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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grydan" data-source="post: 6239335" data-attributes="member: 79401">The thing about Balance Over Time—regardless of whether that timeframe is a 30-level span, 20-level span, a campaign, an adventure, or any other arbitrary division of time longer than a single session of play—is that it fails to actually achieve balance over any time other than the span it was designed for (assuming, for the moment, that it manages even that). So, if you consider balance desirable (and clearly, there are many here who for whatever reason find it undesirable), you're tied to playing a specific length of time in order to achieve it.A Magic-User is supposed to be trading low utility and low survival rates at low levels in for power at higher levels, assuming they can live that long. In any campaign that ends before reaching those higher levels (intentionally or not), the player of the Magic-User has traded something for nothing.Conversely, if the campaign starts at higher levels, the player of the Magic-User has traded nothing at all for their power.The Fighting-Man is left in the opposite situation. The balancing trade-off of being tougher, more effective, and more likely to survive the lower levels is that you gradually fall behind in effectiveness as you reach higher levels. But if the campaign ends prematurely, then you've got all gain for no loss.And again, in the high-level starting campaign, you're in the situation of trading something for nothing.----Then there's the matter of having the Magic-User as 'picking Hard Mode' (and conversely, Fighting-Man as 'Easy Mode').The first problem with this is that the rules are typically silent on the matter. They present the classes as equivalent options, with no caution on the Magic-User that you should only pick it if you want a challenge, and no caveat on the Fighting-Man that says advanced players might find it insufficiently challenging.The second problem is that tying challenge to character archetype excludes players who want the concept of a Magic-User, but aren't looking for Hard Mode, and players who want to be Fighting-Men, but don't want Easy Mode. There's nothing intrinsic to either concept that says it has to be simple or complex: actual physical combat can be tremendously complex, and magic can work however we want it to work. We've certainly seen more complicated approaches to fighters than the original Fighting-Man (both inside of various D&D editions and in other games), and simpler spell-casters than the Magic-User.I think systems that divorce 'intentional choice by the player to take on a greater challenge than the other players' from 'choice of archetype' are the stronger for it. Hard Mode should be available to anyone who wants it, with Easy Mode for those who want it, and probably at least one level of difficulty in between, all regardless of what kind of character the player wants to play.</blockquote>

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