Older Editions and "Balance" when compared to 3.5

[Umbran]

I think this balance thing is simply people arguing more over why their favorite class should the biggest baddest tough guy around.

I'm sorry you think that. I'm pretty sure that view is not supported well by what folks are saying here.

Kirk wasn't very intelligent, but was very intuitive. Spock was very intelligent, but not all that intuitive. Together, they compensated for each others weaknesses, and that made them an unbeatable team.

Ah, but you see, if you watched Trek, you'd know - in the third season, there were a hole bunch of episodes where you didn't really need Kirk or McCoy or Scotty. Spock was so super-special that he had all the answers.

"Mr. Spock, don't Vulcans have the ability levitate, juggle three balls behind their back, and do time-travel calculations in their head while blindfolded?"

"Yes, Captain, but it takes intense concentration."

*Poof!*

"Well, I guess it wasn't all that much concentration after all..."

That's the sort of thing some folks here are talking about. At low levels, the wizard had maybe a couple of spells a day, and then had to wait out being bored while the fighters hacked things to bits for the rest of the day. At high levels, the roles reversed, and the fighters tended to stand around while the wizards blasted things to bits. That's a problem, as some folks end up bored.

We didn't need no stinking balance.

Well, no, you don't need it. But you didn't need a +5 Holy Avenger, either. Doesn't mean you don't want it, or that it isn't nice to have.

Actually never noticed a real balance issue as we played either, course we weren't looking for balance just fun.

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.

As above - you don't need the rules to be balanced to have the game play well. A good GM can have Superman and Indiana Jones in the same game, and have the players of both feel like they've both played major roles and had a good time. But, it takes more work or effort on the GM's part.

 

[Hussar]

Or you can't make the Ability Score requirements but still want to hit things with something sharp. With a 17 Cha requirement for a Paladin you had approximately a 1.5% chance of getting that 17, plus you needed a 13 Wis, and a 10 Str. Paladin's and Rangers were more powerful for sure, but they showed up pretty rarely, plus the Paladin code was a lot more restrictive.

Unless, like us, you used Unearthed Arcana and now the paladin player is rolling 9d6, take the best 3 to get his paladin.

Or, prior, you just let people roll until they got the character they wanted.

Which might contribute to the balance issues we had.

One thing I've learned reading about earlier editions that generally stops me from making too specific comments about them, is that the game I played and the game that was sitting on my shelf, were pretty much related only in name.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I started with basic D&D, and we played that for several years before I got my AD&D hardbacks. Our games were all over the place on the balance spectrum. We played through horrible killer dungeons, powergamed Monty Haul fests that would have been laughed off as jokes by "serious" gamers and other kinds of campaigns in between. At no point during any of the absurdities that were taking place did we point fingers at the rulebook and say "that's broken!!!"

Having read the rules of the game we were all informed quite clearly that any game balance or lack thereof was either to our credit or our fault.

[Moldvay Basic set p.B60]
"The DM is the Boss". The DM decides how these rules will be used in the game. A good DM talks about problem areas with the players and considers reasonable requests by them. The players should realize,however, that the final decision is the DM's: not theirs and not this booklet's!"
[End Quote]

With that firmly in mind I will address this:

But seriously, why do people assume that only power gamers have balance issues? We played pretty high rp games and we had balance issues all the time. Campaign after campaign blew up under the weight of serious mechanical balance issues.

I for one do not make this assumption. I freely admit to being a powergamer at times, especially during some of those early days. What is called mechanical balance these days didn't really occur to us simply because the rules sat us down on a stump like a good dad and said :

OK. Here are some rules you can use to help fairly judge the action in your game. These rules are presented in a straightforward manner for you to use, alter, or discard as you desire. We are going to assume that you will be playing with imaginative, mature people who have gathered together to have a great time and the you will conduct yourselves accordingly. Now, go have fun.

If that concept was understood by the participants then what could possibly "blow up" that wasn't the fault of the people playing?

But, I think that the myth that balance is somehow mythically achieved by special role players who didn't care about the mechanics they used really needs to be taken out behind the barn and beated with chickens.

"Special" roleplayers are not and were never required to run a decent game.

What needs to be taken behind the barn and beaten with chickens is the philosophy that rulebooks to an rpg should be written in airtight, keyworded, legalese because the default assumption of such rules is that one will be playing with the kind of turdheads that would have been tossed out of our games 30 years ago.

 

[Hussar]

Special roleplayers may not have been, but special DM's apparently were.

See, the idea that the game designers can simply foist off responsiblity for the quality of the game onto this mythical DM who runs games well, despite never seeing an RPG before in his life is something I've never really understood.

"Here are the rules for running a good game. However, these rules don't really work all the time, so it's up to you to make sure you run a good game" basically means that the primary assumption is that the GM will know what constitutes a good game.

I chalk it up to the prehistory of the game where the designers just didn't understand that "good" GM's are nowhere near as common as they seemed to think.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Special roleplayers may not have been, but special DM's apparently were.

