The beauty of this game is that the fighter is powerful at lower levels and the MU is powerful at higher levels. Somewhere in the middle, there is balance. But to try to have the fighter and the MU have the same amount of power at each level is a trick that even Gigax didn't achieve. Balance, as I said before, is over-rated. It breaks the game. Its found at the table between DM and players, not in the rule book.
This doesn't make sense to me. If the F and MU are balanced at mid-levels - and if the game is playable at mid-levels - then why can't that balance be projected back to lower levels, and forward to upper levels?
I mean, it might be good or bad design to have a game with the contrasting power progressions you describe, but it is not
mandatory. There is nothing inherent in the notion of a 1st level MU that makes it weaker than a 1st level fighter. Likewise for 12th level.
How is that a deal breaker? Because you want a vanilla game where everyone has the same power level, or that you don't want to play a game where the fighter is powerful at low levels and the MU is powerful at higher levels? To me, the vanilla game that you guys are striving for with your "balance" don't exist.
I don't understand this notion of "vanilla game", either. If classic D&D is playable at fun at (say) 5th to 8th levels, when the fighter and MU are roughly balanced, then why would it be objectionably "vanilla" to set up the whole game like that?
I submit that anyone who is wanting "balance" really just wants Superman and Batman in a fantasy setting. If you want Middleearth, or Narnia, or even Barsoom, "balance" goes out the window.
I don't get this either. Why does Middle Earth require that fighter and magic-users of the same level be radically different in mechanical effectivenss? Couldn't you just stat up the hobbits as (say) level 1, Gimli and Legolas as (say) level 3 to 5, Aragorn as (say) level 8 or so, and Gandalf as (say) level 12 or so?
You want "balance", get it at your table.
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You'll never get that in the rules.
You can't achieve that without making the game so boring, nobody would want to play it.
I assume that you are aware that many games that balance fighters and casters exist and are played. D&D 4e is one of them. AD&D and 3E played between about levels 4 and 9 are another two. Rolemaster does a reasonable job at low to mid levels also. And I'm sure there are some points-buy fantasy games that do OK at it too.
You may find all these games boring - though I'm confused, because you seem to say that you like AD&D between levels 4 and 9 - but plenty of others don't.
Oh, they're rules alright. But what determines how your game is played is which ones your DM chooses to enforce, and which ones he throws out.
Balance is not found in the rules, nor should it be. Balance is found in the gaming group where it belongs. The rules are there as a guideline, and as a trap for rules lawyers to try to challenge DM (usually to their detriment).
I'm not sure what you think the action resolution rules of an RPG are for. But some, perhaps many RPGers - including me - regard them as the principal means whereby the players can, via their PCs, engage the situations that the GM frames for them. If action resolution is just about GM preferences and GM fiat, then what exactly are the players contributing, other than a bit of colour and some suggestions for the "story" that the GM-as-author may or may not take up?
So basically what you're saying is that some (incidentally non-core) spells are overpowered. That doesn't mean that the character casting them is.
My understanding is that the druid's animal companion is frequently comparable in effectiveness to a fighter. Given that the druid also has him-/herself and his/her spells, that does suggest a degree of discrepancy in mechanical effectiveness.
I'm looking at the 7th level Brown Bear, for example. Its AC is pretty bad, but its attacks look OK: a 7th level fighter would be what? +7 for level, +2 for item, +1 for feat, +5 for stat for +15/+10 for 1d8+9, whereas the bear is +11/+11 for 1d8+8 - but with Improved Grab, and what strikes me as a fairly good grapple modifier. (The giant crocodile seems mecahnically a little more effective, but a bit less practical.)
Now 3E is not my game, so perhaps I'm badly underoptimising my 7th level fighter there. But I'm pretty sure I can optimise my 7th level druid as well, between spells and wildshape! And I've still got my bear.
I could, of course, kill a Druid in five pre-planned encounters or even 1 encounter. That's a dumb test. I could just have a 1 HD goblin pull a lever and drop a 10 ton block on the Druid's head as he walked in the door. Then you'll cry "that's situational! Unfair!", well yeah everything is situational in a RPG. And if you think that you are gonna find some spell or reason to out-situation my goblin block trap, just remember the whole area is in an anti-magic field, you contracted a mysterious curse that instantly lowers your wisdom to 1, and your animal companion just had a heart attack and died.
Do you think I'm incapable of running a game with my playstyle that is balanced for both the druid and other classes using 3rd edition? That's what I'm talking about.
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you think that I can't come up with 5 scenarios that the druid and the fighter can both do well solo.
This is a lot of a cop out. The Fighter is obviously going to die to the "Rocks fall, everyone dies" scenario too.
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In short, to challenge the fighter, you have to build an entirely different set of encounters than to challenge the Druid. And if the Druid and the Fighter are in the same party, then it becomes readily apparent to the fighter that the Druid is capable of doing so very much more than he is.
I agree with GreyICE on this issue. Of course it's possible, through a high degree of tweaking in encounter design, and a high degree of GM force in action resolution, to "balance" a fighter and a druid in the same party. The question is whether this is (i) a necessary feature of RPG design, and (ii) desirable in an RPG?
The answer to (i) obviously is No - given that there are RPGs, including fantasy RPGs, that don't require such tweaking and force. The answer to (ii) is more complex, but I think that a lot of people don't want a game where so much of what happens is in the hands of the GM. As I asked earlier in this post, at a certain point I lose sight of exactly what the players are doing, other than providing a bit of colour as they learn from the GM what happens to "their" PCs.
balance can be achieved through metagame mechanics which ensure the spotlight is passed around; in their absence 'balance' is about playstyle and system - not just system.
What you say is true, but I think that system shouldn't therefore be under-emphasised.
For example, if some players - via their PCs - effectively have a high degree of control over scene-framing, but others don't, then that first group of players can, in effect, manufacture their own spotlights (Teleport, Rope Trick etc). And if the GM counters this by a strong application of force, then we're into a playstyle that many of us find pretty dysfunctional.
Similarly, if the game is designed to support a certain generic form of conflict resolution - namely, combat between the PCs and evil enemies - and the system renders some PCs noticeably more mechanically capable in that arena than others - then maintaining comparable spotlight time is going to require a lot of GM departure from default system assumptions in framing conflicts. This is probably not as bad as GM force in action resolution and to counter player scene-framing (or scene-avoidance) strategies, but I still think it can veer into antagonism (or else extreme player deprotagonism) pretty easily.
