I guess we check 6 months down the line in a 'standardized' games, say PFS on multiple tables at a con, how much of core book 1 is still used!
I agree with what someone above said....it may not be creep but new stuff may be less likely to have been tested well, undergo awful proof-reading, less robust to people trying to break it, etc.
It also breaks the uniquness of classes when monks can cast scorching ray and bards fiddle with undead.
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No, Druid, Wizard, Sorceror, and Cleric were never rare in competitive games.
Power creep is a problem. It made the core rulebook and base classes of 3.5 "rare" in many competitive games.
Not true.
Straight wizards were rare, because you would always prestige them since the core wizard didn't get any abilities you would lose if you did and the prestige classes were better. Similarly with sorcerers.
Druids and Clerics would always be some obscure variant, generally of some obscure race, always pulling some special feature of feat from some broken splat book.
All of them pulled heavily from the splat books. The goal should be that the core is the "Core" of most groups and most players with the other books being variants.
So, power creep or no?
Yes. Even if we assume that only 5% of the material in the new book is overpowered, the 95% other stuff doesn't matter, because the people interested in power gaming will ignore the that and focus on the broken stuff.
And it's almost impossible to balance against every rule interaction in a complex system like 3.5/PF. And with the new subsystems in all the new classes, balancing is (intentionally?) made even harder.
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So, power creep or no?Yes. Even if we assume that only 5% of the material in the new book is overpowered, the 95% other stuff doesn't matter, because the people interested in power gaming will ignore the that and focus on the broken stuff.
And it's almost impossible to balance against every rule interaction in a complex system like 3.5/PF. And with the new subsystems in all the new classes, balancing is (intentionally?) made even harder.
That's easy to fix, ban the broken stuff and problem solved. IMO, there is almost no power creep in this book, and there are some awesome and fun concepts i will run and play. So all in all, totally worth the money.
No, Druid, Wizard, Sorceror, and Cleric were never rare in competitive games.
Power creep is a problem. It made the core rulebook and base classes of 3.5 "rare" in many competitive games.
Not true.
Straight wizards were rare, because you would always prestige them since the core wizard didn't get any abilities you would lose if you did and the prestige classes were better. Similarly with sorcerers.
Druids and Clerics would always be some obscure variant, generally of some obscure race, always pulling some special feature of feat from some broken splat book.
All of them pulled heavily from the splat books. The goal should be that the core is the "Core" of most groups and most players with the other books being variants.
Um, you rarely see non-archetyped Wizard, Clerics, Druid, and Sorcerors in PF (non-core bloodlines). So if that is what you meant: than you've reached that limit now.
No, Druid, Wizard, Sorceror, and Cleric were never rare in competitive games.
Power creep is a problem. It made the core rulebook and base classes of 3.5 "rare" in many competitive games.
Not true.
Straight wizards were rare, because you would always prestige them since the core wizard didn't get any abilities you would lose if you did and the prestige classes were better. Similarly with sorcerers.
Druids and Clerics would always be some obscure variant, generally of some obscure race, always pulling some special feature of feat from some broken splat book.
All of them pulled heavily from the splat books. The goal should be that the core is the "Core" of most groups and most players with the other books being variants.
Except that a big reason you started seeing late in 3.5 is that a lot of the concepts that could be played with the core books had been played into the ground simply because the system was reaching an advanced age and people who had been playing from the beginning had already tried all of them. Thus, splat books became a way to keep playing while not replaying old characters.
PF inherited that to a certain extent, so the chances of finding a pure core character in a group of experienced gamers is still rather small, simply because they have already been played and most people don't care for repeating the same character over and over again.
The area that Paizo has done much better than WOTC in is the relevance of core material. Even if there are very few "core" characters, there are relatively few characters that completely ignore the core book; even the expanded base classes still make solid use of the feats and spells in the core book. The core classes are still played with variations and specific themes, and prestige classes and multiclassing is significantly less of a factor in PF than they were in 3.5.
In the end, to expect experienced groups to never or only rarely move beyond the core books with an underlying system as old as 3.x/PF is unrealistic. Splat books are a necessity if you want those groups to keep playing your system, as the core rules can only cover so many concepts before the players get bored. I think Paizo has done a remarkably good job in their archetypes and limited selection of additional base classes in keeping the core material relevant in the face of old age.
