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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5947614" data-attributes="member: 996">In some ways 3e is /less/ balanced than 2e.  And a lot of people have played RIFTS enjoyed it.Really, D&D has been a successful game for a long time without being very well-balanced at all.  While some of the rejection of 4e can reasonably be attributed to nostalgia, the usual resistance to change further abetted and amplified by the SRD/Pathfinder, and nerdrage, I can't reject out of hand the possibility that there's something else.D&D, as the 'first,' RPG has the strongest name recognition of any RPG, by far.  That means a lot of new players start with it, simply because they're likely to have heard of it, and it's easy to find a game.  It's also had really quite poor class balance for almost it's entire history (excepting 4e, of course).  And, it's always had a system of rewarding frequent play with greater character power (experience).  Put two together and you have an environment in which experienced players have a continual stream of new players to over-awe with their established characters and/or (particularly with 3e) their hard-won system mastery.  Nod.  Common structure, well-defined keywords, clear rules - they all help with that.AD&D had a long history.  At first, fighters had little more going for them than the possibility of rolling an 18/00 strength - and magic items could grant that or 'Giant Strength' to fighters, clerics, and even thieves.   Certainly once UA weapon specialization dovetailed with the obscure TWFing rules in the DMG, specific sorts of fighters became quisinarts of doom, and stayed that way in 2e.  I don't think that damage specialization really balanced the great versatility of Vancian casters, but it certainly helped keep them relevant through the 'sweet spot' of mid-levels (~4-7, IMHO).Yeah, that's a workaround.All true.  If casters can't have sharp limitations, then they need less potent spells, or non-casters need more potent and /much/ more versatile abilities.  Those are also clearly unacceptable.  Ergo, there's folks out there what hate balance.I've heard the theory that the only thing 4e really goofed on was presentation.  If it was a mistake, it was an understandable one.  Being up-front with the mechanical commonalities of the classes made 4e much easier to learn.  That should be a boon, even to experienced players, since even they are learning a new system.  Unless, of course, the niche D&D had secretly carved out for itself was one of intellectual challenge and system-mastery rewards that thrived on the game taking some extra time and effort to learn and master.  Thus the early criticism that 4e was 'dumbed down' - part of the fun was that it wasn't quick and easy to learn.That is another reason "the classes are samey" never really flew.  3e classes, especially casters who shared many of the same spells, could be pretty 'samey' too.  The real difference wasn't homogeneity but parity.  Without trap choices among classes, the challenge of mastering the system is lessened.  4e did eventually bury itself in a mountain of trap /feats/, but I guess that was too little, too late.Interesting post.  May your train of thought never de-rail.</blockquote>

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