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

shadowmane · Sep 5, 2012

Lanefan said:
I take it back one step further: they start out as relative schmucks and have to earn the tools to become heroes; then - assuming "hero" is among their career goals (it often isn't) - use those tools to become such.

Lanefan

I've got no problem with that. Its how you weed out the bad builds at the lower levels. But the whole campaign should be built around the characters and their goals. You provide the sandbox as far as setting, but if you don't have them at least partially in mind, then all you're doing is involving them in a story your (the DM) are telling. You're bringing them along for the ride, and nothing they do will effect the game world.

My approach is that everything they do effects the game world. At first, negligibly, but as they level up and gain in power, their actions effect it more and more. They are the central characters in the story. They are the protagonists. They are the heroes, no matter what level they are at. The campaign is about them becoming heroes in the game world.

Neonchameleon · Sep 5, 2012

shadowmane said:
I cut my teeth on Star Wars D6. As far as D&D, I learned on 1st. I've never played 2nd. I've played Pathfinder, though. So I guess you could call me one of the Grognards. Which is why I see things the way I do. If you look at Lord of the Rings, they start out as unknowns. They end up the heroes. That's how I envision the characters in my game. To that end, I design the story around them. Yeah, some of them will loose their lives. But for the most part, there will be a core set of characters that I will design the adventures around, based on who they are, where they are from, and what their individual goals are. There's also the group goal.

Presently, I'm teaching my sons. I'm using Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game. I'm contemplating using the Playtest rules with them, but I probably won't. I've not played 4E, but I've heard a great deal about it. Pathfinder/3.5 seemed too gritty for me. A rule for just about everything. I like my games simple. The DM does the heavy lifting, not the rules. This is why I like the direction Next is going in. Back to simplicity. For crunch, you'll buy additional rules, but the basic game is just that... basic.

Steely_Dan said:
And therefore...?

Balance issues are different in different editions. Late 1e/early 2e is probably the best balanced edition of D&D before late 2010 era 4e. Gygax paid a lot of care and attention to game balance although he was subtler about it than the 4e designers (who were reacting to the excesses of 3.X). Which means that although 2e doesn't look that well balanced it isn't bad. And so when 2e players say balance isn't an issue it's because they've never seen what lack of balance can do to a game.

And a lot of what you've heard about 4e is almost certainly wrong; there is a vast amount of completely factually wrong information out there. 4e at its core is arguably a simpler system than B/X, never mind AD&D (and it's been more than a year since I cracked open a non-MM rulebook in play as DM) - but it requires almost a perceptual shift to run properly from more classic forms of D&D. It takes longer to put it bluntly because orcs are designed to die in a combat with ebb and flow over four hits rather than in one.

As for being a grognard, I wouldn't have said so. I wouldn't call someone a grog just for liking old games because those are the ones you know and because in some ways they are objectively better than successors. It's the vehemence and the reasoning that make for a Grognard.

shadowmane · Sep 5, 2012

Well, FWIW, I believe Gigax was gone by the time 2E was written. Nuff about that, though. Again, I never played that version. I am, however, open to this new version because it harkens back to a system I learned to play this game in. I think if they keep it simple, it will enable DM's much more leeway in how their world interacts with the players' characters.

In the Pathfinder game I was in, there was a feeling of being attached to the world, though the DM didn't really do that, given that nobody really wanted to involve the deities in the game (and this even though we had 3 clerics in the party). Of course, the game was a pro-rated level game, where everyone was allowed to make 9th level characters. I think if the DM is dealing with 1st level characters and building from there, he's more able to adjust to the characters, and re-design any modules used accordingly. Likewise, he can design encounters with the characters (or at the very least, their classes) in mind. This centers the story on them, while at the same time, allowing a metanarrative to go on around them, of which they are a part, even if not actively... yet.

ForeverSlayer · Sep 5, 2012

I write my stories around the characters at present but they know their characters aren't set in stone. They may begin the game with one PC only to finish on their second or third and when the story ends it seems like it was written that way from the start.

