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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6995588" data-attributes="member: 996">Ironically - but not surprisingly, since they're so much bigger business than RPGs - the definition /was/ lifted from the gaming industry.  It works very well for more complex computer games and card games, but simpler card, video, & especially, board games, can often get by with mere 'fairness' rather than the more rarefied 'balance' of that definition.It is just ideal for RPGs, though.Obviously doesn't fit the definition of balance in question.   The three choices it offers are each viable, but they are not particularly meaningful (arguably there's some meaning in why each beats and is beaten by one of the others, but it's pretty minor)... and there are only 3 of them.That's one thing I like about this definition, is that it highlights the total lack of balance in what are often held up as extremes of 'balance' when arguing in support of something imbalanced, or against even trying to achieve balance.  Eberron was created for 3e, so it didn't exactly 'change,' and the Realms have always been decidedly high-magic.   Greyhawk, perhaps, changed and changed back in that sense.Well, removing them, and replacing them with the more powerful/higher-impact items and spells of the traditional game.A quick read-through of rituals might give you that idea - Disenchant Item is an heroic-level ritual, readily available, there's little use for a +2 weapon at Epic, etc - but the prices of items scaled so rapidly with level that rendering your old stuff for residuum (at 20% efficiency, remember) wouldn't net you enough for even one item of your new level.  Unneeded items might get rendered for ritual components or consumables of your level, though - which fits the logic that much better, as they're just gone after they've been used.But, really, 5e doesn't 'need' you to get rid of items in a setting.  It just doesn't present items as an assumed part of the game.  You can go ahead and include them, it won't make the job of running it that much harder.Other 'new' editions weren't conceived (indeed, even justified) with the idea that they were for fans of each and every prior edition.  Ironically, 5e is new & different in that regard.  There really is.  You may not feel that it's right, but it's very much a thing.  Players are more likely to be aware of PH rules than DMG rule than supplemental rules than 3pp rules than UA rules than DMsG rules.  DM's too.  No DM is going to be unaware that there are MCing & Feat rules available for 5e.  There are also old-fashioned MCing rules available for 5e (somewhere out there, I'm virtually certain), but most 5e DMs likely never even peruse them, let alone give them serious consideration.And, what 5e /is/, in the sense of it's public image, is what WotC makes of it.  Everything else is peripheral.  (And, just as importantly, what 5e /is/, in the sense of the experience at the table, is what the DM makes of it!)But much greater hesitation if it's his own home-brew, and much less if it's a well-known WotC-produced option, surely.D&D had so many awful rules for so long that they became part of its identity.  5e is /not/ simpler or rules-lite, no edition of D&D ever has been.  But it has gone a long way towards fostering acceptance of DM authority to rule on and change the rules.  The above digression about what rule option is more 'accepted' is a much more player-side perspective.  A DM can impose what he wants - DMing isn't so easy, nor DM's so easy to find that he'll be bereft of players no matter how controversial he wants to get in that regard - a player, OTOH, who wants to use a particular option must shop around for a DM already using it, or, much harder, sell a DM on adopting it, that's where seeing the option as high in the officialdom hierarchy as possible becomes such a point of interest.  (And, similarly, where taking the opposite position presents an opportunity to dictate to others how they play the game - or at least, if we're being optimistic, indulge in that impulse even if it's unlikely to work.)</blockquote>

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