malkav666
First Post
Balance and Uniformity
(Sorry its long, Thanks in advance for those of you that take the time to read it)
I have been thinking a lot about game design over the last few weeks and I have come to some interesting observations. A lot of the strongest 4e supporters that I personally speak to about the system will often praise the systems balance as one of its strong points. In fact I would say that the balance of the game is usually the strongest rebuttal offered in its defense. And TBH its offered fairly. It is in fact a VERY balanced system.
I have been rethinking my dislike of the 4e system as well over the last few weeks, to try and pinpoint why I would not enjoy a very balanced game and would prefer one with obvious and often pointed out flaws. It comes down to how 4e gained its balance. It gained it through uniformity. Everything for characters uses the exact same framework, is similar in design and effect, uses the same resource management, has similar capabilities for tactical presence and damage output, and kind of feels like the same class with a few tweaks here and there and some flavor changes. Its hard to have character classes that feel out of balance when you essentially only have one class (from a framework design standpoint). Now I will admit that in later releases some of those similarities where further obfuscated by various splats. But the core remains the same.
When you take any other edition of D&D and look at it. The designers tried to find balance in completely different frameworks for classes and races. That’s a real tough nut to crack when you take a look at it. How does one take a fighter and a wizard that have completely different frameworks and equate them? In some of the older editions they gave the classes different experience points tables to try and achieve balance. Your wizards were slower to level as they had more options, your rogues were quicker to level as they were not as good in combat as wizards and fighters of the same level. How do you balance feat vs a spell when they both do distinctly different things? There are so many different options and rule sets and mini systems in early editions of D&D that actually finding balance seems virtually impossible as there is no common unit of measure.
I guess there are some rules of measure that can and have been used to gauge how powerful something is. DpR or average DpR (Damage per round ) is something I have seen thrown around in optimizations talk. So I guess you could take to damage only combat aspects and measure them. But even that doesn't take in effort to obtain and reusability. For example:
\\\\\\\\\\
A fighter has a feat based ability that was at the end of a feat chain that they had to use 6 feats total to get. He can use it once every round as long as he is in melee range Its average DpR. is 50
A mage has a spell that they can cast at any target within 400 feet. Its average DpR is 50. He can do this 3 times a day.
A rogue has a class based ability that allows him to make an attack that requires an environmental/position criteria to be met. They use those ability within 30 feet of their target once a round as long as one of those criteria is met. Its average DpR is 50
All of these abilities would be available within the same level range of character give or take -/+1.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Are they balanced? From a DpR standpoint they weigh the exact same. But this says nothing about usability, cost to use, cost to acquire in character progression resources (like feats), the action economy of using one of the abilities, the tactical effectiveness of using one, etc). How do you balance the other aspects of them? You can’t unless there is a common unit of measure.
This is what 4e attempted to do: give every aspect of the game a common unit of measure. Page 42 shows us the progressive measure of the game and the relative values. We already know they balanced resource management and character progression resources by making them uniform. Then we have the scale by which things will be balanced against presented plain as day. It then becomes very easy to balance a thing. If I have a table that says 5th level options should do 25 damage (not quoting the book, talking theoretically, but if someone wants to quote the book to discuss the topic, I am cool with that). Then it becomes relative simple to make a 5th level option. Status effects are a little more difficult to balance, but I would not be surprised if there is a table in one of the source books or at the WoTC offices that has those values presented in “how much damage do we feel this effect is worth?” or “at what level is incapacitation ok?”
But it does fit the model of balance through uniformity. Which despite its mechanical “elegance” means that in 4e everything works similarly as and has similar output, thusly making most choices the player may make from a character design standpoint largely irrelevant. It really doesn’t matter what 5th level power I choose if they all roughly have the same gauged effect. But it works and the game is balanced.
Older editions have no common unit of measure, so balance becomes subjective. I have seen so many houserules to try and balance 3.x in the past decade that it makes my head spin (I have many such rules in my own game). And my conclusion is that often when I look at these rules is that often I am not sure what they are measuring to achieve this balance.
But when I look at a 3.e vs 4e argument often I see this: (this is a lowest common denominator paraphrase not an actual quote)
3e player: I want to be able to different things with different outcomes. I don’t want everything to be the same. I’ll deal with any imbalances myself or just politely ignore them.
