The Problem of Balance (and how to get rid of it)

[Imaro]

But it can ease the need to keep the systems balanced.

The point of the absurd example is that the player has spent points on one skill that some GMs are going to have a hard time figuring out how to challenge enough times to make it mechanically worth the purchase. The idea of balance is to attempt to eliminate any choices that are either costed more than their amount of usefulness would suggest, or are costed less than their amount of usefulness would suggest.

Yet you continue to avoid the question of tactical combat, why? Isn't this the same principle? Balance doesn't help this as it really boils down to creativity and imagination. You can, through bad or good combat design, make a characters powers shine majority of the time or less relevant than other players powers, or barely relevant at all. What about the players who can't or won't be able to learn to create good combat encounters. IMO, it really boils down to the DM

It doesn't hurt to have a backup in case none of that works.

What backup? Limitation of choices for your own good? Eh, I'll pass I can make my own choices thank you very much. See it's all about preferences.

You make the point both here and above that the character should have multiple skills to draw from. Multiple options. But that's one of the things the balance argument is striving for: the idea that any given PC has multiple options they can draw upon so they are not sitting on the sidelines because of their mechanics. Again, the point of the absurd example is that the skill has only application and figuring out how to apply that application enough times to make the skill's purchase worth giving up what other options could be purchased may be beyond some GMs.

No, having multiple options has nothing to do with balance. A game where you can attack, or run with a 50% chance for everyone to do either is balanced... but it doesn't have many options. In fact I would argue that the more options introduced, the less balance can be achieved, since it causes the amount of inherent possibilities for which the foundation of said balance can not account for to rise. As far as it being beyond some DM's... how do these DM's cope with again, the rogue in 4e having twice as many skills as the fighter... so the DM/GM has to create situations in which both of their abilities are useful... or you end up with the Rogue getting more screen time. In the end it really is about the DM/GM not about the balance or mechanics.

 

[Spatula]

There's quite a few games that don't bother with inter-party game balance. A lot of supers games, at least the older ones, were like that. The LotR RPG that came out with the movies, from what I heard of it. The Buffy RPG. Most Star Wars RPGs (Jedi are usually just better than everyone else). RIFTS. 1e/2e D&D.

To put it another way, how could you take "game balance"--in terms of classes and races--out of 4E, but still keep it D&D, and still make it enjoyable and playable?

Simply remove the need for races or classes to be balanced. People had plenty of fun with 1e D&D, and wizards ruled the roost there once they got out of the early levels.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Game Balance

Lets examine what that means for a moment. To me game balance means exactly what it says, a balance for the entire game. Starting in 3E, and even more so in 4E game balance has been replaced with turn based combat balance.

Mr. Miyagi sums it up pretty well:
" Remember lesson about balance?" " Lesson not just for karate, but for whole life."

The designers of 4E didn't listen to Mr. Miyagi. As a result of combat balance replacing game balance the game becomes combat. Did older editions of D&D become all about combat (for some players)? I would say yes but the game wasn't balanced around that style of play.

Equality doesn't always balance on the same levels. Using GURPS as an example, lets talk about equality. If the GM starts his or her campaign using 100 point PC's then every player will start the game "equal". This equality has little to do with game balance. One character could be an optimized fighter and other a tech geek with amazing skills. If these characters fought each other the combat wouldn't be balanced at all. Unless a miracle happened the fighter would wipe the floor with the tech geek who was equal to him in points. Overall combat balance isn't addressed by the rules but game balance is.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I've long thought that balance is a crock.

To start with, the veneration of balance as a design principle should be replaced with these two principles:

1) Every player gets to be the star at some point. It's best if they get about equal star time.

2) Every player should always have something interesting and affective to do.

Admittedly, these require GM management to work, not just a good rules set. For example, if character A is strong at combat and weak at stealth and B is the complement, then the GM needs to make sure that there are both stealth and combat based activities in the adventure. It's not hard to do this in a rule book, though. Just tell the GM to design and run his adventures this way.

