So, what's with the trolls trying to deny 3.5 is unbalanced?

So, what's with the trolls trying to deny 3.5 is unbalanced?
I thought that was like the one thing everyone reasonable could agree on, and that the D&D community as a whole manages to work around that with the understanding that it's unbalanced, but I shit you not, I've seen a guy on this very board trying to argue otherwise, and that everyone who disagrees is some kind of idiot.
What's up with that? It's the weirdest case of doublethink I've seen in a couple weeks.

>trolls
Seems like you answered your own question there OPster.

It's the nature of "arguments".

Because the initiator of the argument is a fallible and emotion-prone human, the argument is perpetuated despite evidence literally because "muh feelings".

3.5e holds a place in some players' hearts as a "good time" and their memories convince them that there is nothing wrong with the game or that everything is fixable.
Sure, maybe they have good points on how to fix some parts of the game. But they're conveniently ignoring an avalanche of counterpoints arguing that the system is a waste of time and other systems can do the "fixing" by simply being what they are.

You are trying to fight what amounts to nostalgia, which is not something won rationally.

1. It's not as unbalanced as anti-D&D trolls like to pretend it is. The balance issues tend to simply be well known because everyone has played the game and there's so much written about it, and people who hate the game typically just recite complaints without really understanding them.
2. The balance issues are pretty easy to fix or navigate around, making it a non-issue for most groups.
3. The anti-D&D trolls hope to pretend that balance issues are the entirety of the game, and that they can "objectively" prove that the game is bad, hence why they make people more defensive about the topic

It's all pretty obvious.

It's one part trolls being trolls, and one part meaningless personal experiences beating out objective facts.

You can tell, because every time someone starts claiming that Monks aren't weak or some equally nonsensical bullshit, they go to arguments like "well in my party there's a guy playing a Monk and he does more damage than the party Wizard so that means Monks are super powerful!"

It's hardly nostalgia. It still remains one of the most played and studied games to this day. The arguments about it being easy to fix shouldn't be handwaved away just because your main agenda is try to get people to stop playing it.

See, this is the kind of poster I was talking about in the OP.
He's got some kind of culture war going on that I think is imaginary. Everything is always about agendas and shit. It can never just be someone who plays a lot of D&D who recognizes the problems are a constant bullshit pain that never really goes away, and that D&D is just sort of the bland default that people get when they can't decide what other system to play.

What I dislike is this idea that "balance" is something that intrinsically belongs in an RPG.

I mean, why? Shouldn't you be able to play an underpowered, weaker, or more challenging character?

I like what the LOTR CCG did by having heroes have a rating based on how much threat they generated, i.e aggro.

So essentially, you could have the DM assign your character a score based on their power level, point buy, class etc. And that translates to creatures just naturally wanting to kill and eat you, or seeing you as a more powerful threat.

>Shouldn't you be able to play an underpowered, weaker, or more challenging character?
Yes, you should be able to play a lower levelled character.

The problem is when people who are supposed to be as powerful as each other are not.

1 and 3 are on point, 2 is a load of shit and we both know it

The "you can just fix it!" argument doesn't hold any water. If it needs fixing, that means it's broken. And sure there's a decent game in there if you pile on enough houserules, but that's true of just about every game.

Judging a game on the merits of things that aren't actually part of the game is nonsensical. A bad game is a bad game, even if you can turn it into a better game by making up your own rules because why even bother if you could be playing a good game instead?

Okay, wait.
There are new players that look at the current catalog of games and say, "that's the one"?

I think the reason it's still played is that players are pulled into groups using it. GMs being so rare that they control the fucking spice and universe.

Why shouldn't everyone have similar numerical efficacy but dissimilar narrative projection of this number?
Who requests to be shitty when their friends run the show because their numbers are better? (especially in 3.5e's case).

A game being balanced doesn't stop you being able to do any of that. It just gives you guidelines as to the exact difference in power, by way of that convenient summation of personal power, levels.

