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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4931074" data-attributes="member: 5143">As much as I hate to say &quot;me too&quot;, this is precisely my experience.&nbsp; The main reason I welcomed 3e with open arms didn't have anything to due with customization, detail or anything like that.&nbsp; It was instead that the entire design philosophy appeared to be &quot;don't balance a combat advantage with a roleplaying disadvantage&quot;.2e &quot;balanced&quot; the game using one of two methods: Giving you way more power in exchange for a &quot;disadvantage&quot; like &quot;if you try to fight more than X battles in a day, you'll run out of spells&quot; or something like &quot;You are a thief who gets to fight with the THAC0 of a fighter, but in exchange 'trouble finds you'&quot;.At that point in 2e, I was plain tired of everyone creating characters who were extremely powerful and then, as the DM, being responsible for having &quot;trouble find them&quot; in order to balance it out.&nbsp; Ironically enough, when trouble did find them, they were so powerful, they defeated it without much of a problem.I felt that if the adventure didn't involve them fighting 8+ battles in a single day, I wasn't given the fighters enough of a fair shake.&nbsp; If I didn't hand out enough magic items, I also wasn't giving them a fair shake.&nbsp; And they had to be magic items they could use.&nbsp; I had to throw in enough traps for the thief to feel useful, but not too many of them or I'd bore the rest of the group.The idea that the game would balance itself without work on my part was the thing that won me over to the new edition.&nbsp; I wanted to be able to sit back and tell my players, &quot;Yes, be anything you want from the options available&quot; and I wouldn't have to carefully watch over the character creation to make sure they weren't abusing it.&nbsp; I'd have to examine the reasons for everything.&nbsp; One player may want to take the Swashbuckler kit for thieves in 2e....but were they taking it because they wanted to play a Swashbuckler or because they got the THAC0 of a fighter?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 4931074, member: 5143"] As much as I hate to say "me too", this is precisely my experience. The main reason I welcomed 3e with open arms didn't have anything to due with customization, detail or anything like that. It was instead that the entire design philosophy appeared to be "don't balance a combat advantage with a roleplaying disadvantage". 2e "balanced" the game using one of two methods: Giving you way more power in exchange for a "disadvantage" like "if you try to fight more than X battles in a day, you'll run out of spells" or something like "You are a thief who gets to fight with the THAC0 of a fighter, but in exchange 'trouble finds you'". At that point in 2e, I was plain tired of everyone creating characters who were extremely powerful and then, as the DM, being responsible for having "trouble find them" in order to balance it out. Ironically enough, when trouble did find them, they were so powerful, they defeated it without much of a problem. I felt that if the adventure didn't involve them fighting 8+ battles in a single day, I wasn't given the fighters enough of a fair shake. If I didn't hand out enough magic items, I also wasn't giving them a fair shake. And they had to be magic items they could use. I had to throw in enough traps for the thief to feel useful, but not too many of them or I'd bore the rest of the group. The idea that the game would balance itself without work on my part was the thing that won me over to the new edition. I wanted to be able to sit back and tell my players, "Yes, be anything you want from the options available" and I wouldn't have to carefully watch over the character creation to make sure they weren't abusing it. I'd have to examine the reasons for everything. One player may want to take the Swashbuckler kit for thieves in 2e....but were they taking it because they wanted to play a Swashbuckler or because they got the THAC0 of a fighter? [/QUOTE]

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