Wow, what a doozy I started. There is way too much to touch on and I just enjoyed skimming the ride, but a few points stuck out for me:
Another way of doing this would be to balance out the characters in other ways. Perhaps give the weaker Hobbit Thief the Luck of the Underdog or something else to help him survive the world and still participate. It would still be balanced but they would be different and the flavour would be retained.
This is a terrific idea and exactly what I was getting at. Most of the other posters took it into a place that I wasn't going for (nothing wrong with that). But this really addresses the example I cited: a Tolkienian elf wizard vs. a hobbit rogue--how can they possibly be balanced while still retaining their essential characteristics? Byronic addressed this quite well, for certainly Frodo et al had a Special Something that all the great elf lords and dwarvish warriors and human rangers didn't have, an "X factor" if you will.
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.
Yes, excellent point.
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.
Right. And in a GURPS game a tech geek could have a more crucial role than, say, a scholar in D&D. Let's face it, D&D--perhaps especially 4e--has a very specific flavor. It is "magnificient seven adventuring fantasy." Meaning, it is based on the assumption that the game involves a group of similar-but-different characters going on adventures, fighting monsters, and seeking treasure. I am curious if people have found it adequate for others styles of fantasy. One of my big beefs with the rules as written is that it cannot accomodate the classic "off-the-farm" epic fantasy; there are no zero-level characters, everyone starts out rather heroic. Again, I like this kind of play but it is rather specific. The Dungeons & Dragons game is NOT the Any Kind of Fantasy You Want Game.
This wasn't even really the case in 3e, where you had the OGL which allowed for all types of d20 games. This may be why some say 4e is more "old school" than 3e.
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.
Yes, exactly--and this relates to what Explorer Wizard said in the quote above. 4e is so focused around combat (for better or worse) that the only way to balance classes is to make them equally good at killing things. I'm wondering how they're going to fit the bard into this! (Killing Song? Banshee Wail? Twanging String of Doom?)
What some people seem to forget is that balance is a pure game mechanic creation and as such only exists for the PCs and not for the NPCs. That is to say two PCs of equal level but of different races and classes are equally fun to play and make equal contributions to the game. That's what balance is to me. Why would that be a bad thing?
That's a very good point. But again, it seems to put the cart before the horse, or game balance before diversity of imagination. What I mean by this is that it seems that 4e was designed with the idea that everything must be balanced above and beyond any other consideration. This is enormously restrictive and why, I think, many folks complain that the classes aren't different enough...in other words, there is a kind of homogeneity that has occured.
I used Talislanta as an example of a game that totally eschews balance. You have archetypes that combine the game's dozens, if not hundreds, of races with culturally relevant professions. But the races are extremely varied, from muscle bound ogre-like creatures to wispy fairies to obese nobles to crystalline ice warriors. There is no way to balance all of that, at least in terms of combat. So Talislanta, which values its diversity of imagination above anything else, pulls the cart of game mechanics after it.
I know, I know: different strokes for different folks. It is the ultimate equalizing (ahem,
balancing) tactic used among the children of postmodernism, which includes the majority of RPGers. I am not saying how any one should or should not have fun. But I think you really come up with a different creature when you put imagination before mechanics or mechanics before imagination. Now in a sense D&D doesn't break this cardinal rule in that its core imaginative structure is the dungeoncrawl, this the mechanics are meant to--and quite adequately--serve that. But it just limits non-dungeoncrawl types of fantasy.
I find it absurd that no-one has any penalties to any racial abilities and that no-one gets more than +2. Minotaurs are slightly stronger than halflings and no larger than elves. In fact normal distribution means that a lot of halflings will be stronger than a lot of Minotaurs. The distinction between options has been lost for the sake of "balance." That no-one can actually have a low stat because it would lead to a lack of balance is another issue.
I agree wholeheartedly, or at least the simulationist in me agrees; the gamist says "phaw! if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Attributes don't seem to have much distinction of meaning either. Someone who is extremely learned and a scholar (high Int) becomes a nimble-footed dancer when it comes to ducking sword blades due to it adding to AC. The 4e designers had this notion that weakness wasn't fun, and therefore had to be eliminated. Smearing away everyone's areas of weakness to the same baseline strength is another component of achieving balance which I think has cost something.
Basically, I think the 4e designers came at the game with the dogma that players wouldn't find it fun if their character wasn't exactly as good as everyone else's character in any given circumstances. So in addition to everyone being carefully pegged at the same level in combat (which I don't have much of a problem with - I think the idea of roles contributes quite a lot), you get things like how you can use almost any skill to achieve the same result. Need to sneak out of the town but don't have Stealth? Use Religion to know that the guard will close her eyes and pray to Pelor for two minutes at sunrise.
I actually kind of like this, though, because it allows a certain kind of creative thinking on the part of the players, who won't as easily run up against the wall of "you can't do that in these rules."
(Standard disclaimer: I like and play 4e; I just find myself bumping up some pretty big limitations)
