If your players are fine with not using certain classes, then okay. The word "ban" though made me assume you've got a resentful player, which wouldn't be cool.
And, for example, turning teleport from a simple spell into a lengthy and expensive ritual that causes you to lose healing surges isn't complex houseruling or system tinkering to me. That's just a campaign setting tweak.
In this sense, I once banned any and all forms of raise dead. But my players agreed with that.
Hmmm, maybe teleport works like it did in the movie The Fly. Oh yeah! Campaign plot twist, here we go.
Sure, magic having to be found slows down Wizards some. Clerics and Druids? Not so much.
More to the point, people have a right to rather than houseruling a system for hours and hours (which probably won't even solve the problem) instead say "yeah, we don't want to deal with the problem, don't take problem classes." It's actually a fair thing to say. I used to do it all the time (there's very little I hate more than system tinkering at this point, back in AD&D it was fun, but over the years I've grown to hate it). Don't take Clerics, Druids, or Wizards, sounds good to me.
P.S. Teleport proof buildings suck, because then the big bad is stuck in their lair (unless they want to risk a telegank squad landing on them). That's just not very intimidating. "Grrr, I'm the big evil villain, I'm gonna terrorize the countryside by hiding in this building for the rest of my life."
P.P.S. Having entire classes (Fighter, Monk, Paladin) that are obsoleted by other classes (Druid, Cleric) is just poor. You can call it 'fetishizing balance' all you want, but it's just not fun for anyone when the Druid solves the entire combat and makes everyone else look like a chump (well maybe the druid enjoys it, but meh).
I would have thought you'd be the biggest proponent of balance, Yamagi, since if the point of D&D is to gain power, then the Druid and Cleric gain more power faster than every other class. Druid levels are worth more than fighter levels, they give you more power (cleric levels are miserable and should be prestiged classed out for a full spellcasting PrC ASAP).
I'm a proponent of rigorously pursuing balance only in games that are player vs player like fighting games.
However, even in fighting games people make the assumption that something is broken FAR too often and instead jump to that cry when really they're the ones with the problem. So I generally care less about balance and more about trying to overcome things because generally balance only becomes apparent after a long time of playing at high levels.
Also, why would I be a big proponent of it? I don't play D&D to gain power...I play it to have fun. If everyone were doing it to gain power well it'd be silly because everyone would inevitably pick the "strongest" class/race/etc combination like everyone picking the same character in an unbalanced fighting game.
That is why I don't understand the inordinate focus on "balance".
The other thing is, the continued focus on "combat" also causes this and it's a complete disconnect. If the characters are THAT powerful and there's nothing in the world that can compete with them they should be dealing with other planes or managing kingdoms. They have triumped over mundane combat. This is like the soft-cap of "Named" levels in AD&D. At those levels you have better things to do. And if you DON'T have better things to do than go into combat, than the things you are fighting are going to be prepared for your level of power.
DMs don't often enough put themselves into the shoes of the NPCs or monsters that would be dealing with this. If I'm a high level character in a world and am aware of what CAN AND WILL be leveled aganst me, you had better believe I am going to have precautions against it. I play to win. Similarly, if I am a player, I am expecting my enemy to expect that...so it escalates a bit into smarter thinking between hero and foe. THAT is how the situation HAS to be balanced otherwise you do get what you are describing. However that's the failing of the DM to craft appropriate challenges.
On the flipside, if the world DOESN'T scale to that level, the PCs need to start actually shaking things up in the world and establishing a power base and even start heading to other planes. Because that will keep giving them a challenge.
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
I'm a proponent of rigorously pursuing balance only in games that are player vs player like fighting games.
I think pretty much all D&D fans would agree with you about rigorously pursuing balance.
But in 3.5E at higher levels it's like Cleric, Druid, and Wizard are bengal tigers, most other caster classes are cheetahs, and non-casters are housecats. You don't have to rigorously pursue balance to percieve a problem with that degree of imbalance.
