the reasons I think some dislike so many options in 3.5/Pathfinder. It's too easy imo to twink out a character by mulitclassing. If your going to have someone who takes as a multiclass class1/class2/class3/class4 only to get more bonuses and feats than as a DM imo your not doing your job right. Yes it is annoying to have to keep track of all the material yet if your not willing to do the work as a DM do not DM in the first place.
Too many want to be a DM without having to do the workload as a DM than go and blame the system. Did 3.5 have a lot of rules yes. Yet at the same time being a DM in this system is not easy and does take some effort.
One of the better rpgs that had a built in system to discourage taking new and more powerful things as books comes out used to be Torg. Out of the entire group I was one who stuck by his original character class. Everyone was taking stronger better options. Yet I still was stronger and did more than those charcters because the systems rewards you if you stick with one charcter and build on it. The other characters were ble to do more damage than me yet I hit more often.
It's one thing to not be willing to do the work, it's another to have to spend 10 hours a day rummaging through rules, anticipating every possible ability, adjusting all encounters, giving monsters the same abilities as player-scouring more rules for them,etc. It has nothing to do with willing to do the work so much as the absurdity of the workload players feel your obligated to do without even consideration. while it may be fun for them it's not fun for the DM. If the players enjoy it that much then there more than willing to find a new DM and i will find players that will play to my style. or if you want that much of a rule system go play a video game as i'm human and don't wish to do more calculations a second than my computer. I'm not doing anything wrong as a DM. i choose my style and rules and players can eather except it or not. i'm not going to spend that much time on a RPG when i could be using that time to work and get PAID for it. If the players are willing to pay me to DM than i will run any rule system they want. until then they play in MY world not there's.
1) When they are poorly playtested (or not playtested at all) and deeply unbalanced.There is not a single RPG book written by anyone that has been properly playtested, only differing degrees of improper playtesting.
3) When they present options that are considerably more powerful than the core, leading to power creep, which many view as bad.Not all power is created equal. For example, things that raise the power of weak classes is a good thing.
4) When new classes/feats/spells/items presented step on the toes of existing classes conceptually, decreasing their attractiveness.Tends to go along with the previous example, as the most common use of splatbooks is as bug fixes. The thing is, those classes were already unappealing, because they don't function.
5) When GMs and players feel compelled to spend ever more money to buy ever more books in order to "stay current" or "be competitive".Like it or not, books don't sell without power creep.
6) When the sheer mass of rules material becomes so large no GM can master it, leaving gaping holes for rules lawyers and powergamers to exploit, potentially breaking a game.Because rules lawyers and powergamers never DM? This one is just absurd.
7) When it encourages optimizers to devote dozens of hours to scour the books looking for the best possible combos and builds to produce supercharacters, necessitating the GM devote even more time to adjusting his adventures so that they continue to be a challenge.See power creep sells books.
8) When the GM caves to social pressure to allow classes or other things that really don't fit into his campaign world, damaging the internal logic of the game and people's ability to immerse themselves in the world.Fluff is mutable. Class tags are a metagame concept, and therefore only impede roleplaying if you are bad at roleplaying.
Basically, my bottom line is that I...
Just a couple of additional thoughts in reponse.
In my experience, the absolute worst rules lawyers and powergamers never, ever wanted to DM. They seemingly found far more fun in trying to break a game than in trying to create and sustain one. Those few powergamers I know who did attempt to DM were almost uniformly horrible at it. Combining a powergamer mentality with the DM's ultimate power over the game universe seems to quickly lead to a DM vs. Players dynamic, which then devolves into repeated TPKs. Unless of course, everybody at the table is a powergamer and agrees they pretty much want to play the game like a tactical wargame. Not for me, but I can see the right group having fun with that.
In my experience also, most of the splat books introduced more bugs than they fixed.
It's one thing to not be willing to do the work, it's another to have to spend 10 hours a day rummaging through rules, anticipating every possible ability, adjusting all encounters, giving monsters the same abilities as player-scouring more rules for them,etc. It has nothing to do with willing to do the work so much as the absurdity of the workload players feel your obligated to do without even consideration. while it may be fun for them it's not fun for the DM. If the players enjoy it that much then there more than willing to find a new DM and i will find players that will play to my style. or if you want that much of a rule system go play a video game as...I know this has been said before but in the end it's up to the DM to allow or disallow. One of the things I both like and dislike about 4E is that it fixed while nerfing multicallsing at the same time. Which is one of the reasons I think some dislike so many options in 3.5/Pathfinder. It's too easy imo to twink out a character by mulitclassing. If your going to have someone who takes as a multiclass class1/class2/class3/class4 only to get more bonuses and feats than as a DM imo your not doing your job right. Yes it is annoying to have to keep track of all the material yet if your not willing to do the work as a DM do not DM in the first place.
