Ok, now that i know this:
Storm Raven said:
I'm referring to characters who equal in most areas, and exceed in some, other similarly situated characters in all respects. Like I said, the Ftr/MU equals the fighter in all respects except for spellcasting, where he hvastly overpowers the straight Fighter. Multiclassing should have some real drawbacks, you should give something up to get the benefits. In 1e, this simply was not the case. Multiclassing (and dual classing) were pretty much 100% good, 0% bad.
To some extent yes. Some PCs choose to play underpowered characters, intentionally making their character less capable in some area by design, and that's a choice they make. But the point is that the game system should support the idea that most similarly situated characters will be of similar levels of overall power (although they may have different strengths and weaknesses).
let me get back to your previous post (I wanted to be sure i understood your stance, so that i wasn't arguing against something you never advocated).
Storm Raven said:
No, they are not unbalanced. They just have different strengths and weaknesses. The problem of imbalance occurs when you have characters who are equal to or better than all other characters in a variety of areas. Having a vareity of strengths and weaknesses in a group of equivalently levelled characters is not a sign of imbalance, it is actually a sign of balance. If any one character could excel at all things, then he would be unbalanced.
For example, take the classic 1e Fighter/MU. At the same level of experience points, a 7th/8th level Ftr/MU would match a 7th level Ftr. The Ftr/MU is unbalanced, since, not only is he as good as the Ftr at fighting (and remember, Ftr/MUs in 1e could wear armor and cast spells), he has tacked on 8 levels of MU to boot. The Ftr/MU is equal to or better than the Ftr in every respect.
The same is true for any 1e multiclass you care to throw out there. Bascially, you have all (or virtually all) of the powers of a single classed individual of one of your classes at the same experience point total, and tack on all the class abilities of another class to boot. Show me a 3e 28 point character that is similarly unbalanced, someone who can equal or exceed a number of other characters in all areas.
I guess part of this is degrees of unbalance. I agree: given two characters, A, and B, if A is always as good as B or better, regardless of the situation, then A is clearly overbalanced. Similarly, if A is 90% as effective in some situations, while being 200% as effective in others, then it is almost certainly overbalanced (basically, unless the latter situations are *extremely* rare). And so on.
Our difference of opinion seems to come in the less-absolute cases. I look at balance within a game, not within the mechanics, as, IMHO, that's the real test. That leads to my assertion that the balance of D&D3E characters is heavily dependent on the campaign. Let's take two example characters:
A fighter. all feats and skill points have been spent to optimize her fighting ability, specifically against hordes of weaker combatants. Likewise, physical stats are very high, while Int and Cha were used for dump stats.
A bard. her skill points have been spread around into many things, but most of them are social, with a smattering of physical capabilities (climb, jump, etc.) to support them. Feats all boost her social-interaction abilities. Cha, Int, Wis, and Dex are high, while Str and Con were her dump stats. Her spells are heavily focused on divination and illusion.
Now, assuming both were built by the book, they are nominally balanced. Let's stick them in a campaign.
Campaign X: The characters are adventurers, working for a "problem-solvers" guild. Basically, people hire them to take care of problems: usually marauding monsters, but sometimes cleaning out a crypt of undead, or retrieving an important artifact from a dungeon, or figuring out which son killed the local lord. Many of their problems can be solved with force, most require cleverness and problem-solving. A few can't be solved with force, and rely purely on problem-solving and/or social skills. In this campaign, which runs from 1st to 15th level, the fighter and the bard get to contribute about equally. There are entire scenarios where the fighter is a fifth wheel: she can't do much to suss out the evil son, since they have to leave it to the authorities to deal with him. But there are also entire scenarios where the bard is pretty much useless: her magics aren't helpful fighting the golem guardian, and she can't hit the thing, much less damage it. Overall, everybody contributes equally (let's say, 90% of the time), and the times when one character is completely useless are few and far between.
