D&D General Worlds of Design: A Question of Balance

Some people think that every character class must be equally balanced with every other class, but why is that necessary? Are they competing with the other players in a co-operative game?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay​

The Destination or the Journey?

When approaching a discussion of class balance, it's worth asking the question: is an RPG session a destination or a journey? Or to put it another way, is an RPG session "mental gymnastics" or an "adventure"? I think the latter in both cases. Consequently, shouldn't character classes be about different ways to succeed, not about "power" (or whatever it is that has to be "equal" between each character)?

The concept of asymmetry--different starting capabilities and assets on each side--is very important in some kinds of games, like historical strategy games. It's hard to sensibly reproduce history symmetrically, in which all players start at the same level of power; for an example of how this is handled in a board game, see Risk. There's good reason for this. One of the easiest ways to achieve "balance" in a game is to make it symmetric, with everyone beginning "the same."

The need for symmetric play has spilled over in video game design, with all classes being balanced against each other, even in single-player. That style of game development has influenced modern tabletop games for similar reasons: keeping all players equal smooths out the game's design. But I think something is lost in forcing symmetric design in a tabletop role-playing game.

What's Class Balance, Anyway?

The first problem is that "class balance" is a fungible metric. Presumably, all classes are "equally powerful" but what does that mean, really? If play is all about the individual, the game turns into a competition between players to see who can show off the most. For games where personal power is important, this can make sense--but I don't find it conducive to the fundamentals of teamwork Dungeons & Dragons was built on. If D&D is about cooperation, flattening out every character's power implies that they're in competition with each other.

When the game is about the success of the group as a whole, about co-operation, then there may be compensations for playing a less powerful class. In fact, some of the classes by their very nature are inherently unbalanced for a reason. Jonathan Tweet's most recent article about The Unbalanced Cleric is a perfect example. And there are opportunities for creativity in how your "less powerful" character copes with adventuring.

Variety is the Spice of Life

There's also something to be said for the variety that comes from characters of differing capabilities. It doesn't matter to me if some characters are more powerful than others, whether it's because of class, or items owned, or something else. Different characters with different power levels creates a form of interesting play.

Here's a real life analogy: The soccer striker who scores a lot versus one who makes many chances/assists and helps the team maintain possession. But in a profession where it's so hard to score, the one who scores a lot will usually be regarded as a better player ("more powerful"), or at least the one who is paid more. Yet both are equally valuable to the team. And offensive players tend to be more highly regarded than defensive players.

Magic is Not Balanced

Then there's the issue of magic. In earlier versions of D&D, magic-users did much more damage than anyone else thanks to area effect spells (I tracked this once with the aid of a program I wrote for a Radio Shack Model 100!). In a fantasy, doesn't it make sense for the magic users to be the most powerful characters? Heroes in novels, who often don't wield magic, are exceptions in many ways: without a lot of luck, they would never succeed.

Designers can avoid the "problem" of character class balance by using skill-based rules rather than rules with character classes. You can let players differentiate themselves from others by the skills they choose, without "unbalancing" them. And shouldn't each character feel different? There are certainly archetypes that character classes often follow, yet those archetypes exist for reasons other than "play balance!"

Still, won't magic use dominate? A GM/game designer can do things to mitigate the power of magic. For example. magic can be dangerous to use, and the world can be one of low rather than high magic, e.g. like Middle-earth more than like The Wheel of Time.

The Value of Combined Arms

In the only RPG I've designed--which is intended for use with a board game, so that simplicity is paramount--I use a classless system. But for a bigger game such as D&D, multiple classes help provide both differentiation and opportunities for cooperation ("combined arms"). And I enjoy devising new character classes. Whether you need a dozen or more classes is open to question, however. Nor do they need to be "equal."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Logic here is one of those things that depends an awful lot on your initial assumptions. If you take something like a sneak attack or other precision damage to involve damage to vital systems or shock, then it makes sense for undead, plants, elementals, and constructs to not be affected. But you can adjust your assumptions to include things like vulnerable body structures and not just vitals.

With respect to mind-affecting effects, same thing. If you assume those things need a live mind to affect, then undead should be immune even if intelligent and free-willed. It might also come from a niche protection assumption - that necromancy should be appropriate magic for controlling undead rather than magic used to control living beings.

