Class Balance - why?

[pemerton]

Encounters and Dailies for martial characters aren't REALLY that hard to look at in a way that makes sense.

I prefer to regard them just as metagame abilities.

What is the difference between a Brutal Strike and a Reaping Strike, in game? Nothing. They're both hits by the fighter. The Brutal Strike is just a slightly more brutal one. What the mechanics do is let the player of the fighter decide when his/her PC will achieve a slightly more brutal strike, by letting him/her choose to use the daily rather than the at-will.

What is the difference between hitting two targets with a close burst, and hitting target A with a melee attack in round 1, and then hitting target B with a melee attack in round 2? Nothing, except that with the close burst the fighter got lucky, or struck slighly more quickly, or . . . (This actually helps to reduce the sense of a stop-motion world that a turn-based combat system can tend to engender.)

Now some ranger and rogue powers that impose conditions (blinded, weakened etc) perhaps do have to be narrated as special moves, but they are a minority of overall martial powers. And even then there's nothing stopping the player of the ranger characterising every attack as an Excrutiating Shot - it's just that only once a day is it so excrutiating that the target is weakened!

 

[Wormwood]

IYou 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.

I respectfully disagree.

At my table, a 1st-level Rogue is every bit as interesting as its 1st-level Sorcerer counterpart. And they maintain parity to 20th level and beyond.

But if the rules allow one character to overshadow another, then the rules are broken.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not if the GM is harsher on the player of the sorcerer than the player of the rogue in adjudicating free-roleplayed action resolution.

Or if the GM designs encounters that the sorcerer will feel obliged to engage mechanically, while creating space in the same encounter where the player of the rogue can free roleplay.

This is not how I particularly like to run or play the game, but I think it is what the OP has in mind, and I think it is a fairly widespread way of playing D&D (I would say it became widespread in the mid-80s and would associate it mostly with a certain type of 2nd ed AD&D approach).

Basically, you treat the unfairness of the rules by adding unfairness in how or when to apply them. Maybe this is a case where two wrongs make a right for some people - if the "unfairness" in the second part is part of the social contract, it may not be felt as such.
I, obviously, dislike it.

 

[pemerton]

So do I. But I really do think this is what the OP has in mind - what else are we meant to make of the repeated invocations of the importance of the GM, and the claims that those of us who rely more heavily on mechanical balance have lost the roots of the game in a powerful GM who is more than just a miniature-pushing funny-voice-talker?

 

[Hassassin]

But if the rules allow one character to overshadow another, then the rules are broken.

I think allowing "overshadowing" is pretty much inevitable. (E.g. make a clone of another player's character and be a dick about playing it.)

However, encouraging it would be another matter, and I think some people here may see the 3e rules as having done that.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think allowing "overshadowing" is pretty much inevitable. (E.g. make a clone of another player's character and be a dick about playing it.)

However, encouraging it would be another matter, and I think some people here may see the 3e rules as having done that.

Probably some here do, but while I largely agree with their analysis of the problem, I wouldn't go as far as "encouraging" on that question. In fact, sometimes I think the problem is not with the "over-powered" casters but with everything else. We tend to want to rein in the 3E wizard, cleric, and druid on behalf of the poor fighter, paladin, ranger, bard, etc. However, in 3E, those casters finally got to do a lot! That's been a complaint of earlier editions for some time.

The problem was, most everyone else got stuck too close to the old model. A bunch of feats (or minor music magic or sprinkling of low-level spells and abilities) just didn't compare. That is, in relation to the main model, 3E tends to hamstring several classes, the initial fighter, bard, and ranger being the prime examples. It just seems like encouraging the casters to be overpowered in comparison.

Of course, a lot of people didn't like the iniital 4E answer to that, either--bring the fighter and the rest up to snuff with analogous mechanics, flavored differently. Yet, nothing says that some combination of 3E/3.5/4E/Essentials couldn't come up with a good set of "stances" or the like to mix with feats to make the fighter operate on that same plane with the wizard. I think you'd still need to find away to make casting not quite so reliable compared to the 3E model, but that could probably be done.

 

[Spatula]

I respectfully disagree. If any player playing any character can contribute equally to any facet of the game (i.e. any situation), then there may be some feelings that the choices they make are not meaningful. For example, if I choose to play a rogue and I can contribute equally in a fight against undead as a player who built an undead-hunter priest type character, his character concept is cheapened. He should be better than me in that scenario. That's just the tip of the iceberg with encounter design - some encounters will favor certain class/race/ability combinations and that is okay.

"Combat" is a facet of the game that takes up a lot of playing time. "Combat vs undead" is a specific situation, and not at all what I was talking about.

 

[billd91]

But if the rules allow one character to overshadow another, then the rules are broken.

On what scale? Rogues in 4e generally overshadow most other characters in stealthy or thieving situations. Does that mean the rules are broken?

 

[billd91]

So do I. But I really do think this is what the OP has in mind - what else are we meant to make of the repeated invocations of the importance of the GM, and the claims that those of us who rely more heavily on mechanical balance have lost the roots of the game in a powerful GM who is more than just a miniature-pushing funny-voice-talker?

I ghink people are starting to make a lot of unsupported assumptions in this thread.

 

[Dellamon]

So do I. But I really do think this is what the OP has in mind - what else are we meant to make of the repeated invocations of the importance of the GM, and the claims that those of us who rely more heavily on mechanical balance have lost the roots of the game in a powerful GM who is more than just a miniature-pushing funny-voice-talker?

I'll agree with that, but I am not being judgmental, which is how I think some of you are taking it. I honestly believe that the structural changes brought about in the later editions marginalized the role of the DM. It really boxed the game into a more rigid framework and invited min-maxing and power-gaming (and a healthy dose of rules-lawyering). If you are one of those gamers (and there is nothing wrong with that - to each their own), you probably love those editions. If you are not, you probably are not the biggest fan. I, obviously, am not one of later edition fans. While not as refined as 3.5 or 4E, I feel the framework of 1E (and retro clones and hybrids like C&C, etc.), allows for more narrative freedom for the DM and more creativity for the players. Plus, combat and encounter resolution is soooo much faster (and usually deadlier!).

Ultimately, from my experiences at the game table, I think the abundance of rules and powers have stifled player creativity. I see that in a lot of the younger players that I have played with. And a lot of those changes were made in the name of strict class balance.

I'm just psyched to see the re-release of the 1E books. I hope a lot of the people who started playing in the 3E era can give it a shot.