Is it really so important that everything is equal?

[Dykstrav]

"Power" is a relative term. I don't worry too much about whether a particular class/race/feat/whatever is balanced because the utility of a particular option is always going to vary in a particular situation.

In a typical dungeon crawl, I'd much rather have a rogue along than a bard, for instance. The chances that bardic music or social abilities will come in handy just aren't as high as running into traps and other nasty surprises. In a city-based adventure, a abrd is easily one of the ebst choices. Gather Information and his other abilities just get more of a chance to shine.

I think the sorcerer/wizard camps demonstrate how not even the core material is agreed on as far as balance goes. A sorcerer with Improved Counterspell would be able to take a wizard of equal level around the block. Nevertheless, there are plenty of players who won't touch a sorcerer with a 10-foot pole because they just can't give up versatility for more spells of lower levels.

 

[MerricB]

I think the sorcerer/wizard camps demonstrate how not even the core material is agreed on as far as balance goes. A sorcerer with Improved Counterspell would be able to take a wizard of equal level around the block. Nevertheless, there are plenty of players who won't touch a sorcerer with a 10-foot pole because they just can't give up versatility for more spells of lower levels.

D&D is not a PvP or duelling game, and any comparison of balance on that level is deeply flawed.

Balance involves how each character contributes to the challenges faced in the game. Obviously, the balance of D&D supposes that combat will form the majority of the challenges (although there are several forms of combat, which draw on different skills), although that there are other types of challenges (traps, puzzle-solving and role-playing) is also assumed.

Cheers!

 

[Dykstrav]

D&D is not a PvP or duelling game, and any comparison of balance on that level is deeply flawed.

Balance involves how each character contributes to the challenges faced in the game. Obviously, the balance of D&D supposes that combat will form the majority of the challenges (although there are several forms of combat, which draw on different skills), although that there are other types of challenges (traps, puzzle-solving and role-playing) is also assumed.

Cheers!

No, it's not, although it's certainly reasonable to expect that characters may fight NPCs with class levels. On that basis, it's worth considering the fact that you may have to fight something from the Player's Handbook instead of the Monster Manual. However, I tend to think that relative balance is part of what level is supposed to be about.

The sorcerer versus wizard discussion just seems to come up particularly often in the games I've seen. Most players I've met are firmly committed to the idea that one class is 'better' than the other, whereas players of more martial characters may be just as likely to try a ranger as a barbarian, for instance. Without getting into the particulars of these discussions, suffice to say that my experience has been that there's not a consensus on balance even as far as material in the Player's Handbook goes.

It is kind of unfortunate that many players think of 'balance' entirely in combat terms though.

 

[MerricB]

No, it's not, although it's certainly reasonable to expect that characters may fight NPCs with class levels.

Indeed, although this situation is still a party vs. NPC battle, not a duel, which would be a lone sorcerer vs a wizard. D&D doesn't even try to perform balance on that level.

The sorcerer versus wizard discussion just seems to come up particularly often in the games I've seen. Most players I've met are firmly committed to the idea that one class is 'better' than the other, whereas players of more martial characters may be just as likely to try a ranger as a barbarian, for instance. Without getting into the particulars of these discussions, suffice to say that my experience has been that there's not a consensus on balance even as far as material in the Player's Handbook goes.

The sorcerer vs wizard comes down greatly to situational balance. What is undeniable is that neither class is strictly better than the other. Rather, they have situations where you'd prefer one over the other.

Cheers!

 

[Dykstrav]

The sorcerer vs wizard comes down greatly to situational balance. What is undeniable is that neither class is strictly better than the other. Rather, they have situations where you'd prefer one over the other.

Cheers!

Precisely. What I think of when I hear 'balanced' is material that is good but doesn't outshine the rest. A big part of this is adventure design. I think alot of people get the idea that certain classes/races/whatever are unbalanced because the situations in which they're cool are either very common or very rare in their campaigns.

