How strong can D&D characters become when compared to super heroes?

Most game rules are broken. Look at Hero System or GURPS. They allow for some fo the worst abuses I have ever seen in game, yet players clamor about how balanced the rules are. For the most part I like 3.0-3.5 rules. I have not looked at 4.0. The idea of it just turns me off entirely. Can you make a min/max? Well yeah, but dimes to dollars, you can in 4.0 as well, and probably one that is more abusive.

This makes for a large dichotomy in power. As of third edition is was clearly understood that to achieve some semblance of balance across classes, a certain value of magic items was to be assumed. Otherwise you end up with the spell casting classes in the roles of the seeing in the land of the blind. Their advantage is monumental. I mean take a simple example of a wizard with fly, protection from arrows, and fireball (don't even need improved invisibility) and he could slaughter an army in complete safety (till the spells ran out of course).

Probably the main difference in D&D vs. superheroes is the limited 'charges'. The powerful classes in D&D are the spell casters and they have a limited amount of boom in their arsenal before they run dry. At high levels they are nigh unstoppable, for a little while at least. A high level fighter can do his work all day (as long as his HPs hold up), but without magical equipment and buffing, he's nowhere near the power level of the casters.

In addition to the 'charges' you have the more limited duration of the spells once fired off. Time stop effectively makes you a lot like the Flash, but not for very long. Fly, well that's obvious, but only for a little while (though overland flight is eventually available). Shape Change is plenty powerful but again, only for a little while.

Heck, you even have 'cosmic' level effects in Wish and Miracle, but again with certain limitations and number of uses in a day.

In truth, high level D&D spellcasters(and psionicists) are certainly super by any measure. It's just a different kind of super. They are like super scientist inventors who's gadgets have limited battery life.

I always love when someone who hasn't even looked at the 4e rules makes a sweeping generalization about them.

Not that we need to play D&D rules, here, but this really isn't that powerful. As soon as you attack, you are visible and have to re-hide at -20 on the check (which is a move equivalent action, so you can only attack once per round at that). It's the snipe rules.

I did leverage this sort of thing in a local convention campaign we had here called Cheesy Munchkin Adventures. This was a 3.0/3.5/D20 campaign in which you were supposed to mangle the spirit of the law with the letter of the law. Pretty much anything from any respectable D20 source (and the Munchkin books, which were by no means respectable) was allowed.

I cheesed up a gnome shadowcraft mage with hide in plain site, and enough hide that he was completely undetectable. Since he was a spell caster (and shadowcraft mage gives you silent spell automatically eventually) he didn't have to play the snipe game and could rock people's worlds without anyone ever knowing he was there.

The campaign was taken to a reset point where the 20th level characters have a faceoff and all the cheese was allowed to fly. My guy was able to survive, but by no means was he able to defeat the more cheesed out people. I couldn't even scratch those.

Ok, I have read the 4th edition rules, and know a lot of people who do play it. You can sure as hell min/max just like in every previous edition. This is especially true with the utter plethora of books that WotC has been pouring into the market.

You can in 4E, but only up to a practical limit.

In 3rd Edition, the problem wasn't so much mix-maxing, it was that you could do it to an extreme degree and still have a well enough rounded character in other areas that it was playable.

In 4E, because of it's severely limited framework nearly all the extreme examples of min-maxing require serious sacrifices to most other areas of character development.

Unfortunately, 4E did this by making most of the character classes and powers so cookie cutter that if you took a random sampling of a dozen powers and classes and removed their names, it'd be difficult to tell them apart.

Hey! This power does X dice of damage to a nine-square burst at range, if you succeed at a D20+Attribute Modifier+Other Modifier roll vs target's Reflex defense. Quickly tell me what power I've described.

Every class has the exact same number of powers at any given level. The ONLY real significant difference is whether they're melee or ranged.



-np

Is this analysis based on just the initial books or does it include all the expansions? I've not gotten the extra books, but from what all the players and DMs tell me, min maxing is alive and well with the expansion books.

I agree that with just the PHB, the classes are pretty well balanced at the expense of being very similar.

Let me rephrase this then.

having perused the books online, and at my gaming store of choice, as well as getting the opinions of friends who have played the game, and reading some very opinionated and objective reports here...

the game has 0 interest for me.

My comment about it being able to min/max stands. I do not think any game system can avoid it.

I find that preferable to wizards outclassing everything else by level 7.

