Books balance

[AganDur]

I don't know if there has been such a thread already, so point me to it if there is.
I began DMing a couple of years ago, but never used anything beyond the core rulebooks. I am DMing a campaign now, in which I plan on adding some new books slowly, and giving them new abilities through trainers, especially for new classes. I, however, want to avoid anything too unbalancing, and don't want to give them too much too soon. They are currently level 4, and if they dire they get to create new characters with the new stuff, at the same level they died.

So are there feats, spells, classes or even entire books, I should avoid or change?

[mistermysterio]

Well, there is a LOT of material out there... so maybe give us an idea of what books, specifically, you are considering using and then we can recommend changes or things to avoid based on that?

Also, is this for 3.5? Pathfinder?

First party books only? 3rd party considerations?

[AganDur]

Ow yeah sorry, I forgot to add that. For now I was thinking of adding the Complete rulebooks, as well as the Expanded Psionics (maybe through opening more of my world). I am also considering several other books such as : Magic of Incarnum (I have a quest idea for it), Tome of Battle, Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exalted Deeds. We already use the Unearthed Arcana arctic races, but otherwise we are only using core rulebooks and no Level Adjustments races.

And I would rather use first party books for 3.5, but could use 3rd party or non official ones if the content was really interesting for my lore too.

[TotallyNotEvil]

Is it a cold-themed campaign? Can't go wrong with Frostburn then.

I also recommend Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium. Never leave home without.

[AganDur]

At the time yes, Viking-based more precisely. I have frostburn on hand for all the weather-rules but haven't used the rest yet.

[BowStreetRunner]

One thing I would suggest trying to avoid is introducing multiple new mechanics at the same time. If you are going to introduce some of these (I personally recommend Martial Adepts and Incarnum, but would suggest avoiding Truename Magic) it might be a good idea to have separate adventures that introduce each one through NPCs and monsters. Dumping several on the players simultaneously can be a bit confusing.


Psionics: Expanded Psionics Handbook, Complete Psionic, and supporting material from other books.
Martial Adepts: Tome of Battle
Pact Magic: Tome of Magic
Shadow Magic: Tome of Magic
Truename Magic: Tome of Magic
Incarnum: Magic of Incarnum

The concept of introducing each new supplement through a tailored adventure can be extended to the other books as well. Frostburn, Sandstorm, Stormwrack, and Dungeonscape are almost ideal for this sort of thing. But an adventure could be built around really any of the supplements that you want to introduce.

[EDIT: just saw you mention the viking theme. I think the voyages of viking explorers would be ideal ways to introduce these sorts of things, through visits to exotic locations where different races, cultures, and such exist.]

[AganDur]

Yeah, I am planning an adventure to uncover/unlock the Incarnum. The players have already heard of it, and battled a lone Lost. The Psionics will be introduced when they leave their land, for now they are in the midst of protecting a small town during a long Winter.

[Nifft]

There are some things in each book that you should probably remove, or just not allow in the first place.

As a new DM, it might be easier to cherry-pick new content rather than opening the floodgates of multiple new books at once. You might want to allow PCs to pick up gear / spells / PrCs / etc. from new books over time, rather than opening all content at the start of the game.

-- -- --

Some specific thoughts:

From the Expanded Psionics Handbook, you may want to remove bestow power, since it's pretty easy to get a loop which restores unlimited power points.

On the other hand, IMHO the unlimited power point potential from Magic of Incarnum -> Psycarnum Infusion seems pretty reasonable, since the "free" PP are significantly below the manifester's level, and that's fine as long as you treat the "free" PP as a pool of temporary PP and require that all power point expenditures come from only one pool at a time (which is the default).

From Frostburn, you probably want to remove shivering touch and ice assassin. You also may want to look at snowshoes and decide if you like that it's a strictly better version of longstrider.

[Doctor Awkward]

I don't know if there has been such a thread already, so point me to it if there is.
I began DMing a couple of years ago, but never used anything beyond the core rulebooks. I am DMing a campaign now, in which I plan on adding some new books slowly, and giving them new abilities through trainers, especially for new classes. I, however, want to avoid anything too unbalancing, and don't want to give them too much too soon. They are currently level 4, and if they dire they get to create new characters with the new stuff, at the same level they died.

So are there feats, spells, classes or even entire books, I should avoid or change?

There is a bit of a technical fallacy that exists within the 3.5 Edition; that the core rulebooks do everything just fine, and that additional sources beyond that contain nothing but overpowered mechanics that only munchkins would be interested in.

In reality, for most practical character optimization purposes, the most overpowered material you will find is in core (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual).

