Balancing Classes with Roleplaying or GMing

[two]

Wasn't there some rule or vague sort of design principle that character classes were not supposed to be balanced in ways non-mechanical, meaning, they should all be balanced (roughly) class to class regardless of the type of campaign that is being run?

(barring absurd extremes, such as a Paladin in an evil campaign setting).

This obviously relates to the psionics issue.

I don't think anyone is debating (are they?) that if your campaign has 3 of less encounters per day 90% of the time, Psions are going to rule the roost.

Is this not a poor design?

(forcing GM's to run campaigns in a certain way)?

In the past I have not had many GM's that consistently want 4+ encounters in a day. Once in a great while -- yes. Every freaking day? No way.

The other side of the coin is Warlocks. Not very uber with <5 encounters per day, but with 10 encouters in a day -- they get very strong.

The thing is, 5+ encounters in a day in my experience is very rare. It's ok to have a class shine once in a while.

<4 encounters, on the other hand... I don't find this to be rare. Rather, the rule.

Maybe I should create a poll. hhm......

 

[FrostedMini1337]

You know why I like D&D? Because everytime I open up a d&d book, I don't have to download a patch.

Balance doesn't bother my group much because of the roleplaying balance.

Yes, my psion is powerful. He made someone execute himself in public. People have been known to drop dead at a glance from him. The rest of the party is ok with this. Know why? They don't fear for their characters lives. The cleric has all the protection he needs from the church, and they throw some extra scratch his way. The fighter/blackguard isn't afraid of much either, and has the same cleric backing, but to a lesser extent.

"With great power comes great chance of sneak attack"

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I don't think anyone is debating (are they?) that if your campaign has 3 of less encounters per day 90% of the time, Psions are going to rule the roost.

Is this not a poor design?

Perhaps, yes. A design weakness, at the very least.

In fact you only need to have 4 or 5 in a single day every once and then those days with 3 encounters will be a sufficiently reminder to keep him honest.

The benchmark of 4 encounters presumes 4 level equivalent challenges, and that is somewhat artificial even by the DMG guidelines.

Your 8 level party might have 4 separate fights with CR 8 creatures in the day. Or they might fight, one CR 8, then two CR 7's, then one CR 7, then two CR 6's.

But does any DM do that all the time?

IME most DMs prefer to run one CR 8, then two CR 8's, and call that a day. As long as this rountine does not become too predicatable it is probably "close enough".

The Psion (and Wizard) becomes a significant problem at the 1-2 encounters (or equivalent) per day. Not really a big deal if you are usually north of that.

 

[Cartigan Mrryl]

(Foreword: Please don't misunderstand me, I mean good campaigns in the sense of something more than "Kill-kill-kill" campaigns, a good campaign has many a fight too, but there's more to it than the fighting... so no anger, okay? I meant no offense to ANYONE.)

In most of the good campaigns... wait, let's start over.

In some of MY favorite campaigns, the social guys won the day. I remember that AWESOME Evil Talker-class in the BoVD... I can't remember his name (The one who, as a class skill, added his/her INT mod to all social-like checks [bluff, diplomacy, intimidate,etc.]) Talked his way out of a fight between his group (Himself, 2 casters and an evil Cleric) and, like 12 Mercenaries. He talked them outta it... so now our DM rates things by how much they could get away with, not merely combat-ability.

But I'm ranting....

Psionics are BROKEN, everyone knows it... so why bring them up? [meant as a question, is all]