I'll certainly grant that. But I think it shows yet another aspect of the (thorny, sprawling, everpresent) balance problem with 3.5e that the Rogue can have one of its few Special Things negated so, so easily, while it takes a Wizard hyperspecializing in specific, easily-countered options to end up in a similar state. That is? The Wizard is flexible enough to, at least in principle, have a tool for essentially any occasion the designers could meaningfully prepare for, which is a pretty substantial set of occasions. The Rogue cannot do this, and even the intervention of other party members isn't likely to fix the problem.

Now, if the design of the game is supposed, explicitly, to include a "naturalistic" perspective on things (which is a perfectly cromulent design value in isolation), that can complicate things a lot! But "naturalism" is never listed as a pillar or focus of game design. It is, at best, vaguely alluded to as something some people appreciate...and it is just as often ignored (see: hit points, whether you think they're meat points or abstractions, they're not naturalistic) as it is obeyed. PF changing the Sneak Attack thing without it causing an enduring hue and cry is a perfect demonstration that this really is "a game," not a world-engine-simulator, and people can accept abstractions or handwaving when it serves the design goals of the game.

 

[fadecomic]

Overbalanced classes make the classes either generic or stiff. I get that everyone wants to participate all the time in every combat, or they're bored. Alternatively, when you assign roles and balance participation time, you get to the point where everything is prescribed for the characters. You see a lot of both of these in MMOs. Class choice either just changes the color of the pretty lights on the screen, or it makes it so that you have a specific, linear set of actions you need to do in a combat situation. It's so formalized that a lot of MMOs have their own jargon for for what each class does in combat. Yeah, no one's sitting around during a battle, but you're right back in boredom territory again, because now everyone is just following a script every single battle.

 

[Tony Vargas]

For reference:

...one definition of balance I ran across that seemed to work really well for RPGs was something like:
"a game is better balanced the more choices it presents the player that are both meaningful and viable."

Overbalanced classes make the classes either generic or stiff.

"Overbalanced" isn't really a thing. I mean, literally, something "overbalanced" has lost it's balance.

​

overbalanced -​

fall or cause to fall over from loss of balance.​

... choice either just changes the color of the pretty lights on the screen, or it makes it so that you have a specific, linear set of actions you need to do in...

What you're describing there is imbalance, in the form of choices being presented that may feel meaningless, "colors of the lights," and only one combination of which is being judged viable, "linear set of actions you need".

But, while some MMOs may or may not suffer from exactly that sort of imbalance (IDK, not into 'em, myself), no version of D&D has ever really suffered from the former. Differences among D&D classes and PCs have generally been pretty meaningful, even in the WotC editions, all of which allow for some player re-skinning of their characters.
The latter, sure, there have been times when quite specific combos dominated, most notably in 3.5 optimization exercises, or when specific SOPs became ingrained, the way you "needed a cleric" or groups would have a "door drill" or the like back in the day, for instance.

 

[fadecomic]

That's the definition of "overbalance". I didn't make the word up. It means to push past balance to the toppling point, which is exactly what I've described.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's the definition of "overbalance". I didn't make the word up. It means to push past balance to the toppling point, which is exactly what I've described.

If something is, as you say, "overbalanced," then it isn't balanced anymore. Since I am advocating FOR balance, I am obviously NOT advocating for overbalance. As that would--literally--be not the thing I'm advocating.

I grant you that things that have become sterile are bad. Show me where balance automatically means sterile.

 

[Lanefan]

@fadecomic - are you using "overbalanced" to mean "overly balanced"? If yes, other posters' confusion explained.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

@fadecomic - are you using "overbalanced" to mean "overly balanced"? If yes, other posters' confusion explained.

There is no such thing. To be overly balanced is to be not actually improving the quality of the work. This is like saying that an article or clothing is "overly tailored" or a musical instrument is "overly tuned." To be "overly tuned" (if such a term were even used) would actually mean being OUT of tune. To be "overly tailored" would mean failing to be a good fit.

Balance, as with most valuable things, is contextual and purpose-specific. "Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while Virtue finds and chooses the mean." (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

 

[Lanefan]

There is no such thing. To be overly balanced is to be not actually improving the quality of the work.

Exactly - balance can be overdone, at which point it stops improving anything.

