Can somebody explain the bias against game balance?

[ProfessorCirno]

Honestly, I think the key is to simply accept that statistics are no longer meant to be flat assumptions of an adventurer's actual, well, statistics. They, like so many other things, are just abstracted now.

 

[Ariosto]

In one 4e session in which I was a player, a halfling was better at intimidation than a minotaur. Neither was trained, but the little guy had a higher charisma -- the same factor governing (e.g.) diplomacy. There's a little problem in the ratings, and there was a bigger one in the DM's getting hung up on those rather than considering the circumstances.

However, considering the circumstances of a big, bull-headed guy swinging a big battle-ax (versus a child-sized guy pointing with a dagger) would have given a bonus based on something other than the abstract mathematical "build".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Here's where we differ: I see this issue in every single edition of D&D.

True...up to a point. A Half-orc is still only 2x to 2.5x bigger than a hafling...but a Minotaur, Goliath, or Dragonborn may be 3-4x more massive.

I want to examine and clarify this a bit.

If we look back at 1ED, there were no playable races that were significantly more powerful or dexterous than any other. All of the PC races were basically just a tiny bit of a variation away from humanity, at least in terms of physical/mental attributes. Essentially, the issue we're talking about didn't exist.

In 2Ed, we got the Complete Book of Humanoids, which let us play creatures like Ogres and Minotaurs. While their Str bonuses were only +2, realize that those races could go beyond the whole fractional Str chart. That meant that an Ogre or Minotaur PC could get up to a Str of 20 (yes, I'm looking at the book as I write this), which was far outside the reach of most other PC races which were capped at 18/00 or even 18 or less. They literally were as strong as some Giants...indeed stronger than a couple of subtypes.

3.X gave us wide open PC gen rules, Savage Species (the spiritual descendant of Complete Book of Humanoids) and standardized stats- no more 18 to 18/00 stuff on the Str chart, so a +2 was a +2. In THAT regime, Minotaurs (and other races with stats far outside of human variation) used for PCs didn't get a +2 bonus to stats like Str, they got bonuses of +6 or more. In addition, some had abilities on top of those larger attribute bonuses, like the Goliath's Powerful Build ability.

4Ed, OTOH, stripped away some of the iconographic potency of these races in the interests of balance. IMHO, this stripped away their flavor.

In 4Ed- looking at PHBs 1-3 plus FR and Eberron- there are 8 races or subraces capable of getting a +2 bonus to Str: Humans, Half-Orcs, Shifters, Genasi, Warforged, Minotaurs, Goliaths and Dragonborn. Most have an average mass under 250lbs. In that context, those that mass over 300lbs seem almost...wispy...in comparison to their mass. They're not as impressively beefy as they used to be.

And other races that got the same kind of treatment suffer just as much. Githzerai of previous editions were granted unusually large Dex bonuses. They were agile in ways that Elves could only wistfully contemplate. This contributed to their aura and mystique. Now, Elves are every bit as dexterous as Githzerai. The grey-skinned monks of the Astral plane have lost some of their cache.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Honestly, I think the key is to simply accept that statistics are no longer meant to be flat assumptions of an adventurer's actual, well, statistics. They, like so many other things, are just abstracted now.

If my Str doesn't tell me how strong I am relative to other beings, what good is it?

If my Dex doesn't describe my relative agility, what good is it?

If that's the level of abstraction you're proposing, I submit the game has abstracted such elements to so great a point as to reach uselessness. You might as well not have stats.

 

[Nifft]

If my Str doesn't tell me how strong I am relative to other beings, what good is it?

Str, when combined with feat, class and race bonuses, tells you how good you are at Str-based tasks, including some attack and some skill checks. It may be responsible for one of your defenses, too.

If my Dex doesn't describe my relative agility, what good is it?

Dex, when combined with feat, class and race bonuses, tells you how good you are at Dex-based tasks, including some attack and some skill checks. It may be responsible for one of your defenses, too.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If my Str doesn't tell me how strong I am relative to other beings, what good is it?

Str, when combined with feat, class and race bonuses, tells you how good you are at Str-based tasks, including some attack and some skill checks. It may be responsible for one of your defenses, too.

If my Dex doesn't describe my relative agility, what good is it?

Dex, when combined with feat, class and race bonuses, tells you how good you are at Dex-based tasks, including some attack and some skill checks. It may be responsible for one of your defenses, too.

To which I'll counter that you might as well just fold that into the Feats and other mechanics and do away with the stats if the stats in and of themselves describe nothing unique and useful.

Such a system that would tell you things like "If you want your PC to be more dexterous, pump more build points into skills that reflect such agility, such as Tumble or Escape Artist, or into Damage Avoidance. Strong PCs might want to buy more carrying capacity, basic damage, or even levels in Intimidate." No stats required.

But D&D stats- like nearly every other RPG out there- tell you something about the physical and mental prowess of the PC in question, regardless of abstraction. Not so what ProfessorCirno asserts.

