D&D General How do you define balance?

[HammerMan]

If everybody wants it, or believes they need it, or compare other things to it--then it's probably unbalanced.

if I worked at WoTC (man would people hate me) and I wrote and got published 3 new feats.

1)Improved toughness: You gain 10(3d6) hp and 3d6HD you can spend per day like your normal HD
2)Spell Casting Dabbler: You pick up to your prof bonus spells from any list of spells and add them to your spells known and they always act as prepared, These spells can not be higher then 1 less then your highest spell slot.
3)Spellfire: You gain the detect magic and absorb element spells at will, along with eldritch blast cantrip. special any round that you have extra damage dice from absorb element you can change the eldritch blast damage type from force to the element type, if you do you can add them to 1 ray of damage as no action on a hit.

all three would be REAL hard to choose from... but all three are pretty unbalanced for a 4th level character

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Moreover, there is something inherently wrong, for me, in what is probably one of the most collaborative game ever, to present the spotlight as a kind of holy grail that players should, in a sense, be fighting for, with the DM as an referee.

I'm not @Umbran but my more charitable reading of his post is that: Sharing the spotlight with the other players at the table creates balance in the game.

 

[Voadam]

There was no Balance by design in 3e. The developers on multiple occassions said they just threw out ideas and it was up to the GM to incorporate what they wanted in thier game.

3e had a design goal of all classes being roughly balanced mechanically for combat at the same level.

They took AD&D's each class being balanced partly by varying xp charts and partly by being balanced at different levels over the course of a campaign and changed it.

Races went from powerful ones with class and level restrictions to all races having roughly equivalent benefits and no class or level restrictions.

Classes all used the same xp chart and were designed to be D&D combatants.

Thieves went from terrible combatant skill people to sneak attacking striker rogues with dodge powers.

Fighters went from being a warrior chassis on which rangers and paladins got bonus powers to having their own abilities designed to be comparable to paladin and ranger powers.

wizards got more spells and hp at lower levels so they can be significantly contributing party members from low level on instead of being a weird weak at low level balanced by strong at high levels power curve.

3e designers explicitly said that alignment and roleplay restrictions on paladins and barbarians and monks were not power balance mechanisms but simply flavor restrictions.

The fact that there was still a lot of mechanical imbalance and they did not fully achieve their design goal of balance does not mean there was no balance by design.

They tried a lot of mechanically diverse stuff and provided a ton of options, not all of it was balanced even though one of their design goals was for balance.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I'm not @Umbran but my more charitable reading of his post is that: Sharing the spotlight with the other players at the table creates balance in the game.

Swarm couldn't have stated this any better. When reading them I felt that both parties were right about the issue and Umbran could have been interpreted much more charitably.

 

[Umbran]

And this is where I don't agree. 4e, rightly, does not define Watchers are exceptions, and I would personally be offended to be categorised as an exception for my style in playing the game.

Your misunderstanding of my point seems to be growing.

I am not interested in the dynamic where I say a thing, you make declarative statements about what I mean, and then I have to disabuse you of misconceptions, only to find you hanging on to those misconceptions even more tightly, making even stronger and more negative declarative statements. If you aren't going to let go of your prejudgements, or maybe even ask an honest question to be sure you understand, we can just stop.

Moreover, there is something inherently wrong, for me, in what is probably one of the most collaborative game ever, to present the spotlight as a kind of holy grail that players should, in a sense, be fighting for, with the DM as an referee.

So, any given group has finite time at the table. Spotlight moments, where a character does something dramatic, pivotal, or otherwise really cool, happen, and take up time. Ergo, there will be a finite number of spotlight moments in your game - they are a finite resource. Sorry, but that's just the nature of being finite beings living in linear time.

The entire point I started to make is that, in fact, players shouldn't have to fight over these moments - what I think of as a well-balanced system will tend to distribute them fairly evenly just as a result of engaging in play. No fighting required. No GM choosing where they go is necessary. They just happen, as a natural result of engaging with the game.

And yes, 4e was a pretty well balanced system. I didn't care all that much for the details, but I accept its balanced nature.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I consider balance mostly a matter of spotlight time and general contribution. The game and party is balanced when these are generated just out of the normal course of play, without the GM having to force the issue with any frequency.

For me, the last part of the sentence is the most crucial “without the GM having to force the issue with any frequency”.

As the DM, I have a diverse toolbox I can use to ensure spotlight gets shared around and a powerful character’s weaknesses occasionally come into play.

BUT doing so has trade-offs. It means extra time designing encounters when I could be working on the story. It means not including certain enemies even if they make sense thematically. It means straining verisimilitude because not doing so overly constrains weak characters or enables overly powerful characters. On occasion, it means missing the mark and a near TPK.

