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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5782106" data-attributes="member: 5143">What I'm saying is that I build encounters often before I even know what PCs will be in the group.  I come up with the plot and idea for an adventure before the first session even starts.  So, I'll write down "Orcs attacking nearby village.  PCs will be hired to hunt them down, the town knows where they live, in a cave.  In the first room, there will be 10 Orcs who are eating dinner when the PCs arrive.  In the second room is where their 2 wizards live.  It is too far away for them to assist quickly into the first room but they will arrive after 10 rounds if the battle isn't over.  The last room has the Chieftan and his 2 Shamans.  They are so far away they can't even hear battles occurring in the first two rooms."Then, I find out what classes and races the PCs are afterward.  I don't plan for "The PCs have a wizard, so I have to put one enemy wizard into each battle as a counter to him."It started out imbalanced.  Just most groups didn't notice it at first.  I certainly didn't.  When I first started playing D&D, I just thought it was so cool that I got to pretend to be a half-elf fighter/thief and that I could pick locks and beat people up with a sword.  It wasn't until about 6 months or a year of playing before I started noticing how weak I was compared to our wizard.  And how often I felt like I could just do nothing on my action in combat since the Wizard had the proper spell to take care of the enemy and was acting right after me.  Given...my first game was one where we were already 12th level.  And our DM allowed a Netbook of Spells that was floating around the internet, filled with even more overpowered spells.  Which made it even worse.  But it WAS imbalanced.  And it took a while, but it did start to get no fun.  So much so, that the rest of my characters were pretty much Wizards after that.I don't think all classes need to be at the exact same level.  But similar, yes.  I have to feel that the attack I made with my sword is at least similar in power to whatever the wizard did.  I have to feel that if we replaced our wizard with a different class that we could still beat the encounter.  I'd be ok with doing 10 damage with my sword if the wizard had to use up a daily resource to do 20.  I'd be ok with the same wizard doing 5 damage in an area of effect.  But I'm not ok with the power discrepancy being as high as it is(sometimes the wizard is doing over 300 times more damage than the fighter).This was less of an issue in 1e/2e, I agree.  However, most wizards tended to collect scrolls, wands, and other magic items to supplement their spells since there were so few of them.You are right, in that most of the time, after that one spell, the wizard sat in a corner for the next 2 or 3 fights doing nothing and waiting for the rest of the party to defeat the encounter, since he had no spells left.But many times, the group would simply stop and rest for the night to have the fireball available next combat.  It might slow things down, but most of the time, there was no problem with slowing things down.Sometimes that room was the only difficult fight all day.  Sometimes those 20 rooms would be empty.  It really depended on the DMs adventure design.  If he decided to throw 20 more rooms of monsters at you...well, you might as well pull out your gameboy and start playing games, because you weren't going to contribute meaningfully to the rest of the session.I don't think it'll ever balance in favor of the melee types.  But it will get closer.  5th is a bad level, because it is only the beginning of where the wizard gets powerful.  Take a 11th level wizard who can cast a 10d6 fireball a number of times per day, and probably a delayed blast fireball, and a number of other spells.  But even the 5th level wizard still has a number of magic missiles to take care of the lesser threats.  In practice, there was rarely more than 6 fights a day, so you didn't have to save too many spells.I do have fun crunching numbers.  Sometimes.  I'd prefer not to pay attention to them.  That's what I like about 4e.  For the most part, I don't have to concentrate on them.  I know that no matter what striker class I pick, I will be doing an appropriate amount of damage.  I know that no matter what leader class I pick, I should be able to keep the party alive.  When I pick my powers, I know that all of them are roughly equal(not exactly equal, that would be no fun...but roughly).I never had fun choosing spells in 2e, because I always looked at the list of spells and thought "Why would anyone use any of these spells except these 3.  The rest are downright poor in comparison."  It always felt that if I didn't pay close attention to the numbers, I'd end up as dead weight in the party.</blockquote>

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