Nerdery 39: Power Creep

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1411

[Eagle Prince]

Power Creep surely is a good way to sell RPG books, I would guess.  There is a lot of cool new feats in the PHB2, actually most of them seem pretty balanced.  Most of the real good ones have very high prerequisites (there is a new feat called Weapon Supremacy that requires fighter lvl 18 as a prerequisite, on top of like a billion feats, so in the end I think it is actually pretty balanced.  I mean the difference between a 1st level spell and 9th level spell is huge, makes sense for fighter feats to be the same).

The two big problems I think is first, it makes your older stuff obsolete even before a new edition!  Then second, it can throw off the balance if everything isn't creeped at the same rate.

[Eagle Prince]

42, what exactly is this type of power creep?  Where instead of the PCs getting more powerful, they make the bbeg more of a loser?  Check out the updated 3.5 stats for Juiblex, I think he got "punk'd" cause now he is down to CR 19.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20060601b&page=1

[42]

Players just getting whiney.

Kind of like those scary nuclear missiles, the "players" get all whiney that they can obliterate the world a gazillion times over so the "designers" start having them dismantled and generally nerfed.

[Eagle Prince]

Ah, yes makes perfect sense now.  Thx.

I will cross-reference that with its okay to club a baby seal to lower gas prices (ie kill some dude for loot or that last bit of XP you need to lvl); but go up in arms if same seal dies from oil tanker crash (ie avenge the death of "some dude" if another person killed him).

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I always wondered, with all these mega-rich magic shop owners with only 3-4 levels in anything, why I didn't just go in and loot his place. I mean, it's not like they could stop me or bring me to justice.

[Entsuropi]

Get a shotgun and you could do that irl.

Why don't you?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

because my levels in real life don't compare to my levels in my D&D character. And the guy at the gun shop is probably much better than me with a gun.