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<blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1193967" data-attributes="member: 10201">I find that a little suspect.&nbsp; I ran an AD&amp;D (mostly 2nd ed) campaign for years, and never ran into this problem.&nbsp; In fact, i was pretty new to the whole GMing thing at the time, and, especially early on, i did a lousy job of balancing encounters.&nbsp; I'd basically just eyeball it (which, for someone without much experience as a GM, isn't a terribly accurate method).&nbsp; I frequently misestimated wildly.&nbsp; And yet, i never had problems with balance between the PCs, in term of encounter effectiveness.&nbsp; Were the PCs of &quot;wildly&quot; different strength?&nbsp; Oh, heck yeah!&nbsp; Throw in a few magic items (not everybody had the same number, nor of the same power), and it only gets worse.&nbsp; My encounter planning was frequently not much better than random guessing, and yet i never ran into the problem you speak of. The D&amp;D3E game i was in ran into the problem a lot more--in order to give the brick a combat challenge, the creatures frequently had to be tough enough that most of the rest of us (including the other fighter) couldn't even hit them.&nbsp; Likewise, a creature that was a serious threat to the brick would take most other members of the party out in a round.This is not to say that AD&amp;D2 was better than D&amp;D3E in this regard, just that it is only slightly worse, and the differences between them in this particular regard (class balance) are overshadowed by the differences between playgroups.Or just play in a game with little-to-no combat.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="woodelf, post: 1193967, member: 10201"] I find that a little suspect. I ran an AD&D (mostly 2nd ed) campaign for years, and never ran into this problem. In fact, i was pretty new to the whole GMing thing at the time, and, especially early on, i did a [i]lousy[/i] job of balancing encounters. I'd basically just eyeball it (which, for someone without much experience as a GM, isn't a terribly accurate method). I frequently misestimated wildly. And yet, i never had problems with balance between the PCs, in term of encounter effectiveness. Were the PCs of "wildly" different strength? Oh, heck yeah! Throw in a few magic items (not everybody had the same number, nor of the same power), and it only gets worse. My encounter planning was frequently not much better than random guessing, and yet i never ran into the problem you speak of. The D&D3E game i was in ran into the problem a lot more--in order to give the brick a combat challenge, the creatures frequently had to be tough enough that most of the rest of us (including the other fighter) couldn't even hit them. Likewise, a creature that was a serious threat to the brick would take most other members of the party out in a round. This is not to say that AD&D2 was better than D&D3E in this regard, just that it is only slightly worse, and the differences between them in this particular regard (class balance) are overshadowed by the differences between playgroups. Or just play in a game with little-to-no combat. [/QUOTE]

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