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General Tabletop Discussion
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Balanced vs. Imbalanced vs. Today's D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 9082375" data-attributes="member: 22779"><p>This. This. 1000 times this.</p><p></p><p>If the system is balanced and functional, you can unbalance it very easily and you KNOW what your changes are going to do. In an unbalanced system, any change is very difficult to predict because you can't really know how it will interact with all these other areas of imbalance.</p><p></p><p>All you have to do is look at the whole "AD&D is the MOST LETHAL GAME" meme. See, the thing is, I realize that I made all sorts of changes to AD&D when I played it. And those changes resulted in a game that played very, very differently. So, no one can really talk about playing AD&D. Because your table, my table, and Dave's table over there are all operating from such different baselines that comparisons are virtually impossible.</p><p></p><p>In a balanced system, you can actually compare tables, compare house rules and come to a fairly reasonable approximation of why X or Y occurs at one table and not another. Because that's what balanced systems are - predictable. Doubling monster HP in a balanced system has a pretty predictable result. In an unbalanced system, who knows. I know when I ran 2e, I always gave monsters max, or very close to max, HP because they were too easy in combat otherwise. </p><p></p><p>Probably due to changes I'd made during character generation plus the proliferation of TSR splat books that took the idea of game balance out behind the shed and put a gun in its ear.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 9082375, member: 22779"] This. This. 1000 times this. If the system is balanced and functional, you can unbalance it very easily and you KNOW what your changes are going to do. In an unbalanced system, any change is very difficult to predict because you can't really know how it will interact with all these other areas of imbalance. All you have to do is look at the whole "AD&D is the MOST LETHAL GAME" meme. See, the thing is, I realize that I made all sorts of changes to AD&D when I played it. And those changes resulted in a game that played very, very differently. So, no one can really talk about playing AD&D. Because your table, my table, and Dave's table over there are all operating from such different baselines that comparisons are virtually impossible. In a balanced system, you can actually compare tables, compare house rules and come to a fairly reasonable approximation of why X or Y occurs at one table and not another. Because that's what balanced systems are - predictable. Doubling monster HP in a balanced system has a pretty predictable result. In an unbalanced system, who knows. I know when I ran 2e, I always gave monsters max, or very close to max, HP because they were too easy in combat otherwise. Probably due to changes I'd made during character generation plus the proliferation of TSR splat books that took the idea of game balance out behind the shed and put a gun in its ear. [/QUOTE]
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