Can somebody explain the bias against game balance?

[tyrlaan]

Did I miss the memo where this became about 4e/3e? The OP didn't mention an edition or even a SYSTEM.

To the OP:
I have seen the bias you refer to, but I think it is mostly the result of hyperbole. In all cases I can drudge up in my memory, when someone came across as a naysayer for balance it was to back up a dislike for system/edition x. In reality, I don't think anyone is actually against balance, but sticking to your guns with white-knuckles can start skewing statements after a while.

It is my Opinion the Jedi should be the most powerful. That is how he was in teh story. If the jedi is balanced with everyone else, the jedi loses its magesty.

I have never seen an incident of a member of my group not having fun because they are not playing the Jedi. I don't buy the argument of the players not having fun because the classes are not balanced.

This is interesting (and also related to the topic ).

I've been in Star Wars games through various systems. I agree that a jedi by all rights should be more powerful than any other player at the table and probably capable of killing the entire party should the jedi decide to do so.

On the other hand, that would get pretty boring to me if I'm playing the Han Solo character. It works fine in a movie, but at the game table it gets old fast when the answer to every problem is "let the jedi do it." Why would I want to play in a game where everything is resolved by one player and the rest are all second fiddle in every situation?

In a way, I see the jedi scenario to be the perfect example to argue for/against balance in a game. To me, balance needs to exist so everyone can have fun. If the players in your game are cool with the power imbalance, more power to you, but it wouldn't fly for me. I don't need to be the hero every moment of every game, there's plenty of limelight for everyone. But I do need to feel relevant to the story. I mean, even Orko got his chance to shine, because otherwise he would have left Eternia ages ago.

 

[AllisterH]

Again, my question stands.

If there is nothing inherently WRONG about the various options being unbalanced, why not simply TELL the players that beforehand instead of letting the players discover it haphazardly through play?

 

[Barastrondo]

Second off, I'm not at all certain that D&D is (or should be) a cooperative game, in the same sense that Bus Depot Diner or Secret Door is a cooperative game. At least, it is not (or should not be) in a sandbox-type environment, where a player's ability to improve his character(s) is fundamentally linked to his abilty to "steer" the environment.

I'm not saying that all RPGs are cooperative games. I do know, though, that I much prefer the ones that are. For one, my wife far prefers cooperation to competition, so I get to play with her more if the group is working together to achieve mutual awesomeness instead of competing for personal aggrandizement.

Finally, I note again that a game in which no one is allowed to demonstrate any form of personal excellence, while it might be cooperative, is very much liable to bore some folks. And the minute Sue starts showing personal excellence rather than Bob, the game either ceases to be fully cooperative, or fails to reward Sue for her excellence.

I don't think I've ever seen an RPG balanced to that extent. Even in 4e, which is obviously the high end of design paid toward character balance, personal excellence happens every turn (barring the dice being horrible creatures). People excel at specific roles or tricks, doing stuff no other PC at the table can do; there's just less of a sense that to make the feylock's mobility (for instance) shine, you have to make other characters' mobility suck.

 

[Benimoto]

The topic I haven't seen answered is why do the OP and his supporters feel I'm a bad person for not liking the design philosophy of 4e?

I'm not sure where he said that. That said, if you're getting a negative vibe here, it's because you seem obsessed with making a noncombatant character, and in many D&D games and most published D&D adventures, such a character is going to be a burden upon the rest of the group for large parts of the game. That is ultimately a selfish choice in a team-oriented game, and so most people view it as a negative.

 

[Obryn]

And personally, I see modeling races that are nearly 8 feet tall and approaching 400lbs as a potential reason for using unusual balancing tools, as opposed to merely making them slightly stronger than Gnomes and Halflings that are a quarter of their mass or less.

That's a LOT of shoe-horning going on there.

*shrug* I'm just pointing out that not every stat is important to every character, and the "dump stats" vary greatly from PC to PC. Hiding a stat penalty is even easier than it was in 3e, which means that only net effect of balancing bonuses like this would be to push certain races away from (or towards) certain classes and increase homogeneity. As an example, I think it's safe to say that most 4e Wizards would gladly take a +4 in Intelligence in exchange for a -8 in Strength. They'd see almost no game effects from the penalty. Ditto, Fighters exchanging a higher Strength bonus in trade for Charisma.

It's not even balance, really; calling it balance is a dodge. I think the balance implications on the table would be fairly negligible; most combats would be unaffected if a Minotaur had a +4 Strength bonus and a -2 Intelligence penalty, or if Gnomes had -2 Strength. It's a race/class issue, and how much you value seeing unusual combinations.

Personally, I like to see unusual race/class combinations, and anything which discourages that is a bummer in my book.

-O

 

[Barastrondo]

Again, my question stands.

If there is nothing inherently WRONG about the various options being unbalanced, why not simply TELL the players that beforehand instead of letting the players discover it haphazardly through play?

I think that's a great idea, myself. I remember someone talking about how suboptimal choices in 3e like Toughness were intended to make players feel clever and rewarded for making the choice not to take them, which struck me as kind of a dodgy philosophy (if it's true at all; I can't remember the source). Players shouldn't feel good for dodging traps in the rulebook, they should feel good for dodging traps in the dungeon.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Didn't we have a gazillion page thread on this just a couple months ago?

"Game balance" means different things to different people. Straw men of the concept are used in both sides of the edition wars to stoke the flames.

Until someone creates an operational definition of game balance that everyone can agree to work from, this is a pointless conversation that will only devolve into two people arguing about what the definition of the word "is" is.

 

[OchreJelly]

Didn't we have a gazillion page thread on this just a couple months ago?

"Game balance" means different things to different people. Straw men of the concept are used in both sides of the edition wars to stoke the flames.

Until someone creates an operational definition of game balance that everyone can agree to work from, this is a pointless conversation that will only devolve into two people arguing about what the definition of the word "is" is.

Ditto. The OP didn't provide enough constraints on what kind of "balance" we are discussing. In a game as complex as DND it typically comes down to:

• balance on classes against themselves.
• balance on players vs. environment (the DM).

...and within those there are many subsets of discussion: non-combatant classes; unfair monsters; swingy-ness vs. grind; and so forth. So which of these are we trying to discuss a bias against?

 

[macrochelys]

Shenanigans. Pre 3e. Cats do less then 1 point of damage in 3e.

Nah, everything in 3.0 and 3.5 does minimum 1 damage.

The topic I haven't seen answered is why do the OP and his supporters feel I'm a bad person for not liking the design philosophy of 4e?

The OP at most stated that (some people) want to be more powerful than the other players and/or a burden to the other players. You seem to be saying that it is fine to be (some people) when the character is balanced by DM action (spotlighting). I don't really see where the OP called you a bad person.

 

[Cadfan]

Can somebody explain the bias against game balance?

What really is the big issue here? On its most basic level, people who are ill served by a balanced game are people who want to be more powerful than the other players, and those who want to be free to make a weaker character that is a burden to the other players. I don't really have any sympathy for either of those.

I'm sure there's some other explanation, and I'd love to here them.

Well, this may not be a popular opinion, but some people just aren't temperamentally suited to discussions of game balance. This doesn't explain everyone, but there are certain people... I general, if someone connects "game balance" with "loss of wonder" then they fall into this category. I don't believe they'd actually be happier with an unbalanced game, but I do believe that they'd be happier with a game where they'd never seen behind the scenes.

Basically, if what you're looking for in a game is a sense of enchantment, you aren't going to be happy with the game after a long discussion of exactly which Great Wizards of Oz are really men behind curtains.