D&D (2024) Should the game be "balanced" and what does that mean?

[MGibster]

The social and exploration pillars always go neglected.

I think one of the reasons the social pillars get ignored is because some classes just aren't good at it. If I sat down and he told me his campaign was going to be full of interactions with NPCs and it would be important to form social bonds with them, I'm not making a Fighter. I'm probably going to make a character with Charisma as their main attribute like a Sorcerer, Bard (sorry Snarf), or a Warlock or at the very least something that gets a lot of skill points like a Rogue.

 

[Reynard]

I think one of the reasons the social pillars get ignored is because some classes just aren't good at it. If I sat down and he told me his campaign was going to be full of interactions with NPCs and it would be important to form social bonds with them, I'm not making a Fighter. I'm probably going to make a character with Charisma as their main attribute like a Sorcerer, Bard (sorry Snarf), or a Warlock or at the very least something that gets a lot of skill points like a Rogue.

That's a failure of the design. If each pillar was equally important, character generation would provide resources for each pillar, not make you choose between them.

 

[payn]

I think one of the reasons the social pillars get ignored is because some classes just aren't good at it. If I sat down and he told me his campaign was going to be full of interactions with NPCs and it would be important to form social bonds with them, I'm not making a Fighter. I'm probably going to make a character with Charisma as their main attribute like a Sorcerer, Bard (sorry Snarf), or a Warlock or at the very least something that gets a lot of skill points like a Rogue.

Yeah, the fighter isn't very good at exploration either. I think the dominate on pillar design needs to be rethought if the game is going to acknowledge three of them. This is an area that no edition has been great at balancing.

That's a failure of the design. If each pillar was equally important, character generation would provide resources for each pillar, not make you choose between them.

Yeap, I suggested a bunch of fighter options in a thread a few months ago. Things that give them an edge with military folks and law enforcement. Some type of leadership ability that gives them a place in the social pillar. Not sure if I came up with much for exploration at the time or not.

 

[FrogReaver]

IMO, everyone implicitly agrees that a game must have some degree of balance - for example: no one wants there to only be CR 20 dragons in the world for the level 1 PC's to fight. That's not balanced!

Since this establishes some degree of balance is to be strived for, the real question is how balanced should the game be? I'd say a game should be balanced around the characters having strengths and weaknesses and that it's easy to create encounters that challenge any given weakness while not making a PC feel targeted or totally useless for doing so. As an example 5e does this really poorly for melee PC's (flying/ranged enemies) and allows casters to overcome their weaknesses far to easily (single level multiclass dip for martial AC and single feat to shore up most of their biggest weaknesses (constitution/concentration saves).

 

[payn]

WotC just offloading the work of providing GM advice to new folks onto the internet is one of my biggest peeves with their strategy.

Aside from that they just need a DMG2 or the equivalent of the PF Gamemastery guide: a deep dive into all the procedures of the game and how to apply them to everything from courtly intrigue to mass combat to item creation to domain management. The game is poorer for just presenting adventures and ignoring all the other, often much cooler, stuff players can be doing.

There appears to be a large number of folks just fine with what the rulebooks provide. Even in this thread, posters seem to not understand what folks want beyond it. I agree with you, but there doesn't seem to be a drive to produce it. Maybe that's once bitten, twice shy of the splat era? Maybe, Paizo doled out their GM options because they had to introduce new territory on an older system? Maybe, WOTC is keeping that option in their back pocket when sales slow? Not sure the reason, but it might bring old dogs like me back if they start making it.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah, the fighter isn't very good at exploration either. I think the dominate on pillar design needs to be rethought if the game is going to acknowledge three of them. This is an area that no edition has been great at balancing.

Yeap, I suggested a bunch of fighter options in a thread a few months ago. Things that give them an edge with military folks and law enforcement. Some type of leadership ability that gives them a place in the social pillar. Not sure if I came up with much for exploration at the time or not.

Honestly, fighter is too broad a class for a simple design. Broad classes need ample mechanical choices to mold them into something more specific and 5e fighters are the 'simple class'.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's a failure of the design. If each pillar was equally important, character generation would provide resources for each pillar, not make you choose between them.

If you could make a character 3x as good at combat by sacrificing social and exploration then that would theoretically work fine, it's just the fighter at best is slightly better than some other classes at combat (and he's arguably worse than most of the naturally charismatic classes).

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah this is the video that ends with the manticore example, and the video itself talks about the difficulty of building encounters and making monsters that have a predictable CR. In terms of balance, I think I would still ask why an encounter needs to be balanced, and what does balance means. It seems to mean that you can play the monsters without fudging dice, and provide a challenging minigame that nevertheless reliably results in PC victory as long as they are decently tactical. While I agree that encounter building could be more intuitive, I think it's an open question as to whether balance in that sense is a valuable design goal.

The other point in the video is that the DMG and supplements should have reliable subsystems for specific kinds of fantasy rpg things: magic item economy, crafting, strongholds, etc. That would be helpful! The dmg is a mess. Some of those rules might be better left to specific supplements (ship rules in GoS, war rules in the upcoming Dragonlance).

IMO, all one has to do is consider a game where level 1 PC's always fought CR 20 dragons to realize why that is a valuable design goal.

 

[Ancalagon]

This, this, this, a thousand times this.

I have only been GMing with this edition, since 2015. Learning how to GM is/was very difficult, and is a perishable skill, especially early on. Figuring out how to balance different player expectations, the nebulous rules of exploration and social interaction, when rewards should be given out, and how to pace the game should be done for me in the DMG. I shouldn't have to go trawling up youtube videos, hopping on tiktok, or digging into 50 year old forums in order to run the game.

Almost every single RPG in print right now indeed suffers this same flaw.

I was thinking about this the other day. It's not rare for a DMG to give examples for certain scenes - a chase is a common one. But I think it would be a good idea to have short examples of other typical scenes - a or warlock infiltrating an enemy camp, a sneaky rogue doing the same, an ambush, a lock opening scene... it would help a lot I think.

 

[MGibster]

That's a failure of the design. If each pillar was equally important, character generation would provide resources for each pillar, not make you choose between them.

I'm in agreement. At least with combat, every character class can easily make meaningful contributions to defeating the bad guys. And while each class can certainly roleplay and support social encounters in some way, the rules don't really offer a whole lot of support for that. I've had many games where those playing Monks, Fighters, Rangers, and sometimes even the Rogue (depending on build) essential sit out of social encounters specifically because their characters aren't "good" at them when the other classes outshine them. I'd like to say that's just stinkin' thinkin', but their not entirely wrong.

I think every character should be good at talking to NPCs. Maybe not all NPCs, maybe just a select group of them (soldiers, other students of the arcane, members of their neighborhood, nobility, etc., etc.), but good at talking to someone. Role playing is what separates D&D from table top war games or board games. If you're going to have players sit out of social encounters because their not good at them, you might as well play Descent or Warhammer Quest.

Yeah, the fighter isn't very good at exploration either. I think the dominate on pillar design needs to be rethought if the game is going to acknowledge three of them. This is an area that no edition has been great at balancing.

I guess the Druid and Ranger are pretty good at exploring. Who else?