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Thread: class balance
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2007-01-02, 08:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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class balance
I may be a newbie here, but I see a lot of posts lately on game balance, especially for classes like the fighter and the monk. I at first thought these classes were overpowered (they always seemed to be in my two groups' games), but apparently they are seen by the rest of you to be underpowered. When I got to thinking about it, I sort of agreed with you.
However, I usually see the answer posted as something made to empower these classes to be more able to keep up with the others. However, I've really thought the other way: if it's all the casters that are so much stronger than the non-casters, why not make the casters weaker?
First of all, I don't like the idea of every arcane spell succeeding. If anyone has played star wars RPG, I like their system of the force, the way they have it as skills. I was thinking that all arcance spellcasters would have to buy skill points in a spell school and then make that check when needed to cast a spell. If they fail by 5 or less, it fails, or if it fails by more than 5, it backfires or goes haywire. This may seem a bit brutal, but personally, I think magic should be. Again, I haven't thought all the way through this yet.
I'm not sure if this should be posted on the homebrew boards or not, but I've seen most stuff like this posted here, so I'll go along with the crowd. I haven't really thought this through all the way, as you might have noticed, and I still don't have an answer on how to balance some of the divine spellcasters. Please don't flame me, I know some of my ideas sound weird but that's because most of the games I play in are different than the normal ones. Other than that, any thoughts or comments are appreciated.
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2007-01-02, 08:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Caster nerfs are quite common and there is propably threads about this on even currently.
Anyways, the problem with arcane spells failuring is, as Ambu described on the other threads "At some rounds caster will rule the game and on others do nothing. It would be much better if they were doing balanced stuff on each round." (Okay, not word by word quote but the point).
One thing I have concidered is giving all casters bard spell progression on what levels they can cast new spells. However, this practically takes metamagic away from wizards, so possibly cheapening them all metamagic increases by 1 spell level or something. Not given even nearly enough thought or playtesting yet, though. Might go far overboard.
Other way would be to just ban preparing classes - using psionics, sorcerers, favored souls and spirit shamans instead of wizards, clerics and druids is a big step towards balance.
However, if this hasn't comen up in your games, you shouldn't worry about it too much. :P
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2007-01-02, 08:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Yeah, but I know it will come up eventually. Still, I like the idea that spells fail sometimes; wizards can try to cast things way above their level or way below their level but they just have a different chance of success. They can choose to cast mediocre spells most of the time, poor spells all of the time, or really awesome spells with no reliability. I especially like the fact that this would make the schools come into play more than they do now. I think I like the idea of a wizard studying some schools extensively and other only moderately.
Uh oh. Now I'm getting all off track, and I think my hatred of the d20 magic system is taking over. I guess I might have to come up with something and then move this to the homebrew boards
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2007-01-02, 08:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Spells allready have failure methods built in, thats the hole entire point of spells requiring touch attacks, saving throws, or spell resistance, adding another method of failure just creates a chance that the caster or their allies will die because the caster rolled a 1 when they really needed that dimenson door,heal,wall of force,ect.
There are plenty of ways of help balance spells, you can make spells generally less powerful (see psionics and tome of battle), you can limit the amount of spells the caster can learn (see sorcerer, favored soul, psionics, and tome of battle), make spellcasters rely on multiple abilities scores like everyone else in the game does (favored soul), and make spellcasting more widely avaible to other archtypes (duskblade and beguiler)."Sometimes, we’re heroes. Sometimes, we shoot other people right in the face for money."
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2007-01-02, 08:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
i havent had any problems with my groups casters, most of them being fast damage blasters.
next io expect people to say something like "blasters are teh suxorz!!?!eleventeen!!!!!!?!!!!!!PIE!!!!i!!1111!!! 1!!!¿" but i just went and said it.
personally i find them to be fun. sure, blasters can't mass hold person then mass charm person the survivors, but they can sudden maxamize a lightning bolt and bluf everyone who didn't get fried that they happen to be a blue dragon hidden somehwere just out of sight. and ya know, disintigrate the ton of rock it would take hours for the fighter with a warhammer to smash through.
