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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Fighter/Martial Problem (In Depth Ponderings)
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9174757" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>(I should share a definition of balance that I encountered that I've found helpful</p><p><em>A game is better balanced the more choices it presents to the player that are both meaningful and viable</em>.)</p><p></p><p>Perfect balance is impossible, and better balanced games are increasingly more difficult to create & maintain.</p><p>Presenting the characters with more choices, so they can do a wider variety of things that are worth doing, <em>is </em>creating a better balanced game.</p><p></p><p>I don't believe the fundamental disagreement is about sorts of balance.</p><p></p><p>The Fighter v Wizard math calculations are an example. They show the fighter theoretically balancing with the wizard in DPR (the fighter's best thing, nearly it's only thing & not exactly the much more versatile wizard's best thing), over the vaguely recommended 6-encounter day, if those encounters are against a relatively low number of foes, and non-DPR resources are not considered. </p><p></p><p>That there are so many other ways to play the game that place less emphasis on single-target DPR, only means the actual martial/gap is that much wider. </p><p></p><p>(Though, TBF, tradition implies the default way to play the game is grueling time-important dungeon crawls.)</p><p></p><p>I think it was just a pendulum-swing. 3e made skills the stuff of extreme specialization, you could either invest heavily in a skill and be awsome (insane/broken if it was Diplomacy), or as you leveled, you became utterly worthless at it against same-level challenges - "overwhelming the d20." 4e moved off that peak by giving everyone a baseline progression so even untrained stayed relevant at higher levels, while trained/specialized became extremely good. 5e continued towards the opposite peak, where training/level just doesn't make much of a difference and "everyone's got a shot" - Expertise has kept it off that peak. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 9174757, member: 996"] (I should share a definition of balance that I encountered that I've found helpful [I]A game is better balanced the more choices it presents to the player that are both meaningful and viable[/I].) Perfect balance is impossible, and better balanced games are increasingly more difficult to create & maintain. Presenting the characters with more choices, so they can do a wider variety of things that are worth doing, [I]is [/I]creating a better balanced game. I don't believe the fundamental disagreement is about sorts of balance. The Fighter v Wizard math calculations are an example. They show the fighter theoretically balancing with the wizard in DPR (the fighter's best thing, nearly it's only thing & not exactly the much more versatile wizard's best thing), over the vaguely recommended 6-encounter day, if those encounters are against a relatively low number of foes, and non-DPR resources are not considered. That there are so many other ways to play the game that place less emphasis on single-target DPR, only means the actual martial/gap is that much wider. (Though, TBF, tradition implies the default way to play the game is grueling time-important dungeon crawls.) I think it was just a pendulum-swing. 3e made skills the stuff of extreme specialization, you could either invest heavily in a skill and be awsome (insane/broken if it was Diplomacy), or as you leveled, you became utterly worthless at it against same-level challenges - "overwhelming the d20." 4e moved off that peak by giving everyone a baseline progression so even untrained stayed relevant at higher levels, while trained/specialized became extremely good. 5e continued towards the opposite peak, where training/level just doesn't make much of a difference and "everyone's got a shot" - Expertise has kept it off that peak. ;) [/QUOTE]
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