Game Balance - A Study in Imperfection (forked)

[Nifft]

Alright. Sounds like we have enough data to categorize this type of balance attempt.

I'm going to call it Balance by Obscurity, in reference to "Security through Obscurity". Like its namesake, Balance by Obscurity is only a delaying tactic. Your players eventually will figure out whatever weakness a critter has, so all you're doing is asking them to waste a few rounds being sub-optimal before they get to lay down the smack.

In some regards, this type of balance seems a better fit for a puzzle than a tactical skirmish. Effectively, it is a puzzle, in that it's the players who are being tested more than their characters: will you have the secret counter-measure? Will you discover what it is in time to avoid major injury?

I can see how the same kind of person which dislikes puzzles might dislike encounters that are balanced by obscurity.

Cheers, -- N

 

[innerdude]

One area of balance that I've always wondered hasn't been approached is what I would call "The Balance of Natural Selection."

In BECMI, for exampple, the demi-human classes simply stopped progressing after 8-12 levels. And while the approach can feel arbitrary, I wonder why some form of this hasn't been attempted.

For instance, it's clear based on 4e's inherent "1/2 character level" to every combat/skill check, that WoTC recognized that any numerical value above a certain point for a certain type of check naturally becomes "unbalanced." They realized that aside from magic bonuses and other various buffs, any inherent, organic mechanical "bonus" contributor over 15 (maximum of 30 levels / 2) had an unbalancing effect on game outcomes.

Thus, in 4e, no matter how hard you try to improve a certain skill or combat check, the maximum you'll ever reach is a simple formula: 1/2 level + attribute bonus + feat bonuses + item/implement/magic bonus + racial bonus + temporary buffs + situation bonuses.

Now you can still easily reach skill checks with 35+ bonuses in this way, but it does in some ways put a "hard cap" on how high checks can go, especially in relation to 3.x.

Now, if balance is the ultimate goal, one of the ways I've considered balancing the math of d20 is to limit the bonuses OUTSIDE the standard 1/2 character level bonus.

For instance -- it would be very easy to houserule that any attribute bonuses must limited to a +5 or less--the rationale being that anything above a +5 bonus in any attribute exceeds the inherent genetic limit of "human" (demi-human/tiefling, whatever) development.

Furthermore, I've also considered implementing a house rule where any magic item that gives a natural increase to any check is inherently limited by the attribute the check is dependent upon. Meaning, let's say you have a rogue with a +2 strength mod, and he finds a magical sword +3. Well, because the rogue is limited to a +2 strength mod, he/she cannot maximize the total potential bonus of the magic, because his/her physical capacity is not able to use it.

Along those same lines, I've also considered houseruling my Pathfinder games by simply capping the total bonus any one character can receive on any one check, by simply saying, "That's not possible." For example, regardless of buffs, magic items/weapons, skill, or inherent attribute, the total added bonus to any one die roll can never be more than 5 + the character's level + their natural attribute bonus. In other words, if you're a level 10 fighter with an 18 strength, the upper limit of the total bonus to a hand-to-hand attack is +19. Doesn't matter if you're bull strengthed, hasted, and attacking with a weapon-focused +4 longsword, anything beyond that point is simply beyond the physical capacity of the person performing it, and any bonuses beyond that are just wasted.

While I realize that this would feel "underpowered" to some players, the goal behind this would be to stop munchkins in their tracks. Sure, go ahead and take every attack feat in the book--but you'll never realize the benefit. Second, I think it would allow for a more robust skill/feat system that actually rewards players for creating more well-rounded characters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel willing, you are not "a plowboy who just bought his first real weapon and armor".

It's something of a stylistic difference, in that some people prefer for PC's to be professional kill-things-and-take-their-stuff-ologists ("I'm workin on my PHD in orc stabbin'!"), and others prefer for PC's to be Joseph Campbellesque, Narrative-trope-ridden Unexpected Heroes a la Bilbo, Frodo, Luke, Harry, et al ("Golly, I didn't know about other planes, Gandalf/Obi-wan/Hagrid!").