Maybe if your agenda wasn't so obvious, you wouldn't be called out on it?
I mean, you are treating your personal opinions as facts. That's the very basis of fanaticism.

Most people don't think of D&D as bland, and those problems are less of a pain for them than they are for you. You may adamantly think otherwise, to the point of hoping to stop people from playing it, but that's literally an agenda.

That's what levels are for, dumb-dumb. If you really want to play a weak character, you can achieve that by playing a level 1 guy in a level 5 party. But playing a level 5 Fighter in a party of level 5 Wizards and Druids shouldn't make your character useless.

see? Everything is all about agendas. With a heavy dollop of doublethink, because he is obviously pursuing a troll agenda.

Take a look at /a/, /v/, /co/ or /tv/ on any given day
Anger is addictive. It feels good to be mad and fight about things.

>someone doesn't like what I like
>IT MUST BE A HIDDEN AGENDA, (((THEY))) ARE CONSPIRING AGAINST ME AGAIN!

This must be an enemy Fate Core stand!

Are you REALLY going to pretend you made this thread for any other reason? I'm sorry people are calling you out so early and forcing you on the defensive, but you must be mindless if you think that calling someone else a troll will make it less obvious that you are one yourself.

Don't you see that's literally a balancing mechanic? And probably not a very good one.

If you think balance doesn't matter then just tell your players they can make whatever kind of character they want from the outset. But something like 3.PF is not an example of that. It doesn't let one person make a level 20 dragon fighter-sorcerer with a custom spell list while another person plays an level 1 goblin wizard leper. It puts heavy restrictions on the kind of character you make and still doesn't come out balanced.

Basically: you can have a system which is super freeform and imbalanced, or a system that is balanced but restrictive. If it's restrictive AND imbalanced then you're taking the worst of both worlds.

Nobody denies that 3.5 is unbalanced. It's infamous tier system is literally the fanbase as a whole acknowledging that the game is unbalanced.
What 3.5 fans deny is the importance of the imbalance to the enjoyment of the game. It's the argument that, since the balance issues are very well documented, it's easy to play balanced games of 3.5 as long as the players and Gm are competent and communicate well beforehand.

No but bro you can fix 3.5e so that it all works

I made this thread specifically because some troll was being cray-cray, and I wanted to ask people why.
Apparently, you followed.

>you're not allowed to discuss the flaws of one of the most popular games in the world

You're right, let's pretend 3.5 is balanced and never bring up anything bad about it ever again.

Could you post a list of all the things you like so we can make sure never to say anything bad about them either, lest we provoke your autistic wrath and persecution complex once more?

Pfff yeah like communicating, "let's just play anything else so we don't have to remake this game engine"

kek

No, the guy was literally denying wizards weren't unbalanced.
Hence my confusion.

er, denying wizards were unbalanced.
Double negatives. They getcha.

OP, shut the fuck up with your system war trolling.

Why are you so obsessed with talking about a game you don't want to play? The fuck is wrong with you, other than that you are a little bitch who can't handle a game being popular?

Oh god, you trolls really are pathetic, especially if you think you are fooling anyone at this point.

>oh no, they detected I'm trolling
>I better call literally everyone else in the world a troll

Oh, I play it. It's a good time sometimes, even if a bit bland. I just think it's crazy that this guy over here
is calling everyone who understands the system is unbalanced and work around that trolls.

>still pretending you're not obvious trolls

Really? To the point of strawmanning and misusing "literally"?

Here's your last (You) from me.

Jokes aside, that's a valid alternative. I'm a fan of 3.5, and I enjoy playing it, but it's far from what I'd think of my go-to RPG for scratching the D20 itch. That's what Mutants and Masterminds is for.

Who was? I have no idea who you're referring too, so I don't know if there was a misunderstanding, the guy didn't express his argument well enough, or if he was just a fucking idiot. Got any links to the thread, or screencaps of the argument, or something?

