Older Editions and "Balance" when compared to 3.5

[Doug McCrae]

The important thing to note about older editions is that balance was over the long term - years of play. Characters were supposed to die a lot, so one would be frequently rolling up a new character, rather like hands in Poker. Poker has a lot of randomness, at the level of individual hands, but because many, many hands are drawn, the luck should even out over time. It was intended to be the same with early D&D, each player would roll up a great many characters. Ofc someone like Stan could game this system by rolling up many more characters than the other players and only using the best ones.

The balance of the magic-user versus the fighter was also intended to be over the long term. A magic-user is supposed to be weaker than a fighter at low levels, roughly equal at mid-level, and definitely more powerful at high level - 9th+. This balance can only work if one plays long campaigns, where PCs can rise to name level, and then retire one's chars at that point. If the majority of play takes place at name level or higher, m-us are OP.

Likewise, Vancian magic is unbalanced if there are few encounters per day. The game assumes dungeon play, or a similar situation where there are many encounters each day.

If one doesn't use dungeons or doesn't play from 1st to around 10th and then stop, or roll up and play lots of new characters, then old school D&D isn't balanced.

 

[Gothmog]

If you never go past 10th level, you won't ever see most of 3E's really heinous class-balance issues; the main power differential between PCs is going to be between the system-savvy and the system-ignorant.

Even at high levels, the problem may not come up. A tolerably well-built fighter will have no problem keeping up with a blaster wizard and a healbot cleric. It's when wizards discover the wonder of save-or-lose and utility magic, and clerics decide to buff themselves up because they want to take a more active hand in combat, that fighters and rogues get left in the dust.

Before 3E, casters still had an advantage at high levels, but not nearly as much of one, for a couple of reasons. First, saving throw mechanics didn't allow for save DCs; your chance to save against an archmage casting finger of death was the same as against an apprentice wizard casting charm person, and a powerful foe was likely to shrug off both. So you didn't get the phenomenon of save-or-lose spells dominating the game. (On the other hand, lower hit point totals and the tendency for hit points to plateau past 9th or 10th level meant blasting magic was quite a bit stronger.)

Second, each class had its own experience table, and casters typically leveled much slower than non-casters once they got up around level 10-12. So a 15th-level caster might dominate a 15th-level fighter, but you wouldn't see them in the same party.

Third, just as saving throws didn't have variable DCs, magic resistance was a fixed percentage. A foe with 90% magic resistance shrugged off 90% of spells, period. It could get to be a real headache.

Finally, you just didn't get as many spells per day in older editions.

Yep, Dausuul nailed it.

I never had balance problems with older editions, but in 3E balance became a huge problem. In 1e and 2e, the different XP advancement was the main means of balance, and I actually liked the XP discrepancy between wizards, druids, etc and the more mundane classes. While the spellcaster was potent, he was very limited in what he could do per day, and had to plan to use his abilities to best effect.

With 3e, the differential XP advancement was gone, AND more spells were allowed per day, AND the spells were pretty much identical to previous editions (meaning very potent), AND more buff spells were present, AND save DC bumps were easy to obtain. The result is obvious- immensely overpowered spellcasters compared to non-spellcasters. This was an issue in ever 3e game I played in or ran past 5th level. Add on to this how easy it was to make a way overpowered build with certain feat/PrC combos, and 3e never had a prayer of balance. 3e had some great innovations and developments, but balance, well-considered game design, and implications of design changes were not among them. To this day, no 3e-derived game has even begun to able to solve these problems to my satisfaction.

 

[billd91]

The games (1e, 2e) were balanced better than I believe most people realize.

Wizards had awesome powers at higher levels without needing a lot of magic items (though they did like them). So the treasure tables in 1e were skewed in favor of disposables and the armor wearers and weapon users rather than wizard-oriented items. This seems to have disappeared in 3e in favor of tables based more around cash value.

Magic items were also a lot harder to make, keeping wizards (or other spellcasters) from kitting up powerful stuff on the relative cheap compared to fighters who were buying up their stuff retail in 3e.

