Well, has there been any power creep in 4e's brief lifespan already, as far as anyone can see? Are the recent books providing new material for classes, feats, powers, whatever that immediately up the overall power-level from what it was in the main books?
Or not yet? And if not, do you think it will happen, or not?
Power creep hit 3e very early on in the game's history, probably the first signs of it were already there around this time after its release.
RPGPundit
It's hard to say. I don't think so, but I'm biased. But here's a roadmap to examining it:
If you want someone independent to do an analysis, I would encourage people to look specifically at the Swordmage class (and see how it compares to other defenders).
For races, it might be a good idea to compare the drow and the genasi vs the standard races. Some of the powers look kinda tough, but they don't seem significantly more powerful than the half-elven dilettante, human versatility, elven accuracy or dwarven sturdiness powers..
If you want to include DDI material they have released Minotaur, Gnoll, and Warforged races. Bard and Druid are out in a more or less usable form.
And finally you could look specifically at the Martial Powers book and see if the power options presented in there are significantly more powerful than the standard PHB powers. I was looking at the Rogues earlier (I have a rogue).
Much of the power creep in 3e was due to stacking templates and prestige classes. 4E avoids this. Paragon paths (what 4E replaced Prestige classes with) are really almost minimal kits: like 3 powers and some fluff text that simply replace standard powers.
First splat book and things started looking shaky. Adventurers vault had a few dodgey items. Bloodclaw weapons seem overpowered allowing you to spike your DPS (4e adopting MMO terminology). Veterans armour now seems like a no brainer. Veteran's armour gives you back a daily and is available at a very low level. There is also a high level ring that halves the cost of rituals, it does not interact well with crafting magic items allowing the party more cool gear than they should have at their albiet high level.
The Gensai have stat bonuses that make them simply better than others at being a tactical warlord. Str and Int. It's a small edge.
The Warforged is a strong fighting race but it doesn't necessarily steal the spotlight from the uber dragonborn. It did seem to make dwarves obselete till the Batterager class feature arrived.
Martial power introduced the Battlerager. Combined with a dwarven feat available at low level you have a nice buffer of constant temporary hitpoints and will prove very very difficult to kill. Sadly this is a no brainer. All fighters should pick Battlerager.
I can't see much power creep. Apart from Battlerager what creep there is isn't that bad or is so high level that it wont matter.
I think they've been doing a good job so far. There are maybe some questions about Battlerager Vigor from Martial Power, but it's strongest in certain, very narrow situations (when enemies are melee-only, for instance).
AV has a few items that are questionable, but IMHO that's par for the course whenever you get more of something.
About the closest so far is that the recent preview of the Invoker is quite possibly better than a Wizard. As they explain it, though, Wizards are a bit underpowered in 4e (ironically), and need a boost, themselves, to keep up with the other PHB classes.
-O
Some people have claimed that there is power creep but despite the odd exploitable item, I think this is mostly just a perception based on the new shiny and as the overall design improves.
For example, there was a general perception that the PHB2 classes were more powerful than the PHB1 ones in the playtests but in fact the new classes used the same number of resources and dropped roughly in the same places as the old ones.
It has been theorised that the newer classes are just better designed to show off the 4e mechanics (forced movement, battlefield control, mobility, teamwork) so they seem more potent to the players.
QuotePower creep hit 3e very early on in the game's history, probably the first signs of it were already there around this time after its release.
I don't think that power creep was too much of an issue in 3.*ed because things were so horrifically unbalanced in core that letting people play all kinds of weird shit from splatbooks often IMPROVED balance (with a few exceptions). For example letting in craploads of non-Core feats really helped fighters be at least somewhat useful.
Also, overall (again with a few exceptions) the non-Core classes were VASTLY better balanced than the Core classes.
Can't say I've noticed it myself, although I expect the CharOp people have found ways to exploit the new material as usual. Generally speaking the system is more transparent, making it easier for designers and playtesters to spot imbalances before publication.
The wizard is an interesting case. I think it is definitely less powerful in the hands of an inexperienced player or someone who isn't good at coordinating the rest of the team.
So the obvious thing about wizards is they are good at clearing out lots of minions.
But if you are good at coordinating with the rest of the team and kinda know when to use what, it becomes pretty useful as a class, especially the battlefield control/ongoing damage/area effect powers. So the un-obvious thing is, wizards can change the way the battlefield looks and set up hazard zones and conditions that can make life unpleasant for a lot of monsters.