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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6176616" data-attributes="member: 17106">Which is a really strange bias. And is very specific, restrictive, and exclusionary. And doesn't really follow from any principle or precedent that I'm aware of.A pretty harsh characterization. I don't know a lot of D&D characters that fit it. Again, a bard can be somewhere in between a sidekick and the main combatant.I'm also sensing an anti-sidekick bias. There's nothing wrong with being one.Sure. If you run a campaign that favors the bard, the bard becomes more useful. No issues there.I wouldn't. Perhaps the most overpowered PC I ever saw was a barbarian. Or so I thought. Then other characters naturally took over the spotlight, and then others. The beauty of D&D is that it's very difficult to break.I'm inclined to err on the side of "let the player play their cool and possibly unbalanced class" as opposed to "let me tell the player that their character is too powerful and compromise the character in some way in the name of balance". Case in point:One of the really meaningful changes from 2e to 3e is the cleric. It goes from 7 spell levels to 9, picks up spontaneous healing and various useful combat capabilities, while losing some restrictions (all changes made in the name of creating an "equally viable character" out of a rather misguided belief that divine casters were not good enough). But I let people play them, and they play fine. No big deal. Does the 3e cleric need a downgrade? Probably. But only because it got an upgrade in the name of "balance" that it didn't need.No it shouldn't. Barbarians are defined not solely by physical might, but also by prowess and survival skill and probably other things. A character built solely around physical might probably shouldn't be all that great.</blockquote>

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