And even that wouldn't be a huge problem if it took a lot of system mastery to create those overpowered casters. But it can easily happen by accident.
In a system with unified mechanics, like 4E, it's pretty easy to make the classes approximately balanced. They don't have to be perfectly balanced. (I consider the unified mechanics directly beneficial in themselves, but I care more about the classes being approximately balanced.)
With non-unified mechanics like 3.5e or (to date) 5e, it's much more difficult. In fact, with either of those specific systems, in order to approximately balance the classes against each other one must make assumptions about how much of each sort of resource-consuming activity the party will face over the course of an adventuring day. And if those assumptions are significantly incorrect for any given campaign, whatever balance was achieved with those assumptions is significantly distorted.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
I'm a proponent of rigorously pursuing balance only in games that are player vs player like fighting games.
I think pretty much all D&D fans would agree with you about rigorously pursuing balance.
But in 3.5E at higher levels it's like Cleric, Druid, and Wizard are bengal tigers, most other caster classes are cheetahs, and non-casters are housecats. You don't have to rigorously pursue balance to percieve a problem with that degree of imbalance.
And even that wouldn't be a huge problem if it took a lot of system mastery to create those overpowered casters. But it can easily happen by accident.
In a system with unified mechanics, like 4E, it's pretty easy to make the classes approximately balanced. They don't have to be perfectly balanced. (I consider the unified mechanics directly beneficial in themselves, but I care more about the classes being approximately balanced.)
With non-unified mechanics like 3.5e or (to date) 5e, it's much more difficult. In fact, with either of those specific systems, in order to approximately balance the classes against each other one must make assumptions about how much of each sort of resource-consuming activity the party will face over the course of an adventuring day. And if those assumptions are significantly incorrect for any given campaign, whatever balance was achieved with those assumptions is significantly distorted.
And how did 4E do with unified mechanics? Hrmm...yeah
The vast majority of people don't care about balance. Just like the vast majority of people playing fighting games don't care if the game is actually well balanced. They care about varied, fun things that are enjoyable and flavorful.
Again, you also don't address my points about the DM taking into consideration what classes can do. Is that on the DM? Yup. Ever been a problem for me? Nope. It's pretty easy to deal with (as outlined above)
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
And how did 4E do with unified mechanics? Hrmm...yeah
Quite successfully, apparently.
Just not successfully enough to satisfy some corporate execs who had been promised the new hit MMORPG as a side effect of 4E, in addition to almost completely taking over the TTRPG market rather than merely dominating it.
So those corporate execs got rid of the designer and brought in someone who promised to make the dominant TTRPG more like the second-fiddle TTRPG. The result was that sales dropped to pretty close resemble the second-fiddle TTRPG as well.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
And how did 4E do with unified mechanics? Hrmm...yeah
Hey Yamagi, what this board really doesn't need more of is edition warriors.
I simply said that players playing 3E have a good reason to view spellcasters as gamebreaking and broken (like infinite ranged attacks on a short cooldown that are undodgeable in a fighting game about kicks and punches broken), and I would not blame them for banning those classes, but that they should just outright ban the classes rather than complaining about them.
If you really can't hear a simple, factual critique without raging and starting a war, these boards really aren't gonna be good to you. Most people here are well aware of the good points and the flaws of each edition, and many of us can maturely discuss them without starting an edition war.
Hell, I haven't even ragged on pathfailure ONCE in these forums yet, and that takes some significant restraint~
Coddle players who whine to get their way; these players will give you a lot of DM advice and tell you how easy it is to make up stories for their boring characters, but never offer to DM in this Utopian D&D paradise they envision in their head. Besides, they are always threatening to take their dice and go home. But never do. Never actually doing anything, but always quick to tell you how it is done.
Dole out artifacts and special powers like a drug-dealer at an album-release party.
Put a trampoline at the bottom of every pit.
Put pits in every hallway. Unless there are pits in every hallway. And at least a half-arse reason why the players should think there might be pits in every hallway.
