Is it really so important that everything is equal?

[RFisher]

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.

That just isn't true. Indeed, I don't think any of the balance problems I mentioned happened in D&D. e.g. Gurps 3e race creation rules were full of balance pitfalls. The psionics in the basic set were pretty clearly unbalancing, though that was less of a problem. It just meant that if you allowed psionics you should expect them to dominate tho game unless you took measures to mitigate that.

Wait--two-weapon fighting. That's never been balanced well in any edition of D&D I've played (that had rules for two-weapon fighting). (& I am not interested in discussing that opinion--I've done it to death.) Unless you want two-weapon fighting to be unbalanced.

C'mon people. Balance IS a myth. Drop it, have fun, and move on.

If you mean acheiving perfect balance in all things, I can agree, but I think that's a strawman. I've met vanishingly few people who thought such was possible. (& I'm pretty sure that thought gets squashed after enough trying.) Indeed, we want certain imbalances. A 20th level fighter shouldn't be balanced against a 1st level fighter. An Ars Magica Magus is intentionally not balanced against grogs.

If you mean that there are never balance problems, I have to disagree based on experience.

 

[RFisher]

Well, to me the point of actually paying for a game is to get rules, not to have to tweak guidelines to my own needs.

That's a big reason I don't buy a lot of role-playing products anymore. I'm going to tweak any game to my own needs, but if I'm paying for rules, they expect them to be thoroughly thought out and thoroughly playtested. I am constantly disappointed.

(& this isn't only directed at current products. The "anymore" is because of experience, not necessarily because today's products are significantly worse than those of the past.)

 

[Will]

Achieving balance is impossible. But so are a lot of things. Striving for balance, IMO, is worthy.

The real argument comes from weighing options. Is a given option balanced enough? Is the extra effort worth the improvement?

The real complexity in D&D (as mentioned in this thread) comes from situational elements. And this is where balance is really illusory; a wizard, for example, compared to a sorcerer: the balance varies immensely based on how the DM runs a game. A game with lots of downtime, standard treasure, and available cities will favor the wizard. A game with little downtime, little treasure, and spent mostly away from civilization will favor the sorcerer.

And that's fine; the best you can hope for is a sort of 'average game.' The power of a feat will vary depending on how the campaign is run. But where things get stupid is when one feat is clearly better than another; for example, a feat that added +5 to a skill and could not be combined with skill focus.

Of course, most balance issues AREN'T that clear. Consider Improved Toughness and Toughness; improved is clearly better if you are only going to take one feat. But what if you have several feats? Improved toughness + toughness x3 is nice. And Toughness is a prereq for other stuff; evaluating the 'worth' of those other options is subtle, balancing the extra HP from Improved Toughness to a raft of special abilities you'd qualify for.

Then you get the comparison of 'is toughness as good as skill focus or power attack?' Um.

Really, when it comes down to it, most balance in D&D is a matter of gut instinct somewhat informed by a knowledge of the system and gameplay.

Which is, of course, a cue for all the arguments.

 

[Dykstrav]

Achieving balance is impossible. But so are a lot of things. Striving for balance, IMO, is worthy.

Exactly! It's important to strive for balance, although it's nearly impossible to achieve balance.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Is it really so important that everything is equally powerful and useful in the game?

It really depends on the game. In a game of powergamers, yes. If your character doesn't pull their weight you'll get harassed for making everyone else's character pull part of your weight. In a game of RPers, no. People who are out solely to RP and who could honestly care less about powergaming find that balance is not near as important as concept.

Does it really matter if a feat or is slightly less powerful compared to others, or a spell compared to other spells with the same level?

See above for my response to things like feats, classes, etc. As for spells - here the issue is significantly more sticky. I truly wish that the spell system was designed on a linear model. Say, for example, that there were three categories of damage dealing spells: area effects, rays, and touches. [Plus all the other spells of goodness. I'm not trying to limit things like prestidigitation. I just find that balance is most often called into question when damage is concerned.] What I wish would happen is actually rather complicated, but it would look something like this:

TOUCH SPELLS:

Level     0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9
Damage   1d3  1d6  2d6  3d6  4d6  5d6  6d6  7d6  8d6  9d6

Now, I just made that up, so don't get too picky about the progression here. But I figured the touch damage could easily mimic the rogue's sneak attack progression to be balanced. Then, I would say that for each die of damage that you are willing to forfeit you could instead substitue a condition: Ability damage = 2 die, Dazzled = 1 die, Frightened = 2 die, damage is elemntal (fire, cold, etc) = 1 die, etc ... Again, I'm not submitting that list as official, just using it as an example. This way, people could create their own spells and be sure that they were balanced with the original spells made under this system.

You could then make up a similar table that would be used for rays, except that I would probably increse the damage to d8s on account of having to make a more difficult attack roll.

For area effects, I'd like to see a chart made up that balances the size of the area with damage. Thus, if you want a wide spread spell you damage dice would decrease. If you want only a narrow effect, your damage would increase. Of course, your limitations would increase with each level.

My point is that I'd like those guidelines organized and published to ensure spell uniformity.

Are gamers really so obsessed by efficiency that they don't take a sub-par feat or skill if they can take something more powerful?

Again, depends on the game. In a game of powergamers, yes. That's one of the reasons I don't often enjoy playing with powergamers. I've been there - and for me when the emphasis is on "winning" more than "having fun" it is no longer fun for me. I'm not judging, just saying that emphasizing winning and competition among players is not fun for me.

