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

[The Choice]

My point is more that people complained when 3.5 was released that it was too soon and a money grab. 4e was also too soon and a money grab.

Not really. Compared to other RPGs, D&D has had a relatively slow edition turnout rate. By itsself, 4th edition (and now Next) is pretty much in the average for how soon after the previous edition it came out (the real outlier being the switch from 1st to 2nd, 11 years, which can probably be tied to internal problems at TSR). You might have a point about 3.5, but then again, I think the "half-edition" was more a product of user feedback than a "oh crap! Sales of our books are down. Quick, publish a new PHB!"

Exactly. Problem solved. The only issue is when you assume that others had or will have or should have the same very specific experience.

I don't "assume" anything, I know, from personnal experience and from having seen others experience the same burnout and frustration, that imbalance in 3E can kill games. Apparently, I wasn't alone, and others voiced it in a clear enough way that the designers at WotC recognize it to this day as a problem with the game.

For you, maybe.

There are plenty of legitimate issues with 4th edition D&D. I know I have quite a few. But the "I can't play the type of game I used to play back in [insert favoured edition here]" is one I just don't get. I would really like to know what types of games you cannot run under the 4E ruleset that you could under another edition.

I don't feel like a moron when I play a fighter.

I mean no offence when I say this but, if you're playing in a 3.X game, maybe you should?

Let's look at the fighter, the very concept of the fighter, independent from any edition. He's a tough guy, good with weapons and armours; in most D&D settings, he'll have the best selection of both these things. So he's pretty good at swinging steel and kicking butt. In 2nd edition, the one I'm most familiar with, he'll mow down goblins and orcs in a single hit at low levels and, by the middle of his career, he'll be able to stand toe-to... well face to toe with giants and trade blows with those monsters. Let's say, for argument's sake that he's level 9, fights with a two-handed sword (with a modest +1 enchantment, wears full plate, and has a suitably heroic strength score of 18(70). He comes up against a frost giant and engages it in combat. He'll hit on a roll of 8 or more and do an average of 13 hit points of damage per attack (he gets 2 each round). Considering the frost giants 65 hp average, our fighter takes him out in about three rounds. Now, consider that in 3.5, the giant's hp doubled, and the fighter's damage potential (by core rules only) increased, but not by much (2d6+10 before any magical enhancement beyond a +1 weapon), it'll take him an average of two more successful attacks to put it down.

But what about the wizard in all of this? In 2nd edition, faced, along with his buddy the fighter, with a frost giant, he still has a plethora of possible actions: a fireball could singe the fighter, the frost giant's save against magic is good enough that a charm monster has less than 50% chance to hit, other options mean getting up-close and personnal with the giant (and its axe), so no. So he stands back, fires off a lightning bolt taking (on average) half of the creature's hp (roughly a quarter with a successful save) and letting the fighter do the rest (maybe getting a magic missile in here and there for good measure). In 3rd edition though, the logic is completely reversed because of how saves work: the giant's Will save is a pathetic +6, even with the +5 bonus for casting the spell in combat, the wizard's got a decent chance of hitting with charm monster. If he has spell focus (or its greater version) in enchantment, his odds are even better. And, he can do this more than once per fight thanks to scribed scrolls. So, not only did he just invalidate an entire encounter by not playing the same game the fighter's forced to play, he now has a buddy that's stronger than the fighter for nine days!

But you can't judge everything from combat, right? So how do those two guys fare in a social encounter situation? In second edition, they are pretty much on the same footing: there are no "social" non-weapon proficiency in that edition of the game (well, unless you count "etiquette"), so whoever speaks "louder" at the table wins. That's fair, abitrary, but fair. Sure, the wizard can cast friendship or charm person and win the encounter, but he doesn't have that many spell slots, and if he faces an individual with loads of hit dice, he's kinda gambling dangerously. In 3rd edition, again, both classes start at a pretty even footing: they both suck at social encounters. No social skills and two skill points per level... But the wizard's not some dumb jock; his intelligence modifier means more skill points, so he could, technically buy his way into being a half decent orator, while the fighter will be good at... climbing stuff, I guess. But again, the wizard can bypass that whole "we must convince the duke with Diplomacy, Bluff or Intimidate" thing with a quick eagle's splendor, or with any charm spell or, to be really nasty, a dominate person spell. He's got the slots for it now or the scrolls for it if need be.

