Balance - A Thing of the Past?

[Ridley's Cohort]

I've always thought that balance was kind of a crock. Different characters will excel in different activities and it's up to the DM to make sure that everyone gets some spotlight time. The important thing is that everyone should have something useful to do in almost all situations and be able to be a star in some situations.

For the record, I generally agree with you that spotlight time is of much greater practical import than any mechanical definition of balance.

There are a multitude of different ways to achieve the goal of sharing the glory. Balanced class design is one possible method of achieving that end, even if it is not a panacea for various reasons already stated in this thread.

It does have the attractive feature that it can probably get you at least 80% (or more) of the way there while running on autopilot, and therefore is a potentially a big labor saving device for the DM (presuming you believe that the DM is responsible for spotlight management in the first place).

 

[Chimera]

That is a presumption of 3e I believe, one that I have grown to have some level of distaste for. IMHO, the world should be the world. It does not alter and shape itself according to the abilities of the PCs who adventure within it.

The campaign I will be starting shortly will be nothing like that. 1st level PCs might run into an EL 12 encounter in the first session. And they had better run.

By the same token, once they reach 10th level, they are going to have to hunt for challenges, because the typical adventures available won't even begin to threaten them. They will have to dive into the outer planes or start being really creative to prevent being bored. Of course, I don't expect this to happen for a couple years at least.

I'm right with you. The World is the World. If first level characters insist on hunting the Legendary Dragon of Wherever, they're dead meat.

BUT;

Be prepared. I can virtually guarantee that, no matter how clearly you spell it out, no matter how often you repeat it... At some point your party is going to run into a Beholder or something much too difficult, and one person is going to charge in and die, later claiming either "I thought you wouldn't throw something at us that we couldn't handle" (heard that one myself) or "I thought you were kidding".

Do yourself a favor at that point. No matter how good a player, no matter how good a friend...

Cut Him Loose.

 

[Lanefan]

I can virtually guarantee that, no matter how clearly you spell it out, no matter how often you repeat it... At some point your party is going to run into a Beholder or something much too difficult, and one person is going to charge in and die, later claiming either "I thought you wouldn't throw something at us that we couldn't handle" (heard that one myself) or "I thought you were kidding".

Do yourself a favor at that point. No matter how good a player, no matter how good a friend...

Cut Him Loose.

I disagree. There's no need to cut him loose. Just say "tough" and keep going with the game...and if he cuts himself loose on that basis, so be it.

Lanefan

 

[Gargoyle]

Balance is important to me, but not as much as it used to be.

If I really wanted a balanced game above all else, I'd be playing chess, and I'd still probably hear arguments from people about the white pieces always moving first.

The balance I like to strive for in D&D is when:

- The power gamers cannot overshadow everyone else all the time.
- The roleplayers cannot build a character that is useless in combat and gets everyone killed.
- No single option, whether it is a weapon, class, feat choice, spell, or whatever is the one everyone picks.
- There aren't any options that are so abysmal they are never chosen.
- Everyone is able to contribute to the game, if not in every fight, at least in other types of encounters.

Balance to me is definitely not "Every class, feat, and spell choice are equal in power." That doesn't work because it's too elusive. After six years of 3.x we still have lengthy discussions about spiked chains. My players and I like having lots of options, and as long as my game is in the ballpark of balance, I'm ok with that.

 

[Hussar]

The biggest balance issue by far is one that cannot be solved by any rule, design, or book:

Players are not "balanced".

Some players are better at the game than others. Some talk more and take up more airtime, others sit quietly even when they'd be better off talking. Some can role-play, or act, better than others. Some know the rules and-or bother to learn them, others don't. Some want in-depth role-playing, others just want combat. Some want to follow the storyline, others are more interested in killing other PC's.

With all this in the game, rule balance becomes a relatively minor issue.

Lanefan

I completely disagree.

While what you say is 100% true, I still disagree with rule balance being a minor issue.

Take the 2e rules for two weapon fighting. By burning a couple of weapon profs, I could make two attacks per round at full strength bonus. My other choice was sword and board, for an extra +1 AC or two handed attacks for an extra 2 points of damage (by and large). There simply was no balance there. The two weapon fighting rules made two weapon fighting a FAR better choice. A second attack at full bonuses was just incredibly more powerful than any other choice.

So, once the Complete Fighter came out, I never again saw a fighter type use anything else. Why would I? It's like asking people to use daggers instead of longswords. If something is vastly better than something else, then there is perfectly reasonable to use the better thing. People can talk about powergaming all they like, but, realistically, why would I use a dagger instead of a longsword as my primary weapon?

So, rule imbalances can vastly impact the game. A single imbalance like that meant that EVERY character I saw (and played) in 2e, other than maybe wizards, used two weapons. Certainly every fighter type. It meant cookie cutter characters since the rules so obviously favoured one concept.

