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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 2545719" data-attributes="member: 3424">Generally agree, but I think the real question is not the reasons why they are the most powerful/least powerful, but the reasons why they were designed that way. I'd say that the cleric was designed to be the most powerful class mechanically, because its primary function - healing and buffing the party - is not as fun as fighting the monsters in melee or blasting them to bits with magic. So, the cleric was given more mechanical benefits so that it would be more attractive to play. For the races, I would agree that the half-orc was the least powerful, followed by the half-elf. I can think of a couple of reasons why they were designed this way. First, half-orcs and half-elves as crossbreeds should be rare (IMO, despite the fact that there seems to be one in every book <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />) and a slight mechanical disadvantage keeps the number of half-orc and half-elf PCs down. Second, there is the roleplaying angle - a player can have a lot of fun with the archetype of the angst-ridden outcast caught between two worlds, or (for a half-orc) the archetype of the dumb brute, so these two races can be at a slight mechanical disadvantage.Again, I generally agree. I think the game designers realized that buffing during combat was no fun because it ate up all the buffer's actions, and buffing before combat is very dependent on DM whim. It's similar to the cleric problem - most people would rather do something concrete than play support. Personally, I think the game would have been better served if the designers introduced move-action spells rather than swift spells, but maybe that would have been even more confusing. The main downside is that it reduces the value of the Quicken Spell feat, which they had gone through such great effort to build up again in 3.5e by changing the haste spell.When playing "Uno", any player who has one card left must announce this fact by saying "Uno".Why it's good:1. It creates tension and excitement in the game. Once someone says "Uno", all the other players sit up, take notice and ususally gang up on that player. It prevents the game from ending with a whimper because the other players aren't paying attention.2. When it happens, it encourages the other players to use their "big guns": the Skips, the Draw Twos, the Wild Draw Fours, etc. instead of hoarding them. This makes the end-game even more interesting.3. The eventual winner knows that he won depsite giving the other players fair warning and despite them ganging up on him. This gives him a bigger emotional pay-off.</blockquote>

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