Legends and Lore: Balance

[Jhaelen]

Wizards, however, were underrated. Excepting Orbizards, there was a cry about them being underpowered (specially their at-wills) when compared to other controllers

Really?

I only recall complaints that they didn't feel much like controllers. That's what the designers admitted and were attempting to fix by introducing new powers focusing on the controlling aspects. I definitely disagree that wizards are underpowered. E.g. they have many of the most powerful dailys in the game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's one of those weird 4e-hater things that was going early on. Wizards were dumped on pretty hard because they didn't measure up to the 3e wizard. It didn't take the haters too long to realize that there wasn't much sympathy for wanting the overpowered wizard back, so the derision shifted gears.

'Not much of a controller.' Was a funny one, I though, since the description of the conroller role was little more than a vague description of the wizard's powers.

I think the real problem is that 'control' already had meanings in WoW and M:tG, and that the /monster/ controller role got conflated with the PC role. Somehow there came to be this vague consensus that you weren't doing control if you weren't inflicting conditions or forcing movement or something like that. Interdicting a large swath of the battlefield with an AE counted for nothing. Minions weren't fully apreciated either, initially, and that also led to under-estimating the controller role.

WotC, for all people complain about it, /does/ listen to what their fans have to say, even when the fans happen to be mistaken. So, 'controllers' have been re-defined to be more like what people got the impression (between getting them mixed up with other uses of the word, and taking hardcore 3.5/PF fan belly-aching seriously) they should be.

Kinda like how some genius found the 'math error' so we're stuck with Expertise feat taxes.

 

[FireLance]

In certain rare circumstances sure, but 4E doesn't support this kind of play very well (damage etc). So if it's just as good there isn't really a point to it and in the end, you're actually contributing very little for those other two rounds. Contributions that could be very vital. I don't feel a class built on not doing anything is going to be effective or viable design in 4E.

Agreed. Which is why I've been saying it should be implemented as a power choice. If it suits your playstyle, pick that power. If you don't, take something else.

Especially if its Wizards right? I guess everyone should get used to playing Wizards. Clearly there will never be enough Wizard options between Wand/Tome/Staff/Orb/Pyromancer/Enchanter/Illusionist/Necromancer/Nethermancer/Evoker. We obviously need more due to the terrible lack of options there.

Well, the fighter's no slouch in the options department, either: one-handed weapon fighter, two-handed weapon fighter, two-weapon fighter, battlerager, brawler, sword knight, warhammer knight (or was it some other weapon?), greatsword slayer, greataxe slayer, and I think there is another alternate class feature from Martial Power 2 (one handed weapon and no shield, or something along those lines).

But admittedly, there is an inherent reason why spellcasters tend to end up with more options than the martial classes: magic is not limited by plausibility. Nobody blinks an eyelid when the swordmage pulls an enemy to him with a whip made of electricity, but the idea that a fighter can get an enemy to approach him with a taunt or by feigning weakness gets derided faster than you can say, "Come and get it".

Obviously, but at the same time it can often - and if the assassin teaches us anything this isn't theorycraft - be quite useless. Either an encounter will make it pretty pointless to do it in the first place, or it might be easily wasted for a plethora of reasons (especially with the way 4E combat has changed due to errata/monster design).

And some players are quite happy to run these risks in order to enjoy the occasional big payoff. I get it that not everyone likes this playstyle. Some people don't like come and get it, either. But, in both cases, some others do.

 

[Aegeri]

In fairness though, the original PHB Wizard didn't have good control options for at-will powers. The original at-will powers weren't great. The thing with this of course is that Arcane power - long before essentials - fixed this with new at-wills. Quite frankly essentials "fixed" something that was no longer a problem in the first place. Wizards were at no stage "underpowered" and even from the start were able to be immensely effective controllers - unless of course the person complaining was whinging they weren't able to instant win DnD anymore.

For some amusement of the general thread, not even the Wizard has as much stuff as the Fighter (though HoS will go a bit towards fixing that), who has 414 powers. The Wizard has 296. The runepriest has 80 powers. In terms of at-wills the Fighter has 17 choices, the Wizard 19 choices (plus HoS to come) and the Runepriest has... 4.

