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

[Tony Vargas]

Is what you want even achievable?

Certainly not in the sense of perfection, humans being such imperfect creatures living in an imperfect universe.
That truism can be taken as a reason not to try (anything, ever), a reason to settle for merely tollerable rather than good, or an opportunity for continuous improvement. Or just as a meaningless truism.

The DM who has a huge impact in my view on all of what you say above. Certain choices are always going to be better with certain DMs and with certain settings, adventures, etc.

Certainly very, very true in 5e, by design, and true of the classic game, which could easily have been an entirely different game from one DM to the next. Arguably true to a lesser degree (for different reasons) in other WotC editions.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

If you create a "very hard" challenge and the players use a combination of good tactics and luck to easily achieve victory, did you "achieve balance?" Or would you say you (or the game system) failed?

Neither, luck can always affect things. If they had average luck and easily beat an encounter I thought was hard, then I messed up. The DM has to take into account the party's tactical proficiency in encounter balance.

 

[iserith]

I think [MENTION=57494]Xeviat[/MENTION]'s description is a good goal in general. Choices should matter, and the rules should strive to make them matter. When they don't, the DM can step in and help out. But the DM can also be the source of the issue, too, as you say.

Sure, I agree. But with everyone having their own "playstyle," it seems the best solution is a collection of rules and options that the group can choose to use or not as needed to achieve their preferred aesthetic. You can't have "balance" without the DM in other words. Not in an RPG anyway. In a board game or card game, that seems more achievable.

 

[iserith]

I sense an undertone in some posts that a more "balanced" system was achieved in the previous version of the game.

If that is so, are you playing that game? If not, why not?

 

[iserith]

Neither, luck can always affect things. If they had average luck and easily beat an encounter I thought was hard, then I messed up. The DM has to take into account the party's tactical proficiency in encounter balance.

I think it's necessarily a sign of good encounter design that the PCs, by application of their skill, can trivialize a challenge that, by the numbers, is Hard, Deadly, etc. Or the reverse - an easier encounter is made harder because of poor application of skill. It means that the players' decisions matter which is to me a good thing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sure, I agree. But with everyone having their own "playstyle," it seems the best solution is a collection of rules and options that the group can choose to use or not as needed to achieve their preferred aesthetic. You can't have "balance" without the DM in other words. Not in an RPG anyway. In a board game or card game, that seems more achievable.

I agree entirely. 5E goes out of its way to depend on the DM using judgment to abdicate outcomes in the game....if that's the intention, then I don't see how we can examine the design when removing that dependence on the DM.

 

[iserith]

I agree entirely. 5E goes out of its way to depend on the DM using judgment to abdicate outcomes in the game....if that's the intention, then I don't see how we can examine the design when removing that dependence on the DM.

I think you'd have to look at it with a specific "playstyle" in mind for any given examination. The DMG seems to favor one "playstyle" in particular, "The Middle Path," which balances the DM narrating outright success or failure and using the mechanics to decide outcomes. In that it suggests other "playstyles," such as ones that rely too much on mechanics or too little, have some potential bad outcomes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not necessarily. The reason being that "balance" can mean so many things.

Certainly, if you make a claim about balance, you should settle on a definition, first.

For instance, I use the definition:

A quality games possess to varying degrees, marked by a sufficiently or even surfeit of choices available to the player that are both viable and meaningful.

I'd think a game meeting that definition of balance would probably do a fair job of delivering 'genuine choice.'

For example, let's take weapons. Let's balance it so that all weapons do the same damage. Every weapon now
does 1d8 damage. This is balanced. It also renders any choice meaningless.

Which isn't balanced.

For a functionally identical case of imbalance, consider a game that presents twice as many weapons as that first hypothetical, a dozen of them do 1d4 damage, one does 1d8, and the rest do 1d3. Weapons have no other game-mechanical qualities in this system, just the damage die.

In both games, everyone using a weapon runs around doing 1d8 damage. In the first game, everyone's using the weapon their character concepts called for (assuming it's on that shorter list), in the second, everyone's using the exact same weapon.

Balance does not automatically mean more meaningful choices

You can define it as the ability to place the game book in an upright position without it falling over, if you like, it just wouldn't be a useful quality on which to judge a system.

I think [MENTION=57494]Xeviat[/MENTION]'s description is a good goal in general. Choices should matter, and the rules should strive to make them matter.

It's a very similar definition to my own, because we're both looking at the same quality, if in slightly different ways. When some choices are too bad, they stop mattering, and when one choice is too good, all the alternatives stop mattering. Strict superiority is the clearest case, if one choice does everything another does, does all those things better, and does more beside, and has the same or fewer limitations, and the same or more advantages, the other choice might as well not exist, it's that "illusion of choice," and not even a very good one. Strict superiority isn't necessary to make a choice meaningless or non-viable, either, just clear and broad enough superiority (that's where subjectivity comes in, not in whether there is imbalance, just in the individual's tolerance of imbalance).

 

[shoak1]

And balance gives players more genuine choices rather than the illusion of choice.

This.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think you'd have to look at it with a specific "playstyle" in mind for any given examination. The DMG seems to favor one "playstyle" in particular, "The Middle Path," which balances the DM narrating outright success or failure and using the mechanics to decide outcomes. In that it suggests other "playstyles," such as ones that rely too much on mechanics or too little, have some potential bad outcomes.

Yeah, you can discuss the rules system and how they may work or not work for a given playstyle, especially when one deviates from the default expectation. But even then, I think the game presupposes alteration of the existing rules, which would require the DM to use judgment.

So if you wanted to run a game that was almost nothing but combat, and as a result was much more tactically minded, then it makes sense to lessen the focus on interaction and exploration, and to add elements that support the combat experience you want (minis and a battle map, flanking and other tactical concepts, etc.).

I suppose you could get to the point where there is almost no need for a DM other than to read the module and narrate to the players, and to roll dice for the monsters....you could get to that point, but you'd still need a huge dose of DM judgment to get there.

A bit ironic, I suppose.