I'm not exactly sure how that would be fun...

Today, I was told something ridiculous by someone I don't know:

"You can have fun eating poop."

Really?

My first instinct was to react poorly. It's clearly insulting, illogical (besides the basis of the argument being "poop eating is fun"), and it's an incredible overreaction to the discussion at hand. How someone's preference for a particular class in a role-playing game has anything to do with "eating poop" is beyond my reasoning faculties, but for some reason, that connection was made. No, the person didn't need to make that connection, he didn't have to equate poop-eating with playing a druid, but he did anyway. And the internet is surely better for it.

But I didn't react poorly, I just chose to not continue having the conversation there. I'm not a better person for it, I just can't see the point in having a discussion about something where someone else equates what you are doing with consuming feces.

There are a number of thoughts that this exchange put into my head, though. The first is that, no, playing a druid in D&D is not like eating poop... so, those of you who are interested in the druid class in D&D, please continue to enjoy it. The druid is an interesting combination of ranged and melee control, and just because there are some folks out there who can't grasp the utility of being able to seamlessly shift between the two modes, doesn't mean the class is terrible. The druid may not be as good at ranged control as a wizard, or as good at melee as a rogue, but they are vastly superior to a wizard at melee, and vastly superior to a rogue at ranged control. It may be that the druid is a good support class, but it's not chewing on dookie.

The second thought I had is that these potential problems that people have with classes, like the Paladin, Warlock, or Druid are significant, in that there are arguments to be made and potential problems to look out for, but they aren't NEARLY as significant as the problems you run into in older versions of D&D. Or even other non-D&D games. Now, I enjoy 4th edition a lot, but I wouldn't call myself a "fanboy." I just think it's a solidly made game. And when you have people talking about how 2 points of damage in the difference between a Warlock's curse and a Ranger's quarry is TOTALLY GAME BREAKING I find myself at a loss for words. Do you guys not remember the really ridiculous imbalance between fighters and wizards in 3rd edition? Or how the cleric could basically function as a single-character party and overpower just about anything with the right build?

I'm a pretty mechanics focused person when it comes to RPGs, and I'm not terrible at math and I trust math as an abstract concept that can say a lot about how the different aspects of a system combine. So I'm not saying that the math is wrong, or that you should just play these classes for the "role-playing." Sometimes there are problems that need to be re-worked. But I haven't seen one yet that is so absolutely terrible that it's unplayable or doesn't function in a fight (or the rest of the game). And a lot of times the pure math arguments fail to take into account things like non-damaging effects, movement and mobility, benefits to other characters, and long term (i.e. two or three rounds) set up for a pay-off. Math is hugely important, but if it's not accounting for everything, then it's going to be off.

I'm done with the conversation on RPGnet about the druid and won't be going back to it. But I felt like I needed to let some steam off about how people have been behaving with regarding the game, and having the preference for a class likened to sitting down to a meal of doodoo was just the latest thing to leave a bad taste in my mouth.