Consider the ideal lineup of classes in your usual Fantasy RPG. You have the Fighter, who is good at fighting, the Magic-User of various flavors, who can do magic, but only a certain amount of times per adventure-day. The Thief, who sneaks around and steals stuff. The Cleric, who primarily heals wounds and turns away the undead.
Each of these classes engages with a different part of the fantasy. They are the best in their own categories. Nobody steals like the Thief or fights like the Fighter. Only the Magic-User can use magic.
However, this ‘balance’ is difficult to obtain. Players complaining that a class is ‘underpowered’ or ‘overpowered’ is as old as the game genre itself.
Consider D&D5e/5.5e
The game focuses largely on the game as combat-simulator. Thus, some classes end up being clear losers, objectively sub-optimal if your plan is entirely to put Monsters into Graves.
What if we turned these different power levels into a purposeful design?
In video games, we are all familiar with Difficulty levels. Easy, Normal, Hard and Brutal.
Suppose we organized classes by ‘power’ and let players openly decide what power level they want to play at? The only rule is that, if one player chooses an easier class, every other player should have a class in the same bracket, or else be open to the possibility that they will be overshadowed by this ‘cooler’ class.
Easy
Paladin,
Druid, Cleric
These
classes are strong in almost every situation, flexible and
straightforward to use.
Normal
Fighter,
Sorceror, Warlock
Nothing
to write home about, but they have a simple gameplan that just works.
Hard
Wizard,
Ranger
Either
technically demanding, or generally accepted to be suboptimal in
terms of rules.
Brutal
Rogue,
Monk
Classes
lamented for being weak and ineffectual, for true hardcore players.
Next time you get your group together to begin a campaign, consider asking them, not what level of power they want to start at, but what level of Difficulty Class they want to experience.
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