Older Editions and "Balance" when compared to 3.5

[Beginning of the End]

When people become convinced that the only "right" encounter is a perfectly "balanced" encounter, however, the system is being abused. That's when you get people obsessing over PCs who aren't optimally built; or PCs that are performing "above their level"; or party builds that aren't capable of meeting the challenges they're "supposed" to be facing. The fetishization of balance is poison.

I disagree entirely.

That's certainly your prerogative. But it is also incontrovertible fact that the CR system was not designed so that every single encounter could have an EL equal to the party's average level. Those using the tool for that, or anything remotely resembling that, are explicitly not using the tool in the way it was meant to be used.

Having a system that could accurately predict how much of a challenge a particular enemy or group of enemies would be for your players is pretty much the holy grail of DMing.

It's also impossible unless you take away all player initiative in choosing and building their characters. (And you'd probably have to take away their ability to actually choose the actions they take in combat, too.)

The best you will ever achieve in the real world is a ballpark estimate built on an assumed baseline. And 3E's CR system achieves that.

Although, IMHO, 4e has come closest to this.

And it got closer to your theoretical "ideal" by taking away player choice in character builds.

The idea may have eventually been altered in order to become a balancing tool, but one can say with absolute certainty that in a game where all weapons regardless of type do 1d6 points of damage (i.e. OD&D in 1974) that any differences in weapon proficiencies were entirely a matter of flavor text.

In 0E this was tied to magic swords - the only magic weapons were swords, so if the cleric couldn't use them it made the fighter stronger.

(Checks Volume 2 of the White Box.)

Yeah. Just like I thought. That's not true: You can find the magical daggers, axes, bows, maces, war hammers, and spears on page 24. The maces and war hammers would obviously be usable by clerics.

 

[Dausuul]

I agree that each table will have its own set of priorities, and a universally balanced game is essentially impossible.

But that doesn't mean the game designer has no part to play. I'm an inveterate tinkerer--I bang on the rules all the time--and I have found that 4E is a dream to work on compared to older editions, because it presents me with a "standard model of play" that is solidly balanced. That means I only have to worry about balance when I knowingly diverge from the standard model. If I make a 10th-level monster with +22 to hit and AC 17, I know right away that this is going to result in a monster that's stupidly easy to hit but never misses, because I'm going way above the standard attack bonus and way below the standard AC.

 

[S'mon]

Otoh I feel that 1e AD&D ought to have had some sort of system for determining how many magic items the typical PC has at a given level. Gary spends a lot of time in 1e talking about how vital it is to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of Killer DM-ing and Monty Haul-ism. Yet at no point does he give us a metric.

Well there are the item generation tables for NPC adventurers, who are stated to be similar to PCs and should be GM'd as such. They have a *lot* of magic, more than 3e PCs of equivalent level get.

In fact I find the bodies of NPCs are usually the main source of magic in a 1e game, the MM treasure tables (and the DMG dungeon generation tables) are actually very stingy. Classic doesn't have equivalent tables, and Classic NPCs and PCs seem to have far less magic IME.

That said, I find 1e accommodates a huge range of different magic levels very well. It's not hardcoded into the system the way it is in 3e & 4e. 5th level PCs with no magic items can still have exciting adventures, though they may advance more slowly than a magic-heavy group.

 

[S'mon]

Can someone XP ExploderWizard for me?

Sorry, I already tried & got a "must spread" again

 

[Umbran]

The original intent of the game was for the people playing to unlock their own imaginations and create a game together that doesn't suck for them.

Yes, and you can do that if you ignore everything that isn't in your own head, but it'll take a while. There's something to be said for learning from other people's mistakes and experience.

Any set of rules aims you in the general direction of what those rules do well. It pays for the ruleset to give you some guidelines. Gary tried to do that in 1e, but he lacked the experience of later decades and several other systems' worth of trial and error to do it as we would today. His vagueness was not a feature, but nobody else could have done a better job at the time, so it really wasn't a fault, either.

So the rules get heavier and heavier with endless updates and revisions that get shoveled to off to the DM instead.