 

[Ariosto]

Villians & Vigilantes (1982 revision) is still one of my favorite games. When it was published, though, Champions was already light-years ahead in the kinds of game balance that I think are most to the point of the OP.

It was necessary for a Champs ref to moderate how players spent their points, to make sure that supposed disadvantages and advantages really were properly assessed in the campaign context, and to nix "game breaking" notions. Flexibility always comes with such a price.

However, the points system made it easy (if often time consuming) to work out balances of character power. It helped that long combat sessions were -- par for the course in that genre -- the central focus. I have not seen the new (6th) edition, but from what I have read about it there is a decoupling of factors that might make such evaluations even easier.

V&V emphasized the element of surprise, and the downright wackiness, characteristic of the comics that inspired it. The recommended approach was to play oneself with the addition of a semi-random (but mostly random) set of super-powers.

A character with few powers tends to be less powerful than a character with many. This being the case, the GM is encouraged to upgrade the usefulness of the powers received by a character with few powers, in order to make him capable of contending with more powerful characters. Also, random die rolls cannot be expected to consistently produce sets of powers which go well together. In many cases it is advisable to modify one or more powers, perhaps drastically, in order to create an interesting set of abilities. When modified, powers shouldn't be made more or less useful, except for the reasons stated above, or perhaps as part of a give-and-take situation where one power is diminished to increase another.

If players instead are choosing their powers, then even the probabilistic factors don't apply -- and it is easier to come up with extremely powerful synergies.

Some things just are not immediately provided for, and those can be surprising omissions. For instance, neither wall-crawling nor web-spinning turn up as "arachnid powers". To lift tons of weight, one really needs not just a high strength score but a lot of body mass (telekinesis, as written, not availing much).

Still, I find that it works out pretty well most of the time taking things just as written. Variations in character "stats" tend just to fit into the bigger picture of what players do, and how, along with a hefty helping of chance. The effects of experience levels are quite subtle next to those in D&D, serving much more to give a sense of growth than to determine the odds in encounters.

Like the D&D editions that had come out at the end of the '70s, V&V was still very much rooted in the original "just examples for your consideration" gamer-to-gamer mode of viewing and presenting RPG "rules".

Over all, I find the emphasis in those old games more on players exploring the imagined world -- not just as a map, but as an often surprising process -- than on players defining the milieu. Strategy is very important, more in choices in the role-playing context than in choices of mechanical scores. However, that "stuff happens" on the basis of swings in dice-rolls is also important. There's a keen appreciation of the novelty factor that makes "Man Bites Dog" news whereas "Dog Bites Man" is not.

The super-hero genre has its own peculiarities, of course. The vagaries of the comic book business and the value of trademarks have established that death is seldom more than a temporary state. On the other hand, it is just one of many occasions on which characters may be subject to radical transformations. Retroactive continuity is par for the course (and just as reversible). Of all forms of fantasy, this is the most far out!

 

[Nifft]

To which I'll counter that you might as well just fold that into the Feats and other mechanics and do away with the stats if the stats in and of themselves describe nothing unique and useful.

Then you must have missed the part where they do, in fact, contribute something useful. ("Unique" is an empty complaint, since every PC has every stat, and many PCs will have the exact same score in any given stat. Stats are the least unique aspect of any D&D PC, because the combinations are so limited. If this wasn't just blind rhetoric, and you actually had something to express here, perhaps could you find a better word for it?)

They aren't enough to fully describe all the stuff some people seem to want them to describe. They must be combined with all the other resources to which your PC has access.

However, many systems do get rid of stats, and some lack feat-like resources as well. Some of these systems are quite good. If you wanted to go that route, there's plenty of prior art from which you could steal.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I don't see the difference between 6 and 15 as splitting hairs. Rather far from it, in fact.

The difference between 6 and 15 is four bonuses, which might be what you're trying to talk about but I'm talking about racial bonuses -- which are the difference of 2 at most.

Now you are assuming that halfling culture and half-orc culture would not be defined by their characteristics.

I'm assuming that both races have blacksmiths, and that all blacksmiths prosper in part by being strong.

Compared to seeing their societies as different, getting hung up on the stat mods *IS* very much splitting hairs.

Getting hung up on D&D's stat mods is a practice in hair splitting, period. That's my point. None of the mods are particularly "realistic," which is why I've given up analyzing what they "should" be.

My original comment is a reflection of how silly I find D&D's stat mods from a realistic PoV. They're inherently unrealistic, and therefore unworthy of prolonged attention or analysis (aka hair splitting).

True...up to a point. A Half-orc is still only 2x to 2.5x bigger than a hafling...but a Minotaur, Goliath, or Dragonborn may be 3-4x more massive.

Not sure what your point is.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Thats what abstract hit points for .... you know it was one of the things that bugged me back in the late 70's and its now a saving grace. (Of course other mechanics now support that definition better than in the past).

Why did it bug you back then? Hit points were abstract then and are still abstract now.