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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8622116" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Firstly, balance is inherently contextual. The balance of a free-for-all PVP game will be very different from the balance of a purely cooperative game. This means we need the context for D&D (since I presume that's the balance you want to talk about).In terms of its game (as opposed to its equally-important roleplay), D&D is a cooperative game of adventure, growth, exploring a world and its contents, and overcoming challenges.As a result, I take "balance" to mean:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Unless explicitly stated otherwise, options that players must choose between (e.g. two distinct races) are of approximately equivalent average worth, over both comparative short-term and long-term scales. In practice: someone choosing to play Druid instead of Wizard should not make them dramatically more, nor dramatically less, capable of securing "success" for the team than anyone else.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The designers have (a) decided on the purposes the game is intended to fulfill (e.g. the "Pillars" of combat, exploration, and socialization are various purposes), (b) set clear and identifiable goals for how those purposes will be enacted (e.g. "some classes are more defensive, while others are more offense oriented"), and (c) developed testable metrics for whether those goals have been met and actually followed through with the testing to ensure they have been so.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Because D&D uses randomness as part of its resolution system, "balance" must be allowed to vary around a central tendency. This, combined with the variation between tables, means that "balance" cannot ever be "perfect," but instead can be expected to fall within certain acceptable ranges, while allowing for the possibility that, sometimes, things will go pear-shaped. That's how probability works.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The rules are designed such that future additions are unlikely to have deleterious effects propagate back into already established mechanics. That is, using tools like exception-based design and careful selection of keywords, you create a hierarchic structure within the rules, such that in general implications only go "one way" (down the chain, from higher-order, more-generalized effects down to the lower-order, more-specific effects). This helps avoid accidentally creating paradoxes or infinite loops or the like.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Being honest with yourself and the players about whether or not an effect is actually workable in practice. Wish, as originally conceived, is fundamentally unworkable; it encourages a BS arms-race between players giving ever-more-perfectly-specific wishes that can't be fouled up, and DMs inflicting ever-greater harm or punishment for overpowered wishes. Such mechanics simply cannot be just dropped into the lap of a player who wants them. Instead, they need to be handled very differently; this doesn't mean wish has NO place in D&D....but it does mean it has no place as a spell ordinary wizards of high enough level can learn to cast. I find a LOT, and I mean a LOT, of players are unwilling to admit that certain things just cannot play nice with being available as generic rules, and instead need to be turned over to DM-provided boons or the like.</li> </ul>A game that hits all of these points is almost certainly going to be well-balanced.As for why these things are important? I personally think it's very simple, but apparently a lot of other people don't. D&D is a game. It is also roleplay. Both of those things are vitally important. A game requires balance, and in this context it must be appropriate balance for a cooperative game.One chooses to play a game, rather than simply roleplay without rules at all (which is quite doable, I did that for many years), because the game part adds something to the experience. A game invites strategy, because a game can be played poorly vs played well, in the sense of "succeeding less" vs "succeeding more." But for a game to be worth playing, the strategy must be non-trivial and learnable. In order to learn how to play the game, the player must be able to make informed choices (so they can actually strategize in the first place), and must be able to clearly see how their choices led to the consequences (so they can actually learn from both success and failure). If the player is constantly acting on false information, they are not learning how to play. If the consequences are disconnected from what the player chose to do, then they will falsely associate those consequences with their choices, when in fact some other thing caused those consequences.Making informed choices is much easier with a balanced game, because one need not be constantly looking for hidden gotchas nor second-guessing whether one has chosen an actually effective option or a dud. Likewise, in a well-balanced game, it is significantly easier to learn from the consequences of one's actions, because similar inputs will necessarily lead to similar outputs (up to the randomness of the dice, of course). Hence, balanced systems foster greater strategy, and thus offer superior gaming.If one wishes to have a D&D that respects the fact that it is just as much a "game" as it is roleplaying, then it follows that balance is necessary. This, of course, naturally leads to questions of where, what, and how, but those are entire threads in their own right, so I will not answer those questions here.</blockquote>

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