The down side is that unless you have a game with strong niche protection where the same set of roles is used in every adventure it's hard to make and use published adventures.

To see the downside of balance, I'll take it to the ridiculous extreme. The ultimate in balance is that everyone plays exactly the same character. The downsides, of course, are that you don't get to play the character you want, things are boring with everyone the same, no one gets true spotlight time, you're limited in the types of adventure you can do, and you lose the ability to use interesting mechanics strategies. I don't think any game designer would actually do this, but the more you focus on balance the more you get these problems as well.

The other downside of the veneration of balance is in design time allocation. The more time you spend on making things balanced, the less you have to spend on other aspects of the game, since no one has an infinite amount of time and money to spend on design. For example 4E has a very balanced combat system, but a lot of the other things I demand out of a game, setting, ecology, society, just aren't there.

 

[LostSoul]

Balance has nothing to do with whether something is a game or not... it's a preference in design, pure and simple and has nothing whatsoever to do with determining whether something is a game or not. You seem to be trying to claim it is inherently better for a game to be balanced when in actuality... it's not.

Balance is a good quality in a game. It prevents winning strategies (I think that's the term), where one choice is always the correct one. Without player choice, the game becomes meaningless.

I think Connect 4 has a winning strategy. Once you discover it, then there's no point in playing the game; it's literally going through the motions. I don't think Chess has one (or it hasn't been discovered yet), so you can play the game and see if you can win or lose based on your choices.

However... if your priority for play is different - you don't want to succeed at every "fair" challenge the DM throws at you (let's say up to party level +4), but you want to explore what it's like to be a non-magic using mercenary in a world controlled by powerful wizards, then balance - making wizards only as powerful as mundane folk - is not going to work.

To sum up: Balance is good for gamists and good or bad (depending on the source material) for simulationists.

 

[Badwe]

Exploder: the difference between inter-player balance and balance of the party vs. outer threats is something that the WoW players of the world have cried many millions of pages about. I doubt even 4e could balance a fight between a wizard and a fighter.

It was said, in response to my post, that interesting decisions are possible without game balance because in an RPG you can make any decision possible. I disagree. First, if a player is merely choosing between options specifically enumerated in a rulebook, each of the choices must, to some degree, seem like an option. If one feat or one spell or one class is so unequivocally better than its equivalents, there is no choice. There isn't any choice because the only real choice, weather it is in regards to combat, utility, skill checks, roleplaying, whatever, is weather to be good at it, or weak. To actually suggest that the majority of players will choose to to be weak flies in the face of gaming theory. Other people have already offered examples such as dual wielding where everyone able to does so. This is not interesting or creative.

Furthermore, the example of slogging away at a solo with at-wills on a plain battlefield is just a reskin. slogging away at a high CR, high HD monster with basic attacks because the wizard is out of spells on a plain battlefield is the 3e equivalent and is no different. Don't blame poor encounter design on 4th ed.

Balance, in some form, is so integral to creating meaningful decisions, challenges, tradeoffs, and tactical scenarios, that to imagine wanting to actively discard them is beyond me. Many posters offering systems to eschew balance have highlighted how fantasy novels don't need to be balanced, but the only balance they're really evading is PNP RPG balance. A novel must still have character development, plot progression, twists, drama, etc. in order to be a successful novel. You might as well ask why a benchpress needs the same weight on both sides when a pulley doesn't (hint: it's because they are both accomplishing different tasks).

Anyways, my befuddlement aside, the reality is your best option is to switch to older, less balanced editions of D&D.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Sorry, deleted. I really should never debate.

 

[Imaro]

It was said, in response to my post, that interesting decisions are possible without game balance because in an RPG you can make any decision possible. I disagree. First, if a player is merely choosing between options specifically enumerated in a rulebook, each of the choices must, to some degree, seem like an option. If one feat or one spell or one class is so unequivocally better than its equivalents, there is no choice. There isn't any choice because the only real choice, weather it is in regards to combat, utility, skill checks, roleplaying, whatever, is weather to be good at it, or weak. To actually suggest that the majority of players will choose to to be weak flies in the face of gaming theory. Other people have already offered examples such as dual wielding where everyone able to does so. This is not interesting or creative.

