Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3815003" data-attributes="member: 42582">There are ways of being "balanced but different" within combat that don't simply involve giving one character at-will moderate damage abilities and the other character limited-use high damage abilities. Jackelope King has given examples, drawn from his M&M game.Furthermore, not every way of achieving such balance are equally good game design. For many players, at least, it is a defect in game design if effective play requires them to regularly miss a turn. This is what D&D requires wizards to do, if they are not to nova and thereby give rise to the 15-minute day (and also to overshadow the fighters).As far as I can tell, 4e is looking to give wizards different options: more options, but different from damage-dealing (wizards, we are told, will be "controllers"). It is also looking to give fighters more options.I don't know why you suggest that fighter's per-encounter or per-day resources must be spells or even wuxia abilities. There is nothing magical or wuxia about a once-per-day "second wind", or a once-per-minute "mighty blow", or any number of abilities that I'm sure the design team can conceive of.As to the question, why balance combat effectiveness? Because, as currently played at least, combat takes up about 75% of the time at the gaming table in the typical D&D game. So a PC who is not effective in most combats, most of the time, means a player who is frequently having nothing to do at the table.To give a wizard per-encounter abilities does give the wizard more powers (= abilities), but not necessarily more power (if, as is almost certain, the effects of per-day spells are changed). For a player of a wizard to want to be able to do something effective every turn is not a desire for some sort of juvenile instant gratification - it is a desire to have fun playing a game.</blockquote>

Verification