Revisionism

[Aus_Snow]

I disagree with your claim that increasing (or even bothering with?) game balance automatically leads to the things you sem to think it does.

Also, game balance is not an illusion. It is however something that requires a good deal of designing to get right. Note: not 'perfect', but right enough. Perfect balance *is* an illusion, and should be treated as such. Balance, pure if not simple, OTOH, is a very important design goal, and one which more designers should keep in mind, IMO. In fact, this is a major area of disappointment/frustration for many gamers, with many RPGs: 'If only the bloody designers had bothered to balance things! Aargh!' - that kind of thing.

This is a pet peeve of mine, and I doubt I can shift you from yours, which seems to be in direct contradiction. So yeah, I'll leave it there.

There are some other points there that I most certainly agree with. Hm, I've also found Vitality/Wound to be pretty much bollocks, though. Remathilis covered that ground, so. . . yep, that's it for now.

 

[Choranzanus]

4. The Illusion of Balance: Both the 3rd Edition and the 4th Edition rulesets are focused on a concept of “balance” that is largely illusory. This arose out of complaints that earlier editions were “unbalanced” – an equally illusory concern. However, focusing on that illusion has a number of deleterious effects:

e. Everything Must Be Built in the Same Way: The focus on balance required that everything, from traps to monsters, from magic items to NPCs, be built following explicit rules and numeric values. This was a primary cause of increased DM preparation time, and ultimately served little purpose as far as actual game play went.​

I have seen such statements before on ENworld and I would like to know exactly what you believe is this balance that is so destructive to the game.
My understanding of "game balance" is that metagame reasons (rules) should not eliminate meaningful choice. For example, if all weapons do d6 damage and longsword does d8 (hypotetic example), then everybody is wielding longsword. Most often game balance is mentioned with classes, that they should be equally powerful, but that is the basically the same, since you pick your class.

So, game balance is not there to make everything the same, but precisely the opposite. After all, the classes are explicitly balanced against each other by being different. If the game (I feel you are talking about 4e, at least in part) feels that everything is the same, then this has nothing to do with game balance.

 

[Obryn]

The only time I've ever used a VP/WP system was for PCs in my Call of Cthulhu d20 game. I used this instead of the massive damage threshold set at 10, since I wanted to run a long-term campaign with at least a few action elements. I also didn't use it for Mythos creatures, because really - they are supposed to be scary and you should not fight them.

After that, I'd never consider running it for anything even remotely heroic.

-O

 

[malraux]

6. Encourage sandbox play and resource management: Removing the expectation that the party can rest unmolested, and removing the expectation that all encounters will be balanced based upon the party at its full resource level, discourages characters from “going nuclear” and having 15-minute adventuring day.

In my experience, making rest dangerous just exacerbates the 15 minute day problem. If the party knows that resting can be dangerous, then they have a disincentive to pushing further.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

interesting post

A brief summary of the problems involved is provided below:

1. Preparation Time: The largest bugaboo created by the 3rd Edition ruleset is that the preparation time for the Dungeon Master is out of keeping with the game time spent in actual play. Preparation should be relatively simple, with more time spent developing setting (including both background and adventure setting), plots, and NPC personalities/motivations than is spent on crunching numbers and doing general math.

I think the problem with prep time was, because there were complex rules for creating monsters, people felt obliged to follow them, the CR system was not a reliable indicator of challange. Of course any arbitary group of 3e parties could be highly variable as to power, moreso than a similar sample of 4e parties, I suspect. Other than that, I agree.

2. Rapid Exponential Growth Curve: In the 3rd Edition ruleset, gaining levels increases the power of player characters exponentially. Worse, this exponential growth is coupled with an accelerated speed at which levels are gained. Together, these factors damage the game in several ways:

a. Characters frequently level before they have fully explored their abilities at any given level.​

Don't agree, with point a, but the exponential growth can be a problem, there is a lot to be said for flattening the power curve but I think in 3.xe systems the problem is that character strengths increase dramatically while weakness get worse, which sets of the hunt for magic items to compensate and encounters that challange some party members can obliterate some others.

4. The Illusion of Balance: Both the 3rd Edition and the 4th Edition rulesets are focused on a concept of “balance” that is largely illusory. This arose out of complaints that earlier editions were “unbalanced” – an equally illusory concern. However, focusing on that illusion has a number of deleterious effects:

I disagree that balance is an illusion, but it is not the be all and end all either. However, I believe that all player characters should be able to contribute in a meaningfull way in play at any given time. That said, I am beginning to suspect that some of the balance issued in 3.x was due to the variances between high medium and low bab and saves.

6. Lengthy Combats: A combination of numbers bloat, focus on miniatures, and parsing tactics based on overly complex subsystems could cause combat rounds to drag to a near-standstill. For many players and DMs, coming from games that focused on exploration or role-playing as much as combat, the amount of time required to resolve a 3rd Edition combat – especially a high-level combat – was simply too great.

