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

[iserith]

I'm not sure whether you still didn't read my post thoroughly or didn't understand the point I was making - I will assume the latter and phrase it a bit differently:

Comparing combat feats with non-combat feats is subjective based on play styles - so comparing "Read and write all languages" to "+3 with swords" is problematic. However, if you are comparing COMBAT feats, that subjectiveness narrows (note I said narrows, not disappears) considerably. There is still some subjectiveness because some people might play extreme dungeons only, or ranged combat only - but that doesn't mean you should eschew balance as a principal - continuing down that path is nihilism - it leads to the conclusion that nothing matters because everyone plays differently.

The designers can and should balance combat feats based on the assortment of monsters they present in the MM - which is a large assortment of different types, ranged, spell, and melee. They can and should balance based on a variety of locales - dungeons, urban, wild, etc. In other words, balance to the mean/average. This is still a bit subjective BUT it is done in thousands of games successfully. Extreme examples of play should not be considered in judging balance.

You say D and D is "a set of tools the DM can use to make the game he or she wants and nothing more" - that is a line of thinking that could and does alienate a substantial portion of the gaming world. I, like many, have an expectation that D and D be a complete game, not a collection of tools that must be endlessly tinkered with to work.

In the end, I agree with Tony Vargas' statement that D and D 5e suffers from a failure to commit to balance - and I think your attitude sums up 5e's problems (as percieved by me) in that regard.

If that is your expectation, then you should expect disappointment. Balance (whatever that may mean to the DM or group) happens because of the DM's efforts toward that end, not because of the game system. This is why I find complaints about "balance" in D&D 5e to be laughable. The people doing the complaining reveal their misunderstanding with every post.

Change your expectations, however, and it becomes easy to see what is required of you as DM. After all, they sold us this game system during the playtest (in part) as being one of "dials," right? Where you have a lot of options and you tune things to your desired specifications? This should really be a surprise to no one in my view.

 

[shoak1]

I understood what you said, and I'm sure he did as well. Honestly, I think it's you who is not getting what I'm trying to say. The game is not "combat only", and you can't compare "combat feats against other combat feats" for this reason, as well as the reason that they all overlap under the greater umbrella. Combat, interaction, and exploration aren't all separate things that don't impact one another--they more often than not all overlap and impact each other. Exploration or interaction may allow you to overcome a combat challenge rather than combat. And vice versa. They are all intertwined. At least, that's how the game is designed to be played. See my examples I gave earlier about how some classes seem way OP to others depending on if you allow short rests all the time or not, or if you ignore other factors. Gaining and maintaining spell components is very much an out of combat action, but it very much impacts the combat encounter unless you (general you) choose to ignore it. So you can't really complain casters are OP when you're ignoring features built into the overall game that are meant to mitigate these things.

For example, even if you look at two "combat" feats: heavy armor mastery and grappling. A person who views D&D only at a tactical combat sim will probably say grappling is worthless, especially compared to heavy armor mastery that is basically a damage reduction mechanic, so it's not balanced. But D&D is not meant to be played as a tactical combat sim, and those out of combat factors play a huge role. Maybe they party is in a desert, ocean, or jungle, and wearing heavy armor imparts serious penalties or can't be used at all. Or someone casts heat metal on the armor wearing guy. In those cases, being able to grappler would have a much bigger impact than heavy armor feat.

The point is, is that you cannot separate the three pillars into different games. That's bad methodology for whatever analysis you want to do, because that's not how the game is designed to be played. If all you're doing is evaluating white room arena comparison, then some comparisons will seem very unbalanced because they are designed knowing that other factors from the other two pillars will have an impact in the typical game (like how the availability of spell components is not a combat pillar feature, but very much has an impact during the combat phase). So if you choose to ignore the other two pillars, the onus is on you to make those adjustments because you're the one skewing some abilities/feats to be artificially more impactful than others.

OK now I am certain that you did not carefully read my post. Maybe I should block and copy it as a response to this post of yours because you have completely ignored the counter-arguments I made against exactly what you say here.

 

[Sacrosanct]

OK now I am certain that you did not carefully read my post. Maybe I should block and copy it as a response to this post of yours because you have completely ignored the counter-arguments I made against exactly what you say here.

You keep saying to this to everyone else. Maybe it's not all of us "completely missing what you wrote", but you thinking you're writing things you never did. The odds are better of that, then of everyone else refusing to read what you're writing.

 

[Argyle King]

If that is your expectation, then you should expect disappointment. Balance (whatever that may mean to the DM or group) happens because of the DM's efforts toward that end, not because of the game system. This is why I find complaints about "balance" in D&D 5e to be laughable. The people doing the complaining reveal their misunderstanding with every post.

