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<blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 5780997" data-attributes="member: 5868">My take?&nbsp; Class balance is important because no one wants to suck night after night while another player steals the show, just because you chose to play a rogue and he chose to play a wizard.&nbsp; Every character should be able to provide a fair contribution, all else being equal.&nbsp; That's not to say the same contribution -- fair is not equal, fair is fair.I'd like to think we learned from the bad old days of 2 hp magic-users with one light spell, who could do nothing but hide at the back of the party for most of the adventure, hoping to eventually gain enough levels to really be important ... and by the time they got there they rendered their fighter and thief counterparts irrelevant.As to XP ... they are a metagame concept.&nbsp; Design rule #0 for game designers in my opinion should be not to balance in-game concepts by metagame systems.&nbsp; One XP should have equal value for all players, just as in-game one GP has equal value for all characters.&nbsp; If you want a class to be &quot;easier to learn&quot; and gain in power faster, bake that into the class design; don't do that by varying the value of XP for every player at the table.&nbsp; Similarly, if you have magic item creation, don't try to balance it by having an XP component requirement ... again it's using a metagame concept to try and solve an in-game balance dilemma.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Olgar Shiverstone, post: 5780997, member: 5868"] My take? Class balance is important because no one wants to suck night after night while another player steals the show, just because you chose to play a rogue and he chose to play a wizard. Every character should be able to provide a fair contribution, all else being equal. That's not to say the same contribution -- fair is not equal, fair is fair. I'd like to think we learned from the bad old days of 2 hp magic-users with one light spell, who could do nothing but hide at the back of the party for most of the adventure, hoping to eventually gain enough levels to really be important ... and by the time they got there they rendered their fighter and thief counterparts irrelevant. As to XP ... they are a metagame concept. Design rule #0 for game designers in my opinion should be not to balance in-game concepts by metagame systems. One XP should have equal value for all players, just as in-game one GP has equal value for all characters. If you want a class to be "easier to learn" and gain in power faster, bake that into the class design; don't do that by varying the value of XP for every player at the table. Similarly, if you have magic item creation, don't try to balance it by having an XP component requirement ... again it's using a metagame concept to try and solve an in-game balance dilemma. [/QUOTE]

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