[rant] Balance schmalance

[Trickstergod]

See, I'm all about a party seriously over-powering and beating the crap out of much, much lower CR monsters, and the same applies to my players. Way back when I was running one of my first 3rd edition games, one of my friends commented, with some ire, how those knights, town watchmen, and generic humanoid monsters always seemed to level up with the characters, and that the PC's never really get a chance to be the big dog, no matter where they go. They never get to appreciate that they're higher level, and for all intents and purposes, they may as well have stayed at first, because things were more or less just as challenging then as now. I assured him that the town watchman suddenly popping up from a 1st level warrior to an 8th level fighter when the characters went from 1st to 5th level (because it always seems those NPC's are a bit bigger than the PC's) just wasn't going to happen.

So in that regards, balance? Bully to that. My PC's get to enjoy the fact that 10th level is a heck of a lot more powerful than 1st, and only an idiot would mess with them. Usually.

On the other hand, I've seen players get wicked pissed when I've thrown them up against a challenge that was far, far beyond them. Even when I hadn't intended the PC's to fight it or really have much effect on it. I can only imagine how those folk would react were I to put them into a fight against a monster that was at least four or over their Challenge Rating.

I've no intention of stopping with the high CR monsters where the characters aren't supposed to fight, or where the PC's do something really, really dumb (and I've already made it clear how powerful the NPC or monster is), but a random, massive CR monster just isn't going to happen. That's not fun, and not conducive to a continuous campaign. So in that respect, some balance is needed.

As others have said, there's also the "I still do something in the party" kind of balance. This holds particularly true in the case of prestige classes, in my opinion, which often aren't balanced with the base classes. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem were it not for the fact that there's not a prestige class that fits every single PC, or even most, I've found. Nor will there ever be a time that every PC has a prestige class which fits.

There’s also a difference between running a game, and writing books for the game. If you’re running a game where the party wants to play an Aristocrat/Fighter, a Rogue who focuses on Diplomacy and Gather Information, a Wizard/Bard and a pacifist Druid who uses no weapons…well, a DM should, at least in part, allow for that. I think the idea of party balance just detracts from role-playing. Needing a Warrior, Priest, Wizard and Rogue is just obnoxious. I rarely find that out of four players, each one wants to fill one of those different niches. I usually find there’s some degree of overlap. Generally, I’ll have two PC’s who both do the same thing.

On the other hand, that’s just running a game. Writing books for one, though, should take into account balance. I’m of the opinion this is where most complaints crop up; if you have a group of friends that are all about fighting a fire giant at third level…hey, awesome. But a CR 3 in a monster book should, roughly, be an appropriate challenge to a generic party of a Warrior, Priest, Wizard and Rogue. Roughly, mind you. The same goes for spells, prestige classes, etc. The mechanics in a d20 book should be roughly comparable with the Core books. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have a common starting point to work off of – the better you can gauge just how powerful something is or isn’t, the better you can make use of it. Or alter it to your needs. A common starting point is a good thing.

Now, that is hard to attain at times, but it should be strived for within books.

As for running a game itself, I generally just go for what makes sense. Which doesn't always match up with balance.

 

[Buttercup]

Now this is a story I'd like to hear..

It involved many large barrels of oil on a pitch smeared wagon, pouring oil on everything around the wagon and a bunch of fire arrows that they manufactured themselves from oil soaked bits of fabric and regular arrows. They were able to take their time setting it up, you see. The resulting fire storm was really something. It took out a Bone Ooze and about 30 ghouls.

Edit: I forgot to mention the rotgrubs. They died too.

 

[Psion]

Now don't get me wrong. I'm 100% behind the desire for balance in the game, and the need for it. But it just can't be perfect folks, too many variables. Have you ever tried to pass off your off-the-rack blue blazer and your off-the-rack blue slacks as an off-the-rack blue suit? You might have fooled yourself into thinking the colors were the same, but believe me, no one else was buyin' it.

So it is with balance in the game. The harder you try to get it just right, the weirder it starts to look.

Gee, I walk into the thread looking to rebut you, but you have to go and say something sensible!

