Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustinA" data-source="post: 3726787" data-attributes="member: 51618">Besides, imbalance that occurs as a result of high or low quality play is quite different than a handicap.Look at Chess, for example. Both sides get the same starting position. By the end of the game, one player has won and the other has lost (total imbalance). RPGs aren't a game that you win or lose, but the idea that play can result in a bettering or worsening of one's position within the game seems quite acceptable to me. (If the outcome is pre-determined, what's the point of playing?)The analogy of Chess' starting position is an interesting one to misuse. For example, one could argue that the "starting position" of D&D is character. One could then conclude that the Warrior and Fighter classes are balanced, even though one is clearly an inferior option, because choosing the Warrior class would be a worsening of position as a result of play.This is obviously a bad approach, since it can be used to justify poorly balanced classes.OTOH, trying to eliminate sub-optimal builds isn't particularly productive. For example, trying to create a system in which a player cannot decide to create a fighter with Strength as his lowest ability score is not only a waste of time, but an unnecessary limitation on the flexibility of the character creation system.(I think one potential explanation here is that, since a functioning D&D party needs to have certain roles fulfilled -- fighter, arcanist, healer, rogue -- no one should ever have to "bite the bullet" and choose one of those roles for the "good of the group", even though it's a sub-optimal and less fun choice.)The question, I suppose, is ultimately where the line between "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcome" (as FireLance terms it) is to be drawn. In Chess, the line can be firmly drawn. In D&D the line is a bit fuzzier, but it definitely lies somewhere within character creation.But this is an interesting example because there are, in fact, superior and inferior weapons in the real world. So while I agree that no single weapon should be the Ultimate Weapon, I don't necessarily think that all weapons should be equally valid choices.Well, yes. But two pages after saying that, Gary gives multiple methods for rolling up ability scores (and no methods for not rolling for ability scores). So I'm not sure it's the best example. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Justin Alexander<a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net" target="_blank">http://www.thealexandrian.net</a></blockquote>

Verification