How Do You Handle Over-Optimization Player Characters And Enemies?

[kyoryu]

Now that I've seen that Pun Pun refers to a specific 3.5 D&D "build", I have a more general 3.5 sort of "optimization" related question: with all the seemingly infinite Feats and Prestige Classes that the "splat" books provide (BTW don't "Google" splat!), you get quite a lot of customization, so much it almost seems more like a point-buy game like Champions, which makes me wonder, just what are classes and levels for?
If you just use the PHB than 3.5 seems much like old D&D, but add "splat", and with all the Feats and Prestige Classes it seems like the simplicity of classes and levels is lost, so why still them at all?

3.x with all the books is basically a very "chunky" point-buy system. You buy one "point" in Cleric, one in Thief.... etc.

The original idea of a Prestige class is that it's something you can be, but you can't just be from the start. I originally thought Paladin would have been the *perfect* Prestige Class, but they wanted to keep it core.

And, yeah, you're right. 3.x with all the addons can easily allow more optimization than Champions.