Class Balance - why?

[pemerton]

I ghink people are starting to make a lot of unsupported assumptions in this thread.

I'll agree with that

I'm glad that the OP understood what I was trying to get at.

I am not being judgmental, which is how I think some of you are taking it. I honestly believe that the structural changes brought about in the later editions marginalized the role of the DM.

<snip>

Ultimately, from my experiences at the game table, I think the abundance of rules and powers have stifled player creativity.

I don't think you're being judgemental. I think you might be underestimating the range of playstyles and play experiences that are going on with more "modern" rulesets. On the off chance that you're interested, here are some links to actual play posts from my 4e game. I think you'll see that it plays a bit differently from the "min-maxing" game you're describing, but nevertheless does rely on the modern mechanical design.

I'm just psyched to see the re-release of the 1E books. I hope a lot of the people who started playing in the 3E era can give it a shot.

I won't be buying them - partly because I'm in Australia, but also because I've already got a full set of 1st ed AD&D hardbacks in good condition (my PHB, DMG and MM are the revised covers - the wizard, the guardian of hell, and the red dragon frying pegasi).

I enjoyed AD&D a lot back when I played it - especially Oriental Adventures - but I don't think I could go back to it now. As for the influence of that era on 5E - I hope that the designers pay attention to the subtle differences of tone between Moldvay/Cook B/X and Gygaxian AD&D, and draw more on the former than the latter. I think Gygax is a bit more prescriptive in his approach to scenario design, adjudication, and the overall point of play.

 

[pemerton]

Here is a post by [MENTION=40522]Dykstrav[/MENTION], and another by [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION], in a thread on the General forum, that illustrate similar approaches to balance between PCs as the OP in this thread is suggesting - the GM shaping the story, the rewards etc to ensure that no single PC is dominant in spite of mechanical imbalances between PCs.

The OP is not on his/her own in respect to this. It's a fairly widespread approach that I think the designers need to be aware of, and to talk about in their guidelines for the game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What is the obsession with class balance?

Balance is a critical aspect of any game, RPG or otherwise. Class balance is critical to D&D because Class is such a big part of a character.

Why should a magic-user and fighter or rouge and cleric all be comparable in power at the same levels?

So the game doesn't automatically suck for you based on the archetype you want to play.

Isn't balance a subjective quality that can shift based on play conditions?

No, it's prettymuch objective, but, yes, it can shift based on play conditions, if it's not very good balance. A well-balanced game will support a variety of play styles and conditions without breaking.

I think one of the things that did the most damage to class balance was putting all classes on the same xp progression table (I think this occurred in 3E).

Ultimately, experience progression is entirely abstract. If you have one character that gets to level X and Y,000 exp, and another that gets to level X+2 at Y,000 exp, but the two are balanced at those different levels, then that is no different than having two charters balancing at the same level & exp totals. The only difference is that it's easier to tell that characters are of about the same power level if /level means the same thing to all classes/.

I think 4E magic using classes lost that mystique by trying to force balance through the rule set rather than putting that in the hands of the DM.

They did lose a certain, subjective, mystique, yes. That was a very small price to pay, though, especially as the loss is meaningless to anyone who doesn't have the same subjective opinion about 'mystique.'

4e casters still do tons of physically impossible things, it's just that in the abstract math of game mechanics, those things are more nearly balanced, now.

Putting balance in the hands of the DM makes the role much harder. That means more DMs screw up, running imbalanced campaigns that frustrate players and put them off D&D, and many more players simply never DM, because it is such a difficult and thankless job. In 4e, it's much easier to run. I was never able to find more than one or two campaigns of AD&D or 3e to play in at a time. I'm currently in 3 4e campaigns, plus one Gamma World, and I've turned down invitations to others. And, while I rarely ever ran 3e (having run AD&D for 10 years straight, so a little burned out at the outset, and just not having the time 3e demanded due to RL), I frequently run 4e.

It's just a much better game from the DM perspective. If you like the challenge of taking a really bad game, and thrashing and house-ruling it into playable shape, though, it's definitely not for you.

And if you think about it, there was additional balance built into AD&D that a lot of people just chose to ignore (it was too hard to use, slowed game play, etc.).

There was a /lot/ of that, yes. Vancian casting, too was a hard limit - but people made up spell-point systems. Each ed, actually, went and did what people were doing with their house rules: removed restrictions on casting without powering it down correspondingly. Until 4e, which leaves casting no more restricted than non-casting, but also not much more powerful.

I fully understand that we all want to be special flowers at the table with our characters, but should that not be more about character development and roleplaying than stat blocks?

