D&D General On Powerful Classes, 1e, and why the Original Gygaxian Gatekeeping Failed

[Voadam]

A difference in XP progression is an attempt to balance. A Thief is a weaker class than a Paladin. But a Thief advances more quickly (Paladins take 2751 XP to get to 2nd level, which would get a Thief more than 250 XP into 3rd level). This is an attempt to balance.

This breaks down with Magic-Users who take a lot of xp to begin when they are super weak and then comparatively less at higher levels when they hit their stride. Around level 7 they even out. At the end of the charts the magic-user is a level ahead.

Fighter
1 0—2,000
2 2,001—4,000
3 4,001—8,000
4 8,001—18,000
5 18,001—35,000
6 35,001—70,000
7 70,001—125,000
8 125,001—250,000
9 250,001—500,000
10 500,001—750,000
11 750,001—1,000,000

Magic-User
1 0—2,500
2 2,501—5,000
3 5,001—10,000
4 10,001—22,500
5 22,501—40,000
6 40,001—60,000
7 60,001—90,000
8 90,001—135,000
9 135,001—250,000
10 250,001—375,000
11 375,001—750,000
12 750,001—1,125,000

 

[steeldragons]

I think it goes more to the notion of the "prestige class" not being more powerful, but more specialized.

Its not that the Ranger should be more fightery than the fighter, but a Ranger deep in the woods is going to look amazing compared to the Fighter. The paladin is not as good as the Fighter in general combat, but watch out when your facing the hordes of evil.

That is the way to have your cake and eat it to. These "prestige classes" are rarer because they are specialized, and you don't as many specialists out there. By that token, the specialists are godly in their niche, but don't compare as well to the generalist in other scenarios.

That is a better balancing system than simply "Paladins are Fighter+++"

I actually toy with this for my homebrew system.

Not with Rangers. But Paladins, for sure.

I've gone back and forth whether or not Bards are better done this way. Make them a limited (5 levels? ish) worth of particular abilities available to any Neutral-aligned Rogue, Fighter, Druid... or Mage (sorcerer or wizard for D&D) ,maybe.

I could see an argument for the Monk...Lawful Fighters or Rogues...or Clerics? Or the Warlock...even Necromancer -as opposed to a Wizard speciality like any other.

I think these very specific, "big" thematically, classes could be better suited as these kinds of "prestige class" like bundles of features.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Sure. As you say, some of Garry’s attempts at balance were more successful than others.

Right, you’re thinking of “balance” on an individual-to-individual basis. A Holy Avenger is more powerful than a normal sword, so they’re not “balanced against each other.” I’m talking about balance across the broader playing field. A Holy Avenger is able to be as powerful as it is and still feel “fair” because it’s extremely rare. If everyone could get one as easily as they can get a normal sword, normal swords would feel pointless. But, because normal swords are easily accessible and Holy Avengers are not, they each have a purpose and a role. The power is “balanced out” by the rarity, making for a fair overall gameplay experience.

My comparison to Magic: the Gathering was very intentional. Magic is a game where rarity as a form of balance is integral to the game’s design. Nobody is going to make the argument that a powerful rare card like Jace the Mindsculptor isn’t way stronger than a common card like Youthful Knight. But, in an environment where card availability is limited, the rarity of the former balances its relative power. Commons, though typically weaker than rarer cards, are more important in limited, because they form the majority of the card pool, and are the basis on which you’ll be building a deck. A rare bomb can be useful, but if you try and build around it, you’re likely to end up with a much weaker deck than one built from a solid base of commons.

Of course, this form of balance fails when access to the rarer cards isn’t actually limited. Richard Garfield severely under-estimated the amount of product the average player would open, and realized that in the long-term, rarity wouldn’t serve to balance the more powerful cards like he thought it would, because people would just buy enough packs to get whatever cards they wanted regardless of rarity (which is why limited formats were invented).

Likewise in D&D, players just re-roll until they get the stats they want, or use more generous stat-generation methods, or “cheat” or otherwise manipulate the intended probability distribution so they can play what they want to play. This undermines the balance factor I believe stat requirements were supposed to create, making the powerful classes, bonuses, and other advantages of high stats more accessible than they were intended to be. Which is pretty much your thesis. I think we’re ultimately in agreement here but quibbling over terminology.

In reaction to the Holy Avenger part alone, this too was part of Gary's presumed balancing apparatus re the give-n-take going on with the Paladin, i.e., his limit on alignment, followers, monies, et al. So yes in the "broader" aspect I agree. It's all, in EGG's perspective, a series of +1/-1 to get to "0"= balance.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This breaks down with Magic-Users who take a lot of xp to begin when they are super weak and then comparatively less at higher levels when they hit their stride. Around level 4 they even out. At the end of the charts the magic-user is a level ahead.

I think that either of these is plausible scenarios:

1. This was really reinforcing the "weak at low levels, make it up at higher levels" concept for the MU. Which is furthering the idea that the MU was specifically balanced in terms of that concept.

2. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." Gary Gygax, likely when designing the never-released HOBXVART!

 

[David Howery]

Game Balancing by rarity would not be discovered to be poor game design in multiplayer gaming until decades after 1e.

90% of 1e's failures came from not being able to learn from predecessors since it was first.

yeah, people tend to forget this a lot. Even with my 'looking backwards with rose colored glasses' view of 1E days, I can see the design flaws in 1E. Still, it was the first, it was a new and shiny thing, and it was a hell of a lot of fun....

 

[billd91]

Game Balancing by rarity would not be discovered to be poor game design in multiplayer gaming until decades after 1e.

90% of 1e's failures came from not being able to learn from predecessors since it was first.

Ultimately, that depends on what unit your balancing around. Rarity was a poor balancing factor for intercharacter balance. Perhaps not as bad when looking at balance issues in at the campaign level as a whole when balancing the presence of different character types over others in some kind of Gygaxian naturalism.
Then again, it isn't until decades after 1e that intercharacter balance becomes cemented (maybe even fetishized) as the be-all, end-all of balance in D&D.

 

[Voadam]

Game Balancing by rarity would not be discovered to be poor game design in multiplayer gaming until decades after 1e.

I and people I knew noticed it and disliked it during 1e.

I don't think we were alone.

90% of 1e's failures came from not being able to learn from predecessors since it was first.

Forgetting something?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One other thing to note which is pretty screwy:

The PHB for 1e came out in 1978. It doesn't really describe how to roll up a character, although its suggestion that a viable PC needs at least two 15's tells us that Gygax was already planning for a process considerably better than 'roll 3d6 in order 6 times', which was the rule in previous versions of the game. Still, given there was no other documented method, this was exactly what you did when the book was published, thus many of the things you discuss in this thread were virtually impossible to attain.

The DMG instantly changed things drastically. Depending on which method you chose would make a huge difference in exactly how ability score-based gatekeeping would impact your ability to choose things. I think most groups chose Method I (4d6 drop 1, arrange as desired). With this sort of method you basically got to choose your class and apply a reasonably high score to your prime requisite. Most PCs have at least a 15, although it was not too hard to end up with a 'dud' and be locked out of most choices. I'd also note that race choice, due to racial adjustments, COULD widen your choices.

Overall, I think the 'Green Berets' argument is basically the most cogent explanation for the whole thing. Gygax simply liked a certain sort of verisimilitude and observed that it would be darn unlikely for a wimp to be a ranger, and the 'Rangers' would not accept such. I mean, if you take these rules from the perspective of "I'm so-and-so with these abilities, what can I do with myself?" it certainly isn't a non-sensical set of rules. It is just BAD RULES FOR A GAME. And this is a key point. Gary was a great GM, but he was at best a mediocre game designer in a sort of logical game system design sense.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I’ll add that I really like the idea of rarity as a balancing tool. But it requires a different type of game to work. That’s why limited formats are a thing in magic - instead of building decks from your whole collection, everyone gets a fixed amount of sealed product and has to build a deck with whatever they get, or else draft picks from a shared pool and build with what you draft. To make rarity as balance work in D&D, you would need a similar restriction.

Again, theoretically you could achieve this by strictly enforcing 3d6 in order (or whatever method of rolling stats, the important part is just that everyone has to use the same method), with no rerolls. But in practice, players can just have their characters commit suicide (or play them suicidally if that’s not allowed) so they can roll up a new character, until they get a set of stats they like. Maybe the thing to do would be to let everyone roll up a certain number of characters (again, enforcing the same rolling method for everyone), and once your characters are all dead, that’s it. You’re out. This would work better for a more competitive form of D&D, where the DM tries to kill the PCs and the players try to keep their characters alive as long as possible.

I would like to note here the reality of TROUPE PLAY which was practiced in, at least Gary's, early campaigns. That is, the game was designed such that players would develop a number of characters and play different ones at different times. You were bound to get some 'good ones', and it was normal practice to A) use these character sheets for NPC henchmen (IE you rolled up a really nice wizard with an 18 INT, but you're playing your 6th level fighter now, so you hire a wizard, guess what sheet you use). and then B) henchmen could be promoted to being PCs. This was pretty close to a 'rule', at least of campaign management. So in a LOT of cases when you needed another PC, you already had some good stat blocks lying around to use, and they had some experience, etc. Technically your wizard PC might be the henchman of your fighter PC "out on sabbatical" and next week he's an NPC again, but that was perfectly fine. At some point the relationship might change, or the fighter might get ganked and maybe the wizard even gets some of his stuff, or inherits some of his employees.

The point being, you might well roll a lot of characters up, and even if you weren't allowed to toss the ones you didn't like, you could just make them less significant hirelings or whatnot, and you could build up the 'good ones' before you even really played them, and keep them 'on deck'.

 

[Minigiant]

Forgetting something?

Did D&D have any predecssors other than D&D to learn from?