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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5751923" data-attributes="member: 58197">I have experienced balance issues in actual play. Sometimes they were due to deliberate powergaming, but many were accidental; somebody just happened to pick a build that was grossly over- or underpowered.I remember one 3.5E campaign where I made a druid with a tiger animal companion. My previous experience of characters with &quot;pets&quot; (mostly arcane casters with familiars) had led me to believe the pets tended to be on the weak side in combat, so I took a few feats and spells to beef up mine. That tiger dominated the battlefield. On at least one occasion I forgot to declare my own action because it was so inconsequential compared to the tiger's pounce-and-rake routine. I soon retired that character because nobody else was getting any glory.Then there was the night I ran a one-shot BECMI game at 9th level*. To all appearances, the party consisted of one magic-user and some speed bumps to slow down the monsters on their way to said magic-user. Ridiculously lopsided.On the underpowered side... monks, mostly. The 3.X monk is a trap just waiting to snap its jaws on newbie players; it looks so cool and awesome with all its special abilities, and then you play one and discover that none of those special abilities is actually worth anything. Melee types in high-level 3.X games are another example. The underpowered PCs have been less memorable but considerably more numerous than the overpowered ones.[SIZE=-2]*Well, 8th to 10th. I handed out a fixed amount of XP, so levels varied by class.[/SIZE]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5751923, member: 58197"] I have experienced balance issues in actual play. Sometimes they were due to deliberate powergaming, but many were accidental; somebody just happened to pick a build that was grossly over- or underpowered. I remember one 3.5E campaign where I made a druid with a tiger animal companion. My previous experience of characters with "pets" (mostly arcane casters with familiars) had led me to believe the pets tended to be on the weak side in combat, so I took a few feats and spells to beef up mine. That tiger dominated the battlefield. On at least one occasion I forgot to declare my own action because it was so inconsequential compared to the tiger's pounce-and-rake routine. I soon retired that character because nobody else was getting any glory. Then there was the night I ran a one-shot BECMI game at 9th level*. To all appearances, the party consisted of one magic-user and some speed bumps to slow down the monsters on their way to said magic-user. Ridiculously lopsided. On the underpowered side... monks, mostly. The 3.X monk is a trap just waiting to snap its jaws on newbie players; it looks so cool and awesome with all its special abilities, and then you play one and discover that none of those special abilities is actually worth anything. Melee types in high-level 3.X games are another example. The underpowered PCs have been less memorable but considerably more numerous than the overpowered ones. [SIZE=-2]*Well, 8th to 10th. I handed out a fixed amount of XP, so levels varied by class.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

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