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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6237999" data-attributes="member: 17106">I think you may have crossed up the negatives there and I'm not sure I understood what you meant. The thought in question is, as I was discussing above, thought about how a world would develop that had, over time, millions and millions of characters with access to these abilities. Wrapped up in that is the notion that if a particular ability exists, it will be used effectively, so it is either used to its full extent, or, on a societal level there is some compensatory mechanism (such as teleport blocking, or making charms illegal in civilized areas, or any number of other things).There are some subtly game-breaking abilities that non-magical characters get, such as being able to survive a fall from any height. However, I seriously doubt the game-breaking potential of the different classes is the same, nor would I expect it to be. The basic dynamic of D&D is that the fighter is the simple, reliable, and safe option, whereas the other options are progressively more complicated and higher in variance. A wizard is the most likely to achieve something game-breaking, but is also the most likely to achieve nothing.I don't take it as implicit that all characters should have equal potential to cause earth-shattering changes, or that the term "balance" applies to that dynamic. For example, if we play a hundred wizards and a hundred fighters through to 20th level, half the wizards become virtual gods and half of them die at 1st level, and all the fighters make it through and become famous and fairly successful at combat but don't grant wishes and create demiplanes for themselves, that would be evidence that the classes are quite well balanced. In practice, the outcomes aren't nearly that good for the caster crowd, creating the impetus for more "reliable" options like the warlock.</blockquote>

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