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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 9481114" data-attributes="member: 2013">Part of the problem seems to be that people see D&D as a “game” and when people play games, they want to “win.” I can’t recall where, but I saw a YouTube video on game design and balance where the psychology of games was discussed and I recall the statement that “players perceive a PVP game to be balanced not when they win 50% of the time, but instead when they win 70% of the time.”Obviously, in a well balanced PVP game “fair” would be a 50% win rate (assuming similar skill). This means psychologically, players are poor judges of game balance as they are biased in favor of themselves.D&D is seen mostly as a combat simulator and therefore players only think it is “fair” when they (or their characters) are at a significant statistical advantage in combat - and at least since 3e introduced challenge rating we actually saw that codified in the rules - a character of level X was a CR X encounter, and a “balanced” encounter for a party with 4 PCs of Level X is a CR X encounter… so fights are only “balanced”when the PCs have a 4:1 advantage. This is lunacy.We need to divorce ourselves and the players from the notion that the game is “fair” when we are massively advantaged. Perhaps we do this be reframing the balance conversation away from “can you win a straight up fight” and toward the 50% success rule of “do you expect half your characters to die in the course of a typical adventuring day? If not, the game is not balanced.” This takes us closer toward older editions where it was less about “winning all the fights” and more about “surviving is victory” as our fairness criteria and knowing 1 retreat is an option and 2 there is a 50/50 chance I won’t even make it out alive.I mean, Rogue One was a much more compelling story to me than Episode 7 of Star Wars… because you actually felt like there were stakes and a noble death can be more satisfying as a story than running through a story successfully thanks to Plot Armor.</blockquote>

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