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<blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 5021048" data-attributes="member: 32740">I voted &quot;other&quot; for essentially the same reason as jgbrowning.&nbsp; The early ideas of balance stemmed from how OD&amp;D treated &quot;balance&quot;.&nbsp; For the most part there just wasn't a lot of power to balance in the first place.&nbsp; But it seems apparant that &quot;balance&quot; was to be established by enforcing rarity.&nbsp; If a PC class was deemed powerful it was made slower to advance.&nbsp; In 1E powerful classes were made harder to qualify for.&nbsp; The idea being that it was okay for a player to have a powerful class if A) the class levelled up more slowly and B) the qualifications made it infrequent or even rare to actually SEE the class in play.&nbsp;&nbsp; Rarity=balance.&nbsp; This approach persisted through 2nd Edition.&nbsp; Also, level limits came in with 1E for demihumans and persisted through 2E and while not furthering the idea of rarity it attempted to discourage play of the more powerful demihuman multiclassed characters by simply placing an arbitrary hard limit on their advancement.&nbsp;Of course, it's complete bunk, not least because the factors that were supposed to ensure a given level of rarity or discouragement were simply wildly circumvented if not outright ignored.&nbsp; People developed and used all manner of character generation methods that overcame the high qualifying stats or just allowed players to meet them if they wanted to play the class.&nbsp; They houseruled or ignored demihuman level limits.&nbsp; Not until 3E came along were these &quot;quaint&quot; ideas about balance abandoned in favor of actually attempting to make the classes and races of a more equal degree of balance in the first place.&nbsp; Their success or failure even through 4E is no less debatable but at least they were finally approaching the problem in a sensible manner.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Man in the Funny Hat, post: 5021048, member: 32740"] I voted "other" for essentially the same reason as jgbrowning. The early ideas of balance stemmed from how OD&D treated "balance". For the most part there just wasn't a lot of power to balance in the first place. But it seems apparant that "balance" was to be established by enforcing [I]rarity[/I]. If a PC class was deemed powerful it was made slower to advance. In 1E powerful classes were made harder to qualify for. The idea being that it was okay for a player to have a powerful class if A) the class levelled up more slowly and B) the qualifications made it infrequent or even rare to actually SEE the class in play. Rarity=balance. This approach persisted through 2nd Edition. Also, level limits came in with 1E for demihumans and persisted through 2E and while not furthering the idea of rarity it attempted to discourage play of the more powerful demihuman multiclassed characters by simply placing an arbitrary hard limit on their advancement. Of course, it's complete bunk, not least because the factors that were supposed to ensure a given level of rarity or discouragement were simply [I]wildly[/I] circumvented if not outright ignored. People developed and used all manner of character generation methods that overcame the high qualifying stats or just allowed players to meet them if they wanted to play the class. They houseruled or ignored demihuman level limits. Not until 3E came along were these "quaint" ideas about balance abandoned in favor of actually attempting to make the classes and races of a more equal degree of balance in the first place. Their success or failure even through 4E is no less debatable but at least they were finally [I]approaching[/I] the problem in a sensible manner. [/QUOTE]

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