Game Balance - A Study in Imperfection (forked)

[Dannyalcatraz]

Originally Posted by Dannyalcatraz
I played several 1Ed Barbarians...never had an issue with them.
What level range?

What level range?

Cheers, -- N

Some never got past low levels- mostly due to campaigns dying off. However, I have at least 3 that are in their "teens"- one of which is a PC in our still-active 1Ed/2Ed hybrid campaign that got updated to 3.X. (She was at that power level before the conversion.)

I can't seem to find one who actually got killed- and yes, I do keep a "PC Graveyard."

 

[Ariosto]

I always thought that the Cat Lord was one of Gygax's favourite creations. (He is one of mine as will).

Ah, yes! For those who don't know, the Cat Lord is the next entry after Cat (Domestic and Wild).

The Cat Lord is very flavorful, evocative (to me at least) of several of the fictional sources of inspiration Gygax cited in Appendix N.

The domestic cat issue was mainly a joke. It really reflects that the standard AD&D combat system was not meant to depict tackling Tabby for her visit to the veterinarian. Also in MM2, we find entries for such normally non-threatening animals as Bat, Eagle, Falcon, Goat, Otter, Owl, Rat, Raven, Skunk and Weasel. In the context of characters with just 1-to-whatever hit points, an ordinary rat (or cat) dishing out a whole point of damage calls for some extraordinary situation in my view.

More generally, though, it is my impression that MM2 tended toward tougher monsters. It came out a couple of years before UA, but material in the latter had appeared beforehand in Dragon (and some in Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth), and I reckon had been tried even earlier in the Greyhawk campaign. So, I'm thinking that maybe the tougher monsters reflected tougher characters already adventuring in that campaign.

(Then again, my impression is pretty subjective and might not be accurate.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

I suspect you could balance teleports with the addition of (easy to use) traces and blocks. But I agree that, out of the box, teleport is too strong to be risk free!

And yet, by the standards of "balance is survivability," it's pretty balanced. It's generally not an effect you can perform to get yourself out of trouble. It's a new tool, but it's not going to save you from the balor.

Though by the standards of "balance by narrative control," it's pretty powerful, because the player gets the option to skip vast portions of the campaign world, and go to exactly where they need to be.

And by the standards of "comparative character tools," it's pretty powerful, because fighters can't teleport.

I think different classes used different internal models of balance, too. Fighters were balanced on combat. Wizards were balanced on "magic tools." Clerics were balanced on healing. Thieves were balanced on skills. The classes may have lacked balance altogether outside of their intended niche. Fighters are there for combat. Thieves are there for skills. Wizards are there for problem solving. One doesn't take a Thief and expect him to fight.

Which I do think was something of a problem, since it assumed a certain kind of challenge spread for the party. Sometimes there'd be fights, sometimes there'd be skills, sometimes there'd be healing, sometimes there'd be puzzles, and there would be a good spread of all of these things. Which, in practice, didn't happen so much.

 

[MerricB]

Ah, yes! For those who don't know, the Cat Lord is the next entry after Cat (Domestic and Wild).

The Cat Lord is very flavorful, evocative (to me at least) of several of the fictional sources of inspiration Gygax cited in Appendix N.
...

(Then again, my impression is pretty subjective and might not be accurate.)

Subjective, accurate or not, it's still entertaining and worth posting.

I never DMed enough AD&D to see a toughening of the monsters in MM2; most of my AD&D play was as a player, not a DM, but certainly in Isle of the Ape, you can see Gary making monsters even tougher than they were: with the new rule that in the case of the required "to hit" number being negative, that value was instead added to the damage roll. Pity the poor magic-user whose bracers of AC had corroded into unusability on the isle and then got hit by one of the behemoths: perhaps 20 extra damage in some cases!

Likewise, there's a toughening up of fighters at the higher levels due to weapon specialization. I feel that Gary wasn't paying too much attention to the lower levels at this stage, because although specialization works really well at the higher levels, it gave one of the best low-level characters a huge boost when it didn't need it so much.

One thing I wish I knew was how much these campaigns gave low-level magic-users access to wands or scrolls, both of which have a significant effect on what they could do.

Cheers!

 

[Lanefan]

That's rather simple. Treat the dead PCs like they're...people. They may be dead, but they might have families who expect to inherit that loot. There could be funeral costs.

Families? What are these families you speak of?

And there ain't much funeral cost involved in burying the corpse about where it fell.

Maybe if they rob from the dead anyway, a ghost of the fallen PC haunts them or some curse afflicts them...

Duly noted as a fine idea.

In any case, DM controls treasure output. If the party plays keepsies with the slain PC's gear, just throw them up against monsters that drop no treasure until you feel their wealth has been properly balanced (obviously, factor in the rest of the party's sudden wealth gain and the upcoming gp drought when telling the player of the deceased PC how much gear his new PC can start with so he isn't screwed over). Heck, be blatant about it, don't even try to disguise your intentions. Tell them flat out why they're not going to be fighting any dragons or NPCs with class levels (or other things that give tons of loot) for the next 10 sessions at least, until they realize trying to game the system like that is just paddling upstream.

I don't care about balancing wealth against the game as such (i.e. the party's overall wealth-by-level is pretty much irrelevant to me); it's the wealth-by-seniority balance that becomes the problem...the long-serving characters can (but don't always) get crazy rich. I don't really want new PCs coming in with that sort of wealth as it takes away from the challenge of building a character up. And adventuring for a long time without much monetary reward can get kinda boring, at least in our games; so going that route would be a pretty extreme last option.

