Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game

[Mattachine]

If combat is moved down to half the "expected" gaming experience, and consequently gets simpler rules, and a smaller portion of the rules, then some of the balance considerations fade or change.

I have played in other games where combat was less than half the emphasis, and mechanical balance of PC stats didn't matter much. For example: Storyteller/WOD, Toon, and even Spycraft (if played in a stealth/espionage way).

 

[Kingreaper]

This sentence is so far from reality it makes me wonder if you ever played the game or if you had a rock for a DM. Do you mean a wizard could specialize to be the master in one or two of those areas, or could be the best in all the areas simultaneously?

I mean, a magic-user was always the best choose whatever area you wanted to be good at. And unlike a non-magical specialist, they could change specialisation on a daily basis (well, for most things).

Not always a wizard mind, but one of the magic-using classes was always your best option, whatever it was you wanted to achieve, as long as you were above level 5 or so.


But honestly, that's the past, and not really important. What's important is what we want from the future.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Regardless of which camp you belong to, and as to what the OP is asking (which we have gone off topic a little) de-emphasizing combat is how I see flavorful imbalance working. If combat is 3/4 of your gaming experience, you have to balance.

That's one way balance can work (and not off topic at all). Though I'd still argue that the more important balance is, the more important it is to get it right--which includes acknowledging areas of failure and/or environment ripping the rug out from under. But you could just as easily have the same issues in other aspects. Let's take something like the venerable charm person spell.

Charming is something that, depending on edition, can work in combat spectacular well to not at all, do anything from minor help in a social scene to totally bypass it, and used a bit creatively, even help with exploration. (The crudest form of the last one is the "charmed mine detector" sent down an innocuous passage suspected of having traps.)

Long ago, I saw some fairly strong arguments that charm person as actually adjudicated in many games, should have been a 2nd level spell. And not a few such arguments that put it at 3rd. But of course, in early D&D, charm person could be something very appropriate at 1st. Or it could be a nice sop to the poor 2 hit point mage that didn't have much of anything else (rolling for starting spells and scrounging from there). Meanwhile, history has shown us that old 1st level stand bys such as read magic deserved their eventual location of cantrip or basically free ability.

With spells, it's not that hard to move them up or down a level to work around group style (though it could be easier and less crude a measure). With class abilities, skills, etc. it gets a bit more dificult. And of course, a lot of such underpowered/overpowered issues are not discrete items, but the synergy of several.

 

[Hussar]

Something that I learned from 2e and this was reinforced by 3e: you cannot balance combat with non-combat elements. It doesn't work. Why would they? You cannot control how much of either you will experience in a given campaign as a player.

Sure, the DM could step up and say, "Ok, the campaign will have this much combat and that much non-combat" but, that's typically pretty broad and often not too accurate in the small scale. Sure, you might have two sessions of no-combat, but, then you have three sessions which are combat heavy.

Which means that the guys that are balanced with combat vs non-combat elements are bored half the time. The combat wombat can contribute virtually nothing mechanically (although through free-forming he might do better) to the non-combat scenarios, and the Peasant with a Spork is sitting in the back playing with his Iphone during combat because he can't do anything.

The biggest issue I have when you try to balance combat with non-combat is that you wind up with players playing different games at the same table. The gnome illusionist is simply not playing the same game as the human fighter. I don't think that's a very good idea.

Balance like with like. Thus, combat effectiveness is balanced across class and siloed away from the non-combat stuff. The one hit wonder character where you are really good at one thing, be it combat or non-combat, is a bug, not a feature.

 

[hanez]

The biggest issue I have when you try to balance combat with non-combat is that you wind up with players playing different games at the same table. The gnome illusionist is simply not playing the same game as the human fighter. I don't think that's a very good idea.

Removing player choices and marginalizing roleplaying focused characters in exchange for balance is soooo 6 years ago. Next you'll be telling us we don't need any rules for roleplaying, and that everything is refluffable so we dont need many options anyways. Just saying I know how this story ends, about half the player base gives up and moves to another game.

 

[Kynn]

I think they should make purposely weak options for all you folks who don't like playing balanced games, so you can suck in combat as much as you like.

Then we'd all be happy!

Please try to avoid trolling. When you post stuff like this to deliberately annoy folks, it just makes your moderators cranky. Thanks. -- Piratecat

 

[pemerton]

Removing player choices and marginalizing roleplaying focused characters in exchange for balance is soooo 6 years ago.

What is the relationship between the pursuit of balance and the marginalisation of RP-focused PCs?

 

[hanez]

What is the relationship between the pursuit of balance and the marginalisation of RP-focused PCs?

Cookie cutter pcs which play and feel the same often results in players roleplaying the same. Mechanics heavy rules with fluff removed (which happens because we focus on mechanics to find balance), results in players using powers and not roleplaying what they are doing. Some players also signifigant differentiantion between the rest of the party and they also need weaknesses as well as strengths to bring out RP.

 

[Kingreaper]

Mechanics heavy rules with fluff removed (which happens because we focus on mechanics to find balance)

No, the two are really completely unrelated.

Balancing the mechanics, and then fluffifying them as much as you want is entirely possible.

Balance and simplified wording are two seperate design decisions from 4e.

Personally I'm a fan of both of them, but that doesn't chance the fact that they're seperate things.

 

[Hassassin]

I think they should make purposely weak options for all you folks who don't like playing balanced games, so you can suck in combat as much as you like.

Then we'd all be happy!

Unbalanced doesn't have to mean totally useless. If I deal half the damage you do, without having any significant advantage in other combat aspects, am I useless? Of course not, there's goblin butt enough to be kicked by all.

Similarly, even if I am much better at searching traps or diplomacy, you can still help. That +2 has got to matter some time and if we are playing out a negotiation you may come up with good points I wouldn't have though of.