Discussions about "balance" at the table

[Driddle]

So many threads on this board revolve around a vague sense of character class design "balance," it's almost become a throw-away fluff term like "ethics" or "traditional values."

To bring it into focus a little -- or at least one perspective of many -- I ask this: How many times do you hear players during a game declare, "Hey, ol' Bob's character is more powerful than mine. Shouldn't some of our class abilities be modified slightly so that we're on equal footing?"

 

[ElvishBard]

You have no idea how often my players say it. Every other word is complaining how unbalanced everything is. Of course, they are joking and we have a good laugh about it each time. We never talk about balance during the game, once it is over we bring up the really powerful stuff we did and discuss how it might be unbalanced and how awesome it was lol.

 

[fusangite]

You've hit upon two issues in your post:
1. Player concern over balance issues
2. Social problems with balance issues

As a player, I am often concerned when house rules are added or applied in such as way as to damage game balance. And I often raise these concerns with my GM.

However, you are right that it does get tricky when the lack of game balance comes from another PC being granted rule variants that damage game balance. I find it tough to address this issue when a fellow player's character, and thereby the party, is benefitting from poorly considered GM decisions that impact on game balance.

At least when I am offered such opportunities to unbalance the game, I turn them down.

 

[BlackMoria]

I don't hear it, despite 30 years of playing in dozens of campaigns.

Most people realize that if player A's character is better than player B's character, it usually is not a question of balance but of how much a min/maxer or utter twink Player A is in comparison to Player B.

Or, it is a perception of the impartiality and competence of the DM. If a DM favors a player (a no no, but know to happen), there is a incorrect conclusion that that's player's character is better than the other characters.

I have had a newbie ask once why he can't cast spells when one of the other character could. I explained why his character choice - a fighter wasn't a spellcasting class and if he wanted to spellcast, he could take a cleric or mage type. But he didn't like the hit dice and other things of the spell casters. What he wanted was to wear plate mail, carry a big ass sword and cast spells all day, and search for and disarm traps.

In this case, he was new to the game, barely understood the ins and outs of the classes and didn't understand the framework of the game. Once he understood this, he stopped asking why so an so's character could do something his character couldn't

But I never heard of someone say or imply - since so and so's character is better than mine, let's change the rules to make my character better...

 

[AuraSeer]

During a game session, never. Rules discussions of any complexity are not allowed to slow to down play and bore everyone else. If anybody has an argument about the rules, they email the DM about it, and the ruling (if any) takes effect at the beginning of the next session.

That aside, I've only seen a few cases of a player claiming his PC is weaker than another. When it does come up, the usual cause is bad choices on the part of that player-- taking suboptimal feats, or playing a wizard with low Int, or some such. Then it's much more likely that the player wants to retcon new choices for his PC, rather than weaken somebody else.

If one class were very much stronger than another, my group wouldn't ask that the strong class be nerfed. We'd just end up with few PCs of the weak class, and be more likely to have levels in the strong class.

 

[Crothian]

Never, not at the table not BSing after the session or chatting with people during the weak. Mostly it is something people on the net like to argue about and abuse but in practice doesn't come up at the gaming table.

 

[Insight]

Often times, a complaint about balance is really a complaint that someone else at the table is taking up too much of the spotlight. Players need time to show what their characters can do, and to feel that their character choices have meaning.

The Rules as Written are pretty balanced for the most part. Sure, there are some that have obviously not been playtested very thoroughly, and there are tons of threads about 'broken' classes, skills, feats, spells, etc. Generally speaking, however, combinations of character classes, etc from the Core Rules are going to be pretty balanced, rules-wise.

Balance is laughable when comparing PCs to NPCs though, and sometimes this is where complaints come in. NPCs are not supposed to be meticulously balanced against the PCs, and any suggestions to the contrary often come from power gamers who still believe they can 'beat the game'. The endgame in RPGs is to have fun, and anything that leads us to that ultimate conclusion is a good thing. Balance for balance's sake typically does not lead to fun, especially for the GM, who is often left holding the bag.

 

[Psion]

I find that most things that people complain about on message boards never show up in the game.

I have had players complain about balance. In a few cases they were justified (one character in a 2e game I had knew how to min-max), but often such observations are petty and shortsighted (I had a player once who took major issue with sneak attack, and even after I made it clear I wasn't going to be doing anything about it, felt the need to bring it up every fight where the rogue done good. He was eventually disinvited to the game.)

 

[Rystil Arden]

Although there is often quite a bit of power disparity in my games, since each player tends to branch out and specialise in different areas, they don't step on each other's toes.

For instance, the player of the Archmage level 18 might say to the player of the Frenzied Berserker level 18, "Wow, your character is basically unkillable and does massive amounts of damage. Great! Now you can serve as an effective tank for my new scheme to go kill things for money [the Archmage is very materialistic]."

And in return, the Frenzied Berserker's player might say, "Just make sure you're using that super-high caster level to search out new random magical effects for me to study and figure out how to somehow make the DC 100 Spellcraft check to devise a magical ritual that will allow us to seal the ancient source of magic from the Vandolians."

So, while each of the characters is remarkably unbalanced in some way, it leads to constructive comments and congratulations more often than a stick-in-the-mud player who wants to cut back on the power of the other PCs.

Now, they sometimes have complained when I created NPCs that were even more unbalanced than their PCs ("What do you mean she's an Iajutsu Master/Frenzied Berserker? I choose to disbelieve her [said by a player who had played both of those prestige classes separately in the past].")

 

[the Jester]

To bring it into focus a little -- or at least one perspective of many -- I ask this: How many times do you hear players during a game declare, "Hey, ol' Bob's character is more powerful than mine. Shouldn't some of our class abilities be modified slightly so that we're on equal footing?"

Never. I don't think I've ever heard a pc complain like that. I have at least one player who tends to point out stuff that he thinks is overpowered about his own characters, though.