Class Balance - why?

[DMKastmaria]

Re: 3e - Ran one 3e campaign that went to high levels. The Fighter type guy had Samurai and Kensai prestige classes and was a virtual whirlwind of death.

Who the hell played a straight Fighter in 3e, anyway?

I agree that the MU class was too damn much in that edition, but the arguments about "caster-superiority" usually feature some rather selective data. Add in powerful magic items that the Fighter is going to be toting and the idea that they were worthless is more than a little overstated.

Now, my player who insisted on playing a straight rogue, he was screwed. Practically begged him to roll up another character. It was almost impossible to challenge the rest of the party and not kill the poor PC. The Kensai, Sorcerer and Cleric, were able to hang together fine at 15th level.

Re: 1e - If you were playing a Fighter in 1e and felt useless, then it was your fault or you had a crappy DM! Fighter's in my high level 1e game were riding dragons, leading armies numbering in the tens of thousands and had kick-ass magic items, to boot.

Not to mention the fact that what your PC does is up to you! I've never once had an experienced player, be unable to significantly contribute and have fun, in a 1e game. Even at 20+ level (never had anyone play a straight Thief, but...)

Quite the opposite and most experienced DM's have and had players who always, but always played Fighters. Because they like it! And have fun!

On the other hand, I've played low level 1e MU's and still had a blast, participated and contributed to the game after casting my one little spell. Because it's a role-playing game and in 1e I can at least try to do damn near anything I can think of.

The game is not just about the character sheet. Not the game I play and run, anyway.

A 1e MU is freakin' awesome. But, they're still vulnerable, still can't cast a spell if they're exposed to jostling and are unprotected, etc. Personally, I don't let an MU get off a spell with a longer casting time than 1 segment, if he's directly threatened in melee. You can't stand relatively still and concentrate (necessary, per the DMG) when some bozo is waving a sword in your face.

I'm not saying that there aren't some valid points on the "balance" side of the argument. But some of those arguments, seem totally disconnected from actual play. At least in my experience.

One of those 1st level Mu's I talked about above, had to tackle a wererat, in a fight where no one in the party had a magic weapon. He was quite effective in that battle, and I used nothing from his character sheet, but his weight.

 

[DMKastmaria]

At 5th level, wizards got fireball. Back in 1e/2e, it was the be all end all of 3rd level spells. It had a HUGE radius that could be made even bigger if you were in an enclosed space. It did 5d6 points of damage at the level you got it. Most of the enemies you were fighting were 1-4 hitdice creatures at that time, which meant you killed most enemies you were fighting on an average roll of a fireball. If not, they were so low in hitpoints at that point that you could sit back and watch the fighters pick off the last couple of points of damage.

Thieves in 1e/2e weren't good at combat at any level. Being limited to daggers for damage and encouraged not to have a high strength meant they were often doing 1d4+1 points of damage at early levels. Which averages 3.5 damage or about 1/5th that of the wizard's fireball. Backstabs could only be used if the enemy didn't know you were there...which meant you couldn't use it most combats that you started by walking in a door.

And it isn't about concentrating too much on the math. It doesn't require concentrating on the math for longer than a couple of seconds and a simple understanding of numbers to say "I have a THAC0 or 15, so I need a 15 to hit this enemy for 1d8+3 points of damage to one enemy. You have an 70% chance of doing 5d6 points of damage and a 30% change of doing half that to all 20 enemies we are fighting(for a total of 350 points of damage if no one saves and 175 points of damage if everyone saves) ....how is that fair?"

I actually think it's the DMs JOB to understand the math behind the system and to correct for it when possible. Perhaps you aren't thinking enough about the math.

Except, this isn't really what goes down. Not at all!

What goes down, is that the party is lucky enough to have enough distance from a group of enemies, that the MU can get off his fireball, taking care of them, thus saving the Fighter's HP and the rest of the party's resources, so that on that next encounter, when they're face to face with enemies and there's no room for an Area Effect Spell, the Fighter's are still tough enough to handle the situation.

