Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?

[Ariosto]

Love how "current" and "today" and "21st century" apply only to partisans of WotC-D&D. After all, any other preference is just nostalgia, eh?

You're saying that because our current concepts of "balanced deit" are different ... some people might answer differently?

You're on the wrong track. To a large degree, changing concepts of a balanced diet are (#1) based on better information as to how to achieve the same goals -- objectives stated and measured objectively in scientific research. To some extent, they're (#2) based on changing priorities. To some extent, they're (#3) just fads and fallacies.

The issue of different views of "balance" in D&D is not anything like (#1). It is not at all a matter of everyone being on the same page. People who love 1e and loath 4e have very different ends in mind, calling for different means, than people who love 4e and loath 1e.

The present situation may be "progress" from one of those perspectives, but it is hardly incumbent on anyone else to make that view privileged.

It's like saying your Diplomacy game is more this or better that since you started playing Descent instead. What syllable of "different games" is so hard to understand?

 

[BryonD]

Certainly yes.

Though the details of what constituted balance are rather different than those commonly presumed now. And also the window of "close enough" was notably wider (though no less frequently missed)

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I think EGG set out with balance in mind but went off of the rails with Unearthed Arcana.

Given the level-limits for PCs and the progression of the classes that are right there in the PHB, I can't agree with this. Balance issues were, if anything, secondary.

 

[Ariosto]

Lots of folks here talk about how the definition of balance has changed. I think that may be barking up the wrong tree. I think the operative thing is how our understanding of balance has changed.

I know you are barking up the wrong tree as far as I and my friends are concerned. We simply do not want what 4e delivers, or what 3e delivers.

This comes off as if the preference of some people for Baseball somehow means that those who prefer Cricket don't have a different goal for their game -- they just lack understanding of means relative to Baseball fans.

You can reduce both to vague (and often patronizing and invidious) statements about bats and balls, "that nobody ends up twiddling their thumbs wondering why they bothered to come", and so on -- therefore it follows that they are both attempts to do just the same thing, and Baseball is self-evidently superior at doing it.

And so, of course, Baseball fans are in the better position to say what Cricket fans really want.

 

[Thunderfoot]

<SNIPPY>
That's another significant change, sort of related to the point I made on magic items above. The game wasn't balanced for just the dice, but with the idea that the DM would be making fair and impartial decisions (originally the DM was called the referee after all). Some people complain that the newer rules particularly 3e and 4e empower the players while stripping power from the DM, but I think some of those design decisions reflect that fact that not all DMs know what they're doing as soon as they pick up a DMG. There's a lot about DMing that requires experience, and I think the newer rules are like they are to make things easier for a novice DM, and to ensure that he doesn't destroy the party outright because he underestimated the power of a spell, monster, or trap. TPKs should be the result of player carelessness, not DM carelessness.

I totally concur! It seems to me however, that a lot is expected of a new DM more by the PCs than the rules - we used to give (and I still do) new DMs a grace period for learning from their mistakes, I have, however seen groups that were much less forgiving - so I guess there are two sides to that coin.

 

[frankthedm]

You come off as if the preference of some people for Baseball somehow means that those who prefer Cricket don't have a different goal for their game -- they just lack understanding of means relative to Baseball fans.

You can reduce both to vague (and often patronizing and invidious) statements about bats and balls, "that nobody ends up twiddling their thumbs wondering why they bothered to come", and so on -- therefore it follows that they are both attempts to do just the same thing, and Baseball is self-evidently superior at doing it.

its more comparing Massmaketed Baseball today with Baseball Decades passed. We see the lowering of the pitchers mound and the shrinking of the strike zone and know that it being done so juiced up batters can swing for the fences to drive the masses into the stadium even at the cost of the game.

 

[Bullgrit]

People who love 1e and loath 4e have very different ends in mind, calling for different means, than people who love 4e and loath 1e.

We simply do not want what 4e delivers, or what 3e delivers.

You seem to be trying pretty hard to make this an edition war. This discussion is about AD&D1 and balance -- not about what any other edition has.

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

I know you are barking up the wrong tree as far as I and my friends are concerned. We simply do not want what 4e delivers, or what 3e delivers.

I'll bet you I'm not barking up the wrong tree, because we have not yet noted something terribly important:

There is more to a game than how much balance it provides.

Intrinsic balance is merely one thing one might look for in a game. It may not be your top priority. That is fine and dandy. You pick your game based on your own desires.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

More accurately, I think that the designers of 4e realized that instead of balancing combat -with- non-combat between classes, like most games have done before, they decided to give characters the best of both worlds by balancing combat between classes, and non-combat between classes, and abandoning the concept that a character who has good utility outside combat must be balanced by having bad utility inside combat... or that a good combattant must be good at that, and less capable outside combat.

Instead, they found it's easier to just balance combat between the classes, and non-combat, and lo and behold, it works better for a lot less work.

And the concept of archetypes was completely abandoned along the way.

 

[Ariosto]

You seem to be trying pretty hard to make this an edition war.

That's just Bullgrit. I have observed that different people just happen to prefer different games, and championed the view that it is quite sensible and unobjectionable that there should be "different strokes for different blokes". Who has been offering analogies with technological progress, asserting that the difference in games is a matter not of different tastes but of New and Improved versus Old and Obsolete?

Not Yours Truly.