Post/Author/DateTime	Post
icemanjmw 09-02-03, 04:26 PM	First, I'd like to apoligize beforehand if I come off sounding like a jerk (or worse) in this post as that is not my objective. Also I am sorry to anyone that has already been involved in a thread like this before, but I believe the subject needs revisited once in a while. OK, disclaimer over, read at your own risk. I am sick and tired of hearing people, DMs in particular complain about how X rule is broken, or YZ combination of feats/abilities results in an overpowered character. The people who developed the core rulebooks spent a lot of time trying to balance everything in the game. I am sure they did their best trying to keep all the races, classes, abilities, and spells balanced. They made mistakes, I'm sure the people at Wizards won't deny that they messed up some things which is a big reason 3.5 was released. But let me ask all of you, do you honestly think you could have done better. I know I couldn't have, and believe all you will admit that you would have made mistakes too. The thing to remember is most of the mistakes aren't huge mistakes, they are subtle balance problems that only really show up when they are abused by players who meticulously read over the books trying to figure out which combinations result in a "broken" character. And that way of playing is fine for some people, however if that's not the way you wanna play it then there is one simple way to stop it, use common sense. One of your duties as a DM is to keep the game fun, if it gets to a point where it's not fun for you or your players put a stop to it. I'm going to assume that all of you other DMs are at least kind of friends with the people you play with. Sit down and explain to them the problems and come to a solution everyone can agree on. It really is that simple 99% of the time.
Pongolyn 09-02-03, 05:12 PM	Bear in mind, though, that playtesting is the most important phase of any sort of game design, and some of your best playtesters are your players. Quite a few of the greatest revisions in 3.5 were made because people on these boards and elsewhere discovered a flaw and complained about it (case and point: Bag of Rats). As long as people aren't being rude about it (which is a different can of worms entirely), calling a broken rule broken is nearly as important to quality control as the hardworking people behind the scenes. Pongo