Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?

[Orius]

I voted other. It was designed for game balance, but a concept of balance different than what is now termed as game balance.

That's why I voted yes. The game was intended to be balanced in the 1e days, but the problem is that the game changed from rules being added and dropped, and from people playing differently. So what was balanced in 1980 in the early days of 1e wasn't balanced in 2000 when 3e was released and 2e had a lot of baggage from legacy rules.

This is something that affects all editions. Over the course of time 1e got changed from UA, the survival guides and OA, 2e got changed from the Complete handbooks, Player's Option, and the settings, and 3e got changed from all the various splats, the 3.5 revision, and even the OGL. In 10 years, we'll likely be talking about how the things that developed during 4e changed those rules too.

The early ideas of balance stemmed from how OD&D treated "balance". For the most part there just wasn't a lot of power to balance in the first place. But it seems apparant that "balance" was to be established by enforcing rarity. If a PC class was deemed powerful it was made slower to advance. In 1E powerful classes were made harder to qualify for.

...

Of course, it's complete bunk, not least because the factors that were supposed to ensure a given level of rarity or discouragement were simply wildly circumvented if not outright ignored. People developed and used all manner of character generation methods that overcame the high qualifying stats or just allowed players to meet them if they wanted to play the class. They houseruled or ignored demihuman level limits.

That's one of the ways 1e was balanced. Rarity does kind of balance things out if you just roll 3d6 in order. Over the long run, there will be the high-powered ranger or paladin every so often, but as others have said, everyone's playing several different characters, so overall it balances out because the one powerful character isn't being played all the time.

The real problem I think existed outside the game, and perhaps revolves around Gary's departure from TSR. As has been noted in this thread, much of the rules were shaped based on how he and his group played the game. He mentioned here once that he didn't use straight 3d6 for character generation in his games, since players were more satified playing a character they wanted to play rather than one the dice forced them to play, so perhaps any 2e that he would have designed had he stayed with TSR would have taken that into account with class balance. But that's not what happened, and 2e took a somewhat conservative approach to the game, consolidating rules without making any big major changes to the stsurcture, perhaps out of fear of alienating players.

Your chances of rolling a vorpal blade or hammer of thunderbolts are miniscule.

WRT this, maybe things were different in 1e, but in 2e, an experienced DM was encourged to place treasure as he saw fit. So if he felt a party needed or deserved a vorpal blade or hammer of thunderbolts, he'd deliberately place it. Random rolling was for doing things on the fly or inspriation. The downside is that a novice DM might give the party stuff that makes them too powerful too quickly, or doesn't give them enough. Then of course there's the cheapass DMs who think more than one +1 sword is too damn strong and that those gps must be constantly siphoned off for balance. The organization of magic items in 3e into power levels and 4e's system of treasure parcels goes a long way towards helping novice DMs give PCs stuff that is suitable for their level, while more experienced DMs should know how to tweak this stuff.

Did the system play in a balance with itself - yes, did the rules lay out what balance was - no, but it was stated in the DMG that this was the DM's job, something the newer rules are slowly squeezing out of the system. A good DM used to be the one that had the awesome game because even if things went wrong for the party and a TPK ensued, it was because of decisions made by the party, not some power hungry control freak. Now the term TPK is synonymous to unfair Nazi Communist baby-killing father rapers.

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.

 

[Ariosto]

He mentioned here once that he didn't use straight 3d6 for character generation ...

Neither did he offer it among the options in the DMG.

The organization of magic items in 3e into power levels and 4e's system of treasure parcels goes a long way towards helping novice DMs give PCs stuff that is suitable for their level ...

... which is great under the predicate assumption that the DM's job is to give PCs stuff in the first place. Different game.

TPKs should be the result of player carelessness, not DM carelessness.

"Gosh, I didn't realize that anyone coming within 1,000 miles of Azathoth must save versus spells at -6 or go permanently mad."

And you may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?'

Wardrobe malfunction? "Where's the Lamp Post?"

 

[DracoSuave]

The current crop of D&D tends to balance the classes with a focus on equality in combat.

Such that for any given level and any pair of classes, they do roughly the same amount of damage within a 6 round combat

Loosely put, nobody sucks at any level during combat compared to another PC. Since most of D&D is combat, that's the balancing point.

In prior editions, having less combat skill meant you had greater skill in other areas for other enounter types. Thus it was justifiable for the Bard to suck during combat, because he could do cool things outside of combat.


