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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5321847" data-attributes="member: 22779">For me, the basic problem is that older editions were meant to be balanced "across the span of a campaign".  The unit is too large and includes WAY too many play assumptions.  I mean, just in this thread, people have limited balance in older editions to the following:1.  Frequent replacement of PC's.2.  Balance through rarity.3.  Frequent replacement of equipment.4.  Large groups using henchmen and the like.I could go on, but those 4 are pretty much required for AD&D to balance.  Remove any of those, play by a different style, and balance goes straight out the window.RC, you take my example and extrapolate all sorts of elements.  1e Sleep is an autowin in any given encounter.  If the wizard gets it off, he wins.  End of story.  Sure, you could sneak up on him, but, then, you could sneak up on any character and kill him too.  What's the difference?"Oh, it would never happen that way in my campaign" is just another way of saying, "Oh you're doing it wrong."  Onetruwayism at its best.  If I don't play exactly by your playstyle, suddenly all my balance issues are 100% my fault and not the fault of the system.  If everyone would simply play the way you play, then we have no balance issues.  Nice.IME, 1e and 2e go kerblooie about 8th level plus.  As soon as you get into name level, the game gets ridiculous.  But, that was my experience.  OTOH, IME, 3e worked pretty darn well into double digit levels.  Again, this was my experience.  Were there problems?  Oh sure.  But nothing on the level that I saw regularly in AD&D.The central problem with the idea of balance of the course of a campaign is that you never actually have balance.  What you have is a series of imbalanced periods that average to balance.  But, you never actually get to play in that average.  All you get to play in is the unbalanced times.Which means that at any given point in time, you have players sitting on their hands staring into space because they have nothing to contribute.  The wizard's blown his three spells and goes and plays with his Intellivision.  The thief can't backstab in the middle of combat and is doing a d4+1 points of damage to a giant.  Heck, the wizard's doing more damage with DARTS.That's MY experience with "balance" in older editions.</blockquote>

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