NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Votan" data-source="post: 5060718" data-attributes="member: 18680">I also think that the nature of balance is worth thinking about.  Using a purely modern sense of balance (which seems based around individual character effectiveness and tight comparability between characters) it isn't.  But that wasn't the only option to balance characters.  Strong niche building and class restrictions can do an enormous amount to make a game functionally engaging for all players.  In my opinion, unified mechanics usually undermine this because they ask obvious questions that lead to erosion of this sort of game balance.  Once you decide that you can string together enough things (without forced restrictions) then balance goes away.  If the pixie rogue/wizard is more effective than the rest of the party put together (at all tasks) then it becomes less fun to play in that sort of game.  These issues are not exclusive to D&D -- find old world of darkness had a lot of the same balance issues which made it important to start all characters off dead even (allowing one to play a 5th generation Assasmite did poor things to game balance).  But a 1E rogue can do things that can (at best) be duplicated by a rare (and requiring a planned in advance) spell slot.  A party of all wizards would be lucky to ever get a spell off.  This is the same sort of balance that Shadowrun tries to have between Deckers, Street Samurai and Mages.  It's a valid approach to design and balance.</blockquote>

Verification