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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5294861" data-attributes="member: 5143">Sometimes what is fun for you isn't for your players and vice versa.  I use the example of the DM who removed flatfootedness from his 3e game.  He thought it was the supreme level or stupidity that an enemy would literally see you coming, but not have time to react to your attack.  It ruined the game for him that a really fast enemy who rolled low on initiative would let his guard down enough to let you stab him in a vital spot.When he changed it, it kind of ruined the game for me.  I was playing a rogue with Improved Initiative and my feat choice went from being something I was happy with to nearly useless.  I asked him if I could change my feat, which he eventually allowed me to, but even after, I found it reduced the number of sneak attacks my character was able to do to almost half of what it was before.  My character's damage went down a lot.  I felt like I was no longer contributing to battles.  It caused the next couple of sessions to be rather no fun for me until I decided to switch characters.  No one else played a Rogue in that game again, however.Whether the DM was "right" to change the rules to fit his sensibilities even if it made the game no fun for the players...who's to say?  I mean, it's possible that Rogues were overpowered with flatfootedness as a rule and I was only happy with broken crap.My point is that often DMs are really bad at determining what is or isn't balanced.  They often think they know best and then go changing things because they feel it works best and end up breaking it in the process, while convinced they are doing what is best.It wasn't every done in this way in previous editions.  In 2e and 1e, there were no guidelines on how rare anything was supposed to be.  As a DM were you supposed to give out +5 Vorpal Weapons at first level?  There was an implication that the answer was no...but no actual rules.This time there are rules that say there are 3 levels of an item.  a Common +5 sword gives you the +5 bonus to hit and damage, an Uncommon version gives you that and also allows you to deal fire manage with the weapon and cause a burst of fire from it once a day.  The Rare version does everything the uncommon version does and also does an extra 1d6 fire damage with all attacks(for example).I admit, some of this is guessing.  But it's based on what we were told at Gen Con by WOTC(I was lucky enough to be sitting in the room at the time).  The idea is to have a system where someone can get a reasonable powerful item...while not giving them TOO many of them or allowing them to choose THE most powerful item for them.  Often player choice alone is the most imbalancing factor.Why can't they be balanced to the extent that the existing classes are?  Generally the things you balance a class with are: Damage output, Damage taking ability(hit points, defenses, resistances), Mobility and Tactical ability, and out of combat utility.  If you stay within a fairly strict range for these areas, it doesn't matter at ALL what kind of powers the class gets, what order they get them in or whether they have dailies or not.  If the new fighter has the same hitpoints as the old fighter, is able to defend nearly as well, does similar damage, has similar defenses, and has to rest after the same number of healing surges(which are the only real limiting factor in 4e D&D) then it doesn't matter that they only use basic attacks or that they don't choose to mark people.It also means they factor into the math exactly as if they were an original fighter and can be swapped effectively with no change to the game at all.All rules are player limiting.  That's what rules do...limit what you can do.  Why can't you take 6 classes?  Because the rules limit you.  Why can't you get every item in the game?  Because the rules limit you.  Players don't mind being limited if they feel that it makes for a more fun game.In fact, the more player freedom and choice you allow the more unbalanced the game gets...even if every item in the game is balanced.  The thing is, no game designer, DM, or human in general, can see what every single possible combination is.  If you simply removed all of the class names from every power in the game, you'd break the game badly.  Not because there are a lot of horribly broken level 1 powers, but because it's not a good idea to let people pick the best defense power and the best offense power on the same character.  When it might be perfectly balanced to have them on 2 different characters.Simply saying "This class of items are rewards for a job well done and not something every player is allowed to choose from at will" doesn't cause every player to start whining.  Though some will.  I'll just still to the "It's the rules. You can't make Uncommon items no matter how hard you try."See above, but I don't ever remember 1e or 2e having a system of rarity other than "everything was rare".  Which is a little different from having 3 levels of rarity with recommended levels on them.Yes, the new rarity system will need new rules for starting at higher levels.  I assume that instead of picking 3 items that you might be able to pick 2 Common items and roll for 2 Uncommon items.  Or you just get a lump sum of gold and you can only buy common items then you acquire all your uncommon items in play(since it doesn't appear the difference between common items and uncommon items are all that imbalancing).Yep, likely.  That's going to be the hardest part of the conversion.  I'm not looking forward to telling my players that they need to give up some of their items.  But maybe it isn't all THAT imbalancing to let them keep they items they have now.  I think that more common and less uncommon items are an easier to handle game but as long as players don't have 6 of the same +1 item with a great daily power, it probably isn't unbalancing to let them keep their uncommon items.I'm in complete agreement.  There appears to be a lot of backpedaling here in order to appeal to people coming from 1e and 2e.</blockquote>

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