Can somebody explain the bias against game balance?

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Interesting. I'll bet this could be usefully applied to dungeon design.

Almost certainly. I think it's much more directly applicable to character creation, of course. Now that I have a few minutes.....

When you can choose from 10,000 different starting combinations of class/race, you should be able to find the "right one for you." When presented with this wide set of choices, most people profess to be happy about having options. But as you move forward, whenever something rubs you slightly wrong about how it's playing out, the average human being comes to the conclusion that there is something wrong with the choices they made. "There were thousands of possibilities! One of them had to be right." This leads to unhappiness with the state of affairs, and unhappiness with the choice you made. Frequently, this anger is redirected at someone proximate. Your DM tricked you into it, WotC didn't make the class right, WotC made it look better than it actually played, etc. Over time, there's simply cognitive dissonance generated by the fact that you had "perfect" choice, but at the end of the day, nothing is ever perfect. The expectation of perfect choice cannot be fulfilled.

But when you have only 12 possible combinations... you select one and are more likely to "roll with the punches" when things rub you a little wrong early on. Over time, "making the best of it" leads naturally into actually being happy with it. You went in with no illusion of perfection to be punctured, and are more likely to focus on the positive.

There are many experimental designs that shape up that way. A couple books and several TED talks have examples.

Of course, there's always the small percentage of the population who operate in precisely the opposite way. These people are vanishingly rare.

*) For all you Dwarves in the audience, "axes" here is the plural of "axis".

And here I thought the discussion was finally getting interesting. Sub-games for each of my axes would be fulfilling.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Great. But I don't want a lame Minotaur Gore attack. I want Elven Accuracy, I want an extra At-Will power, I want to use my Second Wind as a Minor action, and I want an At-Will from another class.

That's four feats, right?

Sounds like it- each one with its own prereqs.

And before you say "feat tax" again, I don't have a problem with that- its no different than a PC wanting to play a Wizard who is proficient in all weapons.

If you want to play something extremely unusual, its going to cost you in almost any system.

 

[Nifft]

Of course, there's always the small percentage of the population who operate in precisely the opposite way. These people are vanishingly rare.

I am not 100% clear on what "opposite way" means here.

They don't gain unrealistic expectations from a wide array of choices?
Or they don't gun for a perfect choice in the first place?
Or ... ?

Cheers, -- N

 

[Raven Crowking]

Canis,

I understand your reasoning, but fail to see how it is applicable here.

RC

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I am not 100% clear on what "opposite way" means here.

They don't gain unrealistic expectations from a wide array of choices?
Or they don't gun for a perfect choice in the first place?
Or ... ?

Cheers, -- N

They prefer choice to all else. They get so upset by lack of choices at the outset that they take their toys and go home (or stay pissy in perpetuity).

My unconfirmed suspicion is that if we look at their inherent affect towards their choice, it would actually look just like everyone else, but they are making a very conscious choice to make a point. It could also be an artifact of the experimental design.

Famous example:
Students were given an opportunity to take several pictures of campus for a study (at least in the initial run, they were all seniors, as to leverage nostalgia). They were then told they could keep one. Group A got to choose which one. Group B had their choice made for them by the researcher.

Group A was happier with their picture they day they picked it. But when the researchers check back a week later, Group B was much happier with their picture than Group A. There is a very small subset of people who grudgingly admit they like the picture chosen for them, but continue to whine and moan about lack of choice.... probably because they know that some other people got to choose.

Expertise of the person doing the choosing is sometimes a factor, but not always.

Canis,

I understand your reasoning, but fail to see how it is applicable here.

RC

Game A gives you Minotaurs, Goliaths, Half-giants, Half-orcs, Gorilla-men, and Klingons to choose from, all being stronger than "average" but with slightly different modifiers.

Game B gives you "Strong guys."

At the time of character creation, Game A players who want a strong race are happier. But check back in session 2, or session 5, or session 10 and ask them how happy they are with their character.

I will bet you good money that even within the group of gamers (who hilariously and reliably claim a degree of iconoclasty that is over 9000) that Game B's "Strong guy" players are will rate their character higher on whatever scales you're using.

For a more specific and direct application to this thread.... By focusing on character creation, the "problem" of lack of +4 strength modifiers for Minotaurs seems inflated, relative to it's actual importance over time in game. When you get to the game in-play over time, this will take a back seat.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So, "Your choices are fighting man, magic user, cleric, or rogue" is superior to the number of class options of later editions, and the "cantina effect" inherently causes dissatisfaction?


RC

 

[Doug McCrae]

It seemed to me that balance was a design goal of 3e, but it was secondary. The primary design goal of 3e was simply systematization.

Yeah, I agree with you, though I think I'd call it unification or consistency. 3e gave D&D what RuneQuest had had since the late 70s - a unified system. In fact, by the mid-80s onwards, virtually all rpgs had unified systems. HERO, GURPS, anything by Chaosium, WEG Star Wars, White Wolf. The only exceptions were D&D-style throwbacks like Palladium/Rifts, that were still stuck in the 1970s. It was Hong, I believe, who talked about the HERO-isation of D&D with regard to 3e. He was right.

However 3e isn't quite as unified as it could be. I always felt the spell system looked a bit weird, by virtue of being mostly a copy and paste from previous editions. Lots of spells have their own little sub-systems, like Entangle traps its victims in a different way than Web does, for, imo, no good reason.

 

[Votan]

I'll just state at this point that, IMHO, Monte Cook's AU/AE RPG modified Savage Species' approach solved the monster race issue pretty handily. Adding those racial benefits over time is pretty balanced...and has worked pretty well for me when I built racial character classes for my homebrewed campaigns.

It does involve a bit of work, though.

Agreed. It's not really portable into a 4E framework which is much more highly templated but it is (at least theoretically) a way to mix powerful and less powerful race in a d20/3.X context while retaining balance. You still have the issue that the level 1 minotaur is awful weak relative to the level 1 human but at mid-levels this issue will be resolved.

 

[Fifth Element]

So, "Your choices are fighting man, magic user, cleric, or rogue" is superior to the number of class options of later editions, and the "cantina effect" inherently causes dissatisfaction?

There are degrees involved.

If the only choices were human magic-user and human fighting man, I daresay most people would find that far too limiting to be enjoyable. They spend more time "rolling with it" than they do actually enjoying their character.

On the other hand, having 23 races and 47 classes to choose from the start can and does lead to the situation described. Add 987 feats and it gets worse and worse.

There's a comfortable spot in the middle, that's slightly different for everyone.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There are degrees involved.

If the only choices were human magic-user and human fighting man, I daresay most people would find that far too limiting to be enjoyable. They spend more time "rolling with it" than they do actually enjoying their character.

On the other hand, having 23 races and 47 classes to choose from the start can and does lead to the situation described. Add 987 feats and it gets worse and worse.

There's a comfortable spot in the middle, that's slightly different for everyone.

Ah.

Well, here we agree.

At the dawn of 3.0, I thought feats were a great idea. Now I do not. And I am no fan of monster PCs. Except flumphs. If you want to play a monster PC, I always say Yes to flumphs.


RC