D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[dave2008]

Agreed 100%. Any perceived loss of power or ramp up in difficulty is taken as a slight against their character. Maybe since they don’t see the DM side of the screen, they think that the game is already balanced fairly? But then again, that calls back to the game balance of them winning fights 70% of the time being “fair”. I’m not looking to kill characters or be a terror of a DM, I’m just looking for stakes and challenge and the actual threat of character death.

Me too, friend. Me too.

I guess that is the advantage of gaming with friends. We don't have these issues. We simply discuss how we want to play the game and do it. We all understand the point of a game is to have fun, for everyone. You just need to agree to find a path of play that is good for the whole group (DM and PCs).

 

[dave2008]

I actually have a hard time having that conversation with my players, at least having it in that way. We are very focused on what makes logical sense in the fiction, and that often has little to do with exactly how many resource-expending encounters happen over a given period of time. What you're describing is a very anti-immersion conversation from our point of view.

Should be an easy conversation then. What makes logical sense in the fiction is the giant is much stronger than a tiny human (or elf, or dragonborn, etc.). So, logically, for immersion, the DM should double or even triple the giant's hit points and DPR. Easy, logical, and immersive!

 

[Oofta]

I'm genuinely astonished that people thing players want a 100% or 90% chance at winning. This is unimaginable at my table. Each to their own but it strikes me as mind-numbingly boring. If you go onto, say, Mongoose Traveller forums the received wisdom isn't balance. The advise newbies get is NEVER fight a balanced fight. If you can't contrive a massive advantage then you don't fight. Simple. And the Keeper isn't expected to only throw ghouls and deep ones at you in Call of Cthulhu. A star spawn is going to tear the city apart, not be a decent challenge to experienced investigators. Balance is something you put in your game because you want it and the rule have little to do with it.

I think most people want to either be able to win the fight, know they should not even attempt a direct confrontation, or want to have a reasonable chance to flee without sustaining losses when they realize they're going to lose. Permanently killing a PC is the end of a hero's journey, a TPK is typically the end of a campaign so of course they want to come out victorious.

On the other hand, there will be times when retreat is the better part of valor and that can be part of the fun as well ... but it needs to be obvious that retreat is necessary. We've been conditioned by action movies and video games to think that the protagonists (the PCs in the game) have plot armor and virtually always win the day unless it's a glorious sacrifice at the end of the campaign.

So no, they don't need to always defeat the enemy, but that's not the only way to "win" an encounter.

 

[Oofta]

The typical player doesn't really care about balance. They want to be superheroes with no risk of dying.

It's pretty well established that PC's are designed/built to curb stomp a BBEG in two rounds.

That's not balance...

It was designed that way, because that's what the majority of players want.

Following the old rule of "repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it"? Because there's no basis for these statements. Some groups want fast and easy combats, other love slogs where half the party drops to 0 on a regular basis. It's up to the DM and group who should be discussing up front what kind of game they want.

But keep repeating this when it's obviously untrue because the only one who decides how difficult every encounter will be is ultimately the DM. I guarantee that given any party, even a level 20 party, and I can build an encounter that will wipe them out. May take a while at higher levels, but I have infinite dragons and if the story calls for it have no issue using them. As I stated above, if an encounter is completely unfair I'll make sure the party has a chance to bravely run away, but if they refuse let the dice fall where they may.

EDIT: typo

 

[Mecheon]

It's pretty well established that PC's are designed/built to curb stomp a BBEG in two rounds.

That's not balance...

It was designed that way, because that's what the majority of players want.

I mean, you're correct on the second point there, that isn't balance

That's called "Poor encounter design" and kinda is irrelevant to this thread as a whole? The discussion is on balance. BBEG's go down super quickly in every edition except 4E anyway. If you want them to stay around, take some lessons from that or from MMO fights. If the BBEG isn't designed to be a slug-fest taking multiple rounds, then no matter how hard you complain, the stat-block won't magically change to make them one.

Balance, in this case, is referring to all of the classes being designed well enough they can contribute to the fight (And making a class unable to contribute in combat is not an answer, 90% of the game's rules are about combat so that's what matters). An unbalanced edition is 3.5E, because in the PHB alone, several of the classes (Monk, Fighter, Paladin) are some of the weakest classes in the entire game, while other ones (Druid, Cleric, Wizard) are some of the overall strongest. That's what balance is trying to avoid, the sheer gap in power between "This class is useless" and "This class is so powerful that I out-shine everyone else on the table and negate their fun because I solve every problem single handedly"

 

[Micah Sweet]

I guess that is the advantage of gaming with friends. We don't have these issues. We simply discuss how we want to play the game and do it. We all understand the point of a game is to have fun, for everyone. You just need to agree to find a path of play that is good for the whole group (DM and PCs).

I spend a lot of time as a DM looking for that compromise. Sometimes I find it.

 

[cranberry]

Balance, in this case, is referring to all of the classes being designed well enough they can contribute to the fight (And making a class unable to contribute in combat is not an answer, 90% of the game's rules are about combat so that's what matters).

Sure, no one wants to play a weak class and feel useless. Why is that controversial?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Should be an easy conversation then. What makes logical sense in the fiction is the giant is much stronger than a tiny human (or elf, or dragonborn, etc.). So, logically, for immersion, the DM should double or even triple the giant's hit points and DPR. Easy, logical, and immersive!

Most of my players care about the fiction so much that they will willingly buy into the illusion that a situation is very dangerous when it really isn't. Narratively they want the setting to have logical consistency, but mechanically they don't have enough interest in the rules to care whether or not the situation they're in actually is threatening, or just appears to be. That's fine for them, and I'm sure many DMs would be happy throwing up that illusion every week, but it just irks me how easy everything is most of the time. That's why I stopped watching Critical Role. I got frustrated watching the players act so worried about situations in game that I knew really weren't nearly as dire as those reactions made them appear.

That's just not enough for me to have fun, as a DM or a player. I've never been so attached to a PC that I can't accept the possibility of their defeat, even to the point of long-term injury or death. Seriously, I just make another one. But my players seem to take real danger and the possibility of loss personally. It's very frustrating.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Most of my players care about the fiction so much that they will willingly buy into the illusion that a situation is very dangerous when it really isn't. Narratively they want the setting to have logical consistency, but mechanically they don't have enough interest in the rules to care whether or not the situation they're in actually is threatening, or just appears to be.

That's just not enough for me to have fun, as a DM or a player. I've never been so attached to a PC that I can't accept the possibility of their defeat, even to the point of long-term injury or death. Seriously, I just make another one.

So basically... you're @Lanefan while all your players are me.

I would not wish that upon my greatest gaming enemy, LOL!

 

[Micah Sweet]

So basically... you're @Lanefan while all your players are me.

I would not wish that upon my greatest gaming enemy, LOL!

@Lanefan and I have always seen eye to eye on most things, yeah.