I still know a player who swears that druids suck because he tried to play one in an urban-based campaign. Admittedly, druids aren't all that thrilling when the only animals you have to do wild empathy with are sewer rats and alley cats. Bards are also odd creatures. They can be either extremely useful or extremely mediocre depending on the setting and nature of the campaign.

So as far as balance goes... Would it be accurate to say that 'balance' is when a game element is thought of as useful and cool, but there's no consensus that it's the single best option?

 

[MerricB]

So as far as balance goes... Would it be accurate to say that 'balance' is when a game element is thought of as useful and cool, but there's no consensus that it's the single best option?

Pretty much.

Now, obviously there will be campaigns where the adventure construction means that certain game elements are unbalanced wrt that game (consider a game where the only foes are constructs...), but for the majority of campaigns that discussion is possible.

Cheers!

 

[sydbar]

The only way to balance a game, doesn't lie in the rules, but in how you handicap the better players. In one of our 2nd edition games two players played the same race, class, and stats, and they were totally different in power, one was a killing machine, the other was just average.
The killing machine was a person that knows all the rules, and how to get the most out of a character, the average guy is just like most people, and knows the rules, but not how to get the most out of the rules.

 

[Imagicka]

Greetings...

Yes, it is important. There is an illusion of equality in the game. The game wasn't designed to let you play a fighter with a lot of skills, or a rogue or wizard with a lot of feats. You can't mix and match the base components of your character. Not unless you want to use the Class-Creation Guide or some other third-party product that allows you to do that. Would it be balanced if you could? Yeah, sure. Do people want to bother with that kinda of point-buy system? Probably not.

Character classes are stuck with the amount of skills points they are given; the amount of feats as well as character abilities and proficiencies. Now, lot's of people come back to me and say, "Oh yeah, but if you want to have a fighter with more skills, take a couple levels in rogue or expert." Which of course detracts from being a straight fighter.

Having the flexibility to design your character is a nice thing. So, every fighter, or wizard isn't the same. But there isn't much flexibility at all, other than your choice of skills and feats; or completely switching to another class. You can't choose to have a wizard who is poor at melee-ability, having poor will saves and high fortitude saves. How many players want to throw away an entire level just to match their character concept? Not many, when they see their fellow players slowly start to out-strip them in power.

With the plethora of feats that are out there, and sometimes only be able to choose one feat every three levels, you really have to think about where you want to take your character when your first building them. How often do you have players saying "Hmm... I'll have to take this, this, this and that so I can have Whirlwind Attack feat."?? You never have someone say, "Oh look, I didn't see it before...but it looks like I could take whirlwind attack feat if I wanted!" -- It's not necessarily a bad thing to have players have to think about where they want to take their character as the levels progress. But then, maybe again it is. What if a player decides because of what's happened to their character, that whirlwind attack isn't something he really wants anymore, and instead wants to concentrate on dual weapons? Well, I know a lot of people are going to think that getting dodge was a complete waste of time and a feat.

Of course, if you have PHB2, where you could retrain your feats might be something worth looking into. But how many people are using that book? Not a lot I would imagine.

Now, given the fact that every class uses the same experience-point table (even though I don't think they should), with a set amount of skill points and feats (depending on the class or PrC); not to mention the tendency of most players to want to somewhat min-max. Don't you think that everyone should be rewarded equally for the amount of experience they all collect? I do.

Pick any other role-playing game - /any/ game at all - and you won't find anything like the kind of arguments over "balance" that D&D generates.

True, you don't see a lot of that in other games. Two games that I know well, Palladium Rifts and Ars Magica don't even come close to being 'balanced'; but a lot of those games are more concentrated on the concept of the character class first, and then the rules. D&D, in it's attempt to be 'generic', yet also colourful and flamboyant with all sorts of different classes, and PrCs and Feats has all the colour, but no context to the concepts of a setting. This in effect makes you want to compare the classes against each other, and not compare them to the concept in relationship to their setting.

