Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game

[Crazy Jerome]

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.

 

[MichaelSomething]

So, basically you want a Tier System for Classes report?

 

[Minigiant]

That sounds like advocating tiers.
Hmmm...
No Sir, I don't like it.

Because I see anything on the bottom as a challenge.

 

[Gort]

I don't get it. If you're aware of imbalance in your game, why not simply give the lower-powered classes more stuff per level until they're balanced again? If it's as simple as going "a fighter is 0.5 as good as a wizard", you can just give the fighter double HP, likelihood to succeed on a given saving throw, and damage - suddenly he is balanced with the wizard again in that the wizard has a lot of versatility through his magic, but the fighter is an unstoppable doom juggernaut.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I don't understand the objection to balance.

Yes, classes designed with identical mechanics lack flavor and are boring. But that's not the fault of balance -- that's the fault of the design philosophy that achieves balance via identical mechanics.

I'm of the mind that classes can use different design philosophies, and still be balanced. It takes more work, and more playtesting. You have to understand where the math works and where it breaks down, but it can be done.

Fix the approach to design, which is the problem, not balance.

 

[Kingreaper]

Having a module which explicitly made classes have different power levels at different classes could be interested. But having classes weaker than others, over all levels, deliberately, without redeeming qualities (ie. story points) is just plain a bad idea.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Some of the time you could be easily balanced. Do so. At other times, it might not be so easy, but hey, this particular class will get played a lot and we should at least make the effort. To deliberately unbalance upfront because of flavor is something I see for the more niche classes. (I probably shouldn't have used the BECMI ratios as an example of the math. I seems to have created the wrong impression.)

Say you have core classes of fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue, bard, druid, ranger, paladin. Make those as balanced as you can. But then if you have this idea for a warlock that trails behind or a monk that is a bit overpowered, and you just can't make it work otherwise, meter it.

Ideally, of course, that would never come up. You'd find away to make each new class reasonably balanced. So that leaves all the other reasons for imbalance--mistakes, change in play environment, particular players, etc. Primarily, such a mechanic is a modest one that says, "We can't get this perfect, all the time, for everyone. So even though we'll do the best we can, we'll provide a built in method to handle those issues."

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The thing is, some people just don't care about experience gained. Maybe the adventure is only planning on running for a few sessions then ending, so the possibility of level gain is small. Maybe it's a single session convention game. Given the freedom to take a class that only goes up by .5 in these situations, most people I know would take it in a heartbeat.

Yes, mistakes happen. But I would prefer errata to fix mistakes than classes made purposefully imbalanced.

 

[hanez]

I want an illusionist that gives me the VERY HARD challenge to make him useful in combat. I dont want to "ignore" my combat powers. I want the illusionist to be so good in OTHER areas that I am weaker in the combat area for the exchange.

I want a barbarian who can't pick locks, or write scrolls, or make history checks from vague lands. I dont want to pretend I dont have this power, rather I want to be soooo much better at combat then the theif that I am weaker in these areas for the exchange.

I want a wizard that challenges me as a player to predict whats going to happen. If I memorize the right spells Im doing pretty good, if not, well guys I hope your swords are sharp because all I got is charm magic left and these undead don't seem too dazzled by me.

For me balance is a vague concept, sure no one played the bard in my campaign, but was that cause of the music thing or because he was weak? Lets give him a bit of a boost and see what happens. I felt that the cleric in 3.5 was a lil too much, what with armor weapons and spells, maybe we could prune his spell list a bit. But when balance becomes numerical, and illusions, diviniations and skills just dont fit into the model balance has gone too far.
I want a druid who laughs at the forest, but is weaker in the city. And I want classes that are jack of all trades, good at a number of things but master of none. I want a variety of choices that are allowed to be good in some situations, and worse in others.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

We could also come up with a balance meter that is a lot more useful and nuanced than the one I listed in the example.

Perhaps there is some attempt to balance across the combat, exploration, and interaction(so called "roleplaying") pillars, but it is accepted that you won't get a perfect mix in each. (I know that's still being debated. For sake of argument here, assume practical reasons have kept such balance out of reach.) Then you might give a number on each pillar, try to make them reasonably close and the total balanced, but give yourself that same out for mistakes and campaign needs.

Say that we pick something like the 3E or 4E XP chart, but divide every value by 10 (for convenience of handling, that's all). Then your combat, exploration, and interaction meter (CEI) gets divided up amongst those, with the core, balanced classes getting a total of 10 in each one. Maybe a rogue is 3/4/3, while a fighter is 4/3/3. Every core character is built on a minimum 3/3/3, with an edge somewhere that makes sense. (Niche classes might be more varied.) Total that number up (always 10 for the core classes) and divide your XP awards by that number. If you are playing nothing but such balanced classes, the DM can simply divide the XP award before he hands it out, and you can ignore all this.

Now, if you have a character that is truly 4/3/4 of some such mix, it is accounted for in the system. But this more complex meter goes beyond that. Say you are running a game that is heavy exploration at the expense of the other factors. Now you know which classes have an easy time of it or will naturally find the spotlight. You can adjust the factors to compensate, or you can do like you always have with a bard in a combat game or dumb, low Cha fighter in an interaction game--give the guy on the short end of the stick something extra or work the game so that it is ok or let the player enjoy the challenge.

As you can see, with the right meter, this isn't just about tacking on abilities and then forgetting about it, but nor is it anything new. Rather, it's a way of labeling and communicating something that DMs have been doing from the beginning, but without stamping on the class-based nature of the game.

Edit: Was cross-typing this with hanez before I saw his reply, believe it or not.