Pathfinder and 4e....and BALANCE.

[Aberzanzorax]

I'm very new to Pathfinder. Our first session is being geared up for.

I've played a few 4e games and read quite a few adventures.



So I ask from a position of ignorance here....and I admit that/don't have a particular bias.



SO...here's the question. Is 4e actually more balanced than Pathfinder? I ask for a couple of reasons. I remember the "Orbizard" posts about how "broken" they are. I am also struck by how wonderfully diverse, yet balanced, the pathfinder base classes appear to be...again...I haven't played it yet.

It must, of course, be mentioned that with greater diversity (as in the HUGE amount of 3e books and the increasing number of 4e books, that power creep can become a problem and that this can compromize balance). More rules = more rule loopholes/rule exploitation.

But, here's my take. It's a bit of a defense of pathfinder, in the sense that I've heard how important 4e has made balance...how much of a focus it is...and how many had an issue with balance in 3e (and I DEFINITELY agree that in the end 3e had lots of potential for imbalance).


My take:

4e was well balanced upon release...better than 3e was on release. They did a great job (except for a few specifics here and there...but overall still better than 3e). It's grown beyond the tight reins they had, and become more of a wild beast. At the same time, Pathfinder had just the one book (which is a PHB and DMG as one) and then the Besitary, as 4e had upon release. BUT beyond that, pathfinder had an existing game of 8 years (and many years before that) as well as the input of the designer of that existing game (Monte Cook). 4e invoked huge sweeping changes and killed a ton of sacred cows...in the name of a more fun and balanced game, to be fair.

But my point is...couldn't Pathfinder have been more successful in creating balance by "fixing an old game" rather than 4e creating balance by "making a newer game focused on balance"? I suppose I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone who prefers to buy older versions of Windows...because the bugs have been ironed out. Rather than the newest/greatest thing that is an improvement.

Thoughts?

 

[TheNovaLord]

PF is an improvement in many ways than 3.5

(i hope they didnt invent 4th ed just to make everything balanced!)

PF character have lots more options than 3.5.
-are they balanced. Dunno? have played it a lot and still cant make a final judgement.
-does it matter if its balanced? probably not, every pc seems to have lots stuff to do, in and out of combat.

easier to balance 4th ed characters i imagine as they use a similar mechanic ( i have + X to hit, do Y damage plus affect Z, for the most part)

PF feels balanced thus far, maybe. hope they dont ruin it with ever more powerful feats

 

[ggroy]

How exactly are you defining "balance"?

Can it be defined mathematically?

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Fundamentally, spellcasters increase in power exponentially as they gain levels and nonspellcasters increase in power linearly in 3.5E, and Pathfinder didn't really do anything to change that. In plainer english, magic using PCs gain in power as they level at substantially faster rate, and at higher levels a non-spellcaster cannot compete with a well played spellcaster in terms of raw power. In addition, in 3.5E/Pathfinder the differences in power between a well built character and a poorly built one are so vast that the two really aren't playing the same game anymore.

In 4E, the differences are less. There isn't a power discrepancy between spellcasters and noncasters, and character classes generally progress at the same rate as they level. There are classes that tend to be stronger than others, but the differences are minor compared to 3.5E/Pathfinder. There is a significant difference in power between a well built character in 4E compared to a poorly built one, but unless you are specifically trying to fail(putting a low score in the stat your class uses for attack rolls for example), the difference is nowhere near as great as what can occur in 3.5E/Pathfinder.

The subtle difference between 3.5E/Pathfinder and 4E is that the power levels and balance in character building are far more transparent in 4E than 3.5E/Pathfinder. 4E is easy to understand at a fundamental level, and taking a look at things its easy to understand how they work. This makes the balance and imbalances in 4E easier to spot. 3.5E/Pathfinder tends to be vague and arcane, and the balance/imbalance contained in the system is harder to spot at a quick glance.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

SO...here's the question. Is 4e actually more balanced than Pathfinder? I ask for a couple of reasons. I remember the "Orbizard" posts about how "broken" they are. I am also struck by how wonderfully diverse, yet balanced, the pathfinder base classes appear to be...again...I haven't played it yet.

