Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game

[DEFCON 1]

Pit me against an army of humans and I may just have 500 soldiers running before the fighter draws his sword.

Which... defines what you just did as being a 'controller'. You controlled the battlefield. You made the army run away. Just because there's now a term to describe what you did, doesn't mean the term is somehow wrong or incorrect, or that you are for doing what the term describes.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Precisely that. Sorry for any confusion. Balance that attempts to be too finely tuned ends up being endlessly patched. A tabletop rpg should be robust enough to not require that.

I'll go further than that. I'm a "dual extremist". I think both of these are true:

1. The game should not work too hard for perfect balance in particular mechanics. The pursuit annoys plenty of people (due to side effects), it cuts out lots of flavorful material that would otherwise be available, and ultimately it won't work anyway. (If not curbed, you ultimately get something that really is World of Warcraft related, and not in a good way--endless, fiddly patches that do not accomplish anything short of alternating who is happy and who is not.) You make the main engine as robust as you can, and whatever rough balance you get out of that is mostly the balance you are going to have (for good or ill). Then you do some judicious polishing around the edges for the most used stuff. (Where to stop that last bit is part of the real art in the design work.)

2. On the other hand, the game authors should work really hard to tell you what is balanced, how it is balanced, why it is balanced, how you can adjust it, where potential problems are, etc. You can never get too much of this, and are basically limited by practical concerns--i.e. page counts, most people will only read so much on this topic, etc. (Some people won't care at all, of course, and this becomes largely wasted page count for them. However, even people who don't intend to do anything mechanically about balance are often interested in areas to keep an eye on in play.)

It is not that you throw your hands up on #1 completely, and merely provide advice on #2. That's abdicating responsibility, and a game designed that way is one that you'll have to do most of the work yourself. (So why are you paying for it again?) My claim is not that the focus switch from one to the other--or that we drop the effort as a bad business--but that there has been entirely too much focus on #1 at the expense of #2. A good game design needs some of each--especially if it is a game designed to be customized.

 

[BobTheNob]

Please dont destroy D&D for me......... again. Not being reactionary or dramatic, just telling you the truth, maybe my reaction below will shed light on it a bit.

My illusionist isn't a controller. He's a fun little gnome, who plays tricks on people. Often he's completely useless in combat, because the undead consider him an idiot, so I as a player have to work extra hard to make sure I'm not holding the party back. I think of clever ways to interact with the environment or the encounter to have an effect, and I expect my DM to craft encounters where there are a VARIETY of ways to overcome some (but not all) encounters. The DM doesnt do this because I chose an illusionist, he does this because thats what DMs are supposed to do.

My illusionist is a challenge to be as powerful in combat as my fighter comrades. Thats OK, because I'm a kickbut usefull mage in social situations, bartering, making deals, convincing people to help us, overcoming obstacles and even exploring with my side spells. Still in other situations my phantasmal killer, or mirage arcana are clutch spells. Pit me against an army of humans and I may just have 500 soldiers running before the fighter draws his sword.

By making me a controller you scare me that you will simply force me into the same template as everyone else (as was done in 4e). I want to be weaker in some situations, thats why I chose an illusionist in exchange for power in other situations. Cruniching numbers to make me useful in combat will not "unite" anyone.

And if my DM is a strict combat oriented undead heavy DM? Thats ok, when I die I roll up a barbarian, or try again with the illusionist. I much prefer you not redefining the illusionist to play well in his world. In fact by redefining classes to play well in his world, you encourage it to be the only one a DM can imagine. Leave the combat challenged illusionist alone, it will help make the game more imaginative.

I think balance is an illusion(no pun intended).

Inevitably balance nearly always relates to what a character does in a fight, The more you try to achieve it, your just going to turn around and end up saying "Ooops, I just turned this edition into a (yet another) combat boardgame".

I picked up 4e thinking it was great, the tightest most well defined edition of D&D ever, where class balance was wire tight (with errata...). Now, after years of obsessing over class balance, I have to say Im over it. I feel like for all my righteous belief in my mechanical comprehension I missed something vital to what D&D actually is....

Rogues dont HAVE to be great in a fight. They do so much outside of a fight, so why balance them against a fighter? Wizards are wild cards that can contribute in so many ways, so why label them "controller" and turn them into a combat weapon?

