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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5537089" data-attributes="member: 2067">Kinda. "Balance" is a difficult thing to pin down, even for 4e, which is the most fetishistic about it. Pre-3e's balance was "Wizards are rockstars at high levels, Fighters get to wail at early levels, XP's are different so fighters get more levels." That didn't quite work. 3e's balance was "Everyone can help kick a given monster's butt," but that didn't quite work. 4e's balance is "Every Role X class has ability Y in combat," and that has its own problems. 4e's move was a reaction against some abuses in 3e that arose from taking some "tool" and using it to hugely outsized effect. Pun Pun was a creation like this. Take the (repitilian) keyword (a rule designed to have the effect of giving Rangers more things to apply their bonuses against) and a particular ability (a rule designed to give a villainous enemy some lackeys), and change up how they are used (it's a PC!), and you have abuse. Open-ended effects like Polymorph and Wish and other tools without well-defined limits (or intentionally lacking them) gave a lot of effects that were unintended and unbalancing. I personally think that there's a sweet spot between "Polymorph can turn you into anything from the MM" and "you can't fire ray a door because it's not a creature" that both ideas miss by a pretty wide margin. You're hitting one of the narrative problems of the "all-powerful spellcaster" on the head.The thing is, adventuring parties in D&D generally face four broad types of challenges:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Combat (vs. monsters)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Exploration (vs. an environment)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Interaction (vs. an NPC)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Knowledge (vs. a hidden element)</li> </ul>A 3e spellcaster can do all of these better than a nonspellcaster. Save-or-die (and healing) wins combats. Flight and teleport win Exploration. Charm and Dominate win Interaction. Scry and Truesight win Knowledge.I think that every player should be able to contribute to any party in these four ways in a unique and class-specific way, personally. I like wizards who can burn things, teleport, charm, and scry, so for me, the best solution is to make these things roughly equal to what a rogue can do (sneak attack, speedy movement, sliver tongue, and perception abilities) or what a fighter can do (hit it with a sword, climb up that cliff in fullplate, impress the locals with reputation, and always be prepared for an ambush!). That means, I think, giving them all tools that can be compared to each other, and balanced against each other, so that no one tool is "the best" at doing any one thing. 4e really only concerns itself with the first element there. That's where the "powers as effects" idea comes from, and the "roles" system comes from, and where "fighters have daily powers!" comes from, too. The other three elements are mostly demoted to "everyone is equal and DM fiat rules how hard these things are." I'm not a fan of that latter solution, and there's problems with the former, too, for those who don't like the way the tools are presented.</blockquote>

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