IMO 4e is more balanced. It's a new game system. Of course, being new, it has its own imbalances not shared by 3.x, like orb wizard brokenness.

Pathfinder is like 3.75. It's identical or better than 3.x in virtually every way, but it keeps some of the same problems. Seriously, why couldn't they fix the Blasphemy spell? There's no excuse for a broken spell like that to survive unscathed through three iterations. I'm probably overreacting, since I stopped liking 3.x over time, but seriously, why weren't problems like that fixed?

And Augment Summoning - please, no stat boosts. I don't want to change monsters on the fly in combat. Just give straight up combat boosts instead: +2 to hit and damage should suffice. (I guess I'm saying I expected "improvements"; I'm not complaining that Augment Summoning is in any way broken or OP.)

It must, of course, be mentioned that with greater diversity (as in the HUGE amount of 3e books and the increasing number of 4e books, that power creep can become a problem and that this can compromize balance). More rules = more rule loopholes/rule exploitation.

Stick to core rules. If you can't set a baseline, doing a comparison becomes much harder. (DMs have the right to say "no" when it comes to splats. And for the record of this thread, I consider anything beyond PH1, DMG1 and MM1 to be "non-core".)

But my point is...couldn't Pathfinder have been more successful in creating balance by "fixing an old game" rather than 4e creating balance by "making a newer game focused on balance"?

Depends on what you like. Pathfinder would have had to go further if you wanted a more balanced 3.x. Just off the top of my head, the saving throw progressions would need to change, so there's rarely such obvious saving throws to target. Grappling needed to be changed; too often you had monsters with decent attack bonuses, decent damage, but if they ever grappled a PC, it was the end barring specific spells. Attack vs AC progressions needed to be changed (and that was very difficult to do, due to iterative attacks); too many monsters had AC scores so low, it wasn't a question of whether to Power Attack, but by how much?

And that doesn't address complaints, such as AC only being boosted by armor, magic and stat-boosting items. 4e's level bonus to AC, like d20 Modern, makes sense! (You could also mod the game for low magic so much more easily in 4e. In 3.x, cutting magic items would reduce AC by a lot, but reduce attack bonuses hardly at all.)

I suppose I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone who prefers to buy older versions of Windows...because the bugs have been ironed out. Rather than the newest/greatest thing that is an improvement.

I wouldn't say Pathfinder ironed out that many bugs compared to 3.x. Rather, it make some of the weaker core classes not suck as much by giving them good options/bonuses. Mages get unlimited 0-level spells, for instance; not nearly as good as 4e's "I'm more than a glorified archer at 1st-level" though. They also get much cooler specialist options. Sorcerers actually get class abilities. Fighters suck ... less. (Hint: Numerical bonuses are good, but actual combat options are better. 4e vastly surpassed Pathfinder in this area.) Monks... still suck. As I suggested, many of the bugs (IMO) are still present.

 

[Oni]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that 4e may actually be more balanced now than it was at release. Love it or hate it, Wotc has been very active in maintaining and tweaking their game, fixing loopholes that arise and slowly putting to bed old issues.

 

[haakon1]

SO...here's the question. Is 4e actually more balanced than Pathfinder?

Perhaps this is not a helpful reply, but why is balance so important?

There are many other things -- like fun, "feel", and easy of using the rules -- that I'd care about before "balance", for any version of the game.

It's cooperative game, not a competitive one. And by its nature, different characters are good at different things, which will come with differing frequencies in different campaigns. I'm not sure how you can rationally determine which character is "better", or why it matters. You don't "win" if your character gets more kills than the others, or stops more traps, or heals more people -- the winning is in the fun as a group, and playing and growing whatever character you're playing.

I've seen people be perfectly happy with intentionally NOT optimized characters -- one guy spent a lot of Skill Points on making his PC a great cook, because it was part of the PC's personality, and fun for the player.