The guy I was talking to last thread. That shit was wack.
And he showed up in this thread, over here
to insist it's trolling to say that casters are unbalanced. Let me see about getting you some links, this shit's weird.

Do you have any actual arguments or are you just going to spam the thread whining about evil trolls conspiring against you?

Link me to the thread? I've been away from Veeky Forums for a few days.

No, I'm insisting that it's trolling to make this thread about some boogeyman trolls, when all you really wanted to do is shitpost.
Notice how all you've been doing is shitposting? What a shock, since that's all you're here on this site to do.

I recognize 3.5 has balance issues. But, I also recognize when trolls are just trolling, which is why I'm calling you out as idiots trying to stir up arguments for no fucking reason other than you are trolls.

Here's the most recent example of this type of behavior. He advocates quite a lot of working around the wizard's enormous power, but staunchly refuses to admit that this is because the wizard is unbalanced or broken.

Shit's weird.

The more you ignore 3.PF's guidelines as GM the better it is.

The skills are too weak and the caster-level scaling is too generous. The issues these introduce are exacerbated by the regimented and explicit wealth-by-level and magic item budget stuff. Meaningful character niches get lost between those interactions.
These can be mitigated pretty much entirely so long as the GM assumes a greater competency floor for the non-casters and the players all have some self regulation.

>asked to provide evidence of his claims

>doesn't

Hmmmmm....

>I recognize 3.5 has balance issues
See, if you'd admit that instead of claiming wizards were totally balanced, you just had to bend the entire system around them, then this thread wouldn't exist because you would have had a reasonable stance.

If you don't like threads like these, why do you make the problem for yourself in the first place by arguing things that are unablanced are totally balanced?

>Notice how all you've been doing is shitposting?
The only trolling in this threat is you driving it off the rails because you're paranoid about some imaginary conspiracy, and people responding to your lunacy.

oh, I meant for that to be a thread link, since the guy asked for a thread.
Oh well.

So, link a post that actually supports your claim.

Or.. is this all just an bad act on your part?

>addressing a boogeyman

Who are you talking to?

Here are some examples of the guy arguing his face off that things are balanced, despite basing all of his arguments on theoretical edge cases VS other people arguing from experience.

The thread goes on like this for quite a while, with the guy insisting that the stuff is totally balanced, as long as you design the entire game around the wizard. Like I said, shit was weird.

I'm not seeing it. He's not arguing that things are balanced, and even admits that it isn't. He's just saying it's not as bad as people make it out to be, which is a perfectly true. If we listened to the trolls, they would have us believe that the game is unplayable.

He might be erring on the apologetic side, a bit more heavily than even for my own tastes, but there's no troll denying that it is unbalanced as the OP claimed.

Please, try again.

My group plays exclusively 3.5 (I say exclusively, but aside from a one shot at the beginning of summer, we haven't played in a while thanks to scheduling), but considering each of us has played other editions and other rpgs in general, we don't mind it. The complaint that a cleric, or a druid are the most broken combat beasts doesn't hold much weight when we build healers and don't roll druids. Same with caster supremacy. People always bitch, complain, and put heavy emphasis on how a properly built wizard or sorc makes any other class pointless to play as. But when the caster runs evocation heavy combat spell, the argument goes out the window. The problem is that people put so much emphasis on how 'if you play this class it's broken because you can take feats a through g and get spells j through w', that everyone's convinced that's the only way to play that class, and that everyone does it. Almost every other problem stems from this state of mind, and it pisses me off.

of course in the case of my group and the lack of game play problems we face short of actually playing the game, a key point might be that we always get to ~level 10 or lower before starting over

That's the weird part. He keeps admitting that you have to work the system around the character, but every time someone says "that means it's not balanced", he goes blue in the face and calls them a troll.
Hence why I wanted to ask what the hell is up about it?

C'mon now. You're making these claims, and I'm seeing nothing in that thread to support them. Give me the links to the posts, because from what I've seen in that thread, you are exaggerating quite heavily to the point where you are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Give me some links. You obviously thought this was an issue important enough to make a thread about it, so it shouldn't be so difficult that I need to ask you several times.

