Inverse power: a D&D theme?

[13_CBS]

There seems to be a bit of a pattern on what classes are broken and what's not in D&D, the pattern being:

A) If a class gives the impression that it is powerful, the game designers try to limit that power, often too much. So I would imagine the creation process of the monk class for D&D 3.X going something like:

"Ooh! How about the monk class from 2.0, except let's try to make it even more kung-fu like, with blazing attacks (Flurry), Death Strikes (quivering palm), hyper speed (Monk speed), etc..."

"Sounds awesome!"

"But wait, that could be too powerful, so let's nerf it!"

Or,

"Ok, one feature we REALLY need to keep is blast spells like fireball and stuff."

"Sounds cool, but we should make sure that casters don't go above 9000..."

B) If a class gives the impression that it's not that powerful, the game designers don't take too much care in designing it.

"Eh, those utility spells aren't all that cool. I mean, throw up a wall of wind? Spray color at enemies? Whatever."

In short, what the designers thought were overpowered were often toned down, perhaps far too much, while things that the designers didn't think about too much ended up being broken because of that inattentiveness.


Of course, I could just be stating the obvious here...

[RandomNPC]

ya know thats oddly true... i never thought about it before.

when i think of a monk in this kind of setting i see them rushing through a fireball unharmed, shrugging off illusions, and punching wizards because they can.

granted with evasion and saves and whatnot they can, but they don't get any love.

[serpent615]

ya know thats oddly true... i never thought about it before.

when i think of a monk in this kind of setting i see them rushing through a fireball unharmed, shrugging off illusions, and punching wizards because they can.

granted with evasion and saves and whatnot they can, but they don't get any love.

I love my monk... granted he was experimented on and now has a few psionic abilities(spider clime, and a kinetic barrier that can absorb physical dmg. up to my concentration check...then hit it all back in a touch attack)

but yeah, I do agree that it was either dumbed down or left alone.....come on v4.0

[Dausuul]

As far as core classes go, I think you have the right general idea, but it would be more accurate to say that the designers came in with a lot of preconceptions from 2E.

In 2E, blasting magic was powerful and save-or-die/save-or-lose was weak (because monsters had lower hit points, but save DCs were effectively fixed, so a high-level monster would be almost guaranteed to make its save no matter what). So the designers were careful with blasting magic but mostly let the save-or-die/lose spells slide. As a result, blasting magic is well-balanced starting around level 5, but save-or-die/lose is heinously overpowered.

2E didn't have the concept of "full attacks" as distinct from "standard attacks," which meant the designers didn't really consider how much harder it was to get a full attack than a standard attack. That meant that classes like the monk, which relied heavily on full attacks, looked a lot better on paper than they were in practice.

It was a lot harder to pile on damage boosters to your attacks in 2E. The base damage of your weapon was a much larger factor. So, again, the monk looked better than it was, because of those big unarmed damage dice.

Et cetera.

[MrNexx]

Since Dasuul stole ( ) my usual argument, let me add a bit of apocrypha.

I have heard on other boards that the folks at Wizards largely play in "classic" style... wizards are usually blasters instead of battlefield controllers, clerics are unlikely to CoDzilla cheese, etc. Since they play this way, they're unlikely to look at the game and see some of the broken optimizations that can be made.

[TheOOB]

I think most of the problems with 3e are deeper, in the very design philosophy they used to create the system. If you remember, all those years back that talked about how when making 3e, they starting with a list of sacred cows that will remain unchanged(or changed as little as possible) from previous editions. Many things changed from 2e to 3e, but just as many if not more things remained fundamentally the same. 3e was treated like an update to 2e, and was playtested and balanced as such.

This was similar in class design, classes where designed to be easily identifable as their 2e and 1e counterparts, but to sound cooler and more powerful then before, fixing most of the complaints people had. The classes weren't looked at on their own merits, but rather how they ranked against their 2e classes.

4e, so far, looks to be changing much of this, they are talking about how they are rebuilding from the ground up, only keeping what makes the game fun, there are no more sacred cows. They are not looking at the game as an expansion upon 3e, but rather a new product, something that should be able to stand alone on it's own merits.

Don't get me wrong, I love 3e, and I still play it to this day, every RPG has problums with balance, a magician in shadowrun can kill most anyone in a single attack, they will be wounded in doing so but it still way overpowered. I just hope that 4e will take the problems 3e has and tackle them head on.