That depends on what you're objective is... One choice might be best to kill a monster, another to capture it, another to snatch the glass orb in it's hand before it shatters... and so on, and yet all of these options don't have to be balanced against each other. You seem really limited in what you feel the objectives in an rpg can be (thus the importance of a good DM/GM). I think there is no "weak" choice in an rpg, unless the DM/GM makes it a weak choice (thus if your DM/GM focuses on combat... non-combat choices then become "weak" choices). You keep thinking in absolutes and it's not that clear cut since the game is wide open in actions, environment and objectives.

Furthermore, the example of slogging away at a solo with at-wills on a plain battlefield is just a reskin. slogging away at a high CR, high HD monster with basic attacks because the wizard is out of spells on a plain battlefield is the 3e equivalent and is no different. Don't blame poor encounter design on 4th ed.

This has nothing to do with 4e, it shows that balance in and of itself does not create meaningful or interesting choices. Nice try on playing the edition war card though.

Balance, in some form, is so integral to creating meaningful decisions, challenges, tradeoffs, and tactical scenarios, that to imagine wanting to actively discard them is beyond me. Many posters offering systems to eschew balance have highlighted how fantasy novels don't need to be balanced, but the only balance they're really evading is PNP RPG balance. A novel must still have character development, plot progression, twists, drama, etc. in order to be a successful novel. You might as well ask why a benchpress needs the same weight on both sides when a pulley doesn't (hint: it's because they are both accomplishing different tasks).

Is life perfectly balanced? Yet everyday people with differing abilities, capabilities, attributes, and knowledge somehow make meaningful decisions, face challenges, etc. Again, you prefer balance but it is not necessary for any of this, and you have, as of yet, not been able to prove this statement as fact in any way.

Well you got one thing right, the whole "different" tasks bits, I think the problem is that you seem to believe everyone wants to play the game for the same reasons, objectives, etc. that you do. That's a pretty limited view in my opinion.

Anyways, my befuddlement aside, the reality is your best option is to switch to older, less balanced editions of D&D.

You don't even have to play D&D, there's a world of rpg's out there with different design principles, objectives, mechanics, etc. In fact I think it does people good to actually see what else is out there and the different ways an rpg can be played.

 

[Imaro]

To sum up: Balance is good for gamists and good or bad (depending on the source material) for simulationists.

I agree, and I'll go a little farther and say Balance is good or bad (depending on the source material) for narrativists as well.

 

[Mallus]

Starting in 3E, and even more so in 4E game balance has been replaced with turn based combat balance.

All that happened was that the designers came to the realization that combat was a significant part of the way most people play D&D, therefore, balance between classes in combat became a primary design goal. Combat is the exceedingly popular lowest-common denominator.

Outside of the debate here on ENWorld, I've never heard a D&D player honestly state that they wanted their character to be able to suck in a fight. And I come from a long tradition of inveterate role-players and accent-using Method actors (I kid... barely).

As a result of combat balance replacing game balance the game becomes combat.

D&D has always been 'just combat' to those players who want 'just combat' out of the game. Nothing has changed (well, except for the spellcaster's tool kit getting smaller...).

Did older editions of D&D become all about combat (for some players)? I would say yes...

And you'd be right!

...but the game wasn't balanced around that style of play.

It was balanced across levels rather than inside them (stronger at the start vs. stronger at the finish). Or at least that was the design goal.

One character could be an optimized fighter and other a tech geek with amazing skills. If these characters fought each other the combat wouldn't be balanced at all. Unless a miracle happened the fighter would wipe the floor with the tech geek who was equal to him in points. Overall combat balance isn't addressed by the rules but game balance is.

This approach doesn't mean the game is 'balanced', it's means creating/maintaining balance between characters is wholly the province of the DM via encounter selection.