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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6239985" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I remember that refrain.  After playing it for so long, what became interesting in retrospect (to me at least) is that the effort to balance the classes1)  was primarily a "numbers on paper" veneer.  Just like American Football is typically decided by swingy things like "big plays" (on 3rd down and in the 4th quarter specifically) and turnovers, rather than on the numbers on paper going in to the contest, 3.x follows the same paradigm.2)  only had a tangible effect on play through somewhere around level 4.With respect to the various vectors of balance as GM, by the end of my tenure of playing:A)  On challenge balance or expectant encounter (GM-side) results, I felt the CR system was adequate up to about level 7 and proved relatively up to the challenge of its design scheme.  However, after about level 7, it was so off-kilter that I was probably functionally better at eyeballing challenges in 1e and 2e than I was in 3.x.B)  On class balance, I felt that after around level 4, the classes were more poorly balanced than its predecessors.- The Monk was better than in 1e but that was such a low threshold to cross as to be meaningless.  See (1) above regarding numbers.  The Monk looked "great" on paper because "numbers" and "lack of dead levels".  In actual play?  Not so much.  - The Rogue was significantly better at combat but was stretched thin with respect to skills due to the decoupling of various Athletics, Stealth, Perception, and Thievery skills (even with 8 + skill points).  I think its generally safe to say that this class was an improvement over its predecessors.- The Fighter is where things really, really went south.  The 1e UA and the 2e Combat and Tactics (especially with Heroic Fray) Fighters were absolute monsters in combat.  Monsters.  And 2e's NWP and kits let Fighters round out archetype a bit.  The Saving Throw paradigm discrepancy twixt 3.x and its predecessors crushed the Fighter...right in his Fightery face.  The Fighter was worse in 3.x in every way.  And this "worseness" scaled negatively; solid at low levels but you really shouldn't be taking more than 4 levels (qualifying you for weapon spec), if that.  Meanwhile...- The Cleric, Druid, and Wizard (and the introduction of the Sorcerer) became better in every way than their predecessors (except maybe the 2e Specialty Priest) and this "betterness" scaled.  Saving Throw paradigm, spell proliferation, and PC-side magic item creation Candyland made spellcasting classes even more difficult to budget for encounter-wise (as GM) and for martial PCs to maintain competitive parity with.So while there was more "hero protection" and less swingy "insta-gib" deaths than its predecessors (this refrain actually held up to scrutiny), 3.x was in no way more balanced class-wise and, shortly after introductory levels, became unintuitive encounter budget-wise (mostly due to spellcasting's effect on misrepresenting ECL).  Its interesting to look at the (often wrong) reactionary responses to editions in retrospect (with a refined eye born of considerable experience with the ruleset).  The grognardian impulse to castigate 3.x for its "tightening of balance" was just a reactionary instinct due to the veneer of reorganization of information (BAB, Saves, uniform XP, transparent magic item creation system).  It didn't turn out that way in actual play.</blockquote>

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