This... isn't people saying that it's balanced. This is just people saying that the lack of balance isn't (that big of) an issue.

Jesus Christ, is this literally just an argument on semantics?

> A bad game is a bad game, even if you can turn it into a better game by making up your own rules because why even bother if you could be playing a good game instead?
I bet you're one of the low energy fags who hate VtM:B

What would you expect from a troll thread?

user, making a thread doesn't require some kind of cosmic effort. It requires 30 seconds of "man, what the hell was up with that guy". If you want to read the majority of the conversation, you can just start at 56551320 that I linked earlier and work down. The guy systemically calls everyone who disagrees with his statement an idiot, or claims the complaints of things that damaged their games were "hilarious".

It sure dang well feels like it, the guy took the time to individually call everyone shitposters, idiots, memers, or other for running into caster problems.

Here is the guy calling someone a memer for having druid problems in his first game.

No, don't try to run now. Chalking it up as "well, it might just be my persecution complex" doesn't change you from being a troll so butthurt that you made a thread to complain about imaginary trolls.

I'm looking at what you linked, and I'm not seeing anything to support your claims. Either actually give us something concrete to work with, or admit that you are just a butthurt troll and we can end the thread here.

>I'm looking at what you linked
So you're not actually reading the post chain, to see where the guy calls someone a memer for running into druid problems in his first game.

And then you are working your hardest to insist that "the other" is both butthurt and a troll.

I don't give a flying fuck what it feels like. He was saying that it wasn't unplayable, not that it wasn't unbalanced, and there's a huge fucking difference between that.
I don't give a shit if the person you were arguing with is a cunt. You didn't start a thread about cuntish threeaboos, you started a thread about 3.5 fans claiming that the game was unbalanced. No such claim has been made.

Fuck, it just occurred to me that every fucking edition war argument was held between people arguing over something being unbalanced or not, but they didn't even have a common definition on what made something unbalanced or not. Fucking years of stupidity because of mistranslations and misunderstandings.

But user, he claimed everyone pointing out ways the game was unbalanced were trolls, memers, shitposters, or idiots. Rather than, you know, that yes, you may run into problems with that raw.

That's because the "bears are overpowered" thing IS a bit of a meme. It's always brought up by trolls in any discussion about 3.5, because animals have pretty good stats and tend to hit above their CR in melee. It's a legitimate concern, but one that gets brought up so often that it's become one that trolls don't really understand that well and tend to exaggerate its importance.

The guy took it a step too far in assuming that the other guy's first experience with the game had to be at level one, but we're still not looking at anything close to resembling what OP is complaining about. Are you going to try again?

That is specifically what I was complaining about, user.
Immediately dismissing anyone having any sort of problem as a troll, a memer, or what have you, instead of acknowledging that problems with the balance can cause this kind of thing, and that it's unfortunate.

C'mon now. What's with this act?
When asked to actually support your claims, you fail this badly? And then want to claim you didn't make this thread because you're just a lonely troll?

user, there was a direct link to him calling someone having a common druid problem a memer.
What's with these weird airs you are putting on?

user, he's not saying that the game is balanced. He's saying that your personal experience in the matter isn't relevent to the argument. Because it isn't.

It's actually pretty relevant.

user, it has to be relevant, because otherwise you are working with casters in a vacuum.
And casters are -way- more powerful in a vacuum than in someone's personal experiences.

Anon1 says that 3.5 has issues, but that the issues occur a lot less often than is often than believed.
Anon2 says that he has had these issues occur to him.
Anon2's personal experience is irrelelvent, because it doesn't matter if it happened to him or not. The fact that you encountered an issue could just as easily mean that you're one of the unlucky few who encountered the one of 3.5's flaws, not that everyone who plays encounters these same issues.

You might as well claim that, because you lost your arm to a shark attack but have never had malaria, that sharks are more dangerous to humans than mosquitoes (which is provably false).

