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Balance one spell
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<blockquote data-quote="Grydan" data-source="post: 6228660" data-attributes="member: 79401"><p>One cannot 'balance one spell' in isolation. Balance requires at least two things to be compared. </p><p></p><p>Trying to balance a spell in isolation is like trying to balance an old-fashioned set of scales while only placing anything on one side.</p><p></p><p>You need a baseline, a spell that establishes the desired level of power. Then other spells can be compared against it, to see whether they exceed that power, fall short, or match it exactly. Exact matches are, in any complex rules system—and D&D spell-casting is pretty much always a complex rules system—unlikely, to say the least. What you want to try to achieve is 'close enough'. You want advantages to be balanced out by disadvantages. If it's ever obvious, absent campaign-specific or personal-preference specific considerations, which spell a player should take, then something has probably gone wrong. To a certain extent, it's unavoidable: if not all spells are mathematically identical, then there's going to be a <em>most</em> and a <em>least </em>in any numerical comparisons. If not all spells are applicable in all situations, there's going to be a spell that can be used the most frequently and one that can be used the least frequently (though that's going to be affected by campaign considerations much more than some aspects). What people seeking balance are striving for is to make the gap between the best and the worst as small as possible, so that players who make the choice—for whatever reason—to not take the 'best' aren't left in the dust. </p><p></p><p>It's important to always work from the same baseline. Not doing so results in <strong>power creep</strong>. You start with your baseline, make a bunch of spells that are 'close enough', with a few being just a bit more powerful. Then someone works up a new batch of spells using one of those slightly more powerful spells as their baseline, and you wind up with some spells that are 'close enough' to that new baseline, but noticeably more powerful than the original baseline. Continue this pattern of adjusting the baseline long enough, and you'll find that the last spell you 'balance' isn't even remotely balanced with the first spell you began with.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Grydan, post: 6228660, member: 79401"] One cannot 'balance one spell' in isolation. Balance requires at least two things to be compared. Trying to balance a spell in isolation is like trying to balance an old-fashioned set of scales while only placing anything on one side. You need a baseline, a spell that establishes the desired level of power. Then other spells can be compared against it, to see whether they exceed that power, fall short, or match it exactly. Exact matches are, in any complex rules system—and D&D spell-casting is pretty much always a complex rules system—unlikely, to say the least. What you want to try to achieve is 'close enough'. You want advantages to be balanced out by disadvantages. If it's ever obvious, absent campaign-specific or personal-preference specific considerations, which spell a player should take, then something has probably gone wrong. To a certain extent, it's unavoidable: if not all spells are mathematically identical, then there's going to be a [I]most[/I] and a [I]least [/I]in any numerical comparisons. If not all spells are applicable in all situations, there's going to be a spell that can be used the most frequently and one that can be used the least frequently (though that's going to be affected by campaign considerations much more than some aspects). What people seeking balance are striving for is to make the gap between the best and the worst as small as possible, so that players who make the choice—for whatever reason—to not take the 'best' aren't left in the dust. It's important to always work from the same baseline. Not doing so results in [B]power creep[/B]. You start with your baseline, make a bunch of spells that are 'close enough', with a few being just a bit more powerful. Then someone works up a new batch of spells using one of those slightly more powerful spells as their baseline, and you wind up with some spells that are 'close enough' to that new baseline, but noticeably more powerful than the original baseline. Continue this pattern of adjusting the baseline long enough, and you'll find that the last spell you 'balance' isn't even remotely balanced with the first spell you began with. [/QUOTE]
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