D&D 5E What is balance to you, and why do you care (or don't)?

[GMforPowergamers]

Building off the already stated "Batman and Superman" vs "Janitor Joe and Superman," one of my big issues is generally that it is actually really HARD to actually pull this off. That is, Batman on paper reads like a ridiculous Mary Sue: "I'm a world-class, beyond-Olympic athlete, one of the smartest men in the world, attractive, rich beyond the dreams of Avarice such that my entire superhero lifestyle can be hidden in a line item in the financial reports of my global business conglomerate. My parents were killed when I was eight which is what gave me the motivation to save others from suffering that kind of loss. Oh, and the man who raised me is a badass former British secret service agent, my adopted son is a similarly orphaned incredibly gifted gymnast and overall very sharp kid, and my main love interest is one of the world's leading catburglars and also a rich socialite with her own multimillion corporation." By comparison even Superman, the Man of Steel himself, begins to sound surprisingly restrained.

so in Mutants and Master Minds they do it with having the same bonus to hit and damage, but one has it from super strength and one has it from training and special timing. You can trade off some of your bonus to hit for damage... but both are limited by your power level...

so a batman/superman at PL10 could both have +10 to hit and +10 to damage, or could have +8 to one and +12 to the other... and the bat/super trade is best (IMO) would be batman having +12 to hit and +8 special training damage, but superman has +8 to hit and +12 super strength damage

 

[EzekielRaiden]

so in Mutants and Master Minds they do it with having the same bonus to hit and damage, but one has it from super strength and one has it from training and special timing. You can trade off some of your bonus to hit for damage... but both are limited by your power level...

so a batman/superman at PL10 could both have +10 to hit and +10 to damage, or could have +8 to one and +12 to the other... and the bat/super trade is best (IMO) would be batman having +12 to hit and +8 special training damage, but superman has +8 to hit and +12 super strength damage

Isn't that what 4e did with the half-level bonus so many hated as being a "treadmill"?

Like people mock 4e for being so purely mathematical and lifeless but what you say here sounds like a perfect meaning for meaning translation of 4e mechanics in a differently constructed system.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Isn't that what 4e did with the half-level bonus so many hated as being a "treadmill"?

I don't see it as a treadmil

Like people mock 4e for being so purely mathematical

those people are wrong

and lifeless but what you say here sounds like a perfect meaning for meaning translation of 4e mechanics in a differently constructed system.

4e is so far my favorite version of D&D

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the way the discourse around 5E combat design has evolved has had a pernicious effect on this. Notably, 5E DMG gives you some complicated math to allow you to calculate an encounter's balance to your specific party, and the 3rd-party encounter planners also gave this idea that you input your party's configuration and balanced everything around them - this was certainly how I designed my encounters for the first few years I DM'd. It was only after reading an article by the Angry GM that talked about the difficulty treadmill and how to avoid it that I realised that the tiered system I'm currently using would feel more fun.

Oh, it's been a persistent claim since the days of 3.5 at least if not earlier. 4e was where it really got blatant and widespread though...and the irony of course is that the text explicitly tells you not to do that, and rather tells you to give mixes of challenges from easy (e.g. roughly level-4) to very hard (e.g. roughly level+5, maybe level+7 if you're feeling particularly spicy). Many, many, many people tried to spin its (very effective) XP budget rules as mandating perfect lockstep encounter levels, or (hilariously) claiming that it worked like Skyrim where every encounter would automatically level up to match the party no matter what!

The 4e era was full of some really choice strawmen.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't see it as a treadmil

those people are wrong

4e is so far my favorite version of D&D

I mean, you and I agree on these points. I'm taking about how others viewed it.

 

[billd91]

Building off the already stated "Batman and Superman" vs "Janitor Joe and Superman," one of my big issues is generally that it is actually really HARD to actually pull this off. That is, Batman on paper reads like a ridiculous Mary Sue: "I'm a world-class, beyond-Olympic athlete, one of the smartest men in the world, attractive, rich beyond the dreams of Avarice such that my entire superhero lifestyle can be hidden in a line item in the financial reports of my global business conglomerate. My parents were killed when I was eight which is what gave me the motivation to save others from suffering that kind of loss. Oh, and the man who raised me is a badass former British secret service agent, my adopted son is a similarly orphaned incredibly gifted gymnast and overall very sharp kid, and my main love interest is one of the world's leading catburglars and also a rich socialite with her own multimillion corporation." By comparison even Superman, the Man of Steel himself, begins to sound surprisingly restrained.

