Game Balance

[hong]

I know that hit points represents more than endurance. My example was a man in a corner with crossbows trained on him at point-blank range, totally surrounded! I don't care how many hit points that character has...if he moves he's going down!

There is a scene in _The Long Kiss Goodnight_ where Geena Davis (the uber-badass ex-black op) is confronted by a mook waving a gun in her face. They badmouth each other for a bit, and then Davis slaps the gun down, twists the mook's arm around, and uses his own gun to shoot another mook who was sneaking up on them. Bruce Lee is/was also able to take down a dozen or more martial artists at a time in his movies. Chambara swordsmen seem able to wade through armies of cannon fodder, without ever taking any damage.

Uber-badasses can do this sort of stuff; it's what makes them uber-badasses. But eventually, they'll meet an adversary whose kung fu (or whatever) is equal to theirs.

Sometimes hit-points can be abused in a situation where it would make no sense for the character to dodge attacks. If he wasn't cornered it may be different but...

What makes or doesn't make sense is entirely dependent on the context you have in mind.

 

[WizarDru]

It can promote adventures in areas where role-playing is likely to take place - cities, towns, etc. It should provide rules for all sorts of situations that role-playing usually encounters - things like bartering, seducing, persuading, etc.

That doesn't necessarily encourage role-playing, just die rolling.

"We go to town. Gor uses Gather Information. I'll try Intimidating a drunk at the bar. Bob will haggle at store with his appraise skill."

Remember that different people enjoy different playstyles. The inherent assumption that has run through this thread is that 'more roleplaying=good'. I tend to agree, but not everyone enjoys that style, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some players see town as a place to get more stuff for the dungeon. Others see it as a way to advance their political schemes. But the setting is generally irrelevant to role-playing.

I knew a computer programmer once who was working on his own computer game. He said something to me that has always stuck with me: "In the computer game, Ultima, there are a lot of orcs. There are orcs with clubs. There are orcs with no skin or flesh, and they're called skeletons. There are big orcs with one eyeball, and they're called Cyclopses. There are huge orcs with wings that breathe fire, and they're called Dragons. But they all act the same, and they're all really just orcs." His point was that the game made no real differentation between the different monsters, other than physical appearance, and slightly different combat abilities. They didn't behave differently, and they were indistinguishalbe, mostly. The same thing applies with city or town adventures. They're still just dungeons, but with no ceiling. An encounter in a bar, city square or mountain top is no different from one in a dungeon, combat or otherwise.

For example, I consider Sunless Citadel to have more role-playing opportunities than Speaker in Dreams, despite their respective locations.

to the greater issue of game balance, I agree that balance generally refers to combat. It can refer to more, of course, but D&D rules balance and character creation mostly deals with combat. However, having played GURPS for almost two decades, I can assure you that having more potential for role-playing doesn't translate INTO more role-playing. Some mentioned the Storyteller system as an example of a system that encourages role-playing...my personal experience has been directly coutner to that assertion. If anything, it encourages 'Blade'-like vampire punch-outs. Conversely, some of the best RPing that I've seen was in a 1st edition game, where we had no real rules to dictate the kind of game we were running. And we were all fine with it.

Besides which, combat is one of the most popular parts of RPGing, whether it be slaying the Dragon, engaging in a John Woo ballet of bullets, or yelling 'Avengers Assemble!' and striking against Count Nefaria's agents of Evil. I don't want to play Strider riding north for Bree, and finding things to do while waiting for the hobbits....I want to play Aragorn at Weathertop or Helm's Deep. YMMV.

But, as hong has pointed out, the d20 system is more than capable of handling more in-depth role-playing.

 

[jdavis]

People sometimes forget that RPG's are what you make of them. They are designed to to be much more open ended than board games, or computer games. Most games have a note from the creaters reminding people that the rules are only guidelines and the most important thing is having fun. I feel that the greatest strength of RPG's in general is their flexability, they are not Monopoly, everybody has their own opinions and there own likes and dislikes and RPG's end up different according to the people playing. The vast differences in peoples opinions and stories on these messageboards demonstrates that quite nicely.

Some mentioned the Storyteller system as an example of a system that encourages role-playing...my personal experience has been directly coutner to that assertion. If anything, it encourages 'Blade'-like vampire punch-outs.

Being a long time Werewolf player I can say from my experiences that that particular storyteller game is much more combat oriented than D&D ever dreamed of being. Of course that was just our game, I'm sure there are people who played for straight roleplaying.

 

[Nathal]

Uber-badasses can do this sort of stuff; it's what makes them uber-badasses. But eventually, they'll meet an adversary whose kung fu (or whatever) is equal to theirs.

I agree that what you describe fits well with a super heroic and cinematic style of play. Also, you made a good point when you wrote that what makes sense in RPG combat is context-bound.

I enjoyed reading Robin Law's On Good Gamemastering published by Steve Jackson games. Ever read it? He talks a lot about matching the choice of game system to the average taste of the players, which is not an easy task to do. He also writes about systems which favor the GM's control over rules over systems which players most of the "crunchiness" into the hands of the players. It's all very interesting...

Some here have noticed and mentioned that certain games are more deadly than others. Chaosism CoC is one example.

Can anybody think of fantasy RPG that are less "4-color" or comic-bookish than D&D at mid to high level?

On the other hand, one example of a game that out "ubers" D&D by a long shot...RIFTS. And yet one can create a rogue scholar in that system with no mega-damage armor. The GM had better tread carefully in THAT system. Talk about balance!