I'm a fan of the Monster Knowledge check so that you could play both characters, in the same party, conceivably well. It gives a mechanical disincentive against metagaming: "Your character might have heard about the hooch-dissolving-tentacle-slime rumor. Roll Dungeoneering." It also lets you say, by allocating resources, that you know what dissolves even tough, caked-on tentacle slime (perhaps you saw Willie Mays selling it one night).

4e is squarely on the side of the card-carrying adventurer, and most earlier editions at the very least skewed heavily in that direction (3e maybe came closest to modeling the farmboy paladin PC with the NPC classes and Profession skills).

 

[Nifft]

One area of balance that I've always wondered hasn't been approached is what I would call "The Balance of Natural Selection."

What do the words "natural selection" have to do with your heavy-handed imposition of DM Fiat?

Cheers, -- N

 

[Orius]

The way to surprise experienced players is with new monsters and magic, and more cunning tricks and traps. Someone who has played for years might sometimes choose to make a bad move because it's "in character" -- but trying to push people into that position is obnoxious.

Yeah, if the players know all the monster's weaknesses, then maybe get new monsters? I mean there's thousands, maybe tens of thousands of monsters out there, and one reason there's so many is to give a fresh experience. "DM only" material is an excuse that can only go so far, when plently of players are on both sides of the screen. The really common monsters that have been in every MM for 30 years aren't going to offer a lot in the way of surprises. It depends on how obvious they're being about the metagaming I suppose.

My approach as a DM is not to actually tell the players what they're facing, just describe it. It does work from time to time, there was one instance I recall that the players mistook my description of a yeth hound for a hell hound (and I wasn't being deceptive either, just described it about the same as it was in the MM). For really common humanoid monsters like goblins and orcs, I don't even go that far, instead I use classes NPC, tactics and so on.

 

[innerdude]

What do the words "natural selection" have to do with your heavy-handed imposition of DM Fiat?

Cheers, -- N

Well, a somewhat facetious response might be, "It's only DM fiat because it isn't rules-as-written. As soon as they make it rules as written, it's not DM fiat anymore!"

But in all seriousness, I see where you're coming from--it's just that it's clear from BECMI that OD&D's later editors like Mentzer(sp?) had some idea that "racial limitations" were a key indicator for how far a character could actually progress. I guess I'm wondering where on earth we got this idea that it was perfectly okay for a PC--specifically one of the common races--to have an attribute score that represented something completely beyond the norm of human evolution?

If you think there's any merit in calibrating our expectations of D&D to at least some real-world reference point--and I think there are some compelling role-playing reasons to do that--then I think one of the reasons balance has become such a difficult thing to pin down is because players have somehow gotten it in their heads that a 20 ability score with a +5 bonus is "natural." If you look at a "real world" calibration of a 20 ability score in "real world" terms, there's only maybe 10-20 people on the entire planet at any one time (out of 7 billion people) with a score that high. A guy with a 20 strength is one of those 350-pound muscle guys who literally pulls tractors by himself on ESPN, the guy that can squat a half-ton automobile. A guy with a 20 intelligence is a child prodigy, one of those kids who graduates high school at age 8, and graduates with a PhD from Yale by age 18. A woman with a 20 charisma is Angelina Freaking Jolie--so attractive, so compelling, that paparazzi are literally willing to travel the globe to get a single photograph of you, and movie studios are willing to pay you 5 million dollars to make a single picture.

So going back to my last point--it's obvious that both 3.x and 4e extend the "reality" of a character's real physical capabilities far, far beyond a normal statistical distribution. A 20 attribute score is more than three standard deviations from the norm of a 10--it's in the 99.999th percentile of human physical capacity.

Ultimately, then, you can limit some measure of "unbalance" by simply using a "real world calibration" to say, "No, that's just physically impossible."

And I guess my real question is, if balance is a big a deal as everyone makes it out to be, why aren't game designers using this? I mean, it's a foregone conclusion that by 30th level, your typical 4e character is going to have a minimum of a 24 in their primary stat--to say nothing of magic bonuses. And I seriously doubt if there's anyone who's ever lived on planet earth who ever actually achieved that. And yeah, yeah, I know, it's D&D, it's fantasy, it's not reality--but if you want to "balance" a game that simulates reality in any real sense or fashion, one of the ways to do it is to balance the actual physical capacity of the people that inhabit that reality against each other.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It's something of a stylistic difference, in that some people prefer for PC's to be professional kill-things-and-take-their-stuff-ologists ("I'm workin on my PHD in orc stabbin'!"), and others prefer for PC's to be Joseph Campbellesque, Narrative-trope-ridden Unexpected Heroes a la Bilbo, Frodo, Luke, Harry, et al ("Golly, I didn't know about other planes, Gandalf/Obi-wan/Hagrid!").