Which makes a column Mike Mearls wrote some time ago about not wanting to expand the games power bloat all the more ironic. Apparently adding more powers to the Wizard is expanding the game while adding some to the Runepriest would be bloat. Totally.

Well, the fighter's no slouch in the options department, either: one-handed weapon fighter, two-handed weapon fighter, two-weapon fighter, battlerager, brawler, sword knight, warhammer knight (or was it some other weapon?), greatsword slayer, greataxe slayer, and I think there is another alternate class feature from Martial Power 2 (one handed weapon and no shield, or something along those lines).

I don't know how much of my increasingly rather bitter and sarcastic ranting for over the past few months you have read, but I equally hate the fact that the fighter has billions of powers as well. I am actually really consistent on these points - super consistent in fact. I have stated several times the fighter/wizard/cleric need to be put to bed with their teddy bear and other things supported. I would far rather not bloat the Wizard class further (but again, I guess bloat doesn't apply to wizards).

Agreed. Which is why I've been saying it should be implemented as a power choice. If it suits your playstyle, pick that power. If you don't, take something else.

Which either needs to be grossly imbalanced or be useless - as I've pointed out. Effectively this is a power that you could write be stunned for 2 rounds and do X. It's not efficient and in terms of 4Es overall framework doesn't work well. Especially given that we have a model in play for such effects in the Assassin and that doesn't work well at all - even with being able to find tricks to apply shrouds faster.

This isn't 3.x and every poor design decision in 3.x doesn't need to be in 4E.

But admittedly, there is an inherent reason why spellcasters tend to end up with more options than the martial classes: magic is not limited by plausibility

I don't really care what people find offensive to "THEIR IMMERSHUNS" to be absolutely straight. I didn't start playing and loving 4E because I was particularly worried about that in the first place. Nor do I want to see 4E degenerate into a system where you have pages of options for wizards while everyone else can go get stuffed. That's just really bad design in a system where everyone can have a spotlight. There are lots of classes in 4E and most of them deserve support just as much - actually I'll straight out say far more deserving of support - than the Wizard. The Wizard has plenty. The fighter has plenty. Unless you have a really good argument that adds something truly great and unique to the game, I don't see a single reason why either needs much more published for it.

 

[FireLance]

Mathematically, making 3 attacks that do X damage and hit half the time, vs unleashing one 3-round attack thad does 3X damage and hist half the time, would, indeed, be identical.

However, over the course of three rounds, a character might be dropped, dazed, stunned, or lose LoS to any valid target of the warmed-up power. While the character attacking each round would have gotten a hit or two in, the warm-up-power character gets nothing. So the power would have to do /more/ than 3X to be balanced. How much more? Hard to say, depends on all sorts of things, including DM & player styles. /Making it quite difficult to balance./

Which is why my preferred approach is to have encounter "attack" powers that boost the next attack roll of an attack spell. If you line up a series of such encounter powers, the spellcaster:

1. Can use a variable number depending on the tactical situation, instead of being tied down to a fixed casting time.

2. Can select his target(s) on the round that he casts his attack spell, so that he doesn't waste his preparation if the target he originally intended to attack is dead or is out of his line of sight.

3. Can pick another encounter attack power if this isn't his preferred playstyle.

I really think this attitude has sunk in. 4e is a victim of it's own success. By using quite strict design principles, it managed to be the best balanced version of D&D ever. Which is to say, it's the /only/ version of D&D to ever be genuinely balanced. That accomplished, balance has ceased to be a concern in the minds of many, so they're happy to throw it away while rooting around for something else.

Oh, balance is still very much a concern for me and I don't intend to throw it away. However, I do think it can be relaxed slightly (trading "tightly balanced" for "approximately balanced") for other gains.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But admittedly, there is an inherent reason why spellcasters tend to end up with more options than the martial classes: magic is not limited by plausibility. Nobody blinks an eyelid when the swordmage pulls an enemy to him with a whip made of electricity, but the idea that a fighter can get an enemy to approach him with a taunt or by feigning weakness gets derided faster than you can say, "Come and get it".