I'm not here to do an edition war. You can find plenty of places and people to do that with. Go find them.

You had complaints about the 4th edition, and that's your preference. It's a preference that's shared by my wife. I was merely stating my preference.

Back on topic, I think Doctor Strange is probably equivalent to a 15th or 17th level wizard, 3.5 edition-wise.

I'd say sort of. He's not got the spells per day limitation of a 3.5 wizard. In some ways he's more and some ways less. He's also completely at the mercy of the current writer so can be well above that (or below it). Superheroes are very hard to quantify if you don't use published stats for comparison.

I have all the books.*

There are a bare handful of "hyper-maximized" super-builds in 4E.

There were literally HUNDREDS of such builds in 3E.

And even then the super-builds in 4E tend to be of the "I can do an impressive amount of damage for one round and then fall over unconscious and am useless at anything else but this" variety. As opposed to the 3E "I crack the planet in half" builds.

The major difference is that in 4E, you can have, at most, ONE 'prestige class' and later one epic class. And they're not really even full classes, they're more like a half dozen powers added to your main class. Multiclassing base classes is even more restrictive, it's more adding a single limited-version power from another class than actual multiclassing.

Contrast 3E where a character can have as many classes as he has levels, just about.

Additionally, Wizards of the Coast maintains the Character Optimization boards for a reason. The CharOp folks are REALLY REALLY GOOD at finding out broken combos. And unlike previous editions, they errata and update the books ALL THE TIME, constantly nerfing the hell out of the problem powers.

That said, I still count 3E as my favorite edition, with 2E also having a fond place in my heart. 4E I find fun but I also find it a bit shallow.



-np

* - and I mean ALL the books. Even the old white box D&D set. The collection occupies an entire large bookcase.

Not too sure about that, but its been awhile since I played. I know that the HiPS that the Shadowdancer PRC gave allowed you to hide as long as a shadow not yours was near, even if someone was watching you. You didn't even need something to hide in/behind.

This tends to be true. Its not mathematically mandatory.

Here's a trivial example of the principle: you have two options. Option A: your attacks do extra fire damage but you become vulnerable to cold attacks. Option B: your attacks do extra cold damage but you become vulnerable to fire attacks. Its a valid option with no min/max potential.

This is actually much easier to do in PnP games than MMOs because in MMOs the player generally gets to choose what situations they encounter, whereas in a PnP game its usually a human GM that gets to decide that. So in MMOs the player can pick disadvantages that are meaningless because they subsequently avoid them without penalty. In a PnP game, a good GM will not let players get away with that.

However, this is sufficiently difficult that few games seriously attempt it, and none that I've seen actually get it right. But its not mathematically impossible.

This is what you are talking about(all from 3.5 SRD):
Hide in Plain Sight (Su)

A shadowdancer can use the Hide skill even while being observed. As long as she is within 10 feet of some sort of shadow, a shadowdancer can hide herself from view in the open without anything to actually hide behind. She cannot, however, hide in her own shadow.



What I was talking about was :


Sniping

If you’ve already successfully hidden at least 10 feet from your target, you can make one ranged attack, then immediately hide again. You take a -20 penalty on your Hide check to conceal yourself after the shot.



Though I suppose this is relevant:


It’s practically impossible (-20 penalty) to hide while attacking, running or charging.


So in theory, you can hide while attacking at a -20. I have to wonder if there's rules call on this via a vis multiple attacks.

I can understand why he did this. In the materials that I own, such as the Spell Compendium, the Epic Level Handbook, and the Complete Series, using equipment, spells, and feats in those books can downright break a game. Even more so with the Epic Level Handbook.

To respond to the limited amount of spells per day compared to superheroes: Back in 2nd edition, I didn't mind that, but maybe playing Final Fantasy games for so many years made me grow tired of it. There is a variant rule in Unearthed Arcana that lets you do away with that, and use an MP system instead.

Some super heroes get fatigued after extensive use of their powers, but I can see them having MP (or SP) in very high amounts. If D&D characters use this variant rule, higher and epic level characters shouldn't have much trouble keeping up with super heroes.

With the proper selection of feats, classes, and skills, I can see fighters and barbarians being able to keep up with Captain America when it comes to stamina, at least.

Uh, just when did you order that thing?





-np

Complete Psionic helps too.

I always though the 3.0 version was weak. The 3.5 version cranked it up a lot.