Oh, how we forget - the updates and revisions are there because we asked for them. Relentlessly. Back before the internet was on everyone's phones, it began with letters and questions to Dragon Magazine. The more that technology has made rapid dissemination of information possible, the more we've demanded errata and updates, and griped (loudly) when the producers didn't have them post haste.

Don't blame a company for giving the customers what they ask for. If the other players are asking for things you don't like, that isn't the company's fault.

The level of burden is largely the same only instead of the satisfaction of learning to become better at making rulings the poor DM is merely exhausted implementing the patches someone else thought of while being drained financially in the process.

Exhausted implementing patches?

Whose fault is that? You want to patch your rules, that's your choice. WotC isn't coming to repossess your game if you don't. Heck, WotC provides a Compendium and character builder such that you don't have to lift a finger to get the updates.

Yes, there's money involved. You say that accusatively, as if there's any other hobbies out there that don't call for expenditure of resources. We buy the next cool book, the model train aficionado buys the next cool engine, the tennis player buys new shoes and racket, the comic fan buys the next graphic novel, the knitter buys more yarn, and so on. Suggesting that hobbies are somehow not supposed to cost you money is not terribly realistic.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh, how we forget - the updates and revisions are there because we asked for them. Relentlessly.

Perhaps. But that "we" is not universally inclusive.


RC

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

That's certainly your prerogative. But it is also incontrovertible fact that the CR system was not designed so that every single encounter could have an EL equal to the party's average level. Those using the tool for that, or anything remotely resembling that, are explicitly not using the tool in the way it was meant to be used.

How is it a fact that the CR system was not designed for that reason? The DMG actually tells you the percentage of EL you should use against a party in an average adventure. The numbers escape me right now, but it was something like 50% should be EL=APL, 30% should be EL=APL+1, 15% should be APL+2 and 5% should be APL+3 or higher.

It was the section of the DMG that we based he adventure creation rules for Living Greyhawk off of. We actually had a mandate from HQ(WOTC themselves) that monsters had to be level appropriate and average out to the pattern described in the DMG since that was the "standard" 3e experience and LG was trying to give the D&D experience the way that WOTC intended it.

You can use whatever monsters you want, of course, level appropriate or not. But it was certainly the intention of the rules that monsters were always appropriate(that's why every published adventure from WOTC had only level appropriate monsters).

It's also impossible unless you take away all player initiative in choosing and building their characters. (And you'd probably have to take away their ability to actually choose the actions they take in combat, too.)

That's not true. You do need to minimize the impact of those choices, however. A system that allowed you to spend 1 million points any way you liked amongst damage, defenses, roleplaying special abilities, attack rolls, stats, perks, and so on is the ultimate in player choice. But you are just as likely to end up with a character who has +499,999 to hit and damage and 1 hitpoint and 1 ac as you are the character with +0 to hit and damage because all their points are put into basketweaving.

This means that there is no way to tell if your enemy who has 1000 hitpoints and +1000 to hit is too powerful or too weak for starting level characters. You can only get approximately what people will put into their abilities. But because the numbers vary so much, your guess has almost no chance of being right,

On the other hand, if you can say "All 1st level monsters have a 16 AC and 20 hp. All players have +6 to hit and do 5 damage." then you can nail down precisely the percent chance of winning. But being that predictable would be a little too boring. So, you allow enough choice for it to be meaningful without allowing enough that it becomes completely unpredictable. if you allow players to choose options that vary their to hit and damage up and down 15% then you create a 35% difference between highest power and lowest power. Then you can add the ability to attack different defenses and then vary the defenses up or down 15% and you create more randomness and meaningful player choice. You add some tactical and situational modifiers and you add a little more.

But when you add them all together, the numbers are close enough that you can still predict the approximate difficulty of any given creature with a high degree of accuracy.

The best you will ever achieve in the real world is a ballpark estimate built on an assumed baseline. And 3E's CR system achieves that.

