Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="SenseiMike" data-source="post: 4479801" data-attributes="member: 77571">Show me in previous edition books where it specifically said you need to have a balanced party.  You won't find it anywhere.  It might recommend the Cleric in a party, but I remember a passage that stated that you shouldn't try to shoehorn a player into playing something he doesn't want to play.  Yes, I do remember Gygax and others saying in published adventures that they want a balanced mix of characters running through this.  My guys and I ran through White Plume Mountain without a Thief, and we finished it.  Yes, the traps were hell, but we finished it.   One aspect of the First and Second Editions of the game that I rather liked was the way the game said to roll up characters that offered another challenge; playing with what you got.  Note that these games never told you there had to be competent characters meted out for their specific roles, or otherwise they would've dispensed with the rolling method altogether as the 4E PHB has done.  This implied that, if you simply played with the stats the dice gave you, you were bound to potentially be lacking in a role; which is where the books of those editions had basically made the case that party balance was not so pressing.  Maybe none of the players had rolled a high enough Dexterity to be a Thief.  The challenge, then, was how do we overcome this inability?   I realize few people even in those days played the game like this, but I sure did, and I loved that sort of challenge.  And it's when you can overcome such things like that that exercises your mind, enabling you to go through very challenging adventures like White Plume without a Thief.  In fact, we went through Castle Ravenloft the first time without a Mage; it was very hard, but we did it.</blockquote>

Verification