Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game

[hanez]

and since 80-90% of the game was combat and exploring dungeon passages...Well, we questioned why they were even in the game. After all, the game was about combat, being able to fool someone with an illusion might get an enemy to move away from a door or something, but you'd just have to fight them somewhere else.

And here we get to the heart of the disagreement. You think 80-90% of the game is and should be about combat, and I disagree on both counts. I maintain that the reason the designers had those classes in the game, was because they knew what the game was about, possibly more then you do. Anyways thats besides the point, I don't find that as fun and neither do most of the members of my groups who have left 4e for pathfinder. If this is to be a "uniting edition" it will definitely have to resolve this issue, otherwise WOTC will probably have to be happy with their current fan base.

 

[Hassassin]

I've always worried about balance. At first, I didn't realize what balance WAS but I still worried about it. From the first time when I was 15(back in 2e) and my players trounced the group of enemies I had attack them without taking a single point of damage, I wondered "Hmm, that sucks, shouldn't monsters be able to do SOMETHING to the PCs?"

It wasn't until later that people gave a name to it(sometimes around the time 3e was coming out) that I began to think "Wouldn't it be good if the numbers were close to the same on both sides so that one group didn't have a clear advantage?"

That's not the balance this thread is about. The DM can always adjust to a strong party by upping threat level. If one character dies every combat and another never takes a hit, then there may be cause for concern.

 

[Mattachine]

Like some of the other threads on this board, it seems one camp is arguing, "Please make the game only play this way, my preferred way," and another camp is arguing, "Make the game this way, my preferred way, but include the option to play it another way or ignore it."

What is the harm in starting from a baseline where all classes can be effective in each area? Individual players are still free to make a character (and play that character) as unskilled or reluctant in given situations. It's a roleplaying game.

Example: In a long 3.5 campaign I played a rogue/wiz/arcane trickster, from level 1 to level 19. Though, in game mechanic terms, he became fairly powerful, I always played him as a bit of a coward, very cautious in combat, often fleeing for the first round and then coming back with stealth or a spell. He was also the comic relief. I could have played him differently, but I established a certain personality for him that was great fun.

Now, one might say, "Well, you played him as a coward, but with his hit points, saves, and abilities, that was unrealistic." My answer: "The other PCs can't see his character sheet."

Though the game gave me the ability to be good at combat (baseline), I CHOSE to play one less focused on combat, and more focused on being the comic relief.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think his use of the word primary objective is fair. After all its a reaction to the last edition which can had balance as a primary objective at the expense of other large swaths of the enterprise. Not sure if you see this as arguable, but Im sure I could make a pretty big list of things that were absent or signifigantly changed in 4e in exchange for balance.

I wouldn't go quite that far, but no point in quibbling over semantics (which I would need to do to explain why I wouldn't go quite that far).

I will say that a huge chunk of the things on that list that you could make are not absent but substantially present in some other form, or the changes were not meaningful. I'd even bet that I could llst some more pertinent ones that should be on the list that you might miss. Though of course you might surprise me. It depends on how much actual play experience you have with 4E versus hear say or merely reading the rules.

One of the more obvious examples that makes peoples' list is, "I can't play a fighter that is a great archer," or more refined, "at least not until Essentials added the ability 3 years later."

That's a technically true statement as written. But as a complaint about meaningful mechanics or concept, it is absolute nonsense, cloaking personal preference around a claim of missing functionality. You can play a straight warrior concept as a great archer, and you could do it from day one using the ranger class.. You even got good melee ability to go with it. If you really wanted to be a "fighter" in the game, absolutely nothing stopped you from calling yourself that.

With something like "early flight", it is a more iffy proposition. It's true that flight gets pushed back in levels specifically in regards to balance, but it is also true that class levels in 4E do not correspond one-to-one with class levels in early versions. Still, it is definitely delayed, just to the extent that it first appears. Whether "having flight now instead of a later" is critical is even iffier. The only real claim it has is tradition, which is important but no more the be all and end all than balance is. Otherwise, you could just as easily say, "I'm upset because my first level wizard can't cast fireball 3/day," and you'd be on the same ground.

