D&D 5E What does balance mean to you?

dropbear8mybaby said:

Honestly, I don't get why there's so much resistance to balance. Balance isn't boring, it doesn't make everything the same, it just brings the power of certain things into line with certain others so that there are no clearly optimal or nonoptimal choices. I've balanced 5e just with a few tweaks here and there to bring other things up to par and nerfed a few others. It's still recognisable as 5e but now if someone wants to make a champion dual wielding handaxes, they'll be just as effective as a BM without having to think too hard about their build choices. Why is that a bad thing to some of you?

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I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I don't think that many folks here have said that. It's that "balance", as this thread has established, means different things to different people. And even when they agree on what it means, they may not agree on all examples meeting the criteria of their accepted definition.

So, for me and I think many others here, I prefer to take the rules as they are and then correct any imbalances I find. It sounds like you did exactly that with the champion/battlemaster issue that you found. Others may not consider those classes imbalanced, and so may not feel anything needs to be corrected in that regard.

I don't want or need any errata or revised classes being put out as "official material" by WotC. Yes, I am capable of ignoring such material if it were put out, but if I have a choice, I prefer not to have to bother to deal with it at all.

dropbear8mybaby said:

You did. By saying you focus on PC weaknesses you're choosing to metagame deliberately to punish players for character choices. I consider that an abuse of DM power and responsibility. Now, if you're turning around and restating your position by saying you don't do it deliberately and simply include all aspects of the game as an organic construct then that's a different story and the responsibility falls back to the player to manage the consequences of their choices.

But I stand by my assertion that deliberately punishing players for mechanical weaknesses in their PC's in order to "balance" a game is immoral.

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Immoral? To challenge players? Okay.

hawkeyefan said:

I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I don't think that many folks here have said that.

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I think that has more to do with rhetorical tactics. Balance, for all that it has a checkered history in D&D, and is anathema to segments of the fanbase and the playstyles they prefer, and provoked the edition war, and is obfuscated and defamed at every possible opportunity, /still/ has a positive connotation in these discussions, and admitting opposition to it would, ironically, weaken any argument against it.

The most effective arguments against balance go something like: "of course balance is good, but..."

"...the cost is too high..."
"...it can't be perfect..."
"...we can't agree on a definition..."
"...it breaks my immersion..."
"...we've got plenty too much of it already..."

"...therefor we shouldn't try to improve balance, nor even examine it."

I don't want or need any errata or revised classes being put out as "official material" by WotC. Yes, I am capable of ignoring such material if it were put out, but if I have a choice, I prefer not to have to bother to deal with it at all.

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That's fair, of course, convenience is nice and all. But, by the same token, balance is much harder to impose than it is to scrap, so anyone wanting balance pays a very high price for the convenience of those who abhor it. If WotC did that kind of utilitarian analysis (and I very much doubt they did), they're decision to balance 5e the way they did would imply that they found the large majority of the fanbase abhors balance, or that the segment that does, even if small, wields disproportionate influence in the community.
The edition war stands as historical evidence that either of those could be the case. I'm sure there are other possibilities. Whatever the reality, the result is the same: if you want a degree of game balance in 5e, you avail yourself of DM Empowerment to impose it.

Sacrosanct said:

You've insulted people who don't agree with you, said your way is the only right way and others' just don't get it while accusing others of One True Wayism, and then try to play the victim by saying you're being attacked and treated as unwelcome.

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After reading your cherry-picked snippets from "my side," I decided to do a little cherry-picking of snippets from "your side.":

iserith said:

This is why I find complaints about "balance" in D&D 5e to be laughable. The people doing the complaining reveal their misunderstanding with every post.

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Sacrosanct said:

I think 5e's direction has been very clear. Stop trying to get hung up on analysis paralysis by trying to balance everything when most gamers really couldn't care less.

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steeldragons said:

Incredible. I was just going to tell Sacrosanct the same thing. How did you know? "A game without balance?! All is chaos...there can be no meaning to anything...it ends up in nihilism" That there, my friend, is what we who deal in logic like to call reductio ad absurdum. Nope, not a Harry Potter incantation. It is one of the best known -and still and yet very often used- logical fallacies. Also, quite the strawman.

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Sacrosanct said:

And not to interrupt your circle pity party you guys had going on there.....

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Tony Vargas said:

The expectation that whining loud and long about D&D will eventually provoke a new edition, with new problems, certainly seems at least empirically justified.

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Sacrosanct said:

Cognitive dissonance. Look it up.

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steeldragons said:

<Emphasis mine> Why does this read to me so much as hearing, "Resistance is futile" from a chorus of robotic voices?

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Corwin said:

Just as there are some systems/editions better suited for certain types of individuals, maybe the same can be said of game forums? Just a wild theory...

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And the MOST egregious of all insults (wry smile)

Corwin said:

Hippie!

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These quotes don't even touch on the most frustrating part of "your sides" arguments - overall you guys present your positions in a didactic and arrogant manner, turgid with assumptions based on your play style that serve to insult (albeit in an inadvertent though thoughtless way on your part) those whose play style differs.

Continuously partitioning off D and D off from its (as I see it) historic hybrid genre and placing it solely in RPG land, asserting its the DM's job to be the game balancing mechanism, decrying non-sandbox play as reducing player agency - are all perfectly valid positions. But feel free to couch them in words like "as I see it" or such every once in a while.

