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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 5517734" data-attributes="member: 38357">Sure. OK, first of all, I'm only accounting for a certain "n" value of balance, such that I would notice it in actual play. I don't do dpr comparisons or anything of that sort at the table, and I'm only significantly concerned with the issue when it comes up in play. Frex: my scout, one of the other players at the table would not shut up about how she was horribly gimped by not being able to apply both dual weapon attack and power attack to the same strike; personally aside from that annoyance I didn't notice - I wasn't behind enough in damage that I couldn't land the finishing blow on more enemies than that player's thief, either. Given that:Optimized pre-essentials characters are generally balanced, there are (or in some cases where, thanks to errata) some outlying cases, but I'd posit that you had to put a certain amount of work into over-optimizing a character. But you also had to do a certain amount of work in order to avoid an under-optimized character, there where "traps" and pitfalls to be avoided. Essentials characters require less work to avoid under-optimization. And since I don't feel that essentials has actually harmed balance in 4e, that's one in the plus column and nothing in the minus.Well, play styles I can't comment on beyond how I played. Or maybe I could, but I'd rather not; the only thing I could really say is that if someone wasn't having fun, maybe they should have been doing something else. The system never matters so much as what you do with if. Even when "what you do with it" is strictly limited to applying mechanics, that's still a choice and makes a huge difference, IMO.Well, I'm no good at 3.x, but there's plenty of people who had and continue to have quite a bit of fun with that game. And I don't find there's much to compare between AD&D and 4e, they're just different games.Well, yeah, highest I got in one of my games was 12th (enough XP for 13th level, but didn't survive long enough to get training done). But it took a lot longer to get from level 12 to 13 than to get from 1 to 2. I prefer lower-level games overall (or at least, games that start out at low levels and don't where PCs that are higher-level have "earned it"), and I don't find that 4e has done a really great job in fixing the "sweet spot" issues. You still need to be really invested in your character to make all the extra work of running them at higher levels worth it.Fighters remained important all the way up. Magic users had stand-out moments at 1st with spells like sleep or charm person. And the thief was awesomesauce. The first-level thief has something roughly comparable to several extra "feats" and something like a +4 bonus to several very important skills.I've found that the key difference is that "fiction matters" in old-school gaming. Not that fiction doesn't matter in more modern games, there's just been much more of a push to representing that fiction mechanically and / or with physical props and such. I found that magic-users, far from being invincible one-man armies where very fragile and rather wasted on artillery duties. The fighters could mow down orcs more efficiently than a fireball. The real power lay in information and abilities that the PCs couldn't get otherwise, which in turn meant cooperating with the rest of the party.I'll admit that the AD&D games I played and ran where somewhat "separate but equal" away from the dungeon or the battlefield: fighters tended to lead armies, thieves traveled the underworld, clerics dealt with religious matters, magic-users hid in their towers and waited for the moment when one of their spells would be of use, and all of them engaged in politics to a greater or lesser degree. When there was cause to enter a dungeon or march off to war then all classes had their places, none of them where really able to function on their own or steal the spotlight.</blockquote>

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