Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game

[Hussar]

Now everyone can just have fun, and since we know the rules it plays quite smoothly. It just requires players not to get hung up on whether another character finishes twice the orcs theirs does.

That's easy enough to say, but, I can't blame anyone for getting annoyed when the guy sitting next to him is regularly finishing off twice as many orcs (or whatever the toe stepping actually is). I don't game to ride the bench. I want to be at least in the same ballpark as the guy next to me. Not the same. I don't care if his character is a bit better at killing orcs than mine. Not that worried about it.

But, when his character is mowing down orcs like so many blades of grass, and his turn is taking 30 minutes, and it comes to my turn, I make my one roll, miss and pass the dice, and thus wait another 30 minutes for my turn to come back around, I tend to get a bit antsy.

Heck, I used to regularly prep another dungeon during combats in 3e games because I knew that I had about twenty to thirty minutes before my turn would come back around. Since I was DMing one game and playing another, my play time was generally my prep time.

Yay for multitasking, but, not so yay for good gaming.

 

[Hassassin]

That's easy enough to say, but, I can't blame anyone for getting annoyed when the guy sitting next to him is regularly finishing off twice as many orcs (or whatever the toe stepping actually is). I don't game to ride the bench. I want to be at least in the same ballpark as the guy next to me. Not the same. I don't care if his character is a bit better at killing orcs than mine. Not that worried about it.

2x is in the same ballpark, IMO. I feel both the character who kills 10 orcs and the one who kills 20 orcs made a difference. Maybe it's a question of tolerance? Those for whom 3e works well enough have a higher tolerance for disparity.

But, when his character is mowing down orcs like so many blades of grass, and his turn is taking 30 minutes, and it comes to my turn, I make my one roll, miss and pass the dice, and thus wait another 30 minutes for my turn to come back around, I tend to get a bit antsy.

30 minute turns have never ever happened in our games, but we've only had two campaigns in the 15+ level range. 30 minute or longer combats are unfortunately quite common mid to high level.

 

[kustenjaeger]

I'm all for equivalence. A lot of how the equivalence of characters can work is down to the campaign style - for example a campaign that has a lot of combat in each session needs all the characters to be able to contribute pretty well in combat. A campaign that focuses primarily on social interaction needs everyone to be able to contribute decently in some form or other.

Where you get a mix of encounters across a campaign you can either have everyone being pretty good at everything or allow some diversity. As an example if one had 3 hour games with one hour each of combat, exploration and social you could have a very social character who could contribute a bit in combat or a combat specialist who could play a limited social role and they would probably keep the players happy provided that the rough balance of the campaign remained. A shift in emphasis of the campaign or of a number of sessions would however make it tricky for one player to feel as involved.

Another good point is the problem of long player turns which tend to reduce involvement by others for chunks of time. In the old days (running a hybrid 1e/Chivalry & Sorcery) I'd push the players into fast decision making to get the 6-8 people active as much of the time as possible. We didn't have multiple actions to cater for so there was limited time taken by any one person. With 3.5/PF more recently we've had far fewer players but I can feel it being slower to resolve things in combat.

Regards

Edward

 

[Hussar]

2x is in the same ballpark, IMO. I feel both the character who kills 10 orcs and the one who kills 20 orcs made a difference. Maybe it's a question of tolerance? Those for whom 3e works well enough have a higher tolerance for disparity.

You would rarely, if ever, see 30 orcs in a single encounter in 3e. The problem would likely be, you have two opponents, one PC kills one opponent and the rest of the group beats on the second one, until that one PC's turn comes back, and he finishes off the critter.

30 minute turns have never ever happened in our games, but we've only had two campaigns in the 15+ level range. 30 minute or longer combats are unfortunately quite common mid to high level.

Must be nice. 30 minute turns were pretty much par for the course with a number of the players I had. I once saw a guy take ten minutes to decide what to do with a 3rd level fighter! I know it was ten minutes because, after his first turn, I actually started timing turns. I was a little perturbed at the time.

To be fair, I said turn, and that's wrong. I meant round. I'd take my turn, and it would regularly be thirty minutes before I got to act again. It might have just been the players I had, but, I don't think so. I was running online games, so, we went through a fair number of players, and the time never seemed to change too much until we started bringing out the shot clock (you have 40 seconds for your turn or you lose your turn in initiative) and similar table rules.

 

[Hassassin]

You would rarely, if ever, see 30 orcs in a single encounter in 3e. The problem would likely be, you have two opponents, one PC kills one opponent and the rest of the group beats on the second one, until that one PC's turn comes back, and he finishes off the critter.

Oh, I wasn't talking about an individual encounter, but over the course of a day, or even an adventure. I would very rarely use that many enemies in an encounter, unless I had some sort of mass combat or "swarm" rules to use.

Must be nice. 30 minute turns were pretty much par for the course with a number of the players I had. I once saw a guy take ten minutes to decide what to do with a 3rd level fighter! I know it was ten minutes because, after his first turn, I actually started timing turns. I was a little perturbed at the time.

