D&D 5E What does balance mean to you?

[Tony Vargas]

Why can't a grappler use a bow?

Because arrows don't have thumbs?

 

[Ilbranteloth]

The resting thread combined with my own readings of other systems and playing 5e have brought this question to my mind. Often times we discuss balance, between classes, of an encounter, in a party, or in the abstract, but it seems that the definition wildly varies between people. When we make a statement like "GWM is an unbalanced feat" the nature of the imbalance varies between people, so much so that the places where GWM is imbalanced for some is not even a consideration for others.
For me, something like GWM doesn't even make me bat an eye. However, that is only in my specific view point as a DM who primarily challenges players by putting them in to danger of dying. It's reasonable or even likely that were I champion Sword and Board fighter with a GWM barbarian in my party I would feel like he was quite imbalanced!
On the other hand, when people talk about various healing exploits or how to achieve very high ACs (or even finding +x armors) I declare it imbalanced, for a host of reasons. But others may not even consider it an issue worth mentioning.

So to further my understanding of this game and perhaps help others see different aspects of this wonderful game we all presumably love, I have some questions.

I'm going to risk answering this without reading the rest of the thread yet...I think it's a great question though (and I'll start with my snarky response to the title - not falling over. Oh, you meant game balance!).

1- What does balance mean to you?

2 - When you balance an encounter, what is your desired outcome for that encounter? Do you balance combat on the encounter level, the adventuring day level, or the campaign level?

I have no desired or expected outcome. Encounters are the input to the computer of the PCs. So encounters aren't balanced in the sense you are asking. Encounters are developed based on the world around them. For example, if you're playing a WWII campaign, and your 1st-level infantry characters just landed at Normandy, and you've decided you're going to take it upon yourselves to sneak across Europe to confront and kill Hitler in his bunker, you'll find that the encounters along the way may not be very "balanced."

3 - When you look at your players/other players what things make you feel like something is not balanced?

It's more a question as to whether something makes sense or not for me. Not so much "balance" per se. For example, I like the death save mechanic. I like the idea that not everybody is dead as soon as they drop, which is actually pretty realistic as well, if there's a chance for an instant kill. The default mechanic gives you a roughly 60% chance of surviving something that drops you to 0 hp without intervention. If the target number is 13 instead of 10, then you only have about a 35% chance of surviving. That sounds better, although we might make it a bit tougher.

Also, we've been looking at recovery. Recovering from 0 hit points, even if you received healing magic (with some exceptions), you were essentially incapacitated for a week in AD&D.

Why do we care? Because we see players who don't take dropping to 0 hit points seriously. There are threads noting that it's more beneficial to wait until somebody drops to 0 before casting healing magic, that they'll allow somebody to be "killed" and keep attacking because they know they can stabilize and heal them, and that they'll have at least one or two rounds before they have to worry about it, or those that complain when the DM has monsters stab a PC that's at 0 hp.

The goal is to make dropping to 0 hp very, very bad, something that requires immediate assistance, and very well may spark a retreat, especially after the second one drops.

4 - If you claim that you do not worry about balance in your encounters, what are your overall desired outcomes from combats?

I don't have desired outcomes for combats, because I don't have "combat encounters." Sure, there may be some situations where a combat is essentially unavoidable. Ambushes, and an orc attack on a village. But for the most part, encounters are just that - an encounter. For example, if you are exploring an ancient tomb, and come across some undead guardians, do you have to fight? Why can't you run away? One specific dungeon I have used multiple times is an old tomb that has been partially plundered. The first section has a few traps that still sort of work, and some that misfire or are just broken. In addition, it has become the lair for several animals. Almost all of these can be avoided with good adventuring skills and paying attention to the clues of prior victims. The end of that section is the beginning of a portion that has undead guardians.

It's clear that the tomb has been plundered before - do you continue?

The second section has also been plundered, but remains behind a closed door and is not damaged by the elements and animals. But again, the most dangerous traps and guardians have clearly been destroyed by others. It is obvious that it killed very skilled adventurers before.

The final portion is a secret section that has never been discovered. It's tough to find, and many times the players don't. They take what little treasure there is to find, and there's not much. In theory this dungeon is designed for "1st-3rd level characters." But if they do find the undisturbed tomb, with nested shrines a la Tutankhamen, covered in beaten gold, with only enough space to squeeze in to get to the door of the next smaller one, with virtually no escape, and you find the other end of a trap that was damaged due to the ravages of time (and clearly points to whatever is in that sarcophagus as being the real thing that killed all those bodies in the tomb), if you do get to that point, and you decide that you're going to open the sarcophagus anyway. Well, then I don't have a lot of sympathy for the next victims of the CR 15+ Mummy Lord within.

