Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5054267" data-attributes="member: 22779">Ok, this has died down a bit, but, I think I just have to give one last go.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  This is going to be a wall of text, so, you might want to skip to the bottom.Why Hussar Thinks 1e Was Not Designed for Game BalanceThere are two examples I can think of that explain, to me anyway, why I don't think the game was designed with balance in mind.  The first has been talked about here - the distribution of treasure guidelines.  I'll get to the second in a moment.I think that it's fair to say that if a system is designed for balance, then using that system should not give unbalanced results.  Yet, if I use the treasure system in AD&D, there is a very good chance I will get unbalanced results.  Now, it has been mentioned that the DMG is very much aware of this.  Guidelines are given that say that you should not follow the rules slavishly as they will give unbalanced results.  The GM is required to balance the rules in other words.  Also, no one can actually answer my question of "what is reasonable?"  The closest I get is "Well, reasonable for your campaign."  But, that presupposes a fair amount of expertise on my part in runnign a campaign.  How will I know if a given item is too much before I try it in the game.  So, basically, I have to learn through trial and error.How is that evidence of design balance?  Is that not evidence of a system being not designed for balance?Take 3e as an example.  I think we can agree that 3e was designed for balance.  ((I hope we can agree on that anyway))  In 3e, I know within a pretty well defined range, what treasure is appropriate for a given level of character.  There is no trial and error.  The game tells me that if I want to give out treasure X, it is appropriate for level Y character.  I can ignore those guidelines, certainly, but, I know that in doing so, I am now in uncharted territory and it's on my own head to maintain balance in the game.Take a second example.  A basic system that all players must use:  Character generation.System 1 in AD&D is 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange to taste.  Ok, fine.  Now, take two hypothetical groups.  The first one gets average results - a couple of 15's between the characters, nothing below 9, most of the rolls between 10 and 14.  Group B gets a lot luckier.  Each PC has one 18 and one 16 and the rest of the rolls tail off from there.Now, the power disparity between these two groups is pretty significant.  Group A cannot take advantage of various sub-classes (no paladins, probably no monk, ranger or druid) and multi-classing is very difficult.  Group 2 can choose pretty much any class or multi-class and is likely getting xp bonuses along the way for high stats, meaning it advances significantly faster..Now, let's compare two fighters from the two groups.  Fighter A has a 15 strength - no bonuses.  Fighter B has an 18 percentile strength, at least a +3 to damage.  Fighter A has about a 50% chance of killing an average 1 HD monster.  Fighter B kills 100%.  That's a pretty wide divide.In a system designed for balance, how can you get two groups with such a massive disparity of power?  And, how can a system be considered designed for balance when there are no guidelines whatsoever for dealing with this power disparity?  After all a module doesn't say, "For Characters Levels X to Y with ability scores in Z range".  It only refers to levels.---------------To summarize.  IMO, and this is obviously only my opinion, a system cannot be considered designed for balance when using the system gives wildly disparate results.  And, not only do you get wildly disparate results, but the rules acknowledge that you will get very different results but give no real guidelines for dealing with it.  The system basically dumps it all on the GM and tells him to balance the results "for his own campaign".  Are there elements of game balance in 1e?  Of course.  You cannot design a game with no balance at all, that would probably be very difficult and completely unplayable.  But, was 1e "designed for game balance"?  IMO, no, it wasn't.  Beyond including what worked at Gygax and co's tables, game balance was left to the individual tables to determine.</blockquote>

Verification