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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 1643933" data-attributes="member: 5143">Depends on how you are looking at it.  If longsword is a better weapon in every way than an axe, then the people in the world would realize that and use what they felt was the most useful.It doesn't say anywhere in any of the book that "Dwarves use axes".  It's just that in movies and books they might, so people attempt to emulate those characters.If I was a character in that game system and I picked up all the weapons and attempted to use each of them and see which one was better, I'd figure it out, because IN THAT GAME WORLD that weapon IS better.And, believe it or not, the amount of people that become powergamers when they realize how crappy their characters are in comparison to the other players is pretty high.I generally run planned adventures that don't depend on the CHARACTERS abilities.  When I plan adventures and plots, I think "Ok, an evil wizard is trying to conquer the country, he has craft construct, so he has created golems to guard his tower."  I like to create a scenario and see how characters that I have no control over whatsoever handle it.  Yes, it is possible that the rogue might suck in the adventure, or they might be very useful to disarm all the magic traps the wizard put there.When I make an adventure, I like to put my faith in the rules to make sure no one feels left out.  In 3.5E D&D, I can be mostly sure that no matter what class someone is playing, they will have something to do that will assist the party in a significant way in that wizard's tower.  Not only that, but once combat starts, 95% of the time, everyone in the party has SOMETHING to do that is useful.  Each class has their own bonuses and advantages in certain situations, but no one is completely useless.On the other hand, in certain other non-balanced systems it was fully possible to play a character who had no uses whatsoever when combat started.  The players of those characters would tend to leave the table and watch TV for the next hour while we finished the battle.I've also seen players make up characters they were happy with and had a lot of fun playing, but when battle started, they ran up and said "I hit for 3" when another person in the party said, "I hit 4 times for 30 damage each".  I, as a DM, don't want to spend all of my time to look through each and every character that someone makes for my game in order to tell them whether their character is too powerful or not powerful enough for my game.  Plus, I don't want to see players annoyed that the characters they made up aren't as useful as other characters in the group.  You are right, that TRUE balance won't happen.  But it is a good goal to have CLOSE to true balance.Most people will choose whatever they think is the best.  For instance, someone brings a character into a group and they pick axe because they feel that dwarves use axes and they are going to be the tough fighter dwarf who is a great fighter, one of the best in the land.  They join a group of people wielding longswords.  He consistantly does less damage than the rest of the party because of his decision.  The "hardened fighter dwarf" is outdone by the "I hate fighting, but have no other choice human" because they happen to be the same level and the human uses a BETTER weapon.  Does it make sense story wise?  No.  Unless there is a reason in THAT world that axes are better.  If they aren't...then, well, they shouldn't do more damage.  Just because YOU are willing to take a poor choice for story reasons doesn't mean most people are.  I have known at least 5 different role players in that dwarf's position who retired their characters after a couple of sessions and made up someone who used a longsword (well, figuratively speaking.  There were varying reasons they felt underpowered)In short, balance is about less work for a DM who has to continually check and double check everything he allows into his game, it is about more fun for the players because they feel useful and not outdone but the other players, and it's about story consistency.Majoru Oakheart</blockquote>

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