You're ONLY thinking about the math. Your example is totally disconnected from actual play.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

What goes down, is that the party is lucky enough to have enough distance from a group of enemies, that the MU can get off his fireball, taking care of them, thus saving the Fighter's HP and the rest of the party's resources, so that on that next encounter, when they're face to face with enemies and there's no room for an Area Effect Spell, the Fighter's are still tough enough to handle the situation.

You're ONLY thinking about the math. Your example is totally disconnected from actual play.

That's not true at all. This is my opinion formed through playing D&D 2-3 times a week for nearly 15 years straight now.

It's been different in different editions. In 2e, since fireballs expanded to fill whatever space they were put into, people were hesitant to cast a fireball, because it nearly impossible to do the math in your head to see if the room was too small and therefore would cause the fireball to hit your party or you.

But as soon as you were in any outdoor encounter or any room described as obviously big enough, the fireball came out, killing everyone.

For the longest time, we didn't use the initiative system in the book. We rolled 1d6 for each side and the highest side took all of their turns at once, in clockwise order. Our first group had 12 players in it. It would take way too long to follow the initiative system of saying what actions we were taking and then applying modifiers to our initiative based on those actions. So, Wizards couldn't be interrupted no matter how close they were to an enemy in that game.

In our later 2e games when we had less players, we used that system, but there is only a 3 segment time that a Wizard could be interrupted while casting a fireball. The full details escape me right now, but if I remember correctly, you'd roll 1d10 and then if you rolled a 2 and then said you were casting fireball, you were casting from init 2 to init 5. If the enemy rolled 6 for their initiative, even in melee, it was impossible to interrupt your spell.

And yes, if you succeeded on those spells, you saved your fighters hitpoints for the next battle, where you'd switch places. Instead of the fighter hanging back and waiting for the Wizard to kill all the enemies, the Wizard would hang back and wait the 3-4 rounds for the fighters to take out all the enemies while he watched, not willing or able to use any of his spells.

Either that, or the Wizard would cast his guaranteed to hit 5d4 magic missile and still do more damage than the Fighter every round.

In 1e/2e. Wizards were a lot less powerful than they were in 3e, however. 3e virtually removed the concept of spell disruption since you had to hit the wizard at the exact right time, and concentration was too easy to boost. Fireballs didn't expand to fill the area anymore, so you could just pick a square on the map and you'd never hit your allies. And you only needed to have the radius of the spell in space.

But either way, there are millions of different situations you can get into in a D&D game. The situation should not affect the balance of the game. It's ok to have a battle here and there where the Wizard's best power doesn't work. But to say that "If the room is too small, the Wizard doesn't overpower the Fighter" isn't a balancing factor. The classes should be balanced whether the DM is running an entirely underground game with 10x10 rooms or an above ground game where all the battles start at 100 ft away with no terrain.

You NEED to look at it from a purely math point of view because every DM is going to run their game differently. And if even 10% of DMs run into problems because their games are entirely outdoors, that is a problem with the class. You can't just say "Well, my games have been entirely underground and the Wizard is fine. If everyone else would just run their games underground, they'd have no problem." Just like you can't say "The Wizard is overpowered, but as long as you create more powerful enemies to counter all their abilities they are just fine."

The game system needs to be designed so that nearly 100% of DMs can have an easy time running the game and nearly 100% of all players can feel like they were doing something useful in every round of combat and weren't overshadowed. Relying on the DMs skill/battlefield circumstances to balance these things drops the percentage to much lower than 100%.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Seems like you had an optimized wizard and an unoptimized fighter in the same party. A fighter with WF, GWF, Str 24 and +5 weapon would have +28 to hit, for example. That's probably not particularly optimized either.

Well, I assumed a +1 weapon. We were playing Living Greyhawk mostly and equipment was hard to come by. Plus, almost everyone felt that it was better to take a +1 shocking frost flaming acidic merciful weapon than to take a +5 weapon. After all, nearly every group had a cleric to cast Greater Magic Weapon on your weapon every session anyways, to increase it back up to +4 or +5. But without the Wizard and Cleric, they'd be at that power level.

