D&D 5E What does balance mean to you?

[hawkeyefan]

Back to the original topic....to me balance is a general idea that I try to keep in mind when I create adventures and when I design encounters and when I improvize. I will sometimes create imbalanced encounters because I don't want my players to fight their way out of every problem. But even when I do that, I have balance in mind.

I also try to make sure that each player has something to contribute, so I create a variety of encounters for a more well balanced game. I like to make sure that each player contributes meaningfully.

Ultimately though, I don't think that balance is my goal. The goal is to have fun. Balance is just something I use to help obtain that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Wait...I admit it's been a looong time since I played second edition, but didn't weapon specialization kick in at 3rd level? And didn't it give you one rank higher multiple attacks, which would be 3/2 not 5/2?

When first introduced specialization had to be taken at 1st level, don't recall how much it may have changed through the 2e run....
And, I also recall it improving attack progression by 'only' one step. What I'm less certain of is the official way of handling a matched pair of specialized weapons, if there even was a clear one. It may well have been a second bump, or even doubling, or full attack routine with each. So could be 5/2, or 3...
...or even 3/2 twice, so two attacks one round run 4 the next, though I seriously doubt it....

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Balance in an RPG can have several very different meaning depending on the context, which is unfortunate because it can cause confusion in discussing the topic. It can mean equivalent power between PCs, it can mean equivalent utility of character ability options, and it can mean appropriate challenge level in an encounter.

For an encounter, I have an intention of making it negligible, easy, medium, hard, very hard, or impossible. If I achieve my intention in the execution of the encounter I've achieved balance. Picking the right set of challenge levels for a games encounters is important to making the game fun for your group, and the right choice will vary greatly depending on your players' preferences.

Balance among PC generation options means that none stand out as too strong or too weak. If an option is so strong that every player will choose it for his PC or so weak that no one chooses it, it is unbalanced and should be changed.

Probably the most contentious idea is balancing PC power against one another. I've seen this often discussed on this and other board in terms of damage per round, which IMO is BS. There are plenty of ways for players to contribute to the game that have nothing to do with damage or even combat. One of the reasons I disliked 4E is that IMO it went to an extreme in balancing PC power in terms of combat, which precluded many types of play. The best rule I've seen for balancing PCs is spotlight balance. To achieve spotlight balance, 1) every PC needs a chance to shine, an instance where he's very important to the game proceeding in a positive manner, and 2) every PC should almost always have something useful to do.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

And I guarantee you can't, because the players don't dictate or control the game world in D&D.

Irrelevant when talking about system balance. System balance is independent of DM fiat, not reliant upon it.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Irrelevant when talking about system balance. System balance is independent of DM fiat, not reliant upon it.

I absolutely disagree with this. Here's an example that I think illustrates why. PC Bob has combat abilities that are optimized for fighting orcs. PC Joe has combat abilities that are optimized for fighting zombies. If the DM chooses mostly orc encounters then Bob will be much stronger than Joe. Vice versa if the DM chooses mostly zombie encounters. This is a bit of an extreme example, but the utility of every PC and every ability is dependent on the DM providing challenges where they are useful. The system can help, but it falls on the DM to balance the game.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I absolutely disagree with this.

FATAL is a balanced system. You heard it here first.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

FATAL is a balanced system. You heard it here first.

I guess I'll have to take your word for it, as I have no intention of checking this.

 

[Hussar]

Wow, that is even worse than I remembered - are you mixing some later 'Player Option' stuff in there?

Nope. That's straight out of the Complete Fighter.

 

[Hussar]

Wait...I admit it's been a looong time since I played second edition, but didn't weapon specialization kick in at 3rd level? And didn't it give you one rank higher multiple attacks, which would be 3/2 not 5/2?

Nope. Weapon specs kick in at 1st level - just cost you a second weapon prof in the specialized weapon. Two weapon fighting specs and ambidexterity are both from Complete Fighter and are separate from the actual PHB specs rules.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, here's another example.

AD&D crossbows. A heavy crossbow in AD&D did 2-5 points of damage every OTHER round. Any bow did 1-6 points of damage per attack and granted 2/round to anyone proficient.

Now, why on earth, if you have the option, would you take a crossbow? You did a quarter the damage of a bow. Even thieves could still use a short bow. There was pretty much absolutely no reason to use a crossbow.

So, how many PC crossbow users did you see? I might have seen one or two, in the twenty years I played AD&D, compared to the 99% of PC's that used a bow.

That's what imbalanced systems do. They create cookie cutter characters because it is so obviously a bad choice to do otherwise. Yes, you can gimp your character, but, I presume that most players are going to make the rational choice.