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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgoroth" data-source="post: 5884408" data-attributes="member: 6674889">Power rating systemswill fail. There will always be the wrong rating on the wrong spells, because as soon as the rabbits (unsuspecting DMs) get faster, so do the foxes (more optimized/exploitative players or powergamers), since there is too much of a lag before errata can either slow down the foxes. (if not take them out back, and shoot them out right)A creative/smart caster with a vancian system and spells that affect the world in non-trivial ways, can always pose balance problems. Is it the nature of the beast. 4e solved it by making all combat spells apply to a grid, and either do damage against creatures or enemies, but not objects, so you are very much limited to the very limited set of in-combat uses, to avoid e.g. fireball being used to set a forest on fire. In 4e, it just wouldn't happen. But in AD&D, you burn the whole village down. But that's EXCITING. Who wants to play D&D on rails, or without danger or consequence? Being just able to do damage with your spells, is boring and lame. You are playing with fire, expect to get burned. I like my RPG fire to, you know, actually be able to light mundane things on fire, and do more damage, or side effects. Either expected or unexpected, wanted or unwanted. If your aim is off with your spell, whoops. sorry guysAs soon as you make fireball or teleport or invisibility a "tier 5" spell, you just guarantee that they will be sought after more, forcing DMs to allow those iconic spells (at least for specialist wizards), and in which case there never will be balance. However, as we've seen in PF, it is certainly possible to rebalance spells after knowing their uses. There is a huge wealth of use cases and threads on all the power-gamer uses of all these spells, across editions. So long as Wotc allows for open play tests, these bugs should be found /sorted before launch. And if they don't properly playtest, fine leave the burned ruins of the official rules in the dust when you DM, and just houserule certain spells. Better yet, the game system should have material components and DMs enforce it, so they have control over how often certain spells are used.What if bat guano is the rarest thing to harvest in your game world? The bats have been hunted to near extinction by anti-mage inquisitors, and only law-breakers breed bats in cages so they can cast the occasional fireball. A lot of these balance issues can be sorted out in-game within the rules of earlier editions, but there is no house rule in 4e to not use your power the way it says, other than "chose a different power". And with the player entitlement and codified rules expectation, with player-centric focus of 4e, how can DMs reasonably expect to maintain player interest if they bring the ban hammer on your character?I've said it before, there is no balance between a fighter, any fighter, and a smart player playing a wizard with spells -- any spells -- with which there is a complex enough set of world-modifying, non-straight up damage effects. There is virtually no limit on the power of (even weaker) spells in the hands of a creative caster. Sure, start by lowering the number of spells per day, and introducing at-wills, and rebalancing the duration and costs and even spell level of certain spells, but beyond that, there will always be an adventure or encounter-offsetting use of a certain innocuous-seeming spell.</blockquote>

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