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

[GMforPowergamers]

How do you account for the fact that the druid gets to repick their superpowers after a nap, while the fighter is locked in do his weak little ribbons?

of the 6 versions of this game I have played 5/6th say tough teabags...

If anyone contributes as much as a fighter in a fight then balance has already been lost, because the fighter isnt contributing as much outside of a fight.

I would say it is even worse... if YOU run a fight WITOUT a fighter, ranger, or paladin you SHOULD be in for a deadly situation.... because if you don't need the fighter then why have the class?

The fighter has virtually nothing that is class based, and anyone can RP and make plans. So any contribution that isn't part of the class chassis can be done just as well, if not better, by the character that gets to violate the laws of reality more often than they poop.

If spells of level 3+ took several actions to cast we might be getting somewhere. IMO, caster combat contribution needs to go down a decent amount, and non-caster out of combat contribution needs to go significantly up.

all of this is 100% fact

 

[gamerprinter]

Well I'm a small TTRPG publisher, and mostly encountering balance in the development of my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG). The bottomline is that a general consensus of 3.5 third party publishers have a bad reputation with many instances of balance tossed completely out the window coming out with new kinds of wahoo to break the game - not in every case, mind you, there was some great 3PP then, but enough bad instances to give 3PP a bad name. I never developed for 3.5, my first time entering the publishing arena was during Pathfinder 1.0 original days. In my experience most 3PP for Pathfinder are like me overly consumed with creating content that is balanced. When building an archetype or new class, it was critical that while it appears fun to use, it isn't somehow imbalanced compared to existing archetypes and classes. If choosing between the existing classes and your new class, automatically prefers your new class... it's probably not balanced. I would sometimes shoot for underwhelming abilities vs. overwhelming abilities in making ability choices for my archetype builds. So balance in a general sense is a requirement in game design, in my opinion. I don't have an opinion on the subject from a GM/Player point of view, only from a designer's.

 

[James Gasik]

Well I'm a small TTRPG publisher, and mostly encountering balance in the development of my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG). The bottomline is that a general consensus of 3.5 third party publishers are a bad one with many instances of balanced tossed completely out the window coming out with new kinds of wahoo to break the game - not in every case, mind you, there was some great 3PP then, but enough bad instances to give 3PP a bad name. I never developed for 3.5, my first time entering the publishing arena was during Pathfinder 1.0 original days. In my experience most 3PP for Pathfinder are like me overly consumed with creating content that is balanced. When building an archetype or new class, it was critical that while it appears fun to use, it isn't somehow imbalanced compared to existing archetypes and classes. If choosing between the existing classes and your new class, automatically prefers your new class... it's probably not balanced. I would sometimes shoot for underwhelming abilities vs. overwhelming abilities in making ability choices for my archetype builds. So balance in a general sense is a requirement in game design, in my opinion. I don't have an opinion on the subject from a GM/Player point of view, only from a designer's.

That's another problem with balance. You have to figure out what the player will get excited about, and won't make the DM instantly go "ah, this is so much better than [Option X], it must be broken!".

Given that WotC themselves haven't figured this out (Beastmaster Ranger vs. Twilight Cleric as extremes), what chance does anyone else have?

 

[Helldritch]

That's another problem with balance. You have to figure out what the player will get excited about, and won't make the DM instantly go "ah, this is so much better than [Option X], it must be broken!".

Given that WotC themselves haven't figured this out (Beastmaster Ranger vs. Twilight Cleric as extremes), what chance does anyone else have?

Players will always find combos that were not thought of by the developers. It is almost useless to try. And if a dev ever succeed, it will be a bland, tasteless game.

 

[gamerprinter]

That's another problem with balance. You have to figure out what the player will get excited about, and won't make the DM instantly go "ah, this is so much better than [Option X], it must be broken!".

Given that WotC themselves haven't figured this out (Beastmaster Ranger vs. Twilight Cleric as extremes), what chance does anyone else have?