To be fair, I said turn, and that's wrong. I meant round. I'd take my turn, and it would regularly be thirty minutes before I got to act again. It might have just been the players I had, but, I don't think so. I was running online games, so, we went through a fair number of players, and the time never seemed to change too much until we started bringing out the shot clock (you have 40 seconds for your turn or you lose your turn in initiative) and similar table rules.

Maybe I'm just stricter with time, although I don't have codified rules for it. You don't have a minute to decide what you do in 6 seconds, much less ten. The player should usually have already decided by the time it's his/her turn. It may also help that I allow the players to act in any order each round, so slower players naturally gravitate to the end and have had more time to react to what NPCs did. Even when we used normal initiative rules, Delay and Ready were quite common actions.

Anyway, I totally recognize that experiences differ. I would appreciate it if 5e had quicker resolutions mechanics in general, and reduced option overload in combat.

 

[BryonD]

I was running online games....

This may be a very important difference.

You know we have discussed online vs face to face before. I like online, but I think FTF is a whole different level of experience and I've never found an online game capable of delivering what FTF games offer.

And the difference between the two could certainly make elements that shine in FTF turn to detriments in online. I was reading your comments and pretty much shaking my head before I got to that line. I can't imagine play going as slowly as you described. And, independently, I can imagine players being that disengaged when it isn't their turn, but every time I've ever seen it, a less than stellar DM was at the root of it. IME when a game is going well NO ONE is looking at the clock and while the *characters* have turns, the *players* are all constantly engaged.

But online does not have the group atmosphere and energy. That isn't a slam or claim that online isn't fun. But online and FTF are different activities with different pros and cons. I can readily imagine how online because focused on the individual character and on that character's turns. So it becomes a matter of waiting for the next turn. And I can also imagine how it can become a more clinical tactical assessment for someone who is calculating their turn like the next move in a chess match. And that would suck for other players waiting their turn.

I absolutely won't claim that anything in the 3E ruleset is intended to stand against that. It *can* be avoided in 3E, but I won't challenge the idea that other games are simply and for any reasonable consideration "factually" superior to 3E in handling those issues for online play. I can't speak personally about 4E online play. But I'll take it for granted that it is one of those.

You have mentioned before that you play a lot (almost exclusive??) of online games. But it seems it is easy for me to forget that point. Perspective is highly important.

 

[BryonD]

You would rarely, if ever, see 30 orcs in a single encounter in 3e.

Happened in my game just last evening.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No matter where you draw the line on balance--between classes, over an adventure, spotlight, "don't care as long as the class is interesting," etc.--practically speaking, there will be mistakes. There will also be spots where because of your playstyles, players, campaign world, etc. that even if the balance is set right for an average game, it doesn't work for yours. So assume we have a "balance meter".

The "balance meter" could be quite complex (within limits), but for sake of example, let's say that it is a number somewhere between a fraction of 1 and 3. Perhaps .5 to 2. This number is what is applied to any experience gained. If we were roughly imitating BECMI, we might use the Fighter table as the standard (at least through name level), and make the thief .6, the cleric .75, and the wizard 1.25.


Why would we want this? Well, besides the frank admission that balance is elusive and can vary by environment:

• The designers have a class that they really like that is simply not balancing well without destroying the intended flavor and/or adding on stuff that doesn't really belong for power padding. Do it the way they envision and give it an appropriate default on the meter.
• People can vote over time for what the numbers ought to be. Get a good voting system (throw out extremes and so forth), and it gives people a better idea of where the true balance lies.
• You don't want to fool with this during advancement, but you've got a new player in a group of veterans (or vice versa). Ignore the meter, but steer the inexperienced players to classes with higher numbers, while giving the veterans a challenge.
• If certain multiclass options are overly powerful or weak, adjust the resulting balance number to compensate. (Normally, you'd simply weight the factors by number of levels in each class.)
• Gives another factor to use for clear bans--no classes sitting above 1.5, for example.
• You care a little about balance, but not a lot. Players start however they want, but if some particular character starts dominating (because of the character mechanics), adjust retroactively. This is nicer than taking abilities away.

As in dynamically during a campaign? Ehhhh, yeah, that won't smack of favoritism at all. How about we just have a game which has decent enough balance to start with that you don't have to worry too much about it? Coupled with a narrow degree of optimization potential this results in a perfectly workable system. Heck, we have a product on the shelves right now which pretty well proves that to be true.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To me the problem with 3.X shows really quite glaringly as soon as you take a simple maxim into account. "Good strategy is not about defeating the enemy. It is about making the enemy irrelevant." When the wizard starts thinking like this the game breaks sideways. And when I think 'Wizard' that's where my mind goes immediately. It's the combination of Int 18 and d4 hp and the ability to rewrite reality. If your concept of wizard is "field artillery" then there isn't anything like so much of a problem - I'd be hard pressed to name an overpowered spell in the Evocation school.

 

[BryonD]

That's understandable.

To me the game is about being inside the shoes of someone who lives in a world where wizards can rewrite ability. You can't fix what is fun by removing that very thing. To me that is where the failures of 4E show so glaringly.

Different goals and different expectations for completely different play purposes.