What do you do without balance?

[Dr. Prunesquallor]

A player who is less invested in the game may be willing to accept a less powerful/optimal character as the price of ease of play, and therefore be less concerned about balance.

For example, I started playing in a small AD&D 2e group with a 12th-level mage and some sort of Kaz the Minotaur clone. I played a basic fighter, rescued naked from a dungeon in mid-campaign. The DM played support characters. I had a great time playing because the character was so simple to run it was like playing with house money, compared to the effort the other players were putting in.

We added another player and eventually converted to 3.0, retiring the active characters and creating new characters as their sons or grandsons. This is where balance became an issue for us. My high-investment mage-playing friend decided to try a fighter when he saw the new options, and the Kaz guy decided to do Artemis Entreri. I, in all innocence, I promise, picked a dwarf druid, and the fourth guy, also a lower-investment player, took a bard.

That campaign could be divided into before and after Wildshape. Before it, my high-investment friend was somewhat unsatisfied and took a dip into sorcerer to pick up magic missle. After Wildshape, even after getting to use a Wish spell from an NPC, he was just bitter. He was too proud to retire the character, though, and played him until the campaign broke up. It soured him completely on 3E.

Could my friend ever be satisfied with a fighter? I'm not sure. I know it got to him that he was putting in effort to pick feats when he felt like he had nothing to show for it while I got benefits as class and race features. In contrast, the bard player put most of his effort into seduction and seemed to amuse himself immensely while contributing very little in combat.

I guess the point of these maunderings is that perception of balance depends a lot on the tenor of the game as set by the DM and what the player, personally, brings to the game. Any player with a substantial investment of effort who feels he can't realize a reasonable return on that investment might get testy, while a player with no or little investment might accept that he'll have a smaller return.

I feel that 4E has tried to equalize investment of effort and realized returns between the classes by standardizing class structures to some extent while retaining differences in powers. I can appreciate that this level of balance is a sweet spot for some, but I miss the old "no-investment" fighter that 3E took away. "I hit it with my sword. What? That doesn't work? Right. I insult it."

 

[Mort]

I game with my friends and we don't hog the spot light from each other and we help everyone be in the game. We don't need of the game to balance things for us by limiting characters that should not be limited. We have fun with the Jedi being a real Jedi and the force being the ultimate power in the universe. Players enjoy their characters and not for the power the character does or does not have. Or GM's make story hooks for each character so everyone is involved and has a chance to shine.

In the 90's I cut my teeth on games like Rifts that do not have balance between characters. My friends and I have fun together and rarely does the game matter.

A Good GM can make even a bad system a great experience. The real question is: Is the system helping or hurting the effort. Your post implies that often the fun was in spite of the sytem not because of it, and while that shows you have a great group it certainly says nothing good about the system itself.

Yes, it would have been pointless for this discussion if we didn't have Cosmo Knights in the same group that we had Rogue Scholars.

Here for example. the RIFTS non-combat (skills) system is (to put it charitably) underdeveloped and extremely wonky. To make this situation work it's the GM and not the system that saves it.

That said, I think balance is an extremely important part of a system but it's certainly not the whole story.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Fair =/= balanced.

Balanced is like a handicap in sports. Sometimes it is appropriate. Often it is not.

It is fair that, if I play better, I get to be higher level than you. It is not balanced.

I would rather have fair than balanced, any day.

 

[kitsune9]

I'm very curious: in various discussions about editions of D&D and discrepancies between spellcasters and non-spellcasters there are people who wish there wasn't so much focus on balancing things. So that leads me to the following question:

How much balance would you be willing to forgo before you'd no longer be satisfied with the game?

(For the purpose that I using it here I define balance as "when presented with two or more similar mechanical options there are no clear better or worse choices".)

For the most part, the different classes in our play experience from 1e to 3.x, we felt that there was always something for everyone even though they sometimes didn't get a chance to shine like rogues not being able to sneak attack undead in a module filled with them. Mechanically, I'm sure there were lots of design flaws in the balance arena, but we didn't seem to mind it. My group took the good with the bad.

