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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 5021591" data-attributes="member: 8863">That's why I voted yes.  The game was intended to be balanced in the 1e days, but the problem is that the game changed from rules being added and dropped, and from people playing differently.  So what was balanced in 1980 in the early days of 1e wasn't balanced in 2000 when 3e was released and 2e had a lot of baggage from legacy rules.  This is something that affects all editions.  Over the course of time 1e got changed from UA, the survival guides and OA, 2e got changed from the Complete handbooks, Player's Option, and the settings, and 3e got changed from all the various splats, the 3.5 revision, and even the OGL.  In 10 years, we'll likely be talking about how the things that developed during 4e changed those rules too.That's one of the ways 1e was balanced.  Rarity does kind of balance things out if you just roll 3d6 in order.  Over the long run, there will be the high-powered ranger or paladin every so often,  but as others have said, everyone's playing several different characters, so overall it balances out because the one powerful character isn't being played all the time.  The real problem I think existed outside the game, and perhaps revolves around Gary's departure from TSR.  As has been noted in this thread, much of the rules were shaped based on how he and his group played the game.  He mentioned here once that he didn't use straight 3d6 for character generation in his games, since players were more satified playing a character they wanted to play rather than one the dice forced them to play, so perhaps any 2e that he would have designed had he stayed with TSR would have taken that into account with class balance.  But that's not what happened, and 2e took a somewhat conservative approach to the game, consolidating rules without making any big major changes to the stsurcture, perhaps out of fear of alienating players.WRT this, maybe things were different in 1e, but in 2e, an experienced DM was encourged to place treasure as he saw fit.  So if he felt a party needed or deserved a vorpal blade or hammer of thunderbolts, he'd deliberately place it.  Random rolling was for doing things on the fly or inspriation.  The downside is that a novice DM might give the party stuff that makes them too powerful too quickly, or doesn't give them enough.  Then of course there's the cheapass DMs who think more than one +1 sword is too damn strong and that those gps must be constantly siphoned off for balance.  The organization of magic items in 3e into power levels and 4e's system of treasure parcels goes a long way towards helping novice DMs give PCs stuff that is suitable for their level, while more experienced DMs should know how to tweak this stuff.That's another significant change, sort of related to the point I made on magic items above.  The game wasn't balanced for just the dice, but with the idea that the DM would be making fair and impartial decisions (originally the DM was called the referee after all).  Some people complain that the newer rules particularly 3e and 4e empower the players while stripping power from the DM, but I think some of those design decisions reflect that fact that not all DMs know what they're doing as soon as they pick up a DMG.  There's a lot about DMing that requires experience, and I think the newer rules are like they are to make things easier for a novice DM, and to ensure that he doesn't destroy the party outright because he underestimated the power of a spell, monster, or trap.  TPKs should be the result of player carelessness, not DM carelessness.</blockquote>

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