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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5322555" data-attributes="member: 58197">This is where I take up Hussar's argument that AD&D is becoming a sort of Schrodinger's game which can be observed to have whatever properties are convenient for its proponents' debating points.Some people played AD&D and didn't have balance problems. Other people played AD&D and did have balance problems. If the game had a clear set of baseline assumptions, we could observe what happens when you play according to those assumptions and determine whether the game was balanced or not.But when you have to fall back on "inference from the DMG," you're admitting that the game has no clear set of core assumptions--because inference is totally subjective. I played in a number of different groups back in the day, and they all drew inferences from the DMG and the PHB about how the game was supposed to work, and they all thought their inferences were obvious and logical. And every dang table was playing the game a different way.Either there is a baseline or there isn't. If people are arguing about it, there probably isn't.Or, it's nearly impossible to see how any given change affects balance, because 1E-style balance includes ideas like "It's balanced over the course of a campaign" and "Some characters are more powerful in combat, but that's balanced by other characters having more options out of combat." I mean, how could you possibly show something is unbalanced under those conditions? There's always room to reply, "The campaign just didn't run long enough (or it ran too long)," and "Your game just has too much combat (or not enough)."Hence the need for an explicit baseline if any discussion of balance is to mean anything. You can't say whether characters are balanced over the course of a campaign unless you know how long a campaign is supposed to be. You can't say whether combat is balanced against noncombat unless you know how much combat there is.</blockquote>

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