What you've just described is prejudice. The feats of warriors in myth, legend, and litterature go far beyond the merely plausible (while those of archetypal wizards and the like are often quite marginal, leaving them in non-combat and support and deus-ex-machina roles), yet, there's a sub-sub-culture of gamer geeks who want to hold the martial hero to 'reality checks' or some sort of 'verismilitude,' (while crediting the caster-types with every supernatural power ever imagined, less any limitations or drawbacks). Why they have this deep-seated intollerance of a given set of heroic fantasy archetypes, and feel driven to ruin the RPG experience for anyone who dares sully their table by playing such a thing, I don't know. There's a theory that it's some sort of 'nerd v jock' 'revenge fantasy,' but I don't find it very compelling. My guess is that it's a sort of group think that's grown up in response to the initial, extreme, imbalances in the earliest RPGs, most notable, of course, D&D.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Oh, balance is still very much a concern for me and I don't intend to throw it away. However, I do think it can be relaxed slightly (trading "tightly balanced" for "approximately balanced") for other gains.

Those gains would have to be compelling. Balance is what keeps a game fair and playable. In a very real sense, it 'guards the fun' of everyone at the table. Balance is what keeps one player from ruining the game for everyone else - or, at least, makes the job of keeping that one player in line easier for the DM. When you take away balance, you take something valuable away from the gaming experience of /everyone/ who plays the game. It makes sense, then, to sacrifice balance only when the benefit is, likewise, something that will elevate the play experience for all.

 

[wedgeski]

You see no evidence of a move away from symmetrical class development? Really? You should take a look at the E-martial classes versus the E-non martial classes.There is a strong retro trend in design philosophy in 4e since Mearls took the helm. Magic Missile has gone back to auto-hit. Classes have abandoned the AEDU model to varying degrees. The essentials treasure distribution model is a randomised table. There has been a signifant increase in talk about location-based (as opposed to event-based) adventures.Against that retro trend, I personally think it's a foregone conclusion that symmetrical class development is dead and buried. I mourn its loss.

I want to understand this. I get that Essentials introduced a retro flavour, and you've listed some of the reasons why. But it seems a massive leap from there to doomsaying that the old notions of "balance" are somehow going to creep back into the game. Is that all you got?

 

[FireLance]

Those gains would have to be compelling. Balance is what keeps a game fair and playable. In a very real sense, it 'guards the fun' of everyone at the table. Balance is what keeps one player from ruining the game for everyone else - or, at least, makes the job of keeping that one player in line easier for the DM. When you take away balance, you take something valuable away from the gaming experience of /everyone/ who plays the game. It makes sense, then, to sacrifice balance only when the benefit is, likewise, something that will elevate the play experience for all.

I agree, but I would add that balance isn't something monolithic that has to be either left alone or taken away entirely. Even in "Classic" 4E, the classes and powers aren't all perfectly balanced simply because there are differences between them which make them more or less useful in different circumstances. The real question is how much imbalance your group will notice and can tolerate - and the answer may be different for each group.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I agree, but I would add that balance isn't something monolithic that has to be either left alone or taken away entirely. Even in "Classic" 4E, the classes and powers aren't all perfectly balanced simply because there are differences between them which make them more or less useful in different circumstances.

Yeah, I've heard that a lot. I guess I really need to find some good weasle words to re-assure people that when I say 'sacrifice balance,' I don't mean actually ripping it's heart out and offering it up to dark gods. I just mean, make a change that leaves you with less robust balance than you had before. But, dammit, my posts are verbose enough already.... :sigh:

And, no, balance will never be perfect. But, the fact you can't attain perfection is no excuse for allowing quality to slip. "I can't make it perfect, so I might as well make it bad," isn't a terribly good rationale.

The real question is how much imbalance your group will notice and can tolerate - and the answer may be different for each group

That's where the rubber meets the road, sure. But you can't say, "hey, there could be nails on the road,' so why bother putting tires on the thing? Let 'em drive on the wheel rims or make their own tires."

And, while some groups may have a high tollerance for imbalance, how many have a low tollerance for balance? So you deliver some groups more balance than they need - it won't hurt them. You deliver less balance than they need, they'll be cursing your game. Spread some consumer surplus around.