Older Editions and "Balance" when compared to 3.5

[Raven Crowking]

It seems to me that the point that what you consider accurate depends on what you think the target is has significant meaning and relevance in this context. You, in particular, seem to have some rather particular views on what the target is, for you and your personal system, so I would have thought you'd consider it a juicy point.

I have no idea what that first sentence is intended to convey. Rephrase please.

 

[Hussar]

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?

Yup, to both questions.

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

Let me rephrase the question. Does some game designer, who has spent hours and hours pouring over the minutia of the system, possibly has education in game theory, and a wealth of background in the system in question know better what is important in balancing a game for my play group?

Absolutely. 100% yes. If he doesn't, why in heck am I buying his game? If I, amateur gamer who spends a couple of hours a week playing some game, can identify points of balance better than the game designer can, then that's one seriously piss poor game designer.

I would hope that any game designer is better at identifying the importance of balance in the system than I am.

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.

Possibly true. OTOH, presuming that a GM will "fix" the game is lazy design. I give older versions of RPG's a pass on this because, well, in 1976, I doubt that a lot of the concepts had really been thought of all that much. For the same reason I don't blame Ford for not including ABS brakes on a Model T, I don't fault Gygax for not including a skill system in the game.

But, thirty years and millions of hours of game play experience between D&D gamers? No, you don't get a pass anymore.

Think of it another way. If you rely on the DM to "fix" the game for his group, you are presuming that the DM has the ability to do so. You are, in other words, presuming a good DM. What percentage of tables have DM's with that ability? I don't know and neither do you.

How can you presume a total unknown?

If DM's capable of adjudicating in fun ways for their groups is 95%, then fantastic, presume away. If, OTOH, it's only 50%, then you've just told half the gaming tables out there that they are going to have sucky experiences because the designer couldn't be bothered to produce a complete system.

Is it still good if half the tables suck? How many sucky tables is acceptable? 25%? 10%? Wouldn't it be better for the designers to use the experience that they have accrued over the past three decades of game play to produce a system that is actually balanced? It might not be perfectly balanced, but, it's a hell of a lot closer than earlier D&D was.

It's true, you'll never achieve perfect balance, and, honestly, I don't think we ever should. But, shoveling off responsibility onto the unknown abilities of the GM is not acceptable anymore. We should know better.

 

[Spatula]

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

I know my gaming group and I have played together since the late 80's, and our longest campaigns of AD&D lasted years, but we only got to around 10th level. We never, at the time, noticed that the game had "balance" issues in play, but then again, none of our players are really power gamers, and we largely ignored the Skills & Powers stuff.

Older editions were not really balanced at all, and you didn't have to be a power gamer or look for exploits to take advantage of that. From my personal experience, I would say that balance issues didn't crop up all the time because most everyone at the table knew what the sub-standard character options were and avoided them. There were still problems though - the 1e cavalier class (or hell, most anything from the 1e UA), many 2e kits, playing a thief in a combat-heavy game or a 2e bard in a dungeon crawl game, etc.

Playing 3e or 4e, the balance problems become more glaring, for a number of reasons. #1, we're adults now and have less free time to game or to read over books. #2 is that the sheer number of character options creates serious balance issues. The difference between a haphazardly made PC and an optimized one is HUGE. When you're playing in a group of people that have varying levels of system mastery, that's a problem.

That just made me wonder if "balance" in the older editions (pre 3E) was a factor, of it was something that noone ever noticed or worried about, and the game was just played and enjoyed without all of the angst.....

Not in my experience. But back then one didn't have the ability to bitch and moan in an online echo chamber about things, so it was much less visible. If message boards like this existed back then, I guarantee you that we would have the same state of affairs.

and if so, is it possible to do the same thing with newer editions - throwing "balance" to the wind?

Well, sure. But what does that mean in practice, throwing balance to the wind? Not caring about rules balance is as easy as ignoring the online discussions & arguments and not using the errata. Plenty of people play the game that way already - the folks that post here or on other RPG message boards are a tiny minority of the player base.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Playing 3e or 4e, the balance problems become more glaring, for a number of reasons.

I would say, #1, the steeper power curve means that even small differences have major impacts. This is the same reason why 1e Monster Level works, but 3e CR can produce very wonky results.


RC

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

I can't remember the exact quote, but Gary Gygax said in a thread over on Dragonsfoot that the reason clerics were only given blunt weapon proficiencies was a balance issue.

The idea may have eventually been altered in order to become a balancing tool, but one can say with absolute certainty that in a game where all weapons regardless of type do 1d6 points of damage (i.e. OD&D in 1974) that any differences in weapon proficiencies were entirely a matter of flavor text.

In 0E this was tied to magic swords - the only magic weapons were swords, so if the cleric couldn't use them it made the fighter stronger. Later (1E) this magic restriction wet away and the blunt weapons only limitation was discussed and debated heavily in Dragon.

Older editions were not balanced for the combat encounter equivalence (noted in an early post in this thread) as 4E is, so in that sense, no - they were not 4E balanced.

There was however a balance built into the system and the most obvious was the class-specific experience table. Thieves take 1250 XP's to get to 2nd, Wizards take 2500. At higher levels given a fixed number of XP's a Thief will typically be 2 levels higher than the wizard and 1 level higher than everyone else. Thus an adventuring party might range in levels from 10 for the wizard to 12 for the thief. Things were campaign-balanced, not encounter-balanced.

