Why do all classes have to be balanced?

[Bluenose]

The above is a system I would HATE playing. Each class fills a vital role in a party for D&D. When one is balanced with another it makes the party mentality redundant and obsolete. To me the party comes first and the roles for each member in it is vital to fantasy role playing games. There is the Rogue for detecting and disabling traps and maneuvering through tricky situations. The fighter to protect the more fragile of the members of the group. The sorcerer and wizard are there to deal with the magic, buffing, dispelling, and fighting magic with magic. The cleric is about healing and mostly buffing... with some attack abilities that are good in both melee and ranged. Paladin, Rangers and so on like the Bard are a bit more specific in roles but none the less vital. Yet... some people feel that this should all be taken away and make it balance.

The thing is, the caster classes can do all the things the rogue and the fighter do, and generally do them better. In particular, in 3e the Fighter is one of the fragile members of the group, far more vulnerable to magic than the cleric or druid, requiring a significant expenditure of someone else's magic to resist magical attacks and for healing afterwards. And it's also worth noting that while a 3e Fighter's hit points are significantly inflated compared to AD&D Fighters, the damage output of monsters increased at a greater rate, again leaving them more vulnerable. It's hard to accept that each character class plays a vital role, when some of those classes are perfectly capable of performing the role of another class and still performing perfectly adequately at their own role.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Actually if you want class balance then why design several classes? It is simple one class with several abilities. Balance is achieved.

The above is a system I would HATE playing. Each class fills a vital role in a party for D&D. When one is balanced with another it makes the party mentality redundant and obsolete. To me the party comes first and the roles for each member in it is vital to fantasy role playing games. There is the Rogue for detecting and disabling traps and maneuvering through tricky situations. The fighter to protect the more fragile of the members of the group. The sorcerer and wizard are there to deal with the magic, buffing, dispelling, and fighting magic with magic. The cleric is about healing and mostly buffing... with some attack abilities that are good in both melee and ranged. Paladin, Rangers and so on like the Bard are a bit more specific in roles but none the less vital. Yet... some people feel that this should all be taken away and make it balance.

Balancing is for video games... where it is NEEDED because of PvP... this is NOT PvP but a pen and paper game. If you make it balanced then it is and should be in a video game... anything else... keep it so that each role fills a niche in the party!!

Balance is needed to ensure that each role fills a niche in the party. Without balance this doesn't happen. The 1e and 3e monks don't fill any roles. The pre-UA 1e cleric and the 3.5 cleric on the other hand just about fill the fighter role and their own (especially with divine metamagic and nightsticks). And the 3.5 druid fills the cleric role and the fighter role while eating into wizard and occasionally rogue role. (Mid-high level 3.5 wizards eat the rogue role wtih second and third level spells while being wizards with their high level ones).

Without balance you don't have niche protection. Without niche protection you end up with classes without niches. With classes without niches you have classes that don't fill a vital role or even a terribly useful one for the party.

Pro-balance people don't think that roles should be taken away to promote balance. We think that with bad balance your intended role means diddly squat as a more powerful class can cover it and their own. And with bad enough balance they can do it without intending to.

 

[Hussar]

Actually if you want class balance then why design several classes? It is simple one class with several abilities. Balance is achieved.

The above is a system I would HATE playing. Each class fills a vital role in a party for D&D. When one is balanced with another it makes the party mentality redundant and obsolete. To me the party comes first and the roles for each member in it is vital to fantasy role playing games. There is the Rogue for detecting and disabling traps and maneuvering through tricky situations. The fighter to protect the more fragile of the members of the group. The sorcerer and wizard are there to deal with the magic, buffing, dispelling, and fighting magic with magic. The cleric is about healing and mostly buffing... with some attack abilities that are good in both melee and ranged. Paladin, Rangers and so on like the Bard are a bit more specific in roles but none the less vital. Yet... some people feel that this should all be taken away and make it balance.

Balancing is for video games... where it is NEEDED because of PvP... this is NOT PvP but a pen and paper game. If you make it balanced then it is and should be in a video game... anything else... keep it so that each role fills a niche in the party!!

This is a misunderstanding of what balance means. This has been dealt with several times in this thread and others, but, in the interests of saving time and not just point to the above rather lengthy thread, let me sum up:

1. Balanced systems do not mean lack of diversity - after all, chess is a perfectly balanced game, but, we don't play with all pawns do we?
2. Balanced systems do not require exact equality. It's okay for one class to be a bit better at something and a bit worse at another. There's more than enough room for flexiblity.
3. Balanced systems mean that no single option is clearly better than other options. It's okay for one options to be better than another option from time to time, in certain situations. But if one option is clearly better than other options, then you have an imbalanced system.