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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMforPowergamers" data-source="post: 6237894" data-attributes="member: 67338">I want to (again, I know I have posted this here and on wiz and gitpg, and Rpgnet before) say my experience with balance is what I think people who don't think it matters need to keep in mind.In the 90's we played AD&D, we had a lot of fun. I ran a rather loose game more focus on fun then rules. I was in high school when we started and we had plenty of free time. Some times people would make note of "Wow, you made an awesome X Y or Z, but no one ever put too much thought into it. We even had house rules that make me cringe now just thinking about them.My freshmen year of college (still 90's) that all started to change. We started and RPG club at the local community college, and met new players for the first time. (up until then we introduced the game to others, but never had someone who played before join) We met 3 players that changed the game hard core. 1 always played wizards, no matter what. 1 wanted to play a psion 9 out of 10 times, the other always wanted to play a fighter, she thought spells were weak. Up until then we all played everything. The two players who liked mages and psions told us some of there house rules, and we adopted some and didn't others. Then we played. Boom every game the wizard was doing amazig, and the psion too. They said it was all tactics and knowing your character. The girl that wanted to play the fighter was the first person I ever heard compare her self to other players, and she felt she was doing something wrong.  Slowly the power gamers in my orginal group all wanted to be wizards, and even me and the other guy that DMed a lot found our big bads were more often then not casters.By the time I heard that the magic card game people bought out TSR we were already having to choose are players carefully. We would have whole campaigns that would start with the phrase "No wizards" or we would take away the ability of the player to make his spell book and instead make it random rolls.when 3e came out we had a small split. The girl who played fighters kept to 2e for years, and the guy who always wanted to be mages was not able to game anymore (now married with twins on the way) but everything had already changed. There was also a new gameing store in town and as such our group had changes and added new blood again. Some people came in and were great some we didn't hit off... but by and large by the time 3.5 came out EVERYONE WAS A CASTER... We had a party at one point of a Barbarian 1/Cleric X, a fighter 2/sorcerer X, a Bard 5/Druid X, and a fighter 2/rogue 3/ Monk 2 going for shadow dancer... when he decided to re draw a wizard I saw a problem.I was on the internet back then, but not really on the char op boards... then in 2004 or so I meet a guy who knew of all of these 'builds'n my 1st 4e game I ran we had a Ranger (Elven Archer) and a Rogue (Teifling) we were running the adventure path and were in the troll warrens. The rouge had the best round ever... He used a daily and crit, and action pointed an encounter with multi attacks and one of them crit... he did 119 damage... he got up and did a victory lap around the table.  the next round the Ranger was pissy he rolled low on his encounter power and 'only did 123" neither of them go to opt boards, but as strikers you notice that difference.The numbers are only an answer when you already see the problem, but you can't unsee it either. If your group runs more like I did in the 90's and never meet your chris... then great, but if you do then you see it.I don't track who does x damage, but when I have my fighter/weapon master have a lower AC and hit less often and do less damge then your cleric, I start to notice over time... especialy when you pull out big spells I don't hae ON top of one upping me. It happens when I build worlds too. Emperor X needs to be bad ass, and I want my party to fear him even at 12th level, so if he is a fighter he needs magic items to counter spells, or a court wizard... wait isn't the court wizard and evil cleric way more bad ass?</blockquote>

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