The Glade 4.0

Mostly it probably is a matter of the person writing the account wanting to talk about how horribly broken 3.5 and druids in particular are. I'd be willing to be actually seeing the campaign would reveal that the noncasting druid was not, in fact, as powerful as 3 fighters. Khross is right; that's impossible unless the druid was a powergamer and the 3 fighters went out of their way to design horrible fighters, or the druid found a way to consistently break the action economy.

A full-casting druid, counting the animal companion, is probably about as powerful as 2 fighters if all are equally optimized. The simple fact is that the 2 fighters have twice as many actions as the druid, and 3 fighters would have 3x as many, and contrary to what some people like to pretend, targeting a weak save is not an auto-win.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If we're assuming a full Level 20 Fighter vs. a full Level 20 Druid, the only thing that saves the Druid is flight. If the Druid cannot fly, the Fighter will ultimately win.

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Agreed Diamondeye. "Balance" in a RPG is a silly goal to strive for unless your only yardstick is combat/encounter usefulness. (in which case, you' would be playing EQ or the like)
Unfortunately powergamers & min-maxers have dominated the discussion of what the RPG world should be like, particularly dungeons and dragons.

Shadowrun 1st edition had it right. The first 30 pages or so of the rulebook don't have a single rule contained within them. Its ALL about setting.

My favorite characters I ever played were nearly totally useless in combat. (Granted they were LARP characters) The first actually had took flaws that left him pretty well catatonic in any combat situation, and I affected a stutter (and a going-into-panic-mode rapid speech pattern) that made social interactions difficult. (or social challenges rather)

But people sought me out to RP with me (it was a 100+ person LARP) because I had an interesting character and backstory.

WAY WAY WAY too much emphasis is placed on trying to make Role-playing games more like 1st person shooters, there is no effort made at actually creating an interesting character.

I found that post BTW, it's here, talking about his tier system for D&D classes. He has Druids in Tier 1 and Fighters in Tier 5, and then goes on to describe a no-casting variant where Druids are still Tier 3, as in worth three Tier 5 characters which is where Fighters are.

An interesting character doesn't have to be weak ingame. These concepts aren't mutually exclusive.

Just playing a Cleric or Druid isn't powergaming. You're playing a single class character, there's no min/maxing or powergaming involved here unless you consider just picking that class to be powergaming in and of itself, which is the problem. Powergaming would be combining multiple classes and prestige classes to create something broken, not just playing a pure-class Druid.

The level range in question was conspicuously absent from what he posted. I can't imagine a level 20 druid couldn't fly by some means or other.

However, your post illustrates perfectly the problems with a lot of the complaints about 3.X (not criticizing you here, just using it as an example):

1) The druid isn't fighting the fighters in question here, he's alongside them, and that's how the classes need to be balanced, yet many many arguments want them to face off mano a mano for pvp to determine if they're balanced in a completely sterile fight, as if that's how people play the game

2) Very, very little play is at level 20. In fact, the vast majority of all play is below level 12, yet people are always citing things that can be done at level 20 as somehow evidence that the entire system is broken. They ususally do it with Schrodinger's Wizard too, that always has every spell in his book, always has the right ones memorized, and is always able to do this because he always divines every possible course of action ahead of time... never mind the spell slots and time expended on all this divination.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The "tier" classifications are the biggest exercise in game balance mavens agreeing with themselves, and are emblematic of the entire problem with the "3.x is broken!" argument. The power of the highest tiers is wildly exaggerated, and usually based on what they can do at level 20, or at least level 15+, and is based entirely on arguments around RAW in which practically every supplement and rule is allowed, and any DM restriction, no matter how minor, on the rules-lawyering is called "DM FIAT!" and claimed to be a reason the system is "broken" despite the fact that the game is supposed to be played with DM customization and modification as an underlying assumption in its design - to say nothing of the simple expedient of creating NPC "tier 1" characters. Similarly, the bottom tiers are exaggerated in terms of how bad they are, and often inaccurately - for example, the Paladin is not "capable of doing one thing"; he does several things. Primarily fighting, but with a certain level of supplemental clerical power. His fighting ability is pronounced "not that good" and his healing and other powers arbitrarily pronounced unimportant, despite the fact that some parties may not even have a cleric in them; he might be the most powerful healer in some parties!



This is true. However, in order to avoid making some character concepts very weak, special options are needed to make them more viable. If you want to play a lightly-armored fencer, a Fighter doesn't work too well (although better than a 1E or 2E fighter could do it). A swashbuckler, especially multiclassed with rogue, or a swordsage, can pull it off much better.



No, just playing a cleric or druid is not overpowering. However a Druid is very very easy to powergame with, even with minimal optimization, the same for a cleric to a somewhat lesser degree. The thing is, however, most people do not intentionally set out to **** over the people they play D&D with or ruin their fun. That's a quick way to find your overpowered character is suddenly completely impotent when you're no longer invited to play him.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm well aware of where the balance curve actually exists; I'm just pointing that out that in the most popular vein of argument ...

Fighter > Druid.

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Heh.

I didn't think Taly wore braids...