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2007-01-02, 08:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
If you want to see some balanced spellcasting, you might want to take a look at Arcana Evolved. As an added bonus, item creation is also balanced!
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2007-01-02, 09:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Just so you know, even the anti-blaster posters on here respect the disintegrate spell. The best part about it is that it isn't in the evocation school, so those who take evocation as a banned school rely heavily on disintegrate when they need to do outright damage. It also isn't an energy type, so no one is resistant to it. Its only downside is that it allows for a fortitude save, the one save many monsters have a high score in. Also as you point out it has out-of-combat uses.
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2007-01-02, 09:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
I prefer a combination of the two approaches myself. Pull back the casters in some of the areas where they are over the top while boosting non-casters to meet at some medium power level. However there are two issues with any attempts to balance D&D...the sheer quantity of content to consider and a constant stream of new content. Simple changes help some, but true balancing is more complex (and unending) an issue than I'd want to attempt.
First of all, I don't like the idea of every arcane spell succeeding. If anyone has played star wars RPG, I like their system of the force, the way they have it as skills. I was thinking that all arcance spellcasters would have to buy skill points in a spell school and then make that check when needed to cast a spell. If they fail by 5 or less, it fails, or if it fails by more than 5, it backfires or goes haywire. This may seem a bit brutal, but personally, I think magic should be. Again, I haven't thought all the way through this yet.
Given the three casting systems I've tried (preparation, skill, and fatigue) I prefer fatigue systems. But I'd proabably switch to a different system before trying to rewrite D&D into something other than a preparation system.
I'm not sure if this should be posted on the homebrew boards or not, but I've seen most stuff like this posted here, so I'll go along with the crowd. I haven't really thought this through all the way, as you might have noticed, and I still don't have an answer on how to balance some of the divine spellcasters. Please don't flame me, I know some of my ideas sound weird but that's because most of the games I play in are different than the normal ones. Other than that, any thoughts or comments are appreciated.
A simple implementation is simply requiring one time segment per spell level to cast a spell. By "time segment" I mean each individual count within a round.-
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2007-01-02, 09:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Ah yes, the good old days of adding either weapon speed factor or casting time to the initiative roll. (I can't remember now what we used to add for natural attacks). Then it was onto the combat & tactics phase system, with 1-3rd level spells being fast, 4-6th level spells being average, and 7-9th level spells being slow. Since casters had to declare their action at the start of the round, interruption could occur up to the phase in which they finished. Both systems really did balance things nicely.
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2007-01-03, 09:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Yep, I'm totally on board with nerfing Casters rather than boosting Non Casters. Raum makes some good points, though I don't think I would agree with swapping systems before changing D&D's Magic System. There are a number of threads bouncing around with discussion about how to limit Spell Casters by way of House Rules, some do more and some do less.
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2007-01-03, 02:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Well, for creatures, it was based on size... off-hand, medium was +3, large was +6(?), and that's all I have memorized at the moment.
However, I somewhat like what 1st edition did with initiative, at least in the simple form. Roll a d6. Whichever side is highest goes first. Ties means the lowest speed factor weapons go first... unless someone is charging, then its the longer weapon.
Spell speeds only came in for those ties and in surprise... a normal round was 1 minute, but surprise happened in segments... a 1-5 six-second long chunks where you got free hits. Spell speeds, however, were listed in segments, meaning you generally cast your low-level spells during surprise, since they were faster.
It works very well, and keeps spellcasters from owning during the surprise round.
To adapt this for d20, though, you have to declare actions before the round starts, though.The Cranky Gamer
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2007-01-03, 02:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Ah yes, now I remember. I blocked that part from my memory because it did a disservice to the huge monsters. They always went last (with the phase system). They couldn't disrupt any level 6 or below spells if they were alone.
One nice thing about 1st edition again was with the segment system, the power word spells were all 1 segment. They were highly prized because they were the only high level spells (that I can remember) that were really quick.
