kbrakke
First Post
The resting thread combined with my own readings of other systems and playing 5e have brought this question to my mind. Often times we discuss balance, between classes, of an encounter, in a party, or in the abstract, but it seems that the definition wildly varies between people. When we make a statement like "GWM is an unbalanced feat" the nature of the imbalance varies between people, so much so that the places where GWM is imbalanced for some is not even a consideration for others.
For me, something like GWM doesn't even make me bat an eye. However, that is only in my specific view point as a DM who primarily challenges players by putting them in to danger of dying. It's reasonable or even likely that were I champion Sword and Board fighter with a GWM barbarian in my party I would feel like he was quite imbalanced!
On the other hand, when people talk about various healing exploits or how to achieve very high ACs (or even finding +x armors) I declare it imbalanced, for a host of reasons. But others may not even consider it an issue worth mentioning.
So to further my understanding of this game and perhaps help others see different aspects of this wonderful game we all presumably love, I have some questions.
1- What does balance mean to you?
2 - When you balance an encounter, what is your desired outcome for that encounter? Do you balance combat on the encounter level, the adventuring day level, or the campaign level?
3 - When you look at your players/other players what things make you feel like something is not balanced?
4 - If you claim that you do not worry about balance in your encounters, what are your overall desired outcomes from combats?
5 - If something seems imbalanced to you, how do you go about fixing it?
6 - In video games or card games something is considered balanced if it has an overall 50% win rate against the field. A character in a fighting game would be imbalanced if it consistently won more than half its matches. Or a deck in Magic would be OP if it was more than 50% to beat the field. In dungeons and dragons that sounds absurd. My parties are probably around 100% win rate. Do either of these numbers make sense to you? Would you play in a game where the players "won" half the time? What does that mean to you?
My answers in order:
1 - Balance to me means that no option reduces the overall fun at the table. If every player enjoys playing their character and had fun, things were balanced.
2 - When I play in a game where I try to balance encounters, I do it on an adventuring day level and my goal is to leave the players feeling spent and worried near the end of the day up until the last turn of combat that their character could have died. If they end they day saying "Thank god, I had no spells left and one hit die. We nearly all died" then I have done my job.
3 - If I see my players not engaging with a combat or situation that I expected them to want to be in then I suspect something might be out of wack. This could be something like not really caring about a combat because they feel like the other characters can handle it without them, or tuning out in social scenes because they feel like they have nothing to add.
4 - When I don't worry about balance my goal is to have the players fear the world and be cautious. In a hexcrawling game that I have been playing for some months now they fear combats. I would estimate numbers wise only about 1 in 10 is just too hard and a certain TPK, and all of those have in world mechanisms and hints to let the party to flee. But they now take precautions while camping, they discuss fleeing and trying to avoid encounters (They get more XP for treasure and exploration which helps) and when they think they will get in combat they use planning to try and mitigate risks. I usually just try to kill them, and despite no-one dying yet they fear things in the world.
5 - If something seems imbalanced and I am the DM, I will typically try and bring the other players/characters up to the level of the imbalance. I am loathe to ever take anything away. If something is imbalance because of my homebrew then I will work with the player to reach something that captures the same feel, but is mechanically better.
6 - I think you could play a game with a 50% winrate, which I define as the outcome of any encounter going in the favor of the players, but it would need to be a game where all fights are not to the death. A game which codifies retreat and surrender and presents it as a reasonable option in the mechanics and world could be interesting. The other half of this however is how you make the party lose 50% of the time without contrived reasoning, no suggestions there. I say my party has a 100% winrate, because over a long enough timeframe all my adventuring parties have succeeded in their goals. They have had setbacks and character deaths along the way, but never has a party fundamentally failed in their goals forever.
For me, something like GWM doesn't even make me bat an eye. However, that is only in my specific view point as a DM who primarily challenges players by putting them in to danger of dying. It's reasonable or even likely that were I champion Sword and Board fighter with a GWM barbarian in my party I would feel like he was quite imbalanced!
On the other hand, when people talk about various healing exploits or how to achieve very high ACs (or even finding +x armors) I declare it imbalanced, for a host of reasons. But others may not even consider it an issue worth mentioning.
So to further my understanding of this game and perhaps help others see different aspects of this wonderful game we all presumably love, I have some questions.
1- What does balance mean to you?
2 - When you balance an encounter, what is your desired outcome for that encounter? Do you balance combat on the encounter level, the adventuring day level, or the campaign level?
3 - When you look at your players/other players what things make you feel like something is not balanced?
4 - If you claim that you do not worry about balance in your encounters, what are your overall desired outcomes from combats?
5 - If something seems imbalanced to you, how do you go about fixing it?
6 - In video games or card games something is considered balanced if it has an overall 50% win rate against the field. A character in a fighting game would be imbalanced if it consistently won more than half its matches. Or a deck in Magic would be OP if it was more than 50% to beat the field. In dungeons and dragons that sounds absurd. My parties are probably around 100% win rate. Do either of these numbers make sense to you? Would you play in a game where the players "won" half the time? What does that mean to you?
My answers in order:
1 - Balance to me means that no option reduces the overall fun at the table. If every player enjoys playing their character and had fun, things were balanced.
2 - When I play in a game where I try to balance encounters, I do it on an adventuring day level and my goal is to leave the players feeling spent and worried near the end of the day up until the last turn of combat that their character could have died. If they end they day saying "Thank god, I had no spells left and one hit die. We nearly all died" then I have done my job.
3 - If I see my players not engaging with a combat or situation that I expected them to want to be in then I suspect something might be out of wack. This could be something like not really caring about a combat because they feel like the other characters can handle it without them, or tuning out in social scenes because they feel like they have nothing to add.
4 - When I don't worry about balance my goal is to have the players fear the world and be cautious. In a hexcrawling game that I have been playing for some months now they fear combats. I would estimate numbers wise only about 1 in 10 is just too hard and a certain TPK, and all of those have in world mechanisms and hints to let the party to flee. But they now take precautions while camping, they discuss fleeing and trying to avoid encounters (They get more XP for treasure and exploration which helps) and when they think they will get in combat they use planning to try and mitigate risks. I usually just try to kill them, and despite no-one dying yet they fear things in the world.
5 - If something seems imbalanced and I am the DM, I will typically try and bring the other players/characters up to the level of the imbalance. I am loathe to ever take anything away. If something is imbalance because of my homebrew then I will work with the player to reach something that captures the same feel, but is mechanically better.
6 - I think you could play a game with a 50% winrate, which I define as the outcome of any encounter going in the favor of the players, but it would need to be a game where all fights are not to the death. A game which codifies retreat and surrender and presents it as a reasonable option in the mechanics and world could be interesting. The other half of this however is how you make the party lose 50% of the time without contrived reasoning, no suggestions there. I say my party has a 100% winrate, because over a long enough timeframe all my adventuring parties have succeeded in their goals. They have had setbacks and character deaths along the way, but never has a party fundamentally failed in their goals forever.
