Dragon material &web enhancements

[SouthpawSoldier]

What's with the split on material from Dragon Magazine and various web enhancments? Some of the min/maxing builds and threads emphasize feats, spells, racial variants, etc from these sources, and yet I consistently see in play and in PbP games "No Dragon, no Web enhnancements". Are they that bad for min/maxing?

Case in point, everyone's favorite canine/goblinoid/dragon, the Kobold. I've yet to see a game allowing the web enhancements and dragon material for the species. The usual argument is that it overdoes the balancing effort, making kobolds overpowered. Slight Build and a weak natural weapon doesn't seem too overpowered to me, considering the race defaults as a CR 1/2 (not saying CR is best method for measuring a race).

[Crake]

What's with the split on material from Dragon Magazine and various web enhancments? Some of the min/maxing builds and threads emphasize feats, spells, racial variants, etc from these sources, and yet I consistently see in play and in PbP games "No Dragon, no Web enhnancements". Are they that bad for min/maxing?

Case in point, everyone's favorite canine/goblinoid/dragon, the Kobold. I've yet to see a game allowing the web enhancements and dragon material for the species. The usual argument is that it overdoes the balancing effort, making kobolds overpowered. Slight Build and a weak natural weapon doesn't seem too overpowered to me, considering the race defaults as a CR 1/2 (not saying CR is best method for measuring a race).

You're looking at the wrong part of the web enhancement. Take a look at the greater draconic rite. It increases your sorcerer level by 1. No, not your sorcerer casterlevel, your sorcerer LEVEL.

[DarkSonic1337]

I haven't really seen the "no web enhancment" thing before. In fact, I've seen Swiftblade come up almost any time someone wants a "speedy" character (which is a class from a web enhancement).

[nolongerchaos]

Well, web enhancements also give us Spell-to-Power Erudites, which when combined with Psychic Chirurgery and a standard Psions' ability to manifest any known powers, you tend to get Tippy-level shenanigans.

[Story]

Web enhancements can instantly be accessed by anyone (except when they later get deleted). Dragon Magazine is usually the least accessible material of anything.

[kardar233]

I've never seen "no web enhancements". Many of the coolest and most interesting things in 3.5 come out of web enhancements, like the Swiftblade or the Soul Manifester.

Barring Dragon Magazine is fairly reasonable because its balance is very hit-and-miss, the magazines themselves are nearly inaccessible and there's very little indexing for them so it gives a potentially major advantage to whichever player has enough time on their hands to go through the whole backlog.

There's a lot of cool stuff in Dragon Mag, but there's also a lot of crap.