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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DDM" data-source="post: 2656473" data-attributes="member: 37612">About what ? AD&D 2ed being balanced, or the Elf Bladesinger being the only class I've seen totally out of balance ? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I guess the former.Well, I think it all boils down to what we call "balance".a) balance in classes: all versions of D&D never had a perfect balance between classes. Wizards, in all editions, start weak and become the strongest. Usually what I've seen is that with newer and newer versions of D&D, the non-magic classes became more and more stronger in the beginning (I remember the old D&D with the warrior having 1d8 hit points with the mage 1d4... now things are different but mages still have 1d4 for hp).b) spell balance... on all official manuals of AD&D 2ed (not including specific campaign/world spells, like Elminster's for example...), there are only a few spells that I forbid/weaken on my campaign. Choke and Throbbing Bones (Compl. Wiz Hand), Improved Blink, Seven Eyes and Mordenkainen's Force Missile(Spells & Magic). Period.All magic can be dispelled, but a couple.Overall, the magic system is balanced.I can't say the same for 3ed spells. In 3.0 there was Haste, totally crazy, as an example.c) Fights/Melee. The parrying rule seems useless, but gets interesting as long as you take out the -10 AC limit. PArrying with shield needed a house rule to make it more logical and interesting, but after that, all is working.All in all, at expert level (not of character, but of players), fights with and without magic are very well balanced, and don't end up with combos/min+max.Indeed, the import point about combat is not, in 2ed, *how much damage you can inflict*, but, like in real life, who can choose his ground.Min/max in AD&D 2ed means nothing if it's the ennemy who strikes you first, and heavily.Anyway, like I said, 2ed is well balanced. Even Wisdom, considered useless, is really Intuition and Willpower, so you can use it like "observation" skill in 3ed.Now, this does not mean that some rules in 3ed are not plainly better.But given any D&D system, 2ed is the one who needs less house rules/Errata to be balanced at any level of play. Well, it's my opinion, at least.This is why, while we are 2 DM in our campaign, and that one of us is DMing in 3ed with another group, that we continue to play in 2ed (with a couple of house rules) for the main campaign, that is, the one that I'm preparing for Immortals.So, UK, get to work. We're waiting. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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