How important is game balance to you?

[Tony Vargas]

But why do believe that people like playing buffers and healers? That's totally not my experience.

In concept, yes. The former more than the latter, probably, in most cases, since the latter is necessarily reactive, while the former can be proactive and quite dramatic. But, the latter can play to certain character concepts and themes. Compassion, for instance.

D&D 4e is the only RPG system/edition where I notice that interest in playing a leader is about as high as playing a class filling some other role.

Well, sure, it's not limited to healing, and it's better-balanced, overall.

And the reason is easy to see: They don't have to be _dedicated_ healers.

OTOH, you could be. The Pacifist Cleric, for instance, was brought back by popular demand for folks who did want exactly that. Then there was the Lazy Warlord build that willfully didn't use it's actions to attack, even though the design team had very carefully made sure every leader could buff/heal and still attack every round.

It's the opposite of D&D 3e where a cleric was hardly more than a buff-/healbot. In 3e we were basically drawing straws to decide who'd have to fill this unpopular role.

You missed the whole CoDzilla thing, I take it?

And in our 4e group, the defender is definitely getting the limelight very often. It's true that our main striker often evokes more awe because he's the one killing most of the opposition, but everyone realizes it's the defender's expertise that allows the striker to do so. The defender is also the one character that our DM is complaining about the most because it's so hard to scratch or disable him even temporarily.

Part of the beauty of Roles was that they had different appeal and different kinds of 'glory' as a result of different (but balanced) contributions, and really gave players a wider range of style options. You see the glory of the Defender role, but a lot of folks don't, they see the Striker as having the limelight because of his big damage. Others find both Striker and Defender mere grunts, and consider the massive AE power and subtle strategic influence of the Controller far more meaningful and rewarding. Any, yes, some of us do like being the enabler and force-multiplier setting everyone else up.

My favorite Role was Leader, followed closely by Controller and the odd Defender build, and more distantly by Defenders in general, with Strikers well, striking me as positively boring - playable only if there's a really good character concept to RP and some useful non-combat pursuits.

 

[MechaPilot]

Game balance can be a controversial topic. Some feel it is paramount, while others feel it is just a tool among many.

I find that perspective to be rather alien.

Virtually every time I see discussions about balance, I see people arguing for different kinds of balance. The classic example of this in the D&D community is comparing "campaign balance" (the character begins weaker/stronger than others and slowly slips to the opposite end of the scale over several levels of play, such as the wizard from every edition prior to 4e) to "round-by-round balance" (the character's options each round are not inherently better or worse than those of other characters of the same level).

This can also be seen in the "daily balance" of characters (where some characters are equally good all day while others have declining potential as the day wears on; often achieved through declining daily-refresh resources, like spell slots), with the friction between the two generating the five-minute workday phenomenon.

Personally, I feel that these days folks seem to view balance as the end goal, while I feel it's just part of the toolset. After all, a perfectly balanced game is this:

Everybody roll 1d6. Highest roll wins.

Fun, eh?

How do you feel about balance?

I don't think anyone is realistically advocating perfect balance. Perfect balance requires so few variables that any presented choice is inherently illusionary. However, there are very limited times when small doses of perfect balance, such as the old D&D rule that all weapons do 1d6 damage, can have desirable outcomes. If all weapons have the same damage die, then there is no punishment for going with one character concept over another. Want your death cleric to wield a sickle (normally 1d4) instead of a mace (normally 1d6)? You don't miss out on 1-4 extra damage (1 to 2 normally, 1 to 4 on a crit). Or, more dramatically, what if you wanted a lightly-armored dual-dagger using fighter (i.e. a knife-fighter). You don't miss out on 1-8 extra damage.

How do you feel about balance?

Balance is an important consideration; it's part of why I review options players want to use at my table. As a player and a DM, these are the kinds of balance that matter the most to me:

1) no character is so inherently good that they blow through any challenge the DM designs to be difficult or deadly for their level;
2) no character is so inherently good that they don't need the rest of the party when facing an encounter meant to challenge a party;
3) the ability to tailor an encounter to a desired level of difficulty for my players and their characters.

