Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 9657627" data-attributes="member: 7030563">This is really a great point.  Although I can't say I have personally experienced the whining, "BAD" players, I have experienced the second part many, many times.  Every game I played has exhibited wide imbalance between players and that has never been a problem as all players were useful.Also although these forums have endless debates about class balance, class balance is almost never the cause of imbalance either.  Imbalance from magic items, character creation ability rolls and player mastery of the rules is what I see at the table most often.For example, our 5e original 2014 pre-TCE Ranger was by far the most powerful PC when I played Descent into Avernus.  Why?  She had two legendary items - the Shield of Gargoth and the Sword of Zariel and she was the only PC that was any good with them.  She was WAY more powerful than the Cleric, Sorcerer or the Bladesinger/Arcane Trickster in the party once she got the shield a (level 5?) and then the gap widened near the end of the game when she got the sword.  This is while she was playing what was widely regarded as the 2nd weakest class at the time.The only way to balance this would have been to not give out the Shield of Gargoth (which would have been ok) and to make the Sword of Zariel not a powerful item, which kind of defeats or circumvents the plot and would have been no fun for anyone.In the very beginning of the game the Rogue (who later multiclassed Wizard) was the most powerful, because she started the game with two 18s.   Further the Rogue/Wizard character went from the strongest to the weakest in the party for part of the early game right before we found the Shield.  We had all our gear taken and she had to fight with no spell components and first with an improvised weapon and 7 strength and then later with a scimitar she was not proficient in.  The Scimitar and a piece of lard we found in a kitchen (for the Grease spell) is what she went into the Boss fight with.  Once she got her gear back she was the second strongest (since now we had the shield and the Ranger was tops)Similarly, in SODQ my Kender Paladin was the strongest in the party at games end, mostly because she was the only PC who could use a Lance effectively (Dragonlance!).</blockquote>

Verification