Class Balance - why?

[Dellamon]

I've primarily just lurked on the forums the past few years, but now that the new edition has been officially announced I wanted to discuss something that bothered me with 4E (and to some extent 3.5). What is the obsession with class balance? Why should a magic-user and fighter or rouge and cleric all be comparable in power at the same levels? Isn't balance a subjective quality that can shift based on play conditions?

I think one of the things that did the most damage to class balance was putting all classes on the same xp progression table (I think this occurred in 3E). Granted, the XP progression in AD&D was a bit wonky, but I think they were on the right track in some regards. It makes sense that a fighter or rouge class would progress more quickly than a magic using class. If you make the progression ratio 1.25:1 (or something like that), you have suddenly balanced out the tables a bit, especially when you consider the challenges most magic-using classes face with survivability in the early levels. True, once a magic using class reaches higher levels, they are very powerful. But should they not be? The god-like wizard, sorceress, or priest that is a force in the world for good or evil is a staple of classic fantasy. I think 4E magic using classes lost that mystique by trying to force balance through the rule set rather than putting that in the hands of the DM.

And if you think about it, there was additional balance built into AD&D that a lot of people just chose to ignore (it was too hard to use, slowed game play, etc.). That balance was in the form of weapon speed factors and dynamic initiative. It was completely plausible that a 5th level fighter could defeat a 10th level magic-user if they got the jump on them and had a little luck with the dice (and the 10th level magic-user is not a Monty Haulizard). Could you say the same for a 5th level magic-user taking out a 10th level fighter, even if they got a jump on them? I think the later is a lot less likely.

I fully understand that we all want to be special flowers at the table with our characters, but should that not be more about character development and roleplaying than stat blocks? You can make your 1st level rouge just as interesting and fun as a 20th level sorceress with the power to level mountains. The rules should not try to force that, but rather compliment play to make sure you have fun regardless which class you try to play instead of sit around comparing die sizes all evening.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Class balance is a good way to allow everyone to take the spotlight and feel contributing to the game. If one class is weak at an aspect that comes up very often in your game, the player in question can easily feel left out and not enjoy the game much.

But should they not be? The god-like wizard, sorceress, or priest that is a force in the world for good or evil is a staple of classic fantasy.

Is it really? Lord of the Rings, maybe. But then... I didn't find Gandalf all that powerful,he didn't seem to slay people left and right or even throw fireballs.
And I definitely know that one fantasy archetype is that of the guy that only goes by his wits and his martial skill - even against those wizards and priests. Isn't Conan regularly fighting priests and wizards?

I think the archetypes do not per se set a "maximum reasonable power level". It sets more their style, but the rest is a matter of experience, training and pure devotion. Most people just don't have the opportunity to devote all their time to studying spellbook or mastering their fighting styles. They have "normal" lifes.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

My take? Class balance is important because no one wants to suck night after night while another player steals the show, just because you chose to play a rogue and he chose to play a wizard. Every character should be able to provide a fair contribution, all else being equal. That's not to say the same contribution -- fair is not equal, fair is fair.

I'd like to think we learned from the bad old days of 2 hp magic-users with one light spell, who could do nothing but hide at the back of the party for most of the adventure, hoping to eventually gain enough levels to really be important ... and by the time they got there they rendered their fighter and thief counterparts irrelevant.

As to XP ... they are a metagame concept. Design rule #0 for game designers in my opinion should be not to balance in-game concepts by metagame systems. One XP should have equal value for all players, just as in-game one GP has equal value for all characters. If you want a class to be "easier to learn" and gain in power faster, bake that into the class design; don't do that by varying the value of XP for every player at the table. Similarly, if you have magic item creation, don't try to balance it by having an XP component requirement ... again it's using a metagame concept to try and solve an in-game balance dilemma.

 

[Deset Gled]

I'll ignore the basic question of "why" and instead focus on "why does this need to be designed into the game":

If you want a balanced game and the system is inherently unbalanced, it can be darn near impossible to modify the game in the right way to find balance. But if you want an unbalanced game and the system is inherently balanced (or close to it), it is extremely easy to modify the game as you wish. Change the xp levels, add extra abilities, cap levels, whatever; those are all easy mods to make.

Thus, if some people want a balanced system and some don't, it is easiest to make both sides happy by having the base system be balanced and allow it to be modified.

 

[hanez]

Thanks for making this post! I completely agree. I have been wanting to post something like this for a while but have been looking for a way to word it. (and may still do that)


I was happy to have different levels for classes go in 3rd editon, that was just something I was happy to let go. But every class being soooo similar in 4e was really the dealbreaker for me and my play group.