Let characters be combat challenged, but let them be interesting. The Game which I want to DM I want a really low amount of combat. I want it to be exploration and narration, where players live or die by their imagined solutions to problems and how there characters particular traits enforce that. Where pulling out your sword isn't the solution to every...single...encounter.

I have come to understand something I knew when I was much younger but forgot in the rules saturation of 3e and up : D&D is not a combat board-game, its so much more than that, and I cant shake the feeling that the more we focus on "balance", the more we are just going to relegate 5e to yet another "roll for initiative" game.

 

[Kingreaper]

Balance can be achieved both inside and outside of combat, or even through sacrifice of combat ability for out-of-combat ability.

4e took it to an extreme trying to balance as much as possible. But when you look at 3.x, it's obvious why. 3.x was imbalanced in every arena. If you weren't a spellcaster, you were inferior at: Exploration, Social Encounters, Trapfinding, Combat, Long-distance-travel, information gathering... basically, everything.

4e perhaps focused too much on combat. But that's not all balance is about.
Balance is about making sure everyone has a chance to shine, without DM fiat.

If fighters are useless outside of combat then they need to be the best in combat.

If thieves are useless in combat, they need to be amazing outside it.

If wizards are good both in combat and out of it, they need to not be too good at either.

 

[BobTheNob]

4e perhaps focused too much on combat. But that's not all balance is about.
Balance is about making sure everyone has a chance to shine, without DM fiat.

...and there it is. Absolutely.

Though...most people, when you talk about balance, will obsess with balance being a "combat caveat". With it being a holy grail which will require classes to have "combat roles" and that all abilities use a common "power" mechanic.

As good as 4e was at what it did, I thought it missed the point. Having ubiquitous mechanics and combat equality was never what table top rpgs were about. So it achieved what it set out to do, but it set out to achieve the wrong thing.

I find the whole use of the word "balanced" to be misleading. It draws you toward focusing on ensuring everyone works at everything and away from the things game design should focus on : encouraging creativity, characters which are TRUELY unique, allowing players to effectively play whatever their hearts desire, even if it is a bit of a turkey come fight time.

If I look back over my play experiences over time and think of the moments I remember most fondly, I dont remember when I had the biggest number and my fireball killed everything in one hit...I remember the moments when I WASNT able to handle the situation with what I had and had to think about how to beat that.

Again, Screw class Balance...focus on class=interesting.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

4e perhaps focused too much on combat. But that's not all balance is about.
Balance is about making sure everyone has a chance to shine, without DM fiat.

True as far as it goes. Now, don't stop there. How do you know how well people will shine in a given game? You need to know how much time will be spent on the areas that allow each character to shine. You also need to know how long will be spent on each thing, so that people don't get tired of waiting.

And it's no good making a bunch of assumptions about that, and encoding them in the game--e.g. we'll have short combats so that people will not spend much time on combat. Having short combats is great, but it isn't because the designers can then predict the amount of combat, and thus balance around that. Rather, it is great because now the group has more ability to have as much or as little combat as they want.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Again, Screw class Balance...focus on class=interesting.

This is swinging the pendulum too far back the other way. They aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[BobTheNob]

This is swinging the pendulum too far back the other way. They aren't mutually exclusive.

Cheerfully withdrawn!

I still say it shouldnt be the obsession we had in 4e though. I want combat turkey characters to be just as gratifying to play as combat titans. Just generally de-emphasize combat. Thats the first step to achieving true balance

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I still say it shouldnt be the obsession we had in 4e though. I want combat turkey characters to be just as gratifying to play as combat titans. Just generally de-emphasize combat. Thats the first step to achieving true balance

Oh, absolutely. If nothing else, going for that kind of balance in combat is the kind of thing that a group ought to consciously choose. "We want combat balance. So no combat turkeys in this game." That gets it all out on the table, and avoids trouble later. Or, if one guy really wants a combat turkey, everyone knows what they are getting with that, too.

 

[Mattachine]

De-emphasize combat? I suppose, but it is the core of the game, mechanically, and even the core of adventures.

In any edition, a player can make an ineffective combat-character. No one forces a player to make a combat-ready adventurer, even in 4e. You can pick feats that focus on skills, make non-combat stats the highest (or even just use lower stats than point buy gives), and choose magic items that are interesting in effect and flavor, if not the best in combat.

No rules are needed to make a character sub-optimal.