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

[Reynard]

That is not what most people mean by "PC balance."


That is what most people mean by "PC balance."

You're doing this thing where you have decided that you do not care about PC balance, and therefore you insist on weird ultra-narrow definitions of "PC balance" so that you can assert you do not care about it, even while you openly admit that you do care about whether PCs are able to contribute equally during an adventure, which is what PC balance is all about.

No. I know what I am discussing, thank you. As I stated in the OP, I started this thread based on multiple threads where people were very much discussing mechanical strengths and weaknesses of relative classes. YOU decided you wanted to talk about spotlight time and niche protection instead.

 

[Tallifer]

I much prefer 4E because of its balance, so yes I care about balance. By balance, I indeed take the narrower definition of useful in most encounters, especially combat, because having a narrow niche like the AD&D thief is rarely fun (especially when you have a 20% chance to succeed).

 

[Umbran]

So, do you, as a player, actually worry about how your character stacks up to other players' characters? If so, in what ways? What about it is important to you? By what metric do you judge? What do you do if you feel your choices aren't as good or your character isn't as competent?

So, to me, the real issue isn't strict power balance. It is more "relevance balance" or "spotlight balance". Broadly, everyone at the table probably wants to at least feel like they are constructive positive contributors to events. A character who is notably under-powered will have issues being as relevant to the events in the game. A character who is notable over-powered will tend to steal the spotlight.

Now, this can be manually corrected for by the GM, but GMs are human, and taking some of that worry off their hands is usually a sound idea.

 

[Umbran]

No. I know what I am discussing, thank you. As I stated in the OP, I started this thread based on multiple threads where people were very much discussing mechanical strengths and weaknesses of relative classes. YOU decided you wanted to talk about spotlight time and niche protection instead.

The point, Reynard, is that these things are not independent.

 

[Reynard]

The point, Reynard, is that these things are not independent.

They are linked but they aren't equivalent.

Now, in games that focus more heavily on combat, especially if those combats tend toward the difficult side, combat/mechanical disparity will likely lead to an overall disparity in contribution and spotlight time. That may be why I don't see it so much: I try really hard not to run a game that is primarily driven by combat. I like combat and I certainly have lots of combat, but the thrust of the game (the "story") is rarely based on combat. Interactions with NPCs and exploration -- both of which present fewer mechanical disparities between PCs, I think -- do most of the heavy lifting in that regard.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

World Balance. Nope. I have low-, mid-, and high-level adventure sites. Where the players go is up to them. I've seen 1st level characters try to infiltrate an adult red dragon's cavern (they got burnt alive), but I've never seen high level PCs attack a goblin lair.

Character-Character Balance. Nope. Often my player's characters aren't even at the same level. If you want your guy to have more power, show up to more games: get more experience and track down more magic items.

Player-Player Balance. Jujitsu happens after the game.

 

[Voadam]

I played in a 2e game as a fighter who rolled a 14 or 15 strength so no melee weapon attack or damage bonus. There was another guy in the group who played a fighter with an 18 percentile strength. It soured me significantly on AD&D's reverse bell curve and the significance of percentile strength for AD&D fighters. It was not even like a point buy where I would have had a better dex or con, my character was just significantly mechanically inferior at doing his main thing which came up every round of combat.

I consciously chose to rarely play thieves in Basic/AD&D, I felt the class was mechanically poor and vulnerable for little benefit in executing cool character concepts. I felt 4e executed them well mechanically.

I consider PC balance for combat a good goal both as a player and as a DM, I was glad 3e adopted it as a design goal and I felt 4e executed it well mechanically. 5e is decent at it IMO.

 

[Derren]

I've never seen an edition of Shadowrun where any official advice was given to this effect, so I'm not sure it's really intended.

Not officially, but I have seen the same hints and guides being repeated over several SR boards. You measure the strength of a character by the size of his dicepool in his primary occupation and if is is too low (underpowered characters are as loathed in the community as overpowered ones) you give the player some advice how to make it better while you also ask others to tone it down a bit if they are too far ahead.
As SR is more open than D&D just measuring combat power is not really a good way to judge power in itself as someone can also be overpowered in other ways.

 

[Li Shenron]

So, do you, as a player, actually worry about how your character stacks up to other players' characters?

No.

The only balance I really care about as a player is between the alternative choices I have available. It bothers me if there is an option so clearly better than another for the same purpose that's making me feel I'll never take the other one.

The only time I ever had an inferiority complex to another PCs was my very first d&d character, and that was in BECMI where we had to roll for stats in order, and I rolled so poorly that I had to choose my class by elimination of what classes I didn't qualify for (could have been a house rule). Another player had the same problem, we ended up playing the same class, but I had lower scores.

 

[Minigiant]

I see it as role balance
There are several roles in each pillar.

In combat,you have your tanks, skrimishers, healers, archers, blasters, and leaders.
In exploraton you have wilderness, dungeon, urban exploration plus you general sage, scout, athlete, and acrobat.
For social, you have your talker, linguist, lie detector, etc.

So there is a lot of roles in the game to fill.

But why do we talk about PC balance so much?

1. Some classes could only take a few roles, severely limiting a PC's chances in the spotlight.
2. Some classes could take a lot of roles, extremely broadening a PC's chances in the spotlight.
3. Every campaign has different amounts of time in the 3 pillars.
4. Some sessions might ignore a pillar or 2 completely.

If you spend 3 sessions herdiing nobles like cats to defend a metropolis, your combat and exploration PCs aren't in the spotlight for several hours.Then the ranger and monk say screw it and go on their own to stab bears because they are bored.
That is before you get to Mr "I'm loading my lower level spell slots with role stealing spells because those slots do bad damage at this level anyway".