I believe that a lot of the discussion on these forums miss the point. Mainly that a large part of the problem with 4e was that it was OVERLY focussed on combat balance. In fact I remember the designers arguing that there was no way to balance vancian magic with at will fighter-type powers (e.g. attack).

I would argue that this largely misses the point of D&D. The point is to play archetype characters that we see in fantasy, to have an amazing time playing those characters together as part of a team roleplaying through interesting encounters and kicking the bad guys butt.


I respect the drive for balance and believe that previous editions needed work to balance play, but I also believe the cost that 4e incurred was not worth it. Everyone needs a spot to shine, but those spots dont all have to be "cause x damange and move the enemy one space".

• Let the fighter be an unbeatable brute that people are truly scared of and regularly run from.
• Let the rogue have adventures where he says "well I just killed everyone in the keep before they knew we were even here, guess we can just walk to the treasure",
• Let the wizard rain fire down from the sky raising an army.
• AND let all classes have different areas to shine in noncombat too! If the bard bypasses a whole adventure or convinces an army to join the party because of his charm it is JUST AS SATISFYIN as "causing x damage". I played an illusionist not because I wanted to do as much damage as everyone else, but because I occasionally want to bypass battles because of my whit.

It's ok if during one adventure, someone shines more then the other, thats what makes D&D characters so darnd interesting. Work to balances forces together, but dont throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

[avin]

True, once a magic using class reaches higher levels, they are very powerful. But should they not be?

They should be equal to the powerful level Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, etc.

The god-like wizard, sorceress, or priest that is a force in the world for good or evil is a staple of classic fantasy.

In the way you describe Conan would knee down to Thulsa Doom and beg for his life.

There's only ONE thing that can make me turn back to 5E and never return: a edition that keep the pre-4E notion that Fighters are sidekicks for high level casters.

Boo!

 

[hanez]

Thus, if some people want a balanced system and some don't, it is easiest to make both sides happy by having the base system be balanced and allow it to be modified.

Sure.... but if that was sufficient 4e would have captured those players who could have just used unbalanced "house rules" or expansions. Instead, I believe they played the game as described in the first 3 books, found its strict balance to be comparably boring to what they were used to, and abandoned the game for something else. That may happen again if 5e leaves what we like for a Mod.

There's only ONE thing that can make me turn back to 5E and never return: a edition that keep the pre-4E notion that Fighters are sidekicks for high level casters.

I highly disagree with your assessment of that being the case pre-4e. I have had many fighter players that would disagree, Taku:lightbringer (my brothers half orc barbarian), and Babo Gutwrencher (my friends dwarven fighter) often laughed at the weakling wizard (who, granted, would one day amaze them too).

But I agree that 5e should aim for closer balance between the two. Maybe the fighter is unbeatable in one-on-one fights with big baddies, and the wizard is unbeatable on one to many fights with their minions?

As long as it isn't balanced because they have the same amount of powers, and that there powers do roughly the same thing (as in 4e), I will at least give the system a try.

 

[Dellamon]

Amen to that! Class balance is imperative in a tactical war game (which I felt 4E developed into) played on a battle mat or in an MMO, but does not need to be so ingrained in a roleplaying game. There are narrative aspects that cannot be achieved with true class balance.

 

[avin]

• Let the fighter be an unbeatable brute that people are truly scared of and regularly run from.
• Let the rogue have adventures where he says "well I just killed everyone in the keep before they knew we were even here, guess we can just walk to the treasure",
• Let the wizard rain fire down from the sky raising an army.

You like playing casters, don't you?

I agree that the 4E model where every single power look similar to another isn't fun, but back to a place where casters rule the game and Fighters watch it's a deal breaker to me.

 

[Ahnehnois]

My take? Class balance is important because no one wants to suck night after night while another player steals the show

A very telling choice of words. Would that we could balance players, but the best we can do is try to balance the mechanics for their characters.


Class balance is important inasmuch as all the available options should be at least minimally viable, and none should be clearly dominant over the rest. That said, even early versions of D&D easily achieved this is most cases.

A lot of the modern "balance" emphasis is more about the designers trying to win a battle with an obnoxious group of players whose goal is to abuse the rules. This is a battle the designers are doomed to lose, and frankly, the rest of us can end up being casualties.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Sure.... but if that was sufficient 4e would have captured those players who could have just used unbalanced "house rules" or expansions. Instead, I believe they played the game as described in the first 3 books, found it to be found strict balance to be comparably boring to what they were used to and abandoned the game for something else. That may happen again if 5e leaves what we like for a Mod.

Who is to say they got it all right in D&D 4. The balance was there, but their approach isn't the only possible one. That is what Essentials showed us.