[Raolin_Fenix]

Actually, I think the real problem with D&D is teh Internets.

I mean, look at this message board. It's the source of a lot of munchkin power. What if The Logic Ninja had never had a place to post his Guide? How many fewer utility-wizard builds would we see? And would he ever have collected all the ideas to write the Guide in the first place? There's just too much exchange of information, too fast. Anything can be broken by the power of a million mental sledgehammers.

Without the Internet, there'd be a few munchkins running around with brilliant combinations, and they'd spread due to conventions and whatnot. But you wouldn't have an entire world of gamers with the combined munchkinning power of all the other gamers in the world.

[Riffington]

While the internet may make munchkinizing easier, it equally provides the solution. After all, the DM can quickly read up on the players' selections, and quickly learn whether they are cheese or something that might work well in a campaign. If they are cheese, she can learn whether other people used tactics to overcome it, whether they had good houserules, or whether something needed to be banned outright.

[MeklorIlavator]

Actually, I think the real problem with D&D is teh Internets.

I mean, look at this message board. It's the source of a lot of munchkin power. What if The Logic Ninja had never had a place to post his Guide? How many fewer utility-wizard builds would we see? And would he ever have collected all the ideas to write the Guide in the first place? There's just too much exchange of information, too fast. Anything can be broken by the power of a million mental sledgehammers.

Without the Internet, there'd be a few munchkins running around with brilliant combinations, and they'd spread due to conventions and whatnot. But you wouldn't have an entire world of gamers with the combined munchkinning power of all the other gamers in the world.

The problem would still be there. Before The Logic Ninja posted his guide, people knew that Blasting was weaker than save or suck/battlefield control. The Logic Ninja just complied the information in one place so that instead of rehashing the same argument over and over again, we can just point them to his guide. If people look at the numbers, its easy to realize the problems in the system, and sometimes it happens by accident. How many people have made druids with the idea that they need to take natural spell to keep up with the others? I know that that was my though when reading the Druid class for the first time.Oh, and The Logic Ninja's guide is far from being munchkin. In fact, he warns against some of the more powerful combinations, because they make the game un-fun for everyone but the user.

[Morty]

Oh, and The Logic Ninja's guide is far from being munchkin. In fact, he warns against some of the more powerful combinations, because they make the game un-fun for everyone but the user.

Problem is, apparently for TLN many broken things were perfectly normal. But I agree that people are throwing the term "munchkin" around too often. That's the whole thing: you don't have to munchkin and minmax to have broken wizard. Before I learned that it's much more useful than blasting, I intended to play finesse wizard. Same with Druid.

[Solo]

I mean, look at this message board. It's the source of a lot of munchkin power. What if The Logic Ninja had never had a place to post his Guide? How many fewer utility-wizard builds would we see?

I can't speak for others, but I would probably have gone for Save or X and utility spells by myself.

TLN was a strategist and posted a guide on how to make an astonishingly effective type of caster. Whether that is munchkining or not is left to your opinion, but I personally consider a munchkin to be someone who breaks the rules, as opposed to a min/maxer or power gamer, whom I define as someone who merely seeks to create a powerful character.

[Riffington]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchki...-playing_games)

[13_CBS]

Ah, I should probably mention that the pattern I see is most certainly not the entirety of D&D 3.x unbalance in a nutshell, but only a fraction of it. Obviously, balance problems occur from other places too (sometimes, AFAIK, from multiple people adding tiny little details that, when compiled, turn into one big broken thing. Pun Pun was this, I think).

[Chronos]

(sometimes, AFAIK, from multiple people adding tiny little details that, when compiled, turn into one big broken thing. Pun Pun was this, I think).

Pun-pun was inevitable, given nothing but the Sarrukh. A Sarrukh could, if it chose, turn its pet iguana into Pun-Pun. I still can't fathom what the designers were thinking, when they created that creature. All the other ingredients are just about how a player character can controllably gain the ability, and how quickly.

A better example for two non-broken things which are broken when combined is BassetKing's infinite damage build. I don't remember all of the details, but it combines an ability which allows you to treat all 1s rolled on damage as if you rolled a 2, with an ability that lets you re-roll and add damage whenever you roll the maximum damage. When used with a 1d2 weapon, every roll is treated as a 2, which means that you add 2 to the damage, then roll again (another 2), then roll another 2 and add it, and so on.