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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
What makes us care about combat balance in D&D?
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6660551" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>Although I voted the last option (because "everyone contributes to everything important" is absolutely essential to me), I also <em>very highly value</em> #2 (<em>potential</em> complexity, anyway) and #6 (fudging makes consequence-based learning impossible).</p><p></p><p>I believe that a cooperative roleplaying game should respect the tastes of all who play it; since all character options will have to have fluff attached, it should therefore never <em>significantly and consistently</em> favor nor disfavor any particular set of tastes. Thus, while the discrete <em>list</em> of abilities any particular character has do not have to be the same, the amount that any given character contributes to the party should be "on the net" equal--in <em>all</em> parts of play that the designers consider important or meaningful. It's perfectly fine to have strictly contextual issues lead to a wish for something a little different--e.g. "man we're fighting a LOT of undead...wish we had a Cleric or Paladin right now!"--but these contextual issues should never extend to the whole of what WotC calls the "pillars" and should DEFINITELY never find party members "dead weight"--e.g. the <em>ideal</em> case is no one ever pausing to think, "man, we're doing a lot of socialization, I wish we <em>didn't</em> have a Fighter..." nor "man we're doing a lot of fighting, wish we'd brought a Fighter instead of a Wizard..."</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, if as many tastes are to be respected as humanly possible (since "all" may be an impossible ideal), then there should be options furnished for people regardless of their particular combination of fluff-preference and complexity-preference (which are <em>vehemently</em> not the same thing!) There should be dirt-simple "Fighters"...and dirt-simple Wizards, and Clerics. There should be complex Wizards...and complex Fighters. No one should come into it thinking, "Man, I'd love to play a Fighter but [god they're all so BORING]/[I can't keep track of all my actions]" any more than they should think the exact same thing with "Wizard," "Druid," or any other class.</p><p></p><p>And finally...I see roleplaying games as fundamentally games...AND fundamentally roleplay. If they weren't fundamentally roleplay, respecting taste wouldn't matter. If they weren't fundamentally games, level of complexity and "net contribution" wouldn't matter. But since they ARE fundamentally games, they should enable the player to:</p><p>(a) <strong>make informed choices</strong>, and</p><p>(b) <strong>learn from the consequences of prior choices</strong></p><p></p><p>If the difficulty of things once-they-exist-in-play can change at the DM's leisure, "informed" choices become impossible; the information one could base one's choices on is no longer constant. Note that this is NOT the same as saying all choices need to be calculations. To give an analogy, an "informed" choice is like selecting from a menu at a restaurant, which is very much a matter of taste and avoiding danger (e.g. allergies)...but making an informed decision can't happen if the ingredients used to make the food are always at risk of changing without the diner knowing.</p><p></p><p>Similarly, if the player does make an informed choice or set of choices, and those choices would have resulted in failure (even if that failure is simply "trusting the dice too much"), the player should experience that failure so they can go back and try to learn why they failed. This is how you learn to recognize faulty decision-making; it is an eternally ongoing process, but that does not mean it does not improve with time. Similarly, if the player makes an informed choice/set of choices, and those choices would have resulted in success (even if that success is "you got lucky"), the player should experience that success so they can remember strategies that worked. Again, this is an eternally ongoing process, but luck can't rescue you all the time--you can slowly refine your ability to find sound strategies. If the player is denied the ability to experience the consequences of their actions, good or bad, then either way they are being denied an important learning opportunity--either being punished (denied success they had legitimately achieved) or coddled (denied failure they had legitimately earned). Either one, if continued as a pattern, will tend to result in more irrational decision-making (avoiding sound strategies and embracing unsound ones), as well as increased disparity between expectations and results, which is a recipe for disappointment.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 6660551, member: 6790260"] Although I voted the last option (because "everyone contributes to everything important" is absolutely essential to me), I also [I]very highly value[/I] #2 ([I]potential[/I] complexity, anyway) and #6 (fudging makes consequence-based learning impossible). I believe that a cooperative roleplaying game should respect the tastes of all who play it; since all character options will have to have fluff attached, it should therefore never [I]significantly and consistently[/I] favor nor disfavor any particular set of tastes. Thus, while the discrete [I]list[/I] of abilities any particular character has do not have to be the same, the amount that any given character contributes to the party should be "on the net" equal--in [I]all[/I] parts of play that the designers consider important or meaningful. It's perfectly fine to have strictly contextual issues lead to a wish for something a little different--e.g. "man we're fighting a LOT of undead...wish we had a Cleric or Paladin right now!"--but these contextual issues should never extend to the whole of what WotC calls the "pillars" and should DEFINITELY never find party members "dead weight"--e.g. the [I]ideal[/I] case is no one ever pausing to think, "man, we're doing a lot of socialization, I wish we [I]didn't[/I] have a Fighter..." nor "man we're doing a lot of fighting, wish we'd brought a Fighter instead of a Wizard..." Furthermore, if as many tastes are to be respected as humanly possible (since "all" may be an impossible ideal), then there should be options furnished for people regardless of their particular combination of fluff-preference and complexity-preference (which are [I]vehemently[/I] not the same thing!) There should be dirt-simple "Fighters"...and dirt-simple Wizards, and Clerics. There should be complex Wizards...and complex Fighters. No one should come into it thinking, "Man, I'd love to play a Fighter but [god they're all so BORING]/[I can't keep track of all my actions]" any more than they should think the exact same thing with "Wizard," "Druid," or any other class. And finally...I see roleplaying games as fundamentally games...AND fundamentally roleplay. If they weren't fundamentally roleplay, respecting taste wouldn't matter. If they weren't fundamentally games, level of complexity and "net contribution" wouldn't matter. But since they ARE fundamentally games, they should enable the player to: (a) [B]make informed choices[/B], and (b) [B]learn from the consequences of prior choices[/B] If the difficulty of things once-they-exist-in-play can change at the DM's leisure, "informed" choices become impossible; the information one could base one's choices on is no longer constant. Note that this is NOT the same as saying all choices need to be calculations. To give an analogy, an "informed" choice is like selecting from a menu at a restaurant, which is very much a matter of taste and avoiding danger (e.g. allergies)...but making an informed decision can't happen if the ingredients used to make the food are always at risk of changing without the diner knowing. Similarly, if the player does make an informed choice or set of choices, and those choices would have resulted in failure (even if that failure is simply "trusting the dice too much"), the player should experience that failure so they can go back and try to learn why they failed. This is how you learn to recognize faulty decision-making; it is an eternally ongoing process, but that does not mean it does not improve with time. Similarly, if the player makes an informed choice/set of choices, and those choices would have resulted in success (even if that success is "you got lucky"), the player should experience that success so they can remember strategies that worked. Again, this is an eternally ongoing process, but luck can't rescue you all the time--you can slowly refine your ability to find sound strategies. If the player is denied the ability to experience the consequences of their actions, good or bad, then either way they are being denied an important learning opportunity--either being punished (denied success they had legitimately achieved) or coddled (denied failure they had legitimately earned). Either one, if continued as a pattern, will tend to result in more irrational decision-making (avoiding sound strategies and embracing unsound ones), as well as increased disparity between expectations and results, which is a recipe for disappointment. [/QUOTE]
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