The best way to judge, at a glance, a book's potential is to see when it was published. The earliest books tend to contain the most unbalanced material, steadily growing more even and balanced the farther out you go as you approach the end of the 3.5 print run, when the designers had a much better understanding of the system mechanics and what "power" actually looked like.

Though keep in mind when I say "unbalanced", it doesn't necessarily mean "broken". There is a lot of so-called "trap" material that appears early on that only looks broken when it might be pretty reasonable, or is actually pretty underpowered when used in an actual game (even when compared only to other core material).

In the end, the only balance that really matters is the balance between party members. If everyone in the party is equally powerful and capable (a cleric/Ruby Knight Vindicator, a psion, a Dread Necromancer, and an artificer) then you, as the DM, can simply up the challenge factor of the encounters to compensate (more enemies, higher CR's, etc.). The reverse is also true, in that if the party all winds up relatively underpowered (a fighter, a swashbuckler, a spellthief, and maybe a bard), you can decrease the difficulty to match them.


The only specific recommendation I would make is to look not only at material for players but additional enemies. Some of my table's favorite encounters were made using non-humanoid critters with material found in Monster Manual III and IV, the Fiendish Codex I and II, and Frostburn.

[Elkad]

If I was running Core+nothing (not even SRD stuff), the first thing I'd add would be Tome of Battle.
Melee types need the help the most.

[Fizban]

I, however, want to avoid anything too unbalancing, and don't want to give them too much too soon.
You already have the answer. Almost every "problematic" thing in DnD is only problematic if the players (or DM) make it problematic. By introducing things slowly and paying attention, you minimize the risk of big suprises and make make it less painful if you have to roll back a bit. Other than completely learning and digesting the full repercussions of every combination of every-thing you intend to allow simultaneously so you can personally run it through your group's filter, ha.

Normally my suggestion is get rid of the "books allowed" concept entirely, because no one is actually using a "book." The DM might want to use certain things, and the players might want to use certain things, but neither of those are reasons to declare the entire book open season to do whatever you want without approval. You're actually already expected to know and approve the character sheets in the first place, and if the player is planning on something for the future they should tell you now before they get set on it so you can check it out. The only catch is that you're looking at introducing an entire new magic system with psionics, and another new magic system with incarnum, both of which allow choices from a vast array of options that grows as you level up, so trying to vet everything individually means a lot more work. Which brings us back to going slow and keeping your eyes open so you can deal with problems as you find them.

Instead of specific problem elements (which are all up to taste), I'll give some general advice:

Psionics, the main thing is just that they're so easy. The core casters have a limit on how many times they can use their highest level spells, but psionic characters can choose to only cast their highest level powers, giving them more at that top level (at the cost of none lower). Their low level powers are often augmentable into higher tier powers, effectively giving them more high level spells known as well, and their energy based powers usually have four different versions they can choose from (making them effectively four spells). So yeah, more spells known, more flexibility, more frontloading your power if you want to, just easier.

Incarnum, the main thing is that its crazy frontloaded. Each soulmeld has its basic effect even with zero essentia, which means that its better with one invested, and even better with two, and you can take the Expanded Soulmeld Capacity feat to have one of your soulmelds invested that high even at level 1. The most striking example of that is 3d6 at-will acid globs at 1st level. But, none of that holds up over time. Because the system is so frontloaded and full of at-will abilities you can change every day, they made it scale extremely poorly. So incarnum can look super broken at first, but after 10th it really starts to suck.

Complete Arcane has Warlocks, Warlocks have at-will lasers, and this is not a thing the game usually expects. Their effects are limited enough that all it really does is highlight the fact that the DM has to pay attention to what monsters and how they're using them, but you do have to recognize that a warlock allowed to just stand back and shoot forever without being attacked will eventually kill anything that can't regenerate faster than their damage output- while an archer would by stymied by AC and DR and limited arrows, the Warlock is only stopped by SR.

Tome of Battle has a similar thing with mild access to unlimited healing, making it possible to fight indefinitely against foes that can't outdamage your healing maneuvers. It also makes move+attack much better thanks to standard action strike maneuevers, generally considered a good thing.



. . . And, well I suppose I will mention one glaring problem element (that will get a million people jumping down my throat for saying melee can't have nice things):

Complete Champion, Alternate Class Features, Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1st level, pounce. While Tome of Battle makes a point of slowly stepping up the ability to move+attack with more powerful strike maneuvers as you level up (with the manuever that allows "pounce" every other round at 10th level), this ACF lets you charge+full attack with no limits for almost no cost at a level where you can't even normally make use of that ability. It makes no sense for multiple reasons, and is basically the core of 1/2 of the melee builds that break the game (the other half is stacking trip stuff, but your book list doesn't include the source for Knock-Down).