See, the game isn't unbalanced because casters do things better than non-casters, the game's unbalanced because casters don't play the same game as non-casters.

But, I hear you say, what about when they run out of spells, surely then the fighter will shine. That just means it's time to go back to a safe spot and rest a while. Nobody does that, you'll retort. Sure, nobody puts their pet hamster in the microwave to dry them out either, it doesn't stop the microwave makers from putting a warning label on there anyway. I can fix this, you'll add, by making sure no spot is ever truly safe to rest in. That's just putting a phonebook under an uneven table leg; at some point, someone's gonna notice it and point it out.

That's a style right there; a pretty atypical one I'd guess. (Not that there area lot of "typical" D&D games).

I'll agree that that no D&D game (or any RPG game for that matter) will be completely "typical"; players personalities insure that. But to say that the style portrayed in the DMG and in published adventure after published adventure is not a base expectation is sort of ridiculous. When you can't run an adventure straight out of the book without editing core content, your game has problems. A "no jerk move" policy helps, but that's giving cough syrup to a man dying of lung cancer.

[A quick precision: the frost giant exemple comes from a post by light warden from the Something Awful forums, I just dumbed it down a bit because I can't approach its concise and meticulous approach]

 

[GreyICE]

This is pretty much true of any class and the fighter. There's definitely room for improvement there. Then again, I would expect the fighter to be about fighting.

If the fighter is "all about fighting" then... shouldn't he be the best at it? I mean if he's a 1-dimensional character who is all about "Kicking *** and chewing bubblegum and I just ran out of bubblegum" then if he's not the best at it... what's the point?

If he's the best at fighting, surely you wouldn't mind balancing 5 encounters with me then running the fighter through them with an on-level druid, right? Doesn't have to be level 11. Lets do level 6 or 7. That's not endgame, right?


I mean honestly, that's where the issues come in. If someone picks the fighter knowing that they're a 1-dimension character who is simply the best combatant in the entire world, they should be rewarded by actually being the best combatant in the entire world. When the game isn't balanced, it doesn't reward player expectations, and that disappoints your players, fundamentally. King Arthur will never be equal to Merlin, no matter what.

You know, if you really have to have balance, go play the version that has that balance. It happens to be the version people aren't really happy with. The one that caused the rift in the D&D Community to begin with. I grew up in the 70's and 80's. No such thing as a MMORPG then. Computers were 4-64 bit things that you wrote programs on that bounced balls around the screen. Fantasy roleplaying was about recreating Middleearth, or Narnia, or Hyboria. The Japanese influence was only just beginning to make its way across the ocean. In most stories, you had a main character who was low level, surrounded by others who were more powerful than him (well, except for Conan).

Frodo and Samwise were both 1st level adventurers when they set out. But they were surrounded by higher level people in their party. No balance there. The four siblings in Narnia didn't know what the heck they were doing when they first embarked on their adventure. They, too, were 1st level. But they were surrounded by high level characters who made up for it, and those characters weren't all powered the same. Again, no balance there.

Every adventure starts out that way, and every character gains in power and experience differently. Balance is found between the characters as they relate to one another, not through game mechanics. I don't want D&D to be a MMORPG on paper. If I want an MMORPG, I'll go play World of Warcraft. What I don't want is for D&D to morph into WOW on paper, which is what you seem to be advocating for.

And nothing is preventing you, in any edition, from running lower level characters next to higher level characters, or adjusting the rate of XP gain. I'd argue that it can lead to a lot of in-group tension, especially if people aren't on board with that from the very conception, but that's edition neutral. If you're arguing that the level scaling in 4E was a tad intense, well... yeah. It was a problem in 3E too, but not nearly the way it was in 4E, and I think it should be changed. That being said, you can knock out the scaling 1/2 Level to both monsters and PCs fairly easily. Not saying that it even should be in there in the first place, but I don't see it as the sort of dealbreaker.

As for shoving more words in my mouth, please stop it. I don't want D&D to be "WoW on paper." I want it to be D&D. I'm actually a little disturbed that we apparently can't have this discussion without you assigning to me all sorts of opinions that I don't hold.