It's not fair! It's unbalanced! I ask, "what makes you think that after thousands of years, with all of these powerful and skilled adventurers that came before you and failed, that a lowly group of 1st to 3rd level adventurers would not share the same fate?"

I often use it early in campaigns with new groups to reset expectations. This isn't a game where I'm creating encounters tailored for you and your level of ability. It's a living, breathing world, and if you poke a dragon, you'll probably die. If you attack what appears to be a group of 6 orcs in the woods, only to find that a couple of Hill Giants staked them into the ground as bait, perhaps you'll think about where you are and pay more attention to your surroundings.

Low level characters need to stick close to home. Within the range of extended patrols that keep the worst of the dangers away from the village, town, or city.

My monsters are more powerful than describe in the MM. Intelligent creatures are intelligent, and warlike races like orcs are probably much better battle tacticians than a group of low-level adventurers.

In my mind, the primary goal of adventuring is survival. The lure is the treasure and the glory. The reality is that it's dangerous, uncomfortable, you'll often be sore and achy, cranky from lack of sleep, hungry, and wanting nothing but a good ale and a good bed, and that bed probably doesn't even need a companion right now.

You get through it by working together, by looking out for each other's backs, and building a friendship that only those that survived it can understand. And you might come back wealthier than anybody you personally know.

But I feel I've done my job well if the players think first and fight second.

5 - If something seems imbalanced to you, how do you go about fixing it?

Change it. This is a group decision, and it can continue to be tweaked as time goes on. The goal of the table is considered, not just the DM. The DM is more the tie-breaker than anything. Having said that, 90%+ of the changes are initiated by me, and it's mostly to bring the rules in line with what we're doing, so it often doesn't have a major impact on how things are done.

In my view, the game is one where the rules support the actions and fiction you want to make. If they aren't doing that, fix it, don't change the fiction. As opposed to learning the rules of the game, and playing according to the rules. See my example on death saves above.

6 - In video games or card games something is considered balanced if it has an overall 50% win rate against the field. A character in a fighting game would be imbalanced if it consistently won more than half its matches. Or a deck in Magic would be OP if it was more than 50% to beat the field. In dungeons and dragons that sounds absurd. My parties are probably around 100% win rate. Do either of these numbers make sense to you? Would you play in a game where the players "won" half the time? What does that mean to you?

Well, I don't have a field to test it against. But this also requires you to have a ruleset where there's a definition of winning. As I stated, my goal for the rules is to support, to help adjudicate. For something like my tomb, there is little expectation. If you're greedy and continue to push ahead simply because you can, you'll almost certainly not survive. My players quickly learn that they ought to have a goal, a reason for being there. Once they achieve that, they get out. It's not like a video game where you're trying to "clear the level."

On the other hand, their goal might very well be to go in and plunder that as yet undiscovered tomb and treasure chamber. Over the years I've seen several approaches. Hiding it, and returning at higher level is one of them. But going to town and hiring twenty people (knowing that they'll be able to cover costs when they remove the treasures), is another one. It's partially about the players knowing their limitations.

So I have players with a near 0% win rate, and go through a lot of characters because they always like to push that little bit further, to those that are 100%. Most of the time, it's a near 100% win rate, but that's because they play smart, and figure out alternative approaches to the challenges. And they learn when not to take up a challenge. At least for now.

My answers in order:
1 - Balance to me means that no option reduces the overall fun at the table. If every player enjoys playing their character and had fun, things were balanced.

2 - When I play in a game where I try to balance encounters, I do it on an adventuring day level and my goal is to leave the players feeling spent and worried near the end of the day up until the last turn of combat that their character could have died. If they end they day saying "Thank god, I had no spells left and one hit die. We nearly all died" then I have done my job.

Not my job. The players are in full control of the character's actions, so I can't presume to know what they will be doing for the day. I can say that combat in general is dangerous at all levels. My campaigns generally stay below 10th level (even characters that run 5+ years), and overcoming challenges is a combination of character skill and levels, combined primarily with smart decisions. There is always some luck involved - in life, and anything that is decided by dice.

3 - If I see my players not engaging with a combat or situation that I expected them to want to be in then I suspect something might be out of wack. This could be something like not really caring about a combat because they feel like the other characters can handle it without them, or tuning out in social scenes because they feel like they have nothing to add.

I wouldn't consider this a balance thing. This is more just understanding your players and providing interesting encounters in general.

