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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdfrenzel" data-source="post: 1330999" data-attributes="member: 810">On character balanceI agree with the statements made that players who are ineffective tend to get bored and leave. Big no-no. But D&D rules attempt to balance characters only in combat. Outside of that, they're all over the place. A 1st-level Bard is probably way better at Diplomacy than a 20th-level Barbarian. I remember lots of posts in House Rules about using mechanical checks against non-mechanical balances - the Forsaker PrC comes to mind as an example. Hopefully, and in spite of the fact that D&D is very combat heavy, a fair part of the game occurs outside combat. During these times, characters of disparate power levels can win the spotlight with regularity, if the DM is doing his job. When running mixed-level parties, setting up a non-combat objective, then interupting its completion with a combat gives everyone something to do and feel useful ("You young guys grab the orb while we hold off the foul beasts!"). Some players hope only to shine in melee. I shake my head reading the LG forums, where nearly everyone agrees that bards are useless (i.e., can't shine in melee). How sad that these players must never be presented with so few situations and conflicts outside combat! RPGs can be much richer than just fighting, and if you DM to that, then no CRs will help make the characters balanced once the fighting is done.As for a class being useful all through the levels, I can see some value in this. It's just a bit dull, is all. There was a charm to the game that allowed the Thief to be 3rd level while the MU was just turning 2nd. When the MU held the torche, guarded the door, was invariably made to carry the treasure so the rest could fight, and tried to discern the right moment to cast his rolled-up offensive spell, Light. Alright, for me that was charming. And we still played magic-users knowing this, because eventually we would win the day later on (in melee, of course). I don't remember feeling upset that I wasn't a deadly melee killer when the fighter was, nor did the fighter feel dissed when the mage was. We were a team. So I guess I'm saying the absence of the spirit of teamwork and/or non-combat challenges and obstacles causes class balance to become more important. And since most feel that the "open the door, kill the monster, take the treasure" style is not as much fun, class balance means little.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> --- John</blockquote>

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