Class Balance - why?

[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.