Look, I just explained that part to you. He's not "immediately dismissing" someone as a "memer", he's arguing that the guy was using a meme, rather than actually discussing their own experience. And, the evidence seems to point in that direction, especially if you toss away the naive thought that there are no anti-D&D trolls who don't just parrot the same arguments they've seen in these near constant troll threads.

What's unfortunate is the lengths you are trying to go to in order to save face and perform damage control, when all you're ending up doing is providing more and more evidence that you are nothing more than a misguided and not particularly bright troll from the start.

Want to prove otherwise? Link something that actually has some teeth. I want to see one of these "unbalanced 3.5 deniers".

Or, own up to the idea that you are just upset about people arguing that it's not as unbalanced as some people try to make it out to be.

except in this case, it's anons 2-6 who had these issues occur to them. And it does matter if imbalance happened. That's sort of the entire point.

Just gonna drop in to say who's more unreasonable?

The person claiming to speak for the experiences of multiple people across the world/country based on their own experiences or the person denying that by saying their own experiences contradict this?

Both are flawed in some manner but I'll tell you right now the first is MUCH MORE APPARENT in its flaws than the latter.

I'm actually upset that literally everyone in that post chain was dismissed and called a memer, a shitposter, or a troll, because they had problems with D&D being unbalanced. Hence why I linked the post chain.
Really though, why did you follow into this thread to defend yourself like this? It only hammers in the point that you've got some weird shit going on with you.

So, I have to ask:
Why do you keep insisting innocuous posts are trolls and shitposters? You keep doing it, and it always leads to thread derails.

Unless you have the personal experiences of a sizable portion of 3.5's playerbase, or a statistically relevant unbiased distribution, it still doesn't matter.

But, lets assume for a moment that I'm wrong and that personal experience is relevant. Anon1 doesn't know that. He's obviously arguing from a deductive perspective, so when he claims that your personal experiences doesn't matter, that doesn't translate to him saying "the game is balanced."

For this topic, the person using deductive reasoning is more correct than the person using inductive reasoning. Significantly so.

It sort of does translate to him saying the game is balanced when he takes the time to call literally everyone who has run into balance issues a troll or an idiot.

If you hold the position that everyone who feels the game has balance issues is a troll or an idiot, then you are pretty tacitly saying you think the game doesn't have balance issues.

actually, he's arguing from an inductive persective where he is saying his opinions represent the entire D&D populace. Hence the "these problems almost never occur" schtick he went with. He was speaking for the fanbase with no statistics to back it besides his own preferences and experiences.

>For this topic, the person using deductive reasoning is more correct than the person using inductive reasoning. Significantly so.

How? This is a tabletop game we're talking about not forensice science.

Wouldn't the argument putting forth the PROBABLE answer make more sense when talking about the feelings of multiple people across the world vs the argument that something is certain?

Sure but that's because your points aren't points. Obviously I could not pick the class to begin with, pick all the worst options, or just dump the stats it needs the most. The fact I would even need to consider doing any of that is the problem.

>I'm actually upset that literally everyone in that post chain was dismissed and called a memer, a shitposter, or a troll,

Then get upset with the trolls who shitpost all day and every day about how much they don't like a game they don't even play. If people made daily threads to complain about VtM's terrible balance, would you hesitate to call them memers, shitposters, or trolls?

3.5 gets a lot of flak because it's the game everyone's played and can argue about, and also is a game that people have irrational grievances towards. They believe in a zero sum interpretation of the gaming community, and that 3.5's continued popularity is somehow an affront to them that must be corrected. This isn't conjecture, this is statements that they themselves admit to believing, to the point where it forms some of the core of their trolling mantra.

Want people to be able to discuss the game in a reasonable manner? Address the actual trolls, the one's who shitpost about a game they don't even want to play and have no interest in it other than to get other people to stop playing it, instead of trying to claim that the people who are arguing with them are at fault.