IME, a certain amount of balance is usually* helpful and desireable, but there is a point beyond which any further attempts to balance do more harm than good. Though many D&D design assumptions exist, in reality, a game is not so "sterile". Things like variations in the scenario, types of challenges faced, player tactics, and so forth that the difference that minute balance efforts product are far below the "noise" of variations in the typical game. At that point, trying to obsessively balance only harms the game by (frex) making spells or effects blander than they need to be, creating distortions that are sensible in the mileu that exist for no reason other than minute balance, etc.

Hmmm... it seems to me I've had this discussion before.

 

[WizarDru]

The point is, whether the party is barely making it through the encounter, breezing through, expending precisely 20% of their resources to make it through, or running, as long as it's fun then who cares? Believe me, players really love to romp through low-level fodder more than anything. And running from the second encounter is at least as memorable.

No one cares, in the end, about CRs and ECLs. Not even about experience points really, since in 10 or 20 or 30 years what they remember is "One time our group was just roaming around the land, and we run into this really pissed giant...".

As long as it's fun for your group, then by all means, play it that way. But I assure you, CRs and ELs (as opposed to ECLs) are extremely useful guidelines to have. Knowing how relatively dangerous a Beholder is, in relation to a Destrachan or 8th level NPC fighter, is a useful tool for DMs to have...and for less experienced DMs, an even greater tool.

Whether the players remember your giant encounter as a 'and then the DM decided to kill us all' or 'and then we began one of the coolest encounters ever' has nothing to do with balance or the system, and everything to do with you and your group.

Who ever said that all characters should be useful throughout their careers. Fantasy literature abounds with mismatched "unbalanced" characters. IMNSHO, rather than being "the important part of balance" it's one of the major flaws in the system for me. I like to play those useless spell-lobbers so I can savor the power later if I'm clever enough that they survive. Same with a tricky thief. All men are not created equal and neither should be characters!

On the second point, CR will never replace experience. I beat my characters to within an inch of their miserable lives and rarely kill one by overpowering them. That's not to say I won't throw something in their way to see if they're more intelligent than brave. By the same token, they don't get "walk-overs" unless I intend it. To me, CR's are about as significant andaccurate as a blind man's estimate of the distance to the moon based on odor! You gotta kill a few to discover the right "balance." Nothin' substitutes for experience.

My players have worked their way up from 1st level to 23rd, currently, and I can assure you that being overshadowed during combats is not fun for anyone. Watching someone else dominate the combat becomes an exercise in boredom, and removes the fun from the endeavour.

I can also assure you that after a certain point, mowing down legions of low-level creatures looses it's thrill, too. There's a difference between being able to flex your muscles and wasting an hour on an encounter that is a fait accompli from the get-go. Epic characters can mow down entire armies...but that doesn't mean that it makes for compelling game play. Conversely, engaging in a battle against a vastly superior foe isn't terribly fun, either, nor is being faced with challenge after challenge where you're forced to run from a battle, because you're outmatched. Once in a while can be fun and appropriate...but if verisimilitude overwhelms gameplay, fun gets left by the wayside.

It also sounds like you've confused what CR is, and who it's for. It's a DM tool, not a player tool, and should be used as such. If your players have come to depend on CRs as a tool, then they deserve what they get. With the addition of templates, advancement and applying class levels to monsters, the PCs can never be sure as to the abilities of a particular foe. Ask my players about their encounter with a half-elemental Paragon Beholder, and they'll make it clear to you...they never take an opponent at face value. CR is a relative guideline, and nothing more. Party has no cleric? All undead are likely to be tougher...not just for the initial encounter, but for the lingering effects of things like ability and level drains. Party has no melee characters? Golems are going to be...unpleasant. No spellcasters and facing some high-level outsiders? You get the idea. Unwinnable? Not by a long shot. But the CR system was designed to give a rough approximation of how an average party would fair against an opponent, and a relative scale of deadliness. Against a group with terrible Will saves, a Bodak could be a terrible thing. Versus a party of pure clerics, it's almost embarassing to watch. Change the frequency of combats, and the relative difficulty of individual combats changes. Note how the CRs of encounters in "Speaker in Dreams" and the reasoning given in the module.

It doesn't sound like we're discussing balance at all here, but how DMs like to set up their encounters. Which has nothing to do with the CR system, at all.

 

[diaglo]

BALANCE SCHMALANCE.

i think i might have a new sig.

 

[Mordane76]

Bit of Chutzpah
You can do it! Now let them know you can do it!