If you see one of your players suddenly show up with a character who has one level of barbarian with this ACF and the Improved Bull Rush feat (which is required for the second main element, Shock Trooper from Complete Warrior), then they're probably trying to make an ubercharger, which is generally capable of one-rounding or close to one-rounding creatures of equal CR (which are not supposed to be solo'd like that). Most of the rest of Complete Champion is fine enough, and plenty of other game elements can be veto'd or altered as they come up, but an ubercharger build includes multiple feats and ACFs specifically dedicated to the plan and pulling the SPLTB out from under them after they've started playing will be worse than catching it beforehand (especially after the internet has filled them with stories of how it's totally balanced because damage isn't even important man).

If you're actually fine with charging full attacks as standard, well then I'd suggest just making "pounce" a houserule for everyone rather than forcing people to take this specific ACF to get it, since it makes you flat better than any other melee character without it (and all the monsters that don't have it, and makes the monsters that do have it underpowered since their special thing is now everyone's thing). You can keep the combination of pounce+Shock Trooper under control by tightening up on everything else, but the fastest easiest way to make sure it will never be a problem is to ban it. And then ban Travel Devotion when people suddenly start taking cleric 1 instead, since its basically the same thing.

[DeTess]

I don't have much to add to the others here, but if I'm not misremembering, the book of vile darkness contains a pretty nasty combo without needing other sources. It contains the cancer mage prc, which has a feature that makes it immune to the bad effects od diseases. The book also contains a number of diseases that combine a nasty downside with an upside. Ussually those diseases kill the host before it gets problematic, but cancer mage doesn't have that issue, resulting in silly things like 70+ strength after a month of sitting around.

[Fizban]

Right, forgot to mention that one: a lot of writers of the evil/villainous books tended to put stuff that's just more powerful in there because Evil*, and even if you don't allow evil PCs, some of it isn't locked to them. It's not so much common as it is certain things just weren't written to be balanced- they were written to let bad guys be bad guys (the sacrifice rules are particularly ridiculous). So anything that looks villainous is usually worth a double-take as well.

*Which is an amusing since on the monster side, Good outsiders are generally just better than Evil.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I would allow all books at once. There's no point having book-based limits. Instead, review your player's builds, and make it clear that you reserve the right to say no to overpowered characters. Make it clear what "overpowered" means. For example, a character is overpowered if they...
(1) ...have access to higher-levelled spells than a wizard of equal ECL.
(2) ...have more than +20 strength over the sample NPC barbarian (raging) of equal ECL.
(and so on)

Give a couple of simple metrics, point out that the list is not exhaustive, and don't worry about what covers the material was published between.

[2gig]

Books don't really matter for balance. Sure, more books sets the optimization ceiling higher, but that's not what balance in DnD is about anyway. You can always just throw stronger stuff at your players. The balance that really matters is balance between party members, which adding more books actually tends to help with. Also, the reason we want balance between players is so that they are all happy and having fun. More customization options and weird nonsense will make your players happier and they will have more fun.

Core-only (basically PHB only) contains plenty of broken options, such as full-casters, the leadership feat, planar binding, polymorph, etc. Adding more options is mostly beneficial to balance by giving mundanes more options to become stronger. Barring a few weird options, it doesn't get much more imbalanced than PHB casters anyway. Other books also offer alternative caster classes that jive better with melee party members for balance. A mature player will want his/her party members to be having fun, too, so if someone is going too far, just talk to them about lowering their optimizatino.

[Jay R]

It sounds like an interesting experiment. I hope you come back and tell us what worked well, and what didn't. [In a very real sense, it will be like they way people play a new game, in which the books are still being published.]

First, I would give it an in-character justification. The core rulebooks show what was available to the players in the backwater where they grew up. When they reach a new land or bigger city, they can learn about newer options. You can control what kind of options are available as a DM - they haven't been anywhere where they could learn about what's in the Book of Vile Darkness.

Secondly, I'd get the players involved (if they want to be). "OK, guys, you are now resting in an army camp. If you want to start learning new martial skills or classes, show me what book it comes from, and if I approve it, I'll introduce the character you can start learning it from. Any melee tactics or war strategy should be available, but there will be little for the rogue or wizards to pick up here. You can only introduce a few things that make sense together, so think it through. Any melee tactics or war strategy should be available. The rogue may be able to pick up some tips on scouting or investigation skills, but there will be little for the clerics or wizards to pick up here."

[Note: this is a perfect chance for the players of wizard or cleric characters to get creative. Are there spells that the army's cleric knows? Is there a wizard specializing in mass buffs here?]