4e player: I don’t care if everything is the same as long as imbalances don’t get in the way of the flow of my game. I will make the things different with my storytelling or politely ignore them.
The real argument to me is Balance and Uniformity. 4e players seem willing to accept uniformity as long as they can have balance and older edition players don’t want uniformity even if it costs them balance. That seems like a tough nut to crack as well. How do you make a game that pleases both of these people? My hypothesis is that 5e will have to have a unit of measure. But how can we have that measure and still keep variety?
How can we achieve balance without submitting entirely to uniformity?
I have though about it and have a few ideas, and one of the things I would love to do in this thread is brainstorm with some of my fellow gamers on ways to bring balance to the unbalancable.
I’ll start off:
\\\\\\\\\
Threshold: Balance with dials and knobs.
What if we were to take some of the more problematic design elements and put a cap on them instead of elevating them?
Take a concept such as attack bonus (this does assume that spells will have an attack roll, so if that’s a deal breaker for you then skip the bit about attack bonuses) for example and assume that there is a maximum possible that could be attained by a character of a specific level. I am not sure that I know what the sweet spot is or what the cap should be (but I welcome discussions of that very topic). But it would unilaterally balance characters and in all likelihood encourage them to make design choices that they would not have otherwise made because they are already at their attack bonus threshold An example threshold chart could follow something like this: attack bonus threshold is character level+4 with an additional point gained every 3-5 levels to give the baseline a little elevation. This would mean maybe you did not really need to have that 18 strength at level one or that you may choose another feat aside from weapon focus. Monsters could be rated on level by threshold. If you know your group is well below the attack bonus threshold for level 10 characters that maybe you should check the chart and see what threshold their current capabilities are at are at and use a monster that better fits what they can do at maximum potential. Maybe they maximum attack bonuses would make their 5th level toons fit better in threshold rating for 4th level toons
The really cool part is that the threshold would be a dial. You could turn it up or down to suit your playstyle. You want to be more badass , optimize a bit, or play turnip farmers with axes, then you could raise or lower the threshold your group uses. If monsters are using a threshold system there would need to be some tuning options for the monsters to allow for it to fight higher or lower level toons. You could even set a baseline for monsters stats based on threshold and give it certain abilities based on what threshold you are playing at for example:
\\\\\\\\\\
Orc
AC: Threshold rating+12
(with variations for will defense, fort defense, etc. trying to keep it simple)
HP: Theshold rating x 6
Inititive: 1/3 Threshold rating+2
Attacks:
Threshold 1+:
Greatsword:+4 to hit 2d6 +4 damage
Threshold 5+:
Blood Roar:
+9 vs will if successful all opponents within 30 ft are staggered for 1 round and all allies get an immediate move action.
Threshold 10+
A new better ability designed to help make the monster relevant in higher threshold groups.
Etc.etc.
(I don’t claim this orc is balanced its just a quickly put together example)
\\\\\\\\\\
You should probably have a defense threshold as well and it should be on the same table as the attack threshold. If you did this you could do away with having to count derived bonuses and the Christmas tree effect would be lessened as the threshold was met, and there would be more room for unique magic items.
You could apply this concept almost anywhere to system like 3.x where numbers inflation makes certain options grossly better than others: DpR, damage per single attack, total possible debuff modifiers for effects active at one time, defenses, modifiers to a skill,stat, modifiers from +x or damage increasing magic items in general, or amount of healing one could receive.
What I believe would happen if a similar system was in place is that as characters got higher in level and better bonuses became available (better items class features, spells, etc) we would see them branch out into new areas while keeping their favorite crunchy things capped. This seems at first glance like a good thing for me. A system that will allow me to spend some resources on playing the banjo or being a skilled diplomat while keeping myself in the power curve for the group!
