If it's an obvious choice then it's broken

[Kzach]

One thing I've always maintained about balancing house rules or published rules is that if it is an obviously good choice that is clearly better than anything else, then it's broken and needs to be nerfed.

Yet, I'm finding more and more that in the character builder, there are MANY obvious choices for pretty much every build. It's almost as if the designers have purposefully said, "Ok, let's look at this build and make it uber!"

On the flip side, there are also a lot of builds that seem to be 'left out in the cold' so to speak. This almost directly seems to be the counter-result of other builds getting so much love.

So I'm left wondering whether or not my rule still applies. On the one hand, the builds left out in the cold to fend for themselves in the lonely harsh wilderness of optimisation-land, are obviously inferior and few people would play them other than for roleplaying reasons. And even then, roleplaying reasons can be applied to better builds just as easily. Yet at the same time, the synergies that most classes get with feats and powers and class mechanics seem clearly intended to work that way from the start and are a lot of fun because of it.

What's the solution?

 

[Argyle King]

What's the solution?

Make options which have both strengths and weaknesses. There should be times when power A is better; there should be times when power B is better.



If you want choices between different focuses to feel equal, don't make one form of task resolution central to your game at the expense of other choices. This is similar, but not exactly the same as what I've already said. If you're playing a game which is focused on X 90% of the time and Y only 10% of the time, the class which focuses on X is going to almost always be better than the class which focuses on Y.

 

[SparqMan]

What's the solution?

What's the problem?

If you're looking for a heuristic to determine if something is "broken", just look at your game.

You are correct that for gamers that are excited by min-max'ing their characters, the potential synergy between feats, powers and mechanics was intentional. PCs should feel badass and have fun, and for some players that's how it works.

If a particular combination is disrupting your game, look at ways to minimize it in your encounter and adventure design. Or use it as a great opportunity to force some creativity in big, important moments created specifically to challenge their faithful mega-combo.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think the solution is to realize and accept that we are only probably about 5% of the gaming audience, and that the other 95% doesn't know or care about supposed "better" builds, or "better" feats, or "better" anything. Optimizing, or really putting in the time to analyze certain parts of the game compared to other parts of the game, are things that only a select few of us more "hardcore" rpg players bother with or care enough to actually find out.

So yeah... every RPG will have their CharOps militants who will assign the gold, blue, black and red ratings to every facet of the game... but it's nothing that the designers need to be overly concerned with. Most players just don't give a damn about that sort of thing.

 

[Barastrondo]

Man, it depends. I understand that there are warlocks out there who take something other than Beguiling Tongue for their L2 utility, and it baffles me, but then I realize that there are games out there where social situations just aren't that common. I think "broken" isn't a definition that swaps easily from one context to the next.

 

[RLBURNSIDE]

there is a quote from Dune

You have square thoughts that resist circles.

I don't mean to insult you by saying this. Some things are better than others. Life isn't fair. Bad things happen to good people. Animals and People flock to the low-handing fruit. There is nothing you can do about it. Don't try to "nerf" everything to be a perfect communist feat society where all feats are the same value and contribute the same number of widgets per second to the common good. This is not the way the world works. If a player picks a suboptimal feat, they will suffer to hit or damage or whatever, unless it helps their playstyle or there is some other intangible benefit. Let's say you go to work every day, and each day you come home with one feat. You pick the feats that allow you to progress faster at work to get a bigger raise next year, no? Or if you don't, maybe you find a niche where you benefit more from your sense of self-respect or self-satisfaction that the monetary gain is but trifles compared with your own zen reflection.

These are all questions that you can only answer yourself, but mathematically, there is no system which is internally self-consistent for which greater truths are not expressible within the confines of that system. What I mean is...for example, pertaining to D&D...for me, flight is the thing. I want my characters to fly, as early and as often and as fast as possible. Air superiority is worth so much more than you can possible account for in the 4e "rules", because there is more in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in a close blast 5 zone. E.g. I fly up to land on a rooftop and drop prone. I get superior cover from the enemy wizard down below. Next turn, I stand up, launch a volley of arrows at him, and drop prone again. I win. There is such a huge tactical, numerical, circumstance superiority that the flat battle mat in 4e power design cannot fathom...that I gave up an entire Paragon Path just to be able to fly at will. I even changes around my stats, character concept, and classes to be able to fit better with it. (Favored Soul).