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Um, you rarely see non-archetyped Wizard, Clerics, Druid, and Sorcerors in PF (non-core bloodlines). So if that is what you meant: than you've reached that limit now.
Except that a big reason you started seeing late in 3.5 is that a lot of the concepts that could be played with the core books had been played into the ground simply because the system was reaching an advanced age and people who had been playing from the beginning had already tried all of them. Thus, splat books became a way to keep playing while not replaying old characters.PF inherited that to a certain extent, so the chances of finding a pure core character in a group of experienced gamers is still rather small, simply because they have already been played and most people don't care for repeating the same character over and over again.
The area that Paizo has done much better than WOTC in is the relevance of core material. Even if there are very few "core" characters, there are relatively few characters that completely ignore the core book; even the expanded base classes still make solid use of the feats and spells in the core book. The core classes are still played with variations and specific themes, and prestige classes and multiclassing is significantly less of a factor in PF than they were in 3.5.
In the end, to expect experienced groups to never or only rarely move beyond the core books with an underlying system as old as 3.x/PF is unrealistic. Splat books are a necessity if you want those groups to keep playing your system, as the core rules can only cover so many concepts before the players get bored. I think Paizo has done a remarkably good job in their archetypes and limited selection of additional base classes in keeping the core material relevant in the face of old age.
Addressing both of these at the same time.
Core races and classes were specifically mechanically inferior to later releases and options, not just in specific circumstances, but generally. Classes like duskblades, and splatbook feats and spells meant that if you were new to the game, playing out of core, you had little chance to compete with what came later. If you wanted to play a traditional character, common to the setting, you were going to be less effective than what were intended to be rare races/classes/etc...
Paizo, for the most part, is trying to have core be the power baseline, with the add on books allowing you to be better than core only by focusing more narrowly and sacrificing other features of the class that are, in theory, equal to what you are gaining.
In the end, someone new should be able to come into a game with a core rule book and be just as generally mechanically effective as someone with all the splat books, but someone with all the splat books should be able to have more flavor/specific circumstance options.
In 3.5 at the end if you came into the game new with an experienced group and tried to play with just the core, you start behind the 8 ball.
Several valid statements
I don't think very many people here would disagree with most of your statements. That is the biggest difference I'm seeing between how PF is developing and how 3.5 developed in its last few years, and one big reason a lot of people are willing to give Paizo the benefit of the doubt when they preview bits and pieces of new systems and classes. They are willing to wait until they can see the whole thing, and when they do finally see the whole thing, they tend to provide what in their mind at least is constructive criticism rather than dismiss it outright.
It shows in how the books are treated. It was not uncommon in the late 3.5 era for entire books to be blasted and simply banned because they just weren't worth the trouble that it took to find anything decent in them. With PF, I don't see many people condemning or banning entire books; people might hesitate on certain classes, feats, or an optional rule presented in the books, but the books as a whole have been generally well received. This suggests that even if Paizo isn't getting it perfect, they learned from the mistakes of the past, and have earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to power creep.
Wizards prestige classed out because they had no particularly interesting abilities from leveling up, but as often as not, they went into Archmage at the first opportunity, and starting off as a Wizard was always the king of the arcane casters compared to any other base class.
One of most commonly played Druid variant was the Shapeshifter, which people took to weaken the Core druid. Natural Spell out of core was all people needed to make their druid uber.
Archetypes are just new classes without as much in depth detail anyway. And that means that there's a whole lot more of them overall than there were in 3.5.
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Addressing both of these at the same time.
Core races and classes were specifically mechanically inferior to later releases and options, not just in specific circumstances, but generally. Classes like duskblades, and splatbook feats and spells meant that if you were new to the game, playing out of core, you had little chance to compete with what came later. If you wanted to play a traditional character, common to the setting, you were going to be less effective than what were intended to be rare races/classes/etc...
Paizo, for the most part, is trying to have core be the power baseline, with the add on books allowing you to be better than core only by focusing more narrowly and sacrificing other features of the class that are, in theory, equal to what you are gaining.
In the end, someone new should be able to come into a game with a core rule book and be just as generally mechanically effective as someone with all the splat books, but someone with all the splat books should be able to have more flavor/specific circumstance options.
In 3.5 at the end if you came into the game new with an experienced group and tried to play with just the core, you start behind the 8 ball.
I fully support and endorse this post by Ciretose.
