How important is game balance to you?

[Tony Vargas]

Compelling play rests on asymmetry of choices. Every choice a player makes should have an impact on the play space.

That'd be a fair version of 'meaningful' in the context of the definition of balance that I find most useful. I'd be open to a broader take on meaningful, taking player preference and potential impact and I guess "framing" into it, as well as actual, final impact.

Game balance for me is all about establishing equality of opportunity, rather than equality of result.

That's a familiar phrasing from outside the hobby. I'd call that 'fairness.' If every player has the same opportunity to make the best choices, there can be many bad and few good choices, and making the right choices is must part of learning the game - but it's fair. Even if a new player might not think so, at first. Fairness <> balance, IMHO, but a balanced game is going to be pretty fair as a consequence. OTOH, 'equality of result' is another extreme that doesn't equate to balance, at all, being a much more absolute and prescriptive concept than 'viable,' the other thing choices need to be in addition to 'meaningful' to contribute to balance.

Still for the most part I am wary of giving too much weight to decisions made in character generation. I want the heart of the game to exist in decisions made in the heat of the moment. My preference is for other decisions to impact the sort of decisions made in the core game, but not to exert undue influence on the results.

Balance applies at both levels. You can give the players many meaningful & viable choices at chargen, and many more (typically more granular and situational) in play. And, yes, a game can contain one choice that's arguably better than (as opposed to strictly superior to) another as long as both remain viable. And, yes, especially in play there may be some non-viable, even disastrous, choices available, and a cloud of 'chaff' meaningless/useless choices as well, if you like.

I really dislike RPGs where the classes/characters all seem the same but the more variation you add to PC abilities the greater the potential for power imbalance. I actually have found 5e to be somewhat of a "Goldilocks just right" of variation vs. balance.

That's one of the classic conundrums. I don't want to come off as too much of an evangelist for one definition, but the one I like - that a game is better-balanced the more (relatively speaking) choices it provides that are both meaningful and viable is helpful in resolving it (in a way other than unnecessarily sacrificing balance for choice). The key is that balance is about providing more choices. A game where there are no choices - no meaningful choices, for instance - is not that balanced. So there's no variation vs balance trade-off, since balance /requires/ a great deal of variation (without which, you have no meaningful choices). (You still have a point though, that I'll get into later...)

Personally, I'm willing to cut a game a lot of slack in the 'meaningful' category, since subjective elements can make some choices more meaningful to some gamers than to others, but you clearly don't feel that way, so let's consider Campbell's thought, above, about each choice /making an impact on the play space/. If you really did have some choices that had no impact on the specific experiences of play, they'd be meaningless to that level of rigor (they might be very meaningful to a given player, and it doesn't hurt to let such players make those choices, it just doesn't contribute to, nor much detract from, balance). D&D hasn't ever been in danger of perfect balance, but that failing is not for a lack of choices or for a lack of meaningful differences among them - it's the presence (even prevalence) of non-viable choices 'traps' or (if no one's really tempted to take them) 'chaff.'

3E had great variation and possibilities for character optimizers (which I enjoy to a certain degree) but the power gap between clerics, druids, wizards and everyone else became so gigantic that I found higher level games unsustainable.

Yep. If you can tolerate or compensate for the profound imbalances described in optimization Tiers - playing all the same Tier, for instance, or playing E6 where the problems are less profound - 3e's wild customizeability is still pretty awesome. I love to play it when I get the chance, but I'm not really up for trying to run it again, for that reason. Still, it was a wonderful step forward from the tightly class/race- bound classic game.

4E was very balanced, but the classes felt so similar to me that I got bored.

4e was better-balanced than other editions of D&D, but relative to broader comparisons or theoretical ideals of balance, not so much. Not that it isn't fair to call it 'very balanced' in this context, just, y'know, perspective. Of course, there's no arguing with how you felt about them, that's a personal, subjective experience. But, objectively, the classes were quite different from eachother in many ways. After coping with the radical imbalances of the prior edition, though, feeling like lesser imbalance muted the differences among classes is understandable. Like stepping from a lethally frigid environment into a merely uncomfortably cool one could feel overwhelmingly hot at first.

The three pillars of D&D are combat, exploration and social. It's not realistic to expect all classes to be able to contribute exactly equally to each pillar

No, it's not. And, it would be ruinous to balance if they were to contribute /identically/. But it's perfectly reasonable to aim for them each being viable within each pillar independently of the other. There's a good reason to aim for that, too, as it Empowers the DM to run campaigns that emphasize the pillars differently.

I don't think it is incumbent on the game rules to address the fact that some DM's emphasize one pillar over the others.

Maybe not incumbent on RPGs in general (and this is the general RPG forum), but I want to point out that 5e, in particular, has among it's several impossible goals, supporting the full range of playstyles supported by each past edition...

... and, I'd presume, more besides.

 

[Lisa Lewis]

Thanks for information.

 

[Jhaelen]

You missed the whole CoDzilla thing, I take it?

To the contrary, it's exactly what I thought of when I wrote my post about the 'leader' role in 3e (really a big misnomer for this edition...).
The way I recall it was that all theorycrafters agreed that CoDzilla was the strongest kind of character you could build, but in practice there was almost no one who wanted to play one, because it wasn't _fun_.

We had one player in our (extended) group of ten players who seemed to enjoy the group healer role. The other cleric player only played his character out of necessity and did so grumblingly; he'd obviously have preferred a more aggressive role at the front (a position in which he found himself way too often than was good for him - or the group).

We had another player who liked playing a druid, but he was not at all optimized. What he enjoyed was the flexibility of shapeshifting into all kinds of different forms to deal with a variety of situations, rather than trying to find the ultimate combat shape. He was also the player who could look back at the longest list of deceased characters (at one point in the campaign he even kept the character's name and appended a number to it).

We also had a player who only ever played fighters (or maybe a paladin) because he felt all other characters were "too complicated". And to my big surprise when we switched to 4e, the very same player suddenly started playing wizard characters. I still consider this strong proof that 4e was a superior edition, because in at least one aspect it achieved perfect balance: all classes were now equally complex.

We had two players enjoying sneaky roles, one to be as far from the action as possible (i.e. ranger), and one to be in the middle of it without anyone noticing or being able to do anything against it (i.e. rogue/shadowdancer).

One player enjoyed social characters the most, one player was all about arcane casters, and the remaining two didn't seem to have any favorites, trying out almost every other class in the book over the course of the campaign.

 

[pemerton]

Balance can mean different things. I like a game in which each player has a comparable ability to impact the shared fiction. This can be done via balance of mechanical effectiveness, but that's not the only way.

If characters have different degrees of mechanical effectiveness, but there is a way of distributing the mechanical challenges they face so that the mechanical pressure on the stronger character is greater, then their impact on the shared fiction might be similar (eg MHRP has something like this via the Doom Pool).

Or if characters have the same likelihood of confronting a situation that matters to their character, whether or not they succeed in that confrontation, then impact on the shared fiction might vary less than mechanical effectiveness does (I find Burning Wheel to be a bit like this).

 

[Tony Vargas]

To the contrary, it's exactly what I thought of when I wrote my post about the 'leader' role in 3e (really a big misnomer for this edition...).
The way I recall it was that all theorycrafters agreed that CoDzilla was the strongest kind of character you could build, but in practice there was almost no one who wanted to play one, because it wasn't _fun_.

Sure, the traditional band-aid cleric wasn't fun, and the concept has some strikes against it for some folks, and it doesn't exactly have iconic character examples in genre the way the wizard has Gandalf. But that's exactly what 3e tried to address with spontaneous healing spells, and improved buffs (both party buffs and self-buffs), among other things. They threw a lot a the Cleric in 3.0 to try to make it more appealing to players, because it had always been kinda mandatory.

IMHO, through 3.0, it kinda worked, a little. A cleric could participate in melee more effectively, some of his 'buff' spells were well worth casting, and he could sneak in contributions other than healing since he didn't 'need' to memorize full slates of healing spells - he could prep a variety of spells that might be useful, and cast them if they came up, or spontaneously convert them to healing if they didn't. It still wasn't exactly the most popular class, but mechanically, it was less unappealing.

The problem was they'd thrown so much at the cleric to make it bearable while providing healing that, if you just dropped the ball on healing entirely, it could be decidedly overpowered.

3.5 made it worse. AFAIK, there was no rule change in 3.5 that made the WoCLW standard equipment, but it seemed to catch on at that point. Between-combat healing became trivial, freeing up clerics' spells, and, some fairly minor-seeming changes to buff spells (reducing durations, and adding caster-stat-buffing versions) tilted the balance toward clerics self-buffing. And that was it, CoDzilla became very much a thing.

4e finally attacked the 'cleric problem' from a different angle - well, several different angles. It completely re-jiggered between-combat healing so the Cleric (leaders in general) weren't required for it (didn't even need him to pull the trigger on the wand). It made in-combat healing more accessible both as Second Wind and as minor-action Healing Words and healing riders on other Cleric powers. It moved healing resources from primarily clerical spell slots (so clerics no longer 'needed' tons of slots that they could then misappropriate to mutate into CoDzilla) to individuals' Healing Surges. And, it offered viable cleric alternatives (other 'Leaders'), starting with the Warlord, and expanding to include Bards, Shamans, Ardents, Artificers, and Sentinel Druids.

