Be honest, how long would it really take you to notice all of this stuff...?

[Ahnehnois]

In truth every creature met in the game world is a DMPC of some sort.

A character in the game world is no less a living, breathing (imaginary) entity just because it doesn't have a player attached. To think otherwise cheapens the setting and devalues the richness of the game.

Indeed. The DM is playing those characters. All of them. Roleplaying isn't just something that applies to one particular group of player characters.

 

[Savage Wombat]

The point of balance is to ensure that no single option is clearly better than all other options. By making a fight between 4 PC's and a huge dragon a fair fight, you've just ensured game balance. That's the only way to do it. And, by fair fight, we generally mean that the PC's are going to win. Yes, there are outliers where the PC's lose, but, by and large, they do win. An EL par encounter in 3e isn't a guaranteed win. It just means that most of the time the PC's will win and use up X amount of resources doing so.

But the dragon doesn't have to be "balanced" against the PCs the way PCs are "balanced" against each other. It doesn't matter if the dragon has 100 times the HP of the party, as long as it doesn't do enough damage to kill them before they have a chance to kill it. It doesn't matter if the dragon can kill the PCs in three rounds if it's weak enough to be killed in two if they play correctly. What matters it whether the monster has the necessary stats to provide the outcome the DM requires - a hard fight, one the party could lose but probably won't.

The phrase "game balance" may be too general a term. And in any case, perfect balance is still something unreasonably difficult to achieve - good balance is usually more than good enough.

 

[Lanefan]

Let's look at what actually happens in the game world.

A family of L12 clone-giants with 146hp face off against four L12 PCs. It's a tough fight.

A single giant from that family goes terrorising through the village 1st level PCs live in. The giant in question is utterly overwhelming to the PCs, and focussing on destroying the village. It behaves differently. It also should be given a lot more focus than the average giants because it's a career defining moment - when the PCs rise to the challenge to kill the giant they can individually barely scratch the hide of. It's a solo with 184 hit points. But hit points are not directly a thing.

Yes they are. Hit points are every bit as much a part of a game-world creature's (or PC's) makeup as strength, wisdom, and AC. They're a part of what you are, their full potential changing as you advance in age/experience/whatever and their actual value changing as you take damage/injury and recover from such.

And at Level 20, the PCs finally reach the Giant Cloning Facility. The Exarch of Orcus is busy cranking the things out. But the PCs are now experienced giant-fighters. They have hamstringing and opening the femoral artery down to a fine art. And are alert enough they can easily dodge the giants most of the time. The giants are not going to hit on less than a 19; the PCs have the equivalent of AC-10 against THAC0 10 foes. But a battering from giants is still a battering. You make the pests into minions and their threat level against the PCs again doesn't change

A-a-and here's where it goes off the rails again.

Even at 20th level nobody is going to reliably give out 146 h.p. damage on any hit (either that, or the numbers bloat has got *completely* out of hand!). That's what these clone-Giants had when you met 'em at 12th-level and that's what they should have now; which means giving them only 1 h.p. in fact reduces their threat level considerably as they (on average) won't be around as long as they would if they had their real h.p. (146) and thus will have fewer chances to roll that 19.

And of course the obvious way to shatter this beyond recovery is to have your high-Dex. character (who can hit on a whim) whipping daggers at the enemies before or while charging into combat; all it takes is 1 point damage from the dagger and down goes the minion...a single thrown dagger should realistically never bring down a Giant no matter how good your crit. roll is.

The XP values remain constant, the threat ratings remain constant. And because these remain constant it's easier to work out how battered the two sides were in a fight than it is in AD&D.

A creature's h.p. are part of its xp calculation in my system; and as I've mentioned already the threat does not remain constant when you minionize them.

Lan-"I have no idea how area-effect damage magic interacts with minions but I'm going to guess it isn't pretty"-efan

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yes they are. Hit points are every bit as much a part of a game-world creature's (or PC's) makeup as strength, wisdom, and AC.

In other words about as much part of the game world as IQ is part of the real world. Something that measures something - but doesn't explain it all.

They're a part of what you are, their full potential changing as you advance in age/experience/whatever and their actual value changing as you take damage/injury and recover from such.

A-a-and here's where it goes off the rails again.

Even at 20th level nobody is going to reliably give out 146 h.p. damage on any hit (either that, or the numbers bloat has got *completely* out of hand!). That's what these clone-Giants had when you met 'em at 12th-level and that's what they should have now; which means giving them only 1 h.p. in fact reduces their threat level considerably as they (on average) won't be around as long as they would if they had their real h.p. (146) and thus will have fewer chances to roll that 19.

You're missing things I've explained before. The minion giants don't need to roll 19. They need to roll 11. The combat is faster and more brutal rather than mostly involving the PCs ignoring the giants because the giants won't actually hurt them.

And of course the obvious way to shatter this beyond recovery is to have your high-Dex. character (who can hit on a whim) whipping daggers at the enemies before or while charging into combat; all it takes is 1 point damage from the dagger and down goes the minion...a single thrown dagger should realistically never bring down a Giant no matter how good your crit. roll is.

And this is a matter of hit points being unrealistic. A thrown dagger through the eye and into the brain, or through the carotid should kill. Both should be possible for a level 20 PC on as big a target as a giant.

A creature's h.p. are part of its xp calculation in my system;

And your system has what exactly to do with 4E's XP calculations?

and as I've mentioned already the threat does not remain constant when you minionize them.

It increases. You don't ignore minions and walk past them, safe in the knowledge that they won't hit you.

Lan-"I have no idea how area-effect damage magic interacts with minions but I'm going to guess it isn't pretty"-efan

No it really isn't.

 

[Obryn]

Realistically, the DM should have an interest in the well-being of every NPC out there just like the players care about their PCs. Most don't bother with this because it's an awful lot of effort trying to come up with motivations, dreams, goals, and life experiences for a bajillion NPCs; but using the example of King Plotdevice I as DM should have a pretty good handle on what makes him tick and am then going to make sure I roleplay to suit what's in his best interest.
In truth every creature met in the game world is a DMPC of some sort.

A character in the game world is no less a living, breathing (imaginary) entity just because it doesn't have a player attached. To think otherwise cheapens the setting and devalues the richness of the game.

Oh goodness, no. They're not. The players have one character each, and are invested in fulfilling their goals, leveling them up, guiding them, ensuring their survival, and getting loot.

The DM has the rest of the world, and just because Terry the Butcher might secretly dream of being a dancer doesn't mean I have anywhere near that level of investment in his survival or well-being as my players have for their PCs. That's not my job as the judge and facilitator of a game where people come over to my house to sit around my table and play D&D.

Giving NPCs depth does not give me, the DM, anywhere near the same level of agency over their well-being or actions as the players deserve over their PCs. Because there's only (say) 5-6 PCs in the whole game, and real people - my players - are sitting around playing them.

 

[Chaltab]

Yes they are. Hit points are every bit as much a part of a game-world creature's (or PC's) makeup as strength, wisdom, and AC. They're a part of what you are, their full potential changing as you advance in age/experience/whatever and their actual value changing as you take damage/injury and recover from such.

They're numbers. These numbers do not share a 1:1 correlation with any real substance; to assert that they do not only contradicts common sense, but the actual rules text since D&D was first printed. Numbers that do not represent a concrete thing are abstractions. The Ten Commandments command and prohibit more than ten specific things. The First Amendment of the US constitution has five dependent clauses. We delineate all things abstract into components which we perceive as the main distinct themes and assign those themes numbers, but that doesn't make it any more true that there are only ten commandments in the Hebrew scripture or that the US has only altered its Constitution 27 times.

Hit points are, even within the fiction of the game world, immaterial, numerical values assigned by the game rules to facilitate interaction with the world. Anything that is abstract is subject to changes in perspective, and the outlook of a first level party is very different than that of a 30th level party. The level one giant Solo fight is not 'in actuality' different than the level 30 minion fight, in as much as a fantasy game can be said to have actuality. The giant hasn't changed. The perspective the players have of the giant changes. They've fought things so much tougher than giants by that point that giants are target practice. It does not offend verisimilitude, it's exactly how our perceptions of the real world work: those math problems that gave you trouble in fourth grade look trivially easy when you're taking Pre-Cal in highschool. The math didn't change; you and your perceptions did.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Whose Line Is It Anyway isn't a game. It's the name of an improv comedy show.

A game show. The same format is also commonly used by comedy clubs and theater groups. There are plenty of other similar games that revolve around making stuff up surrounding preset prompts of some sort.

