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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 3517571" data-attributes="member: 19675">In no particular order, I respond:I suspect you don't roll stats, either.  But do you use dice in combat?What happens when you have a player who gets a rash of low rolls?  Or high ones? I've been on both sides of that- a Ranger who couldn't hit his favored enemy for the entire combat (and nearly died) and a Ftr/Cleric who earned a personal blessing from Tyr (+1 Ftr level) because of an incredibly unlikely string of 20s and 100s (on a % die) spring immediately to mind.They are all sentient races suitable for PC play that I'd love to play regularly- and have in the past- but not being allowed to play them while others can play other races is no more or less unfair than what happens in Stormbringer.  DM's whim is just as arbitrary as a die roll.Again, its as fair as any other die roll.Because you can't.Your facility with magic was decided by your POW score- an attribute.  The higher the POW, the more powerful an elemental, demon, or virtue you could summon.  As I recall, there were ways to lose POW, like unsuccessful summonings.  (The basis of this system worked in countless other settings)The problem is that Melniboneans and Pan Tangians have innately high POW scores, kind of like a Half-Orc gets a bonus to Str...except it would be more like a Storm Giant's Str bonus in comparison.  This comes from their centuries or millenia-long association with demons and elementals (and even gods) in their everyday society.Result: even a weak Melnibonean or Pan Tangian mage could successfully summon critters more easily than anyone else.Not quite- Dragons never started off as PC races.  Heck, even in legend, they are rarely the main characters, they are the antagonists to the protagonists.Melniboneans and Pan Tangians account for a sizable number of the characters in the Elric saga.  It is largely about them and their effect on the world.Sure there are- most of them just happen to involve taking away the Paladin's ability to act freely in accord with the tenets of his beliefs.Actually, its not.  It was rather clever and (many of us who love the game feel it was charming).The point was that by rolling on the charts, your PC gained benefits & perks.  It was like leveling.  However, the gamble was that each time you rolled, you had a chance of a bad mishap (also kind of like levelling).  The more you rolled, the greater your rewards and the greater your risks.  You also simultaneously generate a PC history.For example, you start PC gen with Joe Dude.  Your pal starts with Jane Plain.  Joe Dude joins the Space Marines, Jane Plain goes into science.  The rolling begins.Jane Plain rolls, gets a promotion and stops.Joe gets a certain amount of training and equipment with his rolling, earning a promotion.  He rolls a few more times, gets lucky, gets some medals for valor, and keeps upping his skills.  Then he gets a bad roll, is injured and is forced out of the service (with Honors!)...and takes up being a private security advisor.Jane Plain?  She has some cash, basic equipment and a little history.Colonel Joe Dude, OTOH, has no financial worries, lots of high-end equipment, a permanent place in history, and an artificial leg.Then the GM starts the first adventure.There is some truth to that.  Palladium OCCs are notoriously not balanced against each other.So what?The problem with Palladium isn't the balance of the OCCs but rather clunky rules in general.  Some of it is simply internally inconsistent.The fact that a party in RIFTS can start off with a Glitterboy and a Vagabond is, in a sense, quite realistic.  Think about the aftermath of the American Civil War.  Wandering around the country were all kinds of people- trappers, Native American Scouts, freed slaves, displaced farmers, ex-soldiers; young & old; men and women...  Should they band together...When in life are you a member of a team where everyone has roughly equivalent abilities and experiences?  Not in your family.  Not in your job.  Not in your friends.  Not in my experience, at least.Balance isn't the end-all-be-all of RPG design.  It may not even be truly possible.  And in some cases, its not even truly desirable.I can take 300 points in HERO and design 2 PCs, one of which will play like Superman and one of which will play like Stephen Hawking.  Hawking is smart, but he won't last 2 segments against Supes.  Supes is ultra powerful in combat, but it will take Hawking's intellect to suss out that they need to tweek the artificial black hole's containtment field just so...I'm sure there are people who can work similar wizardry with other point-based systems, like GURPS.</blockquote>

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