Sure.....and lots of game systems have rules specifically for that. 0-level characters in AD&D, and Commoner/Expert/Aristocrat in 3.x, for example. However, should you be any one of those, I hope you don't encounter a roper's tentacles coming at you from the darkness!

(And it shows what I know, because at first I thought he was talking about cave fishers!)



RC

 

[AllisterH]

And I guess my real question is, if balance is a big a deal as everyone makes it out to be, why aren't game designers using this? I mean, it's a foregone conclusion that by 30th level, your typical 4e character is going to have a minimum of a 24 in their primary stat--to say nothing of magic bonuses. And I seriously doubt if there's anyone who's ever lived on planet earth who ever actually achieved that. And yeah, yeah, I know, it's D&D, it's fantasy, it's not reality--but if you want to "balance" a game that simulates reality in any real sense or fashion, one of the ways to do it is to balance the actual physical capacity of the people that inhabit that reality against each other.

But EPIC is explictly about trying to model people like Heracles and Beowulf.

WAY beyond human....

 

[Doug McCrae]

Here's another thing to consider: Vancian magic. The significant part being that casters get X number of spells per day. This means that the number of encounters per day has a huge effect on balance. One encounter strongly favours the Vancian classes. A dozen encounters favours the non-Vancian, provided they can keep their hit points up. Incidentally, I'm not sure if 3e was intended to be played with Wands of Cure Light Wounds or not. If they're allowed, they have a major impact on game-play.

In most of the 3e games I was in, we only had 1 or 2 encounters per day. There were never any mega-dungeons, though there were a fair number of small - a half-dozen encounters at most - dungeons. This set-up favoured the Vancian casters pretty strongly. I felt my wizard was always stronger than the fighter/rogue for example, even at low levels.

Weirdly the only time I've played D&D as it's 'supposed' to be played - with most encounters handled by the fighters and the wizard hanging back, plinking away uselessly with a crossbow, only using his spells for the big encounters - was in a computer game, Temple of Elemental Evil. I would use two fighters (no rogue - he was replaced with a wand of knock spells, which tells one something about a rogue's utility in D&D) and they would be quite capable of handling most of the battles which are along the lines of 6 gnolls or 1 carrion crawler or 1 giant lizard. Easy stuff. The front line fighters didn't even take enough damage to need much healing so I was able to go through dozens of encounters without needing a rest. But for the really big battles, against hordes of monsters, ogre bosses with levels, EHPs and the like, the wizard was vital, the key spells probably being web, haste and fireball.

I think the reason we never played D&D like this, even in the pre d20 editions (I played a fair bit of 2e in the early 90s and it was never like this) is that combat would've taken far too long and would've become tedious. There was a desire to make combats the spice, not the main course, of a session. (Apologies for the food metaphor.) In fact the one time a DM tried the attrition thing - numerous orc/goblin patrol encounters, which he thought would create exciting tension - it was just very, very dull, because the combat in older editions wasn't sufficiently tactically interesting.

 

[AllisterH]

4e is squarely on the side of the card-carrying adventurer, and most earlier editions at the very least skewed heavily in that direction (3e maybe came closest to modeling the farmboy paladin PC with the NPC classes and Profession skills).

I'm not sure this is true about 4e though...

While the 1st level adventurer in 4e is beating the stuffing out of the "rabble", against expected human opponents such as town guards, pirates, bandits, he's decidely facing an uphill battle.

My impression of pre 4e was that the "DEFAULT" situation was that the vast majority of the rest of the world were 0-1hd (in the 2e Monstrous Manual, under human, only the Knight entry actually has 2 HD)

The human berserker in 4e for example is a 4th level "monster" whereas in the 2e entry for human berserker, it's listed as a 1 HD "monster".

PCs aren't automatically more powerful than the rest of their "race" I think in 4e is one of the differences between editions.....