Post/Author/DateTime	Post
tygreen101 10-20-07, 05:54 PM	I personally feel that classes should be balanced so that no one can argue that person A has a more powerful character than person B. and from my point of view 3.X isn't about class balance, it's about class concept and as long as it's a well thought out concept that is all that matters. so please, share your thoughts: is concept more important than balance or are they both of equal important? thanks in advance,
vorpo 10-20-07, 06:03 PM	Balance doesn't exist. You can't even have everyone agreeing on a single class (most of them) being good or bad, overpowered or underpowered. To implement balance, many things that make DND so great would have to be taken out.
Jaxgaret 10-20-07, 06:46 PM	Class balance is relative. If everyone runs a run-of-the-mill stock Core game, then you can balance the classes to each other - otherwise, there are just too many variables. If the classes are balanced to each other in your average Core game (which they are not currently), they are still going to be unbalanced to each other in games that go beyond the core rules and assumed by-the-book vanilla gaming parameters. Whether class balance or class concept is more important is irrelevant; both are relative terms. What I think is cool, someone else may hate, and vice versa. Character concept is mostly up the player, anyway - flavor for any class can be altered to match what the player wants their character to be. And, as I stated before, class balance is relative, even if the classes are "balanced".
fatal error 10-20-07, 06:47 PM	Well, I think when someone comes up with a Class Concept they can sometimes lose sight of where that character falls in a 20 level system. If their concept includes really cool abilities that, in the imagined form, are equivalent to 8th level wizard spells, you can't make the class a 10 level prestige class entered at 6th level. Unless that is its capstone ability. Characters should be balanced against one another, and cool character concepts need to be spelled out mechanically at the right levels to maintain that balance.
StevenO 10-20-07, 09:17 PM	Both Balance and Concept are relative but to compare them together I believe Balance should be more important. As mentioned earlier some or even much of concept can be level dependant; "My character is mighty and able to kill huge dragons with a single touch," may be ok for a concept but balance means that either needs to be incredibly narrow and with lots of drawbacks OR it needs to come at higher levels. A funny thing about a character concept is that most could be realized using just the core classes. Now some concepts are much harder to do that way so using balance allow the creation of other ways to realize that concept. Idealy a character concept that is balanced with "new" classes should be about the same relative strength as a character whos concept match up with the abilitys of a core class.
luedre 10-20-07, 09:36 PM	First, you have to decide what is balance. You have your ranged, then you have your melee, then you have spell casters. Any of these can balance or neglect others, based on skills/feats/spells/abilities/saving throws. Take a scout, at ranged, he is quite powerful, but if he gets cornered, well his usefulness just went down an incredible ammount. A rogue or warrior mind controlled. As long as each class has a weakness to various other classes, and down have a pwn ability that is broke then it all works out. The point of class balance is to have a variety of party strengths, to make up for the parties weaknesses, hence the basic Cleric/Fighter/Mage/Rogue. But with the classes around you can be used to make a good party make up.