A previous poster (Tony Vargas?) said there might be some "reflexive defensiveness" of the current edition in play here - I would go further and say I see a pervasive, overwhelming, reflexive, didactic, and arrogant defensiveness in these forums, rooted in an inabilty to truly understand, appreciate, and be inclusive of other playstyles - that serves to act as a silencing mechanism. One which serves to wrathcet up the rancor level. Then when the mutual rancor begins to flow in full, "you guys" (deliberate use of quotes here to emphasize the division herein) then bust out with the "gee, why are you guys being so belligerent?" card.

[MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION], Not sure what "side" you think I'm on, but by including me above I could use a clarification. Are you saying you disagree with my theory that there are some systems/editions better suited for certain types of individuals? And that maybe the same can be said of game forums?

shoak1 said:

Gee after reading your cherry-picked snippets I almost started feeling bad for you....but then I decided to do a little cherry-picking of snippets from "your side."

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I must be doing a pretty good job of presenting a balanced (pi) perspective, if both sides are convinced I'm on the other.

Continuously partitioning off D and D off from its (as I see it) historic hybrid genre and placing it solely in RPG land

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'RPG land' should include everything that's been in D&D - minis, odd scaling, morale checks, all the stuff that gets falsely accused of being 'a board game' or 'Roll playing' as if it were separate from roleplaying, when it's actually part of it.

asserting its the DM's job to be the game balancing mechanism

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That's /part/ of the DM's job in 5e (if he cares about balance). The 5e DM is Empowered, his job is neither small nor easy.

Tony Vargas said:

That's /part/ of the DM's job in 5e (if he cares about balance).

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Absolutely correct. Once this expectation is internalized, then it becomes easy to see what must be done in my view. And it's why I find complaints about "balance" to be, as I put it and [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION] quotes as an example of me being mean (I guess), laughable and demonstrative of the poster's misunderstanding.

Tony Vargas said:

I must be doing a pretty good job of presenting a balanced (pi) perspective, if both sides are convinced I'm on the other.

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Indeed you are sir

Tony Vargas said:

'RPG land' should include everything that's been in D&D - minis, odd scaling, morale checks, all the stuff that gets falsely accused of being 'a board game' or 'Roll playing' as if it were separate from roleplaying, when it's actually part of it.

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Tony Vargas said:

That's /part/ of the DM's job in 5e (if he cares about balance). The 5e DM is Empowered, his job is neither small nor easy.

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You have perfectly valid positions here - but you just present them as fact rather than as a position - without a nod to other perspectives or even any qualifying adjectives. Using words like "falsely" encourages ratcheting up of rancor and drawing up lines in the sand imo.

Tony Vargas said:

That's /part/ of the DM's job in 5e (if he cares about balance). The 5e DM is Empowered, his job is neither small nor easy.

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...and ironically, in my mind at least, more rewarding as well. Strangely, I think I got less enjoyment out of running the last couple editions of the game than I do out of this one. The more my role, as DM, was expected to be "rote, box-text reading, RAW-applier", the less I got out of it. Where as I enjoy so much running 5e. Maybe even slightly more more than being a player in it. Go figure. Weird.

iserith said:

Absolutely correct. Once this expectation is internalized, then it becomes easy to see what must be done in my view. And it's why I find complaints about "balance" to be, as I put it and [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION] quotes as an example of me being mean (I guess), laughable and demonstrative of the poster's misunderstanding.

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This is a good example of the didactic and non-inclusive rhetoric I was talking about. The inference is that once I stop fighting and just accept the One True Way, it will become easy for me to glean the laughable nature of my balance arguments....

shoak1 said:

Continuously partitioning off D and D off from its (as I see it) historic hybrid genre and placing it solely in RPG land, asserting its the DM's job to be the game balancing mechanism, decrying non-sandbox play as reducing player agency - are all perfectly valid positions. But feel free to couch them in words like "as I see it" or such every once in a while.
.

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No shoak1, those are not personal insults attacking opposing people as immoral, too dumb to know any better, living on lala land, accusing them of packs of wolves, or being nihilists, etc. You guys have been insulting people of different opinion directly and personally, and more often than not, not based on anything they've actually said or done, but strawmen you're making up.

Like despite me just having explained to you how no one here has said D&D can only ever be an RPG, you repeated it yet again (bolded part mine). That, combined with your numerous other strawmen and personal attacks on people, tells me you have no intention of having an honest conversation. Rather, you've come into this thread trying to play the victim while insulting other people and making up arguments no one has said, and demand that the game and everyone else cater to your deviated style of game play with no willingness of your own to even admit that since D&D is not designed to be a tactical minis game only, you have to do some tweaks to make it work for you. Instead, you accuse the game of being incomplete and anyone not agreeing is giving the designers a free pass. Those aren't cherry picked quotes of you and "your side" insulting or implying people you disagree with are badwrong. They are most of your posts in general in this thread.

So my advice to you, is if you want a forum to seem like it's more accommodating to you, don't go off insulting people and their intelligence and making up strawmen arguments about them. It's not your style of gameplay I have issue with. It's your behavior.