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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9587871" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Yes, good point. This addresses the fundamental situation that makes the hot take become highlighted. It's still a balanced party though, just not balanced playing-player's-PCs or however one phrases that.I think 'hot take: ' ends up being synonymous with 'thought experiment:' most of the time. OP seems to have run into some really bad times across multiple DMs or campaigns, which instigated the thread. I do question -- given OP's framing of the situation as passive aggression and outright bad behavior -- whether the instigating events were more contingent on truly bad DMs than about the specific DMing techniques or assumptions those DMs implemented. A/D&D specific: People have found references in the 1E DMG and modules and such and I agree with them. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it really matters whether it was specifically stated or not (I certainly don't think it was stated in all of the different rules editions). Any number of people played 1E bitd as B/X with new class and spell lists and never played modules, yet still stumbled into feeling this assumption. I think it is because there are inherent road markers for it -- certain negative effects need cleric (sometimes MU) spells to remove*. Traps are an established component of the explained basic play loop, and all the rulesets post-oD&D** said or at least suggested that only Thieves could find many-to-most traps. MUs and Thieves were fragile enough*** that it was clear that there were supposed to be fighters up front keeping the hostiles away from the back line (although henchmen can definitely address this, see Lanefan's point above). Just the abundance of treasure (and how clear it was a main focus of the game to get to use it) that was class-specific really communicates 'it is a really good idea to cover all these bases.' *often with an urgency that a trek back to town for temple-healing will be too-little, too late**where they weren't initially part of the game, and the assumption was anyone could find traps, they just could do so by rolling dice instead of explaining their methods***and clerics able to use so few magic weaponsOther games: There's a huge variety in how well other games even communicate their assumed central play loops at all, much less expectations about how best to play them. There's also a lot of variability in how much there are discrete classes or roles to begin with (and how much they gatekeep various abilities which may or may not be vital to standard play).</blockquote>

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