Older Editions and "Balance" when compared to 3.5

[NewJeffCT]

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Not everybody on a football team can be the quarterback. Not everybody on a football team can be a linebacker. You need linebackers and other defenses to protect the quarterback.

It's also like complaining that a car mechanic is not an electrician nor is like a carpenter. They're all a part of the same team and all have their role to play.
It's not like you have three people on the team doing everything.

The problem with that, though, is that the football team is almost always centered around the quarterback, who is clearly the most important piece of the puzzle. The quarterback is usually the one the gets the most glory when the team wins and most of the blame when the team loses. And, for professional teams, the quarterback is usually the highest paid player.

And similarly, a wizard in older editions of D&D is the quarterback of an adventuring party.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Yeah, but the passages do say that they should all be close to the EL of the party.

There is a point at which someone is so wrong that you can only point at them and say, "You're wrong." You have reached that point.

But allow me to elaborate on the precise nature of your error.

First, let's agree that we're talking strictly about the DMG guidelines for tailored encounters. Because, self-evidently, the DMG guidelines for status quo encounters contradict you entirely (and you admit as much).

With that being said, let's look at Table 3-2 on pg. 49. Here we find that the appropriate encounters for a party vary from "EL lower than party level" to "EL 5+ higher than party level".

This is obviously still inconvenient for your thesis. So let's limit ourselves even more: Let's drop that pesky "+" and assume that "lower than party level" can also be limited to 5 levels.

Still, 5 is a pretty small number, right? That's "close to the EL (sic) of the party", right?

Well, not really. Let's take the example of a 10th level party: We've now defined a range of encounters from EL 5 to EL 15. That's a total of 11 different ELs. The core game is only designed to support 20 levels. In other words, the range of encounters we're talking about is 50% of the game's total range.

So when you say that "they should all be close to the EL (sic) of the party", it's like saying "everyone west of the Mississippi lives close to Los Angeles". It's just flat-out wrong.

But to say the EL rules weren't there to help DMs plan out appropriate challenges is kind of silly.

Man, that would be pretty silly. It's probably a good thing nobody said that, right?

 

[thecasualoblivion]

This is nonsensical. That;s why they're called classes and each class has a role to play with different skills.

How do you balance the different skills?

Fighters are supposed to dish out the most weapon damage. That's why they're front line people.

Let's at least try to put this into a real world perspective.

Not everybody on a football team can be the quarterback. Not everybody on a football team can be a linebacker. You need linebackers and other defenses to protect the quarterback.

It's also like complaining that a car mechanic is not an electrician nor is like a carpenter. They're all a part of the same team and all have their role to play.
It's not like you have three people on the team doing everything.

A fighter's main ability is to dish out heavy damage through weapons. A magic-user's ability is to dish out heavy damage through spells.

Survivability depends upon how creative a player can get in using those class abilities and skills. It doesn't depend upon making a character or character class an everyman with everybody's skills in one package with all skills or just beef up the skills they do have.

And if that's what gaming is all about, then, you might as well just stop playing.

Games are based on creativity, not having uber stats and skills and having a team of Mary Sues.

Did you really read what I posted? What I was saying was that in pre-3e editions the roles generally worked. Then, in the part you left out, I contrasted how the roles didn't really work at all the way they were intended in 3e/3.5e.

 

[Voadam]

Still, 5 is a pretty small number, right? That's "close to the EL (sic) of the party", right?

Well, not really. Let's take the example of a 10th level party: We've now defined a range of encounters from EL 5 to EL 15. That's a total of 11 different ELs. The core game is only designed to support 20 levels. In other words, the range of encounters we're talking about is 50% of the game's total range.

Just to nitpick,

Players are designed for up to 20 in the core game, the monsters and ELs still go up past 20s so you get those above APL suggested ELs and down below 1 for those low level easy ones. So from a 1/10 CR bat to a CR 25 great wyrm blue dragon.

So turn it to ELs of -4 to 25 and a ten(eleven actually) level spread comes out to a little more than 33% of the game's range.

 

[Diamond Cross]

The problem with that, though, is that the football team is almost always centered around the quarterback, who is clearly the most important piece of the puzzle. The quarterback is usually the one the gets the most glory when the team wins and most of the blame when the team loses. And, for professional teams, the quarterback is usually the highest paid player.

And similarly, a wizard in older editions of D&D is the quarterback of an adventuring party.

Actually in older editions, the leader was generally determined by who had the highest Charisma. The way my group played though is we took turns being the leader.

 

[Hussar]

For me, the basic problem is that older editions were meant to be balanced "across the span of a campaign". The unit is too large and includes WAY too many play assumptions. I mean, just in this thread, people have limited balance in older editions to the following:

1. Frequent replacement of PC's.
2. Balance through rarity.
3. Frequent replacement of equipment.
4. Large groups using henchmen and the like.


I could go on, but those 4 are pretty much required for AD&D to balance. Remove any of those, play by a different style, and balance goes straight out the window.

RC, you take my example and extrapolate all sorts of elements. 1e Sleep is an autowin in any given encounter. If the wizard gets it off, he wins. End of story. Sure, you could sneak up on him, but, then, you could sneak up on any character and kill him too. What's the difference?

