Fundamental Basis of Balance

[ThirdWizard]

Likewise, someone mentioned that the game is balanced if a group of 6th level PC's use 20% of thier resources against a CR 6 challenge. That is true, but that is just one completely arbitrarily chosen point of balance designed to meet the goals of a particular designer/DM.

I don't think campaign balance has any place in game balance. That's why these guidelines are so important, arbitrary or not. So, the game can have standards that something isn't going too far above or below that balance. That's why the wealth guidelines were invented, for example; so that one could gauge relative PC power at a given level regardless of their particular style of play. It also allows one to eyeball a feat, spell, class ability, etc against the base assumptions given.

The game is still balanced if a group of 6th level PC's are expected to use 20% of thier resources against a CR 4 challenge, and the game is still balanced if a group of 6th level PC's are expected to use 20% of thier resources against a CR 8 challenge.

I think we're coming at this from two different angles. If a supplement comes out with options that allow a group of 6th level PCs to, on average, defeat CR 8 encounters using 20% of their resources, those options would not be balanced. This is because the relative power level of the game assumes that they will use more resources on a CR 8 encounter.

Sure, I can run a game where level 6 PCs can routinely easily defeat CR 8 encounters, but that has absolutely nothing to do with game balance. I've tossed out the game balance in favor of a new standard, and I must now restandardize the game to fit this alteration. The game hasn't been rebalanced, just my game. So when that supplement comes out that allows level 6 parties to easily defeat CR 8 encounters, it is still not balanced, even if that imbalance doesn't impact my own personal game.

Because, when people talk about balance, they have to have a baseline standard, and that standard has been given to us. We can ignore it ourselves, yes, but in order to meaningfully discuss balance, we have to either accept that standard or create a whole new one for purposes of the conversation. It's simplest to just accept the built in balance and go with that, even if we ourselves don't adhere to it individually.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

This is my motto for balance:

"During the majority of games, every player gets a chance to feel cool and special."

Testify, brother!

This sense of balance seems to be what players actually care about IMNSHO.

Mechanical Balance is only a tool to achieve this. A good mechanical system can get you within a stone's throw of Play Balance while running on autopilot.

Any crazy game system can theorectically be balanced by the efforts and foresight of a Great DM. The immense attraction of a mechanically balanced system is that even Poor DMs who are striving to learn the ropes can get most of the benefits of Play Balance with little or zero effort.

Given the variance in skills and enthusiasm for number crunching between players, there is no guarantee that any system can achieve balance without occasional DM fiat, and only if we make very optimistic assumption that the system is reasonably mechanically balanced in the first place.

I think the biggest reason that the Unbalanced Cleric is balanced in actual play is that it is simply easier to earn a piece of the glory while playing other classes. Maybe your numbers show how much better your Cleric is than my Barbarian, but I know that everyone will be singing his praises and talking about how much ass he kicked at the funeral -- that is good enough for me!

 

[Doug McCrae]

The secret of balance lies in two questions:

1. How powerful are you compared to the characters played by the other players?

2. How powerful are you compared to the challenges your character is facing?

I'd restate 2 as:

2. How powerful is the party compared to the challenges it faces.

Most obstacles in a game, and practically all the important ones, are overcome by the party as a unit rather than by individual PCs.

That said, when I'm talking about game balance, I'm almost always referring to 1.

 

[Doug McCrae]

To answer the OP's point:

One doesn't have to immerse oneself in the depths of wrongness to know what's right.

 

[JustinA]

I agree with pretty much your whole post.

I'd like to add that balance never never ever means:

3). How powerful are you compared to the characters in other campaigns?

That question isn't even really meaningful. As a mental exercise, your 10th level character may in fact be more powerful than a 10th level character in another campaign, but this is largely a meaningless mental exercise because generally speaking characters from two different campaigns cannot interact except in these mental exercises.

The exception being organized play like the RPGA (which notably layers on additional rules to enforce that extra balance).

