Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?

[Jhaelen]

It wasn't balanced. It also wasn't intended to be balanced (in the way that most people think of today). Janx summary is pretty much spot on.

The idea that a class that was starting strong and would be over-shadowed later in their career by a class that started out weak seemed to be one early idea about 'balancing'. From a modern viewpoint that is everything 'except' balanced.
However, back in the days nobody cared about the modern concept of (class) balance.

 

[Garmorn]

Deleted

I not sure what I was thinking when I posted that.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Dausuul]

The game was absolutely supposed to be balanced (and I agree with the earlier poster who said this isn't really the sort of thing you should need a poll for - just read the 1E rulebooks!).

I also don't entirely agree with the claim that it was "a different kind of balance." The core concept was the same - everybody should get a fair share of the spotlight, without the rules intrinsically favoring one set of PC choices (class, race, et cetera) over another. The tools and techniques used to achieve balance have changed, and some ideas about balance which were held then are no longer widely held today, but the goal remains as it was and so does the purpose behind it.

 

[Ariosto]

Yes -- but it is a different game than WotC-D&D. It's like comparing Baseball and Cricket. There are different dynamics in different balances, in a different context of time, informed by an ethos with different priorities.

A fairly simple example: In WotC-D&D, character levels are key to any comparison of "power"; in TSR-D&D, experience point totals play a similar (but not precisely the same) role. Further, there was no expectation that there should be a time "when everyone has around 8,000 XP". That goes back to the fundamentally different framework.

The centrally important balance is between risk and reward prior to application of player skill. That skill consists primarily in assessing and choosing from the many possibilities.

Halflings originally were limited to 4th level, which makes sense in terms of the source material. Hobbits running around outside the Shire on adventures were reckoned uncommon, and Halfling Superheroes able to go toe to toe (if not eye to eye) with Thongor and Conan -- well, that seemed a bit silly.

Nobody was forced to play 'em, but some people did. It was not as if they were especially "weak" -- they just had a limit to how high they could rise. A human magic-user was potentially among the most powerful figures in the game ... but stood a lesser chance of simply surviving as long, and was not so mighty -- or at most was mighty in a different, less frequent way -- in the meantime.

There was no reason a player could not have both -- and, say, a cleric as well -- in his "stable" of characters of various kinds, alignments, levels and locations in the campaign's fields of space and time. Plenty would perish before attaining second level, while after a few years others were likely to have retired at least from the usual sort of expedition, being more concerned with politics and grand strategy. The x.p. returns for high-level characters tended to be paltry except for undertakings versus comparably powerful beings, which could be dangerous indeed if those were played with a modicum of good sense.

 

[Janx]

The game was absolutely supposed to be balanced (and I agree with the earlier poster who said this isn't really the sort of thing you should need a poll for - just read the 1E rulebooks!).

I also don't entirely agree with the claim that it was "a different kind of balance." The core concept was the same - everybody should get a fair share of the spotlight, without the rules intrinsically favoring one set of PC choices (class, race, et cetera) over another. The tools and techniques used to achieve balance have changed, and some ideas about balance which were held then are no longer widely held today, but the goal remains as it was and so does the purpose behind it.

Here is my proof that 1E did not see balance as the same thing as it is considered today:

Open up a 1E PH. Look at the fighter class. Look at the wizard class.
In 6 encounters of varying types, 3 of them combat, the fighter is more useful more of the time.

The wizard gets like 1 spell. That's it. That's the only cool thing he can do that a fighter in 1E can't.

He has 1d4 hit points, he can't wear armor. His THAC0 (or equivalent in 1e) is 20, compared to the fighter's 19. So he can't fight better and he won't live longer.

Neither PC has any skills, because those weren't invented yet. So they are technically the same in that they both have no skills.

It has long ago been observed that 1E wizards start out weak, and are the most powerfull class in the game. Whereas the fighter starts out as strong, but becomes average at high levels.

This is not balanced between classes. This lack of balance defines a type of balance. Therefore, it is a type of balance that 1E is lacking.

 

[bardolph]

Yes, it was intended to be balanced, but the standard has definitely shifted over the years.