P.S. How many campaigns have you run with asymmetrical characters - characters of wildly different levels? How did they work?

P.P.S. Every edition caused an edition war. If you dredge up the old dragon magazine people were panicking that AD&D would take away "the D&D they love."

 

[The Choice]

I desperately want to hear the story behind this, because I find it pretty much unimaginable.

The short version is: he destroyed the in-game economy of the campaign. With scribed scrolls, crafted wands and wondrous items, he negated most challenges straight off the bat. Even after I cut gold rewards by 90% (yep, I modified my "playstyle" from the expected DMG guidelines for wealth by level, punishing every character in the campaign for the unintented consequences of one character's design), they simply pooled their meager resources together to trump all of my well planned encounters.

See, it wasn't my implied laziness that made that game unplayable. It wasn't that I was playing the "wrong" way or even the "wrong" game. It was that, even with a character who knew no spells that inflicted damage, even when I toiled to craft encounters that challenged diverse and varied characters, even when I broke the game in half to curb the power explosion, the core, basic mechanics of the game were out of balance, allowing a single character to become the focus of every challenge.

Could I have just banned item creation feats? Sure, but again, that would have been a jerk move on my part (breaking my game had never been his intention, he told me as much himself), and would have only fixed part of the problem for a while until something else came up.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Frankly I think any group of superheroes (be it DC, Marvel, or other) offers a great demonstration on how characters with radically different abilities can function well together.

So single-classed Figher = Aquaman?

I'll buy that.

Aquaman is "balanced" next to Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman because, somehow, there's always a contrived need to go underwater somewhere.

And even then, it's pretty clear that it's presence in the story is a bone tossed to Aquaman to make him look useful.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You might have a point about 3.5, but then again, I think the "half-edition" was more a product of user feedback than a "oh crap! Sales of our books are down. Quick, publish a new PHB!"

I really liked the 3.5 revision and thought it addressed many significant issues and was a clear improvement. Even I don't believe that.

I would really like to know what types of games you cannot run under the 4E ruleset that you could under another edition.

I would really like to know what type you could, making this a hard question to answer.

But I'll at least articulate some things you can't have:
*A low-level character being dropped or killed from one hit from a typical enemy.
*A low-level enemy not being dropped or killed in one hit from a typical character.
*Spellcasters run out of spells.
*Wounds that take days to heal.
*Characters without healing.
*Characters without daily use-limited resources (energizer bunnies).
*Save or dies.

That's just an off-the top list of some elements I've used within the last 3 sessions that 4e doesn't do. Those are important elements. My last 3 sessions couldn't have happened without them.

See, the game isn't unbalanced because casters do things better than non-casters, the game's unbalanced because casters don't play the same game as non-casters.

And should! What kind of system would posit a tough-as-nails soldier and a mage as being comparable? If anything, you've articulated one of the strengths of D&D: that it comprises multiple playstyles which are in part articulated by the fundamentally different classes.

But to say that the style portrayed in the DMG and in published adventure after published adventure is not a base expectation is sort of ridiculous.

My base expectation is that most groups will never even look at a published adventure.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So single-classed Figher = Aquaman?

I'll buy that.

Aquaman is "balanced" next to Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman because, somehow, there's always a contrived need to go underwater somewhere.

And even then, it's pretty clear that it's presence in the story is a bone tossed to Aquaman to make him look useful.

When I watched the Avengers movie (me not being a comic book person, FYI), I was watching Captain America frantically try to pull some lever while everyone else was off doing crazy things and the deity of the bunch was trapped in a convenient deity-proof cage. This struck me as being very similar to both the way that 4e people seem to see the pre-4e fighters and casters and the way that they can actually work even if you push them to those extremes. Captain America was really just a fast strong guy whose only real power was a magic item (shield), while the Hulk could occasionally go nova and crush everything and Iron Man can fly and shoot things.

Who would watch that movie and claim that those characters were balanced? But it worked.

 

[GreyICE]

I really liked the 3.5 revision and thought it addressed many significant issues and was a clear improvement. Even I don't believe that.

I would really like to know what type you could, making this a hard question to answer.