In a 2nd ed AD&D game, I play a noble wizard evoker with fly, fireball, teleport, and invis. He's level 14. By level 5 I was already owning most encounters easily, but the enemies got wise so I had to come up with counter measures. No problem. Whatever the sitation was, I could find a way to make it work better. I cast shrink on a boulder and drop it on an enemy castle at the perfect time from high up in the air. The damage was incredible. These are things you can do in earlier, and even in 4th edition, that no matter how boring or limiting the rules are, thinking in 3 dimensions opens up so many permutations that one cannot account for things.

For example, with my flying ranger |warlord, I can almost always get to the target I want, on turn 1, before anyone else. Then I kill it or retreat up into the air (possibly). I can do other things, like neutralize the big brutes for a turn by firing off a couple slow ice arrows to save my party. I could do it at-will on a single opponent, if I spent a feat, but why should I? I take Mark of Storm with my lightning breath and lightning weapons and I can slide pretty much anything on the map 2-3x per round, no problem. If Mark of Storm doesn't work, there's always the next thing, and so on.

My point is : nerf one feat/power/whatever, the next one will take its place. There is no perfectly balanced set of feats or classes, and nor should there be. Balance is a good thing, but not "perfect" balance. Perfection is too strick a straight-jacked to impose on a game system, it negatively impacts fun, epic moments, spontaneity..etc. So don't bother.

 

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

I think that there is an ok moment of 'du' choices.

Every ranger should take twin strike=bad
Every Tac lord should take commander strike= not so bad
Every Axe weilding weapon master fighter should take X power=fine...

I would really love for every build/set of at wills have 3 equaly good choices, but if as long as it is build wise it is fine.


Now, the fact that not only do almost all fighters take COme and Get it, but now that Slayers can swap a power strike for it (and it is better yet becuse you add dex mod to the damage)

 

[Kzach]

If you're looking for a heuristic to determine if something is "broken", just look at your game.

Funnily enough, it's the people who DON'T min/max that are the cause of consternation. When 6 out of 8 players min/max, the ones who don't fall into obscurity pretty quickly.

 

[caudor]

I think the solution is to realize and accept that we are only probably about 5% of the gaming audience, and that the other 95% doesn't know or care about supposed "better" builds, or "better" feats, or "better" anything. Optimizing, or really putting in the time to analyze certain parts of the game compared to other parts of the game, are things that only a select few of us more "hardcore" rpg players bother with or care enough to actually find out.

So yeah... every RPG will have their CharOps militants who will assign the gold, blue, black and red ratings to every facet of the game... but it's nothing that the designers need to be overly concerned with. Most players just don't give a damn about that sort of thing.

Agreed. Everyone in our group looks for cool stuff rather than better stuff. I suppose certain things would seem broke if all the players happened to be CharOps.

It is probably realistic to assume that some bad-mamma-jama heroes are a bit more bad-mama-jama than others in certain situations. If the majority of players don't care, then why should the developers? Perfection is sometimes the enemy of good.

 

[DracoSuave]

Funnily enough, it's the people who DON'T min/max that are the cause of consternation. When 6 out of 8 players min/max, the ones who don't fall into obscurity pretty quickly.

If 6 out of 8 players minmax, and players 7 and 8 are falling behind... why are players 1 through 6 not helping them not fall behind, if that's the type of game it is?

And what is the DM doing through all this.

The problem is corrected through helpful players working together.

Not to mention, most 'CharOp' players who maximize damage don't know how to think outside of a very small box. If a player enjoys moving enemies into position, then a high damage build isn't for them. But an Enchanter certainly is. But that's a subpar build... unless you find forced movement valuable.

It's not as simple as 'MAX OUT THE DAMAGE WOOOOOO.' Many groups would find their encounters easier if they looked at other aspects of game play.