But a lot of other games aren't as popular as D&D. I'm sure if you had the same amount of people playing Rifts as you do D&D, and posting on boards like this... I'm sure they would be arguing about game balance as well. Moonstone Spider is correct. A lot of people shy away from games like Rifts because of the lack of balance and over-obvious power-creep. (I won't mention the other creep when it comes to Palladium...) But I would also argue that a lot of other games have characters that start a lot more effective than D&D characters, so your not so cheesed-off when you've realized that you've wasted a feat that is going to take three levels to have a chance to fix.

But, if the game is designed in such as way that once a character has significant advantages over the other characters, you are going to end up with players who think and feel that the game is now unfair and unbalanced.

I don't mind if things are a little out of whack. Because I can always twist here, and pinch there, and put things back into 'balance', so that it works the best for my game. A good example is the earlier Magic Item creation rules, that got revamped. - Or classes that have only 2 skill points per level. (In my game, I've given everyone who only had 2 skill points per level 4 now. Because I consider it such a minor thing, but players really suffer in the game if they don't have the skills to get involved in most situations.)

But what I do mind is that when EVERYTHING is so obviously broken that I wonder what the hell is wrong with the game designers that they couldn't bother to proof-read, play-test or even think about what they were writing, and then expect people to pay money for their schlock.

It's great if your in a game where you don't have to worry about you min-maxing your character. Where the DM makes the game so cool that you don't care if your character is the 3rd level hobbit running around with 15th level rangers and fighters, and a 40th level wizards who's hobby is fighting Balrogs single-handedly. But I suspect that most people don't play in those sorts of games, where they would like to be more than just an observer. Next to other games, and other versions of D&D, this is the one that lends itself to the need for min-maxing and balance the most. Also, it only takes but one crunch-loving player who starts min-maxing their character before the other players start to do the same.

Should there be balance? I think there should. Can you achieve perfect balance? No. But you can get close, or at least attempt to get there. There should be an attempt to have game-balance between the various classes; perhaps not with feats and abilities, but like ehren37 mentioned, poor feats are obviously there as stepping stones to PrCs. But also, balancing feats can be easily done with all the little tricks they have, such as making Dodge increase in strength +1 every four levels, or whatever else.

Yes, we all know that not all players are created equal. With the advent of allowing players to somewhat design their character by choosing their feats and limitedly choosing their skills, not all built-up characters will be equal either, which only widens the chasm. But I think it's better to at least try to keep some things reined in without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As for players. I try to 'balance' out their playing styles by rewarding each player for doing things that are special. Such, I'm not going to give Player-A bonus XP for roleplaying because A is a ham, because they a theatre-major, and I expect that sort of thing from them. But I will give him XP bonus for solving puzzles, because I know he's horrible at it. Where as I'm going to give Player-B bonus XP for roleplaying and not for problem-solving, because she's completely different (opposite) kind of player. When you impress me as a player, and do things I wasn't expecting from you, I try to reward them. I try and reward players for being part of the game, and enriching the game.

Do you want to go into a game knowing that everyone else has a clear advantage over you, and that advantage was written into the game? Or would you like at least the illusion that your on equal-grounds, at least to start off with? If you don't think it's an issue, look at Wizard's D&D forums, and see how many people as asking for advice to have their character pimped-out.

What if you were playing Ars Magica? Where a mage, right out of the gate has the ability to smoke an entire army. Do you want to play one of the grog who has to fight/face that mage? -- It's akin to playing a 1st level character with a 10th level group. Where everyone advances in their respective levels equally. It's going to take you the same amount of time to reach 2nd level as it did for everyone to reach 11th.

Do the feats (where most differentiation occurs) need to be balanced? Well, for the most part, I would have to say... yes. Chained feats should be better and better higher up the ladder you go, when you have prerequisite feats or stats or what have you. That the better a special/class ability or feat is, the more prerequisites should be included, or that the feat/ability should limited by the number of uses per day. I believe something to this effect was even written in the DMG.

With so much of the game designed around being 'balanced', then there should be an attempt to stay within that design-frame. Yes, a lot of that balance breaks down when features your character has aren't being utilized in game. Where your ranger isn't seeing any of his favoured enemies, or your paladin isn't getting a lot of mounted combat inside those dungeons. But that's the fault of the DM, if not the player to attempt to seek out those situations. Minor problems at most.