Serious candidates are things like illusion--and even more so, summoning/conjuring. Illusion was slow to arrive in breadth, and limited--not just for balance, however, but because illusion doesn't work very well in the 4E system. This is as much a failure of the "first cut" skill challenge rules as the combat mechanics, though. Summoning/conjuring definitely got extremely nerfed, deliberately for balance. I suppose a better solution there going forward is to let things break the action economy but call them out as such.

For a no-holds barred, real problem along this line, look at all the silly little restrictions and loss of flavor on magic items, in the initial rules. Some of these got gradually relaxed over time. But you know the worst thing about this? It might have been done for balance reasons, but it really didn't add to the balance much, and relaxing it seriously wouldn't have hurt balance much. Plus, it was overly fiddly for whatever balance results it did supply. Initial multi-classing has some of the same problems. This is classic case of things that were done ultra conservatively initially because no one in charge really knew how robust the system was.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

And here we get to the heart of the disagreement. You think 80-90% of the game is and should be about combat, and I disagree on both counts. I maintain that the reason the designers had those classes in the game, was because they knew what the game was about, possibly more then you do.

My point was that that game could be played both ways. Some people played it with a focus on roleplaying and some with a focus on combat. We ran a lot of purchased adventures. Most of them had 80-90% combat. Most of them were written by the same designers who created the game. Or at least for the same company. We assumed that the designers knew the correct way to play their game and played it that way.

I suggest that there is no "proper" way to play but that both are valid options. And that in a game that is combat based, an illusionist was a bad choice. In a game that was roleplaying based, a Fighter was a bad choice. I'd like them BOTH to be a good choice regardless of the type of game you play in. Because most games fluctuate between them.

Anyways thats besides the point, I don't find that as fun and neither do most of the members of my groups who have left 4e for pathfinder. If this is to be a "uniting edition" it will definitely have to resolve this issue, otherwise WOTC will probably have to be happy with their current fan base.

That's why I don't have huge faith in the idea of 5e. Gamers want sometimes diametrically opposed things in their games. You can't put both in there. Sometimes the mere presence of a rule, even as an option in a game is enough to turn people off it.

Also, the problem is that you are only looking at it from your point of view. If they make the game too much like the old school rules that some of us were really glad to get rid of, they risk alienating their current fan base for whatever percentage of people that are currently playing other editions of D&D or Pathfinder decide that 5e is worth switching for. I have a feeling that number will be even lower than their current fan base.

What's worse is they risk creating a poor compromise and instead alienating BOTH groups.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

That's not the balance this thread is about. The DM can always adjust to a strong party by upping threat level. If one character dies every combat and another never takes a hit, then there may be cause for concern.

The two types of balance are linked, however. If you know the strength of the enemies and balance the PCs abilities accordingly....then you should balance all the PCs abilities accordingly.

If you don't balance the monsters to the PCs, then how can you balance the PCs amongst themselves? Is it too powerful for one PC to have a +15 to hit and another to have +3? Well, that depends on what the defenses of the monsters are.

If monsters range between 10 AC and 30 AC...well, then at least the lower powered PC will have some enemies they are capable of taking out. They'll just have to leave the big ones to the people better at fighting. If the ACs of the monsters vary from 25-30...well, then it isn't fair or balanced to have one person with only a +3 to hit.

 

[hanez]

M
I suggest that there is no "proper" way to play but that both are valid options. And that in a game that is combat based, an illusionist was a bad choice. In a game that was roleplaying based, a Fighter was a bad choice. I'd like them BOTH to be a good choice regardless of the type of game you play in. Because most games fluctuate between them.