Lanefan

 

[MerricB]

Families? What are these families you speak of?

That's why some of the early character sheets had a spot to write down the "heir" of the PC. Only family a lot of them had... the next PC of the player!

Cheers!

 

[Lanefan]

IME...

Paladins get excluded because:

1. DM's don't want to deal with the ethical questions they raise
2. DM's don't want to deal with the party conflicts that can arise

I've always kept Paladins in the game, though my parties tend to be far too chaotic for a Pally to be comfortable. A fellow DM, however, banned them many years ago and still keeps 'em out; his rationale being that between the Cavalier class and a battle-oriented Cleric class the ground is already covered.

Monks get excluded because

1. DMs don't want to include an "Eastern" themed class into their "Western" themed campaigns.
2. DMs don't know how to challenge them
3. DMs don't know how to reward them

I banned Monks for a long time mostly for flavour reasons. I find challenging them and rewarding them works just the same as for any other PC.

I then completely redesigned them and reintroduced them, and so far so good.

The other 1e class I've considered excluding is Bard. I've redesigned those from the ground up too so they can start at 1st level like everyone else, and they're getting a pretty good run out in my current campaign - but if they don't work this time, they're gone. Again though, so far so good.

Lan-"Barbarian should be a race, not a class"-efan

 

[Orius]

RAW, that uber character is not that much more likely to survive. Even with straight 18 stats and max hit points at first level it only takes a single crit or a couple of spear jabs to end the character. 12-14 hit points is still just 12-14 hit points. Dead at zero is a harsh mistress.

Probably doesn't help if the DM decides to have the monsters heat-seek the character.

Method I for stat generation in the 1e DMG was 4d6, drop low, arrange to taste. And, from every survey I've seen online, this was very common at most tables; few people playing 1e used 3d6-straight. The stat tables basically stop making sense if you use 3d6 straight because most mechanical differences are far out on the periphery - usually 3-6 and 15-18.

Also, there wasn't really a sense that the "base classes were it." Even before Unearthed Arcana, you had a series of new classes released in Dragon. Many of these were called "NPC-only," but given their XP tables and the like, they were pretty regularly used in play, too, as I understand it.

(It's been a while, but from what I've read recently, 2e moved back to 3d6-straight as the normal means of character generation. But 2e also had a strong "Rath Effect" built into the game, where players were encouraged to run mechanically bland characters.)

I would say that balance by rarity was chomped up in 1e by putting in the 4d6, because then classes like paladins, rangers, and whatever became more common. The 3d6 method kept them rare, though like I said above the idea of that being balanced was more of an illusion. At least 3e recognized that the classes needed to be more or less equal if scores are assigned. Whether or not it was accomplished is another debate; IMO pumping up the cleric to make it more desirable as a PC class was the radiation that turned it into CoDzilla.

And 2e did have a sort of "Real Roleplayer" approach behind the rules that said, "It's okay if your stats suck, role-playing is more important". It should be noted that the 2e DMG turned 1 gp = 1 XP into an option rule that covered a single sentence, but had a good-sized section about RPing and story XP awards.

So I'm all wrong of 1E
Wonder why this changed in 2nd Edition

Maybe they were trying to reconnect with the original rules? IDK.

In addition, for both 1Ed and 2Ed, 3d6 was so commonly supplanted by 4d6 drop lowest that it might as well have been official. On top of that, the original Unearthed Arcana introduced a plethora of alternative stat generation methods, including one that was designed so that you picked your PC's class first, THEN generated stats via a method loaded to produce viable stats that matched character prereqs...such as Barbarians rolling 9d6 drop lowest 6 for Str.

The 4d6 method from what I've read here was the 1e method. In 2e, it was Method V, and optional (3d6 was the default), but it seemed to be the most common generation rule I ever saw used. Not surprising 3e made it default again.

 

[Ariosto]

I would say that balance by rarity was chomped up in 1e by putting in the 4d6, because then classes like paladins, rangers, and whatever became more common.

Yeah, more common than never getting a chance to play one! What's the big difference between 1 in 500 and 1 in 50,000 -- if I'm not going to roll up even 50 player-characters in my D&D career?

A Warrior-Wizard in T&T (5th ed.) is about 1 in 3290 characters, I think. Anyhow, I have not played enough in 30 years to come across one even played by another player. That would be an average of about two new characters a week, every week.

The W-W is not terribly interesting, and as a waste of space it doesn't waste much either. If there were some especially exciting type, with pages of material devoted to it, that I could not expect to get a chance to play in a lifetime, then I would probably consider that not just silly but a problem.

If that were the case with two-thirds of the classes in AD&D, then I would call it a big problem.

 

[AllisterH]

Yeah, more common than never getting a chance to play one! What's the big difference between 1 in 500 and 1 in 50,000 -- if I'm not going to roll up even 50 player-characters in my D&D career?

A Warrior-Wizard in T&T (5th ed.) is about 1 in 3290 characters, I think. Anyhow, I have not played enough in 30 years to come across one even played by another player. That would be an average of about two new characters a week, every week.

.

You know...I'm actually wondering about something more and more....

WERE you supposed to play/have only 1 character?

Read Gary's posts on his campaign and Old Geezer musings/memoirs at rpg.net. It seemed like everyone in Gary's personal campaign was playing multiple characters.