D&D 5E How much should 5e aim at balance?

billd91 · Aug 6, 2012

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
You could "silo" this stuff. People can pick the "power-relevant" skills that are always important, like Stealth or Diplomacy, and they have to make choices between them. And in addition, yo uget the "flavor" skills, that are their own pool and you can select Craft (Basketweaving) and Profession (Farmer) or Perform (Interpretative Dance) - they will rarely come up, but they are there for you to take and define your character with it.

But isn't this partly a function of the type of game the group is playing? They may rarely come up in a dungeon crawl, but how about a game with courtly intrigue? A game centered around a thieves guild? A game in which the PCs all play undercover members of a kabuki troupe? 3e is enough of a toolbox that it could support campaigns for all of these and different skills may be relatively more or less useful in each one.

I think Monte Cook was right with his ivory tower article. D&D should have gone the route of providing more analytical information to a DM when it comes to advice about helping players with character generation and fitting in with a campaign. And if D&D Next is going to be modular, it will need to go into it.

billd91 · Aug 6, 2012

Pickles JG said:
I cannot have fun without some degree of balance.

But what degree of balance is required? 3e is certainly not devoid of balance, but is it balanced enough for you? Is it possible to quantify it? If you have a choice between games that you perceive to have different levels of balance, do you expect to be able to have more fun with one than the other? Or will other factors likely be more important?

P1NBACK · Aug 6, 2012

If by balance, you mean 4E style balance where all the math is so carefully tuned to provide some sort of "perfect" encounter length, encounters per day, damage per round, powers per day, etc. among all monsters and player's characters... then no. For god's sake, please no.

I played 4E for the first time in 2 years this past Saturday and it was mind-numbing how "balanced" everything was. Everything was so... predictable.

That's not what I enjoy about D&D.

If by "balance" you mean everyone has a unique set of abilities to bring to the table and that each member of the team relies on each other for various things, instead of having one character who can do it all, then yes! Please. Bring it on.

If by "balance" you mean the game functions as you expect it would in a plausible game universe without breaking down the fun or having powers that disrupt the flow of the game, then yes! Do that!

If by "balance" you mean having weighted options that give a player a variety of decisions to make that all seem like worthwhile avenues of approach, then yes!

If you mean "balancing" the game so that the DM has tools for being the judge / arbiter / referee of the game in a fair and honest way, then by all means! Yes!

Balance is important to game design. But, not in the way 4E balanced things. This idea that balance is somehow 4E's domain is complete and utter garbage. Gary Gygax was always big on balance and mentioned it all the time in his text.

See:

1E DMG p7: "Limitations, checks, balances, and all the rest are placed into the system in order to assure that what is based thereon will be a superior campaign, a campaign which offers the most interesting play possibilities to the greatest number of participants for the longest period of time possible. ... If it is all too plain and too easy, the players will quickly lose interest, and your effort will prove to have been in vain. Likewise, if the campaign is too difficult, players will quickly become discouraged and lose interest in a game where they are always the butt; again your labors will have been for naught. These facts are of prime importance, for they underlie many rules."

1E DMG p81: "DM Stipulations: You may assign modifiers to any saving thvows as you see fit, always keeping in mind game balance."

1E DMG p84: "Tricking or outwitting monsters or overcoming tricks and/or traps placed to guard treasure must be determined subjectively, with level of experience balanced against the degree of difficulty you assign to the gaining of the treasure."

1E DMG p90: "You may, of course, adiust any prices and costs as you see fit for your own milieu. Be careful to observe the effects of such changes on both play balance and player involvement."

1E DMG p91: "Alter creatures freely, remembering balance. Hit dice, armor class, attacks and domage, magical and psionic powers are all mutable; and after players become used to the standard types o few ringers will make them a bit less sure of things."

1E DMG p92: "All this is not to actually penalize success. It is a logical abstraction of their actions, it stimulates them to adventure anew, and it also maintains the campaign in balance."

1E DMG p93: "As the campaign grows and deeper dungeons are developed, you exercise the same care in placement of selected and balanced magic items. Of course, at lower levels of the dungeon you have more powerful single items or groupings of disparate items, but they are commensurate with the challenge and ability of participants."

1E DMG p118: "All such creations, however, must be made with care. The items must be such as to not unbalance the game. They must not make one player character too strong, either with respect to opponents or his or her fellows or to the campaign or to the game system as a whole. Items which are expended after a single use, those with limited usages, and those with variable effects are most desirable."

1E DMG p120: "This is carefully planned so as to prevent imbalance in the game. Keep potent magic items rare."