And I am a fan of the rotating spotlight. In the end all I am arguing for is a couple classes to maintain that non combat focus to remind DMs and the company of an aspect of the game that it seems only Paizo cares to remember. Plus the trickery needed to redefine an illusionist into an equivalent combat character is not something I particularly want to see, I'd much prefer just telling the player who wants to be better in combat to choose some other spells next level then reworking an entire school into soemthing that doesnt feel right (or deleting it).

Anyways, just noticed your from Winnipeg, man I had some good times at the Palamino lol. I'm from thunder bay.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Plus the trickery needed to redefine an illusionist into an equivalent combat character is not something I particularly want to see, I'd much prefer just telling the player who wants to be better in combat to choose some other spells next level then reworking an entire school into soemthing that doesnt feel right (or deleting it).

You know, it wouldn't be too hard to create a proper "illusionist" that actually had some combat teeth. There is a class concept out there that involves a heavy use of illusion, deception, and trickery. Much like the illusionist, that concept draws most of its inspiration from stage magic born from misdirection and stage tricks, though it works better for D&D as a magic-using class. The Mirror Image spell and its equivalents is one of the most defining abilities in that class's repertoire. The main difference is that this other class, unlike the illusionist, has a large bag of tricks other than just illusion that lets it work great in both combat and non-combat.

This class, of course, is the magical ninja of Japanese pop culture, born from over two centuries of Japanese stage magic.

I can understand not wanting that particular flavor for your Gnome Illusionist, but it does challenge the idea that you need to force illusion magic into a total non-combat class. Instead, you just need to give the class a heavy dose of physical combat strength and sneakiness (which play better to the illusion school's strengths than fireballs do).

 

[hanez]

You know, it wouldn't be too hard to create a proper "illusionist" that actually had some combat teeth. There is a class concept out there that involves a heavy use of illusion, deception, and trickery. Much like the illusionist, that concept draws most of its inspiration from stage magic born from misdirection and stage tricks, though it works better for D&D as a magic-using class. The Mirror Image spell and its equivalents is one of the most defining abilities in that class's repertoire. The main difference is that this other class, unlike the illusionist, has a large bag of tricks other than just illusion that lets it work great in both combat and non-combat.

This class, of course, is the magical ninja of Japanese pop culture, born from over two centuries of Japanese stage magic.

I can understand not wanting that particular flavor for your Gnome Illusionist, but it does challenge the idea that you need to force illusion magic into a total non-combat class. Instead, you just need to give the class a heavy dose of physical combat strength and sneakiness (which play better to the illusion school's strengths than fireballs do).

My gnome loved mirror image. Lets be clear, I have no problem with combat powers being available in illusion. I have a problem with a system that forces me to choose the combat ones and siloes off the non combat ones, i have a problem with a system that doesnt allow me to make the choice of what I'd rather have. (4e does this by only allowing you to take utility spells at certain levels, not to mention rituals) I see the addition of the powers you reference as a good thing, but not in a way that it totally removes the non combat options as well. Even in 2e and 3e, and illusionist could still choose spells from other schools.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've been pounding hanez pretty hard on some of his points while he has hung in there and engaged the discussion, so fair is fair. His example of a non-combat illusionist (whatever other varieties are available) is exactly the kind of thing I meant in the OP that maybe just needs to stand unchanged and imbalanced, however it works out. Then take it that next step. Clearly label it as such. Whether you use the ranking systems I suggested, keywords, some actual design notes--whatever works is good!

"Hey, this class really can't hold up well in combat without the situation being right, but can dominate some interaction scenes. His exploration abilities are narrow, but can be very powerful within his niche."

Then in another section, they give you some advice on different ways you can handle this--compensate, adjust XP, ignore it, ban it for "that guy" that always takes over the interaction scenes in every game, let the DM adjust the situations to compensate, use optional module P38 that brings illusion back in line with the core classes. You choose what to do about it, now that you've been informed what the deal is.