The only thing that we didn't think was balancing would be some spell or spell-like ability that would be an encounter-breaker. A funny story is that I spent over 3 hours writing up an epic villain to cap off our campaign and the mage killed him with an 8th level spell that was save or die in the first round. Talk about anti-climatic. Anyways, when we play, if we run across an spell or spell-like ability that is totally whacked, we'll have a gentleman's agreement to avoid picking it, because I typically don't like to ban things.

In terms of my opinion as to what was broke, what was unbalanced, etc., I'll let others rant about that. I usually agree with about what is said on these boards.

 

[Mort]

Fair =/= balanced.

Balanced is like a handicap in sports. Sometimes it is appropriate. Often it is not.

Handicapping assumes players of different abilities. I'd say the more important part of balance in a system is how it treats people of equal ability not differing abilities.

The sports analogy: I have two good baseball hitters. I give one a wooden bat and the other an aluminum one. The one with the aluminum bat will hit it farther. This is a lack of balance due to equipment.

It's identical in 3e. I have two players with high levels of system mastery. each designs a high level character - one a fighter, one a wizard. If one of these is more useful and/or objectively better - there's a lack of balance due to the system (either intentional or not) which is essentially the equipment of the game.

Is it fair that one player can design a better character because the system favors that type of character? My answer to that is it's fine if it's explicit and not fine if not. In Buffy the slayer is better - she just is (well magic can be better but this is not the time) as long as everyone knows this, it's ok. In RIFTS the power differential is obvious, there's no pretense - and that's ok too; people can play a similarly powered group or not - it's their choice. My problem with 3e is that it was not explicit. Fighters, rogues, Druids and wizards (or more simply casters vs. non casters) were presented like they were on the same playing field but any look at mid to high levels shows this as a fallacy.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I argue that a group that is less focused on combat is more likely to accept balance over time. I would also argue that if a group is more focused on optimization is less likely to accept balance over time.

An interesting point, and one that seems true anecdotally.

A fun game may not need balance. However, a game that focuses heavily on mechanics probably needs more balance, aka management of expectations. It's reasonable to expect that you can do some things well, some things not so well, and a few poorly. When those things you do well overlap or cross over with another character's abilities, it's reasonable for a player to expect that neither one of you is much better or worse. It's best if you have different capacities in fact. However, if you're both level X, with a reasonable expectation of having +Y to your key abilitiy, talk of balance rears its ugly head when the guy across the table has +10 more than you to his +Y.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I'm very curious: in various discussions about editions of D&D and discrepancies between spellcasters and non-spellcasters there are people who wish there wasn't so much focus on balancing things.

How much balance would you be willing to forgo before you'd no longer be satisfied with the game?

Over the past 8 years there has been a fetishizing of balance. The ideological backlash to that extremism is only to be expected. (It's also predictable that such a backlash will often propel people all the way over to the opposite sort of extremism.)

Justin Alexander also recently posted an essay called The Many Types of Balance which, in part, discusses these issues. Basically, he says, there are three types of balance:

CONCEPT BALANCE -- Which holds that all character concepts should be equally viable.

NATURALISTIC BALANCE -- Which tries to make things in the game behave the way they would within the reality of the game world.

SPOTLIGHT BALANCE -- Which says that everybody should get an equal share of playing time and attention.

Each of these has its strengths and its weaknesses. Since you're asking about foregoing balance, let's focus on the weaknesses.

CONCEPT BALANCE requires that either the flexibility of character creation or the scope of gameplay be limited. This is why lots of people advocating for concept balance focus exclusively on combat, for example: By limiting the scope of gameplay strictly to combat, they can achieve balance.

NATURALISTIC BALANCE allows for the creation of sub-par characters. Avoiding these sub-par characters requires system mastery.

SPOTLIGHT BALANCE requires the GM to actually balance the spotlight. It can also mean that player A needs to sit around and do nothing while player B struts their stuff. (The "decker problem" in Shadowrun is an extreme example of this problem. More typical is the system in which character B has about 80% the effectiveness of character A in situation X, whereas in situation Y the reverse is true.)

These problems can be mitigated in various ways, but not eliminated. They're fundamental to these types of balance.

