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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DarkKestral" data-source="post: 3120614" data-attributes="member: 40100">I like balanced design because it allows me to focus less on the mechanical aspects of play and more on keeping the players in line with one another in terms of spotlight and fun. If I know one player gets his fun off immersive roleplay and another off of difficult combats, since i don't have to check character power often, I can spend more time making the game fun for players. It also means I won't have one player mad about how his character is useless vs. another character, because the first player's character's main schtick is less powerful than another character's alternate schtick (like say, a singly-classed rogue whose DD and Open Lock total modifier is less than half of another player's though the second person is not a singly-classed rogue not specializing in opening locks or disabling magical devices and without thieve's tools and the first has put maximum skill points in those two skills, has his best ability score in Dex, and has feats to further improve those skills and masterwork items to further improve checks) When you see problems like that above, mechanical balance issues are a player problem. Most people don't like playing 'ineffective' characters, and most groups don't like people playing them either.I've been the person whose character was the 5th wheel. It sucks horribly. In fact, it's usually so bad, I'm not likely to assume a GM's telling the truth if he says 'my players are OK with the game I run' when he forces players to play characters like that unless I know he's the only one that ever runs games in the area, because I would assume that the players would probably have left him if they knew someone else. I know that because I was the one always getting hurt, I was the one whose skills never worked, and my money was tighter than everyone else's, because I didn't have much to start with, and my character was always having to pay for uber-armor and healing so I didn't die every combat... so I had to be less heroic and games were less fun as a result.</blockquote>

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