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Holy shitsnacks!

Perhaps only when she's engaged in erotically charged sexventures. Or maybe just when talking about them.

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She's incognito.

I really like his face in the last panel. The situation is kinda of true though...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Depends on what the venue of the argument is. If you go say that on Giant in the Playground, there will be a race to see if the regular posters rip off your nuts before the mods ban you for trolling or not.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Whether or not Khross is actually correct aside, forum monkeys like those found on the OOTS forum are the primary problem with the current state of games.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Which is why I don't post there ...

I've read enough of those forums to know they aren't the kind of people I'd let DM for me or play for me in most circumstances.

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sign up to playtest here:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx ... l/20120109

Precisely my point. I feel that those voices, however, and those like them in other venues, are a major reason for the "balance uber alles" focus of 4E I'm not contesting whether Khross is right or not; I'm saying that Fighter > Druid, whether it's the most popular argument or not, is in disagreement with a very loud very obnoxious part of the player base.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That very loud, very obnoxious part of the player base spends entirely too much time trying to break game based on "balance" issues that don't really exist; in fact, 99.99999~% of balance issues rest with the DM. That said, the other problem is that people who think Druids are better in a 1 on 1 fight than a Fighter are the people who think Fighters are beneath them.

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Here is my input for 5e...

You have the following classes available to humans:
Fighter
Wizard
Cleric
Rogue

Demihumans:
Dwarves - fighters
Elves - Fighter Mages
Halflings - Rogues

There is no hit Matrices or AC, you roll a die and if the DM likes you you hit. If you piss him off you miss (This will bring back the days of Pizza offerings to the DM).

Fighters can use any weapon or armor, Clerics can only use blunt weapons and any armor, Wizards can only use staves and daggers and no armor, Rogues can use leather armor and one handed weapons, no shields.

Elves can use swords, bows and chain armor or no armor.

Halflings can use leather armor, and one handed weapons no shields.

Your set comes with everything you need to be a player, including dice and a wax crayon to color the dice with so you can read them.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I still have that set, although I think I've lost the wax crayon. On the plus side, dice technology has improved to the point where die markings can be done at the factory.

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Most of them are people who want to play fighters but can't keep up with other classes.

A WotC forum-jockey created a Class Tier ranking to rate power and versatility of classes, with 1 being the strongest and 6 being the weakest, in terms of potential. Honestly, it was fairly accurate, although people may debate the precise placement of their various favorite.

Fighter got as high as Tier 4 (with the dungeoncrasher variant class features), but out of core sits at 5.

There's a misconception that the system was to tell you that "you should play a wizard, cleric, or druid." It's not. in fact, it specifically points out Tier 3 & 4 as being at about the optimal point. Fighters need a bit of loving to hit that, but not much (4 skill points/level and high will save would be enough, in my opinion). The problem isn't fighters being too weak -- it's that the top end potential of wizards/druids/clerics/artificers/archivists/etc. is way too high.

Is this actually a problem? Depends what you're doing. If you're playing a tactical wargame? Yes it damn well is a problem. If you are in a structured, RP-focused world with a strong DM, it really isn't a problem at all. I don't approve of taking away class versatility and flavor merely to balance things out. There are better ways of handling the issue, and as Khross points out, a strong DM can resolve it.

This doesn't mean the balance issues don't exist, and no, it certainly does not mean a fighter is more powerful than a druid. Khross's medication is a little on the heavy side right now, I suspect. However, the game is better with those balance issues than it is without the variety in class abilities.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I agree fully with the first sentence. The second.. I think there's a certain basis for favoring the druid but it suffers from enormous exaggeration.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

D&D Pulls heavily from classic fantasy & mythology.

In a huge portion of fantasy and mythology its the priests and wizards who really do wield all the power.

The armies of Pharaoh are decimated by a single priest in Moses.
Gandalf turns the tide of several battles.

And the 'badguy' --the one who actually wields the power, (lets face it, the heroes are usually the underdogs who win by luck or wit, rather than brute force) is nearly always a wizard or priest. (Morgana la Fay, Circe, The Enchanter, Thusa Doom, Sauron, Sauromon)

Thematically, magic is supposed to be more powerful than steel.

In order for D&D to recreate fantasy 'accurately' magic must be able to do what people have come to expect of it from centuries of fantasy.

Magic generally is more powerful that melee, and is supposed to be. The problem in the Edition Wars is that 3E casting is exaggerated heavily.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This isn't a problem.

There is this mentality players have that because something is in the books, they get to have it or use it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not everything that's included in the game's rules is "for you." This gets confusing, because there are some things that certainly look like they should be "for you." Some games have entire books that aren't "for you," but are packaged to look like a player's splatbook - White Wolf is notorious for doing this.

In D&D, level 20 is not "for you." In fact, anything above level 10 isn't "for you." Those high levels are for creating the appropriate Merlin character for your game. This makes Merlin appear to be a higher-level version of you, and makes you feel more connected to him because he's statted like a PC rather than a monster. As a result, you feel as though Merlin is on your side.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Linear warriors and quadratic wizards

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Holy shitsnacks!