>Hence why I linked the post chain.

Where's the teeth. I want something something with actual bite, and not something that just highlights that you are either biased and hyper-sensitive, or just a flat out troll.

C'mon. No more dancing around. Either own up, or pull out one of these trolls who claim that 3.5 is not unbalanced.

>Really though, why did you follow into this thread to defend yourself like this? It only hammers in the point that you've got some weird shit going on with you.

I'm willing to argue this much because I'm not that guy you took an issue with. Conscience clear and standing on the right side of things. Now, are you going to own up, or are you going to shut up? Or, perhaps, are you just going to try and troll a little more?

>It's a legitimate concern
>tend to exaggerate its importance

You seem like the guy from the other thread, user. Especially what with your exactly-the-same-post-style and insistence that everyone having problems is a troll.

It's something to think about. But, some people are willing to try and claim that everyone should never play 3.5 because of it, and it's not very hard to call that an exaggeration of importance.

Why did you follow into this thread to defend yourself like this when it's pretty obvious you were being a shitty dude and making the 3.5 community look bad? While simultaneously giving the tacit statement that everyone who has these problems is a troll, and thus, these problems aren't real?

Where's the links user? All I've seen is people saying that people having

>Or, perhaps, are you just going to try and troll a little more?

Really? Just going straight for that option? Going to just try and avoid all I just levied against you, because you know you have nothing to support your claim? And, you're just going to essentially admit you were trolling from the start by trying to divert the argument in a vain hope of saving face?

Disappointing, in so many ways.

Last chance though. Any actual links, or just conjured boogeymen?

I like how you choose to not engage with any post pointing out the logical problems with your previous statements.

It looks like you misclicked. You probably meant to address

No, it's you thinking that it translates like that because you're looking at things from your perspective, not his. It's entirely possible for someone to think that 3.5 is unbalanced but that Veeky Forums's opinions of it are too harsh.
Case in point: me. I think that 3.5 is unbalnaced, but that Veeky Forums's opinions of it are too harsh.

He gives much more deductive reasoning than inductive reasoning, like when he says that low-level wizards are less of an issue because they don't have many spells, and that color spray isn't that OP because of so many low-level enemies that are immune to it.

because inductive reasoning only works if you actually have a statistically relevant sample size, not just a handful of anons on Veeky Forums.

He's not the one with multiple posts linking to him.

>more deductive
Those are actually both quite inductive, based on personal preferences and experiences.
His entire argument is in fact based around personal experiences.

The guy provides deductive reasoning. Saying their based on inductive reasoning is dismissing everything he's saying.

Hell, you just dismissed the deductive reasoning that guy provided. The fuck is wrong with you?

His 'deductive reasoning" states that it isn't a problem because there are "so many" creatures that are immune to it.
Discounting that it is in fact a relatively small fraction of the published creatures that are immune to it, and that viewing it as so many is inherently based on personal experience.

No, you don't need lived experiences to realize that wizards having a small number of spell slots (evidence) means they can't spam their spells (observation), or that the existence of skeletons (evidence) makes colorspray less applicable (observation).

You do, however, need lived experiences to claim any of this proves that "color spray isn't that OP".
Experiences like: skeletons are quite common.

No, no trying to divert the argument.

In this instance, your claim was refuted. Even if the guy is wrong, and we can argue or agree about that separately, we're still talking about deductive reasoning.

Seriously, what is with you?

yeah but what's the source on OP pic

The claim was only refuted... if he was right. And his inductive experiences held true.
Otherwise, it's quite easy for it to be wildly OP.

The fact that skeletons were common is inductive. The fact that skeletons being common would reduce the effectiveness of color spray is deductive. Only this second argument is of importance to me, because, with regards to just how unbalnaced 3.5 is, the effectiveness of color spray is of much more importance than the comonality of skeletons.

Actually, the effectiveness of color spray depends on the relative commonality of skeletons, and thus is inherently related to how many skeletons or similar monsters there are.