Fundamental Basis of Balance
- Thread starter moritheil
- Start date
skeptic said:
I got complaints in my Wilderlands C&C PBEM from a player who put all her PC stats into combat skills, and then objected to not being as effective at personal interaction as the CHA-monkey PC. My explanation that she could always rebuild her PC to make her more effective fell on deaf ears. This was a 'freeformer' player - apparently she thought it ok that stats should determine combat, but not that they should influence the results of roleplay.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
The balance ain't important 'till someone starts sucking.
And even then, it's subjective to *why* they're sucking.
The rogue isn't doing enough damage. Does the rogue suck and need more damage output? Or is the fact that you're playing in an undead-heavy campaign color your perspective?
And even then, it's subjective to *why* they're sucking.
The rogue isn't doing enough damage. Does the rogue suck and need more damage output? Or is the fact that you're playing in an undead-heavy campaign color your perspective?
ThirdWizard
First Post
A few notes about balance in D&D:
1st: A 6th level PC is a 6th level PC, no matter the class, and even though they're different, one should not get an inordinate amount of spotlight as compared to the rest in the longterm.
2nd: Said group of four 6th level PCs should use 20% of their resources, on average, to defeat a CR 6 challenge.
Anything that creates too much deviation from these norms might be imbalanced.
1st: A 6th level PC is a 6th level PC, no matter the class, and even though they're different, one should not get an inordinate amount of spotlight as compared to the rest in the longterm.
2nd: Said group of four 6th level PCs should use 20% of their resources, on average, to defeat a CR 6 challenge.
Anything that creates too much deviation from these norms might be imbalanced.
moritheil said:
Nobody.
The secret of balance lies in two questions:
1. How powerful are you compared to the characters played by the other players?
2. How powerful are you compared to the challenges your character is facing?
The first question is important because people playing in an RPG generally don't want to become audience members. This makes perfect sense: The entire gameplay of an RPG is based on taking meaningful action. If you can never take meaningful action because Joe the Powergamer's character Uber-Cool solves every problem and single-handedly overcomes every obstacle, then you're not truly getting to play the game. It's like playing paired Monopoly where your partner rolls all the dice and makes all the real estate decisions.
The second question is important because an important part of any game lies in the concept of challenge. Sometimes that challenge lies in overcoming the rules of the game; sometimes that challenge lies in overcoming the skills of the other players; and sometimes its both. But the overcoming of a challenge is always at the heart of the gaming experience. (And I'm not just talking about RPGs here.)
Now, here's an important thing to understand: For the powergamer, an important part of the challenge lies in the skillful creation of the character. To create a character who can easily overcome obstacles which other characters built with a similar pool of resources could not easily overcome is, in fact, overcoming a very specific type of challenge for the powergamer. In such a confrontation, the powergamer is testing his solution to see if it is sound.
That being said: Even the powergamer wants his character to be challenged, because it is in the challenge that he discovers how successful he has been. It is only the munchkin who wants to play a solitaire game of Monopoly without any risk of ever having to pay rent to another landlord.
Here's the other secret of balance: "Power" does not always mean combat prowess. In fact, it almost never means combat prowess. And it certainly doesn't mean "who would win if you put them in a deathmatch with each other".
The concept of "power" can actually be better understood as "spotlight time". It's okay if Character A excels at X, as long as Character B has a chance to excel at Y and Character C has a chance to excel at Z.
Now, in the case of a traditional D&D campaign, the ability to contribute meaningfully to combat situations becomes important -- because in the traditional dungeon crawl, combat features heavily in not only the number of challenges it constitutes but the amount of time spent resolving it. But even with that being said, we know that it's okay for the rogue not to be the best at dealing out damage during combat because they'll be able to get their spotlight time in searching and scouting and disabling traps.
So if balance is only a matter of calibrating between different players and then calibrating between the group and the challenges it faces, what is this concept of "game balance" that designers spend so much time looking for?
Well, as with many rules of the game, the designers are trying to do the heavy-lifting for you. They're trying to make it so that different players are all capable of contributing to the game, even if one of them is pushing for every drop of power they can squeeze from the system while another is simply content to follow the whims of their vision. And they're trying to make it so that they can provide you with some meaningful insight into what types of challenges are appropriate for what types of characters.
Celebrim
Legend
JustinA said:
I agree with pretty much your whole post.
I'd like to add that balance never never ever means:
That question isn't even really meaningful. As a mental exercise, your 10th level character may in fact be more powerful than a 10th level character in another campaign, but this is largely a meaningless mental exercise because generally speaking characters from two different campaigns cannot interact except in these mental exercises. Moreoever, even if it is the case that you are more powerful in a head to head comparison, it may be that the other character is more powerful within that campaign than your character is in yours. For example, its concievable that the other character at 10th level could be the highest level character in the whole campaign world, whereas in your campaign every barkeep is a retired 10th level adventurer and anyone important is 20th level or higher. In such a campaign, where even the orcs are 8th level warriors and every village hedge wizard wields world shaping artifacts, your impressive abilities at 10th level might not mean much. Whereas, in a campaign where NPC's top out at 9th level and you have the world's only +3 longsword, you might be the important person and relatively more powerful than anything you actually meet.
And both games may, or may not be, balanced.
Likewise, someone mentioned that the game is balanced if a group of 6th level PC's use 20% of thier resources against a CR 6 challenge. That is true, but that is just one completely arbitrarily chosen point of balance designed to meet the goals of a particular designer/DM. And more than likely, it is a compromise between the goals of several designer/DMs. The game is still balanced if a group of 6th level PC's are expected to use 20% of thier resources against a CR 4 challenge, and the game is still balanced if a group of 6th level PC's are expected to use 20% of thier resources against a CR 8 challenge. If one party uses 32 pt buy, lots of splat books, lots of 3rd party resources and has a high magic campaign, and another party uses 24 pt buy and has a low magic campaign with a more restricted selection of feats and classes, both campaigns can be balanced and there is little point in comparing characters of the two. What matters is consistancy and fairness, and not how your character compares to Bob's in a wholly different campaign.
What matters is whether you have the oppurtunity to gain resources sufficient to overcome the challenges you face.
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