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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5314772" data-attributes="member: 21169">The important thing to note about older editions is that balance was over the long term - years of play. Characters were supposed to die a lot, so one would be frequently rolling up a new character, rather like hands in Poker. Poker has a lot of randomness, at the level of individual hands, but because many, many hands are drawn, the luck should even out over time. It was intended to be the same with early D&D, each player would roll up a great many characters. Ofc someone like Stan could game this system by rolling up many more characters than the other players and only using the best ones.The balance of the magic-user versus the fighter was also intended to be over the long term. A magic-user is supposed to be weaker than a fighter at low levels, roughly equal at mid-level, and definitely more powerful at high level - 9th+. This balance can only work if one plays long campaigns, where PCs can rise to name level, and then retire one's chars at that point. If the majority of play takes place at name level or higher, m-us are OP.Likewise, Vancian magic is unbalanced if there are few encounters per day. The game assumes dungeon play, or a similar situation where there are many encounters each day.If one doesn't use dungeons or doesn't play from 1st to around 10th and then stop, or roll up and play lots of new characters, then old school D&D isn't balanced.</blockquote>