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With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base
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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6019526" data-attributes="member: 22779"><p>What level of optimization are we talking about though?</p><p></p><p>We've seen in this thread that taking some people consider a wizard choosing an Int stat boost item is optimizing. That putting your every 4 level stat boost into your prime stat is optimizing.</p><p></p><p>Are you saying that casual players would never do either of those?</p><p></p><p>See, there is a real disconnect here. Imaro, you and others seem to think that the game only has problems if we spend hours on the charops boards and deliberately set out to exploit the system. However, it's already been shown that basic, fundamental, and fundamentally simply character choices can fairly easily cause balance issues.</p><p></p><p>No one is talking about combing through fifteen splat books to come up with the perfect combo. We're talking about the ability to recognize why a fireball in 3e is not terribly effective (considering the actual damage output and comparing it to the creatures you face) compared to a plethora of non-direct damage spells.</p><p></p><p>AD&D had this baked right in. Sleep was outright better than any other 1st level spell. But, you were only going to get to cast a couple per day, and by the time you could cast more, the spell wouldn't affect anything. So, you got a big ticket "I Win" card, but only a couple of times. The fighter, OTOH, could plow through lots of encounters and come out ahead. Everyone's happy.</p><p></p><p>3e chucked that out the window by VASTLY expanding the caster lists, allowing easily crafted magic items BAKED RIGHT INTO THE CLASS, and making it trivially easy to bypass the per day limitations on casters.</p><p></p><p>And they didn't really boost the non-casters terribly much. A 2e fighter outdamages a 3e fighter significantly until double digit levels. And this is in a system where monsters have about 1/2 as many hit points. So, no, you don't see a whole lot of balance complaints in earlier D&D about casters vs non-casters, because there weren't a lot of balance issues. There were other issues - the casters sitting on their thumbs for much of a session because they had nothing to do - but balance wasn't the primary issue.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 6019526, member: 22779"] What level of optimization are we talking about though? We've seen in this thread that taking some people consider a wizard choosing an Int stat boost item is optimizing. That putting your every 4 level stat boost into your prime stat is optimizing. Are you saying that casual players would never do either of those? See, there is a real disconnect here. Imaro, you and others seem to think that the game only has problems if we spend hours on the charops boards and deliberately set out to exploit the system. However, it's already been shown that basic, fundamental, and fundamentally simply character choices can fairly easily cause balance issues. No one is talking about combing through fifteen splat books to come up with the perfect combo. We're talking about the ability to recognize why a fireball in 3e is not terribly effective (considering the actual damage output and comparing it to the creatures you face) compared to a plethora of non-direct damage spells. AD&D had this baked right in. Sleep was outright better than any other 1st level spell. But, you were only going to get to cast a couple per day, and by the time you could cast more, the spell wouldn't affect anything. So, you got a big ticket "I Win" card, but only a couple of times. The fighter, OTOH, could plow through lots of encounters and come out ahead. Everyone's happy. 3e chucked that out the window by VASTLY expanding the caster lists, allowing easily crafted magic items BAKED RIGHT INTO THE CLASS, and making it trivially easy to bypass the per day limitations on casters. And they didn't really boost the non-casters terribly much. A 2e fighter outdamages a 3e fighter significantly until double digit levels. And this is in a system where monsters have about 1/2 as many hit points. So, no, you don't see a whole lot of balance complaints in earlier D&D about casters vs non-casters, because there weren't a lot of balance issues. There were other issues - the casters sitting on their thumbs for much of a session because they had nothing to do - but balance wasn't the primary issue. [/QUOTE]
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