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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 6091061" data-attributes="member: 6688858">I suppose it would depend on the frequency of the problem, but my instinct is to say that the game shouldn't try to stop jerks being jerks.I think they should start from a baseline of the kind of impact that bringing a Cleric into the party has in Basic or AD&D, and then tone that down a little bit in both directions (reducing the Cleric's healing capacity, particularly during extended rest periods, as well as give other classes damage mitigation abilities). But I DON'T think that perfect balance between a party with a cleric and a party with another fighter should be the goal.Ideally a party with at least one member of any of the core classes should be better than a party without that class. But this especially should be true in the case of the Cleric I think.Satisfying the traditional support Cleric fan strikes me as similar to the Gnome fan thing: in themselves, they're a pretty small minority, but because D&D is such a social game (not so much for the aforementioned jerks, I guess) if you piss them off you're liable to piss off their entire group which multiplies the effect.Even if having a Cleric in the party does result in a tangible in-game benefit (i.e. assuming that time is a resource), I still want to question your assumption that a party  capable of fewer encounters on average per day is necessarily less fun  for the players at the table. That seems like the game playing  different, but not worse, to me.Some people voluntarily choose to play videogames at harder difficulty levels, right?I think you're working under the assumption that gamism starts right  during character creation. I prefer character creation to be pretty  light on the gamism I think. I expect players to fight like bastards in  the middle of a dungeoncrawl, but not so much during character creation.  I see that as more analogous to choosing your difficulty before  beginning to play a videogame (in terms of its meta-gamist(?) status).What's important is transparency, not balance. It's OK to have  unbalanced characters and parties (within reasonable bounds) as long as  the game explains it clearly. Then you can relativize your in-game success to  your starting power, just like playing an asymmetrical war game or  strategy game.I want to remind/clarify at this point that what I have in mind is really a pretty minor difference between parties with Clerics and parties without. I don't think it's wise to aim for perfect parity.Or getting most of your XP from treasure instead of monsters.The AD&D DMG does not support proportionate healing.</blockquote>

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