4th Edition is heavily invested in concept balance, virtually abandoning the spotlight balance which was once the core design principle of D&D. It achieves that concept balance by both limiting the scope of gameplay (as seen in combat) and the flexibility of character creation (as seen in the skill system).

(Some may interpret that as a slam, but it's not. It's just the reality of 4th Edition's design: They traded scope and flexibility for concept balance. Whether that trade-off is worth it depends on how highly you value concept balance.)

Personally, I largely agree with Justin's self-described sweet spot when it comes these issues (which is probably a good thing, since I play at his table):

CONCEPT BALANCE: I like immersive roleplay and open, sandbox-style scenarios. Thus I prize both flexibility in character creation and a broad scope of potential gameplay. As a result, I have no taste for the trade-offs demanded by concept balance.


However, that doesn't mean that the lessons of concept balance should be completely ignored. While I don't necessarily believe that all character concepts need to be legitimate options, I do believe that all legitimate character options should be viable in the game system.

NATURALISTIC BALANCE: My preference for immersive roleplay and sandbox-style scenarios similarly makes naturalistic balance appealing to me. The need for system mastery, on the other hand, is not inherently appealing to me, but flexibility and meaningful choice both require the possibility that poor choices can be made. Ergo, I'm not particularly averse to the negative aspects of naturalistic balance, while remaining open to its positive aspects.

SPOTLIGHT BALANCE: I like my players to have many different gameplay options for overcoming a given obstacle. And I recognize that giving players meaningful choice in character creation means allowing them to choose where to focus their character creation resources.
Therefore, I embrace spotlight balance.


Fortunately, when you embrace open-ended scenario design, spotlight balance tends to take care of itself. When you give players the ability to craft their own course of action, they'll defend their own interests and pursue those strategies and tactics which best reflect their own strengths. (You'll need to watch out for players who get excluded from the group's decision-making process, but that's a group dynamic that will cause problems far beyond the issues raised by spotlight balance and would need to be dealt with in any case.)


I also tend to believe that, when spotlight balance is working, the problems commonly associated with it aren't actually meaningful problems. Even if all of the PCs are perfectly balanced for combat and your entire game is completely dedicated to combat, each PC is still only capable of being at the center of attention for a limited amount of time. (If there are X PCs, then that time is limited -- on average -- to 1/Xth of the game session.) If you don't like being an audience for the awesome things the other players are doing, then you're never going to be satisfied with anything except solo and one-on-one play. (Me? I like having an audience for my escapades and I like watching the clever escapades of others.)


So, in my opinion, most people who protest that they have a problem with spotlight balance acutally mean that they have a problem with spotlight imbalance -- in other words, someone else is getting more than their fair share of the spotlight.


What I will concede is that spotlight play is not something that can be mechanically enforced within the traditional structure of a roleplaying game. (It can be mechanically enabled, but that's different.) Ultimately the GM, working in concert with the group dynamic, must make sure that the spotlight gets turned to each PC in turn. This is something that must be managed in the moment. It can't even be easily quantified. Knowing where, when, and how to focus a spotlight depends on the tastes of your players and the circumstances of the session. It's a matter of pacing and narrative need, coupled with practicality and an honest gauge of players' current interests, attention, and energy. It's more an art than a science.
As a final note, I'll point out that the exact mixture of concept, naturalistic, and spotlight balance depends on the game and the campaign concept I'm running at the time. Just as there's no One True Way, in my experience there's also no One Size Fits All solution to these issues.

 

[Crothian]

Here for example. the RIFTS non-combat (skills) system is (to put it charitably) underdeveloped and extremely wonky. To make this situation work it's the GM and not the system that saves it.

That said, I think balance is an extremely important part of a system but it's certainly not the whole story.

Rifts then is a bad example because the system is pretty bad in many people's opinions. So, I'll go with d6 Star Wars. Jedi in that game could be much more powerful then other characters. But the non combat skills system worked very well and the game still allowed for different characters to shine even though the Jedi were so potentially dominant.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Handicapping assumes players of different abilities. I'd say the more important part of balance in a system is how it treats people of equal ability not differing abilities.

The sports analogy: I have two good baseball hitters. I give one a wooden bat and the other an aluminum one. The one with the aluminum bat will hit it farther. This is a lack of balance due to equipment.