In short, it is less fun as a DM.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

In my experience at the table, the answer and most important litmus is success percentage.

It really means nothing if the PCs are OP, underpowered, someone has a powerful magic item, etc. so long as you understand that normally you want to give the players a 45%-70% chance of succeeding at anything in the game. When the circumstances warrant a probability outside those ranges, skew probabilities accordingly.

The reason for this system of thought, is that I found through play testing that the players and myself had the most fun within these ranges. Understanding the math allows you to tweak things a little in the background when you think it will improve the player's experience. DC, armor class, NPC stats, ability checks, whatever you can think of may benefit from this strategy, so I've explored that a bit.

You seem to be restating the 5e bounded accuracy concept, but as if you invented it.

 

[HammerMan]

So, any given group has finite time at the table. Spotlight moments, where a character does something dramatic, pivotal, or otherwise really cool, happen, and take up time. Ergo, there will be a finite number of spotlight moments in your game - they are a finite resource. Sorry, but that's just the nature of being finite beings living in linear time.

The entire point I started to make is that, in fact, players shouldn't have to fight over these moments - what I think of as a well-balanced system will tend to distribute them fairly evenly just as a result of engaging in play. No fighting required. No GM choosing where they go is necessary. They just happen, as a natural result of engaging with the game.

And yes, 4e was a pretty well balanced system. I didn't care all that much for the details, but I accept its balanced nature.

now this is an interesting thought experiment:

lets say that we game 12 hours a month (weather that be 3 hours weekly 6 hours twice a month or one long hole day of gaming) and we assume that some portion of this time is spent joking, being out of character, or catching up (if I am being honest I want to call that 9 out of 12 hours) I will say that is 2 hours bringing us to 10 hours of real in game time... we play for a year and that is 120 hours. (a little over 7,000 minutes) what % of that time should each player get the spot light?

Assuming a DM+4 players I would think perfectly balanced would be 1,440 minutes each... that is direct 1/5th. however I doubt anyone would claim to have such a perfectly balanced anything, also sometime will be 'group' time, and the DM most likely doesn't need a full share (after all they are in the spotlight when others are).

720 is (about) half that... if over the course of the year you could (no I don't know how you would keep track) log 700-800 minutes of positive spotlight time per player is that good?

IF the fighter finds that he is a 'spot light' character for 250 minutes (mostly combat, and even then only when the casters are low on resources or they get lucky crits) but the cleric and warlock both have closer to 1,800 minutes each is that balanced? I mean especially if when you look back all 250 minutes of the fighter spot light is life or death climatic ones... but more then 3/4 of the warlock's ones are more hum drum moments and mostly out of combat or early vs mook combat how does this math work out?

If the rogue disarms a dozen traps (about 1 per month) and gets some cool rp moment with the rogues guild twice... then fades into the background as an 'okay' combat character but never gets a break out moment... are those dozen traps really important enough to be spot light?

If at the last moment during the lich's final speech the rogue player remembers something from game 3, and pulls out an auto win scroll that everyone including the DM forgot he had... and gets the single most dramatic and triumph moment, does that (witch will be remembered most likely more then any other moment) make up for the rest of the time?

 

[billd91]

Your misunderstanding of my point seems to be growing.

I am not interested in the dynamic where I say a thing, you make declarative statements about what I mean, and then I have to disabuse you of misconceptions, only to find you hanging on to those misconceptions even more tightly, making even stronger and more negative declarative statements. If you aren't going to let go of your prejudgements, or maybe even ask an honest question to be sure you understand, we can just stop.

Honestly, I think you're missing Lyxen's point and digging in (so maybe follow your own advice, eh?).
He's largely agreeing with the idea of spotlight balance, but highlighting that it's something that some players are content to not have or even avoid because of their play style.
And these days, it's best not to brush away that clarification as "an exception".

 

[Umbran]

now this is an interesting thought experiment:

lets say that we game 12 hours a month (weather that be 3 hours weekly 6 hours twice a month or one long hole day of gaming) and we assume that some portion of this time is spent joking, being out of character, or catching up (if I am being honest I want to call that 9 out of 12 hours) I will say that is 2 hours bringing us to 10 hours of real in game time... we play for a year and that is 120 hours. (a little over 7,000 minutes) what % of that time should each player get the spot light?

So, in my experience, the spotlight isn't on every minute of game. It comes out for events that strongly drive the narrative or results. The rogue making a roll to pick an average lock and get a few gold coins isn't spotlight time. The rogue disarming the multi-part trap that would spill black dragon acid on the crown princess in the limited time the fighter can hold off the Evil Duke's guards is spotlight time. The party barbarian cutting down a goblin isn't spotlight time - Ragnr the Unencumbered getting that necessary critical hit on the dread dragon Oomlaut when the rest of the party is down is spotlight time.