Prerequisites: Insanity and a pair of brass one's.
Benefit: You can scare the bejubus out of creatures that should be able to squash you like a flea. They're convinced that you have the super-mega, uber-powerful, not-seen-since-the-wars-of-the-gods power.
Normal: You're dead.



joe b.

QUOTE!!

 

[Orius]

When I set aside time to role-play, I like to feel that my time at table was well spent, that it was worth my coming along, rather than being merely a decoration. In other words, I want my character to be able to do something! I want to be able to participate in the game, and not have to spend my time in the shadow of another because the rules are set up that way. That's why some balance in the design of the character classes matters.

I've played in games where other characters where a lot more powerful. Frankly it is not fun to sit there not being able to do much, while someone else takes care of business. It may work well in a book, but a game isn't a novel and it's not fun.

It's a game, and like any game it's important for everyone to have fun, and for many people that means contributing a fair share to the effectiveness of the party as a whole. It's not much fun in a combat-oriented game to be a rogue sneak attacking for maybe 30 or so damage, dealing with low hps, low BAB and the situational nature of sneak attack, in the same party as a frenzied berzerker who is dealing out 100+ damage with cleaves every round (and hitting on a 2)

I have to say I fall on this side of the argument here. Characters should be balanced in regards to each other, so one character doesn't dominate. A bored player is a player that walks. Same thing with a pissed off player. If it's not fun, people will just go spend their free time doing something more enjoyable

And as for "campaign worlds" and "realism", there can be a fine line between verisimiltude and DMs throwing a power trip. I remember my first DM, he was a guy that had been playing for a long time, he had the original 1e hardcovers, and so on. When I first started playing, he talked how "D&D is like real life, if you play stupid you die," stuff like that. However, he was a killer-DM. I had a 1st character bumped off by an invisible stalker with no warning except for the fact that a breeze stirred nearby. This was a 2e game, and my character had the Weather Sense proficiency, so I used it. Then the stalker whacks him for 16 points of damage. Sure, in real life, people might get unexpectedly killed, but is it fun for the player to get killed by something random? No, they get pissed, and it's not a case of player whining.

The way I see it, there's a difference between low level characters hearing about that big ass dragon tearing apart the countryside and trying to take it on, and the DM simply plopping a big ass dragon (or coked-up fire giant) in their path. You can put powerful stuff in there for the PCs to interact with in a non-combat way (Planescape, for example had a lot of that), but a DM who throws stuff like that at the characters simply for combat purposes is simply being abusive.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I've played in games where other characters where a lot more powerful. Frankly it is not fun to sit there not being able to do much, while someone else takes care of business. It may work well in a book, but a game isn't a novel and it's not fun. So while game balance may not be of the greatest importance, I think you'd be mistaken to toss it out the windor or ignore it.

I see two problems in this, though.

First, the "odd-pair" may feature moments where one is more important than the other, but it is rarely a case of one always being more important than the other. If such is the case, the matter isn't one of character power but of scenario design (or possibly favoritism). The only true benefit of having a "typical party" of near-same Character Levels is that purchased modules will more easily accomodate them. Outside of that, it is simply the GM's ability to do so that is in the way. I routinely GM mix-leveled parties (my last had a Halfling PsyW4, a Verbeeg ECL8/Fighter4/Rogue2, and a Human Fighter12/Psychic6) and have always managed to keep the game running without a hitch.

Another issue is that believing each character should be equal at all times (hence always sharing the spot light), the idea that everyone gets a chance at the spot light (i.e., the chance to shine as an individual) is becoming a foreign concept, since shinging as an individual has become synonomous with over-shadowing everyone else, which is far from the truth. I have personally seen a player call foul when another PC was able to perform an act no one else could pull off or had any chance of influencing. This same player, however, had seemed to forget that his own character had been the "star" of a session 2 months previous, which (of course) he didn't seem to mind at the time.

The root of balance is, plain and simply, about fairness. It's not about CR or anything else (CR, after all, is only the hard-coding of one measure of balance amongst a sea of infinite possibilities; each of WotC's other games -Cthulu, WoT, SW- also have their own measure of balance, and several available settings -Midnight, Slain- continue the list). When something is too easy to be a challange or too hard to be possible, it isn't balanced. When something is challenging, possible, and fun, it's as balanced as it needs to be.