Sure.

But let us note that, in this case, you have two people with identical goals -- to hit the ball as often, and as far, as possible. If the goals of any two D&D players were the same, then, as they are also using the same rules, they could both make characters equally optimized for the same task.

Your sports analogy would apply to a role-playing game only if one player were allowed to use different rules from the other player. For example, if you allowed one player to use Splatbook X (the aluminum bat) but not the other player, who is stuck using the core rules (the wooden bat).

If you have two players with high levels of system mastery, and each designs a high level character, one of which is "more useful and/or objectively better"....all this does is raise the question of whether or not players should be allowed to design suboptimal characters. It is not a question of fairness, because all players had equal access to all classes and all the same rules.

Moreover, the idea that one character is "more useful and/or objectively better" relies upon the idea that both players are making their characters with the same goal(s) in mind. That this is not always true in the case of role-playing games is fairly obvious, I think, to most people.

If a game designer wants human fighters to be the most common PC choice, then human fighters should have some mechanical advantage to make them common. Other races and classes should have other abilities that offset the fact that they are suboptimal. Clearly, in this regard, "human fighter" was not a race/class combo that the designers of 3e wanted to make optimal.

It seems very clear to me that the designers of 3e believed spells were fun, and wanted to encourage spellcasting at the table. That doesn't mean that it is "unfair". It might mean that it requires houseruling, or that you might prefer another game, if the goals of designers do not match your own. Ars Magica isn't unbalanced because players cannot play Conan, and 3e isn't unbalanced because some choices are better than others for specific goals.

Is it fair that one player can design a better character because the system favors that type of character? My answer to that is it's fine if it's explicit and not fine if not.

My answer is that it is fine either way. Indeed, if you want players to be able to make meaningful choices, I would argue that it is necessary.

My problem with 3e is that it was not explicit. Fighters, rogues, Druids and wizards (or more simply casters vs. non casters) were presented like they were on the same playing field but any look at mid to high levels shows this as a fallacy.

Some feat choices and some spell choices are probably suboptimal, too. But, I bet, in some campaigns the choices you find suboptimal are the optimal ones.

BTW, I refute the idea that 3e was presented as though all choices were equally optimal. "System mastery" was built into the game right at the start, with the idea that a player with more "system mastery" would be able to build a better character than one with less "system mastery". This was explicitly because WotC's market research showed that "system mastery" was one of those things people liked about D&D.

(Whether or not the type of "system mastery" in WotC-D&D even remotely resembles that in TSR-D&D is, of course, a whole 'nother question!)


RC

 

[Mort]

Sure.

But let us note that, in this case, you have two people with identical goals -- to hit the ball as often, and as far, as possible. If the goals of any two D&D players were the same, then, as they are also using the same rules, they could both make characters equally optimized for the same task.

Whe're talking about different things. I'm saying if the optimal character is always a certain type -that's the problem. If for example I present you with 3 different scenarios - say: spying/infiltration, combat superiority (not necesessarily damage output), and survivability and the optimal character for each situation is a spellcaster - the game is skewed toward spellcasters and not balanced between casters and non-casters. That's unbalanced and if the game purports to be otherwise, that's a problem for me.

.

It seems very clear to me that the designers of 3e believed spells were fun, and wanted to encourage spellcasting at the table. That doesn't mean that it is "unfair". It might mean that it requires houseruling, or that you might prefer another game, if the goals of designers do not match your own. Ars Magica isn't unbalanced because players cannot play Conan, and 3e isn't unbalanced because some choices are better than others for specific goals.

That's just it. In Ars Magica spellcasters are dominant - this is not a balance issue it is the intent of the system and clearly stated as such. You can't really go into it expecting to play a non-caster that plays on the same level as the casters.

But 3e is different. The billing is that different character classes have different strengths, being better for certain things than others. But if one or two character classes are generaly the optimal choice regardless of goal, that's not balanced (and somewhat false advertising). In other words if the book says play a rogue if you want to be good at sneaking, scouting and infiltrating but in reality a spellcasting wizard can do all of those things better and also do his and/or other roles better too then again the system is skewed toward casters - and should at the very least admit it.