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2007-01-03, 03:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
"Balance" begins and ends with a good DM. Limit the availability of powerful items/spells and you limit the power of the players. Don't allow PCs to walk into a shop and select magic items from a catalogue. Utilizie roleplaying and reward players for good roleplaying decisions. Being superpowered random PC #37 might be fun for some people, but being Glanetril Causcol, holy protector in service to Pelor is far more fun.
A character's level of power should never be solely determined by the numbers on their piece of paper.
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2007-01-03, 06:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Unless you're discussing class balance...then it's based on game mechanics.
Limit the availability of powerful items/spells and you limit the power of the players. Don't allow PCs to walk into a shop and select magic items from a catalogue.
Utilizie roleplaying and reward players for good roleplaying decisions. Being superpowered random PC #37 might be fun for some people, but being Glanetril Causcol, holy protector in service to Pelor is far more fun.
A character's level of power should never be solely determined by the numbers on their piece of paper.-
I laugh at myself first, before anyone else can.
-- Paraphrased from Elsa Maxwell
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The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
-- Paul Graham in Keep Your Identity Small
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2007-01-03, 08:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
One thing that really helps class balance in D&D is that people often try to play the most overpowered classes like Final Fantasy character.
If you play a wizard like it was a Black Mage it'll be about balanced and same goes for if you play a cleric like a White Mage. Also a lot of people don't know how to use a druid tactically so they're often not too strong in actual play.
I think that goes a long way to explain why while the classes are badly unbalanced on paper in most games I've played all of the characters were very close to being balanced in actual play.
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2007-01-03, 09:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
That's a very good point. Here's the classes that I've actually seen unbalanced with the rest of the party in 3.5 games:
wizard (but kinda balanced because she has to run away a lot too)
sorcerer
monk (low-magic setting & high ability scores)
psychic warrior
That's pretty much it. I've seen clerics and rogues played effectively, but not to the point of unbalanced.
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2007-01-04, 06:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Unless this quote is trying to say "Look at the mechanical aspects of the classes independently of campaign, character's actions, and so on and determine if they are balanced", I missed your point. If that IS what you are saying, then you completely missed my point.
In your experience. Mine has been very much different. See, if one character is totally dominating in combat lets say, then it is pretty easy to place items in an adventure that benefit the other members of the party rather than our 1 overpowered fellow. Then with the addition of new items, the level of power will begin to rebalance.
This is a preference. I personally enjoy low-magic games but I know that there are many people who enjoy high-magic too.
On this we 100% agree.
The level of power a character has is definitely affected by their level, but it "..should never be solely determined by the numbers on their piece of paper."
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2007-01-04, 07:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Yeah, but I would like to give all players equal awards.
NPC: "So, will you do this heroic quest for me?"
PARTY: "Very well... But we can not do this without equipment. What can you give us?"
NPC: "For you, I shall give this blade, forged by the demon lord <insert name> himself. (+5 flaming greatsword of speed)"
FIGHTER: "Awesome!"
NPC: "For you... I shall give this ring that doubles your first level spell slots! (ring of wizardy I)"
WIZARD: "...right. yay... and stuff."
Okay, that might be exagerating and you can take care of a bit by describing stuff correctly but still, you get the idea. It would be nice that everyone would get equipment even relatively close to each other and wizards don't really need that much compared to, say, any warrior type.
I guess you coculd take away more of it by greatly limiting spells wizards are available to find, then quest rewards could be access to those. But still, it would need to be pretty powerful spells then to be equally attracting...
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2007-01-04, 06:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
That is exactly my point. A good DM will provide a variety of different opponents, situations, items, house rules (which are commonly discussed on these boards), or whatever he needs to ensure everyone has fun. Balancing his group’s game, if you want to phrase it that way. However, that does nothing to balance the game of D&D. Nor does it help any other DMs with ideas on how to balance their games…at least not until it’s discussed in a public forum.
If I have missed your point, can you clarify?
In your experience. Mine has been very much different. See, if one character is totally dominating in combat lets say, then it is pretty easy to place items in an adventure that benefit the other members of the party rather than our 1 overpowered fellow. Then with the addition of new items, the level of power will begin to rebalance.
In any case, I’m simply stating that limiting magic items hurts the classes most dependent on them more than it hurts full casters. Even so I’m not selling high magic games as the only way to play. I probably would limit spells in a low magic setting though…or recommend every one play a caster.
While many balance discussions do concentrate on combat and some go as far as discussing single combat scenarios, that’s not how I prefer to look at class balance. Most classes, particularly the core classes, are based on archetypes or roles. A balanced class (IMO!) should be best at its role / archetype and have something to contribute in most situations.
The problem with the fighter in 3.x is simply that at least two (cleric and druid) and possibly three (wizard) classes can easily be built to fill the fighter role as good or better than the fighter class itself. To make it worse, the fighter has few skills or other abilities allowing him to contribute meaningfully to situations outside of combat. The rogue is arguably weaker than a fighter in combat, but rogues are still the best at their role and have the ability to contribute in many situations. I suspect this is why there are so many more balance threads targeting fighters than there are rogues.
The level of power a character has is definitely affected by their level, but it "..should never be solely determined by the numbers on their piece of paper."-
I laugh at myself first, before anyone else can.
-- Paraphrased from Elsa Maxwell
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The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
-- Paul Graham in Keep Your Identity Small
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2007-01-05, 08:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Sure. Characters do not exist outside of a campaign. Comparing the mechanics of a fighter directly to the mechanics of a wizard is odd because you don't take many things into consideration. Is the campaign high-magic? Is it low-magic? What kind of events would have occured to makes these characters choose the way they did as far as character creation goes?
It depends on what you consider "effective". I know how effective I think a class should be at any given level between 1-8 pretty well. I've played those levels countless times as a DM and as a player. If I see that a player has min/maxed his character to be the most effective he can be, or is "pushing the envelope" so to speak, and that it is affecting the other players enjoyment of the game, I have no problem favoring the left behind characters.
The homebrew campaign that I mostly play in is very anti-magic. The comon people fear arcane magic like the plague, and the number of both divine & arcane casters are only a fraction of what they would be in a typical D&D setting. I don't change the players choices at all, they can still choose to be a wizard if they want. However, they are informed that if they are flagrant with their powers they will likely draw the attention of an outsider. Probably due to that, I never run across problems with spellcasters.
I agree.
IME, which is mostly limited to levels 1-8, fighters are one of the most powerful classes in the game. Again, magic items are rare so a spellcaster can't just go buy several wands and have unlimited spellcasting ability.
Yeah, I don't like the Diplomacy skill as written and I have my own version that I use. My point about direct power is that the numbers don't tell everything. If I am a smart player, better at tactics than another player, I would actually be a more 'powerful' character than them. If my character had made a lot of friends in the world, possibly by giving away some of his funds or magic items to aid those in need, I could have a lot of power through my relationships with others.
Its worth mentioning I play heavy RP games so the adventures are not composed of delving into a dungeon time after time and slaying different types of monsters.
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2007-01-05, 08:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Just putting in my 2 cents that at level 8, D&D 3.5 class balance is actually pretty good. Clerics haven't gotten righteous might yet, druids haven't gotten animal growth nor can they turn into a dire bear. So from a front-line perspective, the melee classes are still king.
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2007-01-05, 08:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Major issues & "solvers" for casters:
Spells. Too powerfull. Weaken some of them (Timestop 2 rounds, drop all polymorph, drop contigency, ...)
Unstoppable. Start off with making all casting a Full-Round.
Vestiallity. Forced school selection (ban 2, chose 3, ...)
Alter Spell Progression. Less at high LvLs, more at low LvLs.
Gameplay. Boost your party more. When you one-shot- the dragon, people hate you, when you make the fighter one-shot the dragon he'll love you for it.