Saving throws were kept to values covered by a d20, so there was no ability to spike a save DC higher compared to your enemy's target saving throw. Save or Die effects became a lot weaker as PCs progressed. Not only did that favor high-level characters surviving, it prevented wizards from being an instant win button with a save or die effect... barring a fortunately bad save from the opposition. The tactic was a lot less reliable.

Wizards and other spellcasters were much easier to disrupt in 1e/2e than in 3e. They had to be a lot more careful on the battlefield what spells or actions they would take. Fire off a weak but quicker low-level spell or invest more time (and gain a worse initiative) with a more effective higher level spell thus increasing the risk of being attacked and disrupted?

AC was pretty much confined to 10 to -10 barring exceptional types of enemies. It was very hard for any AC to be completely out of a moderately made character's reach.

Touch attacks were based on the full AC of the target - add in the increased likelihood of disruption and you don't see very many harm spells cast in a fight.

Some changes made in 3e, generally for gamist reasons, actually hurt the balance of the game compared to 1e/2e. Cyclical initiative. After the ease of playing with it, who would want to go back? Yet it makes the turn order of the wizard predictable after being initially set. Combine that with spells being cast in 1 standard action rather than variable segments affecting turn order and the spellcaster is much harder to disrupt.

3e also brought in open-ended bonuses for things, particularly AC and save DCs. This meant that a power-gamer (or anyone with a modicum of sense about improvement) could focus on building up a character with a very high bonus, dwarfing the normal less optimized players or monsters. Easy to work into the rules from a gamist perspective, maybe not so good for game balance.

 

[Doug McCrae]

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[Dausuul]

The important thing to note about older editions is that balance was over the long term - years of play. Characters were supposed to die a lot, so one would be frequently rolling up a new character, rather like hands in Poker. Poker has a lot of randomness, at the level of individual hands, but because many, many hands are drawn, the luck should even out over time. It was intended to be the same with early D&D, each player would roll up a great many characters. Ofc someone like Stan could game this system by rolling up many more characters than the other players and only using the best ones.

The balance of the magic-user versus the fighter was also intended to be over the long term. A magic-user is supposed to be weaker than a fighter at low levels, roughly equal at mid-level, and definitely more powerful at high level - 9th+. This balance can only work if one plays long campaigns, where PCs can rise to name level, and then retire one's chars at that point. If the majority of play takes place at name level or higher, m-us are OP.

Does it seem to anyone else that these two approaches to balance are diametrically opposed?

I mean, if people are going to roll up new characters on a regular basis, then balance across a character's adventuring career (the M-U has to suffer through the weak low levels to get the awesome high levels) is meaningless. Unless you also expect new characters to start off at level 1 every time.

Was there spell disruption in 2e? I'm not saying you're wrong but I don't recall it. The one thing I remember is that level affecting casting time was an optional rule in 2e, as a wizard player argued for it in a game I ran - he thought it made for more interesting tactical decision making.

It was definitely a big concern for the wizards I played. If you got a bad initiative roll and some lucky enemy got a whack in before your initiative came up, say goodbye to your spell. Concentration check? What's that?

 

[billd91]

Was there spell disruption in 2e? I'm not saying you're wrong but I don't recall it. The one thing I remember is that level affecting casting time was an optional rule in 2e, as a wizard player argued for it in a game I ran - he thought it made for more interesting tactical decision making.

Yep, whether you used the optional spellcasting time or not, you declared what you were doing before rolling. If you got hit before your turn (and you didn't get your Dex bonus to AC), you weren't casting, baby. Not only could you not get the spell off, it was lost - disrupted.

Using the optional spell casting time (in 2e, not optional in 1e but the initiative rules weren't as well written so the use was a bit more arcane) made it that much more dicey on the higher level and generally slower spells.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I found 1E and 2E to be poorly balanced overall. You could be an elf fighter/wizard and be level 4/3 and have the same XP as a human wizard of level 4 or human fighter of level 5. So, you would be almost as good a wizard or fighter, plus have another whole extra class' worth of abilities as well. Heck, at the end of our last 2E campaign in 1999, my human ranger was level 8 and fighting alongside an elf fighter/wizard who was level 7 in both. There was no incentive to be human unless you wanted to play a weaker race.