Don't be inconsistent arbitrarily.
If you are doing something for a reason that requires the player not to know about it... Don't tell them about it beforehand. Don't tell them about it during. Don't tell them about it just because they are surprised at what happened and go on a whine.
Don't invite me to a game and kill characters with maniacal joy because of some quirk with your world you didn't explain to the players because their characters should know.
Change the entire course of your world because I can't figure something out.
House rule everything because someone likes their character so much that the idea of you 'arbitrarily' deciding that they die when they stick their head in a falling guillotine seems to them as the height of control-freakish behavior and arrogance.
Don't apply the rules-as-written when it is your brain that needs to be applied.
Don't listen to me. I haven't played D and D in 6 days and I'm jonesin' big time. It makes me grumpy.
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells? DM: Awesome. Yes.
Hell if I know. If I had to take a stab at it, I would say that they really liked sitting around and pretending to be other people. I can't even chalk it up to them being D&D purists because they liked a lot of other games just as much. I think it was because they thought magic was OP to the point of ruining the game. They also hated high level play now that I think about it. They routinely commented on how levels 5-9 were the best in all of D&D. Personally I liked levels 1, and 20, the best. Does that make me an extremist?
I hate to agree with a bunch of people who sound like general jerks, but in this case they were right. Many magic-using classes do break 3.5E, and I've banned them when I DMed (typically the Cleric/Wizard/Druid/Sorcerer, as the Bard/Paladin/Ranger were not problems).
That being said, there's no call for being jerks. Tell people the expectations when they sit down. "Clerics, Wizards, Druids, and Sorcerers are banned (as well as artificers, Psions, and a few more obscure classes). If you like the Druid, I encourage you to make a Wildshape ranger, the Wizard can make a wonderful Beguiler or Dread Necromancer. Also here's the tome of battle, flip through and see if you like anything."
Personally I think the book of nine swords really screws things up, and my favorite classes to play are things like the dread necromancer, warmage, and warlock. I'm a big fan of those dark magic types. My last character was a chaotic neutral (not the dread variety) necromancer with the banned schools of evocation and transmutation. I also kind of just plain avoided conjuration spells like the plague, so I wasn't that unbalancing. It was actually a really cool build based around the Black Lore of Moil and using things like fear spells and other status effects. In the right situations I could be pretty effective. I had fall back options incase I ran into things that could shut me down (believe it or not I was surprisingly ineffective against undead) and constructs.
With no Ray of Deanimation and spells that pretty much only affected living things, constructs hurt. I pretty much had to rely on my undead (I used the Unearthed Arcana specialist familiar variant which was fun) against some things or I would get crushed. And by rely on, I mean use as a distraction until someone with the necessary tools could turn their attention to help me. At low levels I actually felt pretty weak. I was going for this themed character that was all about the idea that necromancy was about the power to control life and death, and there was more to it than undead. It was fun character. His name was Mura, a play on words for the Sanskrit word for death. Yeah, I have known for a long time that once the standard casters reach a certain point they seriously throw things out of whack, and that was one of my biggest problems with 3.5. Everything always had to be tuned around the casters, which made it difficult to provide an appropriate challenge for everyone else. I feel like I did okay on that though. Managed to get the previous game I ran to level 27ish before encounters were solely determined by initiative, and even then things were always messy.
P.S. Teleport proof buildings suck, because then the big bad is stuck in their lair (unless they want to risk a telegank squad landing on them). That's just not very intimidating. "Grrr, I'm the big evil villain, I'm gonna terrorize the countryside by hiding in this building for the rest of my life."
P.P.S. Having entire classes (Fighter, Monk, Paladin) that are obsoleted by other classes (Druid, Cleric) is just poor. You can call it 'fetishizing balance' all you want, but it's just not fun for anyone when the Druid solves the entire combat and makes everyone else look like a chump (well maybe the druid enjoys it, but meh).