I don't think it's very good game design for D&D to be a 'conditional' game. Where all the characters cannot participate in all situations. "Oh, sorry Bob, your fighter doesn't have much in the way of skills... heck, he doesn't even have diplomacy. So, you'll just going to have to sit there and paint your toenails while we go through this political intrigue campaign. Sorry!"

I don't want to play a more complex version of Rock-Paper-Scissors, where the game breaks down just because I don't have any paper; or where Rock always beats Paper and Scissors.

What is the purpose of having rules and guidelines for creating new rules and features for the game if your just going to ignore them?

Now, should every character concept be equally effective in the game? No. If I want to play Blackadder I or S. Baldric as opposed to Doc Savage? That's my choice. No one ever said that I had to spend all my feats or skill points.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Pick any other role-playing game - /any/ game at all - and you won't find anything like the kind of arguments over "balance" that D&D generates.

Rolemaster players don't moan that the Nightblade is better than a Fighter, or a Warmage is unbalancing. They just pick the class they like, come up with a cool backstory, generate a unique character, and play.

Traveller players don't complain that the Scout career is better than a Marine. If they want to play one, or the other, that's cool.

Tunnels & Trolls players don't gripe that MR4 isn't the same at a level four human. They just have a blast.

Warhammer fantasy games will see Rat Catchers banging heads with Wizards, all for the cause of Having Good Fun.

Hope you're seeing a common thread here..........

It just doesn't happen. Nada, nothing.

Utter rubbish.

I've heard many complaints about imbalances in Rolemaster (Warrior Mage being too powerful was common, and lots about background options).
Warhammer Fantasy has plenty of complaints, as it's possible to get a character with one skill (a Student might get Carousing and nothing else), or other starting characters might have a dozen skills.
I've never played Traveller or Tunnels and Trolls (or discussed them with anyone who has), so I can't say much about them.

Geoff.

 

[Dykstrav]

Do you want to go into a game knowing that everyone else has a clear advantage over you, and that advantage was written into the game? Or would you like at least the illusion that your on equal-grounds, at least to start off with?

Have you ever played the old World of Darkness games, the ones published before 2004? In a nutshell, this sort of thing was the rule rather than the exception. But it added to the flavor and tension of the games rather than make players question the design and rules of the game (most of them, anyway).

If you were a neonate vampire, you couldn't just go mouth off to your sire or the Prince unless you were very careful about it. If you happened to run into a Tremere with maxed out Thaumaturgy or a Gangrel with even median Protean (all possible for brand-new characters with no experience) they could ruin your night pretty quickly. And that's not to mention werewolves, who typically could reduce a vampire of roughly equal experience into a bloody smear on the wall pretty easily. For young vampires, you couldn't just run in and bash everything you wanted. You were a very small fish in a very big pond. To survive, you had to engage in warfare socially and politically. You either made some friends or you didn't survive very long. Things usually ended badly if your first response was to try to directly attack anything. There was no question of 'balance,' because it was obvious that the deck was stacked against you.

Same thing with Mage: the Ascension. If you started lobbing fireballs downtown or summoning manticores, some gentlemen in black suits and mirrorshades with Very Big Guns would be paying you a visit. There was even a mechanic built into the magic system of the game itself (paradox) that essentially kept you from being "too cool" with using magic. But these things had a firm basis in the setting and added to the game.

Wraith: the Oblivion was even worse than that. You were a new ghost recently awakened in the Underworld. Everything there wanted to take your soul and forge you into items or corrupt you into a servant of destruction. People in the living world often sought to destroy the things that bound you to it.

To me, these games prove the idea that the entire world CAN be out to get you and the game is still fun to play. The idea that you can't rely on your cool new powers to solve most of your problems (because everyone else has the ability and inclination to tear you into a bloody pulp if you buck the status quo) made the game far more interesting and complex than the mechanics would lead you to believe.