Which only reinforces that the casting classes were too powerful. And before anyone asks. I'm aware that the other classes(including Fighter) could be made nearly as powerful in combat, I'm aware. But as powerful as a Fighter could get, a Cleric could be better than them at fighting or a Druid or sometimes even a Wizard. Plus, no matter how powerful a Fighter was made IN combat, they always had to have virtually no out of combat abilities at all.

I don't necessarily like the fact that power level in 3e depends on optimization, but it does mean even two characters of the same class can easily be "unbalanced", if only one is optimized.

Yes. That's my single biggest reason for switching away from 3e. There was imbalance between individuals of the same class, between members of different classes, and between the PCs and the monsters. And as each book came out, and my players gained experience with powergaming, and the number of powergamed ideas posted on the internet grew the imbalance between the 3 grew.

Until at the end, finding a monster whose stat block was good enough to do anything but drop dead just by looking at the PCs was near impossible. And being a member of the Triad for Living Greyhawk and having to write and edit adventures that were designed to be played by 4-6 characters levels 8 though 12 with any combination of experience levels, classes, and power levels and any kind of DM made me want to tear my hair out.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

From @GeeksDreamGirl twitter, tweeting the seminar happening now on DnDXP:

"#ddxp Monte: A #dnd wizard MEANS something. It's diff than Gandalf, or a spellcaster in Skyrim. We are focusing on the feeling of the class."

Yeah, I felt kind of dumb when I read it in her Twitter feed. I agree that it IS something different...and perhaps it's taken on a life of it's own at this point. I'm just hoping they can find a happy medium between having Wizards who can teleport across the world and Fighters who take months on horseback to make the same trip.

They've said in that same panel that some classes will be better at certain areas than others. I don't so much have a problem with Wizards having the edge in transportation. I'm just hoping the edge isn't overwhelming. Or at least that they don't ALSO have the edge in combat.

 

[hanez]

I'm really not getting where that comes from. Gandalf interferes all the time. It is, in fact, his job to do so. He does so indirectly or subtlely because, in a mano a mano fight with Sauron, he's badly outclassed. In order to maximize his effectiveness, he has to apply strategy, avoid the head-on conflict, and not draw too much attention to himself when he's supposed to be traveling in secret.
With that in mind, we can neither conclude that Gandalf is like a D&D wizard or unlike a D&D wizard except in very limited ways.

No. Its specifically mentioned in Tolkiens work that Gandalf as an Istari was not allowed to interfere directly with mortals. Thats why most of his work is "meddling", talking, advising etc. He only made an exception for Saruman who was also an Istari. You could perhaps also add the Balrog as an exception, perhaps that is somehow related to Saruman. Nevertheless the fact remains that for the bulk of Hobbit/LOTR Gandalfs lack of spells is because he was deliberately holding back using them because of some code. The background for this is in the Simarillion.

Quick google search found me this from http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Wizards

The Istari came to Middle-earth around the year 1000 of the Third Age. They were clothed in the bodies of old men, restricting their powers so that they would only assist to the peoples of Middle-earth and not seek domination like Sauron, a fellow Maia spirit. By inhabiting the bodies of Men they were ordered by the Valar to assist the people of Middle-earth through persuasion and encouragement, not force or fear.

 

[pemerton]

Why not do a little research on the work of Vance (an obvious first stop, surely), LeGuin and others?

The Vancian issue has been debated at length in a recent thread on general, so I won't rehash that - just state my agreement with [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] that 4e in many ways is closer to Vance than 3E, because it confines wizards to a handful of potent daily spells at one time. (Though for truly Vancian wizards, the at-wills probably should be martial, and the encounters involves potions and similar alchemical items.)

