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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lady Dragon" data-source="post: 5033996" data-attributes="member: 3453">I voted Other. I don't really think That Gary really understood game balance the way we do today. Especially back in 77, 78 when he was writing it. Game balance wasn't really an issue like it is today. Also I think he was inexperienced and naive enough so that he believed that most people would follow the rules as written ( even though there is evidence that he and his group did not always do so themselves). So even though the 4 main classes are somewhat balanced if you take the long veiw of it into account, with magic-users weak early and very powerful late. Obviously the other classes were superior but hard to roll up if you followed the rule of strict 3d6 for each attribute no exceptions.However, the hard restrictions on non-humans to their level advancments show that he did take balance into account he felt that their special abilities made them more powerful so he restricted their levels in most classes and restricted what classes they could become.So while it is obvious that he did take Game balance into account in some ways in other ways he obviously ignored it.I have long had a theory that what made 3rd edition so special was it was the first edition to acheived game balance by addition instead of subtraction. Gary used subtraction. The non human races had special abilities so he had to subtract from them to achieve balance, by resticting there class choices and level advancement. Paladins could do eveything that fighters could do plus cast spells and turn undead so he had to make it hard to be one and put other sometimes unreasonable restrictions on them. In fact a lot of the unreasonable rules and restrictions from first edition were because of game balance.But in 3rd edition they used addition. instead of taking something away from non-human characters to make up for the their special abilities they added abilities to humans extra feats and skills) Fighters were no longer just ordinary they got extra abilities (Feats) that Paladins didn't have.So basically Gary was counting on the roll of the dice to restrict just anyone from playing the premium classes not realizing they most players and DM's would fudge to rolls so that they could play the class that they wanted. It is after all a game and it is about fun so why not.</blockquote>

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