DM: "The white dragon swoops in to attack and you can both get off one attack before it gets into breath weapon range."
Human Ranger: "I shoot it with my shorbow... hit... 4 points of damage."
Elf Fighter/Wizard: "I cast fireball at it, 7d6 damage, 22 points of damage, save for half"

And, in a lower magic campaign like I usually played in 2E, a lot of "save or die" spells meant PC death. At least 3E seemed to give you a decent chance of beating "save or die" spells.

Plus, cleric spells stopped at level 7 - so, no divine equivalent to Wish. Rogues pretty much stunk in combat as the game went up in level, as they had to surprise somebody from behind to get a backstab bonus.

To summarize, we had balance issues in 2E when the game passed level 3 or so because of multi-classing being overpowered compared to straight classes. And, I just ran a 2 1/2 year long 3.5E campaign where the players went from level 1 to 18 and really had few balance issues at higher levels... my old 3.5E group was: human Sorcerer, human Cleric, halfling Psion, Dwarf Fighter, human Rogue/Spellthief, elf Paladin, Goliath Barbarian and a part-time human fighter.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I mean, if people are going to roll up new characters on a regular basis, then balance across a character's adventuring career (the M-U has to suffer through the weak low levels to get the awesome high levels) is meaningless.

I believe it was expected that one would be rolling up new characters even if the old one hadn't died. You would have a big stable of living PCs (and many more dead ones), just like Stan with his folder. Characters would adventure with others of roughly the same level. So your surviving 8th level wizard, Lusaud, would often adventure with my surviving 7th level fighter Ercem Good, even though we might both have many other PCs ranging throughout the levels.

Unless you also expect new characters to start off at level 1 every time.

OD&D does. AD&D 1e is fine with creating new chars at higher level to fit in with an existing group*. Gary feels that new players should begin with a 1st level character but once one has experienced 1st level play, it's fine not to go back to it, to start new chars at higher level.

Ofc this borks one of the fundamental precepts of m-u balance, but balance had been getting more and more borked pretty much since day one, or at least day two. 1e and even Supplement I Greyhawk promote the idea of playing beyond 10th level, which borks the balance between m-us and fighters. Thieves were born borked because m-us could do everything they could. Even OD&D's balance is a little borked as, for some reason, m-us can go up to level 16, whereas fighters and clerics are capped at 10.

*There's definitely a contradiction here. I've been saying that a large stable of PCs is expected but Gary's advice in the 1e DMG seems to indicate a group mostly playing at a particular level, even with a very limited number of chars. It could easily be that tastes changed, and 'stable play' declined, or that Gary's group preferred to play their high level chars and/or were unwilling to play at low level any more.

 

[dagger]

I found 1E <snip>

Well we never had any problems in 1e even up to and beyond 15th level. It all just seemed to be balanced and just work really well.

 

[Remathilis]

There were balance issues, but that was because the rules were created hodge-podge across multiple authors, eras, and supplements with often little concern for a "greater whole". In that way, old D&D was designed almost organically as need arose, rather than from a top down "even" balance like 3e and 4e has been.

In effect, it made a usable system that stll felt like a horrible mess.

The biggest problem was the idea of the role of magic in the game and how powerful it should be. Things that seemed good in one view fell apart quickly against another. Case in point: the 2nd level spell invisibility. One casting, 24 hours of invisibility, but you can't "directly" attack. Sounds good. I balances against a thieves hide in shadows because while the former is automatic, the latter can be re-used and re-used. The former also costs a mage one the 4 spell slots he has for that level. So far so good.

Then we get the ring of invisibility. Which gives ANYONE the best of both worlds; re-usability and reliability. Suddenly, the mage doesn't need to spend a spell slot to become invisible; he can do it, attack, and do it again. Similarly the thief no longer has a % of failure, he's good to go forever!

One item breaks the spell-slot economy and the % skill set. That's one example, there are 1,000s more. The only hope a sane GM has is to NEVER give one of those things out in his campaign. Of course, then there is the elven cloak... ::bangs head::