I hate game balance!

rowport said:

I am confused by your post. AFAIK, your examples here *are* about game balance! You posit the classic rock/paper/scissors scenerio, where under the right conditions a certain class excels, so all are balanced as a whole.

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What's more, my experience held that this balance almost never happened in 3e, compared to earlier editions. A fighter would never get close enough to a competent mage to kill him, and the ranger wouldn't be able to kill either of them at range. A wizard would frequently have the best AC on the field, even when resting, and usually had spells prepped to avoid the fighter altogether while he was making him save or die. The one time I did see a mage killed by the fighter, it was because the DM played him as having no defenses.

3e did have balance, but the balance was not as good as people claim, IMO.

Edena_of_Neith said:

As for the wizard, Gygax's wizard is an ultimate example of this philosophy, In Game.
The wizard must work incredibly hard, incredibly long, without reward, without recompense, in extreme danger of dying, for level after level after level. Without cleverness, wit, luck, and work, her life expectancy is measured in 1 round increments.
But the big payback comes, and she is eventually the strongest of all the characters, and she can hurl mighty magics. A very fine case of Perseverence Pays. Great rewards go to those who make great effort.

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And, when you're a game designer and you and all your buddies happen to *love* magic users, why not design the game to where the other classes are just support to the class you love the most and therefore obviously make it superior to everything else?

But, if a designer is going to make the game that way, it should be expressly explained up front that such is so (like in Ars Magica, a game where, again, magic users outshine everyone else). To foment the illusion that all classes are going to be equally viable at all levels *is* bad game design.

On balance leading to every class being equal:
Let's compare two powers:

Tide of Iron - Fighter Attack 1
At-Will - Martial, Weapon
Standard Action; Melee weapon
Requirement: You must be using a shield.
Target: One creature
Attack: Str vs AC
Hit: 1 [W] + STR damage and you push the target 1 square if it is your size or smaller then you.

Thunderweave - Wizard Attak 1
At-Will - Arcane, Implement, Thunder
Standard Action; Close blast 3
Target: Each creature in blast
Attack: INT vs Fort
Hit: 1d6+INT damage, and you push the target WIS squares.

These powers alone are not balanced. If I was aiming for power-gamig and could get Thunderweave instead of Tide of Iron, I'd do so.
The powers have two common aspects: They deal damage, and they push their targets.
But the differences in play are strong - Tide of Iron targets only one creature, Thunderweave all creates in an adjacent 3x3 square area (including allies). Aside from the possibility of "friendly fire" accidents, Thunderweave is clearly stronger then Tide of Iron.

The balance is not achieved by these powers being very similar, or even equally powerful. They are achieved because the Fighter will always be in melee, has more hit points and more healing surges and a better AC then the Wizard, while the Wizard rarely wants to get this close to his enemies, and has a low AC and fewer hit points.

The balance is achieved because combined with all other class abilties and powers, the Wizard and the Fighter will play very differently and have different goals on the battlefield. The balance is achieved because the classes are so different.

I oI personally don't understand why 3E actually took off the magic limiters like wizards not automatically knowing spells.hn

Edena_of_Neith said:

But what made drow - *drow* - famous in the first place?

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I would guess "exoticism," but I'm kind of cynical.

Henry said:

What's more, my experience held that this balance almost never happened in 3e, compared to earlier editions. A fighter would never get close enough to a competent mage to kill him, and the ranger wouldn't be able to kill either of them at range. A wizard would frequently have the best AC on the field, even when resting, and usually had spells prepped to avoid the fighter altogether while he was making him save or die. The one time I did see a mage killed by the fighter, it was because the DM played him as having no defenses.

3e did have balance, but the balance was not as good as people claim, IMO.

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All I can say, Henry, is our experiences differ.

My NPC mages got the smack laid on them.

My NPC fighters/monsters laid the smack on PC mages. Protective magic helped, but never quite proved a panacea.

I could make the players miserable if I designed NPCs as if they would only be around for that one fight. But that's bad design, and not really an option for players.

