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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 4658383" data-attributes="member: 22779">Imaro - I don't know about anyone else, but the reason I'm talking about balance as a guiding principle of game design is because the OP's questions were pretty much answered on the first page.&nbsp; How do you get rid of balance?&nbsp; That's bloody easy.&nbsp; Heck, I've answered it myself a couple of times as well - different point buys, variant rules, change the xp needs, add levels, add templates - and I'm sure there are many, many more.More interesting to me at least, is the idea of why you would want to do this as a baseline in a game.&nbsp; As has been mentioned upthread, it is much, much easier to imbalance a balanced game than go the other way.&nbsp; Thirty years of RPG design pretty much shows that balance is a holy grail in most games.&nbsp; That, while you may have imbalance between the characters overall, by and large, every character is viable in play.&nbsp; If you go too far in imbalance, you wind up with BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner.Sure, I can see that there are a number of ways balance can be achieved.&nbsp; You can do it at the front end with character generation and pretty much hard wire it into the classes, or you can do it on the back end and have the DM create scenarios that speak to the imbalances.&nbsp;&nbsp; Both approaches work.&nbsp; I do agree with you on that.I just think that the second approach is very lazy game design.True there is variablity.&nbsp; And that's where V&amp;V fails by and large.&nbsp; Some random generations were just SO much better than others that it wasn't Superman adventuring with Batman, it was Superman adventuring with Jimmy Olsen.Yup.&nbsp; There was traps there.&nbsp; And they took all of what?&nbsp; 30 seconds to disarm?&nbsp; The thief rolls his find/remove traps and away they go.&nbsp; A far cry from the idea that the game was focused on those things.&nbsp; Really?&nbsp; You really have players regularly regailing each other of tales of how they walked down a hallway?&nbsp; That's one view.&nbsp; My view is that you wind up with either two results - first, everyone cheats and their characters have no low scores and everything is above 10 at the very least and at least one 18.&nbsp; Second, you wind up with one character that is just so far ahead of everyone else that you again wind up with the guy completely overshadowing the other guy.Forex, one fighter (1e or 2e) has percentile strength and the other has a 15 strength.&nbsp; There's just no comparison.&nbsp; The second fighter is averaging well less than half as much damage than the other.&nbsp; A few levels of that and there's more than a few players falling on their own swords.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 4658383, member: 22779"] Imaro - I don't know about anyone else, but the reason I'm talking about balance as a guiding principle of game design is because the OP's questions were pretty much answered on the first page. How do you get rid of balance? That's bloody easy. Heck, I've answered it myself a couple of times as well - different point buys, variant rules, change the xp needs, add levels, add templates - and I'm sure there are many, many more. More interesting to me at least, is the idea of why you would want to do this as a baseline in a game. As has been mentioned upthread, it is much, much easier to imbalance a balanced game than go the other way. Thirty years of RPG design pretty much shows that balance is a holy grail in most games. That, while you may have imbalance between the characters overall, by and large, every character is viable in play. If you go too far in imbalance, you wind up with BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner. Sure, I can see that there are a number of ways balance can be achieved. You can do it at the front end with character generation and pretty much hard wire it into the classes, or you can do it on the back end and have the DM create scenarios that speak to the imbalances. Both approaches work. I do agree with you on that. I just think that the second approach is very lazy game design. True there is variablity. And that's where V&V fails by and large. Some random generations were just SO much better than others that it wasn't Superman adventuring with Batman, it was Superman adventuring with Jimmy Olsen. Yup. There was traps there. And they took all of what? 30 seconds to disarm? The thief rolls his find/remove traps and away they go. A far cry from the idea that the game was focused on those things. Really? You really have players regularly regailing each other of tales of how they walked down a hallway? That's one view. My view is that you wind up with either two results - first, everyone cheats and their characters have no low scores and everything is above 10 at the very least and at least one 18. Second, you wind up with one character that is just so far ahead of everyone else that you again wind up with the guy completely overshadowing the other guy. Forex, one fighter (1e or 2e) has percentile strength and the other has a 15 strength. There's just no comparison. The second fighter is averaging well less than half as much damage than the other. A few levels of that and there's more than a few players falling on their own swords. [/QUOTE]

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