4 - When I don't worry about balance my goal is to have the players fear the world and be cautious. In a hexcrawling game that I have been playing for some months now they fear combats. I would estimate numbers wise only about 1 in 10 is just too hard and a certain TPK, and all of those have in world mechanisms and hints to let the party to flee. But they now take precautions while camping, they discuss fleeing and trying to avoid encounters (They get more XP for treasure and exploration which helps) and when they think they will get in combat they use planning to try and mitigate risks. I usually just try to kill them, and despite no-one dying yet they fear things in the world.

I think this makes sense. I don't tie leveling to combat, treasure or encounters. We (the player and I) when it seems appropriate to level up. It's a long process. I do have XP tables to relate to the 5e design process, using their design as written with my table means it will take about a year of playing to get to 5th level. It slows down after that, maybe 7th level after two years.

In my mind, every combat should be one in which the players fear. No matter how good you are, or how weak an enemy might look, it's just too unpredictable. That doesn't mean they don't engage in combat - it's D&D, there's a lot of combat - but it should always be a concern.

5 - If something seems imbalanced and I am the DM, I will typically try and bring the other players/characters up to the level of the imbalance. I am loathe to ever take anything away. If something is imbalance because of my homebrew then I will work with the player to reach something that captures the same feel, but is mechanically better.

If we decide that something is too powerful, an actual imbalance, then it's usually grandfathered in - player's choice. So if we change something, they can continue to use it if they want. Most of the time they go with the change, but if it's integral into the nature of the character, then we're OK with that.

But then, we have "imbalances" across characters anyway. Sorcery, for example, is different in my campaign. And while it's cool, and flexible, it isn't nearly as powerful as a wizard, especially as you get to higher levels. But that's the point. A sorcerer in my campaign is somebody who has learned to shape magic on their own (and only use somatic components). They shape it on the fly. Wizards, on the other hand, develop spells, with complex formulas with cryptic incantations and rare material components, and they must spend time each day preparing those spells, working the magic within the formulas into their brain to hold a portion of the magic ready to cast that spell. They have a greater control over magic as a result, and can make it do things a sorcerer can't. But it's also a relatively all-consuming part of a wizard's life. And very few can reach great heights at it.

in part because we also have level limits and spell level limits based on your ability score. These are more restrictive than AD&D's were, and humans, without magical assistance, can't get a high enough Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma to cast 8th or 9th level spells. And without magical assistance, the highest level a human can reach is 13th. Longer-lived races can reach 17th, and potentially use up to 9th level spells. And yes, this is a bit of a reversal from AD&D. But 2 of every 3 characters that a player has (and they always have at least 3) are human.

To put it a different way, as the DM I can work around pretty much any imbalance. The game is tough enough that the PCs need to work together, and there are things that some can do that others can't (a lot of skills in my campaign require proficiency to use at all). So I don't spotlight, I don't design around the characters (since they are changing frequently), although individual plots are built around their characters, but it's really up to the players to make it work. Lower level characters advance faster than higher level characters, so they tend to catch up.

6 - I think you could play a game with a 50% winrate, which I define as the outcome of any encounter going in the favor of the players, but it would need to be a game where all fights are not to the death. A game which codifies retreat and surrender and presents it as a reasonable option in the mechanics and world could be interesting. The other half of this however is how you make the party lose 50% of the time without contrived reasoning, no suggestions there. I say my party has a 100% winrate, because over a long enough timeframe all my adventuring parties have succeeded in their goals. They have had setbacks and character deaths along the way, but never has a party fundamentally failed in their goals forever.

A "win" in our campaign is often simple survival. Could be survival from the elements, or survival in a combat, or getting some treasure and getting out. But they have lots of goals, and lots of plots to follow, and more often than not the result is ultimately favorable in its outcome. I agree, by their very nature, if the world is consistent (which I think is far more important than balance), then the players will find ways to consistently "win" if that's what you want to call it.

Really, if I were to define how I approach balance, the answer is, "I don't - I strive for consistency."

 

[tuxedoraptor]

Balance means- in my honest opinion- Using the backbone radiance RPG developed as your core system and building carefully off of it. It has to be the best balanced system ever made, no one is overpowered and no one is underpowered. No one has more health than another. All it really needs is more stuff. I wish it had more flavorful descriptions and more monsters but oh well. Its pretty similar to 4e and I would shed tears of joy if those two were combined. Radiance is literally the closest to perfection any D20 system can achieve. There is no way to min max or break the rules. The closest thing I can think of is the priest power benediction, but it should have the priest only clause attached. I do remember that early in the playtest of the samurai, you could multiclass barbarian to get dual greatswords at level five but that was fixed.