Compare this to 1e. A first level wizard is so worthless, that if you were recruiting for a 1st level mission, you'd be better off taking a 1st level fighter.

Later, at 15th level, you'd be better off taking the wizard than the fighter.

While the 1e designers saw this as a long term balance (life is harder at low level for a wizard, in trade for more power at high level), it didn't necessarily make for fair and fun game play on a per session basis.

Sure 1e had balance goals in mind. But they were 1970s idea of balance.

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. If there is a class that a min/maxer would say "only an idiot would pick that class, it sucks" or "I always play this class, its the best" then that class is out of balance.

Why does this form of balance matter?

For a GM, it matters because it makes measuring encounter difficulty a more consistent process. Each PC is balanced, so they are interchangeable, to an extent. This in turn means all you need to know is how many levels there are. Sure, the GM could tweak set up special encounters to challenge or spotlight a class, but on the average, it's all the same.

For a player, balance matters because nobody likes their character concept to suck so badly that they feel like the tagalong sidekick to the heroes. Sure the guy with the uber-class is happy with the imbalance. Deep down, nobody else is.

In 4e, it seems like the focus is combat functionality. Some classes may do better in direct combat, but all the classes have features to make sure they are actively participating in a fun and useful fashion. Thus, the guy playing the "least fighty" class can still feel like he kicked butt, because he actively contributed in a meaningul way.

That's the new balance.

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.

 

[S'mon]

Balance between threat and reward, yes.

Balance between PCs, no. AD&D has lots of positive feedback loops - eg the better you roll, the more attribute bonuses you get, the better class you can play, and the higher your XP bonus. The higher your XP bonus the quicker you advance, the tougher you get, the more XP you earn.

 

[Ariosto]

“Jesus saves!!! The rest of you take full damage.”

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think that Firelance summed up perfectly the focus of balance in the various editions.

I voted 'No' in the poll itself, as I consider the design of AD&D1 being primarily about 'fun' and fidelity to certain sword and sorcery tropes. I don't think that balance in the sense in which the term is used today was really considered at all.

However, I don't think it was detrimental to the game at all. The groups of people I played AD&D with (and OD&D before that) all had a stable of characters, with different adventures in different campaign worlds (or different parts of the same campaign world). Some people had better attributes than others, but by and large the main focus of the ability scores was as a role-play hook rather than anything else!

The xp tables were a bit screwy, because although wizards required more xps than anyone else to reach 2nd level, and also again at the upper levels, round about the 6th/7th/8th level region they needed less than the fighters!

I'm not convinced by the argument that new DMs benefit from more hand-holding or systems to make it easier for them to run games well since, well, being a DM isn't exactly rocket science! Tens of thousands of people were running fun games of D&D back in the 70's and early 80's with what little support and advice was available back then.

Cheers

 

[Umbran]

When the DMG talks of game balance, it doesn't mean anything at all like the term 'game balance' is used today. The idea of parity between the classes or even characters wasn't even a consideration.

I disagree that outright parity between the classes is really what balance means these days - the means of attaining balance, and balance itself, are not synonymous.

4e makes strong use of parity to provide balance. 3e, and other games, also are designed for balance, but make less use of that particular tool.

 

[Stoat]

It looks to me like 1E gave at least some consideration to parity between the classes. The cleric trades away the ability to use higher-damage bladed weapons in exchange for spell casting. The wizard gains his spells at the cost of good armor, hit points and attack rolls.

Class parity is nowhere near as tight as in later editions, but I think its there in spirit at least.

 

[Janx]

It looks to me like 1E gave at least some consideration to parity between the classes. The cleric trades away the ability to use higher-damage bladed weapons in exchange for spell casting. The wizard gains his spells at the cost of good armor, hit points and attack rolls.

Class parity is nowhere near as tight as in later editions, but I think its there in spirit at least.

I'll buy that as an attempt in 1e to have balance between characters

 

[Bullgrit]

Through the years, I've seen comments saying that AD&D1 didn't bother with balance -- making the stand that balance designed into a game system (specifically the recent D&D editions) was unnecessary and bad.

Because I see the balancing mechanisms all over the place in AD&D1, and I read the advice for balance in the DMG and Dragon magazine, I assumed that those saying AD&D1 didn't bother with balance must be just a vocal minority. "Surely there aren't many people who think this," I figured.

But look at the poll results. Wow. More people think AD&D1 was not designed for game balance. Really? This surprises me. I mean, to me, the intention for game balance are obvious and throughout the rules. This is like seeing a poll say that more people think the sky is not blue.

Bullgrit