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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5314756" data-attributes="member: 21169">I've always been concerned with balance. I remember playing in 2e D&D games in the early 90s where some PCs were much more powerful than others, and seeing it as a problem - casters overpowering non-casters (even extending to PvP) because we only had one or two encounters each day, people cheating on their stat rolls, some PCs having like twenty magic items and cheated stats while others had two magic items and rolled stats - there could be a huge disparity.In one particular AD&D 2e game, starting at 1st level, the DM banned one PC after the first session, because he had 18/00 strength and full plate armor, while the next strongest PC had something like a 17 strength. The 18/00er was thus doing about twice as much damage as the next best character. The reason the 18/00 PC's strength was so high was that his player, Stan, used to have a folder full of characters he had 'rolled up' and played in games back in his home town. He only used the best chars from the folder, or perhaps a char had to have very good stats just to make it into the folder. I dunno, I never looked at its horror. The rest of us folderless fools just rolled up our chars then and there and took what we got, so Stan had a significant advantage. Another player in my wider play circle at that time, Russell, was the most appalling cheat, I don't think he ever actually rolled a dice, he'd just place them.In the mid-80s I played in a Champions 1e game where one PC was built on 300 points, and had something like a 20d6 attack, while the rest of us were 200 pointers and had 10d6 attacks. The player, Benny, had paid for the 300pts with numerous disadvantages such as lots of Berserks, with predictable consequences. There always seemed to be lots of PvP when Benny was a player, I think he regarded killing other players' PCs as a sign of skilled play. Fortunately he mostly used to GM.EDIT: To be fair, in my teens I was a filthy cheat too. When we made up high level PCs for Against The Giants I 'rolled' 18/99 for my strength (I thought it would be that little bit more plausible than 00) and I also 'rolled' up a two-handed sword of giantslaying in the tables in Dragon. I recall also reading the module beforehand and using that knowledge to my advantage.</blockquote>

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