Too many want to be a DM without having to do the workload as a DM than go and blame the system. Did 3.5 have a lot of rules yes. Yet at the same time being a DM in this system is not easy and does take some effort.
One of the better rpgs that had a built in system to discourage taking new and more powerful things as books comes out used to be Torg. Out of the entire group I was one who stuck by his original character class. Everyone was taking stronger better options. Yet I still was stronger and did more than those charcters because the systems rewards you if you stick with one charcter and build on it. The other characters were ble to do more damage than me yet I hit more often.
+1
It is also very dependent pn your situation in life. When I was a single student (HS, college, grad school) I had tons of free time and could put whatever amount of prep time is necessary into running the game.
Now, however, I'm a 45-year old married father of two who works a professional supervisory job that takes up way more than 8 hours a day, is chairman of his church's board, coach's his daughter's lacrosse team and somehow tries to squeeze out a few hours of prep time each week necessary to run a game. I run a combination of published adventures (currently Kingmaker) and homebrew, but have to put a significant amount of work into modifying even published modules to account for the fact we have seven players, some of whom are extremely talented tactically, meaning the power level has to be jacked up to challenge them. Now you want me to instantly allow any new material published into my game that any player wants and to put in the work necessary to master the material? Sure just give me an extra day each week and I'll be happy to.
Now I could just say I have no time to DM since I don't have the time to quickly read all the splats and get prepared to include them in my campaigns, as memorax suggests. Of course, if I did that, we likely wouldn't have a group for long, as I have fewer work and other conflicts than the other two guys who DM for us, and DM more often.
So, instead I just rule that no new stuff is allowed in play until after I read it and am confident I understand it (took me two months with the APG). After which, we give things a try and decide as a group what material we want to keep and what material we don't.
We gamers recognize that designing and printing a RPG is a for-profit enterprise, but we also hold to the idea that it's not just a for-profit enterprise. We hope that the designers, authors, publishers, et cetera are operating in a thoughtful matter, adding material as relevant or useful, and not merely publishing for the sake of moving copy.
Historically, the splat book is where that rubs the thinnest. Variations in quality (and power balance to the crunch) are, I think, somewhat more symptomatic of this, because there simply are just sections of the character-specific gameworld that don't really need a fully fleshed out book to detail. The next thing you know, you find yourself reading a book on Left-handed Gnomish Spellcasters, and wondering not only why you bought it, but why someone saw the need to write it in the first place.
I removed a post. Let's not take things personally.
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It's one thing to not be willing to do the work, it's another to have to spend 10 hours a day rummaging through rules, anticipating every possible ability, adjusting all encounters, giving monsters the same abilities as player-scouring more rules for them,etc. It has nothing to do with willing to do the work so much as the absurdity of the workload players feel your obligated to do without even consideration. while it may be fun for them it's not fun for the DM. If the players enjoy it that much then there more than willing to find a new DM and i will find players that will play to my style. or if you want that much of a rule system go play a video game as i'm human and don't wish to do more calculations a second than my computer. I'm not doing anything wrong as a DM. i choose my style and rules and players can eather except it or not. i'm not going to spend that much time on a RPG when i could be using that time to work and get PAID for it. If the players are willing to pay me to DM than i will run any rule system they want. until then they play in MY world not there's.
I get the point your trying to make and even agree with it. The porblem being is that even if you restrict a lot of options their is a certain amount of workload involved in being a DM. It's part job and part fun imo. It also depends on which rpg you run. If you run a rpg that no longer gets support than it's easier as you have less books to read. As oppossed to say PF and other newer rpgs with a certain level of support. I'm not saying it's easy to do yet one cannot expect it to be a cakewalk and that players have to bend over backwards to accomadate the DM either. In the end the DM has as much power as the players will give him. For all posters talk of DM being king enough of players desert your table your a DM without a game.
If your willing to take the mantle of the DM you need to acknowledge it has certain responsabilites. As players need to be also responsible not to be too much of a burden to the DM. It's a symbiotic relationship imo.
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Divine metamagic may have been the silliest boost to a top-tier class ever.
All wizard/cleric prestige classes were top-heavy and very powerful.
Splat books started going too far into conjuration/illusion spells that bypassed SR, to the point where SR became worthless.
Fighters received some boosts, but for the most part the best got better.
In Pathfinder, APG was well-balanced and interesting, and they used us as guinea pig playtesters. They're doing the same with the ultimates, so I have hopes. Power creep was mostly circumvented, and where it did happen (growth domain ability) it was quickly errataed away.
They did creep up Rangers and Monks, but my god they needed it; and the new options are interesting and not overwhelming. Poor rogues still need it :(.
A lot of this comes down to respect. If you have disruptive players then it's because they don't respect you. What are you doing that impedes their ability to respect you?
In my home games, the only things banned are the Book of 9 Swords and Summoners. Everything else WotC or Paizo is allowed. Everything 3rd party is allowed on a case by case. Are there broken combos available to my players? Yes. Do they take advantage of them? No. My players also realize that anything their characters do an NPC can do better. In this it is the players who determine the power level of the game.
Splat books are fun. Even if I only use one thing out of a given book I still had a whole book to read. I have a couple of friends who, like most of you, simply aren't happy with a splat book if there's only one thing for them to use. It's like people feel an obligation to buy these books and think they were ripped off if they don't use 90% of the content.
Basically, if your players respect you then you can trust them to set the game's power level. If you enforce the "whatever you can do someone else can do better" rule then gaining their respect should happen quickly.
Lots of stuff
As for powergamers, being as neither of us could possibly know "most of them", we should probably stick to just talking about our individual experiences, as I did, rather than broad statements. I fully admit my experience might not be typical, although I think it is. Actually I distinguish between powergamers and rules lawyers. Rules lawyers, as least defined as just someone who has an encyclopedic understanding of the rules, rather than as someone who uses that knowledge for malign purposes, frequently make excellent GMs. For a true powergamer, however, with a real desire to win, they need to be able to successfully suppress that desire to be an effective DM, in my opinion. Some may indeed be able to do it, but I haven't seen it.
As to your other point on the splats serving a grand purpose in redressing the perceived unbalance between the classes, you should know by now that I at least partially disagree with your perception of imbalance. I agree only that it exists at higher levels, balanced by the fact that it tips the other way at lower levels. If your premise is faulty, then so are your conclusions based upon it.
I actually had little problem with most of the 3.5 splats from a balance point of view (the abomination that was the Spell Compendium excepted), but had more problems with them from a sheer silliness of the fluff point of view, and from a bloat point of view that greatly increased the burden on DMs to understand an ever-increasing set of rules.
One final side point not directly aimed at anyone. It strikes me that most players I have met are somewhat better at either roleplaying or mechanics, apart from a few paragons of gaming who are very good at both. Reading through these boards, my observation is that those who are better at the roleplaying than the mechanics usually readily admit their mechanical deficiencies, but very few are prepared to admit they are weaker at roleplaying. Rather, many optimizers are very defensive on that point and go to great and frequently heated lengths to defend their roleplaying abilities. I wonder why it is so hard for some peope to admit they are better mechanically than as roleplayers? I currently bounce between two theories. The first is that optimization is at least partially objective and it is easier to judge whether someone is good mechanically. Roleplaying skill, on the other hand, is almost completely subjective, which may allow all of us to believe that we are wonderful roleplayers, even if we aren't. My second theory is that because this is a roleplaying game, it is somehow socially unacceptable to admit that you actually like and are better at the mechanics. Anyway, just a thought, for what it's worth.
I removed a post. Disagreeing with someone does not prove you are superior to them.
Are there really players out there demanding that all available material be allowed in play? That just seems silly. I've always thought that "subject to DM approval" was implicit. (Forget the explicit disclaimer in the front of the APG.)
Well, all may be a bit of an exaggeration, but yes some players do expect that pretty much all official content would be allowed.
I don't think it is that unreasonable to assume that most of the official content works well enough to make micromanagement usually unnecessary. If the game system is that fragile, it makes one wonder why anyone would want to play it. Certainly problems will arise, but it is often better to address those individual problems, than to toss entire options out the window.
Also, consider the fact that the one thing that players have control over is their character. The players don't get to say, "Don't use any monsters from the Bestiary 2, because they are unbalanced." No, that is the GM's area and he makes those calls. Why can't the players be expected to have control over their one aspect (with in the rules of the game system)? Limiting character options should be something that is done with extreme reservation, a GM stepping in the area of the player's character can be seen as being controlling. Why isn't control of the entire game setting enough for some GMs? Of course, some options will not fit with the game setting (say guns in a typical fantasy setting) and of course GMs in those cases should work with players to find options that fit within the setting.
i found the "PC races" in bestiary 2 to be mechanically disadvantaged compared to the core races. i also found a lot of monsters that seemed to be really lacking for thier CR. like the soulbound doll as a good example. i would consider most of the monsters in that book to be drastically underpowered for thier CR.
In my home games, the only things banned are the Book of 9 Swords and Summoners. Everything else WotC or Paizo is allowed.
Wait, Summoners are banned? Dangit, there goes my idea for a fisherman based Summoner with a giant pet Lobster for an Eidolon.
APG offered a bunch more complete trash for martial characters, and a MASSIVE boost to primary spellcasters. Your argument is invalid.
Hey, the Barbarian got a semi-boost. DR at even lower levels is when it is needed.
But sure the rest didn't get a big boost.
+1 to the OP. I allow a lot of material in my game and simply say NO to the rest. It's that simple. And I enjoy new splat books, it's the one thing I look forward to (and I'm solely a DM!).
The actual problem with splat books in 3.5 was their lack of support. For instance take the warlock a fun looking class which you could play and be about on par with the party rogue. Unfortunately however as new books came out everyone else got new toys to play with but the poor little warlock gets nothing. Out of the dozens of books published after its creation only 1 (Dragon magic) had any support for the warlock and that content was 3 pages.
Actually, there were 2. Dragon Magic and Complete Mage.
As for the rest, I definitely agree with you on the lack of support for the new classes. Which is what worries me about Paizo. I feel like the new classes, plus the new alternate classes in UC, are going to get little support.
Granted, I know UM will give Summoners, Witches, etc. new toys. But what can we look forward to after UC and UM? An APG 2 would be nice, with no new classes, just new toys for the core, new classes, and alternate classes.
Though I'd prefer they get Psionics done already, because it feels like 6th Edition D&D will be out before they get to it. >.>
APG offered a bunch more complete trash for martial characters, and a MASSIVE boost to primary spellcasters. Your argument is invalid.Hey, the Barbarian got a semi-boost. DR at even lower levels is when it is needed.
But sure the rest didn't get a big boost.
The APG was not primarily intended to boost characters rather than have flavorable options. Alot of the trash for martial characters I found actually very well done flavorable options. Otherwise I think the APG gave players what they wanted, Paizo PRPG approved options to expand their PRPG game. I did not find much in the APG that was unbalanced in my opinion, a few spells and maybe a feat or two excluded I will allow it without much anticipated problems.
In the games I DM I find that flavorable characters help alot to avoid the powergaming mentality, in that they do not feel the need to optimize their character as best as they can and willing to take a few feats and invest some skillpoints in that concept.
Splat isnt bad, but I will disallow anything by default before I give my stamp of approval, my players are mostly aware what I deem acceptable and what not.
+1 to the OP. I allow a lot of material in my game and simply say NO to the rest. It's that simple. And I enjoy new splat books, it's the one thing I look forward to (and I'm solely a DM!).
The actual problem with splat books in 3.5 was their lack of support. For instance take the warlock a fun looking class which you could play and be about on par with the party rogue. Unfortunately however as new books came out everyone else got new toys to play with but the poor little warlock gets nothing. Out of the dozens of books published after its creation only 1 (Dragon magic) had any support for the warlock and that content was 3 pages.Actually, there were 2. Dragon Magic and Complete Mage.
As for the rest, I definitely agree with you on the lack of support for the new classes. Which is what worries me about Paizo. I feel like the new classes, plus the new alternate classes in UC, are going to get little support.
Granted, I know UM will give Summoners, Witches, etc. new toys. But what can we look forward to after UC and UM? An APG 2 would be nice, with no new classes, just new toys for the core, new classes, and alternate classes.
Though I'd prefer they get Psionics done already, because it feels like 6th Edition D&D will be out before they get to it. >.>
There is a revised psionics book for PRPG 3rd party, but it gets decent reviews as a 3.5 translation to PRPG, if you liked psionics in 3.5 you might want to look it up. Psionics Unleashed I think it is called.
As I undrstood it, they are trying to fit archetypes and options for the new classes into UC to give them a decent support in the same book.
Not sure that is true for UM as well though.
The problem with splatbooks in D&D 2ed & 3x is that they were made primarily to fit a narrow campaign style. Sure, someone could have a great time using "The Complete Chain Fighters Handbook" if the whole party is playing a gladiator campaign that uses the chain fighters on a regular basis.
Splat books were never made to provide balance with the overall game, instead they were products directed at the folks with the min/max mentality who wanted to make their character into a Superman (sans the Kryptonite vulnerability).
I,for one, never allowed Psionics in my campaigns (even back in my AD&D 1 days.)for the same reason that I did not allow machine guns or lightsabers. I felt that they did not belong in a sword & sorcery campaign.
Though I'd prefer they get Psionics done already, because it feels like 6th Edition D&D will be out before they get to it. >.>
There is a revised psionics book for PRPG 3rd party, but it gets decent reviews as a 3.5 translation to PRPG, if you liked psionics in 3.5 you might want to look it up. Psionics Unleashed I think it is called.
As I undrstood it, they are trying to fit archetypes and options for the new classes into UC to give them a decent support in the same book.
Not sure that is true for UM as well though.
Yeah, I have it and checked it out already. I am thinking of implementing it, but I also am worried about getting my players miffed when I make them change their psionic characters to PF if I find PF's version more suitable.