See, the idea that the game designers can simply foist off responsiblity for the quality of the game onto this mythical DM who runs games well, despite never seeing an RPG before in his life is something I've never really understood.

"Here are the rules for running a good game. However, these rules don't really work all the time, so it's up to you to make sure you run a good game" basically means that the primary assumption is that the GM will know what constitutes a good game.

I chalk it up to the prehistory of the game where the designers just didn't understand that "good" GM's are nowhere near as common as they seemed to think.

Special DMs were no more common than special players in groups that were all learning the game together.

Let me ask this: Do you believe that there are multiple valid playstyles?

Even further, do you believe that a group that has a blast together is "doing it right" no matter how they are playing?

Does some game designer, regardless of talent, know better than you what is import in balancing the game for your play group?

Here's a mind blowing concept for you- thinking that game balance ought to be provided between the covers of a book is a form of one-true-wayism.

 

[Votan]

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.

I must admit I had a very different experience than you did (with the Elf F/MU and the ranger). It is true that multi-class characters were good but careful enforcement of the rules made spell casting a lot trickier to pull off. You needed that fireball memorized (and it was lengthy to do so). You needed to declare it before you rolled initiative or you faced losing the spell. With a dragon it could breathe which made that a tough gamble. If you were in a confined space that fireball could be deadly to the caster. Without bonus spells casters had a lot fewer spells to cast.

That is not to say that 1Eand 2E were more balanced than 3E (they were not) but I did find it possible to have a fairly enjoyable game with these editions with a variety of classes. My major (personal viewpoint) difference is that I seemed to enjoy warrior classes (like Fighter) a lot more in 1E and 2E than 3E which seemed to be very caster friendly in comparison.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Unless, like us, you used Unearthed Arcana and now the paladin player is rolling 9d6, take the best 3 to get his paladin.

Or, prior, you just let people roll until they got the character they wanted.

Which might contribute to the balance issues we had.

One thing I've learned reading about earlier editions that generally stops me from making too specific comments about them, is that the game I played and the game that was sitting on my shelf, were pretty much related only in name.

Yup. We used the 4d6 (drop the lowest) seven times stat rolling method, and if you needed a slight bump to be a paladin or ranger or whatnot you could get that for free.

Experience was a non-issue as far as advancement went, since everyone ended up within a level of each other anyway. IIRC that due to the XP doubling for each level you could always just be one-level behind and be multiclassed.

DS

 

[ExploderWizard]

Experience was a non-issue as far as advancement went, since everyone ended up within a level of each other anyway. IIRC that due to the XP doubling for each level you could always just be one-level behind and be multiclassed.

DS

Before thinking that multiclass was an easy path to more power remember that training costs needed to be paid for each class trainer. At lower levels, getting the gold to pay for single classed training was tough enough, imagine trying to come up with the dough to pay 3 trainers!

That would result in a fair bit of adventuring being done by these multi-classed wonders without XP gain since they had to actually attain the new level before any more xp could be earned.

Of course those rules could be swept aside and forgotten but then how can the product be blamed for the power creep of multi-classed characters.

 

[Henry]

My question to you folks is: How well were the older editions "balanced?"

Rest of thread sight-unseen, my answer is, "Not worth a tinker's damn." To heck with this piddly "balance" mewling! In the words of Mike Mornard, one of the original Kuntz and Gygax players, "We just made stuff up we thought would be fun." Gary et. al. Might have had a passing thought to balance, but the rules themselves were not balanced very well at all.

However, their secret balance-weapon, was, quite frankly, the DM. In the older games, it was up to the DM's rulings to forge balance from a set of rules that were unbalanced. To quote the Old School Primer, "Rulings, Not Rules" are the secret to a well-balanced and fun game of older D&D.

...Please leave that kind of thing out of this discussion, and just focus on your experience and opinions with regards to balance of older editions (or lack thereof), and how you feel that compares to balance in the 3rd Edition.

Based on my experiences of playing over the years, and the words of people like Gary Gygax, Mike Mornard, Skip Williams, and the rest, a DM getting a feel for their players, player style, and player rules-lawyering skills, is essential to running a balanced D&D game. Without it, it's only part of a game, and not a complete one at that. But in the hands of a good DM, an OD&D or AD&D game can come completely alive.

 

[Stormonu]

Back before late 3.5, balance was never an issue I concerned myself with. I knew better than playing a game in the teens, but beyond that if the game was having "balance" issues I had always thought that it was the duty of the DM to roll up his sleeves, analyze the situation and fix the issue himself - either stiffening the competition or pulling out the ban/nerf hammer.

Thus, I find it hard for me to objectively state if older editions were balanced, but again, usually any problem I had with my game I felt it was my failure to keep an eye on the ball - still do, to an extent. Overall, I don't remember anything being out of whack so bad it ruined my fun with the game.

Nowadays, I do appreciate games that make an effort to be a bit more balanced from the start (to the end) because I don't have the time to fiddle and worry about things like I used to. However, balance is still a low concern to "is it fun?"