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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 9006757" data-attributes="member: 2209">I think you are forgetting thieves. Backstab is not near as good as sneak attack, AD&D thieves have no defensive abilities such as evasion or uncanny dodge, and their big combat ability was usually being able to use a short bow. Rogues in execution were often weak end of 3e combat (lower BAB, sneak not working on half of opponents), but you can see the slippery striker intent there that was better executed in 4e and 5e. AD&D thieves were balanced as a slight upgrade on the weapon combatant capability of the magic-user chasis.Also super weak low level AD&D wizards compared with super powered high level ones.I think 2e did a little better at combat balancing some class options than 1e, particularly with the fighter and wizard multiclassing rules.3e in execution led to CoDzilla and batman wizards being strong tiers after a few levels of play but 3e fighters compare well with low armor rangers, once per day heavy armor smite paladins, and low BAB rogues and monks. I'd probably give a little edge to medium armor raging barbarians for melee builds. Higher level melee combatants were generally fairly handicapped by 3e's full attacks only with 5' movement rule set up, but the 17th level fighter archer was a damage machine gun that took out most anything in one round in my high level 3.5 game.Execution was off but I think the goal of everybody being combat balanced across levels was pretty obvious.4e and 5e learned from 3e's mistakes and executed the same design goals better.</blockquote>

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