I actually sense I achieved it in the rules developed for my published setting, especially for archetypes, prestige classes, feats, spells and magic items - hence why I was making my post in the first place. I remember groaning as I was forced to remove or redo more fairly some of the abilities that I dreamt up for archetypes, for example. But I redid them just the same, for balance reasons.

 

[Composer99]

How do you account for the fact that the druid gets to repick their superpowers after a nap, while the fighter is locked in do his weak little ribbons? If anyone contributes as much as a fighter in a fight then balance has already been lost, because the fighter isnt contributing as much outside of a fight. The fighter has virtually nothing that is class based, and anyone can RP and make plans. So any contribution that isn't part of the class chassis can be done just as well, if not better, by the character that gets to violate the laws of reality more often than they poop.

If spells of level 3+ took several actions to cast we might be getting somewhere. IMO, caster combat contribution needs to go down a decent amount, and non-caster out of combat contribution needs to go significantly up.

Suffice to say there is a reason I used words such as "should" and "ought" in my post. In fairness, I did forget to add a final sentence opining that most editions of D&D - 5e among them - have fallen short of this ideal.

 

[Moorcrys]

As long as I feel like I’m contributing, balance doesn’t really mean all that much to me.

I had just as much fun with my 3.5 straight hexblade as I’ve had with any other character I’ve played.

 

[Micah Sweet]

well I mean in the most resent movies he is with the avengers more then anything else... I mean really stark furry and strange have as much screen time if not more then aunt may... heck I think that Venom in 1 movie gets more screen time then uncle ben and harry osborn combined...

Have you seen the three Spider-Man movies for the MCU? He spends a fair amount of time with other high school kids.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

Because it's something cool for Fighters to do. Anyone can attempt to break things (I would likely use the generic Defy Danger or Defend moves, depending on the player's goal, or maybe Hack & Slash if the goal is offense-oriented). This is just a little something more that befits a Fighter. Other playbooks get their own stuff.

To turn the questions back on you: Why does everything have to be something everyone can do, unless it's magic? Why can't there just be specialized skills only some people pick up? You seem to be arguing that literally all people are able to do all physical activities and that's just ridiculous, so I feel like I have to be missing something in your argument.

Further: if you don't have a Fighter in your game, you can just straight-up take Bend Bars, Lift Gates as a multiclass move if your playbook offers one that allows you to take a move from any other class. (As noted, DW strongly and very wisely recommends NOT doubling up playbooks in a single group, because it WILL feel very samey. If I had a player who wanted something like this move but tailored to a different playbook, I would work with them to develop something.)

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.

Yeah, this dilutes the benefit to the point that it's not actually something I can accept anymore. I want things that are special about being a Fighter. They don't have to be PERFECT DO-EVERYTHING moves. Just something special that makes being a Fighter genuinely actually different from being whatever else. Having "you get +30% to Basic Moves" is both INCREDIBLY boring (like...that's straight-up what SO many people constantly pitched a fit over in 4e, that there were too many boring numeric bonuses) and gives me, if anything, negative feeling that the Fighter is something distinct from other things--it doesn't just not stand out, it actively tries to not stand out.

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.

Then we will never see eye-to-eye on this. I want Fighters to have something, (almost) anything, that is genuinely actually unique to them and not just generically available to anyone. As noted above, there can be much more loosey-goosey "well, this more or less fits" options for non-Fighters. But Fighters (and, separately and individually, Rogues, Barbarians, Monks, etc.) need to have things that really are special about being what they are. Otherwise they're literally big piles of actively trying to have nothing notable.

 

[overgeeked]

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

To me, balance is rough parity of players' ability to affect the game world through their characters. In the grand, abstract sense. Not everyone gets a spotlight scene. Not everyone gets a moment to shine every session. Some people don't care and some people want zero spotlight time. And not everyone does roughly the same damage in combat. Some people don't care and some are so utterly obsessed with it that the only way to achieve this is to have that one player make and run everyone's characters. The players have different skills and abilities. The characters have different skills and abilities. So embrace that. As much as you can. That's balance.