I write my stories to the bare minimum and I let the PCs actions and their dice roles be the filler and the ending.

pemerton · Sep 5, 2012

shadowmane said:
Its not railroading. This is, after all, their story. Yes, you provide the sandbox for them to play in, but the story is ultimately theirs. As a DM, it is your responsibility to provide a way for all of them to make it to the front.

I think there is a tension here. The more the GM tailors situations to accomodate the particular abilities of the PCs, the more it seems to me that the GM is the one who is deciding (i) what counts as a solution, and (ii) who is going to solve the situation, and how. Which looks to me like the GM, rather than the players, driving the game.

I tailor situation to reflect the interests of my players, as expressed via their PCs. But generally leave it up to the players to decide (i) what counts as a solution, and (ii) who is going to solve the situation, and how. This approach works best if the various PCs are at least moderately comparable in mechanical effectiveness - ie in their capacity to make an impact on the situation via the action resolution mechanics.

shadowmane said:
I, on the other hand, adapt my game world to the characters.

<snip>

The only alternative is to simply turn it into Chainmail, remove the roleplaying aspect, and play a board game. That's what "balance" makes of this game.

This strikes me as wrong for at least two reasons.

First, whatever the problems one might have with a non-tailored sandbox (it's not my preferred approach) it's not a board game.

Second, there is no connection between balance by way of mechanical effectivenesss, and board gaming. In the first part of this post, I explained an approach to roleplaying in which comparable mechanical effectiveness can matter.

Steely_Dan · Sep 5, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
1) Balance issues are different in different editions. Late 1e/early 2e is probably the best balanced edition of D&D before late 2010 era 4e. Gygax paid a lot of care and attention to game balance although he was subtler about it than the 4e designers (who were reacting to the excesses of 3.X). Which means that although 2e doesn't look that well balanced it isn't bad. And so when 2e players say balance isn't an issue it's because they've never seen what lack of balance can do to a game.

2) And a lot of what you've heard about 4e is almost certainly wrong; there is a vast amount of completely factually wrong information out there. 4e at its core is arguably a simpler system than B/X, never mind AD&D (and it's been more than a year since I cracked open a non-MM rulebook in play as DM) - but it requires almost a perceptual shift to run properly from more classic forms of D&D.

1) Nice, totally agree (3rd Ed started the nightmare, IME).

2) I have DMed 4th Ed extensively, and totally disagree, IME.

Victim · Sep 5, 2012

Lanefan said:
Tougher to manage, perhaps, but not at all impossible.

Consider two characters whose usefulness in a given situation is rated on a 1-5 scale; and let's look at 6 situations and the usefulness rating each time.

2-5-3-2-1-1
2-2-2-2-3-3

This one is balanced - the top line might represent a caster who goes off on the second encounter, the bottom one might be a fighter whose usefulness increases as the day goes along and other powers/spells/etc. get used up. But over the day they've each pulled their weight.

Lanefan

I actually don't think that's an accurate way of looking things. I don't think that equivalent total contribution across a day is a good way of looking at things, because not all encounters are of equal difficulty or importance.

I mean, what are the difficulties of these encounters? Obviously, the party is making it to the next one, so the total contribution (which, for simplicity, we assume to just be the total of the fighter and wizard) is at least equal to the difficulty.

So that leaves us with an estimated difficulty of
4 -7-5-4-4-4

In the two hardest encounters, the wizard is doing most of the work, while the fighter's strength lies in efficiently cleaning up trash mobs. That doesn't really sound like a very balanced scenario to me.

Or how about an analogy? Let's say we have two attack rolls (an 8 and a 20), and then two enemies: a 1 HP kobold that can be hit easily, and a tough to hit evil knight. If the character rolls the 8 against the kobold, he'll hit and kill it, and then he gets the critical against the more dangerous enemy. OTOH, rolling the natural 20 against the kobold kills it, and then 8 misses the well armored knight. Despite the fact that the attack rolls are the same, the outcomes differ - one is clearly superior to the other due to the way those resources are allocated.