From my experience most of the slow down in 3.x combat was recalculating bonus to hit, AC or saves due to cascading effect of items, buffs, debuffs and so forth. Remove most bonus stacking and less divergence between base save, ac and attack numbers, so people would not be seeking all theses bonuses might solve the problem.

1. Provide a baseline. Specifically, 90% of all characters belong to NPC classes. 80% of all characters, regardless of class, fall into a range of 1-3rd level. Of the remaining 20%, 80% are of 4-6th level. Etc. This creates a measure for character progression that allows players to chart their growth against a stable campaign setting.

I fail to see what relevance this has? What level the npc are and how many npc are at what level is a setting and flavour issue. When the PCs reach a certain level the DM will provide opponents of a level appropiate to challange the party and the default background assumptions are not going to enter into it.

2. Reduce the rate of character levelling. Characters move from 1st to 2nd level as quickly as in 3rd Edition, but thereafter the rate at which levels are gained slows exponentially. This allows established game elements to remain challenging for a longer period of time, removes the “Twenty at Twenty” problem entirely, and makes challenge levels far easier to determine. It also increases the amount of time that magic items remain interesting. It also extends the “sweet spot” of the game while allowing for the power levels needed to explain ancient magic items, etc.

Would it not be better to slow the effects of levelling rather than reducing the rate at which the characters level. I like levelling and I find it keeps the players engaged. Some of us do not have a weekly game.

3. Decouple feats and skills from level. Although on the surface this seems to increase the difficulty of defining challenges, it makes DM preparation far easier by reducing the math involved, and allows characters to experience regular growth despite reduced levelling.

Well feats should be decoupled from level anyway but decoupling skills sounds an interesting idea. How are you thinking on achieving it and can one start with a maxed skill?

6. Encourage sandbox play and resource management: Removing the expectation that the party can rest unmolested, and removing the expectation that all encounters will be balanced based upon the party at its full resource level, discourages characters from “going nuclear” and having 15-minute adventuring day.

Well not everyong wants sandbox play and beside that I do not believe sandbox play will stop the 15 minute day.
Also if resources are replenished daily(Vancian casting and so forth) then the party at a given time can have a huge variance in its current power level, particularly if the party has a lot of casters. This makes encounters hard to balance. An encounter that would be easy to the party at full resources could be tough at minimal resources. It is much easier to balance encounters against a party that has small variance between power levels.

7. Use variant Vitality and Wound Points instead of hit points: Vitality is a renewable resource with a short rest, allowing characters to continue adventuring even without a healer. Actual wounds are more serious, though, so that any battle might be important at any level.

Tried that, don't reccomend it, swingier and more trouble that it is worth.

 

[Mister Doug]

If the average guard is a F1 when the 1e/2e PCs are 1st level, what is the average guard when the 1e/2e PCs are 10th level?

The baseline thing has nothing to do with system and everything to do with how a particular DM/group chooses to run their game.

In fact, the lack of verisimilitude of the level system was one of the reasons I left AD&D 1e. This is an endemic problem with the way that all versions of D&D define things like hit points and attack probability as a function of level. In BRP, for instance, the relationship between a heroic adventurer and a normal person is much clearer, though character mortality in some versions of BRP (RQ 2nd edition) can be disturbingly high as a result.

I'm no longer convinced that the fact that high level characters are so superheroic is a huge problem, but the escalation of power and levels and lack of a reasonable comparison to norms goes back to the beginning, and began to be exacerbated with the Greyhawk supplement....

 

[Raven Crowking]

Okay, first off, thanks to everyone who responded!

Some notes:

(1) I know that not everyone is a big fan of sandbox play, or play with a slower levelling curve. Granted. However, I think that these things really are design goals that I have. I am hoping to really extend play from levels 3 to 8, turning this into a sort of "heroic" tier.

(2) Having given a lot of thought to the responses about balance, I am not even sure that 3.x gives a realistic idea of the average character of X level for any given group. Depending upon feat and skill selection, as well as magic item selection, these characters can vary quite a bit in terms of actual power. The many threads here and abroad about character optimization show (to me) that there is no set "average character".

I do know that some players of 1e and 2e had problems with some materials from the UA or the various kit books. As a DM, though, I never had problems with these because I designed sandbox settings in which an uber-tank or a swashbuckler wasn't always the optimal choice. Indeed, the wider the "world" in which play takes place -- and the more options for "winning" that world has -- the harder it is to "optimize".

When people begin talking about balance, they start with the idea that all characters at level X are roughly equal (or, in earlier editions, all characters with XP Y). But, especially in a game with complex builds like 3.x, this can quickly be proven untrue. I cannot recall how many threads discuss "dipping" a level, both as means to power, and as means to ultimately prevent charaters from reaching full power. Does anyone believe that there is an average level 16 character? I would say that the oft-observed failure of the CR system at high levels is due to the illusory nature of the "baseline".