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"Power creep" is somewhat nebulous if it runs off the assumption that Core is balanced, and Core is not balanced.
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Power creep is a problem. It made the core rulebook and base classes of 3.5 "rare" in many competitive games.
Maybe this is the problem.
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"Power creep" is somewhat nebulous if it runs off the assumption that Core is balanced, and Core is not balanced.
What's nebulous about it? Power creep is stacking more weight on the scale. Even if one end of the scale is buried in the ground, you're still adding more weight.
As an aside, I did not expect this thread to be taken seriously. Life's full of little surprises.
"Power creep" is somewhat nebulous if it runs off the assumption that Core is balanced, and Core is not balanced.Unless your notion of balanced isn't quantifiable.
A realist, eh?
Next splat book, I demand rangers with machine guns!
Who cares if they're the new gods, that's totally what would happen in the real world.
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I feel like the monk defiantly got the most love in this book (though they didn't really fix the broken thing about him - his difficulty in getting a natural magic weapon). The genie style feets build of elemental fist (my favorite monk archetype from the APG) so that all to the good.
Unfortunately, archers got 4 feets to make them even more dominant on the battlefield seriously increasing their power. The highest DPS class does not need a way to mitigate DR IMHO.
The Samuri and Ninja both seem fine to me (though I do wish the Ronin challenge power wasn't reactive and therefore much worse than every other Orders challenge).
Gunslingers are the only type of PC to naturally suffer from critical failure in addition to only shooting once a round (most of the time) and massively unimpressive to me for that reason. I honestly think I can build a crossbow fighter or ranger to do more damage with the APG. We won't even talk about the damage output from longbow archers. It will make the gunslinger sad.
So I have to say that UC manages to mostly be below the curve in terms of power level. Except where it decided that archers need more damage.
All that being said I do like all the fighter variants that don't loose heavy armor proficiency. They seem more balanced than most of the APG fighter archetypes (IE I would consider actually using them).
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Well, I don't need more power. I want to do something different. I want to play, but not to repeat exactly the same. That's what keeps me happy, not the fact that my well built old character is garbage if compared to my new character. I want to take an old AP and play it with new a character without breezing through. I want to take a core character and not feel underwhelming in a new AP. You think I'm alone?
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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No, that's a consequence of power creep. It's also less of a negative consequence than you'd think. Publishers want players to desire Ultimate Cobbling because the Shoemaker class is really cool, and one way to make the Shoemaker cool is to make it just a little bit stronger than the previous shoemaking options, without being so strong that GMs simply ban it outright.
Actually, they want new books to be cool because they add more options. For example a normal shoemaker makes normal shoes but you want to make a character who makes glass shoes. The problem is making the glass shoe guy equal in power to the normal shoemaker. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes not so much. It's particularly weird when there are hundreds of shoemaking feats and spells you have to interact with.
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Saying that stuff isn't balanced is ridiculous. Suff is balanced, but just not balanced for PVP or PCVPC. If you're looking for a game where classes are balanced against each other, check out 4E. They are well balanced for team play. They are made to work together, not against each other. So what if a wizard can obliterate a fighter if the latter does not come close enough to strike? They are not supposed to fight in the first place. They are supposed to work together against other creatures.
I think that most people forget this, and go omg omg a wizard outshines everybody!
That can be a result of a 15 minute day (tip to GMs, if your wizard or any other spellcaster blows through his spells in the first two encounters, and then demands to rest, do not let them get rest, harass them).
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Saying that stuff isn't balanced is ridiculous. Suff is balanced, but just not balanced for PVP or PCVPC. If you're looking for a game where classes are balanced against each other, check out 4E. They are well balanced for team play. They are made to work together, not against each other. So what if a wizard can obliterate a fighter if the latter does not come close enough to strike? They are not supposed to fight in the first place. They are supposed to work together against other creatures.
I think that most people forget this, and go omg omg a wizard outshines everybody!
That can be a result of a 15 minute day (tip to GMs, if your wizard or any other spellcaster blows through his spells in the first two encounters, and then demands to rest, do not let them get rest, harass them).
You're missing the problem.
The problem is not only when the wizard can blink and destroy fighters. That can be really frustrating if you're a fighter and fighting wizards, mind you! Really, really frustrating, which is compounded by so many goddamn monsters having tons of save-or-hah-hah spells as natural abilities.
