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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Inari" data-source="post: 1224014" data-attributes="member: 14554">Myself as a DM, I ran into this problem as well, but I found a nice way to balance most of these things out:I'm running a Rokugan adventure, with the many things taken from AU (like the non-magical classes, and talents) and naturally, I've stumbled through the whole nine yards. I'll mention my biggest problems so far, and the solution I applied to each one:First off was the thing of rolling defense... I forsaw that it would slow the game down too much, so I just made it the same "take 10" on AC, meaning that instead of having a defense bonus of +5, you just have a AC of 15 (thenagain, this is Rokugan, so you have things like Void points to raise your AC instantly).Then there was a player that at 6th level was multiclassed as 3 classes, each one with the highest defense bonus (Samurai2/Rogue3/Unfettered1). According to Grim'n'Gritty the player in question would've had a defence bonus of +8, and the player had indeed the good dex bonus of +3, meaning that the player would've had a 21 AC, without the unfettered bonus, and armor penalty (light) along with endless anoyances. So what I did was simply split the classes up into the 3 groups of good, average and poor defense bonus. That being said that if you multiclassed in the same group, you continued advancing in the same defense chart (so instead of progressing as a multiclassed character with a defense of +8, the player advanced as having 6 levels in the good defense bonus class, meaning the player had a defense bonus of +5). The player later decided to change her classes to Samurai2/Unfettered4 (given my concent, of course), and instead of sacrificing defense bonus (she would've gone from +8 to +7 given Grim'n'Gritty's style), she kept her +5 bonus.Next up I had problems with the archer. Back in the 3.5 days, before Grim'n'Gritty he had been one of the highest damage dealers, because, incidentally, he always hit. He had the best to-hit, and given the fact that he had a damage of d8+3, he dished out a lot of damage throughout combats. And the fact that he was almos always out of harm's way, he was rarely taken down. However, when we started using GnG, he fell to the back end of the damage chart. Why? Because we had enemies with a protection of almost 8, and he rarely did any damage. So, what was I to do? I of course knew that increasing his damage output was too good, to give him a flat out +2 damage would've been unbalanced, so instead I gave him an in-game treat. I gave him what they call in AU Bodkin arrows which normally lower natural armor/armor bonuses down by 2 points. So I just called them penetrators, and gave them 2 in penetration. I also intend on giving him a few treats, like fire-burst arrows, and cool enchanted arrows. So there, problem solved. He started to do a lot more damage overall, and regained his status as one of the higher-damage dealers.Yeah, then I stumbled upon the huge armor protection thingi. It really looked game unbalancing that one of the players always soaked 8 points of damage (he had great armor (+7) and natural armor (+1)). This was devestating as he just kept going, killing everything (he uses a +1 katana, with damage of d10+5). So I had to come up with some way that he could be "harmed." He was starting to develope an attitude of "you can't touch me, DM" which got on my nerves (and I admit, I started to become cruel to him, doing too much damage to him and putting him against guys that could've killed his character too quickly). But then I started to think: what happens when someone hits you, but your armor (not fullplate) absorbs the blow? You get the wind knocked out of you, naturally. So I started to look at Spycraft's handle on it, which was that if your armor absorbed the whole hit, you took 2 subdual. But this seemed too unbalanced to me (given the fact that there were 2 players with only 3 in protection), so I decided that for every 4 points you absorb, you take 1 subdual. Subdual damage heals fairly quickly, and can't "kill" you, so it seemed like the best option to me.Then came the thing of healing. Up untill now, I had done without healing potions, as they are fairly rare in Rokugan (it is a power only achieved by the most holy of men), so natural healing had done up untill now. But suddenly characters were healing only 3-4 hp points per week, which stumbled me greatly, and I was forced to give them too much time off (the campaign is fairly time-specific, as great events will be happening in the summer, and given that it was spring, giving an entire week off was an event I'd rather not have repeated). So I came up with the in-game solution of giving them a limited number of healing potions, with a certain twist. Instead of giving them 3d8 healing, instantly, I made them heal 2d8+4 hp, but half of that healing became subdual (note though that if they only needed 4 hp, and healed all that, it counted as if they had got a 4 on the dice, meaning only 2 subdual). And do you know what? It was instant success! The players were as combat effective as ever, yet they were still more cautious. One of the players almost fainted in a dual, after using 3 of those potions in the dual (he was down to 3/4 hp from subdual at the end of the fight).And recently, I've been tempted to change the order of some of the classes, as I don't see that the ranger should be less effective at defending himself than the fighter, as he has a good reflex and good BaB, but I have yet to take a look into that.But that's basically it. By all regards, don't think of me as a hack'n'slash DM. I LOVE roleplaying, and demand that my players role play a lot. Most of the sessions go to political maneuverings, and most of the players have hidden agendas themselves, creating really deep characters. They take it almost as seriously as I do, but we also have quite a lot of combat. At least 1 fight per session, and they most of the time involve quite a lot of tactical maneuvers (as most DnD games do).The GnG system is a great system for those low-magic campaigns, although arcane characters need to be watched out for (luckily for me, none of my players have any spellcasters [we have a samurai, fighter, ranger, archer and unfettered in the group] so I kinda get off easily with spells, and can make them objects to be feared in the campaign).And please, if you have any questions, don't hesitate!</blockquote>

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