D&D 5E Balance of Power Problems in 5e: Self created?

[Tony Vargas]

I didn’t play much of 2e before 3e came out, so maybe you can correct me on this, but I was pretty certain that internet communities and resources for D&D at that point were pretty scarce, and most of the scene was driven by magazines, conventions, and local gaming groups.

D&Ders were pretty active on UseNet, and, before that on BBSs, including MUDs for instance. The earlier community, though, was certainly connecting through 'zines in the 70s, and The Dragon (and other mags like White Dwarf) through the 80s (and into the 90s), alongside evolving digital media as time marched on.

Which makes sense if only because much of their audience is coming from the 3e-4e era where balance was talked about so much that people started noticing it even if before they might not have; and maybe now the pendulum has swung such that balance is getting more attention than it deserves.

I don't see how that's a pendulum swing. In the classic game, there were numerous mechanisms implemented for the sake of balance, that largely didn't work. People got used to the game being imbalanced, and the DM compensating. In 3.x, there were intentional 'rewards for system mastery' (which is imbalance, if imbalance meant to increase the appeal of the game to certain styles) built into the game, and empowerment shifted to the players who came to revere The RAW, and, with systemic imbalance baked in and fewer tools to cope, people started noticing all that imbalance (and the old imbalances that were still left over). The pendulum then swung over to designed-in balance in 4e, and with 5e has swung back to more (casual? natural language? half-baked? Ikea-like unfinished? IDK) open design empowering DMs and making balance a low priority.

I know that without too much effort (relatively speaking) I could kitbash 5e into something I'd run, I could probably even mangle 3e into something tolerable with quite a bit more effort, but I really don't think I could twist 4e into a game I'd want to run

If you simply don't want to run a balanced game, I can understand the sentiment. Though, I think you underestimate the ease with which even the best-balanced games can be willfully imbalanced. For instance, in the classic game, casters start with few Vancian spells, that baloon in number until they utterly dominate, while non-casters get no resources other than hps. Simply heaping more spells on casters and stripping non- casters of any toys they may have at higher level gets you right back there.

I'm not entirely sure I agree that balance is the foundation on which all else rests

A critical component of said foundation, then.

or if it is that it needs must be exactly level.

Ironically, that gets into a different flavor of imbalance. A game without choice is as imbalanced as a game with many choices, one of which is vastly superior to the others. Stable, more than perfect, I think, is the point of the foundation in this metaphor.

 

[Garthanos]

D&Ders were pretty active on UseNet, and, before that on BBSs, including MUDs for instance. The earlier community, though, was certainly connecting through 'zines in the 70s, and The Dragon (and other mags like White Dwarf) through the 80s (and into the 90s), alongside evolving digital media as time marched on.

I was heavily in the Amateur Press Associations back then specifically Allarums and Excursion it got you talking with game designers and hackers

 

[Lanefan]

I'd add the following options (since they are the ones I use!):

(e) Provide strong rewards for in-game engagement through factional allegiances/favours earned that express differently for the different classes.
(f) Provide guidance to both the players and DM on how (and why) to grow breadth of capability as opposed to depth of specialization through rewards earned in play -- be that types of magical items kept, supernatural abilities gained, or mundane abilities such as low justice, landowning, titles, and leadership.
(g) Provide guidance to the DM regarding circumstantial effects on social endeavours from reputation, social position, and gossip.
(h) Provide guidance to the DM on how (and why) to include other gifted or leveled NPCs for the PCs to exploit as part of the setting. The discussion should touch on the pathological versions (DMPC, PCs as errand boys, PCs aren't needed) as well as discuss hirelings, cohorts, specialists-for-hire, allies, and rivals.
(i) Provide guidance to the DM and players wrt placing and leveraging environmental resources.

That almost sounds like you're running 2e's Birthright, or a near variant. If you're not, give it a look - it has a lot of this stuff already baked in.
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Eh. I think 3.5 and 4e were just accelerants on an already burning fire. I didn’t play much of 2e before 3e came out ...

Late-era 2e was a mess (which I did my best to ignore) which is why 3e came in as such a breath of fresh air for many people at the time.