Change your expectations, however, and it becomes easy to see what is required of you as DM. After all, they sold us this game system during the playtest (in part) as being one of "dials," right? Where you have a lot of options and you tune things to your desired specifications? This should really be a surprise to no one in my view.

Sorry to nitpick, but I feel as though a lot of dials that were advertised didn't make it into the final game.
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The rest of my post is a follow up to a previous Tony Vargas post.

I actually think that 3rd could have been fairly easy to fix, but the fix would have created a new edition. Looking through my old books, the main issue with 3rd is that numbers scale too broadly and in too many directions. If you were to scale the number progression down, I suspect you'd have something which looks similar to 5th Edition, but with more granularity and more options.

Saying 4th was more balanced is a little debatable. I think most things were in the same general ballpark, but a few things are noticeable right out of the box. The PHB Paladin was arguably a weak defender, but (oddly) a lot of the paragon paths and other paladin options worked pretty well if they were picked up by a different class. Things were improved with time, but then newer imbalanced options were introduced. Why would I ever take a feat which gives me a +2 bonus under specific conditions over a newer option which gives me +2 all the time? For me, a lot of 4th's problem was that the monsters couldn't keep up with the PCs and that the PCs very quickly became something more similar to superheroes (which isn't necessarily bad if you know that going in). However, I also feel that a lot of the official "fixes" to the problems of the edition went in the wrong direction and broke more things than they fixed. I often felt that the design team must have been playing a drastically different game than what I was playing.

I'm still not quite sure what direction 5th is trying to go. So, I'm inclined to agree with Tony's assessment. Thus far, my own opinion is that 5th is mostly balanced, but there are some notable exceptions, and it's not clear to me what the design mentality was behind certain choices. A lot of the language used during the playtest turned out to mean very different things than what I thought those words would mean.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm still not quite sure what direction 5th is trying to go. .

I think 5e's direction has been very clear. Stop trying to get hung up on analysis paralysis by trying to balance everything when most gamers really couldn't care less. Rather, go back to allowing individual tables to mold the game to fit their needs. Rulings over rules, if you were. Does that mean that many groups may need to tweak things here and there? Yep, but that's been the core of D&D since the beginning. And based on the success of 5e, it seems to be the clear right move. There are soooo many reasons why a lot of people enjoy playing D&D, and tight balance is hardly the #1, as evidenced by how many people are playing each edition.

 

[Argyle King]

I think 5e's direction has been very clear. Stop trying to get hung up on analysis paralysis by trying to balance everything when most gamers really couldn't care less. Rather, go back to allowing individual tables to mold the game to fit their needs. Rulings over rules, if you were. Does that mean that many groups may need to tweak things here and there? Yep, but that's been the core of D&D since the beginning. And based on the success of 5e, it seems to be the clear right move. There are soooo many reasons why a lot of people enjoy playing D&D, and tight balance is hardly the #1, as evidenced by how many people are playing each edition.

I'm not someone who cares about perfect balance. However, having some idea of the mentality behind the game helps determine how much I'm going to invest into it.

It's here that I'll again bring up 4th Edition. It was my experience that the advertised game and what was presented as the story, fluff, aesthetic, and etc was often at odds with how the game actually worked. My concern for how the game works or what the vision is for how the game should work is due to determining whether or not I feel the game suits what I want out of an rpg. There are many things about 5th Edition I like. However, there are are also many areas in which I find that I'd prefer that things work differently, and I don't feel confident in changing the game without understanding what other impacts those changes will have.

To clarify, I'm not saying I'm hesitant to modify things or make rulings. I play other rpgs, and I've GMed other rpgs.

It's your opinion that the direction of 5th is clear. That's an opinion that I'm not so sure I share. As I said, a lot of the words used to describe the direction during the playtest did not seem to mean what I thought they would mean. I base that assessment upon comparing what made it into the final version of the game and what didn't. I also base that assessment upon looking at what the proposed future products are and trying to make an educated guess on what appears to be the proposed steps for getting from point A to point B.

I like a lot of what 5th Edition is doing. For me personally, I'll likely be making some significant changes to how the game works once I gain more experience with the DM side of things. Even so and even with my ability to make those changes, the value which future products hold for me will be determined by whether I find those products to be similar to the direction I want to go in or whether (like was my experience with 4th) the evolution of the game diverges enough from what I want to do to not be useful to me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I actually think that 3rd could have been fairly easy to fix, but the fix would have created a new edition. Looking through my old books, the main issue with 3rd is that numbers scale too broadly and in too many directions.