But I've just recently reread the Earthsea books, and so have views on them. The spells that we see used include (from memory):

*light and illusions (a wide variety);

*shapechanging (which is one mode of transportation spell, though dangerous because of the tendency to lose one's sense of self);

*weather summoning (the other mode of transportation spell);

*conjuration and mending in the style of an AD&D illusionist's minor/major creation spells (used to magically repair boats);

*quite powerful holding/binding spells (used against dragons, galley oarsmen etc);

*curses and confusion;

*healing and herbalism;

*animal calling and control;

*necromantic summoning/astral projection (used to call spirits and to travel to the land of the dead - also very dangerous).​

This is the sort of spell list that, in D&D, might be given to a witch class - a sort of druid/illusionist combination, but with the necromantic aspect thrown in also.

I still think that this shows that a wizard can feel wizardly while being limited in certain respects - there is no teleportation, no D&D-style elemental or force attacks, and no wish spells. In combat, Earthsea wizards mostly fit the "controller" paradigm - conjuring weather to hinder their enemies, using hold person/monster, and speaking words of command/cursing. The only time that a shapechange is used in combat is when Ged turns into a dragon to fight dragons - in an RPG version of Earthsea, some technique would need to be used to limit the resort to shapechange, or it could quickly come to dominate in a way that would not replicate the feel of the stories.

It is a little obscure exactly how powerful (and how mythically powerful) the heroic warriors of Earthsea are, but one important ability they have which wizards lack is rulership - in contemporary D&D terms, then, Earthsea warriors would probably be warlords as much as fighters. Mere warriors, being obviously inferior to wizards, would be NPC fodder, I think.

 

[pemerton]

R. E. Howard's Conan is not the best example for this argument.

It's a while since I've read it, but didn't Conan deal handily with the death-touch monks hanging out in a Stygian(?) temple?

But this also raises the issue of metagame mechanics, which [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] has talked about at least over the past year or so. Conan is good at getting the equipment that he needs - in the Phoenix on the Sword, for example, he gets the relevant equipment in a dream. If we turn this into an RPG, shouldn't the player of Conan have the ability to ensure that his/her PC get the relevant equipment? - rather than relying on the GM's largesse, or the cooperation of another PC.

for the bulk of Hobbit/LOTR Gandalfs lack of spells is because he was deliberately holding back using them because of some code.

And if you want to achieve this feel in an RPG, you don't design the PC to be uberpowerful, and then rely upon the player to adhere to the code (either because s/he is a "good roleplayer", or because there is some mechanical penalty, a la AD&D alignment and paladin rules, for not doing so). You design the PC so that it is as powerful as it should be when adhering to the code, and then you give some sort of ability that permits, in extremis, the use of powers beyond the code (like my "drop the veil" idea above).

we don't need to justify flying because Gandalf did it. Its there because its fun to do. Heres a crazy idea, instead of making classes less fun, lets make them all more fun.

Well, didn't 4e try that - rogues who are as good at stealth as wizards, fighters who can be demigods, etc? And get widely criticised for doing so?

 

[hanez]

I

Well, didn't 4e try that - rogues who are as good at stealth as wizards, fighters who can be demigods, etc? And get widely criticised for doing so?

Well. I cant speak for everyone, but by knowing a lot of players and being active in the edition type posts, I can honestly say Ive never seen "making martial classes stronger" as a criticism of 4th. I have to say that is something I would compliment 4th for very much.

I loved giving the fighter powers

I think the criticism comes from forcing EVERY CLASS into the same power structure, not everyone has to have the exact same at wills, encounters and dailies. One class (perhaps the fighter) could have mostly at wills that are comparitively weaker then another class (perhaps a wizard) that has mostly dailies. When people such as myself argue against balance, we arent saying "dont make the fighter stronger" we are saying dont force them all into the exact same mold.


PS I also think there should be a martial class like the wizard (many spells/powers) and a arcane class like the 3e fighter (pretty much straight at wills, like the 3e warlock). This would give people more choices.

 

[pemerton]

I can honestly say Ive never seen "making martial classes stronger" as a criticism of 4th.

I had this sort of thing in mind.