The Cleric stopped being boring, and it stopped being mandatory. It still made vital contributions of the traditional sort, but it was able to make others, besides. It had become a meaningful & viable class option.
It was balanced.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I voted "Tyranny of Balance." The only kind of balance I care about is "spotlight balance," which means everyone has something useful to do most of the time, and everyone gets to shine and be the best at the task at hand once in a while. This is a DMing issue rather than a rules issue.

I've DMed plenty of AD&D games with PCs in the party from level 2 to 12. Everyone had fun. This wasn't even hard to do on my end. Lots of people enjoy games like RIFTS and Ars Magica that have a reputation for being wildly unbalanced. Lack of balance does not detract from fun IME.

On the other hand, laser focus on balance leads to things like 4E, where classes were virtually indistinguishable. Focus on balance takes away a lot of design space from a game author. It makes it hard to emulate literature, hard to differentiate characters, and severely limits scenarios that can be played.

Short version - game balance in RPGs is a crock, and a focus on balance makes the game significantly less fun.

 

[Campbell]

I am very suspicious of spotlight balance. As a concept it has implications on game design that I am not overly fond of. First, it assumes that players are primarily driven by the limelight. This is not the case for me - I am primarily driven by opportunities that allow me to make a decision that will have an impact on the fiction. Second, it assumes that spotlight is a thing that is given rather than earned. The idea is that the GM will manipulate the fiction and sometimes the rules of the game to provide players with special moments regardless of the decisions players make. That is not my jam on either side of the screen. As a player I do not want the impact of our decisions to be held hostage by a GM imperative to showcase given PCs. As a GM I do not feel it is my responsibility to manage the game. I want things to snowball so I am just as surprised by the fiction as the players are. I am there to provide opportunities for the players to make decisions and see where things lead.

I am not really arguing against asymmetric character types. I am arguing that a game should be designed so that it is on the players to bring their resources to bear. Here's what John Harper has to say in Blades in the Dark (emphasis mine):

Let everything flow from the fiction. The game's starting situations and your opening scene will put things in motion. Ask how the characters react and see what happens next. NPCs react according to their goals and methods.

Events snowball. You don't need to “manage” the game. Action, reaction, and consequences will drive everything.

 

[LostSoul]

Game balance can be a controversial topic. Some feel it is paramount, while others feel it is just a tool among many.

Personally, I feel that these days folks seem to view balance as the end goal, while I feel it's just part of the toolset. After all, a perfectly balanced game is this:

Everybody roll 1d6. Highest roll wins.

Fun, eh?

How do you feel about balance?

The most important thing in any game is that the players have meaningful choices to make. Meaningful choices mean that players can balance one choice against another. What choices you want the players to make differs based on the game you're making, but offering optimal decisions as part of a game is just poor design.

For instance, you can weight weapon damage based on the weight (encumbrance) of the weapon, one hand or two, different classes, genre, or just style. So if you take a heavy weapon you can't wear heavy armour (choice), or you can't wear a shield (choice), or you can't cast spells (choice), or you need to conform to the genre (choice), or you need to play to your own weapon style (choice). But if one weapon was better than any other - more damage, less weight / one-handed / cast spells anyways / doesn't fit the genre / ignores your own style - there's no choice to make. The game is not balanced; pick the optimal solution. Perverse incentives don't support your game.

Rolling 1d6, highest roll wins, doesn't offer any choices. It's not a game. It's a die roll. There's no game balance in something that's not a game.

What a ridiculous argument to make.

 

[LostSoul]

I voted "Tyranny of Balance." The only kind of balance I care about is "spotlight balance," which means everyone has something useful to do most of the time, and everyone gets to shine and be the best at the task at hand once in a while. This is a DMing issue rather than a rules issue.

No it's not. If resolution bogs down in some area, whoever's action needs to be resolved is going to sit in the spotlight. If it takes 30 minutes to do a "psi-battle" in some imagined game, where only one PC can act by the rules, that's taking the spotlight away from other characters.

You'd think this would be obvious.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

No it's not. If resolution bogs down in some area, whoever's action needs to be resolved is going to sit in the spotlight. If it takes 30 minutes to do a "psi-battle" in some imagined game, where only one PC can act by the rules, that's taking the spotlight away from other characters.

You'd think this would be obvious.

This is the "decker issue" from games like Shadowrun. Nothing at all to do with spotlight balance.