In 1e, it was considered "balanced" to have different characters be more useful at different points in their careers. The usefulness of low-level fighters was "balanced" against the omnipotence of magic-users at higher levels. The extra abilities of races like Elves were "balanced" with level caps.

There was also the cosmological significance of balance. Good was balanced against Evil, and Law with Chaos. This was developed to absurd proportions, as "True Neutral" druids were expected to help spread Chaos and Evil whenever the "balance" of the world shifted too much toward Law and Goodness.

 

[bardolph]

Gygax also applied the concept of "balance" to module design. Notice that The Keep on the Borderlands was not called The Caves of Chaos, and that full stats were listed for every guard and citizen in the Keep, just in case the characters decided to take them on instead of exploring the Caves. The scenario was designed as a perfectly balanced stalemate between Law and Chaos, into which the player characters would enter and upset the balance one way or the other.

As a DM, I actually found this kind of design to be really awesome, and probably the most compelling adventures I ever ran were based on The Keep on the Borderlands and The Village of Hommlet, precisely for this reason.

I miss these kinds of scenarios.

 

[FireLance]

Yes, it was intended to be balanced, but the point of reference for balance has shifted.

The primary point of reference for 1E and earlier editions appears to be the ongoing game. Players are expected to have multiple characters, and/or characters are expected to die or retire and be replaced in the course of the game, so even if you are lucky (or unlucky) enoiugh to get a really good (or bad) character now, there is no guarantee that your next character will be the same. The game thus emphasizes equality of opportunity during character creation because there are assumed to be many opportunities to create characters. This paradigm can break down if the players are expected to create a single character and then play it over the course of an extended campaign.

2E's primary point of reference is the campaign. Certain races and classes were more effective at low levels and others were better at high levels, and certain classes were more effective in certain situations and less so in others, but this was expected to even out over the course of an entire campaign spanning many levels and incorporating many different types of challenges. However, this paradigm can break down if the campaign ends after only a few levels, or if the DM does not include challenges that enable all the characters to shine.

3E's primary point of reference is the adventuring day. Characters with daily abilities are expected to manage their resources carefully, and at low levels, when they have fewer uses of their abilities, this means that they will use few or none of them in certain fights. Even at higher levels, when they had access to more uses, it meant that they would have to go through some fights using only lower-level abilities. However, this paradigm can break down if the PCs fight only one or two encounters per day.

4E's primary point of reference is the (usually combat) encounter. Character abilities are designed so that characters will be able to contribute more or less equally to the party's success over the course of an encounter. This does not mean that they deal equal amounts of damage - Leaders buff and heal, Defenders draw attacks and Controllers shape the battlefield and inflict conditions on the enemies. This paradigm doesn't seem to have broken down yet, but it has been criticized for being dull, boring and repetitive.

 

[Ariosto]

The 21st century idea of balance is that each PC in the current game session is able to contribute and add value in a fairly equal fashion.

Taking "fairly equal" a bit more flexibly, it was usually the same a few years ago, in the 20th century, Janx! The key difference was that we considered the matter as players, in deciding which characters would join a given expedition in the first place.

Now, sometimes a higher-level party might take along a notably lower-level character specifically for "seasoning". Equality of contribution is clearly not expected -- but neither is it expected of henchmen, and they get x.p. (albeit at half rate). It can be a pretty quick way to advance a character, provided it survives (which is far from assured, for all the protection the more powerful patrons can provide).

The assumed context of, at the least, "the party" as basically a constant -- usually including all members' survival and success as a normative expectation if not (as plainly recommended in 4e) an entitlement -- radically changes the nature of the game.

A Fighter Lord when fresh might have more than 50 hit points, and a High Priest his peer might be able to "tank up" two such comrades in a day. But suppose the Cleric is otherwise disposed, and Lord Lazy-Not when at half his strength has an opportunity to go on an adventure with a lower-level band? The haul won't be much, but certainly more than he'll get by staying in bed.

High-level spell-casters run into the problem of not having enough hours in a day -- or, eventually, in a week -- to replenish their stocks of spells.

And of course the fellows off on a wilderness adventure that's already a week into the "future" can't teleport back to town in time to join today's expedition into the underworld beneath the ruins of the Cursed Chateau.