Jhulae said:

(like in Ars Magica, a game where, again, magic users outshine everyone else).

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There's a good point to remember when Ars Magica is brought up in a discussion of D&D game balance: the wizards in Ars Magica - who are the primary PCs - are balanced against each other.

Let me attempt to tackle the subject of wizards from one angle here.

In 30 years of gaming, I have seen *very few* single classed human wizards played (in any edition, be it OD&D, 1E, 2E, 3.0E, or 3.5E. I can't speak for 4E yet.)
Of those *very few* that I saw played, most were either killed or abandoned as characters before they made 9th level.
Of the *extremely few* I saw that made it beyond 9th level, some of these were the result of an overly easy DM ('My monsters attack the fighters only, and leave the wizard alone' or 'Here is 50,000 experience points, for these orcs and their treasure! and YES, you can go up 3 levels at once!')

Pre-generated characters were an exception to this rule, but then again they were an exception to the You-Must-Survive-To-This-Level rule.
RPGA games were an exception to this rule, since Tournament Conditions existed there (and still do.)

In short, few players were willing to take Gary Gygax's conception, and try to make it work ... for the good reason that it was SO INCREDIBLY HARD to make it work, if the DM did his job properly.

Had it just been that, the Wizard Controversy would never, in my opinion, have come about.

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Enter the elven fighter/wizard.
He gets all the advantages of a fighter.
He gets all the advantages of a wizard.
When he gets elven chain (it was always when, not if) he has just as good an armor class as anyone else.
He has all the special abilities of elves, on top of all the abilities of fighters and wizards.

Why do you think there are so many kinds of elves in D&D? Tolkien? No. The fighter/wizard (and variants?) Yes.
We have:

Grey elves, high elves, wood elves, wild elves, olvenfolk, highfolk, grugach, valley elves ...
Silvanesti, Qualinesti, Kargonesti, Dargonesti, Dimernesti ...
Gold elves, Silver elves (moon elves), Green Elves, Star Elves ...
Athan elves, Spelljammer elves, Birthright elves, AL-QADIM elves, Spiritfolk ...
Snow elves, Ice elves, Sky elves, Shadow elves ...

(ready to scream yet?)

We have drow, half drow, good drow, crinti (nasty ones, those), half-elves (half-elf / half-human, half-elf / half-drow, half-elf / half-elf, quarter-elf / half-elf / one-eighth elf - one quarter elf / one-sixteenth elf - one eighth elf ...)
Now, what did I miss?
I'm sure I've missed out on a lot of kinds of elves.

Well, ok, we have lots of different kinds of elves. Elves are popular. They are popular for a lot of reasons. And one of those reasons is that elves can be fighter/wizards.

Now, Gary Gygax wrote that elves were limited to levels 7 as fighters, and level 9 as wizards (or, levels 9 and 12, with extraordinary stats.)
But these got ignored, or overruled, and effectively there were no level limitations.

The elf got all the fun and advantages of being a fighter at lower level, then became massively powerful as a wizard at high levels (plus the benefits of being a high level fighter.)
And if that wasn't nice enough, elves could be a bunch of other combinations. A common houserule was the famous fighter/wizard/cleric. This class got EVERYTHING, and didn't have to give anything back. You could have it all.
Be an elf. He's an elf, you're an elf, I'm an elf, want to be an elf too?

Enter the drow. They didn't have such level limits to start with. And what limits they had, became very high indeed even in the core rules. That quickly went the way of the dodo.
Now, enter the GOOD drow. And exit any semblance of game balance.
But, but ... good drow are hated by everyone, right? Especially elves! They wouldn't allow a drow in the party! (chuckles ... sure they wouldn't ... we know just how well that went.)

So, now, instead of high level wizards being a once in a blue moon type of thing - as Gary Gygax envisioned - you have high level elven and drow wizards running amok.
This is what produced the glut of high level wizards with all those game breaking spells people talked about. This is where the prejudice against wizards really started.

