Is DnD well-balanced?

[Dragon Sin-Camealot]

This is the subject that puts the real question to your participation. Many kinds of works have to follow certain rules to be comprehended.

I'm pretty sure whomever wrote the story play tested it first. A beta-test to work out loose-ends.

I'm also unsure as to what conclusion I'd like to draw. Maybe I stated it already. But this is a question to ask yourself and other people about before playing the game.

I don't know what you think. Do you invent too much or too little about certain situations?

 

[Dannager]

I don't really understand what you're saying in the OP, so I'm going to answer the question posed as the title of this thread.

Yes, D&D is well-balanced.

 

[marelion]

What exactlxy do you have in mind when talking about balance?

1)Are we talking about adequate challenges for players of all classes and races?

2)Would you like to consider the relation between DM`s Monsters and Players`Powers?

3)Or would you like to discuss advantages and disadvantages of certain builds with regard to a certain group`s power-level?

I`d appreciate it, if you could give us a little more input! Right now it is a little hard to say where exactly you`d like this topic to go...

So far, the only balancing issue I have seen occur at our game table was the matter of skill challenges.

Our DM doesn`t exactly like them and whenever he deceides to give the system another try he just gets more and more frustrated. It is pretty hard to build appropriate skill challenges as soon as characters don`t max their characters out in this area.

It really drives me nuts that some characters have very little way opf participating in a skil challenge. There is the issue with defenders generally being unable to contribute much to physical skills due to their ACP, there is the matter that most wizards know better about religion than clerics and paladins, which is imho insulting to anybody really trying to play 4E as an R(!)PG.

One thing I`m curious about is checking on the balance between ranged and melee chatacters. So far, it seems consensus that melee characters have the edge but from my point of view shaped by my gaming experience this is really more dependent on the DM and how he adjusts the encounters. I guess it`s a classical case of YMMV.

 

[sigfile]

Faith doesn't require book-smarts. Religion would be better termed "Knowledge - Religion" - it's perfectly fitting for the mage that buries his nose in books all day and night to know more about the history and minute details of a particular faith than the practitioners of that faith. The mage doesn't believe - the cleric does.

Personally, I'd tip the scales for the ranged characters. It's rare for a ranged character to be unable to participate in a battle, every round of the battle. Melee-focused characters get stuck pretty easily when enemies are across a ravine or flying.

 

[Dragon Sin-Camealot]

You should know:

Objective: The game has certain dimensions/possibilities based on the way it is written of the author's intent. It can be pixel on line and/or physical requiring a sheet to draw maps. You can even name people who play.

Subjective: How you feel about it. All you can do is feel mad, happy, indifferent or whatever. That may be true to you in some sense but there's no way to prove this action as fact. You can act and react based on how you feel. The most it physically accomplishes is getting people to play or not.

I know there might be more but that should sum it up. I did DM twice and some of the personalities baffled me. The game is right there in front of them and they weren't forced to play as far as I know.

Oh, well. There's other games in case one fails I guess.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Overall, yes.

In specific situations with specific builds, no.

Depending on the group both yes and no.

I think 4E is the best balanced edition of D&D thus far. The characters have broader abilities, and they work off the same math to boot. Breaking monsters out of the character rules also helped a bunch as monsters with character rules could be really weird.

Magic is less of an I WIN button at high levels, and even fighters can learn a good amount of magic, (rituals) while not losing anything on the fighter side.

The problem is this makes 4E pretty rigid in classes and feats. Multiclassing is deliberately weak, as is the hybrid option. Of course if it is strong, it leads to a lot of problems.

 

[Argyle King]

I do not believe D&D is balanced.

I do believe that 4th Edition at one point made an effort to keep things in the same ballpark. The distance between the high end and the low end was less in 4E than it was in the previous edition. However, there are still some very stark divisions between power tiers of the classes.

This only got worse as newer options were added. The progressing power of feats is noticeable. With each round of books, character options have gotten stronger. A warlock made with only PHB1 will be a world apart from a Barbarian using Primal Power.

Multiclassing is deliberately weak, as is the hybrid option. Of course if it is strong, it leads to a lot of problems.

I disagree. There instances in which a hybrid version of a class actually turns out better than the base class. An easy example is the hybrid wizard. You ditch features (spell book) which have very little worth in comparison to what you gain. Likewise, I find the hybrid cleric generally tends to be better than a full cleric; especially when mixed with another leader class.

Likewise, multiclassing can be exceptionally good with some thought put into it. The way some powers mesh with certain class features sometimes makes those powers better for another class than they are for the class they come from.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I disagree. There instances in which a hybrid version of a class actually turns out better than the base class. An easy example is the hybrid wizard. You ditch features (spell book) which have very little worth in comparison to what you gain. Likewise, I find the hybrid cleric generally tends to be better than a full cleric; especially when mixed with another leader class.

Likewise, multiclassing can be exceptionally good with some thought put into it. The way some powers mesh with certain class features sometimes makes those powers better for another class than they are for the class they come from.

Nah, not really. The feat cost for multiclassing is very heavy, close to 50% of the feats in heroic, and if going into paragon, the loss of real prestige path abilities is hard also. Add in implement problems and ability score requirements and it is just a pain.

As for hybrid, some classes are not bad, true, but you only pulled out maybe 3 of hundreds of combinations. It is not hard for a few to be good. But when so many are just unworkable, it is a problem and a poor system.

Go ahead and rolls the dice for two random classes and hybridize them. Not likely to work well. Take a random class and roll dice to select powers and you are pretty good, not probably not great.

But overall 4E is pretty well balanced, especially if one stays within the class powers and roles.

 

[wedgeski]

I can't really parse the OP but yes I would say 4E is, for the most part, balanced. I have not seen any one PC outshine the other characters in the group, and I have seen all my PC's, at one time or another, wow everyone else with their exploits. Those two criteria fit the bill for a balanced RPG IMO.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I do not believe D&D is balanced.

I do believe that 4th Edition at one point made an effort to keep things in the same ballpark. The distance between the high end and the low end was less in 4E than it was in the previous edition. However, there are still some very stark divisions between power tiers of the classes.

This only got worse as newer options were added. The progressing power of feats is noticeable. With each round of books, character options have gotten stronger. A warlock made with only PHB1 will be a world apart from a Barbarian using Primal Power.

This is very simply revisionist history. The single most unbalanced source for PCs is the PHB1. And right now there is nothing that measures up to a Ranger with pre-errata Blade Cascade or a classic stunlocking Orb Wizard/Bloodmage. A Warlock made using only PHB1 is right at the bottom of the power curve - which is also a function of it coming from the single most unbalanced book. That said, with more feats it's a lot easier to specialise and dump all your resources into the same thing. And Expertise and Themes are examples of creep.