But in general, yes, you are absolutely right.

 

[hong]

The exception being organized play like the RPGA (which notably layers on additional rules to enforce that extra balance).

Or if you're coming to the game from the PoV of Magic: the Gathering. Or perhaps Counterstrike.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

-snip-

QFT!

This is the clearest, cleanest explanation of what balance is in an RPG, and why it's desirable, that I've ever seen. Bravo.

Or if you're coming to the game from the PoV of Magic: the Gathering. Or perhaps Counterstrike.

How are those games' PoVs meaningfully different from the RPGA's? In all three cases - OK, I *think it's true of all three: I'm not very familiar with Counterstrike, but enough to roughly grasp its concepts - they are trying to establish a baseline so that no matter what campaign you play in/player you play against/server you play on, you'll have the same tools available to you and those tools will be roughly comparable.

 

[Hussar]

Balance is IMO, a fairly simply concept. Balance, to me, means that no option should be so good that it occludes all other similar options. So long as mechanics are developed along those lines, then I'm pretty happy with balance.

This is not edition or even system specific. This should be the primary goal behind all mechanics. If a DM wants to go beyond that baseline, that's his choice. But, that baseline should be adhered to as strongly as possible.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Hey, could someone synopsize the original post for me?

I think it's asking "What's balanced?"

But I'm not sure how "Only infinite loops should be thrown out as imbalanced" and "Fiat isn't a useful guide" quite fit in. Is that saying "Anything goes as long as it's in published material and doesn't lead to infinite power?"

 

[Celebrim]

Hey, could someone synopsize the original post for me?

Ok.

I think it's asking "What's balanced?"

Yeah, that's where you are getting confused. It's not. The poster didn't actually say much of anything about balance. Instead, he defined 'balance' entirely in a way in which it is never generally used, and then proceeded from that definition.

But I'm not sure how "Only infinite loops should be thrown out as imbalanced" and "Fiat isn't a useful guide" quite fit in. Is that saying "Anything goes as long as it's in published material and doesn't lead to infinite power?"

Pretty much. To the extent that the original poster said anything about balance, he said that balance was whatever could be obtained in the published rules short of an infinite number.

Let me try to reconstruct his argument.

He begins by saying that there are widely different views of what is an exceptable power level. He notes that different people may have different expectations of what is a normal number of hitpoints, attack bonus, or saving throw bonus. He then asks? Who is right? What is the correct power level to play at?

He then proposes two standards for determining what is the right power level. First, that it have an upper bound, and second that it be determined by the person who is most 'informed' on how to obtain high power levels. In other words, the proper and correct power level for play is whatever the highest power level that can be obtained by someone who knows the rules sufficiently to obtain the highest power level. Or, in other words, power gamers should build as powerful of builds as possible under the rules and this should be taken as the standard by which everyone should be playing (if they aren't, its because they are poorly informed), and the rules are only 'unbalanced' if they allow the possibility of infinitely high values. Otherwise, its 'balanced' if it is legal, irrespective of any other considerations.

He then goes on to say that any other considerations we might have, any other standard we might have to judge power level (as he calls it 'balance'), is heavy handed, inflexible, and unfair.

I think one easy way to misunderstand his argument is to think that he's saying that the DM presents the players with some rules and then from that the player is allowed to build whatever the most powerful character he can from those rules. But that's not really what he is saying. He's saying on the contrary that the player presents the DM with some rules, say the wealth by level guidelines in the DMG, and then the DM is beholden to follow those guidelines or else he is being heavy handed, inflexible and unfair.

I rejected his definition for a lot of reasons, but the simpliest statement of my objection is that if his definition of 'balance' is correct, then all games are balanced by definition and we can never speak of a game that isn't balanced (except, as he would have it, one where the rules weren't being followed). But of course, in practice, if you've played alot of competitive games, you know that they often aren't in fact balanced.