Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Convincing 4th Edition players to consider 5th Edition
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 5959731" data-attributes="member: 32536"><p>Implying that 4E fans want a "tactical miniatures game" and are not really interested in a "roleplaying" game is not going to help this discussion at all.</p><p></p><p>Regardless, you're wrong. 4E is an RPG, and 4E fans want an RPG. Anything else is just you deluding yourself or trying to dismiss the tastes, desires, and needs of others. You don't have to like 4E, but it would help avoid some of ENWorld's eternal edition warring if people like you at least gave other people some amount of respect and didn't try to imply that they are not real D&D fans.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think you don't understand either the extent of pre-4E imbalance, or the real idea of what balance means.</p><p></p><p>Complete and perfect balance is indeed an untenable holy grail. That said, it is still a goal worth pursuing, and it is simply unacceptable to tolerate gross imbalance simply because perfect balance is nearly impossible to achieve. And really, 3E has gross, disgusting, and entirely intolerable levels of imbalance. In other games, most of the discussion of balance really only concerns the 5-10% difference between options that only matters in highly competitive or high-skill play. It concerns things like correcting the trivial advantage given to the layer who moves first in Go, which is meaningless to low-level players but statistically meaningful for professionals (to this day pro Go organizations work to correct this imblance).</p><p></p><p>3E is not that level of imbalance. It is more like a 500% difference between options, which has a dramatic and unquestionable impact on players of any skill level. The higher the skill level, the greater the negative impact. I can say without any exaggeration or hyperbole that 3E is one of the most imbalanced games I have seen, and might very well rank high on the list of the most imbalanced products to have ever been created. So, yes, perfect balance is impossible, but 3E D&D (and 5E as well, from what has been shown so far) is so far away from being balanced that worrying about the impossibility of perfect balance is utterly meaningless.</p><p></p><p>Also, giving each character a role to play is an important part of balance, and is an important part of why many versions of D&D are imbalanced. You see, one of the biggest problems people have with 3E is that the Fighter simply <em>doesn't have a role</em>. There literally isn't a single place in the game where you want to have a fighter in 3E. Almost everything the Fighter can do the Barbarian can do better. The Druid's animal companion is more useful than the Fighter in almost every regard, actually. Casters like the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid make every other character type almost completely redundant and meaningless as far as every single game mechanic is concerned, both in combat and even more so outside of it.</p><p></p><p>So yes, giving each character a role that makes they can play, even if they are not strictly the best at that role, is good. What isn't good is telling the player something like "the Fighter is the best at fighting!" and having that be a complete and utter lie (or maybe just complete and irredeemable incompetence on the designer's part). Because, you know what? The Fighter is not the best at fighting. He's pretty much the worst at fighting, actually. And I don't think it is acceptable for a product I've spent money on to lie to me.</p><p></p><p>You know, this has been said before, but just because it's a playtest doesn't mean we can't comment on the imbalance. Playtests only function properly if people do give feedback, and lots of it. What's more, we have no incentive whatsoever to trust WotC to fix this. We gain nothing by trusting them (particularly since they have done a lot to erode that trust), and we have a lot to gain by voicing our own feelings (even if the hope for that gain was misplaced, at least we made the effort).</p><p></p><p>Also, just because spells are limited resources does not make them balanced. 3E proved that. Balance would only be created if that limit is carefully studied and thoroughly playtested. It will only ever be balanced if the people in the playtest speak up about whether it works or not, and the people at WotC make fine adjustments. Telling people to just trust them is actually just going to sabotage any attempt to create any balance at all. Balance isn't magic; it's a process of experimentation and mathematical analysis based on data. Trusting that a simple limitation will balance something powerful, or that someone can just "fix" it, isn't even the right approach to balancing something.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TwinBahamut, post: 5959731, member: 32536"] Implying that 4E fans want a "tactical miniatures game" and are not really interested in a "roleplaying" game is not going to help this discussion at all. Regardless, you're wrong. 4E is an RPG, and 4E fans want an RPG. Anything else is just you deluding yourself or trying to dismiss the tastes, desires, and needs of others. You don't have to like 4E, but it would help avoid some of ENWorld's eternal edition warring if people like you at least gave other people some amount of respect and didn't try to imply that they are not real D&D fans. I think you don't understand either the extent of pre-4E imbalance, or the real idea of what balance means. Complete and perfect balance is indeed an untenable holy grail. That said, it is still a goal worth pursuing, and it is simply unacceptable to tolerate gross imbalance simply because perfect balance is nearly impossible to achieve. And really, 3E has gross, disgusting, and entirely intolerable levels of imbalance. In other games, most of the discussion of balance really only concerns the 5-10% difference between options that only matters in highly competitive or high-skill play. It concerns things like correcting the trivial advantage given to the layer who moves first in Go, which is meaningless to low-level players but statistically meaningful for professionals (to this day pro Go organizations work to correct this imblance). 3E is not that level of imbalance. It is more like a 500% difference between options, which has a dramatic and unquestionable impact on players of any skill level. The higher the skill level, the greater the negative impact. I can say without any exaggeration or hyperbole that 3E is one of the most imbalanced games I have seen, and might very well rank high on the list of the most imbalanced products to have ever been created. So, yes, perfect balance is impossible, but 3E D&D (and 5E as well, from what has been shown so far) is so far away from being balanced that worrying about the impossibility of perfect balance is utterly meaningless. Also, giving each character a role to play is an important part of balance, and is an important part of why many versions of D&D are imbalanced. You see, one of the biggest problems people have with 3E is that the Fighter simply [i]doesn't have a role[/i]. There literally isn't a single place in the game where you want to have a fighter in 3E. Almost everything the Fighter can do the Barbarian can do better. The Druid's animal companion is more useful than the Fighter in almost every regard, actually. Casters like the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid make every other character type almost completely redundant and meaningless as far as every single game mechanic is concerned, both in combat and even more so outside of it. So yes, giving each character a role that makes they can play, even if they are not strictly the best at that role, is good. What isn't good is telling the player something like "the Fighter is the best at fighting!" and having that be a complete and utter lie (or maybe just complete and irredeemable incompetence on the designer's part). Because, you know what? The Fighter is not the best at fighting. He's pretty much the worst at fighting, actually. And I don't think it is acceptable for a product I've spent money on to lie to me. You know, this has been said before, but just because it's a playtest doesn't mean we can't comment on the imbalance. Playtests only function properly if people do give feedback, and lots of it. What's more, we have no incentive whatsoever to trust WotC to fix this. We gain nothing by trusting them (particularly since they have done a lot to erode that trust), and we have a lot to gain by voicing our own feelings (even if the hope for that gain was misplaced, at least we made the effort). Also, just because spells are limited resources does not make them balanced. 3E proved that. Balance would only be created if that limit is carefully studied and thoroughly playtested. It will only ever be balanced if the people in the playtest speak up about whether it works or not, and the people at WotC make fine adjustments. Telling people to just trust them is actually just going to sabotage any attempt to create any balance at all. Balance isn't magic; it's a process of experimentation and mathematical analysis based on data. Trusting that a simple limitation will balance something powerful, or that someone can just "fix" it, isn't even the right approach to balancing something. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Convincing 4th Edition players to consider 5th Edition
Top