Its just an idea, and TBH it may not even be a good one, because in the end you would lose diversity just as 4e made you lose diversity. It would just be on the back end of things where the resolution happens rather than the front end where choice is involved. Because in the end you cannot have balance without a common unit of measure. For me I would rather see it happen on the resolution side of things and be able to have mechanically diverse play and character options rather than have it balanced in the forefront by making all character options and attacks similar. It also eliminates overpowered options without ruining it for everyone else. You don’t have to ban x spell or option because some guy on the internet made a combo that makes it do infinite damage. If there is a DpR threshold that’s how much damage an OP option does. Also by making the thresholds achievable in your game you set a new definition for optimization that allows even players with less mastery achieve an optimized state. And monster balance becomes easier as well, because they would be balanced against optimized characters. If your group doesn’t meet that threshold (or exceeds it) you can use a monster that your group is balanced to fight against.
Some flaws that already spring to mind is that with different frameworks some attacks or abilities will be better than others still. This is largely unavoidable unless you want everyone to have the same style and type of attacks like 4e. But at least you will have an immediate baseline for what is optimal. Maybe then you could look at a toon and analyze it to better help it get to that threshold or just adjust an attack option to bring it in line with the norms of your game. This system also does nothing for effects that cannot be judged in numerical absolutes, like turning someone to stone or crippling an enemy, and those are very strong concepts indeed (but if you have an idea about how to balance such concepts I would LOVE to read about it).But that’s a really hard one to get right with no means of measure. It also does not take into account the ease at which the threshold is reached. Ideally if there are multiple thresholds it would be easier for members on certain classes to reach the threshold in there are of expertise, but thats hard too.
Now I would like to set some simple rules for discussion this thread. The idea is to discuss mechanics or ideas that can bring balance to system that players of ALL editions can enjoy. I already assume it to be fact that your system of choice addresses your needs better than all of the other systems out there. There is probably nothing new that WOTC could design or that some random internet person could show you that is BETTER for you then what you already know you like. So please don’t hate on what other people like. The thesis of this discussion should be in what ways can we find a compromise for the overwhelming mechanical and playstyle differences of the various editions and look at options and ideas that would allow fans of those editions to play a game together that tried to honor the dissimilar approaches those systems use for resolution, application, and balance that the different editions bring to the table. So please no edition bitching. If you are to get something new that has elements from a lot of very different things then by default you will give something up as well.
The real question is what are you willing to give up to arrive at a compromise?
Love,
malkav
(Sorry its long, Thanks in advance for those of you that take the time to read it)
I have been thinking a lot about game design over the last few weeks and I have come to some interesting observations. A lot of the strongest 4e supporters that I personally speak to about the system will often praise the systems balance as one of its strong points. In fact I would say that the balance of the game is usually the strongest rebuttal offered in its defense. And TBH its offered fairly. It is in fact a VERY balanced system.
I have been rethinking my dislike of the 4e system as well over the last few weeks, to try and pinpoint why I would not enjoy a very balanced game and would prefer one with obvious and often pointed out flaws. It comes down to how 4e gained its balance. It gained it through uniformity. Everything for characters uses the exact same framework, is similar in design and effect, uses the same resource management, has similar capabilities for tactical presence and damage output, and kind of feels like the same class with a few tweaks here and there and some flavor changes. Its hard to have character classes that feel out of balance when you essentially only have one class (from a framework design standpoint). Now I will admit that in later releases some of those similarities where further obfuscated by various splats. But the core remains the same.
When you take any other edition of D&D and look at it. The designers tried to find balance in completely different frameworks for classes and races. That’s a real tough nut to crack when you take a look at it. How does one take a fighter and a wizard that have completely different frameworks and equate them? In some of the older editions they gave the classes different experience points tables to try and achieve balance. Your wizards were slower to level as they had more options, your rogues were quicker to level as they were not as good in combat as wizards and fighters of the same level. How do you balance feat vs a spell when they both do distinctly different things? There are so many different options and rule sets and mini systems in early editions of D&D that actually finding balance seems virtually impossible as there is no common unit of measure.
I guess there are some rules of measure that can and have been used to gauge how powerful something is. DpR or average DpR (Damage per round ) is something I have seen thrown around in optimizations talk. So I guess you could take to damage only combat aspects and measure them. But even that doesn't take in effort to obtain and reusability. For example:
\\\\\\\\\\
A fighter has a feat based ability that was at the end of a feat chain that they had to use 6 feats total to get. He can use it once every round as long as he is in melee range Its average DpR. is 50
A mage has a spell that they can cast at any target within 400 feet. Its average DpR is 50. He can do this 3 times a day.