No, the bigger problem is when the wizard can cast a spell to summon better fighters then you and then another spell turns him into a better fighter then you are, also he doesn't need to do any of this because he's flying and invisible and his spell just ended combat single handedly. Oh and because he's flying and invisible he doesn't really need most of the other classes either.
In other words, you seem to think it's a problem with PVP. It isn't. It's a problem of one class making the others obsolete.
It's a problem with the cleric in 3.5 casting one spell and becoming a better fighter then the fighter, to give the classic example.
So yeah, classes not being balanced against each other can and is a problem when you make Conan the Barbarian only to find you spend most of every combat crowd controlled. But it's just as much if not more of a problem when you find yourself twiddling your thumbs as the wizard solves everything.
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"Power creep" is somewhat nebulous if it runs off the assumption that Core is balanced, and Core is not balanced.What's nebulous about it? Power creep is stacking more weight on the scale. Even if one end of the scale is buried in the ground, you're still adding more weight.
As an aside, I did not expect this thread to be taken seriously. Life's full of little surprises.
I think you struck on the issue.
We can (and will) fight about if the core classes are balanced with each other, but that isn't really relevant to the the power "creep" issue.
Core should be the power baseline that everything else should be measured against. You can see as they develop new classes that is largely what is going on. They swap out things which they consider equal value, so that the end product is functionally equal.
Compare this to some of the 3.5 stuff. Duskblade was completely unbalanced relative to 3.5 core classes. In complete arcana they had a full BaB, no spell levels lost, prestige class.
So far, all of the discussions on here have been about specific "slips" where specific things are overpowered due to interactions, and for the most part when seen they have been corrected.
There is always going to be a major push from power gamers for "bigger, better, faster, stronger" and it will always be tempting for the devs to want to provide this.
But when you do this to the point where base, core stuff becomes less effective, you create a world where you have created two serious problems.
1. An incentive to play what were intended to be "rare" builds over what are intended to be "common" builds.
2. A high bar for new players to be able to be able to enter the game, competitively.
This is why I get so frustrated with people screaming about "Underpowered" options. Options are options, and all options that increase flavor are good options. If you don't want to play an "underpowered" build, don't play it.
But when you go the other way and create over powered classes, spells, etc...then you basically move the game to a point where in order to challenge people who play regularly you have to move the bar to a level where a new comer has issues when using what is supposed to be core material.
And you kill your growth and become the #2 Role Playing Game...just saying...
The two things at play are re-playability (keeping us old heads interested with new and exciting options) and entrance level (letting new kids be able to sit down at a table with old heads and not feel useless).
To do the later, core has to stay as the baseline of power. To do the former, you have to think of lots of new options to play the game in different ways that makes us buy the new books.
This can devolve into yet another "Caster rule, all else drool" thread, but I hope it doesn't. The original conversation is much more interesting.
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In my opinion, balance is overrated, you should be rewarded for choosing the best path to get to your goals, and Pathfinder does this beautifully. Admittedly some classes don't quite meet the goals as horrifyingly efficiently as other, but they still get there, even if it takes them a little longer.
I'm going to put it this way: people aren't balanced enough to properly create a truly balanced system and even if they were perfectly balanced, they would probably be intensely boring.Furthermore: not every path a person can take in real life is balanced, soldiers don't make anywhere near as much as private military contractors, yet there are still way more soldiers than PMCs. As such: expecting a game to be perfectly balanced is asking too much.
4e is fundamentally more balanced than Pathfinder is, but that balance brought about homogenization, everything looks the same, and that makes it boring. While in Pathfinder, you would be hard-pressed to find two classes that felt the same in combat.
The biggest culprit of this is the insanely flexible (and aptly-named) fighter, who can fake being several other classes, and unlike the wizard, can do that until the cows come home. Technically he can keep doing it after that, but he's going to get bored eventually.... we don't exactly have warforged here, though some GMs would still allow them, after making them fit a bit better in all aspects.
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Anybody play this game anymore? Or do you just discuss how unplayable it is?
The balance issue is intractable from the power creep issue. When you introduce an overpowered option, you upset both.
Balance might be "overrated" in the sense that people can get too hung up on small power differences, but balance is integral to any good game. Take a look at the subscribers to WoW today vs. EQ 10 years ago. One really effective way to increase interest in a game is to make sure the player's options are fair.
You mention "real life" which of course isn't fair or balanced. But people play games to escape that unfairness. When people encounter a game that is "naturally balanced" (balanced according to how powerful something would be in real life), most players say "Yuck" and walk away. We deal with enough imbalance in real life that we don't want to deal with it in a game.
This is why Monopoly was so popular, even in the midst of the Great Depression. Say you had to roll different classes at the beginning of Monopoly. You decide to roll "street person" while the guy next to you rolls "tycoon." How much fun do you think that game would be? Fortunately, that's not the way it is, and that's why people still play it.
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We can (and will) fight about if the core classes are balanced with each other, but that isn't really relevant to the the power "creep" issue.
Core should be the power baseline that everything else should be measured against. You can see as they develop new classes that is largely what is going on. They swap out things which they consider equal value, so that the end product is functionally equal.
Compare this to some of the 3.5 stuff. Duskblade was completely unbalanced relative to 3.5 core classes. In complete arcana they had a full BaB, no spell levels lost, prestige class.
False.
A core (PHB, MM, DMG) only Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Sorceror all are stronger than a Duskblade.Really, try that out in a game: the Duskblade loses badly.
Duskblades have 70% of only damage spells. The others have much more utility, buffs, teleportation, etc problem solving spells.
Duskblades are just warriors who use spells to boost their damage. They aren't full casters (they only have 5th level spells, less than evern Bards).
Duskblades are balanced. I'm sorry, your views are biased. But I've seen a Dusklblade in play. They aren't overpowered.
If you are comparing noncasters (Fighter, Barb) to Duskblade: than there disparity from being a caster is the issue. Casters have more options by virtue of being a caster (the 30% non-damage spells like Expendious Retreat, Jump, etc).
And CA's full BAB, no spell lost Prc? Doesn't exist. I just looked.
Are you perhaps mistaken? Did you mean Complete Mage?
I did!
And then I got deployed.
:(
Wars are taking our gamers away! Down with wars!
+1
Remember to flank, and don't forget your rope.
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I once ran a plot, titled "Night of the Crepe". Apparently, the players had assumed it was a typo, and joked about that. But no, the plot evolved entirely around the competitive world of high-stake bakery in the city of Sharn.
Also, I had made a huge stack of pancakes to munch on during the game. I never got any complaints about creep.
/random
I once ran a plot, titled "Night of the Crepe". Apparently, the players had assumed it was a typo, and joked about that. But no, the plot evolved entirely around the competitive world of high-stake bakery in the city of Sharn.
Also, I had made a huge stack of pancakes to munch on during the game. I never got any complaints about creep.
/random
Wow.
No, the bigger problem is when the wizard can cast a spell to summon better fighters then you and then another spell turns him into a better fighter then you are....
I agree with you 99% of the time, but I am not seeing this.
Expecting Core to be equal to Core + Splat is ridiculous, especially in a game with variables that can't be measured in number.
X+Y is always greater than X assuming Y is positive.
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Anybody play this game anymore? Or do you just discuss how unplayable it is?
I have 1 game going right now, I'm waiting for my schedule to normalize before I hop back into a second game I had been playing, before the GM of my first game had to change when he ran. This should be back to normal by next month. Which I don't mind, the gm of the second game is doing some goofy stuff.
Also: Warhammer 40,000 is intensely unbalanced, rewarding whoever plays the latest space marine chapters, and only them. Yes Dark Eldar is a mean book, but it's incredibly fiddly, and it only rewards really good players. Yet people still play it all the time and they think it's the greatest game. The very same people would say that a game (more specifically a roleplaying game, but it does apply to 40k as well, but their idea of balanced is "are the space marines still the easiest army to win with") has to be perfectly balanced.
I think that's just an excuse to get their jollies by being right on the internet, or to let them complain about something minor that the GM should have 0 problems dealing with, considering that the GM is probably the only one who has to deal with it proper. The other players should be taking advantage of whatever neat trick the others in their group can accomplish, not squabbling over how they feel underpowered because they can't perform that trick (or hit like angry freight trains in the case of fighters.), simply because it isn't something that their path has available.
True balance is impossible to accomplish, especially with a system involving rolling dice, because that in and of itself is unbalanced. Some players simply roll better than others. Like that group I mentioned, the one I can't really attend? I'm the best roller in it, I don't have to build a dangerous character to hit harder than everyone else, I'm going to anyway because I can hit, unlike the rest of my group. That's not fair at all.