WhosAChaoticGoodBoy
Explorer
Great post, lots of awesome thoughts.
1. What does balance mean to you?
— I agree that ‘balance’ is imprecise a term. I get the sense it’s a non-starter with respect to actually determining good vs. bad practices in games. The approach I’ve taken in my campaign is ‘balance’ only matters insofar as players don’t outshine each other. In a contrived example, if I’m a really really good rogue, and my battle buddy is a really really good barbarian, that only creates opportunity if we play to our strengths. Some of the trouble this approach creates is mitigated by the fact the players I’m DM’ing for metagamed to the extent that they tried to find builds that would compliment one another. ‘Metagamed’ might not be the most precise term, but I believe good metagaming exists and I’d rather let the players design a sound party composition than have me try to continually build circumstances where two or more players can comfortably fill the same niche.
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 mostly hope that each combat scenario moves the story forward in some way, regardless if they’re able to defeat the opposing force. My thinking is akin to how fights work in a kung fu movie or how the songs work in a musical; the protagonists don’t always win but regardless the drama grows in interesting directions.
More to the spirit of the question, I generally attempt to balance encounters for the session, i.e, the span of time the players are expected to be at the table. Our group tends to have 2-3 combat scenarios per session with roleplay opportunities in between, so I try to have two easier fights and one harder fight prepared.
The exact parameters of these fights change depending how the players behave. For instance, a fight against a group of monstrosities might turn into a fight against a group of bandits if the players decide to go into a city rather than into a forest. But I try to keep the same narrative velocity of combat difficulty, that way, the session itself has a climax and we go home on a high note.
3. When you look at your players/other players what things make you feel like something is not balanced?
— Similar to other responses, I consider the game imbalanced if a player isn’t able to perform the (combat/roleplay) goals they designed their character for. DM-player communication should ideally mitigate any instances where a player designed a character who’s outright not useful to the campaign.
I think there might be something to the idea that imbalance can manifest as one character being more effective? feature-rich? than others, but in my (limited) experience, that hasn’t caused friction in a circumstance where all the players have distinct design goals.
4. If you claim that you do not worry about balance in your encounters, what are your overall desired outcomes from combats?
— Overall, I want the outcomes of encounters to move the story forward. Said another way, it’s way more important for me to know the players are resolving conflicts that are relevant to their (character’s) interests.
Maximizing whether or not the story moves forward might come down to whether or not the players feel like they can choose meaningful conflicts to engage in, so I might say ’balance’ is a distraction from whether or not the DM is leading the players to circumstances they’re invested in playing in.
5. If something seems imbalanced to you, how do you go about fixing it?
— In an instance where a player doesn’t feel like he has the opportunity to fulfill his character’s role, I’d generally want to know whether it’s a specific circumstance or a ‘mechanical’ issue that’s causing player to fall short of his expectations. Since ‘imbalanced’ can encompass a lot of things, I feel answering this question more precisely requires more context.
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?
— In the same way ’balance’ is an imprecise term, the concept of winning and losing combat is also a moving target. If measured solely by whether you defeat opponents in combat, sure, you could ‘win’ D&D. However, I generally don’t think one ‘wins’ D&D in the same way Frodo didn’t ‘win’ Lord of the Rings. (Instead, I might argue Frodo accomplished character goal defined by his relationship with the world.)
Taking a step back, I don’t want my players to necessarily feel like they have balanced odds against the opposition. I want them to surpass their own expectations and feel like badasses in the world, and my role as DM is to maximize the circumstances in which they feel like they really accomplished something. In a combat-to-combat situation, I’m not sure if I could quantify that in a % of instances where they defeated their enemies.
1. What does balance mean to you?
— I agree that ‘balance’ is imprecise a term. I get the sense it’s a non-starter with respect to actually determining good vs. bad practices in games. The approach I’ve taken in my campaign is ‘balance’ only matters insofar as players don’t outshine each other. In a contrived example, if I’m a really really good rogue, and my battle buddy is a really really good barbarian, that only creates opportunity if we play to our strengths. Some of the trouble this approach creates is mitigated by the fact the players I’m DM’ing for metagamed to the extent that they tried to find builds that would compliment one another. ‘Metagamed’ might not be the most precise term, but I believe good metagaming exists and I’d rather let the players design a sound party composition than have me try to continually build circumstances where two or more players can comfortably fill the same niche.
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 mostly hope that each combat scenario moves the story forward in some way, regardless if they’re able to defeat the opposing force. My thinking is akin to how fights work in a kung fu movie or how the songs work in a musical; the protagonists don’t always win but regardless the drama grows in interesting directions.
More to the spirit of the question, I generally attempt to balance encounters for the session, i.e, the span of time the players are expected to be at the table. Our group tends to have 2-3 combat scenarios per session with roleplay opportunities in between, so I try to have two easier fights and one harder fight prepared.
The exact parameters of these fights change depending how the players behave. For instance, a fight against a group of monstrosities might turn into a fight against a group of bandits if the players decide to go into a city rather than into a forest. But I try to keep the same narrative velocity of combat difficulty, that way, the session itself has a climax and we go home on a high note.
3. When you look at your players/other players what things make you feel like something is not balanced?
— Similar to other responses, I consider the game imbalanced if a player isn’t able to perform the (combat/roleplay) goals they designed their character for. DM-player communication should ideally mitigate any instances where a player designed a character who’s outright not useful to the campaign.
I think there might be something to the idea that imbalance can manifest as one character being more effective? feature-rich? than others, but in my (limited) experience, that hasn’t caused friction in a circumstance where all the players have distinct design goals.
4. If you claim that you do not worry about balance in your encounters, what are your overall desired outcomes from combats?
— Overall, I want the outcomes of encounters to move the story forward. Said another way, it’s way more important for me to know the players are resolving conflicts that are relevant to their (character’s) interests.
Maximizing whether or not the story moves forward might come down to whether or not the players feel like they can choose meaningful conflicts to engage in, so I might say ’balance’ is a distraction from whether or not the DM is leading the players to circumstances they’re invested in playing in.
5. If something seems imbalanced to you, how do you go about fixing it?
— In an instance where a player doesn’t feel like he has the opportunity to fulfill his character’s role, I’d generally want to know whether it’s a specific circumstance or a ‘mechanical’ issue that’s causing player to fall short of his expectations. Since ‘imbalanced’ can encompass a lot of things, I feel answering this question more precisely requires more context.
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?
— In the same way ’balance’ is an imprecise term, the concept of winning and losing combat is also a moving target. If measured solely by whether you defeat opponents in combat, sure, you could ‘win’ D&D. However, I generally don’t think one ‘wins’ D&D in the same way Frodo didn’t ‘win’ Lord of the Rings. (Instead, I might argue Frodo accomplished character goal defined by his relationship with the world.)
Taking a step back, I don’t want my players to necessarily feel like they have balanced odds against the opposition. I want them to surpass their own expectations and feel like badasses in the world, and my role as DM is to maximize the circumstances in which they feel like they really accomplished something. In a combat-to-combat situation, I’m not sure if I could quantify that in a % of instances where they defeated their enemies.
