Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
There's a difference between game balance as an attempt to keep PCs on an approximately similar footing relative to each other, and game balance intended to make sure all fights are of approximately equal difficulty and appropriate for the PCs. You can have either one without the other, and addressing one really has no connection with the other in terms of how you got about it.
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Agreed. While I don't need perfectly balance between PCs, I like some "reasonable" level of balance. I wouldn't make players play newbies in a group of seasoned veterans, unless the specific player liked that type of challenge. OTOH, I don't generally give someone a new character that's exactly par to everyone else in the game. In fact, in most situations like this, there has already been an appropriate NPC that a player has taken over and fleshed out: already a connection to the PCs and already has a power level that's close to the others, if not on par. (My general idea here is that I want the players to have fun. If having a lesser character isn't any fun, then I wouldn't force it.) All of this is in degrees and subjective obviously.
The flip side is that I don't tailor encounters at all in my games. That feels artificial to me. Encounters are what they are and it's up to the players/characters to judge when to negotiate, stand and fight, or run for help.