Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6014928" data-attributes="member: 2067">So, for the sake of utter clarity, let me be precise:I think that any D&D game which is unbalanced by the existence of PC flight, Large PC size, PC teleportation, PC divination, or PC's seeing in the dark, or similar things (PC's without opposable thumbs! PC's who can change form!), is not a sufficiently robust D&D for me to have fun with it.These things SHOULD NOT make much of a difference for balance. If they do -- if a game with PC's with darkvision is unbalanced -- then the game is poorly designed for my heroic fantasy roleplaying purposes.A D&D that meets my needs must be able to absorb these effects without being broken. The reason, ultimately, has to do with the needs of my heroic fantasy. The genre is filled with things that fly, things that are gigantic, things that see the future, things that travel immense distances in the blink of an eye, things that transform, and things that live in caves and see in the dark. These things should not be excluded form the reach of players. And since some of these things depend on what you are, they must be within the reach of players at the start of the game. Part of what this means is that a D&D that meets my needs cannot depend on microbalance. Of course, in a particular encounter in the middle of the night, a person who can see in the dark will beat someone who cannot. A D&D that is robust enough for me will be able to absorb that dominance without breaking. That is, even if the dwarf sees in the dark, the game won't become "easy" for the dwarf, the dwarf won't get more "screen time," and the dwarf won't define the way the game is played (forcing me to plan arround the dwarf, for instance). Same with flight, or divination, or Large size. This mandates that D&D be able to take entire encounters -- sometimes even chunks of an adventure -- and not have the game session depend entirely on these things.This is part of why I'm an advocate for things like "adventure-based resource management" and "three pillars of play." These principles help avoid a situation where seeing in the dark makes you suddenly too powerful to be a heroic fantasy PC.</blockquote>

Verification