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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Number48" data-source="post: 5783498" data-attributes="member: 6688047">TL;DRI got through page 4 and never saw what I was thinking expressed:#1) Before we can discuss balance, we must first decide what IS balance. To decided what balance is we must discuss what D&D is. I think the best description for D&D that would suit most people is that it is a story and a game at the same time. However, when we compare a D&D game to works of fiction, there is a critical difference. Nearly all fiction has a single protagonist, or rotates narration of protagonists. In D&D, all the characters are equally-important protagonists. Would you play in a game if you had to play Pippin? It's great to be the main guy, but can you convince people to come every week to play somebody useless. So, the characters must all be equivalent in terms of importance of the story. We'll come back to the story later.#2) We discussed story, but it's also a game. This is pretty easy. If the horse in monopoly was better than the shoe, then the choice between them is not a choice at all. Likewise D&D. Do all the pieces of the game have to work exactly the same? No. Do they have to be able to do the as other pieces? No. If each person plays a single piece in a game, each piece has to be equivalent in the mechanics of the game. More on that later as well.#3) Let's talk about the rules and marry together what we discussed about story and game. If the game has problems, the DM has the capability of addressing them, whether these are global or campaign-specific problems. The real question is, is it worth it? There is an arbitrary line where a DM will give up wrestling with the rules and play a different game instead. This addresses the need for at least a starting point for balance. So what comprises a D&D game? I think that the broad definition would be that most reasonable people run a D&D game as a combination of mostly-story events combined with the mostly-mechanical combats. Too far one way, and you are just imrov acting. Too far the other way and it's a boardgame.#4) A small conversation about characters being equivalent. Say I cut 2 pieces of a cake and 2 people get to choose them. The optimum solution is when they both think they got the better piece of cake. This is possible because there is no single way to objectively quantify which piece is better if they start out similarly. The way that both people can think they got the better piece is that the pieces are initially similar but each offer a slight difference more appealing to one of the choosers. I choose the one with more frosting, you want the one with more candy bits. This is what needs to be strived for. The fallacy of 4E is that the designers determined to make all pieces equal to all people always. What they got was a limited, kinda boring game. Instead, we need to have a game that starts us all in a similar position but with many nuances that make each character seem the best to the person playing it.So, the challenge. 5E should be a game that lets every player participate in way that makes them FEEL an equal member in both story and combat, no matter if the game is 80/20 or 20/80 balance. It needs to avoid the pitfalls of designing in an intended limiting factor that an average group will not do, even though it would be the correct choice from a story-enjoyment point of view. The case in point would be a 3E wizard. The idea being that the wizard would have to carefully balance using the best spells with using less-useful spells in order to complete out the dungeon with the party, and thus achieve balance over the course of the adventure rather than per-encounter. What actually happened is that, if the DM didn't contrive limiting factors, is the party would walk in, shoot all the biggest guns then go rest, come back and shoot all their biggest guns again. Even if wizards cannot rest more than once a day, the party will often choose to simply waste the time because it makes mathematical sense to them. You cannot expect the group to have the forethought to do what best pleases everybody in the long-run. Each person will only play his own character. Limitations for balance that are easily sidestepped are not limitations at all.So, it all comes to marrying game theory with a little behavioral psychology.</blockquote>

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