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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6006157" data-attributes="member: 996">A lot of people have been playing D&amp;D for a long time.&nbsp; Either they figure out one way or another how to play it without it falling apart on them (simply not playing it to very high level, for instance), or they fix it, or they learn to like the way it breaks (especially once you have the system mastery to break it in your favor).&nbsp; The prescription to balance 3.x at higher levels includes things like:&nbsp; Never allow the 5MWD, anytime the party tries to rest before you've managed to squeeze a few rounds of relative ineffetiveness out of the casters, you have their Rope Trick or MMM dispelled or their planar sanctum breached or lever them with extreme time pressure or whatever it takes.&nbsp; Provide the party with false or misleading information as to what threats will be faced in the 'day' to come - yes, even though they have all manner of divination spells to see through such things.&nbsp; Make liberal use of anti-magic fields and zones, but tone down the encounters that include them to be handled by the non-casters at their now greatly-reduced strength.&nbsp; Provide non-casters with 'make work' encounters and challenges that are too trivial to expend spells on (depends on cracking down on resting, above).&nbsp; Populate encounters with 'sacrificial' enemies whose only purpose is to look bad-ass enough to draw the inevitable first wave of SoDs and the like, then start the real encounter.&nbsp; Etc, etc, etc...&nbsp; It helps if you have some player restraint, too - if the skilled optimizer plays the fighter, while the casual player has fun with a blasting sorcerer, you'll have a lot fewer issues with caster dominance.'Tactical play' certainly has suffered from that.&nbsp; It's been taken from having a broad, interesting range of options in combat, to 'playing on a grid.' Personally, I like a fairly expansive definition of Balance.&nbsp; Otherwise you fall into absurdities like 'balance just makes everyone the same.'&nbsp; Fun is entirely subjective, so, yeah, I'm sure you could.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6006157, member: 996"] A lot of people have been playing D&D for a long time. Either they figure out one way or another how to play it without it falling apart on them (simply not playing it to very high level, for instance), or they fix it, or they learn to like the way it breaks (especially once you have the system mastery to break it in your favor). The prescription to balance 3.x at higher levels includes things like: Never allow the 5MWD, anytime the party tries to rest before you've managed to squeeze a few rounds of relative ineffetiveness out of the casters, you have their Rope Trick or MMM dispelled or their planar sanctum breached or lever them with extreme time pressure or whatever it takes. Provide the party with false or misleading information as to what threats will be faced in the 'day' to come - yes, even though they have all manner of divination spells to see through such things. Make liberal use of anti-magic fields and zones, but tone down the encounters that include them to be handled by the non-casters at their now greatly-reduced strength. Provide non-casters with 'make work' encounters and challenges that are too trivial to expend spells on (depends on cracking down on resting, above). Populate encounters with 'sacrificial' enemies whose only purpose is to look bad-ass enough to draw the inevitable first wave of SoDs and the like, then start the real encounter. Etc, etc, etc... It helps if you have some player restraint, too - if the skilled optimizer plays the fighter, while the casual player has fun with a blasting sorcerer, you'll have a lot fewer issues with caster dominance. 'Tactical play' certainly has suffered from that. It's been taken from having a broad, interesting range of options in combat, to 'playing on a grid.' Personally, I like a fairly expansive definition of Balance. Otherwise you fall into absurdities like 'balance just makes everyone the same.' Fun is entirely subjective, so, yeah, I'm sure you could. [/QUOTE]

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