I disagree. 3e's system is mostly guessing. There is a chance that the CR 8 creature in any particular book might have an AC anywhere from 10 to 40. Same with all the rest of it's saving throws. So, when the designers looked at each creature and decided on a CR, it was mostly just guessing. They've admitted this themselves. It was a matter of "This creature has about as many hitpoints as this other CR 8, but it's attacks are significantly higher. We'll write in CR 9 and call it a day."

And it got closer to your theoretical "ideal" by taking away player choice in character builds.

Yep, it did sacrifice some player choice in character builds in order to get there. I don't have any problem with that at all. I started playing D&D in 2e where Wizards couldn't wield a sword, ever...simply because "They already got spells, you can't give them a sword as well". I think I can live with "choose amongst about 5000 different builds, about 4800 of which are good ideas for a character and completely balanced" vs "choose amongst 10 million different builds, only 2000 of them are worth playing, make any sense and fit within the narrow balance range that the game is designed for".

Plus, my experience with 3e eventually proved to me that not all choice is good choice. Mainly the 2nd campaign in a row that I ran where the PCs wiped 95% of the encounters I sent at them without even a small chance of anyone dying or losing. They all complained that they had no fun because there was no challenge, I had no fun because I felt like I was picking up dice and rolling for an hour and a half just to prove a forgone conclusion. Yes, this included the time I threw a EL 22 encounter against them while they were 16th level. Which, according to all estimates should have ended in a TPK of the party. Instead, the enemy got 3 actions, and all of them didn't actually hurt the party.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think Don Turnbull's Monster Mark system was superior. Also, the way Turnbull approaches the issue of monster level and encounter difficulty shows that encounter balancing was a concern for at least some of those playing early D&D.

That's a very good point. Turnbull's system was incredibly mathematically rigorous, like nothing we've seen until 4e (or perhaps Trailblazer). It was determined to get the numbers right, or as right as possible when there are so many weird monster powers. It does show that the concerns which inform 4e were present from the very early days.

I was trying to provide a systematic method of assessing a monster's relative malignity, so that new monsters (from Strategic Review, Dungeoneer etc. - and I wonder how many of you use EPT monsters in non-EPT dungeons?) could be assigned with reasonable accuracy to levels. As it happens, revised monster level tables are not the only product of the system, particularly in its newer refined form. Many have criticised the Greyhawk experience points table, for instance, and this method provides a basis for quite accurate reappraisal.

The method gives dungeonmasters better guidance than previously available on the thorny question of how many wandering monsters should appear against a party of a particular size and strength. Also - is a 4 dice +2 Su Monster about as nasty as a 4-dice Giant Snake? This method clothes the bare bones of intuition.

- White Dwarf #1, 1977

Emboldening mine. Check the level appropriate encounter!

Here's some more foreshadowing of 4e (and E6) -

D&D is most fun for third to sixth level characters, who are strong enough to adventure without fear of immediate death, strong enough to have more combat options than flight, melee and sleep spells, but not so strong that they can laugh at monsters

- Lew Pulsipher, Introduction to D&D, White Dwarf #24, 1981

 

[TarionzCousin]

The "balance" I remember from 1E was having your character get killed. With your new character in a similar situation the "next" time, you would do something different--unless you were Egli. He always charged headfist into battle.

Hmmm... come to think of it, all of his characters died pretty quickly, too.

 

[billd91]

How is it a fact that the CR system was not designed for that reason? The DMG actually tells you the percentage of EL you should use against a party in an average adventure. The numbers escape me right now, but it was something like 50% should be EL=APL, 30% should be EL=APL+1, 15% should be APL+2 and 5% should be APL+3 or higher.

You really should look over the text you're quoting and responding to again. The info you're providing here is illustrating exactly what he's saying. The CR system was not designed with the intention of every encounter having an EL equal to the APL. There were expected to be encounters of varying levels, some substantially lower, some substantially higher, some hard but easier if you had the right solution to the situation, etc.

I disagree. 3e's system is mostly guessing. There is a chance that the CR 8 creature in any particular book might have an AC anywhere from 10 to 40. Same with all the rest of it's saving throws.

Unless you actually find a CR 8 creature with AC 40, I'm going to call shenanigans and say a 0% chance.