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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game
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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5837939" data-attributes="member: 54877"><p>You get a similar issue on the "gimping yourself" side of the equation, too. With our group full of players not that interested in character buidling, probably a third of our appreciation for 4E over 3E is that I'm not constantly having to police the characters to make sure the players don't gimp themselves. There is a little chafing about not having options (in character), but it is <strong>nothing</strong> compared to the chafing at having options in the book that sound plausible but don't actually work very well.</p><p> </p><p>I don't know how many times I've had a long conversion that starts something like this:</p><p> </p><p>Player: I want to do X.</p><p>Me: You can do that, but it might not work the way you intend because of Y.</p><p>Player: Bugger. Well, I still want to try it, got any suggestions?</p><p>Me: Well, let's see what else you want to give up or incorporate ...</p><p> </p><p>And 15 minutes later, we've practically reworked half the character to make it sort of work. After a few times of that, it becomes, "Out of these things, which ones will actually work for me?" You know, a limited set of choices that all mostly work as advertised. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></p><p> </p><p>Bringing this back around, kicking and screaming, on topic ... I don't object to having choices that are imbalanced. I object to having imbalanced choices that are not labeled as such and/or missing necessary advice to clue a player in on when and when not to use it.</p><p> </p><p>Say a fighter character has 20 feats to pick from that might be plausible in his current circumstance and level. I want maybe 8-10 of those to be no particular extra information, meaning, "You can pick this and unless you've done something really odd, it will be mostly ok. Not perfect, but you won't totally regret gimping yourself or fill like you stepped on someone else's toes." Then if on top of that, we have a few that say, "Don't pick this unless you also have A or B, or know what you are doing, or you want this option enough you don't mind losing a bit of power." And then a few more that say, "This is typically a bit overpowered. Check with your DM before taking. Will be more acceptable when J or K."</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5837939, member: 54877"] You get a similar issue on the "gimping yourself" side of the equation, too. With our group full of players not that interested in character buidling, probably a third of our appreciation for 4E over 3E is that I'm not constantly having to police the characters to make sure the players don't gimp themselves. There is a little chafing about not having options (in character), but it is [B]nothing[/B] compared to the chafing at having options in the book that sound plausible but don't actually work very well. I don't know how many times I've had a long conversion that starts something like this: Player: I want to do X. Me: You can do that, but it might not work the way you intend because of Y. Player: Bugger. Well, I still want to try it, got any suggestions? Me: Well, let's see what else you want to give up or incorporate ... And 15 minutes later, we've practically reworked half the character to make it sort of work. After a few times of that, it becomes, "Out of these things, which ones will actually work for me?" You know, a limited set of choices that all mostly work as advertised. :D Bringing this back around, kicking and screaming, on topic ... I don't object to having choices that are imbalanced. I object to having imbalanced choices that are not labeled as such and/or missing necessary advice to clue a player in on when and when not to use it. Say a fighter character has 20 feats to pick from that might be plausible in his current circumstance and level. I want maybe 8-10 of those to be no particular extra information, meaning, "You can pick this and unless you've done something really odd, it will be mostly ok. Not perfect, but you won't totally regret gimping yourself or fill like you stepped on someone else's toes." Then if on top of that, we have a few that say, "Don't pick this unless you also have A or B, or know what you are doing, or you want this option enough you don't mind losing a bit of power." And then a few more that say, "This is typically a bit overpowered. Check with your DM before taking. Will be more acceptable when J or K." [/QUOTE]
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Balance Meter - allowing flavorful imbalance in a balanced game
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