Balance is VERY important in that it allows many different concepts to be viable. Not all concepts mind you, so sit down in the back before you drag up that one, but, many concepts. I'd much rather play in a system that supports more concepts than one that supports less.

On a side note, that's why I stopped playing Paladium games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The rules hugely favoured taking certain skills which in turn boosted your stats, which in turn made you tougher, faster and better. So, despite the fact that the skill section was umpteen pages long, every character had almost identical skill lists.

That's why balance is important.

 

[D'karr]

I completely disagree.

While what you say is 100% true, I still disagree with rule balance being a minor issue.

Take the 2e rules for two weapon fighting. By burning a couple of weapon profs, I could make two attacks per round at full strength bonus. My other choice was sword and board, for an extra +1 AC or two handed attacks for an extra 2 points of damage (by and large). There simply was no balance there. The two weapon fighting rules made two weapon fighting a FAR better choice. A second attack at full bonuses was just incredibly more powerful than any other choice.

So, once the Complete Fighter came out, I never again saw a fighter type use anything else. Why would I? It's like asking people to use daggers instead of longswords. If something is vastly better than something else, then there is perfectly reasonable to use the better thing. People can talk about powergaming all they like, but, realistically, why would I use a dagger instead of a longsword as my primary weapon?

So, rule imbalances can vastly impact the game. A single imbalance like that meant that EVERY character I saw (and played) in 2e, other than maybe wizards, used two weapons. Certainly every fighter type. It meant cookie cutter characters since the rules so obviously favoured one concept.

Balance is VERY important in that it allows many different concepts to be viable. Not all concepts mind you, so sit down in the back before you drag up that one, but, many concepts. I'd much rather play in a system that supports more concepts than one that supports less.

On a side note, that's why I stopped playing Paladium games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The rules hugely favoured taking certain skills which in turn boosted your stats, which in turn made you tougher, faster and better. So, despite the fact that the skill section was umpteen pages long, every character had almost identical skill lists.

That's why balance is important.

Fighting with a dagger is still a "suboptimal" choice in the game as it stands now and the game has way more artificial balance than ever before. So why would you play a character that fights with a dagger instead of a longsword? Flavor.

In 1e and 2e there were weapons and choices that obviously were more "optimized". This apparent lack of balance never prevented anyone from doing things differently from the "optimized" track. As a matter of fact during the same period you mentioned I saw a wider variety of fighting styles than before. So your experience is as varied as mine. And that is all it is, an experience. You said yourself that YOU played the game that way. Obviously some other people played it differently and balance was not an issue.

If we took the balance argument further down the line all weapons should do the same damage. All classes should only be able to do X damage and any class that did Y would be unbalanced. In OD&D all weapons used the same damage die. After a while it was boring.

It is obvious that there are weapons that are better at doing damage than others. People still fight with all kinds of weapons. I've seen the Greataxe wielding power attacker and the dagger wielding finesse fighter. Those two styles are obviously not balanced but people still choose them; not because of balance but because of flavor.

 

[Psion]

As I said in another thread, D&D is essentially rigged. If every encounter is balanced so that the party can't possibly lose, then it's rigged in favor of the party. It's like playing a computer game on a skill level that allows you to beat the game every time.

Feh.

You say this. But wander over to the necromancer games forum and hear what they have to say about Shackled City being too hard. And then ask me, I'll tell you how deadly Age of Worms can be.

You are likely to suffer minimal losses in a challenge of equal EL to party level. But that's by design, as a campaign management tool. Knowing is half the battle, as they say. You can face your party with any EL you like. If you want a cakewalk, that's on you (the DM). If you want a tougher challenge that risks a bloodbath, that's on you. But wanting one and getting the other is best avoided.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Fighting with a dagger is still a "suboptimal" choice in the game as it stands now and the game has way more artificial balance than ever before. So why would you play a character that fights with a dagger instead of a longsword? Flavor.

I kind of liked the "all PCs do 1d6 damage" rule from classic D&D, but very, very few gamers seemed to go with that (most used the "optional" rules for variable weapon damage).

I've also been kicking around the idea of class-based damage. I think that has some merit, too.

 

[D'karr]

I kind of liked the "all PCs do 1d6 damage" rule from classic D&D, but very, very few gamers seemed to go with that (most used the "optional" rules for variable weapon damage).

I've also been kicking around the idea of class-based damage. I think that has some merit, too.

Well, if you are examining that route it does speed things up a bit. For even faster results make all weapons do a static amount of damage, like DDM and SWM have. You sacrifice variety and choice for speed.

I don't particularly like that. It seems too bland.

 

[Henry]

Never seen it. 6 years of DMing *a lot* of 3e and 3.5e, 30+ players, and not one spiked chain.

Seen three over two campaigns, one of which was ME.

I will say that Spiked Chains are not as messy as the legends say, though, because it requires a pretty large amount of investment, and tripping ain't killing. (Mostly because the DM has so many opponents out there that your comrades are too busy to take advantage of your tripping up foes.)