No he doesn't. There's nothing much restrained about Superman, particularly Silver Age Superman. Fortress of Solitude, more pets than you can shake a stick at, powers that are capable of virtually any deus ex machina that a writer decided to pull out of his butt (issues of Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes, particularly, come to mind).

But this is also part of the conceit of superhero comics. They truly are modern mythology in the sense that virtually everything about them and the circles they inhabit are as excessive as Jason and his Argonauts - including Heracles. How many teams have resources from a virtually unlimited budget? The X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Justice League of America - danger rooms, mansions, weird tech galore, satellite bases. Occasionally, there's a bit about their resources (Charles seeking extra money from Angel, the Fantastic Four going to Hollywood) but they're never really a problem. Then there are decades worth of increasingly convoluted, ret-conned backstory in which even a lowly orphan like Cyclops is brought up in an orphanage designed to groom him by Mr. Sinister.

Honestly, any of them with an extensive publication history are like this. Batman is comparatively straightforward.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

Balance is all about giving all the players an equal chance to shine.

 

[Scribe]

That is, Batman on paper reads like a ridiculous Mary Sue: "I'm a world-class, beyond-Olympic athlete, one of the smartest men in the world, attractive, rich beyond the dreams of Avarice such that my entire superhero lifestyle can be hidden in a line item in the financial reports of my global business conglomerate. My parents were killed when I was eight which is what gave me the motivation to save others from suffering that kind of loss. Oh, and the man who raised me is a badass former British secret service agent, my adopted son is a similarly orphaned incredibly gifted gymnast and overall very sharp kid, and my main love interest is one of the world's leading catburglars and also a rich socialite with her own multimillion corporation." By comparison even Superman, the Man of Steel himself, begins to sound surprisingly restrained.

As a fan of Batman, I feel personally attacked...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

When designing a game, the designers of course should pay attention to balance. There should be not trap options, if you have choice between different things, they should be roughly equally good. However, this doesn't mean they should be the same! Often attempts at balancing things leads to homogenisation, where the choices become just cosmetic and everyone basically does the same thing with slightly different fluff. This is to be avoided, different choices should actually be different!

And this also means it is OK for some characters to be worse at combat, as long as they're good in something else useful. Sure, D&D is rather combat heavy game, so all characters should be able to contribute in some way in that, but I feel the obsession about perfectly balancing the combat power is misguided. It elevates combat above all other aspects of the game, and it simply is bizarre from from world building perspective. Certainly a fighter, whose whole raison d'être is to be a master of battle should be better at it than say, an illusionist, a thief or an artificer?

Also, in actual practice, at the party level, balance doesn't matter that much. Spotlight does. But if one character does a bit more damage or can cast a couple of spells more, it doesn't really matter, as long as one character doesn't make another redundant. I have played a lot of (non D&D mostly) games where the characters were of wildly different power levels. Exalted games with Dragon Blooded (least powerful) and Solars (most powerful) or WoD games with normal humans with master level mages or vampires. Worked just one as long as each character had things to do and contribute. Depending of the player those don't necessarily need to even be "useful" things, they can be purely dramatic things.

So yeah, designers probably need to obsess about the balance,* players, not so much. And GM's just need to pay attention that everyone gets a chance to contribute and don't feel redundant or neglected.

* Now of course it is perfectly fine to design a game where all characters are not of equal power such as Ars Magica or Exalted, but then that power difference should be stated outright, so the plyers can make informed choices.

 

[billd91]

Isn't that what 4e did with the half-level bonus so many hated as being a "treadmill"?

Like people mock 4e for being so purely mathematical and lifeless but what you say here sounds like a perfect meaning for meaning translation of 4e mechanics in a differently constructed system.

It's not even close. The terms of the game are different enough, particularly with respect to "advancement" that there's no treadmill to walk on in M&M. There's no effort to extend the "sweet spot" across all levels from 1st to 30th (the treadmill). Rather, the power level is the level you design and start at... and probably stay at.