A rogue has a class based ability that allows him to make an attack that requires an environmental/position criteria to be met. They use those ability within 30 feet of their target once a round as long as one of those criteria is met. Its average DpR is 50
All of these abilities would be available within the same level range of character give or take -/+1.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Are they balanced? From a DpR standpoint they weigh the exact same. But this says nothing about usability, cost to use, cost to acquire in character progression resources (like feats), the action economy of using one of the abilities, the tactical effectiveness of using one, etc). How do you balance the other aspects of them? You can’t unless there is a common unit of measure.
This is what 4e attempted to do: give every aspect of the game a common unit of measure. Page 42 shows us the progressive measure of the game and the relative values. We already know they balanced resource management and character progression resources by making them uniform. Then we have the scale by which things will be balanced against presented plain as day. It then becomes very easy to balance a thing. If I have a table that says 5th level options should do 25 damage (not quoting the book, talking theoretically, but if someone wants to quote the book to discuss the topic, I am cool with that). Then it becomes relative simple to make a 5th level option. Status effects are a little more difficult to balance, but I would not be surprised if there is a table in one of the source books or at the WoTC offices that has those values presented in “how much damage do we feel this effect is worth?” or “at what level is incapacitation ok?”
But it does fit the model of balance through uniformity. Which despite its mechanical “elegance” means that in 4e everything works similarly as and has similar output, thusly making most choices the player may make from a character design standpoint largely irrelevant. It really doesn’t matter what 5th level power I choose if they all roughly have the same gauged effect. But it works and the game is balanced.
Older editions have no common unit of measure, so balance becomes subjective. I have seen so many houserules to try and balance 3.x in the past decade that it makes my head spin (I have many such rules in my own game). And my conclusion is that often when I look at these rules is that often I am not sure what they are measuring to achieve this balance.
But when I look at a 3.e vs 4e argument often I see this: (this is a lowest common denominator paraphrase not an actual quote)
3e player: I want to be able to different things with different outcomes. I don’t want everything to be the same. I’ll deal with any imbalances myself or just politely ignore them.
4e player: I don’t care if everything is the same as long as imbalances don’t get in the way of the flow of my game. I will make the things different with my storytelling or politely ignore them.
The real argument to me is Balance and Uniformity. 4e players seem willing to accept uniformity as long as they can have balance and older edition players don’t want uniformity even if it costs them balance. That seems like a tough nut to crack as well. How do you make a game that pleases both of these people? My hypothesis is that 5e will have to have a unit of measure. But how can we have that measure and still keep variety?
How can we achieve balance without submitting entirely to uniformity?
I have though about it and have a few ideas, and one of the things I would love to do in this thread is brainstorm with some of my fellow gamers on ways to bring balance to the unbalancable.
I’ll start off:
\\\\\\\\\
Threshold: Balance with dials and knobs.
What if we were to take some of the more problematic design elements and put a cap on them instead of elevating them?
Take a concept such as attack bonus (this does assume that spells will have an attack roll, so if that’s a deal breaker for you then skip the bit about attack bonuses) for example and assume that there is a maximum possible that could be attained by a character of a specific level. I am not sure that I know what the sweet spot is or what the cap should be (but I welcome discussions of that very topic). But it would unilaterally balance characters and in all likelihood encourage them to make design choices that they would not have otherwise made because they are already at their attack bonus threshold An example threshold chart could follow something like this: attack bonus threshold is character level+4 with an additional point gained every 3-5 levels to give the baseline a little elevation. This would mean maybe you did not really need to have that 18 strength at level one or that you may choose another feat aside from weapon focus. Monsters could be rated on level by threshold. If you know your group is well below the attack bonus threshold for level 10 characters that maybe you should check the chart and see what threshold their current capabilities are at are at and use a monster that better fits what they can do at maximum potential. Maybe they maximum attack bonuses would make their 5th level toons fit better in threshold rating for 4th level toons
The really cool part is that the threshold would be a dial. You could turn it up or down to suit your playstyle. You want to be more badass , optimize a bit, or play turnip farmers with axes, then you could raise or lower the threshold your group uses. If monsters are using a threshold system there would need to be some tuning options for the monsters to allow for it to fight higher or lower level toons. You could even set a baseline for monsters stats based on threshold and give it certain abilities based on what threshold you are playing at for example:
\\\\\\\\\\
Orc
AC: Threshold rating+12
(with variations for will defense, fort defense, etc. trying to keep it simple)
HP: Theshold rating x 6
Inititive: 1/3 Threshold rating+2
Attacks:
Threshold 1+:
Greatsword:+4 to hit 2d6 +4 damage
Threshold 5+:
Blood Roar:
+9 vs will if successful all opponents within 30 ft are staggered for 1 round and all allies get an immediate move action.