 

[Lanefan]

Virtually every time I see discussions about balance, I see people arguing for different kinds of balance. The classic example of this in the D&D community is comparing "campaign balance" (the character begins weaker/stronger than others and slowly slips to the opposite end of the scale over several levels of play, such as the wizard from every edition prior to 4e) to "round-by-round balance" (the character's options each round are not inherently better or worse than those of other characters of the same level).

This can also be seen in the "daily balance" of characters (where some characters are equally good all day while others have declining potential as the day wears on; often achieved through declining daily-refresh resources, like spell slots), with the friction between the two generating the five-minute workday phenomenon.

Macro-balance vs. micro-balance.

Macro-balance is, overall, more important to a long-running game than micro-balance. For a tournament or convention one-off, micro-balance becomes more essential. Which to design for, is the question, because I've come to believe that achieving both is probably impossible. For me, it's macro all the way.

Balance is an important consideration; it's part of why I review options players want to use at my table. As a player and a DM, these are the kinds of balance that matter the most to me:

1) no character is so inherently good that they blow through any challenge the DM designs to be difficult or deadly for their level;
2) no character is so inherently good that they don't need the rest of the party when facing an encounter meant to challenge a party;
3) the ability to tailor an encounter to a desired level of difficulty for my players and their characters.

1 is important and 3 is (to me) largely irrelevant; any given encounter is what it is and if the party can't handle it they can (almost) always flee.

But 2, above, is something I've thought about for ages (as in, ever since I started DMing 30+ years ago): how to make sure each character needs a party around it. The only solution I've come up with so far (which seems to be having the desired effect, so far) is to:
a) really hack back on (or ban entirely, up to you) multiclassing, and
b) keep the abilities of each class firmly within that class - make sure each class has its niche e.g. only Cleric-types can cure, only Rangers can track, only Fighters can specialize in a weapon, and so forth
c) corollary to this is to keep some NPC adventurers on standby in case the party realize they're missing something and go recruiting

A character who can do a little bit of everything is in effect a one-man band and doesn't need anyone else.

Lanefan

 

[MechaPilot]

Macro-balance vs. micro-balance.

Macro-balance is, overall, more important to a long-running game than micro-balance. For a tournament or convention one-off, micro-balance becomes more essential. Which to design for, is the question, because I've come to believe that achieving both is probably impossible. For me, it's macro all the way.

That's what I mean though; no one ever says no balance. They just say not that kind of balance.

1 is important and 3 is (to me) largely irrelevant; any given encounter is what it is and if the party can't handle it they can (almost) always flee.

3 is very important to me.

My biggest peeve with editions before 4e is the difficulty of adequately gauging how difficult an encounter will be, especially given how difficult fleeing is: In D&D avoiding encounters is much more possible than fleeing them successfully (I've had entire parties die because they tried to flee, where at least half of them would have survived if they'd have stayed and fought). Party death grinds a game to a halt (individual PC death can as well), and not having challenging encounters makes the game feel like it has no stakes. A good way to accurately gauge encounter difficulty helps cut out the guess-work, the game halting deaths, and the stale cake-walks.

 

[Lanefan]

3 is very important to me.

My biggest peeve with editions before 4e is the difficulty of adequately gauging how difficult an encounter will be, especially given how difficult fleeing is: In D&D avoiding encounters is much more possible than fleeing them successfully (I've had entire parties die because they tried to flee, where at least half of them would have survived if they'd have stayed and fought). Party death grinds a game to a halt (individual PC death can as well), and not having challenging encounters makes the game feel like it has no stakes.

Fair enough. Here, character death is mostly seen as just a grim fact of character life; though in 33 years of DMing I've only wiped out one entire party (and come very close on another few occasions). The game goes on.

A good way to accurately gauge encounter difficulty helps cut out the guess-work, the game halting deaths, and the stale cake-walks.

As long as there's some variance. Having every encounter just happen to be exactly what the party can handle seems a bit...contrived, somehow.

