D&D General Do you care how about "PC balance"?

[Ancalagon]

Does balance between PCs matter? Absolutely - in fact I think it's the balance that matters the most. The disparity between a naively designed character in 3.x or pathfinder and an optimized one is immense. It's much better in 5e.

Balanced encounters - bah. Those tools are only there so that the GM knows what she is doing. A group of 1rst level characters may have to deal with a half dozen marauding ogres. That's "too powerful" for first level characters you say? Well if they want to go fight them "mano a ogro" sure - and they deserved to be clubbed and have their bones eaten. But there are plenty of ways low level PCs could deal with such a threat. They just have to be smart about it.

 

[Northern Phoenix]

Does balance between PCs matter? Absolutely - in fact I think it's the balance that matters the most. The disparity between a naively designed character in 3.x or pathfinder and an optimized one is immense. It's much better in 5e.

Balanced encounters - bah. Those tools are only there so that the GM knows what she is doing. A group of 1rst level characters may have to deal with a half dozen marauding ogres. That's "too powerful" for first level characters you say? Well if they want to go fight them "mano a ogro" sure - and they deserved to be clubbed and have their bones eaten. But there are plenty of ways low level PCs could deal with such a threat. They just have to be smart about it.

That's silly. Those ogres only exist because the DM decided they do in the numbers they do. There could be any number of them. It's the same with Dragons. You could have one just drop down and roast a level 1 party because "that's the "Real" World, it's not balanced by level" but that's not big or clever, it's just being a dick.

 

[Ancalagon]

That's silly. Those ogres only exist because the DM decided they do in the numbers they do. There could be any number of them. It's the same with Dragons. You could have one just drop down and roast a level 1 party because "that's the "Real" World, it's not balanced by level" but that's not big or clever, it's just being a dick.

So if a dragon just shows up and wrecks the party, sure that is the GM being a dick. But that's not the example.

The ogres are clearly too much for the party to take on in a straight on fight (and the GM should make sure to communicate that well to the party). But not every problem can be solved by beating it up. The PCs have a serious challenge... what do they do? They could leave town - too much for us! They could try to rally the villagers and set traps and defensive positions. They could try to recruit help - mercenaries, that spooky wizard who lives in the tower 3 hills that way, maaaybe even a dragon! The ogres might be bribed, they could be fooled into leaving, they could be poisoned....

... really the possibilities for solution and exciting adventures that result are only limited by your imagination. Don't be afraid to put a hard problem in front of the PCs. Their cleverness and resourcefulness will amaze and delight you.

Am I silly to wish for this, as a player or a GM? I think not.

 

[FrozenNorth]

There is no character building minigame (except in Traveller)

True, because games are supposed to be fun.

 

[FrozenNorth]

no.

And I'm not running games in systems that lock out GM agency and try to turn all players into rules lawyers. There is nothing about fantasy that requires balance. I can't think of any popular fantasy story where everyone was equal in effect, power or influence. I've seen lots of games where DM's hate certain things and that screws over certain classes or play types. Not a set of rules that'll fix that. As a certain superhero said. If everyone is special then no one is special. But every character should get thier special moments and that's always up to the DM.

It was the villain who said that.

 

[billd91]

It was the villain who said that.

Well, so did Dash, but he was a frustrated child not very good on nuance.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I’d say “No....up to a point.”

In a combat heavy adventure, the differences between characters are more evident.

But even in a combat heavy game, I don’t think most players care about a difference of one or two points per round of DPS.

However, there is a point at which a character’s contribution is so underwhelming that it is difficult to care about the character.

 

[Hussar]

Again, in these discussions, one has to nail down what you mean by imbalance as well. If my character averages 3 hp/round more damage than your character, likely no one is going to notice. It's such a small difference that it gets ignored.

OTOH, if your character is doubling my character's damage output, and we're both playing similar characters (my homebrew sword and board fighter and a sword and board paladin with identical stats, for example) then, sure. Because, at that point, I have to ask myself, why am I playing my character and not playing yours? After all, in that example (which is from actual play) there really wasn't a whole lot of mechanical difference between the two characters - they're both sword and board defense fighter types. I might as well play the other class. I can still play my character as my character, and not suck.

To me, balance means that no given option is obviously better than other options. If a given option is obviously better, to the point where any rational person would always choose that option, then the system is imbalanced.

+1 here or a bit more damage there? Don't care. But, make my character superfluous? Yeah, that's a balance issue.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Well, so did Dash, but he was a frustrated child not very good on nuance.

So was the villain.

 

[Stalker0]

I’ve had the player with the cheesed out dread necromancer that literally made the entire group feel worthless

I also saw A cheesed out beguiler in another friends game where the dm had to effectively change his whole game around the character, so that every combat either became “beguiler just gained a whole group of new monster friends” or “beguiler sits in a lawn chair and does nothing”

So those were the big exceptions. More common is the player who feels weaker than the general party.

so as a DM, yes I think mechanical balance is important...to a point. I think it’s far moreimportant to ensure all characters have moments of specialness, aka “cinematic balance”. Mechanical balance helps with that, but it’s not the primary driver