I think the popularity of 5e is because they answered this question correctly; design it stable enough for tourney play but freely encourage deviation on your own. This goes back to my comments about balance being the foundation. For example, the game is balanced around the assumption of no magic items, but the DMG freely states you can hand them out like candy if you want that kind of game. It warns you of course, but the fact that they built the game in this fashion is a large reason the choice flows so well. In 4e and 3.5, magic items were assumed, and even the inherent bonuses really didn’t do an amazing job of going backwards. While 4e was pretty balanced and 3.5 definitely was not, they were similarly rigid in this design. 5e succeeded in mostly keeping the balance aspect while creating greater freedom for people to have varying level of item prevalence.

In many ways 5e seems to want to just give you the chassis and some bare-bones parts and then offer a boatload of options, where 3e and 4e wanted to give you the whole car fully loaded but with very few if any options beyond colour. I too prefer the 5e design model.

Fair enough, though to continue the analogy my problem with the supposition of the thread is that some people might say “you can stay afloat regardless of if it’s calm or stormy” which is where the variation lies.

Balance in this analogy is merely a matter of attempting to smooth out the waves. Do you smooth out the big ones and let the little ones go (macro-balance), do you smooth out the little ones (micro-balance) while either working on or ignoring the big ones, do you try to make the sea flat calm (perfect balance), or do you just ignore the lot and buy a sturdier boat?
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If you simply don't want to run a balanced game, I can understand the sentiment. Though, I think you underestimate the ease with which even the best-balanced games can be willfully imbalanced. For instance, in the classic game, casters start with few Vancian spells, that baloon in number until they utterly dominate, while non-casters get no resources other than hps.

Which to me is a variant of long-term balance - perhaps not an ideal one, but it is balanced: vancian casters are a short-term-pain-for-long-term-gain proposition.

That said, high-level non-casters can be pretty powerful too in their own right...just not *as* powerful as the casters. It's not like the non-casters never improve at all.

Lan-"as a high-level 1e Fighter, a battle with a caster would still come down to who won initiative in the first round"-efan

 

[Tony Vargas]

.
Balance in this analogy is merely a matter of attempting to smooth out the waves. Do you smooth out the big ones and let the little ones go (macro-balance), do you smooth out the little ones (micro-balance) while either working on or ignoring the big ones, do you try to make the sea flat calm (perfect balance), or do you just ignore the lot and buy a sturdier boat?

I'm sorry, what's the boat in that analogy, it can only be the game. The sturdier boat /would/ be the better balanced one. The flat sea would be the formulaic campaign that avoids any imbalancing situations.

Which to me is a variant of long-term balance - vancian casters are a short-term-pain-for-long-term-gain proposition.

Sure, it's just a particularly ineffective one, even for the balance- of- imbalances 'Long term' approach.

If you simply don't want to run a better-balanced game, I can understand the sentiment. Though, I still think you underestimate the ease with which even the best-balanced games can be willfully imbalanced. For instance, 4e is better-balanced, giving all classes a rough parity in resources, hps, surges, action points, encounters, & dailies. If you wanted to (kit)bash 4e back into the classic shape, all you'd have to do is take encounters & dailies away from the martial classes, and give the traditional 'full caster' classes more dailies - perhaps by the simple expedient of not having them trade out lower-level dailies in Paragon and Epic, perhaps by also allowing them to swap encounters and utilities for dailies, as well.

The balance of the game doesn't prevent that or make it difficult. Though it does make it very clear exactly what you're doing.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm sorry, what's the boat in that analogy, it can only be the game. The sturdier boat /would/ be the better balanced one.

Actually I was thinking the sturdier boat would be a group of players who don't worry o'ermuch about such things and just ride the waves.

If you simply don't want to run a better-balanced game,

I never really said that. It's more that balance, while fine in and of itself, is further down my design-priority list than it might be for other people; and I'm quite willing to allow short-term imbalance if there's a countervailing long-term balance e.g. 1e wizards v fighters.