Oh well, I digress...

 

[WizarDru]

Can anybody think of fantasy RPG that are less "4-color" or comic-bookish than D&D at mid to high level?

On the other hand, one example of a game that out "ubers" D&D by a long shot...RIFTS. And yet one can create a rogue scholar in that system with no mega-damage armor. The GM had better tread carefully in THAT system. Talk about balance!

I have no idea what you're saying with the Rifts comment, honestly. As for more comic-bookish than D&D fantasy? Exalted comes to mind.

 

[Gez]

I knew a computer programmer once who was working on his own computer game. He said something to me that has always stuck with me: "In the computer game, Ultima, there are a lot of orcs. There are orcs with clubs. There are orcs with no skin or flesh, and they're called skeletons. There are big orcs with one eyeball, and they're called Cyclopses. There are huge orcs with wings that breathe fire, and they're called Dragons. But they all act the same, and they're all really just orcs."

You're speaking of Richard "Lord British" Gariott ?

 

[Gez]

I voted 1 & 2 to say "Balance means equal viability and usefulness of each character; combat matter but no more than everything else".

I've found out that systems like White Wolves don't encourage roleplaying, but metagaming. Mainly because of the "rule of 1". Simply put, fumbles are so frequent that characters suck at everything. So players try to avoid situations where they would have to throw dice.

From my personal experience, the more dice, the worse. People with a dice pool of 3-5 are usually much more successful than people with a dice pool of 6-10.

When I make a WW character now, I optimize and munchkinize him much more than my average D&D character, as I make sure to take all the difficulty-reducing and 1-eliminating merits I can find for my character's specialization (for example, I made a character whose Drive and Pilot checks are always at difficulty -3, and two "1" are eliminated always where they to rear their ugly heads). Outside his field of expertise, he's a complete sucker.

Talk about balance !

 

[Frostmarrow]

I think that there is more role-playing potential in Warhammer 40,000 than in D&D or WoD. The reason is that WoD and D&D has rules for social interaction and W40k doesn't. If you can't roll a dice to get what you want you'll have to spell it out. A system with no rules for social interaction would be a good role-playing game. (If it came with a kick ass combat system, of course.)

I know you say that there are different playing styles and I respect that. Some people might find it awkward to speak in first person, for example. But for me I think the best role-playing is acheived at Cons with well thought out characters but virtually no stats.

A good role-playing game would give stats for how a character is likely to react but in no way state how good they would do so. I mean nature/demeanor, alignment or virtues are all fine but manipulation as an ability or intimidate as a skill are not.

To each his own I guess but I'm rapidly becoming fed up with D&D for these very reasons. I don't want my character to do the role-playing for me. I want to do it. I have a similar problem with knowledge skills. I want to try out my knowledge I don't want to be restricted be the lack of knowledge skills or play a character with more knowledge than myself. "Ho hum. I have no idea but I guess my character does. I'll set my character on auto-pilot if it's all the same to you guys."

As for balance; some abilities which might seem very powerful can make a class less attractive because of the responsibilities that goes with it. For example the ability to heal people is mostly a chore so a lot of people are happy not to have it. The ability to use diplomacy on the opposition takes the fun out of encoutering sentient being so much that some find it better not to have it. I mean I'd rather say something idiotic, with my own voice, to the dragon that inevitably will get us into trouble that roll a +45 diplomacy check and have the dragon become friendly.

I'm just venting but please feel free to point out where I'm wrong.

 

[Gez]

I'm just venting but please feel free to point out where I'm wrong.

Well. For Knowledge skills, for example, it would be a bit strange if my knowledge was equal to my character's one.

They would know nearly naught about their world, but have several insights about computer programming, as well as be able to drive a car but unable to ride a horse.

Same for social skills.

Our characters are not ourselves.

Let say a geeky fellow, the kind of people who's so shy he hides behind Internet to speak with others, wants to play a social character. If he has to roleplay it, he'll be probably ridicule and will end up not playing that kind of characters anymore, instead focusing on gruff, taciturne, uncharismatic PCs. If, on the other hand, he get to roll the result of his roleplay, he'll be rewarded frequently and may even end up more confident.

That's probably an example a bit extreme, and that suppose DMs use a middle-ground between pure roll-play (as in "I go to the town to get info, I rolled 27 on Gather Informations") and pure role-play (as in, taking 3 quarters of hour real-time asking clumsy questions in character).

Since we roll-play most physical interactions with the world (walking, swimming, fighting, riding, driving, crafting, etc.) but role-play most social interactions, RPGs allows social gamers to play physical characters yet get the best of both world, whereas shy gamers with weak characters will get the worst. Not necessarily fun.



By pushing this logic to its extreme, we could say also:

"I don't want the character to do the brawling for me" or "I don't want the character to do the spellcasting for me". Caricature ? Yes, I recognize it.

I bet you like Live-Action RPGs. Me, I prefer table-tops that allows me to play things radically different from me. I seek fun and a good story above immersion, I think.

 

[Bastoche]

IMO, game balance equals "camera time".

On the battlefield, the fighters has their camera time. When magic's involved, spellcasters has their camera time. When traps needs to be disabled, when the ennemy needs to be spied, the rogues has their camera time. When lost in the wood being attacked by bears, the rangers has their camera time. Etc.

3E D&D is NOT combat oriented, it's "dungeon crawling" oriented. It's not the same thing. There's more combat in dungeon crawling then other types of games, but there's other things too.

If combat was everything in D&D, there would be only onle class: the fighter.