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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1201321" data-attributes="member: 10201">hmmm... that's a good point.I don't *think* i've ever argued quite that, but maybe i have.  I'd have stated it like this:"AD&D has a mess of only-loosely-interconnected systems which can be easily used to produce a balanced game.  Therefore, changing one element won't generally propagate to others (loosely-connected), and any subsequent changes that are necessitated in the interrelationships are easy to implement, leading to a possibly-new balance that is no less stable than the original point."vice"D&D3E has a tightly-interconnected set of subsystems, all built around a couple core elements.  Therefore, changing one element almost always has propagations which must be addressed, and the fixes for those are likely to have propagations of their own.  Thus, re-establishing balance in the face of a change often takes a fair bit of effort, and may not be as stable as the original balance point."I certainly never intended to argue that "AD&D had no balance, so you couldn't make it any worse" (or words to that effect)--rather, i think the balance was embodied in the interaction of rules and group, rather than in the rules alone.  I'm still undecided as to whether or not this is a good thing.  On the one hand, you don't want to be fighting the rules to have a good game.  But i, personally, find myself fighting games like D&D3E (and Storyteller, and GURPS, and...) more than games like Over the Edge (and Dread, and Four Colors al Fresco, and ...).  Perhaps i have an atypical balance point in mind, so shifting a game with its own balance point is a chore, while simply setting the poin there with a more open game is easy.  But, on the other hand, you also don't want a set of rules that requires your efforts just to achieve *any* sort of balance.  Personally, I think it's this latter that frustrates so many who love D&d3E about AD&D: for them, it simply couldn't be played "out of the box".  Me, i don't see the advantage.  That is, IME, the much-vaunted balance of more-complex systems doesn't actually translate to better play, so i'm left with a lot more effort (D&D3E vs. OtE, frex) for no perceptible [to me] gain.  In short, while i can see that D&D3E is better balanced on paper, there must be some other element (i suspect the campaign style, but it might be a player-dynamics issue) that contributes to balance, because my empirical experiences with it are that it's no better.Oh, and I'd say that very few of the changes i made to AD&D were for reasons of balance--almost all were to improve verissimilitude, simulation, or flexibility.  The only thing i felt needed to be changed to improve balance was racial level limits--i went to XP penalties instead.  [And, i still prefer that solution, even if it takes some  fasttalking to justify it completely, to the all-races-are-equal solution of core D&D3E.  Though ECLs are a pretty good fix, too, and much less math.  I guess i'd have preferred elves to be an ECL +1 or +2 race, and closer to how they were depicted in earlier editions (and thus, to Tolkien).]</blockquote>

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