Third, I'd introduce somebody who knows the new abilities as an NPC whom they meet and learn from. This gives you a chance to test it out yourself, in your own game. It also serves to slow down its introduction a little.

One of the biggest advantages of what you're trying to do is that the PCs will grow organically. Unless they stay core, they can't plan out their complete path to level 20 in advance, because they don't know what will be available.

[AganDur]

Sorry for the response delay! Thank you all for all the help. I will take everything into account and keep you posted about how this goes.

Our next game is on the 3rd of Feb, and I'm planning on introducing the Tome of Battle, through a few NPCs, and give them the opportunity to get a bit more than core stuff, as they will reach a bigger city now, and will have a lot more at their disposal than before!

Hopefully everyone will find something that they like!

[Red Fel]

There is a bit of a technical fallacy that exists within the 3.5 Edition; that the core rulebooks do everything just fine, and that additional sources beyond that contain nothing but overpowered mechanics that only munchkins would be interested in.

In reality, for most practical character optimization purposes, the most overpowered material you will find is in core (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual).

Came hoping to see someone post this. Yeah, the thing to remember is that (1) almost every book has something "broken" (meaning either under- or over-powered, or even completely dysfunctional), and (2) the standard "core" set contains some of the most overpowered stuff.

It's a great way to keep everything in perspective. No matter how daunting a new system might be - like Psionics or Martial Adepts or Warlocks - there is content in the core books that completely obviates every challenge. Which leads directly into...


You already have the answer. Almost every "problematic" thing in DnD is only problematic if the players (or DM) make it problematic.

This. A single player, using only the spells in the PHB, and playing only single-class Wizard, can prepare spells that will completely obviate every challenge. Spells travel long distances, reveal hidden dangers, control minds, summon minions - they do literally everything, right down to letting a Wizard be a better Fighter than your Fighter.

One player could do this. Doesn't mean he will

That's the point. Any player could make things difficult, not by function of the material available, but by function of the player wanting to make things difficult. Any DM, too, although it sounds like you're doing a good job of avoiding that. A single PC could be an absolute blender, destroying every combat, or a Diplomancer, avoiding every challenge with a single skill roll, or just play a Tippy-level Wizard... Or they could decide against doing that. And that decision to avoid being difficult carries over to every new source of material. A player could build a Psion with functionally infinite PP... Or not. A player could design a Warblade who can perform four full attacks in a row... Or not. A player could build an invisible flying robot dragon that shoots lasers... Or not.

Back on point, though, it sounds like you've got a good handle on how to introduce material. And as long as you have an understanding with your players, I don't anticipate you'll have many concerns about book balance.

[AganDur]

So, we had our game today and it went pretty well. They only scratched the surface of the new town they find themselves in but already met a few NPCs with new classes, one of them a Crusader, and they seem interested. The next game should tell us how much they like the new stuff, and how goes their search for trainers and stuff. I'm looking forward to finding what they want to use out of all the new things they might get.

Thank you all again for the help and advice!

[King of Nowhere]

In my experience, it's not books that are overpowered, or even feats or spells or stuff.
It's the combination of the above.
See, there are some sources that allow you to reduce by 1 the spell level needed for a metamagic feat. Now you can cast quickened spells with a slot 3 levels higher. That is nice, but not broken. But when you put 4 of those sources together, you can cast quickened spells for free. or empowered quickened maximized spells for free. That's broken. And yet none of the single sources was, the only broken thing is the way they stack together. Or there are sources that let you cut 10% of the cost of making magic items. That's ok. Put ten of them together, and you make magic items for free.

In my game I am giving the part artifacts that are definitely more powerful than almost anything published. But I don't run into problems of broken stuff
because those are the only overpowered things I introduce, and I am careful to reduce positive interactions between those and other items.

So, I agree with the advice of considering each build separately, and limit the most powerful interactions. It is also important if the player is counting on some particular rule interpretation that you disagree on.

[Fizban]

In my experience, it's not books that are overpowered, or even feats or spells or stuff.
It's the combination of the above.
See, there are some sources that allow you to reduce by 1 the spell level needed for a metamagic feat. Now you can cast quickened spells with a slot 3 levels higher. That is nice, but not broken. But when you put 4 of those sources together, you can cast quickened spells for free. or empowered quickened maximized spells for free. That's broken. And yet none of the single sources was, the only broken thing is the way they stack together.
Yup.

And when you stop treating "books" as allowed, this problem is much easier to stop. If people have to ask for specific things, then the fact that they're asking for three different versions of the same ability from three different books is suddenly glaringly obvious and you can just say no, or rule that they don't stack, or whatever you want.