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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6176694" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I think the important question in these sorts of debates is actually a pretty simple one.  What percentage of the gaming populace wants to play a character who is ultimately subordinate to another character/player in a long term campaign?  By subordinate I mean set dressing or support to express or further the potency/awesomeness of the (under this paradigm) primary protagonist character/player.In all of my time GMing, I've run games for well over a hundred players.  During that tenure, I've known of two (with one other being debatable) players that expressly wanted to be Sam, Merry or Pippin rather than Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli.  I'm certain that my experience, while perhaps extreme, is not anomalous.  The proportions may not be 100 +:3 but they are probably not far from 8:2.  I mean, isn't this just the classic "who is going to play the Cleric" problem in another guise (Isn't this why the minor/swift action heal was invented so players could do something besides heal in a round)?  If the heavy majority of players don't want to play the subordinate, window dressing or support character that highlights another player's protagonism, shouldn't class balance be a virtue (level:level, otherwise what is the point of "level") in game design?  Couldn't playing a subordinate/support character come with metagame currency that lets them play to that subordinate role while maintaining, relatively, equal viability (functionally with respect to their utility which is derived from their impact on the resolution of conflicts)?  If classes are equally viable (with respect to their utility as derived from their impact on the resolution of conflicts), wouldn't it just be a small matter of perturbing their numbers slightly downward (HPs, defenses, skills, to-hit, damage, et al) or playing one level lower to get a weaker class?The virtue of creating imbalanced classes (level:level) has always utterly escaped me.</blockquote>

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