D&D 5E What is balance to you, and why do you care (or don't)?

[Asisreo]

Balance and Fun is multifaceted. There's too much to have any general say about what should and shouldn't be appropriate. Some people dislike close-knit balance while others enjoy it.

What's important isn't what balance comes pre-packaged into the game, with all its assumptions. It's what you find most fun. Great games that you just don't like will exist, and you can adjust their balance to fit you and your party.

There's a few things I have to adjust for my party to have fun in 5e. Some would call my games wildly unbalanced, but my players have great fun in this style of game.

Even player-to-player facing imbalance is something subjective. What one player values, another might not or even dislike.

 

[Lanefan]

... Bend Bars, Lift Gates:

This is a default move of the Fighter playbook. No one else gets this move, as playbook rules (in the base game, anyway) are mostly unique to each class. The main exceptions are Cleric and Wizard, since their "Cast a Spell" move is essentially identical apart from class-specific flourishes about the costs of mediocre or bad rolls. Other than that specific move, however, each class gets its own unique moves.

While I like that Fighters get a move like this, my immediate question is why can't everyone at least try it?

In 1e D&D every character of any class gets a (generally quite low) bars-gates % chance based solely on Strength. What would work there for making it more a Fighter-specific ability is to, say, give Fighters a -30 boost to their percent roll (low is better here) as a class feature - that way, everyone still has a chance but Fighters are better at it.

On a broader note, silo-ing specific abiities like this into classes is fine but making those abiities absolutely exclusive to those classes isn't, where the ability is something that any Joe or Jane could in theory at least have a small chance of doing.

 

[Lanefan]

you know I interact with you alot but I never asked... what edition is the closest to the powerlevel you want? 1e, 2e, basic? some amalgam?

We play a much-modified 1e, which has its own issues with slow power creep and overly-increasing complexity but as it's mostly a homebrew system now those are things we can fix on our own.

I guess my preference would be somewhere between Basic and a stripped-down 1e, more or less.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, you can give classes things like that. Though as D&D has ability scores (DW doesn't have anything similar IIRC) that are usually used to handle these sort of things, the feature should interact via them, instead of creating a disconnected parallel system.

Here's where I disagree, and it comes back to the original thread topic around balance. One unintended cause of imbalance, sometimes, is the overwhelming desire to shoehorn everything into universal mechanics rather than using discrete subsystems for different things as appropriate.

3e putting everything on to a d20 platform caused some minor but noticeable balance headaches in situations where greater granularity is needed e.g. where a 5% chance (i.e. 1-in-20) of something happening is too much but the chance still needs to be greater than 0%.

5e tying all roll bonuses or penalties into the advantage-disadvantage mechanic has the same problem: sometimes advantage is too great a bonus to suit the situation, other times it's not enough.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

3e putting everything on to a d20 platform caused some minor but noticeable balance headaches in situations where greater granularity is needed e.g. where a 5% chance (i.e. 1-in-20) of something happening is too much but the chance still needs to be greater than 0%

I understand why simplfyiing to roll d20+stat/skill was a goodish call. I just wish we kept SOME d100 % rolls

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Here's where I disagree, and it comes back to the original thread topic around balance. One unintended cause of imbalance, sometimes, is the overwhelming desire to shoehorn everything into universal mechanics rather than using discrete subsystems for different things as appropriate.

3e putting everything on to a d20 platform caused some minor but noticeable balance headaches in situations where greater granularity is needed e.g. where a 5% chance (i.e. 1-in-20) of something happening is too much but the chance still needs to be greater than 0%.

5e tying all roll bonuses or penalties into the advantage-disadvantage mechanic has the same problem: sometimes advantage is too great a bonus to suit the situation, other times it's not enough.

I literally cannot imagine caring about a below 5% difference in odds. It is so insignificant that it is really not perceivable in play. And certainly a class feature should actually have a significant impact, so double proficiency or advantage would be warranted. And if it uses the same base system than everyone else, except just boosted, then we get around the issue of only one class being able to do this. Everyone can try it, this class just is a lot better at it.