Campaign Y: The characters are 3rd- and 4th-sons of minor nobles, participating in the Queen's court. All action takes place within the capitol city. Scenarios almost always revolve around political intrigue, and violence is almost never an option--not even in small measure: laws are very strict about violating another person, and enforced by a powerful and magic-assisted constabulary. A few scenarios dip into the seedy underworld, where some fighting is allowed, but even there the repurcussions of a body turning up could come back to haunt you. The same opponents come back over and over, because you don't generally kill them. Most of the scenarios involve a mix of social skills and cleverness, many require problem-solving, and almost none involve force. In this campaign, which also runs from 1st to 15th level, the bard shines: she has exactly the right mix of skills--even in her weakest area, combat, her BAB and hps carry her through, since the combat encounters are generally more like minor scuffles. The fighter, OTOH, is bored. At best, she gets to be the intimidator for the rest of the party, implying violence that she can't afford to actually use. She's not particularly good at social stuff, due to poor stats and almots no relevant skills. And she isn't very bright, so doesn't have much to do in problem-solving, either. Overall, the fighter contributes, say, 20% of the time, while the bard contributes 95% of the time--and there are no scenes where the fighter is the only one who has the necessary ability, and no scenes where the bard is completely useless.
Now, i'd say that Y is a perfect example of unbalanced characters, despite them being exactly the same characters that were balanced in X. I'm loath to pin the blame purely on the system: obviously, if the above occurred the group has a hefty bit of blame to share for allowing the situation to occur: the fighter's player should've made the character differently (at least at higher levels, once she saw how things were going), and the GM should've accomodated the PCs. And, of course, what i picked is almost certainly hyperbole. But i took things to extremes to make the point more quantifiable: i think that if an area of ability is never, or almost-never, utilized during the entire life of the character--and not just for that character, but for the whole campaign--being good in that area "doesn't count". It is no longer a tradeoff of "i'm good at combat but lousy at negotiation" if the game has no combat--or no negotiation. It instead becomes, for all practical purposes, "i'm lousy at negotation" or "i'm good at combat"--without the offsetting counter.
And it is possible for such situations to occur with much-less-extreme characters than i've described. I would restate your definition to be "The problem of imbalance occurs when you have characters who are equal to or better than all other characters in a variety of areas, within the context that the characters exist". If the characters get to contribute equally, by any reasonable measure you choose to use, then they are balanced. This can not be taken beyond the confines of a particular campaign, or at best campaign style, IMHO. It is simply meaningless to look at two characters in a vaccuum and conclude that they are or are not balanced.
So, back to the original disagreement: it is trivial to make two wildly unbalanced characters in D&D3E if the campaign style deviates significantly from that assumed by the core rules. But, on the flip-side, even your AD&D1 example (Ftr vs. Ftr/MU)might not be unbalanced in a given campaign. If the campaign was, again, one of political intrigue, it might not matter: outside of the bard class, there really wasn't any mechanical support for those sorts of activities, so both would be equally unprepared, and neither would get to make much contribution due to their class abilities (especially if the Ftr/MU was loaded down with artillery spells, and no divination, charm, illusion, etc.). Now, before you jump on me: i don't think this is a fair example, and it doesn't excuse the horrible balance problems in AD&D1 (and, to a lesser extent, AD&D2) due to multiclassing. I'm simply pointing out that those who say they never had balance problems due to multiclassing could be telling the truth--their playstyle might be (or might have been) such that the problems were minimized or sidestepped. Similarly, i think it is overly simplistic to say that there are no balance problems with the core rulebooks in D&D3E. Yes, the classes are much better balanced for the expected playstyle of D&D. However, that expected playstyle doesn't appear to match any D&D game i've played in (under any edition), so balance problems are a real possibility, not just some symptom of whacked-out weirdo games. And, moreover, "more balanced" does not equal "balanced"--it is a matter of degrees, and the fact that D&D3E is much less unbalanced than previous editions doesn't mean that it, too, can't be unbalanced.