Another concept that has faded since those days was the use of non-combat restrictions to balance combat abilities. The Paladin's alignment and other restrictions are a good example here. He is better than a fighter in many ways but can only have 10 magic items, has to give away a lot of cash, and has to be lawful good - this doesn't really hurt him when fighting the red dragon, but it is a set of restrictions he has to deal with within the game, just not necessarily within combat. 3E and 4E went with the idea that combat advantages should be balanced with combat restrictions while 1E and 2E did not.

The idea that balance is something that should or must be left to the designer is just not practical in play.

Examples: In 1E finding a +2 Giant Slayer just as you start G1 is a huge deal. 1E assumes you will figure this out and admittedly not everyone will, players or DM's.

In 3E finding a Giant Bane sword just as you start an updated G1 is a huge deal, but 3E tries to tell you that it has the same value as finding a Dragon Bane or Rabbit Bane or any other Bane weapon - it' doesn't. 3E tries to wrap this in a framework, stick a number on it, and call it a balanced system to make everyone feel better, yet something like this is still very situational and often misleading. How is a later edition better in this case, as in more "balanced?" - it isn't. It's a guideline at best.

The DM has to play a major role in this kind of thing knowing by his party, his players, and his campaign regardless of the system being used. It's part of the job, whether you're playing 1E or 4E.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Think of it another way. If you rely on the DM to "fix" the game for his group, you are presuming that the DM has the ability to do so. You are, in other words, presuming a good DM. What percentage of tables have DM's with that ability? I don't know and neither do you.

I would say rather that you are presuming a DM that wants to learn to become a good one. Like many hobby activities, one grows in ability with time and practice. Games that claim you can be a great DM right out of the gate based purely on the product alone are selling snake oil.

How can you presume a total unknown?

All games must do this to some degree. The designers must presume that potential players will like what they see enough to want to play the game.

If DM's capable of adjudicating in fun ways for their groups is 95%, then fantastic, presume away. If, OTOH, it's only 50%, then you've just told half the gaming tables out there that they are going to have sucky experiences because the designer couldn't be bothered to produce a complete system.

I hear the terms 'complete system' and 'incomplete system' thrown around quite a bit. I don't consider a game that lists creative and imaginative participants as required components for play to be incomplete simply because rules elements that make these traits unnecessary are not included.

Is it still good if half the tables suck? How many sucky tables is acceptable? 25%? 10%? Wouldn't it be better for the designers to use the experience that they have accrued over the past three decades of game play to produce a system that is actually balanced? It might not be perfectly balanced, but, it's a hell of a lot closer than earlier D&D was.

Who determines that a given table sucks? A group could be playing and having fun for many years blissfully unaware that they do in fact suck because they don't play D&D the way some other yahoo plays it. The original intent of the game was for the people playing to unlock their own imaginations and create a game together that doesn't suck for them.

The closer D&D comes to becoming a single balanced by the rules pre-packaged experience the more meaningful contribution of the players' imagination gets shoehorned out.

It's true, you'll never achieve perfect balance, and, honestly, I don't think we ever should. But, shoveling off responsibility onto the unknown abilities of the GM is not acceptable anymore. We should know better.

So the rules get heavier and heavier with endless updates and revisions that get shoveled to off to the DM instead. The level of burden is largely the same only instead of the satisfaction of learning to become better at making rulings the poor DM is merely exhausted implementing the patches someone else thought of while being drained financially in the process.

This is the type of progress that is aimed at churning out a more mindless consumer and not a better DM.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The idea that balance is something that should or must be left to the designer is just not practical in play.

Yeah, but the designer still has to do the best job possible. He has to make assumptions, about things like campaign length, frequency of new PC generation, what level the game is played to, average number of encounters per day, and so forth. If his assumptions are wrong then his design will be less good than it could be.

You make an interesting point about whether a broken points value system (gold piece value being the points in the case of the 3e magic item system) is worse than no system at all. I've been finding with games like Champions, at least up to 4th edition, and M&M, that their balancing mechanisms are so borked as to be worse than useless. One is better off ignoring the point cost and just looking at the PC's capabilities.

Otoh I feel that 1e AD&D ought to have had some sort of system for determining how many magic items the typical PC has at a given level. Gary spends a lot of time in 1e talking about how vital it is to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of Killer DM-ing and Monty Haul-ism. Yet at no point does he give us a metric. At no point does he spell out how many PC deaths make a Killer DM (assuming average player skill) or what quantity of giveaway makes a Monty Haul DM. It seems to me rather pointless to talk about it at all if no metric is provided.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Can someone XP ExploderWizard for me?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Gary spends a lot of time in 1e talking about how vital it is to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of Killer DM-ing and Monty Haul-ism. Yet at no point does he give us a metric. At no point does he spell out how many PC deaths make a Killer DM (assuming average player skill) or what quantity of giveaway makes a Monty Haul DM. It seems to me rather pointless to talk about it at all if no metric is provided.

Who determines that a given table sucks? A group could be playing and having fun for many years blissfully unaware that they do in fact suck because they don't play D&D the way some other yahoo plays it. The original intent of the game was for the people playing to unlock their own imaginations and create a game together that doesn't suck for them.

One post rather answers the other, IMHO.


RC

 

[Doug McCrae]

Older editions were not balanced for the combat encounter equivalence (noted in an early post in this thread) as 4E is, so in that sense, no - they were not 4E balanced.

4e isn't balanced around the combat encounter. The use of action points, dailies, magic item dailies and consumable resources (which cost gp), can have a huge influence.

It's balanced, I believe, around a unit of roughly four encounters, what is estimated to be the typical adventuring day's worth.

EDIT: That said, Vancian powers and consumables have far less of an effect than in previous editions, so 4e comes much closer to being balanced round the encounter than any other edition. It still isn't, though.