Balance - A Thing of the Past?

[Odhanan]

I agree that blandness isn't a requirement for balance, but I seriously think many people out there mix up the two to a degree. I've seen many DMs look at a character class, spell, element of background (!) and what not and scream "munchkin" because the idea wasn't bland enough (i.e. average joe born from parents killed by orcs and now trying to make it as a straight rogue).

 

[D'karr]

I do not see that blandness is a requirement of balance.

You are right and I agree. However, it is often the product of the quest for balance.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

It is a complex thing. And I can see more than a kernel of truth to the idea that the quest for balance can (potentially) encourage blandness.

The number of people who were initially blown away by the wide array of class benefits for the Monk and Paladin and declared those classes overpowered was not small. This was in 3.0!

Anything more "outlandish" than those classes is bound to generate controversy.

The formulaic way of generating a new class is to give a special "feat" every 1-2 levels. If you keep the feat boring enough, you will successfully avoid rocking the boat.

 

[DarkKestral]

I like balanced design because it allows me to focus less on the mechanical aspects of play and more on keeping the players in line with one another in terms of spotlight and fun. If I know one player gets his fun off immersive roleplay and another off of difficult combats, since i don't have to check character power often, I can spend more time making the game fun for players.

It also means I won't have one player mad about how his character is useless vs. another character, because the first player's character's main schtick is less powerful than another character's alternate schtick (like say, a singly-classed rogue whose DD and Open Lock total modifier is less than half of another player's though the second person is not a singly-classed rogue not specializing in opening locks or disabling magical devices and without thieve's tools and the first has put maximum skill points in those two skills, has his best ability score in Dex, and has feats to further improve those skills and masterwork items to further improve checks)

When you see problems like that above, mechanical balance issues are a player problem. Most people don't like playing 'ineffective' characters, and most groups don't like people playing them either.

I've been the person whose character was the 5th wheel. It sucks horribly. In fact, it's usually so bad, I'm not likely to assume a GM's telling the truth if he says 'my players are OK with the game I run' when he forces players to play characters like that unless I know he's the only one that ever runs games in the area, because I would assume that the players would probably have left him if they knew someone else. I know that because I was the one always getting hurt, I was the one whose skills never worked, and my money was tighter than everyone else's, because I didn't have much to start with, and my character was always having to pay for uber-armor and healing so I didn't die every combat... so I had to be less heroic and games were less fun as a result.

 

[greywulf]

Hmmmmmmmmm.

I don't /want/ a balanced game. I want my adventuring party to face impossible odds, and win the day because of inspired role-playing and tactics, not because of number crunching and calculated ECLs. I want the weak rogue to be hero, and the mighty Fighter to acknowledge the victory.

I want some battles to be a pushover, and others to put the characters right to the limits. If I GM and the battle takes up 25% of the party's resources, I've failed. That ain't gaming, that's maths.

Thankfully, all that CR and ECL (remember when it was just Hit Dice and life was simple??!) stuff is just a guideline, and should be used as such. Yep, a CR 4 battle will be tough on my 4 x 1st levellers, but it's the climax to the game, so let's boogie and balance be damned.

I don't want balance in the party, because life isn't like that. I want everyone to have a good time, and everyone to have a chance to shine, but it ends there. The sorcerer shouldn't be as good a fighter as the....ermmm... Fighter. End of.

Pick your skills, feats and equipment to suit your character concept, that's all. Anyone who chooses Spiked Chain or tries to "optimize" their character in MY games will get a well-balanced Ogre landing on their heads

 

[Hussar]

Greywulf, I would suggest strolling back a bit upthread and rereading. Balance has ZERO to do with designing encounters. Balance does not mean that every encounter has to equal APL. The DMG specifically says that it shouldn't. Anyone who tells you that game balance limits DM choices when designing adventures is trying to see you something.

Balance also does not mean that every character can perform every act equally. That would be stupid and extremely boring. Is there any evidence in the game that this is true? Is there a single shred of evidence to suggest that game balance would be served by allowing sorcerers to be as good of a fighter as a fighter?

You can go look if you like. I'll wait.

Found any yet? No?

That's because that's NOT what game balance means. Game balance means that many (but not all) concepts within the game will be viable. Not that some won't be better than others. Not that some won't completely dominate in very limited circumstances (try disarming traps with your fighter instead of a rogue), but that, over the course of the campaign, no single option will be so superiour to all other options that NOT choosing that option is a deliberate handicap.

Yes, D'Karr, some people will choose to deliberately handicap themselves. That's true. However, the majority will not. The majority are rational actors who will choose the best option for themselves every time. Which mean sleep spells and longswords for twenty years of the game.

 

[Brimshack]

To me the biggest mistake is in the pretension that balance is a mechanical feature of the game rules rather than a function of actual play. You can tweak, test, and tweak all day, but you will never generate a rule system that can ensure balance in a game. Take a campaign underground and watch the guy playing the Druid become more and more bored. Run several fights in a row and see the guy with the meat shield become the hero of the campaign. Now take the game into the city for some heavy role playing and watch the guy playing that fighter grow more and more frustrated as the other characters solve problems he can't even touch. Of course there are always options that make it possible for one sort of character to accomplish something in sub-optimal situations, but that doesn't change the fact that one sort of game is better suited to one sort of character than another (or visa versa).

But that's where the whole misconceptualization of gaming comes into play. The real question isn't whether or not the Fighter is more important than the Wizard or visa versa; it's whether or not each of your players has an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the game. If not, then it could be due to incompetence, the design of the game relative to his character mechanics, or even simply the social dynamics of the table. I think it's the GMs responsibility to try and keep everyone meaningfully involved in the game. For me that means going beyond mechanical balance if need be and actively aiding a character or two. I don't believe in bringing a character down just because it has gotten ahead of the curve, but I am quite happy to throw a small sub-game someone's way, boost the character with a little extra experience and/or magic, and just generally doing what it takes to get a player back into the game.

Some clearly consider that unfair to the other players, but I think that misses the point of an RPG. The players aren't competing with each other, and helping one does not by definition hurt the others, quite the contrary. One could easily say it's up to the players, and if someone designs a lemon, then so be it. But that kind of formal sense of fairness works better for one-off type games and systems with few judgement calls. If a player is to come back game after game and enjoy his or her character, then a sense that their own irrelevancy is somehow fair given their choices just doesn't help much. Imbalance is always at least partially a function of the GMs own choices, and a good GM should keep working to correct and recorrect any imbalance in player participation.

 

[Greylock]

Dabngggg...

I think I just broke a tooth.

 

[Hussar]

A thought that puzzles me is the idea that for a class or game mechanic to be interesting, it cannot be balanced. D'Karr specifically says that the quest for balance has led to bland and vanilla rules. I find this very strange.

I look at books like Tome of Magic and see three classes absolutely dripping with flavour. Stuff that is unique and facinating. And balanced. Possibly even a tad on the weaker end of the scale.

Why do interesting rules have to be imbalanced?