The magnitude of the scaling isn't the issue, it's the variability of it. You BAB can go up 1/level and your STR or DEX can go up 10 points, plus enhancement bonuses, and you can pick up magic weapons, etc - or your BAB can be 3/4 or 1/2 and it might be impractical to put more than trivial resources towards stats & items to improve your use of weapons. Skills the variation was even more extreme. That could have been fixed the way 4e & 5e did it: just use one progression, 1/2 level in 4e, +4 over 20 levels in 5e. But that only addresses 'balance' between optimized & unomptimixed d20 rolls, which was not such a huge deal, if you sunk stuff into your d20-mediated speciality, you'd be untouchably good at it, unoptimized characters needn't bother. 'Balancing' what a character is extremely good at vs those who neglect it isn't such a major issue, it's when the character who is barely trying to be good at something is better than the one that tried to specialize in it that you have severe balance problems (and Tier 1 vs Tier 6 classes!).

Actually fixing 3e's mechanical balance issues would have required a total re-design of the classes and scrapping the magic system, at minimum.

Even so, a 3e campaign could be balanced after-market, as it were, by some or all of the following:

• player restraint
• All players having equivalent system mastery
• DM brinksmanship
• 'Living World' style play
• 'DM force/illusionism'
• E6 style play
• The banhammer

Saying 4th was more balanced is a little debatable.

It's really not in the least debatable. Even the most virulent h4ters of the edition war wouldn't try to claim 4e wasn't much better-balanced, they'd go with 'too balanced' or 'gave up too much for that balance...' ;P

The PHB Paladin was arguably a weak defender

Like the other examples of 4e balance issues (though this was a pretty minor one), it was quickly cleared up by the continuous stream of errata and new material. The PH CHA Paladin had some issues, specifically, and Divine Power cleared them up.

For me, a lot of 4th's problem was that the monsters couldn't keep up with the PCs and that the PCs very quickly became something more similar to superheroes (which isn't necessarily bad if you know that going in).... I often felt that the design team must have been playing a drastically different game than what I was playing.

That's sounding plausible, I think you may have been playing a different game from me, too. One of the early complaints was that PC numbers didn't keep up with monsters, not vice-versa. It was addressed (and over done, IMHO), especially in Essentials, which introduced & re-introduced many balance issues, while simultaneously becoming more parsimonious with errata. In retrospect, a faltering first step towards 5e...

I'm still not quite sure what direction 5th is trying to go. So, I'm inclined to agree with Tony's assessment.

It was meant to be able to handle the styles of each past edition, and that certainly precludes going to far in any one direction, and requires leaving the DM a great deal of latitude. As a result, balance (since past editions varied radically, from the baroque & failed balancing mechanisms of the classic game, to the intentional rewards for system mastery of 3.x, to the robust balance of 4e) was also left very much up to the DM.

 

[Argyle King]

My thoughts on 3e being salvageable are based upon my last attempt at running it (which was admittedly long enough ago tp be a vague set of memories).

One thing which struck me was that using fractional base saves and BAB without rounding off helped curb a few issues.

I also remember tinkering with the rate of number growth. To use a vague and likely incorrect example, instead of something increasing every 1/2 level, increase every 1/4 level. New feats and features would be gained, but numbers stay a bit more bounded like how 5th is. Essentially, the end result is similar to E6 play, but the way of achieving the result is different.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - fixing 3e was fairly easy. Remove the Tier 1 classes and you're pretty much done. The difference between a Tier 2 and a Tier 4 class wasn't quite as pronounced and the really bottom end classes generally didn't get played anyway, so I ignore them.

I know that my own 3e games were markedly different once the players stopped playing Tier 1 classes. We played for years without a cleric/druid/wizard. Our main caster was a Favored Soul and no one else had any casting to speak of. Worked out fine.

And, of course, E6 sorts things out the other way as well.

I know that I haven't had any major balance issues in 5e so far. I'm not saying that they aren't there, but, generally, we haven't seen them. Stuff like Sharpshooter and GWF don't bother me, so, I don't see it as a problem, even if I recognize that others might.

Now, to be entirely fair, we haven't really gotten into high level play, so, that might be the issue too. We've basically capped out at 12th level or so. We certainly haven't run into any major issues in 5e.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

OK now I am certain that you did not carefully read my post. Maybe I should block and copy it as a response to this post of yours because you have completely ignored the counter-arguments I made against exactly what you say here.

Why bother? His arguments are illogical. When people base their arguments on fallacy, you can't use reason or logic to argue against them, because it will just fall away like water off a duck's back.

Stop trying to get hung up on analysis paralysis by trying to balance everything when most gamers really couldn't care less. Rather, go back to allowing individual tables to mold the game to fit their needs.

So now you're telling people the right way to play the game. Nice.