House, I've no idea about.

I'm referring to "playing house"; i.e. the archetypical game that young children engage in where they pretend to be adults and go through (frequently banal) daily activities.

Sim City is a solo game - and it's balanced the way solo games are, meaning that there is no one dominant strategy.

There are clearly some strategies that are better than others. There's also no real defined victory IIRC; it's simply a question of building whatever you like.

The reason I picked those three is those are all types of games that exist well outside of the D&D world, yet have a lot more in common with D&D than strategy games or wargames. D&D is improvisational theater, it is open-ended exploration of a character, and it is a world simulator. There are many noncompetitive games that share a lot in common with D&D, and few if any of them have any conceit of any type of balance. The Sims. Charades. The list goes on and on.

Of course, many competitive games also aren't balanced between participants/competitors. Take Mafia for example; several defined (and totally unequal) roles create an engaging dynamic.

And even games that do have a concept of competitive balance don't force participants to be equal; they just provide equal opportunity. For example, if I'm dominating the Scrabble scene by getting a Q on a triple word score every time, it doesn't mean that the letter Q is overpowered, it means that I understand the rules better (or have memorized more words that start with Q), which is how you win in Scrabble. If Usain Bolt keeps winning races, that doesn't mean the races are unbalanced, it means he's faster than everyone else. System mastery in D&D (say, picking out optimized Polymorph forms) is essentially similar to skill training for competitive games.

In terms of overall usefulness yes I believe they ought to be.

What about good ol' basketweaving? Is that supposed to be on the same level as using a sword? Trying to balance apples and oranges is doomed to fail. Even adopting a very limited, restrictive, dungeon-based setting still opens D&D up to a variety of capacities that will never be balanced with each other. A point in performance can't really be compared with a point in a saving throw to the level of rigor that would be required to enforce that level of balance. Likewise, a druid can't really be compared with a rogue to that degree.

"...If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D & D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters. It is the opinion of this writer that the most desirable game is one in which the various character types are able to compete with each other as relative equals."
Gary Gygax, The Strategic Review

So...if magic is restrained, everything's fine right? I mean, no one anywhere is arguing for unrestrained magic (which to me, sounds synonymous with at-will spells, so maybe someone is).

You confuse balance with symmetry. 4E is asymmetric. Like e.g. Fox and Geese. Or any wargame I can think of. Or any fighting game. 4e is balanced between PCs like a fighting game. (Who's stronger? Any good fighting game will have a lot of viable fighters) and between PCs and NPCs like Fox and Geese. These are both forms of balance.

What you're referring to as asymmetry however, while it may be a perfectly good model for wargames, is not appropriate for a roleplaying game. A roleplaying game is about the characters, not the players, and should be judged in terms of the characters' world and not the players' experience. The players certainly aren't competing with each other (unlike with a wargame), so as [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION] notes, balance between them is irrelevant.

 

[Hussar]

[NITPICK]While I agree with your assessment of the long-term playability of Chutes & Ladders due to its randomness, I would have to say it is perfectly balanced- each player has identical odds of any roll or sequence of rolls.[/NITPICK]

Oh agreed. It is balanced. Where the analogy breaks down for DnD though is that the DM has six pieces on the board and everyone else has one. Sure other people might win but the DM only has to win once for everyone to lose.

That's why rocket tag and high level DnD has balance issues.

 

[Hussar]

The phrase "game balance" may be too general a term. And in any case, perfect balance is still something unreasonably difficult to achieve - good balance is usually more than good enough.

Totally agree with this.

 

[Bluenose]

Yes they are. Hit points are every bit as much a part of a game-world creature's (or PC's) makeup as strength, wisdom, and AC. They're a part of what you are, their full potential changing as you advance in age/experience/whatever and their actual value changing as you take damage/injury and recover from such.

And of course changing according to the enemy you're fighting. Unless hit points are absolutely and only meat points, in which case they shouldn't change as a character gains age/experience/whatever, then the opponent's skill level also plays a factor in how hard you find it to defend yourself. The brown belt who finds it easy to defend themselves against novice judoka doesn't survive for long against a master. And if D&D isn't going to increase defences as characters level up and use hit points to represent increased defensive skill, then by far the easiest way to model that aspect of reality is to acknowledge that once skill levels diverge significantly then it makes much more sense to modify hit point totals than to leave them the same.