Balance, as with most valuable things, is contextual and purpose-specific.

And, as with many things, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. In the case of game design balance, however, we all see the cutoffs between unbalanced, good balance and too balanced at different points along the grade: what's unbalanced to some might be good balance to others and even too balanced (i.e. overly balanced) to a few.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Exactly - balance can be overdone, at which point it stops improving anything.

No. If you take an action that would make anything "overdone," that isn't balance anymore. It's something else--or, you have used a tool or method intended to produce it incorrectly, and thus created non-balance.

Like, take sound balance. There is no absolute "perform this action to create more balanced-ness, which can go too far into excessive balanced-ness." You can shift the volume (and, for a speaker array, direction) of sound one way or another, and finding the correct point for a given context produces balanced sound. Any motion away from that point produces unbalanced sound. It can be unbalanced left or right, up or down, loud or quiet, bass or treble, but it can't be excessively balanced.

If you wish for more precise terminology: imbalance is distance away from context-appropriate balance. It is a measure of "far-ness." There is no such thing as excessive "close-ness." You can absolutely argue that the wrong center has been chosen (e.g. Celsius temperatures are useful for everyday use, but inappropriate for calorimetry), that there are extra criteria that weren't considered and thus the whole fails to achieve balance (e.g. "sure, you balanced the center two speakers, but the front speakers and back speakers are now out of balance with them"), or that a particular method is unreliable for achieving balance when used incautiously (e.g. "making all speakers have the same average output doesn't help if you're trying to balance for sound position"). But for something to be "overly balanced," it must become imbalanced--likely in a different way than it was imbalanced before, but still.

Hence my Aristotle quote. Balance IS the mean; context tells you what kind of mean(s) you're looking for (sets the parameters), and analysis tells you how to find the mean(s).

And, as with many things, too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Great adage, but not particularly useful. Courage is not one pole with cowardice as the other. Courage is the mean (chosen for each context) between cowardice and rashness. It is not possible to be too courageous, because courage lies in avoiding both deficiency (cowardice) and excess (rashness). It is not possible to be too sincere, because sincerity lies in avoiding both deficiency (dishonesty) and excess (discourtesy). It is not possible to be too magnanimous, because magnanimity avoids both deficiency (pusillanimity) and excess (profligacy).

Balance is not itself a virtue; it is "being at the mean, chosen for each context." The status of "balanced" means that the thing in question (be it a game, a person, a collection of massive objects in a gravitational field, whatever) is actually located at the context-appropriate mean for as many parameters as possible (this is, after all, practical wisdom, not theoretical wisdom). If there is a presence of excess, then it is not balanced. It may be excessively precise, or excessively verbose, or excessively complex, but it cannot be "excessively avoiding excess and deficiency." You can't excessively balance a scale; either the two plates are in (effective) equality, or they are not, and once you reach equality, the only direction you can move is away from it.

And if you want to actually talk about what really is in excess, please, do so! Because that's actually a useful thing to do, as it gets us closer to the state of "as many things as possible are neither too much nor too little."

 

[Lanefan]

No. If you take an action that would make anything "overdone," that isn't balance anymore. It's something else--or, you have used a tool or method intended to produce it incorrectly, and thus created non-balance.

<snip the balanced sound of hairs being split>

Must I really spell it out?

In an RPG, perfect-at-all-times mechanical balance between characters can only be achieved by having every character played be exactly the same - same stats, same abilities, same feats, same skills, same race and class, same hit points, same level, same possessions and wealth, etc., etc. - in short, a party of clones. That way, every player has exactly the same tools, resources and mechanics to work with as they play the game.

If such an RPG exists I don't know of it, nor do I know of anybody who would play it. Every RPG I can think of has or allows for at least some mechanical variance in many if not all of the things listed above after the word "same"; and as soon as you introduce mechanical variance you introduce imbalance in some form or other, be it on the immediate-term, short-term or long-term scale.

The farther the game design moves away from the extreme-of-balance I posit above, the less perfectly balanced the characters will (likely) be; and for each of us there's a different sweet spot where that increasing imbalance leads to peak enjoyment and playability after which further imbalance makes the game less playable and-or enjoyable.

Which means that yes, it's very possible for an RPG to be too balanced.