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

[mellored]

I ask this because of a some changes that were tried in UA and rejected and one change that was made and is unliked by many.

People want different classes to feel different.

Then they want balance secondary.

You could make everything perfectly balanced by only having 1 class and 1 enemy. But that would be boring.

Sneak Attack on your turn only (tried in UA and rejected)

Rogues should be good at stabbing people when they turn their back.

No doubling critical Sneak Dice or Smite dice or other damage riders (tried in UA and rejected)

That's was to reduce the effects of luck, and getting 1-shot.
Combat is less exciting if you always win.

Paladin smite using a bonus action which effectively limits it to once a round on your turn (implemented but disliked)

Most people agreed it was more balanced that way.
Even those who complained where still suggesting once per turn, and mostly didn't like it being a spell. Because not being a spell was different.

Changing Warlock mechanics to a long rest (tried in UA and rejected)

People like it being different.

Using statblocks for Wildshape (tried in UA and rejected)

People like having different animals with different abilities.
Not turning into a horse with a climb speed.

Using statblocks for familiars (tried in UA and rejected)

People like different familiars having different abilities.
A frog familiar should be different from a snake familiar.

 

[Oofta]

I think it is, and always has been, up to the DM and group to figure out what level of challenge they want. You can't always please everyone though, some people will want every fight to be a cakewalk and pout if they take a single point of damage (looking at you Dave, no not you Dave or Dave, the other Dave). Other people, myself included get bored if the game is on easy mode.

Meanwhile I do think people want their chance to shine. That isn't exclusive to combat or even out of combat skills or spells. Some people only care about rolling D20s and killing the bad guys, others want to be show off some ability out of combat, others just want RP situations that have impact.

So there is no generic "Do players want balance" in the sense of class abilities. I think they do want balance but what that means is going to vary from one individual and one player to the next.

 

[Voadam]

Having played an AD&D fighter without strength bonuses next to one who had 18 percentile strength the imbalance was continuously noticeable to me as a player and was detrimental to my fun as a player.

I have played B/X basic, AD&D, Rifts, GURPS, White Wolf, and 3e where you can have lots of imbalance between characters.

I prefer balanced PCs as a player and as a DM.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think that's a good chunk of it, but what you say here assumes all players want balance(even if they judge it differently). In my experience, there are also a lot of players(and DMs) who just don't care about balance. We(I and my players are in that group) find things that aren't balanced to be very enjoyable. I think most of us don't want broken, which also gets judged differently by different players, but unbalanced is just fine.

Oh absolutely! That's the even further reason why some things didn't get changed in 5E24... a lot of players who didn't care about balance at all just didn't see the point in things changing for the sake of change. Agree 100%

 

[Oofta]

Having played an AD&D fighter without strength bonuses next to one who had 18 percentile strength the imbalance was continuously noticeable to me as a player and was detrimental to my fun as a player.

I have played B/X basic, AD&D, Rifts, GURPS, White Wolf, and 3e where you can have lots of imbalance between characters.

I prefer balanced PCs as a player and as a DM.

That's one of the reasons I'll always want to use point buy. I'm okay if I play a PC that isn't always as powerful as PCs with other classes (although I find 5E did a pretty good job here most of the time), it's that I've seen people roll at the table and in 5E we would have had 1 PC with a 20 in their primary stat (with no bad stats) and one with a 14.

Of course it's all personal preference, but if given a choice between point buy and rolling I've taken point buy every time.

 

[Scribe]

I ask this because of a some changes that were tried in UA and rejected and one change that was made and is unliked by many.

Do people want balance? Yes.

The real fun is in defining what that looks like. Good luck getting a single answer.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I ask this because of a some changes that were tried in UA and rejected and one change that was made and is unliked by many.

Yes, players like well-done, effective balance. They do not like lame, poorly-done forms of balance. Trivializing the mechanics necessarily balances them, but pretty much nobody likes that.

It helps a lot to understand that "balance" is not one single thing, but a variety of different things, and some versions of it are much more preferable than others.

I think it is more fair to say that all players play the game so differently that no one will agree on what things actually ARE balanced or unbalanced.

For every player who says "I've done the math! To get a precise numeric equivalent, then X feature should be written to give us Y result!"... there will be another player who disagrees with their calculation. Probably because of the style of play that makes X feature "proc" (for lack of a better term) for the former player occurs much more or less frequently than the latter and thus the math doesn't match up for both equally.

So rather than balance... a lot of the things you put in your list might be ones where players looked at it and said "Is that appreciably better than what we already have?" And if the answer was "No"... then they'd prefer to just keep things as they were, regardless of how much more "balanced" the feature may or may not have been.

I don't think that actually acts as an argument against balance.

It just means that it's more complicated than an absolute diamond-perfect argument. You'll note that mischaracterizing one's opponents as demanding absolute perfection is a pretty common bad debate tactic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Do people want balance? Yes.

The real fun is in defining what that looks like. Good luck getting a single answer.

There is not, and should not be, a single answer.

Instead, we have a spectrum of answers with various pros and cons, and need to articulate why it would be beneficial to do one thing instead of another. There are some forms of balance that would be wonderful, but aren't something that can actually happen because it would be too expensive/time-consuming for the devs. There are other forms that are totally achievable, but utterly unacceptable to any reasonable gamer because they're simplified to the point of triviality. There are yet other forms that might solve problem A perfectly but leave problem B totally untouched, and thus might be inferior to something which only mostly solves problem A but also mostly solves problem B at the same time.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Some want it, some don't.
There are some players trying to willfully misread a rule to gain unfair advantage in combat.
There are players who just want to have fun, disregarding combat power.
Most players I know however like it when chamces in combats are only slightly in favour of the players amd everyone can contribute.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I ask this because of a some changes that were tried in UA and rejected and one change that was made and is unliked by many.

I don't think players want balance so much as to be not overshadowed. People don't want to come to the game and watch an episode of "The Lee Show" because he's got enough power that everyone else is superfluous.

I have found that this is different from one player having a bit stronger character and then is the rock that holds off the tide.