Threshold 10+
A new better ability designed to help make the monster relevant in higher threshold groups.
Etc.etc.
(I don’t claim this orc is balanced its just a quickly put together example)
\\\\\\\\\\
You should probably have a defense threshold as well and it should be on the same table as the attack threshold. If you did this you could do away with having to count derived bonuses and the Christmas tree effect would be lessened as the threshold was met, and there would be more room for unique magic items.
You could apply this concept almost anywhere to system like 3.x where numbers inflation makes certain options grossly better than others: DpR, damage per single attack, total possible debuff modifiers for effects active at one time, defenses, modifiers to a skill,stat, modifiers from +x or damage increasing magic items in general, or amount of healing one could receive.
What I believe would happen if a similar system was in place is that as characters got higher in level and better bonuses became available (better items class features, spells, etc) we would see them branch out into new areas while keeping their favorite crunchy things capped. This seems at first glance like a good thing for me. A system that will allow me to spend some resources on playing the banjo or being a skilled diplomat while keeping myself in the power curve for the group!
Its just an idea, and TBH it may not even be a good one, because in the end you would lose diversity just as 4e made you lose diversity. It would just be on the back end of things where the resolution happens rather than the front end where choice is involved. Because in the end you cannot have balance without a common unit of measure. For me I would rather see it happen on the resolution side of things and be able to have mechanically diverse play and character options rather than have it balanced in the forefront by making all character options and attacks similar. It also eliminates overpowered options without ruining it for everyone else. You don’t have to ban x spell or option because some guy on the internet made a combo that makes it do infinite damage. If there is a DpR threshold that’s how much damage an OP option does. Also by making the thresholds achievable in your game you set a new definition for optimization that allows even players with less mastery achieve an optimized state. And monster balance becomes easier as well, because they would be balanced against optimized characters. If your group doesn’t meet that threshold (or exceeds it) you can use a monster that your group is balanced to fight against.
Some flaws that already spring to mind is that with different frameworks some attacks or abilities will be better than others still. This is largely unavoidable unless you want everyone to have the same style and type of attacks like 4e. But at least you will have an immediate baseline for what is optimal. Maybe then you could look at a toon and analyze it to better help it get to that threshold or just adjust an attack option to bring it in line with the norms of your game. This system also does nothing for effects that cannot be judged in numerical absolutes, like turning someone to stone or crippling an enemy, and those are very strong concepts indeed (but if you have an idea about how to balance such concepts I would LOVE to read about it).But that’s a really hard one to get right with no means of measure. It also does not take into account the ease at which the threshold is reached. Ideally if there are multiple thresholds it would be easier for members on certain classes to reach the threshold in there are of expertise, but thats hard too.
Now I would like to set some simple rules for discussion this thread. The idea is to discuss mechanics or ideas that can bring balance to system that players of ALL editions can enjoy. I already assume it to be fact that your system of choice addresses your needs better than all of the other systems out there. There is probably nothing new that WOTC could design or that some random internet person could show you that is BETTER for you then what you already know you like. So please don’t hate on what other people like. The thesis of this discussion should be in what ways can we find a compromise for the overwhelming mechanical and playstyle differences of the various editions and look at options and ideas that would allow fans of those editions to play a game together that tried to honor the dissimilar approaches those systems use for resolution, application, and balance that the different editions bring to the table. So please no edition bitching. If you are to get something new that has elements from a lot of very different things then by default you will give something up as well.
The real question is what are you willing to give up to arrive at a compromise?
Love,
malkav
Last edited:
