I hate game balance!

[Psion]

No.

That kind of balance is stupid. Always has been, always will be.

I actually agree. Sort of.

I think what did happen in 3e, and worked if the DM did it correctly, was shifting the means of balance over levels.

 

[The Little Raven]

Resources!

Magic missile is a resource. Use it, it's gone. You can swing your swordarm all day long.

That is what made them different, in past editions. But in 4e? You, sir, are totally correct - there is no difference between the two.

Weapons!

Tide of Iron is a melee attack that requires a shield. No shield, you can't use it.

Magic Missile is a ranged attack that benefits from an implement, but does not require one.

Nimble Strike is a ranged attack that requires a ranged weapon, which requires ammunition (aka a resource).

If those abilities have no differences, despite having very different requirements, then there's no difference between melee attack and Magic Missile in 3e.

When you pull back so far as to lose all the details, your view has begun vague to the point of uselessness.

 

[MerricB]

Everyone is the samn darn thing. A fighter uses a sword, a rogue uses a light blade, a wizard uses a spell, and a ranger uses a bow. But they all do damage in the same way. Sure, the wizard uses a "magic missile" while a ranger uses a "longbow" but its the same damn thing. Rogues get a sneak attack or whatever its called, and a ranger gets a hunters quarry whatnot.

Honestly, you really, really, really need to play some 4e, and for more than just one or two sessions. The classes play quite differently, and more and more once you get to the higher levels.

In AD&D, the cleric and fighter are nearly identical at 1st level. They're both primarily melee combatants. Sure, the fighter probably does a point or two more damage and the cleric can cast a couple of cure light wounds spells, but that's about all the difference they have.

By 10th level, they're acting quite a bit differently.

It's the same in 4e, although even at 1st level there's differentiation. Our combat last Sunday saw the Fighter, Paladin and Warlord in melee with a bunch of kobolds whilst the Wizard was blowing them up with his blast ability and the Warlock was striking from the rear. Then the tide turned and the Wizard and Warlock found themselves in melee... it wasn't good for those two characters.

At 20th level, what are all those characters going to be doing?

The Fighter is hitting everyone adjacent to him quite hard.

The Cleric is calling down the wrath of his god, affecting all creatures near him, or buffing his allies.

The Rogue is darting in and out, hitting one opponent for lots of damage (either in melee or ranged).

The Wizard is raining down death from afar, affecting many enemies at once.

All of their styles are quite distinct - the number of opponents they affect, the range at which they work, the secondary conditions they create, and even the damage they do.

The big difference is that the Wizard isn't useless after using his big spells, and that the non-spellcasters have utility abilities that aren't overwhelmed by the spellcasters.

Play D&D 4E. You really need to see it in play for a few sessions until you understand what its strengths are, and what its weaknesses are.

Cheers!

 

[GnomeWorks]

Gary Gygax made it that way, and that's how it has been, in OD&D, 1E, 2E, 3.0E, and even in 3.5E.

Honestly - who cares? Sure, Gygax did it that way. Doesn't mean it's good design.

Now, in 4E, it is not that way, so you may have found a D&D that is more to your liking.

Wrong again, Edena. Just because I don't like how it was done back in the day doesn't mean I like how it's being done now.

Well, there are some things about which we can agree 100%. Good show, old man.

Man, I can legally drink here in the States as of around four weeks ago. I don't think I qualify as "old."

That's like saying "You're not looking at languages at the same level I am; you stand five feet from the book, and they all look alike!"

Clarifications abound elsewhere, yo. But thanks for playing!

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

And as I've said, I think Gygax was a horrible game designer, so saying he intentionally put bad design in his game doesn't do anything for me.

I happen to think he was a very good game designer. Just my opinion.
And Monte Cook, and the others ... are really good designers. Again, my opinion.

Ahh, the "do stuff now which is balanced by a future that may never occur" design philosophy which is fully dependent on the type of long-term campaigns which the majority of D&D players don't play.

Do you expect perfection out of Gary Gygax? Out of others? You won't get it.
Modify your game outside of Gygax's concepts to suit your needs!

Anybody playing a poorly designed class has a right to complain.

Then redesign it the way you want. Gary Gygax made it clear you could do that. That was a part of the framework of the rules. If you didn't like it, you could change it.
But don't just sit there and complain. DO something about the situation.

You like bad game design. That's cool.

Bad game design? That is your opinion.
I happen to think it was very GOOD game design.

However (and here's the surprise), a lot of other people don't. We like our game designers to actually put work into the design, rather than tell us we need to figure it out for ourselves.

(blinks)

Gary Gygax put an immense amount of effort into the game. A lot of other people put immense amounts of effort into the game. The list of these people is legion, and their efforts are epic.
But they cannot create perfection, and they cannot please everyone, all the time. Who could hope to do that?

I'll say it again: D&D is not an auto-happy game. You know that. If you are a DM, you *really* know that. You must work for the fun, work for the reward, be you a player or a DM. You get back, what you put into the game.
The designers cannot grant you satisfaction (although it isn't for lack of trying ... they have tried very hard.) YOU must make the effort to find the satisfaction and reward you seek out of the game.

As for the wizard, Gygax's wizard is an ultimate example of this philosophy, In Game.
The wizard must work incredibly hard, incredibly long, without reward, without recompense, in extreme danger of dying, for level after level after level. Without cleverness, wit, luck, and work, her life expectancy is measured in 1 round increments.
But the big payback comes, and she is eventually the strongest of all the characters, and she can hurl mighty magics. A very fine case of Perseverence Pays. Great rewards go to those who make great effort.

 

[GnomeWorks]

I actually agree. Sort of.

I think what did happen in 3e, and worked if the DM did it correctly, was shifting the means of balance over levels.

Anything that touchy is way too easy to screw up. I've got no interest in dealing with a system in which a player goes from worst to best, no matter how big the timeframe is. It's just not worth it.

Nimble Strike is a ranged attack that requires a ranged weapon, which requires ammunition (aka a resource).

...you have got to be kidding.

You are seriously citing ammunition as a comparable resource to 3.5 spell slots?

Ammunition can be bought, sold, found, traded. Spell slots are pretty much set by the game and can't really be modified (let's assume core, since it's useless to argue beyond that).

If those abilities have no differences, despite having very different requirements, then there's no difference between melee attack and Magic Missile in 3e.

Weapons != expendable resources. But nice try!

When you pull back so far as to lose all the details, your view has begun vague to the point of uselessness.

Yep, thanks for the witty dialogue!

 

[fuzzlewump]

Ok, I've been away all day since my OP.

First off, thank you all for reinforcing my last paragraph og the OP so strongly and effectively. I KNEW my opinion must be wrong, and I thank you for showing me the error of my ways. The acerbic and sarcastic replies really drove the point home how I'm an idiot for feeling the way I do. Thank you.

You criticize others for using sarcasm but then use it yourself. What?

In the attempt to balance, they made everyone the same. Everyone's special!

Your use of hyperbole makes it clear you are not in the least impartial. The reason is because while all attacks are able to do damage, they all have different effects. You ignored this completely, saying every ability is the "same." If you want to have a convincing post on the proposed vanilla flavor of D&D, you'll have to take all of its parts in consideration, including but not limited to: slowing, knocking prone, pushing, pulling, sliding, weakening, knocking unconscious, varying effects based on ability scores not used in the attack roll itself, attacks versus different defenses, bonuses applied with attacks, penalties assigned with attacks, et cetera.

Yeah, I'm sorry, but an 18th level wizard should be able to destroy an army, with a few 20th level fighters in said army. HES A FREAKING WIZARD!

What are you talking about? Why should wizards allow the decimation of an entire army and a few 20th level adventurers? "FREAKING WIZARD" means nothing outside of the context of the spells in previous editions which allowed wizards to decimate an army. In other words, there is no law of the universe that rules a wizard must be more powerful than everyone else in the end, and be weaker than everyone else in the beginning.

In a previous post I talked about how Wizard's perhaps aren't able to handle magical energy as well in the heat of combat, and so aren't any more powerful than the steel of a dedicated melee combatant. If you believe that certain players at the table should be more powerful than other players at the table, then so be it, nothing will change your mind. But inside the context of the world, anything can happen.

It's this diapering that 4E does that pisses me off. You are obviously stupid, and a twink, and a munchkin, and your spineless mushbrain DM allows it to happen, so we'll make a game system that prevents that with the rules. Lets make everyone special!

What are you talking about? You can say buzzwords like a professional, but what does balancing the classes have anything to do with diapering? In 3.5, you simply were worse off choosing a martial class instead of a caster in the end. It was, as far as anyone can tell, a design goal. So, by leaving bad choices in the game, that's how you separate the 'men from the boys' or the 'babies from the men' in order to satisfy your metaphor?

How is each class being equally powerful a, truly, general, all around, bad thing? Your complaints are with the classes being vanilla, but that has nothing to do with the overall power, that has to do with the uniqueness of the abilities of each class.

In my games, I'm chock full of fighters, barbarians, rogues and clerics, and rarely does anyone want to play the mage, because they routinely get their asses kicked by the archers and mages on the bad guys side who say "Holy crap, a mage, kill it, it's powerful!"

So, instead of everyone wanting to play the mage, no one wants to play the mage. Wouldn't it be better if it was in the middle ground, where a mage was just as good of an option as the fighter and the cleric? Remember now, magic doesn't have to be more powerful than steel, there is no law, so why shouldn't the classes have at least similar power levels?

 

[GnomeWorks]

Do you expect perfection out of Gary Gygax? Out of others? You won't get it.

This is an unfair argument. I've got little interest in speaking ill of the dead, and we're going to wind up going there, if this part of this conversation continues much further.

The wizard must work incredibly hard, incredibly long, without reward, without recompense, in extreme danger of dying, for level after level after level. Without cleverness, wit, luck, and work, her life expectancy is measured in 1 round increments.

But the big payback comes, and she is eventually the strongest of all the characters, and she can hurl mighty magics. A very fine case of Perseverence Pays. Great rewards go to those who make great effort.

No, Edena. Seriously. This is Bad Design.

Say you start a game at 1st, and it ends at 3rd. Oh, sorry, M-U, you just got screwed for nothin'.

Say you start a game at 20th. Oh, hey, M-U, you get phenomenal cosmic powers, at absolutely no cost! Aren't you cool!

I don't know how you cannot see that that can cause issues. Balancing a class "over level progression" is just a really, really, really bad idea. I don't care who's doing it, or what the philosophy behind it is. It just plain out sucks.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

This breaks down immediately if you ever start a game at higher levels, or if you let someone roll up a character of a different class to replace a fallen hero at something other than 1st level. And again, saying "well, 'proper' DMs make sure everyone always starts at 1st level" does not excuse the system: it just paints over another flaw and mandates just one more "proper" play style in order to compensate.

Having spent many a year in the game design business, I can't in good faith support the idea that there are no such thing as weaknesses in any given system. There always are, and it's not heresy for a designer to try addressing them — it's his job. A game designer who stops asking "Is there a way that this could work better?" about a game they work on is not a game designer any more. They're just creating by rote.

I was subjected to a 'proper' DM demanding we play 1st level characters in I6 Ravenloft, and said 'properness' led to a very unfun adventure and a TPK (Ravenloft was meant for levels 6 and up: I do not know what the DM was thinking.)
So yeah, you are right. A 'proper' DM doing things 'properly' can lead to absurd situations.
I do not advocate that there is one, 'proper' way to play D&D.

You are a Game Designer for White Wolf? Cheers to you, sir.

Edena_of_Neith

 

[GnomeWorks]

How is each class being equally powerful a, truly, general, all around, bad thing? Your complaints are with the classes being vanilla, but that has nothing to do with the overall power, that has to do with the uniqueness of the abilities of each class.

I was just scanning your post, fuzzlewump, and this line caught my attention.

This is the problem. It's not that each class is of equal power - that's something I'm not too sure of, in general, but it sounds like enough of a good idea that I'm willing to run with it until I can think of a good reason that it's not a good idea.

It's that the class abilities seem to be rather similar in nature. Again, I haven't played it extensively, so maybe that's totally wrong, and they just look that way on paper (I'd blame the formatting); but just looking at them, and having toyed with them a bit, none of the classes really stands out from each other. They do, a bit, but not really significantly.