I am almost certain that if the first core rulebook had looked like Essentials, D&D 4 would have caused much less fracture. But it would be just as balanced. But it took probably a year or so of understanding the D&D 4 system and all its implications to get to that.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The reason people want class balance is because feeling like the 3rd wheel in a group sucks. Most D&D games spend 50-80% of the game in combat. There are some people who play with a lower percentage than that, but that appears to be the average.

So, in a 5 hour long session, knowing that at least 2 and a half hours of that time will be spent fighting things, most people want to know that they are doing something useful during that time. There's only so many times when it becomes your turn in combat that you can say "I continue hiding under the table until the wizard goes and kills all the enemies with his fireball" before you get sick of it.

Could you say the same for a 5th level magic-user taking out a 10th level fighter, even if they got a jump on them? I think the later is a lot less likely.

Yes, I could. They have a number of spells by the the time they get to 5th level that is a near guaranteed win in they were fighting a 10th level fighter: Hold Person is likely to win a battle if the magic-user goes first. So are a number of other spells. Depending on how high the fighter rolled for hitpoints a fireball could take him out. Stoneskin, I think, is probably 4th level, but I can't remember. It has the ability to make the wizard immune to nearly all attacks from the fighter for a couple of rounds. My knowledge of spells from 2e and 1e has dwindled in the years since I last played it. Charm Person pretty much ends combat and lets you control the fighter for a while.

I fully understand that we all want to be special flowers at the table with our characters, but should that not be more about character development and roleplaying than stat blocks? You can make your 1st level rouge just as interesting and fun as a 20th level sorceress with the power to level mountains. The rules should not try to force that, but rather compliment play to make sure you have fun regardless which class you try to play instead of sit around comparing die sizes all evening.

But what if your idea of fun is being the cool rogue who leaps over people's heads, trips the enemy and stabs them in the back, killing them outright and you aren't satisfied with doing 1d4+3 points of damage to one enemy while your wizard friend hits 10 enemies doing 10d6 points of damage to each of them?

You can roleplay the bad-ass rogue all you want, but when the rubber meets the road, the rules determine what you can actually DO instead of what you SAY you can do. And when those rules have the wizard waving his hands over locks you tried 10 times to pick and failed, only to have them open immediately....or those rules have you search a door for traps, not find any and then have your wizard wave his hands and discover all the traps in the room...or you try to sneak past some guards only to have them hear you(but not your friend the wizard, who has a silence spell up)...well, you begin to feel like it might be better to just be a wizard.

Sure, you can roleplay just as well as that wizard. But over half the time, you aren't roleplaying, you are fighting. People just want to be as good in both halves of the game.

 

[Dellamon]

Extremes - thats what I think hurts the discussion of class balance. The whole concept of "Well, if my fighter cannot cause as much damage in a round as a wizard who casts a meteor swarm, then I am done!". This is a tactical wargame balance argument, not a roleplaying argument. Why can the fighter not contribute just as much by sneaking around the flanks and hitting the big bad while the big bad wizards duke it out. They could turnt he tide of the battle. Or the priest who provides the critical heal at just the right moment. Or is it all just about damage?

 

[hanez]

You like playing casters, don't you?

I agree that the 4E model where every single power look similar to another isn't fun, but back to a place where casters rule the game and Fighters watch it's a deal breaker to me.

Not really. I have mostly DM'd in my play sessions. In 2e I liked casters because I liked complicated characters. But what I really like to play is archers/rangers and on occasion classes that are very weak in combat (illusionists, charmers etc).

I also LOVE rogues, but have less experience in playing them. I know in my campaigns they get serious attention time, because its often the rogue that says ok, Im going to sneak around and try and find some stuff out while you guys sit here and wait. Granted the party often gets restless and does other stuff, but theres just something cool about him sneaking around and slitting throats.

 

[Rex Blunder]

I wonder what the overall "I think casters should be overpowered"/"I prefer to play casters" Venn diagram looks like. a poll?

I do think there is a place for a game where someone chooses to be Superman and someone chooses to be Jimmy Olsen. However, these should be labeled clearly up front. A newbie player who decides to play a fighter shouldn't have to discover after a few levels that he has Jimmy Olsened himself.

 

[Belphanior]

Amen to that! Class balance is imperative in a tactical war game (which I felt 4E developed into) played on a battle mat or in an MMO, but does not need to be so ingrained in a roleplaying game. There are narrative aspects that cannot be achieved with true class balance.

It's certainly correct that "true" balance can never be achieved through the mechanical aspects of the game alone, but so what? Even if the balance is not perfect it can still be good. Saying that class balance can't be achieved is like saying that world peace can't be achieved - probably true, but that doesn't mean it's a bad goal to strive for.


