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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5957098" data-attributes="member: 996">The attitude that either was a bad thing.  Game balance lets us sit around the table and each play a character we want to play with a decent chance of not ruining the game for eachother.  Balance means we may compromise a bit on exactly what we want so as not to stomp all over the next player's (or even the DM's) play experience.  The attitude that making the compromise is unthinkable is not something that mere discussion is going to help with, and there's no game-design decision that could cater to that attitude and any contrasting attitude (including the exact same attitude with a different focus of what should be overpowered and what should be underpowered to provide contrast) at the same time.  It's a lose-lose proposition.There are many advantages to a common structure.  It makes the game more consistent, easier to learn, easier to understand, and easier to run.  On the design side, it makes class balance a much more nearly-achievable goal (perfect balance being one of those impossible goals you can only work towards, never reach).  It makes adding to the game 'safer' in the sense of reducing the potential for unchecked power inflation.  It makes it possible to design challenges that are more likely to give the desired level of difficulty to a party regardless of exact make-up.  It was a tremendously powerful 'innovation' (for D&D - many, perhaps /most/, games don't have classes with radically different sub-systems).  I've yet to hear a cogent argument against it, though I've certainly heard some very impassioned ones.  On the design side, a common structure 'closes off design space' (the flip side of Essentials 'opening up design space' that is).  Specifically, it closes off design space that would make the game imbalanced, inconsistent, and generally sucky.  Once you've labored for a couple of years to keep a game up to snuff, the impulse to compromise on such qualities in return for having an easier time adding to it must be overwhelming.  (Just thinking about it makes me glad I'm not a professional game designer.)  When something about how magic is supposed to work is set in stone, yes, going back on it hurts continuity.  I think it's a (post?-)modern impulse to /want/ to set in stone how magic works and to value continuity that highly.  Or maybe a nerd impulse. Anyway, it's an impulse I certainly share.  But, I'm willing to set it aside if it lets me have a ripping good heroic-fantasy adventure in my TTFRPG.  Aside from mechanics, for instance, D&D hasn't had a consistent, set-in-stone explanation for how and why arcane magic works the way it does.  It just works how it does.  That is a stark and inflexible demand for an underpowered fighter.  The limitation of the fighter is that he simply can't use even what very-limited-in-scope abilities you allow him vs many opponents, particularly those that are iconic to the genre.  OTOH, the caster has unlimitted scope and power, and is merely 'limitted' in how often he can conjure up that power by some resource or risk constraints.  Sounds nice, except that for the wizard it's intrinsic to his class, and for the other's it's tacked on.  The wizard can learn epically-potent new spells, or gain an amazingly powerful item, or be privileged consort of the goddes of magic, or all of the above.  The rogue can maybe steal some item of power, or the fighter pull it out of a rock somewhere because he's arbitrarily 'the chosen one.'  If play is going to continue into high levels and 'great power,' then the class progressions should take everyone there. Arbitrary mcguffins do not make up for one class having vast powers and others being strictly limited in what they'll ever be able to do.The difference between "it happens when it needs to" and a "daily power" is who decides when it needs to happen.  A limitted-use ability gives that agency to the player, and makes him an active participant in defining his character and his character's story.</blockquote>

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