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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4090792" data-attributes="member: 5143">It IS an effort in group storytelling, sure.  Where 75% of it is spent on a grid rolling attack rolls and keeping track of hitpoints and each player plays one character and identifies with it.Effectiveness and power is the same thing.  If you can fly and you get the party to the top of the tower, you are being more effective than I am at getting to the end of the adventure.  You are also more powerful.  If you can do 70 damage to 10 people and I can do 50 damage to 1 people, you are more effective AND more powerful.  If you can open locks without a roll and I need to roll one, you are more effective and more powerful.As for balance of purpose.  If you are essentially saying that the fighter is better at his role(purpose) while the wizard is better at his, then you have to show that it is true.  If a wizard can have an AC of 30 and a Reflex save of +12 when the fighter has an AC of 24 and a Reflex save of +8 then the Wizard is BETTER at the fighter's purpose than he is making an imbalance.  If a wizard can find traps better than the rogue and automatically open all locks then he is better at the rogue's purpose.The ONLY reason a Wizard can't solo most adventures is because the DM designs the difficulty of monsters around having 4-6 party members all doing damage to the creature in one round.  If you took a dungeon designed for 7th level characters and put a decently made 10th level wizard against it...he could solo it.  It is extremely unlikely that a 10th level fighter could do the same.Which aren't really limitations.Spells per day doesn't really matter in any campaign I've played in after 5th level or so.  At that point there just isn't enough rounds of combat in a day to actually use up your spells.Spell preparation isn't that big of a deal.  It's easy, prepare the spells that are useful most often and carry scrolls of anything you don't use every day.SR is annoying, but it's basically a tax put on casters to make them feel like they have SOME limitations.  Resistances are normally easily bypassed just by casting a different spell.It's not a matter of against each other, it's about whether I feel my character was just as needed to reach the end as everyone else in the group.  In 3rd, I don't.As I point out above, old editions had the ILLUSION of balance of purpose.  In the end the balance was: every non caster has a purpose balanced against each other, casters are way more powerful than all non casters and can fulfill ALL purposes but they can only do it so many times per day.  This only mattered whenever there was more battles in one day than the caster could handle(i.e. almost never).Purpose isn't thrown out the windows at all in 4th.  If anything, it was only made stronger than 3rd:Defenders are the ones with lots of hitpoints and a high AC, their purpose is to take the hits and protect the rest of the party from damage.  Arrange the monsters so they are not in a position to get to the back line.Leaders give out bonuses to the party and provide tactical support.  They heal the party as well.Strikers do damage.  Lots of damage.  And they sometimes reduce the powers of enemies.Controllers put up walls, put status effects on enemies and mostly cause enemies to spread out due to area of effect damage.They are just different roles than they had before.  Those were:Defenders: Take damage so the wizard can do his thing and defeat the monsters.Leaders: Buff the whole party at the beginning of the day so nearly no one gets hurt.  If they do get hurt then heal them.Strikers: Do nearly nothing in combat except try to get into the right position.  Wait until a trap or lock showed up or a wilderness adventure.  Ace that one skill roll.Controllers: Bypass all obstacles, buff the party, do area of effect damage, do individual damage, get the party to its destination.Immunity to anything sucks from a game point of view.  I design a monster whose main attack is that it frightens people so much that they actually DO die of a heart attack.  It's a cool idea, I can't wait to try it out....but it isn't possible because the Paladin is completely immune to it making it no challenge against him or any other group that can cast Heroes Feast.A better idea is to give the Paladin an advantage in that situation without a blanket immunity.  It makes it more fun to fight a monster than has a chance of winning than one you know you are immune to.  I certainly hate running a game where I'm rolling endless rolls that don't mean anything: "So he uses his frighten ability again, since it's what he does.  Oh, right...you are all still immune.  Now it's the fighter's turn."You can still die from abilities in 4e.  You can even die in one hit if an enemy rolls enough damage.  These things aren't out of the game.  Sure, it might be that you can no longer run a scenario where King Arthur walks into the room and the wizard raises his hand and the King drops dead immediately.  But, frankly, that sounds like the worst story ever.Instant death, instant petrification and the like are great for NPCs, they suck for players.  They are only fun for DMs who like the idea that the players will be REALLY frightened of an encounter because they have these sort of powers.Plus, one of the at will powers in the Fighter list is Cleave, which is the ability to attack an enemy with a melee weapon and slice right through to something beside it.  How is this something that doesn't belong in LOTRs?  Another power lets you attack and knock the enemy backwards when you do.  There isn't even a backwards in Final Fantasy.  My favorite heroes in fantasy books do this sort of thing all the time.None of the Fighter abilities listed so far are magical at all.  Same with the Ranger.They aren't basing their design off of video games.  They are basing their design around games in general.  These same ideas make for a fun game in board games that I played long before I ever played a video game.The problem with basing things off of books is that books aren't meant to be games.  It's easy to say "Gandalf is a powerful mage capable of taking on the Balrog by himself" then when it comes time to fight orcs for it to be Aragorn to be the one who shines and defeats them.  It's easy because you don't have to define the "rules" of how Gandalf's magic works.  You don't have a player of Gandalf telling you that he's bored because none of his abilities do anything in this fight.  You can simply say "Gandalf doesn't use any magic and fights with a sword this battle...and he isn't as good at it as Aragorn."  There isn't anyone playing Pippin who is complaining that he doesn't feel like there is any reason for him to show up for the session since he doesn't seem to ever do anything.In a book it's all plot.  Gandalf suddenly becomes as powerful as you need him to be at any particular moment.  You can't do that in a game.It's your OPINION.  You know why people try to balance video games though?  Because when you sit down to play EQ, WoW, Diablo, or even NWN, you want to have fun and it isn't fun if you lose all the time and it isn't fun if you feel like you should have made a different character because yours sucks.This thinking doesn't apply just to video games.  It applies to all games.  It's been a design goal of D&D since the beginning.  Every correction made was because "this rule made something too powerful" or "this rule made playing a wizard no fun".</blockquote>

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