It /should/, yes. Which is why balanced mechanics are better than crap mechanics - because they allow you to make your character about development and roleplay, instead of chasing broken combos.

 

[pemerton]

Balance is a critical aspect of any game, RPG or otherwise.

<snip>

So the game doesn't automatically suck for you based on the archetype you want to play.

<snip>

Putting balance in the hands of the DM makes the role much harder. That means more DMs screw up, running imbalanced campaigns that frustrate players and put them off D&D, and many more players simply never DM, because it is such a difficult and thankless job. In 4e, it's much easier to run.

<snip>

It's just a much better game from the DM perspective. If you like the challenge of taking a really bad game, and thrashing and house-ruling it into playable shape, though, it's definitely not for you.

<snip>

Which is why balanced mechanics are better than crap mechanics - because they allow you to make your character about development and roleplay, instead of chasing broken combos.

Interesting post.

I agree that balance is important, but I think the OP is right in thinking that it can be handled by the GM rather than the mechanics. Whether that is a good way to handle it is a different question, and I think your post picks up the key issues there - GM-adjudicated balance puts a lot of pressure on the GM, and as the last sentence I've quoted hints at, opens the door to "gaming the GM" and "playing to break the system". I think the tendency of GM-adjudicated balance to lead to this sort of balance-of-power struggle is a real one, to which classic D&D - with it's entry level players and GMs and its lack of balanced mechanics - was historically prone.

I think that the designers of 5E need to learn from that history, but also think about why it is that a large group of D&D players seem to want this sort of strong GM, and see if they can create modules/options to support forceful GMing without leaving the rest of us stuck with crappy mechanics.

 

[Tony Vargas]

DMs will always have the power to do what they want with their campaigns. Not having a desperate need to change everything because the system is eff'd up doesn't mean you can't choose to change the system as much as you wish.

Maybe the key is that players are more apt to put up with a 'forceful' style of DMing if the DM is the only thing making the game playable? "Give me a bad system so I can use the threat of RAW to bully my players into whatever variant if feel like this week!"

 

[pemerton]

Maybe the key is that players are more apt to put up with a 'forceful' style of DMing if the DM is the only thing making the game playable?

Another possibility, but still one that doesn't paint the preference very nicely, is that the players want a strong GM for other reasons (eg they don't know other techniques for achieving a satisfying story out of play) and the need for the GM to intervene in basic action resolution creates the "in" for the desired exercise of GM force.

Is there a way of painting the preference in a favourable light? When you look at some of the posts on this thread from the OP and those who agree, they seem to imply that (i) without a strong GM, fictional positioning will become less relevant to action resolution, and (ii) once fictional positioning is relevant, mechanical balance becomes less important.

I don't agree with these hypotheses, but the "4e is a boardgame in drag" motif is widespread, so maybe these players aren't familiar with, or don't like, other techniques - including mechanical techniques and player-driven techniques - for making fictional positioning count.

 

[Dornam]

Class balance is important, but having player characters that cater to the needs of many different type of players is just more important.

We don't play 4e because some of my players prefer the "pick 4 feats and you're done Fighter" and others prefer the "I want to have 200 spells at my disposal Wizard".

Are these two characters balanced by the rules all the way up to Level 20? Probably not!

Can the GM balance these classes ingame? Sure way!

So I myself appreciate the early snips of information that promise easy chars and I do not expect them to be balanced power wise.

 

[Hassassin]

Balance is a critical aspect of any game, RPG or otherwise. Class balance is critical to D&D because Class is such a big part of a character.

There are a lot of games where 1) some players are better than others (e.g. sports, chess, poker), 2) some players will affect the game more/less than others (e.g. different positions in soccer, ice hockey), or 3) the balance of the game will be determined by chance in the beginning of the game (e.g. many card games).

Ultimately, I find arguments like "most/all games have feature X so D&D should too"* unconvincing, simply because RPGs aren't like most games. Most games have (groups of) players playing against each other, but not RPGs. In most games the objective is to win, but not in RPGs.

* I'm not trying to quote you here, but this is what some posts in the thread amount to.

 

[Siberys]

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying, Hassassin - Tony Vargas is saying a very D&D mechanic (class) is important, not that something from another game is... Unless you're saying mechanical balance is a feature of other games that D&D doesn't necessarily need. Is that what you're getting at?

 

[darkwing]

Let's examine the word "balance". In 4e that doesn't mean any class can kill any other class if they just get initiative. It just means that all classes contribute and the game is fun for all classes, regardless of level. That's why it's important.