1E DMG p174: "Be careful not to upset the probability balance."

Tony Vargas · Aug 6, 2012

Li Shenron said:
But you too are falling into the trap of making assumptions on how to play the game...

I don't see where I made that assumption. Far from it, a well-balanced game can be played in a wider variety of ways than a poorly-balanced one, which, to compensate for it's imbalance, needs to be played in some prescribed way (like, oh, always having X exp of monsters, every 'day').

Just to give you a counter-example to your assumptions: have you ever played a computer game of some sports (e.g. soccer)

No, never. Sorry. I know it's weird for an IT guy to never play computer games, but I just don't want to look at a computer when I get home...

I'm just saying that a sub-par option is not the same as a worthless option!

A sub-par or situational option isn't the same as a non-viable one. Think 'strict inferiority,' for a strong example of what a balanced game strives to avoid entirely. Sub-par or useful-only-situationally options should probably be minimized, but doubt eliminating them would even be possible ('perfect balance'), particularly in an RPG.

Tony Vargas · Aug 6, 2012

Raith5 said:
This is a great point.

Both 3rd and 4th had too much worthless content in regards to feats, for instance. 3rd had too many silly spells and 4th had way too many classes (which I think drifted towards the lack of real choice towards the end).

Feats? OMG, yes, far too many 'chaff' and outright 'trap' feats. 3e Spells? More a matter of a number of overpowered spells dominating lists, IMHO, than many 'trap' spells (situational, yes, and much better as on-tap 'rituals' as in 4e than competing for combat-useable slots). Classes in 4e? There were two that were notably sub-par, the Seeker and Runepriest, more a matter of being under-supported. And some essentials classes were pretty sad, too, of course, I guess what you mean by 'towards the end,' yes.

For me "balance" is about creating rules which enable a transparent and equal starting point for different classes - which then can be altered by the choices made by the DM and players with regards to what sort of adventures and campaigns they undertake.

Click to expand...

A little more permissive and less technical a definition than I'd prefer, but workable.

Click to expand...

Ahnehnois · Aug 6, 2012

billd91 said:
But what degree of balance is required? 3e is certainly not devoid of balance, but is it balanced enough for you? Is it possible to quantify it? If you have a choice between games that you perceive to have different levels of balance, do you expect to be able to have more fun with one than the other? Or will other factors likely be more important?

And, to extend that statement, what would a game without some modicum of balance even look like?

Herschel · Aug 6, 2012

P1NBACK said:
Gary Gygax was always big on balance and mentioned it all the time in his text.

The important distinction being Gygax wanted balance but had no idea how to actually achieve it.

Nor is that surprising really. He and Arneson were the first and they were flying by the seat of their pants. And after a while Gary became so entrenched in his own creation he couldn't really break out of it. It's kind of like having someone else proof read your work: When you're too close to it you miss things/issues because in your own mind they read/work differently than the reader/player comprehends them.

And he didn't/couldn't know any better. The whole RPG industry is built off of his ideas. They evolved from his musings, not the other way around. He was a catalyst for everything since, not a means nor an end. In other words he had the ideas, but no foundation to actually base them on.

innerdude · Aug 6, 2012

Balance is important, no question.

However, it's not so important that it should be the absolute, baseline, total sum goal of a pen-and-paper RPG---any RPG, D&D or otherwise.

Put another way, RPGs have yet to find a cure for the jackass gene, and even the most rigidly balanced system isn't going to make it fun to play with that kind of player.

I think it's reasonable to expect that a player character should be able to contribute to the major areas / "pillars" of a chosen campaign, and not feel that their contributions are limited, overshadowed, or rendered meaningless. I don't think that aim requires an over-zealous, fetishistic approach to balance either.

To a certain degree, "mechanical" balance in terms of combat effectiveness is only really a priority in design if you believe that your players treat combat effectiveness as a primary vehicle of "fun" play, or place a high priority on the emotional satisfaction they receive by being combat effective.

For example, in a Star Wars Saga campaign I played a couple of years ago, I was BY FAR the least combat capable character in the game. And I can almost guarantee you that I had as much or more fun playing that character than the Trandoshan hand-to-hand fighter player who, by level 12, had tweaked out his build to the point that he could literally take on an AT-ST single-handedly with nothing but a vibroblade.

Was the system "balanced"? By most views of "between each PC" sense of balance, not at all.

Did I care? Not in the least. The reason I had fun? Because my GM made a point to include ways that my character's talents were maximized, and I had plenty of non-combat screen time.

So, the real question might be, "Is it fair to expect a GM to bring 'balance' to portions of a game that are inherently not balanced?"