That said, I find the dice often take care of that for me. Sometimes an encounter I think will be (and on paper is) a pushover causes all kinds of trouble, while something that should clobber 'em hard they blow off with ease.

Lanefan

 

[MechaPilot]

As long as there's some variance. Having every encounter just happen to be exactly what the party can handle seems a bit...contrived, somehow.

I agree. And I did say the ability to design a challenge to a desired level. Sometimes, that level is on par with the PCs, sometimes it's lower, and sometimes it's higher. The ability to make an encounter fit a desired level of difficulty for a party of a given level doesn't mean you have to choose the equal opponents option, and it doesn't mean you have to only design encounters to one level of difficulty.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I was looking for a definition of balance, and you came up with "equal". To me that's equally nebulous in the context of an RPG where you aren't comparing similar things. Can you illuminate me?

Niche protection, equal spotlight time, etc. It's complicated... this helps

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html

 

[Tony Vargas]

Macro-balance vs. micro-balance.

I'm not sure if MechaPilot offered that as an example of two reasonable alternate interpretations of 'balance,' or just as an example of the futility of arguing about balance.

But, the difference seems more than just scope. The former is a balance of imbalances over the course of time, you need enough time to make it work, even in theory. Enough time might be a 1-20 campaign, or a 6-8 encounter day, depending.

Macro-balance is, overall, more important to a long-running game than micro-balance.

Well, it exists, in theory, over a long-running campaign. So it'd be fair to say that macro-balance is more important in a long-running campaign. Rather it's more important than micro-balance remains debatable.

For a tournament or convention one-off, micro-balance becomes more essential. Which to design for, is the question, because I've come to believe that achieving both is probably impossible.

It's a question of scope. Of course, if you achieve balance on the micro level, it generally scales up - the macro level isn't imbalanced, either.

That's what I mean though; no one ever says no balance. They just say not that kind of balance.

On rare occasion someone does admit that they simply want on character option to be more powerful than another. But, yeah, most of the time, it's not arguing against balance, just the way balance is implemented or the 'kind' of balance, with the objective of, well, protecting the simply-more-powerful option.

...I guess I could be more charitable...

My biggest peeve with editions before 4e is the difficulty of adequately gauging how difficult an encounter will be

A very valid other sort of balance, yes. My solution back in the day (and now, again, in 5e) is simply to keep the monster side of the equation secret behind the DM screen and tweak or make it up as the combat developed.

especially given how difficult fleeing is: In D&D avoiding encounters is much more possible than fleeing them successfully

A whole 'nuther topic, but a worthy one.

 

[Campbell]

Compelling play rests on asymmetry of choices. Every choice a player makes should have an impact on the play space. What is up for grabs is how much overall weight we should give to a given choice. That really depends on our goals for play. Game balance for me is all about establishing equality of opportunity, rather than equality of result. Still for the most part I am wary of giving too much weight to decisions made in character generation. I want the heart of the game to exist in decisions made in the heat of the moment. My preference is for other decisions to impact the sort of decisions made in the core game, but not to exert undue influence on the results.

 

[Ogre Mage]

I really dislike RPGs where the classes/characters all seem the same but the more variation you add to PC abilities the greater the potential for power imbalance. I actually have found 5e to be somewhat of a "Goldilocks just right" of variation vs. balance. 3E had great variation and possibilities for character optimizers (which I enjoy to a certain degree) but the power gap between clerics, druids, wizards and everyone else became so gigantic that I found higher level games unsustainable. 4E was very balanced, but the classes felt so similar to me that I got bored.

The three pillars of D&D are combat, exploration and social. It's not realistic to expect all classes to be able to contribute exactly equally to each pillar, but I think each classes potential to contribute to the aggregate total of all three pillars should be in the same general ballpark. Imbalance can still occur because some DMs may, for instance, emphasize combat and downplay social or vice versa, but I don't think it is incumbent on the game rules to address the fact that some DM's emphasize one pillar over the others.