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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5658971" data-attributes="member: 996">Not quite.  Striker damage mechanics are typically at-will (some are 1/round or 1/turn -others aply to every damage roll - some have a not-too-difficult condition to meet), so is the Avenger's greater accuracy.  It's easy to balance a trade-off between resources of the same general availability.The Slayer is balanced with AEDU classes in the way an AD&D fighter was balanced with casters.  The Slayer gets exceptional toughness (for a striker) and strong at-will abilities with little choice or variety - AEDU classes get a wider range of powers, including higher-powered dailies.  The AD&D fighter got exceptional toughness (d10 hd, higher bonus for exceptional con, high AC, rapidly improving saving throws) and strong unlimitted-use attacks (big weapon plus percentile STR plus specialization plus rapid attack matrix advancement plus multiple attacks at higher levels) - the casters got memorized/used 1/day spells that could be quite difficult to cast in combat with a bewlidering breadth of both function and often overwhelming power.  Even the 3.x fighter got a little more choice and variety or at least, customizeability.Now, while it's obvious, just as common wisdom, that the AD&D and even 3.x fighter never balanced that well vs casters, it's not just because of the similarity to past failures that we can judge the inclusion of the Slayer to introduce balance issues.  There's also some very clear logic behind such a judgement.  Any attempt to balance the power of abilities that can be used every round against abilities that can be used on a limitted number of times cannot hold when number of rounds vs the number of limitted uses is allowed to vary.  If at-will powers used every round for 5 round per encounter over 4 encounters (20 rounds) is balanced with the use of weaker at-wills for 19 rounds and a potent daily on 1, then those same powers can't possibly balanced in a day with only 5 rounds of combat - 5 rounds of at-will use vs 4 rounds of at will + the same daily that supposedly balanced 15 rounds of inferiority, before.  Of course, the DM /can/ keep such classes balanced, just as he could in 3.x (or, to a lesser extent AD&D - there were many more sources of imbalance, and ways to juggle them, back then).  It's a matter of finding the length of 'day' at which balance is best, and pegging that as the average you gun for.  If that turns out to be too long a day for the DM's liking, he can also reduce the relative value of dailies by making encounters less predictable - if you're never sure how many more encounters you might face, you're hesitant to use dailies - or, if his campaign is tilting the other way, telegraphing the timing/nature of encounters to keep dailies more useful.</blockquote>

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