If *I* am stuck playing a fighter OR a wizard, because he's human, and *you* are playing an elf and you have ALL the advantages of BOTH classes AND the abilities of elves on top of that, AND you advance almost as fast as I do (in 1E and 2E), AND you have no level limits, then of course my human character is going to be jealous. I'm not going to be real happy as a player, either, because the system grants you more opportunity and fun than me ... because I chose a human character.

And so, IN ADDITION, you can level up as a wizard - WITHOUT the hazards a single class wizard must go through because you have the advantages of a fighter also, with good armor class and hit points and attacks and elven goodness - and so you reach high level as a wizard and gain all that power without having to pay any of the price a single classed wizard would have had to pay.
You've gotten around the system. You've beaten the system. You've been handed it all on a golden platter. It's breakfast in bed.

We all did this, I fear. We all loved those elven multiclass characters. Who can say they haven't played a fighter/magic-user? It's really a lot of fun to do so, because you reap all the benefits the game offers (if you can be a fighter/magic-user/cleric, you've really got it all.)

In 3E, the equivalent would be that only elves (and other demihumans) could be gestalt, and basically only ELVES (and drow) could have arcane classes and PrCs as gestalt.
Humans? No gestalt.
But we'll put level limits on the elves to balance things out. Oh, but ... that's not fair to the elves ... we'll raise the level limits. But ... that's not fair either ... we'll just eliminate the level limits.

So, in 3E/3.5E, imagine a game where humans must abide by the normal rules, but *elves* can be Gestalt, they are the only demihuman race allowed to be Arcane Casters, and they have no level limits.
While your human character struggles along as a fighter, that elf is a fighter/wizard gestalt, gaining all the benefits of both classes but only needing the same number of experience points.

This was roughly the situation in 1E and 2E.

So, you get a glut of high level wizards who have not earned such power - not, at least, as a single classed human wizard would have to earn her way to high level - and now they are throwing around great power (or, better yet, Elven High Magic) and they have it all.

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You wouldn't allow a 3E game where demihumans could be gestalt and humans couldn't, where only elves could be Arcane Casters (besides humans) and they could have all the benefits of being elves + the benefits of gestalt + the benefits of being wizards, without any penalty at all.

But that's how it worked in 1E and 2E, that's where you got all those high level wizards, that's a great part of the reason why wizards became resented, and that's how the system got broken.

Had the system been maintained as Gary Gygax wanted, elves would NEVER have gone above 12th level as wizards (very weak indeed, compared to an 18th level archmage), single classed wizards (humans) would have been rare (due to the incredible difficulty of playing them) and none of the uproar over the Broken Wizard would have happened.
As for the drow, they were meant as NPCs. As PCs, they weren't viable because *everyone* tried to kill them on sight (with very good reason!) And if the party might tolerate a drow, the NPCs around them would not. So long as the DM maintained the game in that mode, a drow PC was very difficult indeed to play.

And there's your answer to the problem of balance and the wizard.
Elves wrecked it. (Perhaps, it is time to wreak some serious harm on said elves?)

redcard said:

Why do people think everyone can cast rituals?

The section on Rituals says outright that you MUST have the ritual caster feat to cast it.. and if you don't, you must have the scroll/etc. It also says some rituals are not available in some worlds. And more rituals will be published which you might not choose to use.

For example, it's highly doubtful my GM will allow Raise Dead to be in any form.. or if he does, it'll just be in scroll form.

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Because anyone who wants to cast rituals can do it by 2nd level? 1st if you're human.

All it takes is 2 feats, regardless of class. Less if arcana or religeon are on your class skill lists.

Personallly I like that, but some people think it's a bug, not a feature.

Andor said:

Because anyone who wants to cast rituals can do it by 2nd level? 1st if you're human.

All it takes is 2 feats, regardless of class. Less if arcana or religeon are on your class skill lists.

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There's also a stat requirement. But yeah.

Personallly I like that, but some people think it's a bug, not a feature.

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It's certainly a very different assumption than any D&D before.

I was tinkering with my own campaign setting for which this assumption works very well for, loosely based on a recent popular motion picture... but it's very much NOT a D&D setting.