On the other hand is also the issue that class balance can sometimes be the same as the narrative aspects you mentioned. Spellcasters can choose to bypass encounters entirely by teleporting the party to the end destination of their journey. Spellcasters can gain obscure knowledge simply through casting a spell. Spellcasters can instantly force an NPC to become a friend. Spellcasters can raise the dead. Spellcasters can summon so many allies that they literally get multiple turns per round to play with.

And so on.

The Fighter, as a class, is very hard-pressed to keep up in 3e. Sure he can maybe convince an NPC of something with some good words. Sure he can tip the scales of a fight by being in the right place at the right time. But those aren't class features; the wizard can also do all that, and so much more besides.

 

[Dellamon]

You can roleplay the bad-ass rogue all you want, but when the rubber meets the road, the rules determine what you can actually DO instead of what you SAY you can do. And when those rules have the wizard waving his hands over locks you tried 10 times to pick and failed, only to have them open immediately....or those rules have you search a door for traps, not find any and then have your wizard wave his hands and discover all the traps in the room...or you try to sneak past some guards only to have them hear you(but not your friend the wizard, who has a silence spell up)...well, you begin to feel like it might be better to just be a wizard.

Sure, you can roleplay just as well as that wizard. But over half the time, you aren't roleplaying, you are fighting. People just want to be as good in both halves of the game.

I was using that example as a roleplaying / fun example, not a literal power example. And I think that is the crux of the issue - class balance is looked at by the majority of players from a purely combat and mechanical perspective. It seems a lot of people have lost the narrative roots of roleplaying. A good DM an allow a 1st level thief to be a bad ass if that is what the story requires. And make it a lot of fun for the player as well.

 

[hanez]

double post

 

[hanez]

I wonder what the overall "I think casters should be overpowered"/"I prefer to play casters" Venn diagram looks like. a poll?

I think this is a strawman and is somewhat frustrating. We got that attitude in 4th, "oh you just want that because you want to be better then everyone else" ... no, I have never heard of codzilla except in forums, and neither have the 10-12 players I regularly play with.

I think in D&D there is a dungeon master, and that dungeon master is tasked with making the game fun for everyone. He does this buy managing time slicing, droppping the perfect item for the fighter a couple adventures before he needs it, making an enemy somehow magic resistant the adventure after Gandalf "shined a lil too much" and buy calling people out when they are min maxing and not roleplaying.

I think the more D&D caters to "professional players" who debate on what the mathematical best class is, the less it can be relevant to 4 guys sitting around a table because they just want to play some cool characters that ARE DIFFERENT from eachother.

I also think no one wants them to be OVERPOWERED. No one said that. What we want is them to be sufficiently different, vary in strengths at different levels and in different situations, and remain true to D&Ds traditional archetype. Make them as balanced as you can, just not like 4e did because that just made them all the same class IMHO. Feel free to buff the hell out of the fighter if the system needs it, I believe Iron Heroes and even 4e had a lot of ways to make the fighter more interesting. Just don't reduce the classes to the same exact same framework in your attempt to balance the game.

Extremes - thats what I think hurts the discussion of class balance. The whole concept of "Well, if my fighter cannot cause as much damage in a round as a wizard who casts a meteor swarm, then I am done!". This is a tactical wargame balance argument, not a roleplaying argument. Why can the fighter not contribute just as much by sneaking around the flanks and hitting the big bad while the big bad wizards duke it out. They could turnt he tide of the battle. Or the priest who provides the critical heal at just the right moment. Or is it all just about damage?

I think this is soooooo right. Maybe now and then the big baddy needs to be immune to fireballs and the like and you better hope you brought your raging fighter/barbarian to smack him over the head. Or maybe he's got hostages that your going to fry (I always thought fireballs did a bad job of not reminding the DM that they burn even the good people)

 

[Belphanior]

I was using that example as a roleplaying / fun example, not a literal power example. And I think that is the crux of the issue - class balance is looked at by the majority of players from a purely combat and mechanical perspective. It seems a lot of people have lost the narrative roots of roleplaying. A good DM an allow a 1st level thief to be a bad ass if that is what the story requires. And make it a lot of fun for the player as well.

1. People can disagree/have different preferences without having "lost their roots".

2. A good DM can do anything. How about an average one? Or a sub-average one? If a product can only be properly used by an above-average user, then it's not a good product.

3. I think you'll find that not everybody uses a "story". I for one simply construct a scenario and let the PCs react to it. I have no ending in mind. I have no story. Story is what happens after the events, not before them. So for people like me, we can't let the 1st level thief become badass this way. It feels repugnant to me too - if I'm allowed to be badass because the DM wants me to be at that moment, it's not truly badass. It's being patronized. I want to be badass because I legitimately am a badass.