I can understand the sentiment. Though, I still think you underestimate the ease with which even the best-balanced games can be willfully imbalanced. For instance, 4e is better-balanced, giving all classes a rough parity in resources, hps, surges, action points, encounters, & dailies. If you wanted to (kit)bash 4e back into the classic shape, all you'd have to do is take encounters & dailies away from the martial classes, and give the traditional 'full caster' classes more dailies - perhaps by the simple expedient of not having them trade out lower-level dailies in Paragon and Epic, perhaps by also allowing them to swap encounters and utilities for dailies, as well.

The balance of the game doesn't prevent that or make it difficult. Though it does make it very clear exactly what you're doing.

Oh I'm sure I could make a right mess of 4e if I wanted to...maybe even improve a few things if I was lucky...but it'd be more effort than it's worth in part because, as you say, I'd have to strip it down to its very component parts and rebuild it from scratch rather than just strip it down to the chassis like I would with 3e.

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

Actually I was thinking the sturdier boat would be a group of players who don't worry o'ermuch about such things and just ride the waves.

A bad anology, then - if all the players are quie literally in the same boat, then there's nothing to balance.

I never really said that. ... I'm quite willing to allow short-term imbalance if there's a countervailing long-term balance e.g. 1e wizards v fighters.

Sorry if we're speaking different languages, but that's preferring imbalance, just with a side of theoretical fairness if you stick with it long enough.

...but it'd be more effort than it's worth in part because, as you say, I'd have to strip it down to its very component parts and rebuild it from scratch

That is the exact opposite of what I said. A few sentences of simple mods, removing swaths of powers from some classes, and you're there. The point wasn't that there was a point to breaking a balanced system when already broken ones are so plentiful, just that doing so is dead easy compared to fixing a broken one - but also that it's decidedly obvious that the result is broken.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Another way to look at it is this: a superhero game might be designed to have mechanics that help ensure that Black Widow's player is able to contribute as much as Thor's player (eg metagame mechanics of some form).

This is true, but t it need not be necessary. Adventure design can be just as important as the game design itself. If you know the strengths and weaknesses of each character, then you should be able to give each an opportunity to shine regardless of the rules.

I don't think 5E (or most games with which I'm familiar) are so poorly designed as to lend themselves to such imbalance. This is why I'd agree that most imbalance is indeed self created.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If you know the strengths and weaknesses of each character, then you should be able to give each an opportunity to shine regardless of the rules.

Sure. Take imbalanced characters in an imbalanced game and manipulate the situation so that each has a moment to shine. Spotlight 'Balance.' Like Lanefan's Long-Term 'Balance,' it's not balance at all, but a way of imposing fairness on an imbalanced system.

This is why I'd agree that most imbalance is indeed self created.

Maybe in the sense that any imbalance can be fixed (or, more likely, compensated for), so failure to do so is self-inflicted. Similarly, no matter how robustly balanced a system, it can be broken - so, again, self-inflicted.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Fundamentally with the right players and the right DM, you can run any system and have fun.

As a system becomes less and less balanced, it takes either more and more effort on the behalf of the players and DM or more raw luck to achieve that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sure. Take imbalanced characters in an imbalanced game and manipulate the situation so that each has a moment to shine. Spotlight 'Balance.' Like Lanefan's Long-Term 'Balance,' it's not balance at all, but a way of imposing fairness on an imbalanced system.

Maybe in the sense that any imbalance can be fixed (or, more likely, compensated for), so failure to do so is self-inflicted. Similarly, no matter how robustly balanced a system, it can be broken - so, again, self-inflicted.

Exactly. I don't think that the "default setting" of most games is that imbalanced. It takes either pretty dedicated effort or pretty crazy circumstance for things to be that imbalanced.

I mean, I suppose it may vary depending on what we mean by "imbalanced", but the most likely meaning to me is having one PC that totally outshines the others. When that happens, it's usually a case of one player knowing how to min/max and another not. That's like saying basketball is unbalanced because you put Lebron up against a 5 year old.

Fundamentally with the right players and the right DM, you can run any system and have fun.

As a system becomes less and less balanced, it takes either more and more effort on the behalf of the players and DM or more raw luck to achieve that.

This is probably true. But just to make sure I understand....do you mean balanced between player options like classes and such? Like if one of the classes was so much better a choice than the others....is that what you mean?