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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 3640804" data-attributes="member: 891">In my opinion the problem is that the DnD mechanics for players are all about resource management. Everything has charges, uses per day, etc.If you are running a group of just rogues, monks, and fighters, sure, there is no resource to manage other than hitpoints and you can leave them to the world.But in nearly any other combination if you let loose certain classes become unplayable.Imagine a raid on a village of Kobolds living in a cave complex the way it would 'go down in the real world' - unstopping violence as the Kobolds defending their home from agression. Midway into the second skirmish all the magical support of the assaulting team would be tapped out, and they would fall from the sheer weight of numbers of a whole tribe of kobolds.There is no logical way to explain why a tribe of kobolds would not send their entire tribe to stop a home invasion by some 4-8 hostile monsters (humans and elves). Or at the least, why they would not all be aware of it.But we have become accustomed over the years to putting those empty storage rooms, or not having anyone wander into the guard shack for 8 hours while we let mages rest, etc...And that 'brand of illogic' sweeps across the entire genre of DnD.DnD builds its playability not by balancing all the classes directly, but by limiting the resources of some - making their abilities more potent but less often available, and forcing a certain thinking, a certain playstyle. DnD balance works best when you keep these resource characters at some mid-point in their availability. While they are full they are over-powerful, once drained, they are often useless. You have to stage it all just right to keep them in a game of allocation.If you go against that grain, you make some of the core assumptions of the game engine unworkable.A no holds barred approach might work in something more directly balanced - such as Hero / BESM / GURPS / Shadowrun (each with its own, other problems) - but when a game balances by using resource allocation, failure to pay attention to that is not equally 'punishing' to all the members.If you want a harsh, hard to win game of DnD, that is an admirable goal, but you need to do it in a way that impacts all the core class choices equally, or simply remove the disfavored classes from the roster.If you want to show them what an assault on Kobold Manor ought to really be like, do it in an RPG other than DnD. Probably GURPS, much as I don't care for the new edition of that game, it would probably show them what that assault ought to really look like if it was real, better than the other choices I know of at least. And in that game, I could keep them on their toes 24/7 and feel I was being equally hard on all of them in doing so. I'd go nuts with my frustrations against GURPS doing so... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> But I could do it and feel even handedly harsh about it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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