And balance is in the eye of the beholder. One man's balance is another man's bland homogeneity or straitjacketing, etc. One man's lack of balance is another's "variety of cool choices, all of which have upsides and downsides".

More rules = more rule loopholes/rule exploitation.

I agree. I think a minimalist ruleset is best for any version of the game. But not because it's better "balanced", just because it's easier to learn and use, and makes for a more consistent baseline of what the world is like. I particularly dislike changing how things work/what classes exist, etc. in mid-campaign.

Note that for any edition, you are free to ignore all the supplemental rules, or choose the ones you like. I've done "core books only" in DMing AD&D, 3e, and 3.5e, and I'm a player in a 4e campaign with the same approach.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Perhaps this is not a helpful reply, but why is balance so important?

Balance is important because people aren't perfect, and RPG players are rare enough to be valuable, even if they aren't perfect. In a game situation where everyone is perfect(and it does happen), balance can be set aside. When just one of those players decides to use the system to be more powerful, it affects everyone else. If somebody optimizes, balance becomes important.

 

[JohnSnow]

I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that you won't be able to have this discussion without starting an Edition War. But, that said, I will enter, eyes wide-open.

On the actual topic, I think it's hard to say. To the extent that Pathfinder is really Dungeons & Dragons 3.6e (or maybe 3.7), it came out with a lot more playtest time than Fourth Edition. Seeing Pathfinder, and how many people regard it as a "totally new game," I'm not surprised they feel 3.5 was a new edition. To me, rewriting a few class features, feats, skills, and spells are updates, not a new edition.

But I digress. I will say that I've looked at Pathfinder and it doesn't do a thing to address any of the balance gripes/issues I had with Third Edition. There may be a lot of small changes (compared to 3.5e), but I've seen more substantive ones in people's houserules (my own included).

By contrast, 4e is a much more substantial change intended to make all the classes more "equal" (or "balanced") in play. To that end, the casters were powered down (relative to the other classes) and the non-casters were powered up. The hit point system was also reworked so that there's less variability between classes, different characters in the same class, and across levels.

I will also say that, by design, 4e is less easily "broken," because the rules are both more transparent and less flexible. What I mean by that is there's less likelihood of some rules element suddenly becoming "broken" because of an unintended synergy that comes up by accident. When something is broken, it's usually one power (and "too weak" is more common than "too uber"). "Broken" powers or feats make it out on occasion (there were a few in PHB1, as has been said), but those are usually relatively easily and quickly (often by WotC) either "powered up" or "nerfed."

Since Pathfinder, as near as I can tell, is more like a modded version of 3.5e with many of the later options stripped out, that cuts down on the busted combos compared to 3.5. The core is relatively robust, and the classes may be MORE equal than they were relative to 3.5e. And since Paizo is a small company, it will have fewer updates, and probably hew closer to its initial design. That said, if you start allowing 3.5 options, you're going to run into the same balance problems 3.5 had late in its life. However, it does seem that the traditional power discrepancy between classes (i.e. the primary casters are just better) still seems to be very much in effect. But some people consider that discrepancy to be a feature of the system, rather than a bug. So that's only a "balance" problem if you think it is.

Ultimately, I'd say which system you think has better "balance" probably depends entirely on your personal preferences and what exactly you think "balance" means.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

As a counter to the previous post, the following:

**please note that this isn't a criticism, but a statement, I'm going to try to state it without value judgements**

Option creep does equal power creep, and this is equally true of both 3.5E and 4E. That being said there is a lot more balance in 4E core than there is in 3.5E core. If you look back on character optimization theory in 3.5E, the three most powerful classes in 3.5E were Wizard, Cleric and Druid, all contained in the core rules and with the majority of the tools they need to dominate the game(as levels increase) in place. While optional supplements gave these classes poweful tools and broken combos, the core was already in place. There is nothing in 4E core that is as powerful as 3.5E's big three, compared to other options. While option creep does equal power creep, in 3.5E at a fundamental level spellcasting was a lot more powerful than the alternative.