Achieving Balance

[Ariosto]

When your options are so limited, how much time can your spend?

There's a circular effect, a synergy. Whether or not they involve decisions, additional steps add handling time. Having already slowed play on that axis, it can be very tempting to expand rules "horizontally", adding more variations to each step.

There is no bar to piling on situational modifiers in old D&D! That one book or another offers but few examples can be misleading if one does not understand that ad hoc adjustments are not only not "against the rules" but an assumed part of play.

However, neither is there a bar to not complicating affairs; complexity is not mandatory. Your DM will adjudicate such matters with common sense. When important single combats occur ... then details may be considered that otherwise might get glossed over.

 

[AllisterH]

Keep in mind there are two different ways people are referring to when they say combat length.

Combat length where the overall time for the encounter is measured and then there's individual combat length - how long does it take to resolve a player's individual turn.

 

[Imaro]

You know one of my biggest problems with balance based around combat, is that it doesn't address the imbalance in those things outside of combat, such as skills? I guess what I'm saying is how can characters be balanced around only one aspect of a game and that equal balance as a whole. Is it balanced that my fighter starts with 3 skills... while your rogue starts with 6 skills? This is made even more disproportionate by the fact that we are supposedly equally able to contribute in battle... yet not so much in challenges outside of combat.

Now some will argue this is because of armor proficiencies, weapon proficiencies, defense bonuses, hit points, etc. But these are all aspects of combat and thus should not affect the balance of the non-combat aspects of a character, since if they do then the conclusion must be that the characters are not actually balanced equally in combat effectiveness... the fighter is better at combat than the rogue and thus has less skills because of it... which leads to the fighter having much less to contribute outside of combat than a rogue does.

 

[Perram]

You know one of my biggest problems with balance based around combat, is that it doesn't address the imbalance in those things outside of combat, such as skills? I guess what I'm saying is how can characters be balanced around only one aspect of a game and that equal balance as a whole. Is it balanced that my fighter starts with 3 skills... while your rogue starts with 6 skills? This is made even more disproportionate by the fact that we are supposedly equally able to contribute in battle... yet not so much in challenges outside of combat.

Now some will argue this is because of armor proficiencies, weapon proficiencies, defense bonuses, hit points, etc. But these are all aspects of combat and thus should not affect the balance of the non-combat aspects of a character, since if they do then the conclusion must be that the characters are not actually balanced equally in combat effectiveness... the fighter is better at combat than the rogue and thus has less skills because of it... which leads to the fighter having much less to contribute outside of combat than a rogue does.

In my opinion balance is important only for the activities that the game is going to focus on, really, as has been referred earlier. With 4th edition one of the specific design goals was to balance everyone on the combat front instead of having non-combat be taken into account for combat balance.

In this they were saying that with thier rules system: Combat is was their most important activity under the rules, or at least the one that needs to be focused on when it comes to game balance.

[I know some others may disagree with this, and please don't take this as a bash towards 4e, I think it is important that when you are designing your product that you do indeed have a focus.]

Trying to achieve global balance on all fronts is going to be impossible, as the balance of play is going to shift one way or the other based on the GM and the plot in his games.

The players should be made aware of what is likely to be the focus activity for the game. If the game is going to be a space opera with lots of spaceship duels, then the players need to know that they may see little screen time if they decide to make the ship's medic who stays behind on the main battle cruiser while the skirmish ships fly out every time combat rolls around.

In this same situation, a lot of care needs to be placed on balancing the star fighters, but balancing the medic is less important. It doesn't matter if he is the best medic in the world with hundreds of thousands times more money and political power than the ship fighters if he isn't seeing screen time.

 

[Imaro]

In my opinion balance is important only for the activities that the game is going to focus on, really, as has been referred earlier. With 4th edition one of the specific design goals was to balance everyone on the combat front instead of having non-combat be taken into account for combat balance.

In this they were saying that with thier rules system: Combat is was their most important activity under the rules, or at least the one that needs to be focused on when it comes to game balance.

[I know some others may disagree with this, and please don't take this as a bash towards 4e, I think it is important that when you are designing your product that you do indeed have a focus.]

Trying to achieve global balance on all fronts is going to be impossible, as the balance of play is going to shift one way or the other based on the GM and the plot in his games.

The players should be made aware of what is likely to be the focus activity for the game. If the game is going to be a space opera with lots of spaceship duels, then the players need to know that they may see little screen time if they decide to make the ship's medic who stays behind on the main battle cruiser while the skirmish ships fly out every time combat rolls around.

In this same situation, a lot of care needs to be placed on balancing the star fighters, but balancing the medic is less important. It doesn't matter if he is the best medic in the world with hundreds of thousands times more money and political power than the ship fighters if he isn't seeing screen time.

Yeah, and I'd agree with you... except for the introduction of skill challenges. In skill challenges we have a focus on multiple rolls, by multiple individuals, with each failure and/or success affecting the goal of the entire group. So now we have the rogue who can participate with 2x the potential options of the fighter.

From the above, again I ask what is the rhyme or reason for anyone having more/less skills if they're class is already balanced in combat?? Unless out of combat abilities had to be used to achieve balance in combat (which then the game isn't really balanced around combat) or there was no reason, which IMHO is an even worse reason.

 

[Treebore]

Balance is actually pretty easy. As long as the players felt like they could have died, or did, had a good time, and want to play again, "balance" was achieved.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yeah, and I'd agree with you... except for the introduction of skill challenges. In skill challenges we have a focus on multiple rolls, by multiple individuals, with each failure and/or success affecting the goal of the entire group. So now we have the rogue who can participate with 2x the potential options of the fighter.

From the above, again I ask what is the rhyme or reason for anyone having more/less skills if they're class is already balanced in combat?? Unless out of combat abilities had to be used to achieve balance in combat (which then the game isn't really balanced around combat) or there was no reason, which IMHO is an even worse reason.

I think the "trick" with skill challenges is that it's easier to participate in them. There is a multiple of skills useable in most, there is fair chance you are either trained or at least have a good modifier in one skill to grant the party some benefit.

And: They are over a lot faster than combat, usually. Even a complex challenge doesn't contain much more than 15 skill checks, while a combat has a lot more checks going on. Even if we discount decision times, that's still considerably faster.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

their market research showed that players who buy minis spend significantly more than those who do not.

*sheepishly raises hand in shame*

 

[jgbrowning]

IMO, balance is the GM, not the system.

joe b.

 

[Ariosto]

Balance can be a matter of "the GM, not the system"; that seems to be the case in a lot of Palladium Games, especially Rifts. More precisely, it seems to come from the GM and players working together to set boundaries (rather than having artificial limits imposed by a rule-book).