But I'll at least articulate some things you can't have:
*A low-level character being dropped or killed from one hit from a typical enemy.
*A low-level enemy not being dropped or killed in one hit from a typical character.
*Spellcasters run out of spells.
*Wounds that take days to heal.
*Characters without healing.
*Characters without daily use-limited resources (energizer bunnies).
*Save or dies.

That's just an off-the top list of some elements I've used within the last 3 sessions that 4e doesn't do. Those are important elements. My last 3 sessions couldn't have happened without them.

Honestly, way back in the 1970s E. Gary Gygax (the one and only) said that books and movies don't make for compelling adventures, because the demands of the tabletop are incredibly different from the demands of a book (I think it was something about how incredibly boring it would be for 2 people to be sitting on a boat in the river while the rest of the party did all these crazy things).

Anyway, of those 3E elements you listed:

1) Trust me, 4E is quite lethal enough that 1-2 hits can and will drop you if you're unlucky. I've taken 22 damage from a single swing at level 1. It hurts.

2) Enemies that can be 1-shot exist in 4E, and are a lot more common than they are in 3E.

3) Spellcasters running out of spells isn't inherently an interesting mechanic for the spellcasters. "Now your character doesn't really do anything" is just painful to play. What was the element of the gameplay that required the spellcasters to be running low on spells?

4) Wounds that take days to heal is an optional system that you can add in. You suffer penalties based on your wounded condition, but it doesn't necessarily bring the adventure to a screeching halt while you heal. If you want to bring the adventure to a screeching halt so the party members can run around looking for a healing MacGuffin, it's probably more fun to do it with an NPC anyway. Just make him critical to the PCs to accomplish something, and have him be poisoned and near death or something.

5) Lots of characters in 3E don't have healing. The Ranger, for instance, or the Psion, or the Wizard. It's a niche filled by a limited number of classes - that are very useful to have, yes, but not a requirement to play the game.

6) Sooooo, back in 3 Spellcasters running out of spells is a feature, now it's a bug? What? If you want, you can also run Essentials characters who don't have daily resources, btw. But honestly I'm just sitting here scratching my head.

Why was it a feature that Spellcasters ran out of resources back in your item 3, and a bug that they do so now in item 6?

7) If you really want some effect that is so dramatic that the character has to roll a single die to determine whether their character lives or dies, just add it to the game. And make it so they can't be resurrected if they fail - blast their soul from existence.

It's just not a very core mechanic, because if you have to roll 12 dice like that your character is going to die at some point, and if they can be resurrected easily it's basically a Diamond Dust tax on the entire party, rather than something interesting.

 

[chaochou]

... if some players - via their PCs - effectively have a high degree of control over scene-framing, but others don't, then that first group of players can, in effect, manufacture their own spotlights (Teleport, Rope Trick etc). And if the GM counters this by a strong application of force, then we're into a playstyle that many of us find pretty dysfunctional.

Sure, I agree. A great many spells in D&D have huge metagame properties disguised as something else. Teleport is aggressive scene-reframing. So are Charm Monster, Spider Climb, Tongues.

In fact I think there's a strong case - or at least an interesting discussion - to say that all rpg magic systems are powered by metagame mechanics.

An AD&D wizard spends a third level 'bennie' (in this case called a spell slot) to cast a third level spell. Spending that metagame bennie produces an effect. We fluff the spending of the currency as the wizard 'casting a spell' but what we are doing as a player is spending a metagame currency to produce an effect.

For me, this metagame imbalance is a hallmark of D&D. Certainly pre-4e. I'd very much like an edition which gives fighters and rogues the same scope for scene-reframing and narrative control which spellcasters get.

But I think that takes us back to the 'mythic fighters' thread from a while back. Personally, if a 20th level mage can stop time I'd fully accept a 20th level fighter who can zoom round the planet so fast that time goes backwards.

Many people absolutely disagree. They seem to think being a spellcaster - by definition - should give access to a metagame that being a non-caster should not.

 

[Steely_Dan]

That being said, you can knock out the scaling 1/2 Level to both monsters and PCs fairly easily. Not saying that it even should be in there in the first place, but I don't see it as the sort of dealbreaker.

Yes, I removed the 1/2 level malarkey from characters and monsters like a cancerous growth (monsters provide a challenge over a greater span of levels, etc) makes such a difference.

