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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Transformer" data-source="post: 6237890" data-attributes="member: 70008">I care about class balance in combat, so I'm going to disagree.First, XunValdorl, your examples of experiences that led you to believe that few people care about this issue are the Pathfinder Society and conventions. I don't think those are the best settings for making the judgment you've made here. Conventions usually mean one-shot games, often with strangers. If I were playing a one-shot adventure at a convention, and my character were getting repeatedly outshone, I would just put on a friendly face and deal with it. After all, it's just a one-shot, and I want to make a good impression. But if I were in a two year campaign, and week-in and week-out my character were getting outshone, then I would be unhappy. So I wouldn't judge based on conventions. As for the Pathfinder Society, well, I imagine the Pathfinder Society would attract more people who aren't too concerned with class balance, while all the people who really care a lot about it would gravitate toward organized 4th edition play instead. So I wouldn't make the judgment you've made based on the Pathfinder Society either.Second, I think you're mischaracterizing the issue a bit. When I say I care about in-combat class balance, I'm not saying every reasonably-optimized character needs to deal the same amount of damage. I'm not saying every character needs to be useful in every situation. I'm not saying a player shouldn't be able to specialize for out-of-combat stuff, and so, end up less effective in combat. I'm not even saying it's a travesty if my fighter deals 30 damage per round and my friend's barbarian deals 50 damage per round. That's not that huge a difference.The inequalities in class balance in 3rd edition were much more dramatic than that. A reasonably optimized 18-level wizard doesn't just deal a little more damage than a reasonably-optimized 18th-level fighter; the former absolutely curbstomps the latter. The fighter isn't just less effective, he's totally unnecessary. The wizard can incapacitate the bad guys in a single round without any help at all (save-or-suck spells). The fighter isn't slightly overshadowed by the wizard; he's the wizard's clean-up crew. What if I'm playing that fighter, and I'm trying to role-play an awesome badass who's an expert at combat? How about that: class balance just became a roleplaying issue.Unless someone is deliberately roleplaying an ineffective character, or a character who is ineffective in combat (which is great; more power to her), her character should not be so overshadowed by another character as to be entirely superfluous. A reasonable approximation of class balance is, in fact, a worthy goal.If you want to say that 4th edition sacrificed too much on the altar of balance when it based all classes on the same mechanical sub-system, hey, maybe you have a point. But all those people posting on forums, advocating for class balance? They're not alien robots or something, they're players just like you, who clearly do care about this stuff. Their forum posts are no less representative of the concerns of real-world gamers than yours.</blockquote>

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