SR. Give ALL monsters/races SR, (5+HD) Up non SR spells 1 LvL, Drop Spell Penetration & Greater (or make them free, all casters will try to take them).
The biggest problem is Wizards of the Coast wants the casters to be more powerfull. After all, It's magic.
The best solution lies with the players. Don't overpower them, boost your party, make an evoker once in a while. CoDzilla is a well known term, but in all my games everybody loves the cleric, especially the fighter. He does what he's supposed to do, Heal & Boost.Last edited by Falrin; 2007-01-05 at 08:33 AM.
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2007-01-05, 08:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Originally Posted by Falrin;1782424The biggest problem is Wizards of the Coast wants the casters to be more powerfull. After all, It's magic.
The best solution lies with the players. Don't overpower them, boost your party, make an evoker once in a while. CoDzilla is a well known term, but in all my games everybody loves the cleric, especially the fighter. [B
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2007-01-05, 10:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
The best class balance in the world is good DMing. Talk to your PC's about their feat and spell selections. Ban Divine Metamagic and Polymorph. Throw in more encounters per game day, and make sure you have enemies with high saving throws. Problem solved.
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2007-01-05, 02:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
Why do we care about how balanced classes are against one another? D&D is designed as a team game, not for player-versus-player combat.
If your players are upset that the casters rule every encounter, then you aren't planning the encounters very well. Person Man's advice is spot on there. If your players never encounter anything but ogre barbarians and umber hulks, of course the casters will outshine the fighters.
It's not an issue of game system balance - although, granted, casters are mechanically more powerful. Their greater mechanical power only matters if the other players aren't having fun.
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2007-01-05, 02:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
And not having fun is the key issue we are trying to solve. I experienced this in 1E with a DM who threw away the casting time rules and allowed all spells to be cast instantly (and thus not interruptible because there weren't readied actions either). The casters took over, and we poor fighting/monk types pretty much did nothing. At the time I was upset that the DM was not using the obvious game balance put in place by those rules. Little did I know that 3E would embrace a similar system!
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2007-01-05, 02:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
At high levels it doesn't matter how you plan an encounter, the full casters will always be more versatile than everyone else.
Personally I never had this problem since I run low level games and my players don't know how to optimize a character.
But it's easy to see how casters can unbalance the game at high levels even without being powergamers. And even if they are powergamers they shouldn't be punished, the game should already be balanced at all times so that we don't have to worry about things like that.
For example even if you run a low magic campaign and you give non-casters the best items, the casters could simply create the items they want. And even if they don't casters are the classes that could survive easily without magic items.
Tormsskull try playing high level games or listen to the opinions of people who did.
Besides why should we change our worlds to balance the game?
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2007-01-05, 03:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
In order to get to high-level games the characters have to survive many many challenges, which is never guaranteed. Second, I figure if you play D&D 1x a week (pretty common for our group) it will take you at least a year if not more to get to "high level."
Change your worlds? I'm not saying you should change your world, I'm just saying my world doesn't run into this issue because it is low-magic. IMO that is one way of handling the "problem" of class imbalance at high levels.
As well:
This is circular logic. If you don't think there is a problem with class balance at high levels, then you're all set. But if you understand the fundamental concept of D&D, which is to have fun, balance has to enter into the equation at some point or another. If one character is dramatically more powerful than another, it is not going to be as much fun for the weaker guy.
You seem to agree that the classes are unbalanced at high level play based on this quote:
And that's why it is circular logic. In essence you are saying that the game is unbalanced at high level play, you admit that the game should be balanced, but that you don't think you should have to change anything to make it balanced.
I guess I just take a more proactive role in the well fair of the game. If there is a problem I fix it.
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2007-01-05, 05:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: class balance
The Cranky Gamer
Nexx's Hello
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*"I" is an English pronoun in the nominative case of first person singular. It does not indicate the actions or writings of anyone but the first person, singular.
*Tataurus, you have three halves as well as a race that doesn't breed. -UglyPanda
*LVDO ERGO SVM