What makes us care about combat balance in D&D?

[Jessica]

The error in your thinking is summed up in matching a 13th level monk against a 13th level wizard, and severely compounded by ignoring what I posted about interplayer relationships. 2 PCs of should never be contesting each other; matching them up in that way is a red herring. If someone feels unimportant or a fifth wheel that's something wrong with the DM or the group dynamic. There is no fundamental assumption that all classes are equal. Its been clear since 1E that they were not; casters started weaker and became the most powerful. The idea of implicit balance was imposed by the MMO community.

I was burned by bad balance long before I ever touched an MMO. Radically unequal classes are a bug and not a feature. This whole casters-start-off-really-crappy-but-become-gods-in-the-end-as-a-reward-for-putting-up-with-the-crap-low-levels, not only seems like a massive D&Dism that doesn't really jibe with a lot of other fantasy works but it also reeks of being some kind of bitter nerd power fantasy used to justify the eerie IRL parallel myth of the anti-social, studious, intelligent weakling who suffered immensely in the early part of their life suddenly being entitled to success and a happy ending. This is 2015. Developers generally have a much more advanced and nuanced understanding of game design than they did 30-40 years ago. I'm pretty sure entire thesis papers have been written on why LFQW is an absolutely horrible idea for a good game.

It's not a flaw in the system when the DM alters it - its the way its supposed to work. 4E was designed wrong because it tried to be balanced. Balance is not a goal in a tabletop system. It's not needed with a human DM. If fights are ending before they start, the fight is designed wrong. If everyone else is doing your roll, they are being dicks. Systems that are designed to not need house rules are done wrong. Those are not the designers job, they are your job.

Human DMs are human. They are very fallible and thrusting responsibility for fixing broken stuff onto a job that already has a lot to do is unfair. It's extreme laziness to make a game and then expect a large amount of house ruling for it to run reasonably well.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is not true at all. There were discussions about class balance back in the earliest numbers of White Dwarf, and in Dragon throughout the 1980s. Roger E Moore's article undertaking a mathematical comparison of the classes was published in Dragon 69 (Jan '83).

1983? That's ten years late to the party on game balance. Why are there different XP tracks for different classes? Game balance (until 3.x threw them out). Why couldn't clerics wield edged weapons and why were swords so good against large monsters? Game balance - giving the fighter a leg up at higher levels (until 3.x threw them out). Why were Weapon Specialisation and the variant fighters in Unearthed Arcana so strong? Gygax said on these very boards it was for game balance -Rob Kunz playing Robilar probably unbalanced his play testing. Why the demihuman level cap? Again balance - a power boost offset by being locked out of the endgame.

As for the idea that a 13th level monk shouldn't match against a 13th level wizard - the level structure implies they should. The multiclassing rules imply they should. The encounter level rules say that a 13th lev l PC class of any type is the same level of challenge. In short the books tell you they should be on a level. Which means one of three things. Either they are on a level, the book writers screwed up, or the people who wrote the books are purposely misleading the players in a way that ruins a lot of people's fun. And it's not option a. As for the idea that a new DM should know how the game works better than the designers, wtf do we pay designers for?

Also the idea that two PCs should never be contesting each other is both risible and rules out the way D&D was played in both Gygax' and Arneson's groups. The claim itself is simply an attempt to cover the fact that behaving naturally in a way that isn't automatically allied exposes gaping flaws in the game.

 

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], I answered number 2 because I thought I might be able to subsume 1 under it. For me it's the complexity of the mechanical systems, including action economy as one element of those, that makes balance in D&D a big deal. (I think that 2 can also subsume elements of 4 and 5 - it is the complexity that makes combat rules carry more heft, and that makes combat an attractive site of D&D combat resolution.)

As I tried to imply in my original post, those are the ones I was picking as well.

Also, I have it on good authority that the idiot that put together the poll meant to allow folks to choose 3. However, it looks like he didn't click the obvious "allow users to pick multiple options" radio button. Unfortunately, he is far too prideful to admit such a stupid mistake, so he would probably try to keep that little tidbit under wraps and revise history with some sort of "prioritize your top 3 and pick the most important one" rubbish. Uttery dickery.

More commentary later!

 

[pemerton]

1983? That's ten years late to the party on game balance.

Sure. I was just putting it out there as an easily referenced example of balance concerns prior to MMOs.

As for the idea that a 13th level monk shouldn't match against a 13th level wizard - the level structure implies they should.

This was always a point of confusion in AD&D, where the XP tables tended to imply one thing, whereas the ubiquitous use of PC level as a measure of capability tended to imply something else. Roger Moore, in the article I referred to, used XP totals, not level, as his measure; but maybe there was also a thought in the early days of the game that some character types were better than others at earning XP? I don't know.

I agree that once you get a uniform XP table and 3E-style multiclassing the implication of equivalent effectiveness is undeniable. The 3E encounter-building and challenge-rating structure further reinforces this implication.

Also the idea that two PCs should never be contesting each other is both risible and rules out the way D&D was played in both Gygax' and Arneson's groups.

I agree that there is no general assumption in RPGing, or in D&D play, that PCs don't contest one another.

That said, 4e won't mechanically support it all that well: combats between PCs won't be mechanically that satisfying, and the skill challenge structure doesn't naturally accommodate confrontation between protagonists (although the DMG2 suggests some workarounds for this that are quite interesting).