And yes, a 3rd Level Party that trapses off after the evil dragon just because they heard about it deserve to become lunch.

 

[Acid_crash]

BALANCE SCHMALANCE.

That felt good.
--- John

I've always wanted to know how SCHMALANCE was spelled.

That said, discussions about balance are as good as discussions about alignments...nothing really gets solved and everybody gets pissed. The best way to handle discussions like this and not get too upset about it is to not get involved in the first place. But that wouldn't just be any fun.

What kind of balance are we talking about? game mechanic balance. If that's the case, then we are talking about the wrong game. is it play time balance amongst the players. IF that's the case, then its a non-game issue and more a people issue which each group must figure for themselves, especially the GM. We can talk about balance until each of us is tired of it, nothing will get resolved because this game, and most rpg's, are just not all that balanced. There isn't anything we can really do about it.

We all know that once the wizard gets to 5th level then he's gonna pick fireball and begin to blast the battlefield, now suddenly making the fighter type seem weaker, unless the fighter gets some cool magic weapon to make up for the sudden disadvantage. We all know that the rogue will do less damage then the barbarian, unless the rogue gets some nifty magic item to help with the difference, or a mage casts buff spells on the rogue to help. We all know that the balancing issue boils down to power scaling in the classes, and magic items the GM must dish out to keep the pace up as the monsters power scales up around them.

Being a GM with D&D is like walking a fine line...too many magic items and the characters are powerhouses and walk over everything, and too few items will allow the wizards to walk all over the other characters.

The other thing that throws balance out the window are player actions during the game, and how often players make stupid decisions that then make it seem the world is a more dangerous place than it really is. The example of the characters in a small town overhearing the rumor that there is a dragon in the countryside rampaging a few farms. As players go (thinking of the majority, not all of them), most will think the DM will tailor this to the characters and will automatically think that they can handle it. Then they go investigate, see that it's three times their size, and still attack it because they think the DM wouldn't really attack them with it. Then there is a TPK, and they blame the DM for unbalncing the game against them by attacking them with a creature that is too powerful for them to handle.

Another example: I had a group just exit a cave in the hillside that a wizard teleported them into. After a brief fight inside the cave, they exited it and heard some rocks being moved above them. Over a small crest they see a Hill Giant, minding its own business, playing with some rocks. Then they see the Hill Giant playing with a goblin, and see him toss the goblin into its bag of rocks. This group of characters, 5 in all, averaged 3rd level. The Hill Giant had a CR of 8. As players go, they flat out attacked the creature because it was there. By the end of the battle, there were two survivors, one at -HP, the other three were dead, the Hill Giant was dead, and the two survivors had no way of carrying the 3 dead bodies with them to the nearest town, which they didn't know where it was anyways. Then this group got pissed at me because they felt I was unfair. I told them that their characters live in a WORLD, and in this WORLD things beyond their capacity to handle do exist. Plus, I told them I was testing their intelligence and see if they would actually run from something than attack it. They didn't like that too much. So, after attacking a Hill Giant that had absolutely no knowledge of their existence, the campaign ended right there. Was that my fault that they acted rashly and didn't think about it? I don't think it was.

 

[Liquidsabre]

*chuckle*

Balance is a useful tool and should be used to keep things fun for all. A great game general runs the fine line between balance and suspension of disbelief (i.e. a reasonable amount of realism, reasonable of course varying....) for the most amount of enjoyment. A great rpg story of a band of heroes wouldn't be told at all if a a giant came along and smited them for no good reason at 2nd level. But play is done in many flavors, if that's yours and you can continue gaming with folk without being thrown out, more power to you.

However, I have absolutely no sympathy for DMs who fail to respect game balance. The headaches they create in-game (and out of game) because of it are their own and suffer as they should. Now when said DMs turn around and complain about the game system... that's when my ugly head rises to smite with a nasty breathweapon.

Also note that this thread was posted in general. Now imagine what would have happened if it had appeared in the rules forum *shudder*

edit - just wanted to remark that I agree with acid_splash and I too generally create realistic game worlds (part of the suspension) where such encounters exist. When balance is brought up it ususally means mechanically in-game and referrign to the balance between PCs as far as game-time and power levels. That's all there is to it really.