NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GX.Sigma" data-source="post: 7159196" data-attributes="member: 6690511">Neat thread! Guess I better answer the questions: A: <img src="http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=413544&type=card" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />But seriously: I looked up the dictionary definition. Balance is "a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions." This seems about right. In game design (or any art, really), EVERYTHING is a balancing act. There are so many different kinds of balance: aesthetic balance, competitive balance, intraparty balance, difficulty, spotlight, ingame options, character builds, etc. These days I plan each session as "a game of D&D" in itself, so I guess that puts me on the adventuring day level. When the barbarian deals twice as much damage as the fighter, and takes half as much damage as the fighter (in addition to having more hit points than the fighter to begin with). When one player doesn't feel like they have enough cool things to do as the other players. When one player gets more attention from NPCs than everyone else. etc.Depends on the encounter. Some are speedbumps, some are severe tire damage. I think it's dangerous to "desire" a certain outcome from an encounter. It's also dangerous to think of monster encounters as "combats," but that's a whole other thread.Depends on the problem. If we're talking about intraparty mechanical imbalance, I'll keep an eye on it, and maybe houserule it for the next campaign. I have played in a campaign where the players won 100% of the time, and it was the most boring thing ever. It's a game. I'm supposed to be challenging myself. If I can't lose, what's the point of all these dice and rulebooks?A 50% win rate sounds fair. Of course, it should go without saying that "losing" doesn't mean "everyone dies and the campaign ends." It just means you don't accomplish your goal. If you don't save the prisoners in time--sorry, they're dead, you lose. If you don't stop the bad guy from taking over the town--the bad guy takes over the town, you lose. If the villain escapes with the precious artifact--sorry, they have it now, you lose. Then you continue on from that failure: "OK, the villain stole the evil artifact, took over the town, and killed all the villagers--what are you going to do about it?"(Also, "50% win rate" doesn't mean you should contrive a perfect 50/50 ratio, but that you should design scenarios you think the party has roughly a 50/50 chance to win or lose.)</blockquote>

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