 

[The Choice]

I really liked the 3.5 revision and thought it addressed many significant issues and was a clear improvement. Even I don't believe that.

I also believe they had financial reasons for going forward with 3.5, I just don't think it was the sole or even main motivator.

But I'll at least articulate some things you can't have:
*A low-level character being dropped or killed from one hit from a typical enemy.

Tough, but possible if you bend the encounter building rules a bit and use MM3 math. A first level NPC with a greataxe could do it on a crit.

*A low-level enemy not being dropped or killed in one hit from a typical character.

Short of sleep (which will still take two rounds if it hits) I don't see a single at-will, encounter or daily attack power that, outside of a critical hit with a high critical weapon, will take out an average monster. Minions, sure, but not the standard creatures.

*Spellcasters run out of spells.

While a wizard or cleric will always have a cantrip or orison to fall back onto, it is entirely possible that, within the span of an encounter (a particularly tough one), both of those types of characters could run out of dailies and encounter abilities, even at high levels. Their use then becomes limited, but, I'll agree, they don't become totally useless or a hindrance for other characters like in previous editions. I just happen to see that as a net positive.

*Wounds that take days to heal.

Possible with the disease rules. I'd argue it's even easier to do that then in 3.5.

*Characters without healing.

While everyone has the second wind ability, it's not the most efficient use of a healing surge. So, while there is no "fix" to that, you could choose not to use it. It's not really a solution though, even I'll admit it.

*Characters without daily use-limited resources (energizer bunnies).

Slayers and Knights.

*Save or dies.

Are kind of there, actually. It's just that they work more like "save or get progressively worse until you die". You could bring back pure save or die effects, but it would mean bringing back a 1e/2e-like system for saving throws where those spells really weren't effective at high levels.

I would really like to know what type you could, making this a hard question to answer.

Easy. I can run mystery/investigation games without having it spoilt by a single spell (or spell-like ability). I can run combat intensive sessions without fear that a lucky streak on my part will straight up murder the PCs. I can run sessions with a single combat, and not expect it to be either a cakewalk for the PCs or a massacre. In essence, 4E provides my games with a level of "armour" that makes it tough (though not impossible) for them to fail catastrophically. Some would say it's "safe", I prefer "challenging while remaining fair for all those around the table."

And should! What kind of system would posit a tough-as-nails soldier and a mage as being comparable? If anything, you've articulated one of the strengths of D&D: that it comprises multiple playstyles which are in part articulated by the fundamentally different classes.

HA! Fell into my carefully laid trap. The world of D&D, whatever you choose it to be (FR, DS, your own homebrew), is a fantastical world populated by weird creatures. A simple peasant cannot simply get up one morning, pick up a sword and call himself a fighter, no more than some seamstress can, by finding a wand in some robes she has to mend, call herself a wizard. If the world is completely unrealistic (and a world with centaurs, floating eyeball-thingies that shoot deadly rays, dragons and pixies most definately is) than it stands to reason that all characters with a measure of training can stretch the limits of our reality. Why is it tough for a fighter to trip a centaur? Because creatures with 4 legs are hard to knock down, right? That's the case in our world whenever I go cow-tipping (I don't, but for the sake of argument, let's say I do). Well, what if your trip-master fighter learned his craft from a veteran of the Great Centaur Invasion of '09? Surely he learned how to trip those from that grizzled old man. So when that hooved bastard is bearing down on him, he knows where to aim to put him down.

I'm not saying fighters should fly, turn invisible, cleave the tops of mountains and levitate them or fire mind bullets at his opponents, but his exploits, his feats of strength, agility and endurance should be amazing.

My base expectation is that most groups will never even look at a published adventure.

You could be right. We don't have any real numbers to back assertions one way or another, but Paizo has a neat subscription business that runs on publishing adventures. And TSR, back in the olden days, published many adventures that have become "classics" (not for me, mind you, but for older players, maybe). You might have never paged through one, but if the past (and present) is any indication many players, both new and old, did and still do.

What's more, the advice on campaign management/adventure building from the DMG/GM advice book is a pretty useful tool in determining the "common middle-ground" of a game, providing a starting point from which to expand if needed.