NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 3994066" data-attributes="member: 467">The less you rely on random character generation, the less effective the "balancing" systems inherent in the system are.  Also note that the balance wasn't necessarily based on any given moment -- it was supposed to be based over the course of the campaign (where players would be expected to run many, many characters).  Using high stat minimums to "balance" powerful classes doesn't work because that means all the powerful classed characters will be even more powerful by virtue of the necessity of high stats.  Which works fine when that character is a one in a million, but breaks down the moment you allow players to pick and choose what they want to play.  And, if a player does get that lucky, he is going to want to hold on to that character and the character is going to be played with a sense of mortality that is rare among PCs.I think a lot of the design elements and mechanics that people call "broken" or "bad" from previous editions are called that because those mechanics are designed, in many cases, for an entirely different sort of playstyle, one that D&D has slowly edged away from over the years (and certainly over the last few years since 3.5 came out).  While it is true tere have been munchkins and power gamers since the game began, 3.5 has taken this to a new height by not just building the game system, but the entire business model, around munchkinism as it would have been traditionally called and is now called "optimization" and "build".  Add that to the need for constant rewards (fast levelling and no dead levels) and the tone of the average game has changed quite a lot, I think.  4E was inevitable in more ways than one.EDIT: Thast sounds more bad-wrong-fun than I intended.  What I mean is that since 3.5 came out, both thegame system and the publishing strategy of the game have seemed to focus more and more on PC power and just the right combinations of abilities.  The last couple years have been even more focused on defining "fun" as both PC power and constant mechanical rewards.  I don't see this changing in 4E; in fact, all the evidence points to making it more fundamental to the game in 4E. Me gut feeling is that this has alot to do with Mearls' involvement in Des&Dev: it is his definition of "fun" that is guiding the direction of the game, but I can't be certain of that.</blockquote>

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