Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
And your proposed solution is... actually, I'm drawing a blank on how we were supposed to fix it without houserules - as we eventually did, to make it so he could attack with both his weapons using a standard action. I think the campaign ended before we could see how much it helped. But the system gave us no tools whatsoever to address this problem. And doing it ourselves increases effort and reduces enjoyment.
I'm guessing house rules, changing priorities, changing playstyles -- all legitimate ways to go about if you find yourself in the situation of discovering that the system you are running and choices you made don't support a your character actually being impactful, but in the end you having to change your actions to accommodate (unadvertised) quirks within the game.

Which really just highlights that we're having (at least) two discussions -- should parties be balanced, and should game systems be balanced (or at least not being balanced be a legitimate critique thereof). Of this, I am of two minds -- one, the games that are fun are the ones that are fun, not ones that match up to peoples' theoretical rules about what makes a great game. The troll up above suggested that caring about balance was something only 'Hyper Active Selfish Demanding Dominating Competing Action type[s]' cared about, and that's easy to laugh at, but it's definitely the case that lots of people played those editions of D&D noted for being unbalanced (3e of course, but also most all of the TSR-era has gotten legitimate gripes over it) and had absolutely balls with them. On the other hand, to play a straight fighter or monk (or from the above example, Swashbuckler) in 3rd edition, certainly past a certain point, and you really have to have an accommodating group (willing to make house rules, and/or find ways that characters contribute regardless of their mechanics) to feel like a contributing part of the group. Which is galling particularly since, new to that edition, all things were advertised as semi-interchangeable and worth the same (since you can MC between classes, and all require the same XP to level).

Which really brings my main point -- a system doesn't have to be balanced in all ways and under all circumstances, but if so it should make that somewhat obvious. 5th edition is not balanced, particularly if you do not get the expected number of encounters per rest cycle (and lots of people have been complaining about the expected encounter rate per rest being well outside their normal experiences). However, it pretty well states what its' expectations are, as well as giving sample methods for addressing the situation if your gamestyle does not match them (the gritty rest alternative also doesn't match a lot of peoples' gameplay style, but at least it is an acknowledgment of the issue and a template for how one might make one's own fixes).