(3) WP/VP: I am no fan of the idea of healing surges and vancian fighters. What other options have people used to decouple encounter hp from daily hp?


RC

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

(3) WP/VP: I am no fan of the idea of healing surges and vancian fighters.

Well, you don't have to use Vancian Fighters to use healing surges, if that's any help.

The easist "trick" to make healing surges count for more is to give drawbacks for healing surges expended, or have them recover at a lower rate.

What other options have people used to decouple encounter hp from daily hp?

Well, I myself haven't come up with anything.

Torg uses this approach:
There are several aspects to damage:
o Shock points. If these exceed your toughness score, you drop unconscious.
Certain events and effects in combat can remove shock points, and they heal at a rate of 1 point per minute.
o "K" and "O". Some degrees of damage deal a K or an O to you (in addition to anything else. You lose an O after one round. A K stays. If you get two Ks, or an K when you already have an O, or an O when you already have a K, you are - guess it - K.O.
o Knockdown: Some attacks drop you to the ground.
o Wounds. A character dies once he has 4 wounds. Wounds heal slowly, unless you use healing magic (and maybe very advanced tech.)

This might all sound pretty complicated, but the way you take damage is pretty simple.
If he enemy hits you, take his damage value modified by the die result, subtract your toughness, and consult a chart. The chart tells you what you suffer (and its always a variety of the above, starting with shock points, and eventually amassing a K, O, a knockdown result or a wound.

This is the basic damage system. Torg characters and some villains are "possibility rated". This has two basic effects for this purpose:
- Possibility Rated characters use a different table, that deals less damage (especially in regards to shock points).
- You can spend possiblities to reduce the damage taken. One possibility gives you 3 packages, and each package allows you to remove some shock points, K/O effects or wounds. You can only spend one possibility for this, so you have to decide whether you risk a wound to stay in fight, or prefer to get knocked out, or take something in between.

The system might sound complex, but its very easy to use in play. Combat can still be very deadly, but this is strongly decided upon by the player - does he risk taking some wounds in the hope of beating his enemies next round, further contributing to the battle, risking that the next attack deals so much damage that even after spending all his packages, he will drop dead?

---

I think the basic ideas here are:
- Damage per default comes in short-term and long-term effects.
- The player has a resource that he can spend to avoid short-term effects in favor of long-term effects, or both.

---

One approach:
Wound Points & Vitality Points are used, but the meaning is different.
All damage is vitality damage. Vitality recovers at a fast rate (either a rate like 1 point per level per minute, or just say "after 5 minutes of rest, all vitality points are back")
Whenever a character takes damage, he can decide to spend wound points to reduce the vitality damage. Maybe 5 points of damage per wound point, +1 per 2 levels. If a character runs out of vitality points, he drops unconscious, taking one 1d4 wound points for each successful attack, +1 for every 10 points of damage dealt.

The problem is carefully balancing damage over the levels with the total vitality points for a character, and the points gained from wound points. You ideally want the ratios to be constant (barring special benefits gained over levels).

 

[Obryn]

(3) WP/VP: I am no fan of the idea of healing surges and vancian fighters. What other options have people used to decouple encounter hp from daily hp?

What are healing surges if they aren't a pool of hit points that separates encounter HPs from daily HPs?

-O

 

[Hussar]

a. Characters frequently level before they have fully explored their abilities at any given level. As a result, “character mastery” becomes an artefact of “system mastery” – as levels increase, players cannot deal with them effectively unless they master the system itself. In older editions, slower rates of progression meant that a character remained at a given level long enough for the player to master that character at that level before moving on. Mastering a character is easy; mastering the system (especially when the system is complex) can be overwhelming.

This I strongly disagree with. I remember polling ENWorlders some time ago about how often they leveled up in 3e. It was generally after 3 sessions (or so). That means you've got about 3 weeks to figure out what you class gets each level. Classes do not change so radically each level that it is that honerous for players to figure out what's what.

Of course, the corrolary assumption here is that leveling is somehow faster in 3e than it was previously. This has been proven fairly false by Quasqueton's evaluations of various classic modules. In other words, it was only slow if your DM made it slow, same in any edition.

Heck, I just finished a campaign of 60 sessions today that saw us to 9th level. That's just about 6 sessions per level. A month and a half is more than slow enough to grok a new class.

It takes 13 1/3 encounters (by encounter I mean doing something that nets you xp, not necessarily combat) in 3e. Simply reduce the frequency of encounters and you slow down advancement. There are a number of methods for this - involve more role play oriented situations, for one, information gathering for another. Exploration as well can do it. Complicated situations that require planning as well can slow down advancement.