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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6176715" data-attributes="member: 17106">A support character gets less "spotlight" and is likely considered significantly less powerful on the CO boards.I absolutely agree with that, and I built my houseruled bard in part on that idea. But ultimately, it's everyone else that is rolling the attack and damage, while he's not getting the same "spotlight". If the bard is by himself, he's not so hot (though being a jack of all trades is helpful in that case).Well lets see. He expected to be mocked to some extent (really, this guy was a guy who played bards regularly, so there was an ongoing series of jibes). He liked the concept, and he stuck with it. Next campaign, he played a fighter. From my perspective, he seemed to enjoy the latter more, but I don't speak for him.As to the last point, that was quite a few years ago. It's only for an upcoming campaign that a player again expressed interest in a bard, and I wrote a specific variant bard for him. He specifically wanted to play an attache (i.e. sidekick), and the campaign details I provided suggested that social skills would be particularly useful.In general, my players have developed the approach that the best character is a living character. They know that I am likely to throw the kitchen sink at them, and subject their characters to a wide variety of unpredictable effects from all kinds of sources. They value hit points, fort saves, and Con, which bards suck at. They value armor, which bards have limited use of. They generally make their characters without a lot of advance knowledge (unlike the exception above). They also don't generally like spellcasters or other special abilities, and would prefer cold hard bonuses to a d20.Personally, bard is one of the few classes I don't believe I've ever played in any form (though as a DM, I have run some highly competent bard NPCs).Some people aren't patient enough to wait for that pendulum to swing. My players and I are, which was more the point I was making.However, as to the second point, I find that there are a fair number of players who actively dislike the spotlight and would prefer to be in the background. Robin Laws even identifies "wallflower" players or somesuch in his player types. I find that bards, along with the other spellcasting classes, generally serve those players well. I don't think they're being done a disservice. I also find that some people (like my specialist described above) just attach themselves to a particular concept an enjoy the challenge of trying to make it work, even under suboptimal circumstances (another Robin Laws player type).Some people just like arguing.That's an interesting way of putting it, but valid, I think. There are a number of character concepts in my games that are better or worse than in the core rules due to various setting constraints and houserules, all of which is part of my directorial vision. I don't think one needs to pull out the b-word for that, but whatever you want to call it, I think that customizing one's game is important.I don't understand why a PC sidekick is not valid. If we were running LotR, players would be lining up for the sidekick characters. Playing something other than an alpha dog is a perfectly reasonable choice.No worries of that happening."Bias" simply has a negative connotation that I think is inappropriate. All opinions are not biases. If my opinion is that half-orc characters are likely to be at a disadvantage in a game that revolves around beauty pageants, that isn't a bias, simply a natural conclusion based on what they are.Again, from the RDL examples above, I think that a only a minority of players are aggressively interesting in being the star of the story, and many are interested in being supporting characters, an assertion which I am not alone in.If they were, why bother having classes at all? Why not just have one class, and simply make all characters be minor variants of it? That would be "balanced". The point of classes is to create different archetypes, not just in flavor but in substance. They're different to make the game richer and more dynamic, and to support more diverse character concepts and player types than one homogenous mechanical construct could. And once they're truly distinct, balancing them isn't possible on the same level as if they all used exactly the same mechanics.Even if one buys your 8:2 figure (which is not my experience, not much else to say there), the two are still a substantial fraction of people, and bards are only a small fraction of characters.Apparently. Perhaps the vice of trying to create balance among classes that are inherently different things is easier to understand?Look back at the cleric example. It used to be considered underpowered, so it was "fixed" by making it overpowered. The bard was considered underpowered, so it was "fixed" by making it into a "leader". The fighter was considered underpowered, so it was "fixed" by giving it powers. Attempts to balance apple and orange classes have a) failed to accomplish their goal or b) lost the essence of the class and alienated part of its fan base. Or both.Or to look at it another way, what do you think of the 13th Age classes? The designers there pretty explicitly stated that they approached class balance in vague terms and that it wasn't the be all end all of design. They seem to have found the virtue in doing things that way.</blockquote>

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