"Oh, it would never happen that way in my campaign" is just another way of saying, "Oh you're doing it wrong." Onetruwayism at its best. If I don't play exactly by your playstyle, suddenly all my balance issues are 100% my fault and not the fault of the system. If everyone would simply play the way you play, then we have no balance issues. Nice.

IME, 1e and 2e go kerblooie about 8th level plus. As soon as you get into name level, the game gets ridiculous. But, that was my experience. OTOH, IME, 3e worked pretty darn well into double digit levels. Again, this was my experience. Were there problems? Oh sure. But nothing on the level that I saw regularly in AD&D.

The central problem with the idea of balance of the course of a campaign is that you never actually have balance. What you have is a series of imbalanced periods that average to balance. But, you never actually get to play in that average. All you get to play in is the unbalanced times.

Which means that at any given point in time, you have players sitting on their hands staring into space because they have nothing to contribute. The wizard's blown his three spells and goes and plays with his Intellivision. The thief can't backstab in the middle of combat and is doing a d4+1 points of damage to a giant. Heck, the wizard's doing more damage with DARTS.

That's MY experience with "balance" in older editions.

 

[FireLance]

"Balance" is a word with may possible definitions in the RPG context.

To me, if one of your party members is frequently sitting around unable to assist in a combat, needing to be protected - acting as as a tactical burden and detriment, rather than a resource - that's a balance issue. Same goes for other scenarios outside of combat, honestly.

You know, I think this post made another piece of the balance puzzle click into place, at least for me.

D&D evolved from wargames. And one of the characteristics of wargames is that one player usually controls multiple units. Each of those units would have individual capabilities, relative strengths and relative weaknesses, and it is up to the player to deploy his units so that they build on each others' strengths and shore up each others' weaknesses. Issues such as the need for certain units to be to protected by other units, or units held in reserve and not used until they are needed would thus be internalized within a single player. An artillery unit might have long-range attack capabilities, for example, but be vulnerable to close-range attacks. A player might thus decide to deploy an infantry unit close to the artillery unit to defend it against such attacks. Other units might be capable of making a single, devastating attack once per engagement, and a player who chooses to deploy such units should be prepared to leave them unused until needed, and ensure that they are protected until then.

Similarly, when creating a party of characters for a single-player computer or console RPG, you don't really care that your fighter needs to protect your wizard, that your thief doesn't contribute much in a fight, or that your cleric spends all his actions healing the other characters. As a player, you are controlling the entire party. You only care that the party as a whole has the abilities required to overcome the challenges that you encounter in the game ("balanced", from one perspective ).

However, if one player only controls one character, then such issues can no longer be internalized, and imbalances between characters become more stark. I think the expectation in earlier editions was for players to be more accepting of these differences and to take turns to be in and out of the spotlight.

On the other hand, the 4E approach is to make all characters more generally useful so that they can contribute in all situations (although not necessarily equally, or in the same way).

 

[Raven Crowking]

RC, you take my example and extrapolate all sorts of elements. 1e Sleep is an autowin in any given encounter. If the wizard gets it off, he wins. End of story.

Only to someone unfamiliar with the rules.

There are creatures specifically immune to sleep, including elves (why I mentioned the elf), undead, etc. There is a Hit Die limitation to what is effected, as well as an area of effect. If those kobolds are spread out, sleep isn't an autowin button at all, at all. Sleep also doesn't descriminate enemies, but rather by Hit Dice, so Crom help you if you try to sleep that lone bugbear after he's engaged your 1st level fighters. Or if he has a few goblins backing him up.

Take a look at the spell rules, take a look at the Level One wandering encounter tables in the 1e DMG, and get back to me. Look up the creatures in the 1e MM if you must, so that you can see which ones don't really care about sleep spells and which ones do.

Your "autowin" is a situational win at best, and has, IME, been the death of many a PC when used carelessly by magic-users who fail to read their spell descriptions.


RC

 

[Hussar]

Ok, for the overly pedantic:

Sleep is an autowin for any encounter which does not feature creatures specifically immune to the Sleep spell, which, from hit dice less than 1 to 4+1, the majority of creatures are NOT immune to sleep. While there might be situations in which sleep is not autowin, they are not in the majority.

Happy?

My point, which you keep missing, is that a wizard with Sleep will face one of the following three choices:

1. Autowin - the creatures all fall asleep.
2. Useless - the creautres are immune.
3. Mostly useless - the spell is already used and the wizard is reduced to plinking away with darts. If he actually gets into melee, he's got a life expectency closely related to small squishy things on busy highways.

And this is what you consider balanced design?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Want to go through the moathouse in Village of Hommlet with me and see how many encounters are "autowin"able by sleep?

It is hardly "overly pedantic" to point out that your idea of sleep as an autowin is simply wrong. And there is nothing the matter with being wrong, btw, so long as you are able to learn from it and stop making the same mistake.

And, from personal experience with playing many 1e magic-users, and from DMing many players playing the same, I can say that a 1st level magic-user armed with sleep faces more than the three choices you are able to see.

Heck, in 2e I played a diviner that managed quite well with no offensive spells at all!

D&D is not -- or, historically, has not been -- just a series of fights. Certainly it does not have to be, regardless of edition used.



RC

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