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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8007877" data-attributes="member: 7006">Condensing class features and widening options for subclasses would results in a wider disparity in power across the board.  The more options you include, the more chances you have of overpowering some combinations and underpowering others.  And it's not something that can really be controlled for very well, because since every table focuses on different things, parts of features that some tables and playtesters believed were fine will be determined by others later on as they play to be horribly underpowered.  Because they might be very tactics conscious or build conscious or put all of their eggs in one pillar basket at the expense of the others, and do their level best to break things and then complain that the testers didn't account for them.But that kind of disparity has always happened and continues to happen.  I have had players who have been perfectly happy with the ranger as-is, because they never have run damage simulations to find out that rangers "do less DPR" than the other combat classes, while at the same time find the roleplaying focuses of FavEne and Nat Explorer to be very useful and flavorful.  Likewise I have a 4 Elements Monk that has found his elemental spells to be fun as all get out and based upon how I run my encounters he has not felt ki point constrained.Whereas I know there are others who have run the math on all the classes and subclasses backwards and forwards and would believe my players are just playing poorly if they don't notice a difference in what they've chosen.  But if groups like mine were playtesting potential new options, we might give glowing remarks to features that would make others go "What, are you nuts?!?"  Which means the more and more and more options you put into the game (by making more subclass features as suggested in your original post premise) the more you're going to have disparities like this and a much wider high and low between the best and worst classes because some people would be fine while others would rip it to shreds.Which isn't necessarily the end of the world... we will always rework things to our own specifications... but it does just give the more balance-conscious more opportunities to get all teed off about the differences.  The same way bringing in new character options right now is doing it.  The more difference you include, the more chances to change supposed balance.</blockquote>

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