Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?

[Ariosto]

Magic Missile had almost no valid uses. 1d4+1 damage just wasn't enough to justify a spell slot.

Potting another magic-user isn't valid? The spell out-ranges sleep, although the latter's area of effect almost -- measuring range from its center -- makes up the difference (changes from OD&D, to be sure). An m-u of 5th level or higher is (as I interpret it) immune to the soporific spell.

Is a nearly guaranteed 4-10 or 6-15 damage worth a slot when one has 2 or 4 slots available?

 

[pawsplay]

It would then follow that at AC 11, a fighter would need an 11 or higher to hit.

But it doesn't work out that way. And once you take levels and non-fighter classes into account, the formula breaks down completely.

I don't understanding your logic. Liking the number 10 doesn't have any bearing on what happens after that. I'll bet shoe sizes really bother you...

 

[Ariosto]

The messing up of armor classes (e.g., making them not really armor classes any more) by adding overlap and shoving studded leather and ring mail into the middle ... was not pretty. Really, it was pretty ugly. When the PHB came out and revealed what had been done, there were a few "AC 9 forever" bitter-enders. The claim (in the DMG) that counting down from 10 was done for backward compatibility still makes some sense, despite all that, though. I don't remember anyone getting all worked up over the ACs in the MM -- which was in so many ways really an OD&D work.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Wow. RCFG is a lot of material. Looks like I'll be reading for quite a while!

My not-so-secret agenda is achieved! Join me on the Dark Side!

 

[Ariosto]

Most everything to do with m-us boils down to a "balance of terror" -- a sword-'n'-sorcery version of Mutual Assured Destruction. If there are not a lot more quickly dead than just among the 'quick', then the balance is probably off. Low-level magic-users should die like flies, and wizards should think twice and move once to avoid a fate worse than death.

 

[Hussar]

Luckily, Gary Gygax had games going back at least to H.G. Wells upon which D&D rules were based. Because there was no desire to slaughter "sacred cows" that worked, in many cases Gygax was using game principles that had been tested for decades or longer. Hence the way AC works prior to 3e.

Also, Hussar, while it is true that Gygax & co. had intentions as to how the game would be played, their intentions were far less restrictive than those of the 4e designers, and their game far less restrictive than that of the 4e design. Tight "balance" of the 4e type can only occur by restricting emergent choices that would otherwise throw that "balance" off.



RC

So, RC, when you repeatedly argue that PC's should never gain all the treasure in an adventure, that random encounters should always be used to limit resting time, that magic should be limited and difficult to find, that creating new magic items should be virtually impossible (or at least as difficult as the DM wants to make it), that worlds should be humanocentric and pulp fantasy - you're not arguing that 1e limits play choices?

I can't speak to 4e, never played it and don't really care. Even if 4e is more restrictive, that doesn't make 1e open and free. The rules can be extremely restrictive - ask anyone who's ever played a druid or a monk or a paladin or any demi-human that didn't choose an unlimited level limit.

In other words, for your version of emergent balance to exist, all the initial elements must be very similar. If they aren't then a particular emergent property won't occur. If you change DMing styles then you will not achieve balance.

4e, from what I can see, balances without the intervention of the DM. The DM can unbalance the system (probably in a similar way to 3e - by reinterpreting rules without understanding why those rules existed in the first place) but, if the DM runs the rules as written, the game will be balanced.

3e had issues, particularly at higher levels, but, for the most part allowed you to run a very large number of different campaigns with vastly different dming styles, all without becoming a train wreck. The plethora of variant d20 systems shows how rubust d20 was for running all sorts of different D&D style campaigns.

I don't think the same can be said of AD&D. It contained far too many presumptions on how your world would look. Departing from those assumptions resulted in massive problems as evidenced by the tome sized binders of house rules out there.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So, RC, when you repeatedly argue that PC's should never gain all the treasure in an adventure, that random encounters should always be used to limit resting time, that magic should be limited and difficult to find, that creating new magic items should be virtually impossible (or at least as difficult as the DM wants to make it), that worlds should be humanocentric and pulp fantasy - you're not arguing that 1e limits play choices?

Please read what you are responding to.

All games have built in limitations. The more the designer attempts to build in balance, the more limitations must be built in. Hence, perforce, the more “balanced” a game is, the fewer options it has. The goal of all design is to create the “right balance” between these limitations and playability. The designers of 1e chose to go with fewer limitations, and less inherent “balance”; the designers of 4e chose to go with more limitations and less inherent “imbalance”.

That’s the way it goes. There is no other way it can go. One trades off for the other.

 

[Gimby]

Please read what you are responding to.

All games have built in limitations. The more the designer attempts to build in balance, the more limitations must be built in. Hence, perforce, the more “balanced” a game is, the fewer options it has. The goal of all design is to create the “right balance” between these limitations and playability. The designers of 1e chose to go with fewer limitations, and less inherent “balance”; the designers of 4e chose to go with more limitations and less inherent “imbalance”.

That’s the way it goes. There is no other way it can go. One trades off for the other.

I'd argue the opposite, really.

Take 1e Wizards, as a simple example. The balance in them is that they are weak at low levels and strong at high levels, so the balance emerges as its rare for a Wizard to reach high levels.

If you are starting your game with characters at 8th level, then this balance point is moot. The Wizard is now just stronger than other choices without its main "balance" feature.

Or the Paladin, balanced by scarcity. If you allow point/array stat generation, then a player can always choose to be one (or never choose to be one, if insufficient stats are given).

Or the Thief, whose mediocre combat ability is balance by excelling at stealth, trapfinding and lockpicking where your campaign for whatever reasons features none (or little) of the above.

And so on.

I recognise that this is a simplification, but if you want the balance aspects to come into play with greatest force then you must start characters at first level, must use random stat generation, must provide challenges tailored to the party rather than ones determined by the gameworld and so on. You may ignore all these for a deliberately unbalanced game, but thats diverging from what appears to be the design assumptions.

If your character classes are balanced against each other at all points in time given identical levels, then this allows you to diverge from these constraints. Use any stat generation method you like. Start at whatever level you like. Present whatever challenges you like. Use any mix of character classes you like. Doesn't matter, characters will still be balanced against each other and the challenge generation guidelines will probably still give reliable results.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't think the same can be said of AD&D. It contained far too many presumptions on how your world would look. Departing from those assumptions resulted in massive problems as evidenced by the tome sized binders of house rules out there.

Just one tome? As compared with how many for 3e?

Arcana Evolved
Book of Vile Darkness
Cityscape
Complete Adventurer
Complete Arcane
Complete Warrior
Dungeon Masters Guide II
Dungeonscape
Iron Heroes
Players Handbook II
Savage Species
Unearthed Arcana
... Etc. ...

IIRC, one ENworld poster wrote of owning 80 3e books.

I have seen at first hand players using hand trucks to leverage and wheel their stacks of books to the tables at the FLGS.

 

[Ariosto]

If you are starting your game with characters at 8th level, then this balance point is moot.

No doubt.

And if you start the white side in chess without half its pawns, and the black side with a pawn already promoted to a second queen ...

I'll bet that, if you devote the same effort to it, you can come up with a similarly unbalanced variant for any other game.