The bolded part was always a problem for the reasons you describe. I think Wizards made some attempts at band-aid fixing it that worked out decently well if your group wasn't too creative with entry strategies. There was this one spell that both alerted the caster if there was an incoming teleport and redirected the teleport, and though the teleport had gone off target. Not a perfect solution because it only covers a small area and is still a little contrived. The other problem I had was certain scrying spells that let you shoot the crap out of someone from a few leagues away. Sure its cool to read about it in some of the Forgotten Realms novels but still. Scrying shields help again as they require a roll, but again, still, a little contrived.
However, even in fighting games people make the assumption that something is broken FAR too often and instead jump to that cry when really they're the ones with the problem.
This. This until my dying breath. Whenever I am dealing with any game, and I find something that I feel like is unbalancing, my first reaction now is, "how can I get around this/use it to my advantage?" This is exactly what Day[9] says about the idea of balance in SC2 and I couldn't agree with him more. Sure, something may be really good, it may even be better than several other options. It may even be better than most if not all other options, but that doesn't necessarily equate to unbalanced. Just to make this point there is this funny little video WoWCrendor did on Youtube about his SC2 laddering experience.
Dragon? Give yourself a 20 on your next attack roll, hit them with Shivering Touch using Mage Hand, laugh.
Even with my borderline laconic view on the idea of balance, I thought that was dumb. Same thing for ray of clumsiness. Dragons are suposed to be the foe that every class is scared of. Really with careful use of low-level attribute damage there is a lot that you can neutralize that would otherwise hurt really bad. You have to do some pretty silly stuff to get around that.
And how did 4E do with unified mechanics? Hrmm...yeah
I don't think anyone could really argue that it balanced the game. It definitely turned me off though. I don't like my games to be that uniform. Even when I run World of Darkness I take pains to include a variety of different creatures so as to be using different systems as much as possible. I'm glad other people liked that kind of system and got to have fun with it, but that was one of the main reasons I went to Pathfinder and other games. Though I am about done with 3e simply because I have been doing it for so long. I'm really excited to see what we can do with the supposed modularity of Next.
And how did 4E do with unified mechanics? Hrmm...yeah
I don't think anyone could really argue that it balanced the game. It definitely turned me off though. I don't like my games to be that uniform. Even when I run World of Darkness I take pains to include a variety of different creatures so as to be using different systems as much as possible. I'm glad other people liked that kind of system and got to have fun with it, but that was one of the main reasons I went to Pathfinder and other games. Though I am about done with 3e simply because I have been doing it for so long. I'm really excited to see what we can do with the supposed modularity of Next.
That's the thing. They worked so hard to make a balanced game that SEEMED so balanced that they forgot that people like powerful stuff that seems broken. People gobble that up.
They tried to copy so much from popular MMO's and the like without fully appreciating WHAT is so popular about those games. They got the HOW down pat...but the WHAT and WHY totally escaped them.
I will see what is in Next...I just do not do well with a foot-in-the-door on the design process...either I have to have input, be doing actual QA work (like my work for Harmonix) or do nothing but wait for the finished product. Anything else will drive me bananas.
EDIT: Just wanted to add that, I totally agree they made a well balanced game. However, well balanced games that look & quack like well balanced games do not build the hype like a game where the balance is unknown.
I'm on a journey of enlightenment, learning and self-improvement. A journey towards mastery. A journey that will never end.
If you challenge me, prepare to be challenged. If you have something to offer as a fellow student, I will accept it. If you call yourself a master, prepare to be humbled. If you seek me, look to the path. I will be traveling it. #SuperDungeonMasterIITurbo
In all my years of playing the "horribly unbalanced" versions of the game, I never once thought it was unbalanced. High level wizards decimated everyone else, and that seemed perfectly fair. And I'm not saying that because I played wizards. I never played a wizard. I figure they deserve it, they needed the most XP, had the lowest HP, etc. You'd be lucky if your party's wizard survived to level 2, much less 20. But now with 4e, I greatly appreciate the balance.