Are you constantly bothering your DM to bump certain sub-par options/combinations up?

No! Never! I mean that seriously. There is enough power creep in the game already.

I was just thinking that in our gaming group everyone always takes something which has little use, such as a couple of feats or skills, sometimes even a level in a second class, without thinking too much about whether it is a powerful choice or not. It doesn't mean we don't look for usefulness and power, just that we're not obsessed by wasting an opportunity. After all, that's what happens to almost everyone in real life too...

Sounds like you have a decent gaming group. Of course nobody expects to hose their own character. But I like playing in a group that doesn't need to be better that the iconic figure of each class every time! Sounds like you've found a group that is comfortable with imperfection as well. Kudos!

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

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.

Poor example. That's like saying a 1st level character cant kill a great wyrm red dragon, or a naked glitterboy cant blow up the sun. The difference between a 1st level character and a 20th level character isnt imbalance. The difference between characters with equal character creation resources IS (levels in D&D, exp in Vampire, whatever). Vampire clans were ROUGHLY balanced with each other, with the exception of Caitiff, which are intended for PC use about as much as Experts, Aristocrats and Adepts.

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.

Paradox applies to all your fellow Mage players, and any enemy adept you encounter. That's balance.

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.

Again, low level vs. high level.

 

[Ghendar]

In D&D though, you get folks wondering whether a Hobgoblin is "worth" +1 LA, or if a Barbarian is front-loaded and all that jazz.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

C'mon people. Balance IS a myth. Drop it, have fun, and move on.

Preach on brotha. Not trying to tell anyone how to play their game but, IMO, too many people get too focussed and bent out of shape over balance.

 

[Dykstrav]

The difference between a 1st level character and a 20th level character isnt imbalance. The difference between characters with equal character creation resources IS (levels in D&D, exp in Vampire, whatever). Vampire clans were ROUGHLY balanced with each other, with the exception of Caitiff, which are intended for PC use about as much as Experts, Aristocrats and Adepts.

You're right. There's no reason that a vampire game would mix neonates with ancillae, elders, and methuselahs. Level is scale, not balance.

But WoD players debated endlessly about how balanced alot of things were, particularly vampires and werewolves. The simplest solution was simply to not mix games, but even in the same game you had these issues.

More vampire-specific, most of the players I knew felt that Malkavians and Nosferatu really got the shaft from a playing-the-game point of view. They had some pretty crippling drawbacks (starting derangements and horrific appearance) for some disciplines that were (mostly) available to any other vampire. Later in the game Malkavians got Dementation, but still these two clans were rarely played in the games I was involved with. Ventrue were also rarely played, especially in LARP games. Dominate and Presence just aren't as cool without hordes of NPC humans to use them on.

Or what about the Tremere and Gangrel? I'd say that at least half the vampire games I played (LARP or tabletop) had some goober that played a Tremere neonate with cauldron of blood. Most every Gangrel started addressing every problem as a fight once they got feral claws and some Fortitude (admittedly within character for a large portion of the clan). Same thing with Brujah that split their dots between Celerity and Potence.

Toreador seemed to straddle the fence between loved and hated.

In LARP games, Caitiff were actually a quite popular choice. Getting to pick your three "clan" disciplines (with what was percieved as a limited drawback, most neonates were at the bottom of the pack anyway) was so appealing to players that we eventually had 20+ Caitiff in a game of 60 players. The Storytellers actually put a clamp down on new Caitiff characters because of it. Only after an archon passed through town and saw how tolerant the Prince was being of Caitiffs did their numbers thin.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There's also an issue of balancing for what the PC's are intended to do.

In Vampire, the PC's aren't really expected to go around killing things and taking their stuff, or to fight evil villains in hand-to-hand magical combat duels with kewl items. They're expected to play machiavellian politics, personal relationships, stealth, and secrecy. Accomplish your goal without getting seen. Don't kill people, cause people to kill themselves.

You don't really HAVE to be balanced for combat that extensively in Vampire. What you may have to be balanced for is social interaction and intelligence. Everyone needs to contribute to The Masquerade.

In D&D, you have to be balanced against a dungeon -- against monsters and traps and puzzles. Everyone needs to contribute to the Dungeon.

Because The Dungeon may change drastically from campaign to campaign, it's impossible to get 100% accuracy with everything and still allow for meaningful variety, but the better the process is, the farther you can stretch it before it breaks.

 

[Dykstrav]

Sorry if I got the thread a bit off-topic.

I'm not trying to do a point-by-point breakdown of D&D versus Vampire, I'm just saying that Vampire is a good example that a game can work without the characters being on an "even" level towards each other. Status traits, influence and other backgrounds can really skew things for characters, especially in a socially-oriented game like Vampire. It's entirely possible for a neonate to have more respect than an another neonate, just from buying the Status background. Status is an awesome trait to buy up. But few players actually care about it- they would rather buy up their cool disciplines or develop their other traits.

On this basis, it would seem that some players think that disciplines are percieved as being 'better' than backgrounds. Despite the fact that you could use your Status to influence the Prince's policies, or your Influence to have someone's haven re-zoned. The question of 'balance' seems to come up in cases like these because players have clear favorites.

Knowing these things never stopped people from playing Vampire that I know of. But then again, it's a very rules-light system as compared to any iteration of D&D.