Neonchameleon
Legend
That's exactly the point. Robilar had a ludicrous gear list and Rob Kunz himself was very good at reading Gygax. Fighters were balanced with Kunz not the average player in mind.
D&D General The Importance of Verisimilitude (or "Why you don't need realism to keep it real")
- Thread starter Alzrius
- Start date
Tony Vargas
Legend
DMG p120, repeated on p121 is the quote that springs to my mind, tho it mentions magic-users dominating play, rather phrasing it as fighters needing help. It may not be what neoncameleon was thinking of. There are a number of such pronouncement, I think. Things like regretting the magic system, the famous warning about the "weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" and so forth.
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Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I disagree with calling them "one" example. Each class feature is something that needs to be judged in isolation (e.g. the recent playtest idea that wizards can swap out a prepared spell with 1 minute of work), since things like multiclassing and subclasses mean that you can't necessarily presume what a given character of a given level will have.
Well now we're getting into definitional issues of what sort of evaluation is "reasonable." Again, I'll note that a lot of people agree, when talking in the abstract, that fighters have it worse than wizards. And yet fighters remain a more popular class. Clearly, the balance issue isn't a thing for a considerable number of people; I propose that verisimilitude has something to tell us about why that is.
Neither of these things have matched my experience. A lot of people disliked the restrictions that wizards labored under in AD&D 1E and 2E, and so those restrictions were removed, and wizards became "unbalanced." The restrictions, in other words, were what kept balance with regards to magic-users and martials. Now, the obvious answer to the LFQW issue would be to restore those restrictions, bringing balance back
Contrast this with verisimilitude, which maximizes options by arming the players with an understanding of how the world works, and so makes it clear that what can be done doesn't end with what's written on the character sheet. Each scenario encountered in actual play is unique, yet operates according to understandable rules, and so allows for characters to contribute regardless of their class, feats, etc. Remember the anecdote I mentioned about my barbarian flipping the table to crush the swarm? There's no abstract metric of balance that could have quantified that; you only get it from verisimilitude.
On the contrary, verisimilitude takes arbitrariness out of the equation, since the entire point of it is to define how/why the world works the way it does. While specific instances of play are situational and varied, the internal logic of the game world remains self-consistent, meaning that the players have ways of interacting with it separate from an abstract measurement of cross-indexing class abilities, racial traits, feats, etc.
To put it another way, situationality is not arbitrary. Once the rules of the world are set, anything that contradicts that needs to be explained, lest it break immersion.
And yet the latter was better received than the former. Now, there are all sorts of reasons for that (in my opinion) that was beyond a simple comparison of systems. But I don't think the issue of balance versus verisimilitude is a non-issue there.
Which was beloved enough to spawn Pathfinder, giving us another two years of 3.5 and a decade of PF1. Not bad for a system with balance issues.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
The 1E DMG? Because in mine, pages 120-121 are about random treasure determination.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I'm not sure there's a cause-and-effect thing here. Rob Kuntz absolutely played Robilar in a manner that confounded Gary's style (with regard to bypassing encounters rather than engaging them and eschewing the use of a map), but I don't think that Gary subsequently held that was indicative of fighters being an overpowered class. He was very much aware that Rob's play-style was exceptional.
Tony Vargas
Legend
correct. That's the context, the tables are weighted for that purpose
121, first paragraph, 120, middle of the second column, aprox
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I don't agree with Gygax. Fighters got the most hit points, the best saves, proficiency with the most weapons, the best attack matrix, and could clear an area of little enemies in no time. Considering the lower hit points and damage of everything in those days, that all makes a big difference.
Just because you like editions Gygax was heavily involved with doesn't mean you have to agree with all his opinions. That goes for every designer, by the way.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Right, but that's in the context of dominating play through magic item acquisition, not a statement that magic-users dominate the game in-and-of themselves. It says that class is "sufficiently powerful" is all.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Thieves had problems. But those have been addressed in modern OSR in ways that don't require turning them into a sneaky MMO striker assassin.
Tony Vargas
Legend
I mean, table weighted to give fighters lots of items they need, and deny magic-users.
Net result, fighter many items, magic-users a few.
That's mean to 'balance the game'
The implication would be, net of items, the magic-user was ahead.
But, it's like, it was 1979, it was one of multiple ways EGG tried to balance the classes, some of which were just ...odd... and, most of which have been entirely abandoned, without actually replacing them with anything else.