 

[Lanefan]

yeah I think even 1st level (although I have heard convinceing arguments for making it 3rd or 5th level) classed PCs should have the 'you are no longer mundane' label.

Barely. You are no longer mundane in the same way someone who just got their Masters degree is no longer mundane. You're still an ordinary person who can go out for a beer with other ordinary people and fit in just fine; you've just picked up a few more skills along the way*.

I'd rather the real "you are no longer mundane" point not arrive until about 5th level (or even higher in a 1-20 system), in part because I greatly prefer situations where the characters are mortal, and vulnerable, and have to work around that in order to achieve their goals. Curb-stomping everything in their path most of the time is fine for higher levels.

* - I think this might be part of what makes Spiderman so popular, in that of the various supers/Avengers he spends by far the most time hanging out with ordinary people rather than other supers, and himself comes across as just an ordinary person with some abilities tacked on. He's relatable-to in ways many other supers are not.

 

[Maxperson]

and cantrip damage scales... so where I swing my longsword twice each for 1d8+3 (so 2d8+6 15ish damage) your firebolt is now 2d10 (11) or your cantrip with a rider is 2d8+effect (9) so even then where the fighter is a little ahead on damage (as long as the caster isn't a warlock) even at will the caster is keeping up mostly...

cantrip scale again... 3d10 (or 3d12 death toll) or 2d8/6+ effect... or worse case 3 attacks at 1d10+cha mod compaired to 1w+str mod 3 attacks

17th level this happens again.

justt taking firebolt (the most resisted damage even) and most fights that the wizard used 0 spell slots they will be throwing 1d10/2d10/3d10/4d10 by tier with a to hit ratio similar to the fighter or rogue... that fighter will have 1w+st with 1 attack per d of the cantrip (again scaled by tier) but need more to hit rolls so more chance to crit but more chance to miss...

There's more to consider, though. The Fighter will have a fighting style, which may contribute to damage. The Champion will also be critting more often, which adds to damage. The Battle Master has superiority dice, which add damage plus effects. And so on. Also, even though the Fighter has more chances to miss due to more rolls, he is also hitting far, FAR more reliably every round due to more rolls. The Wizards gets a single all or nothing roll.

 

[Lanefan]

if this is true (and I am not even 100% saying it isn't) then a party of a hexblade a druid a wizard and a bard is how much more powerful then a party of a fighter a rogue a ranger and a artificer?

My 5e-fu isn't high enough to be able to answer that. I don't, for example, know how effective at melee a Hexblade is vs a Fighter; nor an Artificer vs a Wizard when it comes to casting.

At first glance those seem like parties almost custom-built for different pillars: the first is built for social (wizard and bard up front, hexblade and druid for support) and the second for exploration (ranger and rogue up front, fighter and artificer for support).

now how does 'power creep' effect sawpping the ranger for the bard?

Depends what the party is doing next, I suppose. That said, I'm aware the last (and only) worthwhile Ranger was the 1e version, so I can only assume that trading out a Bard for a Ranger is going to hurt the party's power a bit.

 

[Lanefan]

While that could solve the issue, what do you do when the Martials hit level cap, but the casters are still a level or two behind? Just end the game there? Haha, no capstones for you, you got 9th level spells, that's all you need?

Or let the martials sit around while the casters catch up to gain powers they probably don't need in the first place?

(Or I guess you could end the game the instant the Rogue hits 20th, but at that point, this isn't a better solution than E6).

For this to work you'd kind of have to abandon the idea of there being a "capstone" level - or at least the idea of that capstone being the same level number for every class - and maybe even homebrew-design for a few levels above 20 to make it (or make it appear to be) open-ended.

You've nicely highlighted a problem with the game being designed as closed-ended here: it limits options and cuts back on design space.