Neonchameleon · Sep 5, 2012

Steely_Dan said:
1) Nice, totally agree (3rd Ed started the nightmare, IME).

*Glances over at bookshelf*
*Sees Skills and Powers sitting next to The Complete Book of Elves (and only about four books away from Unearthed Arcana)*
*Thinks the nightmare started before 3e*

2) I have DMed 4th Ed extensively, and totally disagree, IME.

The game and the rules are different things - the game's much more complicated than B/X, but I think the rules themselves are simple in the way that the rules of Chess or even Go are simple. And then you give everyone powers and incentive and you're in something at least as complex as a chess game.

shadowmane · Sep 5, 2012

pemerton said:
I think there is a tension here. The more the GM tailors situations to accomodate the particular abilities of the PCs, the more it seems to me that the GM is the one who is deciding (i) what counts as a solution, and (ii) who is going to solve the situation, and how. Which looks to me like the GM, rather than the players, driving the game.

I tailor situation to reflect the interests of my players, as expressed via their PCs. But generally leave it up to the players to decide (i) what counts as a solution, and (ii) who is going to solve the situation, and how. This approach works best if the various PCs are at least moderately comparable in mechanical effectiveness - ie in their capacity to make an impact on the situation via the action resolution mechanics.

This strikes me as wrong for at least two reasons.

First, whatever the problems one might have with a non-tailored sandbox (it's not my preferred approach) it's not a board game.

Second, there is no connection between balance by way of mechanical effectivenesss, and board gaming. In the first part of this post, I explained an approach to roleplaying in which comparable mechanical effectiveness can matter.

The only thing the GM is deciding is what situations are present. If you're running a dungeon with 2 fighters, 2 thieves, 1 MU, and a Cleric (just as a for instance). All I'm saying is that you will design the encounters with the players in mind. You'll have a few traps and secret doors for the thieves. You'll have rooms full of mooks for the fighters. You'll have a magical threat for the MU to take care of, and throw some undead in for the Cleric to help with. That's designing the adventure for the players. You're not railroading them by doing this. You're simply providing the environment they're going to go into. It just so happens that the environment has been tailored to their little group.

Alternatively, if you have a group with 2 fighters, 2 rangers, and 3 clerics (the Pathfinder party I was involved in last New Years Eve), you're going to design the dungeon every so slightly differently to challenge them, but not overwhelm them too quickly. The DM gives the balance by being sensitive to the group dynamic, while still throwing a challenge at them. The game world adapts to what they are doing, and they adapt to how the game world reacts to them.

Lanefan · Sep 6, 2012

pemerton said:
I think there is a tension here. The more the GM tailors situations to accomodate the particular abilities of the PCs, the more it seems to me that the GM is the one who is deciding (i) what counts as a solution, and (ii) who is going to solve the situation, and how. Which looks to me like the GM, rather than the players, driving the game.

More to the point, planning around the PCs all goes to hell when 3 of the 7 PCs die partway in to the adventure and are replaced by 3 others whose classes, abilities, etc. are completely different than the first lot who you've already tailored the adventure to.

It's easier to just have the adventure be what it is and let the players/characters figure out how to tackle it based on whatever they've got at their disposal.

Victim said:
So that leaves us with an estimated difficulty of
4 -7-5-4-4-4

In the two hardest encounters, the wizard is doing most of the work, while the fighter's strength lies in efficiently cleaning up trash mobs. That doesn't really sound like a very balanced scenario to me.

What this tells me is that if the encounters were all about the same relative difficulty the second one was a pushover and the rest took a bit of work.

Lanefan

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

shadowmane

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Neonchameleon

Legend

shadowmane

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ForeverSlayer

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pemerton

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Steely_Dan

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Victim

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Neonchameleon

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shadowmane

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Lanefan

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