 

[Jessica]

That said, 4e won't mechanically support it all that well: combats between PCs won't be mechanically that satisfying, and the skill challenge structure doesn't naturally accommodate confrontation between protagonists (although the DMG2 suggests some workarounds for this that are quite interesting).

I actually played a long term 4e pbp PvP game on RPOL while I was deployed to Iraq and it actually worked really well overall. Some classes were more self sufficient than others and did really well at 1v1(Fighters, most strikers including Rogues surprisingly, and Wizards) while some classes started to shine in 3v3(leaders, Swordmages, non-Wizard controllers). It was really fun. I got an Eladrin Wizard/WotST/Archlich up to 23, I had an old scho0l Dwarf Hexhammer that got up to 19, and I had a Warforged Fighter that got up to around 9ish IIRC and in addition I also had a few 3v3 teams(usually all Dwarves because I <3 4e Dwarves).

 

[pemerton]

I actually played a long term 4e pbp PvP game on RPOL

<snip>

Some classes were more self sufficient than others and did really well at 1v1(Fighters, most strikers including Rogues surprisingly, and Wizards) while some classes started to shine in 3v3(leaders, Swordmages, non-Wizard controllers). It was really fun.

You learn something new every day!

I like the mix of 1v1 and 3v3.

In my 4e game I remember three solo combats (though none PvP), all involving the dwarf fighter: he duelled a hobgoblin commander at around 5th level, he fought an arena ogre for the pleasure of his duergar hosts around 18th level, and he soloed a githzerai dojo at around 28th level.

The githzerai one was relatively interesting in part just because of the stakes, and the fact that it came down to one last roll between the PC and the sensei. The others were a bit disappointing - the lack of synergies (on both player and GM side) was very noticeable.

 

[Balesir]

Balance, in general, is severely overestimated in terms of importance in D&D - and for that matter, any other human-run tabletop game. Despite claims of a "rule 0 fallacy" where the game is thought to be inherently unbalanced if the DM has to intervene contrary to the rules, in reality this "fallacy" itself is a Stolen Concept Fallacy - the entire GAME is designed to be run by a human who can adapt and change things.

GMs are very useful for injecting imagination, inventiveness and humanity into non-player creatures and organisations in the game. When they start to define how the general "physics" of the game world works, however, I find it to be deeply unhelpful to genuine shared storytelling and roleplaying in the extreme.

The "rule 0 fallacy", as I perceive it, boils down to a rejection of broken communication. RPG rules are a communication to the players of how the game world works. Their characters already know this perfectly well; they have grown up in the aforementioned world! But, without detailed communication, the players have no real clue of how the game world is supposed to operate, especially with regards to activities that they are unlikely to have experienced first hand in this "real" world or any other - like fighting with swords, base jumping without the benefit of a parachute or casting magic spells. If the GM modifies or invents the "physics" of the game world on the hoof, the players are left with no useful model of how their character behaviour might affect the world at all. They are being asked to play characters who, we can only presume, suffer from random delusions and flawed memories. While these things are not unknown in the "real" world, they usually come for some reason and associated with predictable patterns...

Rejecting this in order to focus on the letter of the words is selectively rejecting one aspect of the system while accepting the rest and then complaining about a problem that creates.

Not really. A lack of "balance" in game rules speaks to something much more problematic than that: it suggests that the world is built on a lie (or series of lies). The rules of how a world works have implications for, well, how that world works. If the rules of the world were stated to be that gravity pulls things down, but all rivers ran uphill, then that would indicate that the "rule" about gravity was false. In this case, (a) how have any intelligent creatures in the world failed to notice this, and (b) what is the rule that keeps creatures and objects from "flowing" up into the air?

A world where rivers run uphill might exist - but the rest of the world would assuredly not look just like the "real" world if they did. Balance works in the same way - as a cursory glance at real-world economics will show you. If money buys stuff, then rich people will have more and/or better stuff. If wizards are really more powerful than rogues, then everyone will try to be a wizard and no-one will voluntarily be a rogue (and I'm talking about the people in the imaginary world, here, not the "real" world players sat around the table).

As an aside, the growing unrest in the world today is starting to show quite graphically what happens when "lack of balance" starts to become manifest.

While this can be true for a particular campaign or game group, it's based on the idiosyncracies of that group and how it plays. A game group that plays exactly according to the rules as written and allowing every official supplement but no house rules or third party supplements at all is a theoretical standard and reflects how almost no one actually plays, much like balance comparisons at level 20.

Lack of balance in an imaginary world, unless it is taken fully into account in the structures and description of that world, breaks the plausibility of that world. This is irrespective of the group or the style of play the world is intended for. Lack of "balance" in a system is really an incoherence between the system and the game-world that it is described as working in. This means that either the world or the system is a lie - a lie to the players who are supposed to be playing the roles of creatures in it.

That said, it is important for each character to feel useful. This, however, is the job of the DM.

Quite disconnected from what has gone before, here, I will say that if my character's usefulness in the world and relevance to the story rely entirely on the contrivance of one participant in the game, I'll go and read a book, thanks. Same basic situation, less hassle and probably better writing style/story quality.

Don't allow characters that can do anything to do anything.

So, you are literally saying that the GM should lie to the players about the nature of their characters' capabilities as communicated by the rules? That they should say "here are the rules; they tell you what your character's abilities will do, except that I'm lying here and I will arbitrarily declare that you can't do some of it"? Isn't that essentially saying "you can choose to play any character you like but they will all actually be the characters I like because you actually have literally no say in this game whatsoever"? Whatever is the point in me playing in such a "game"?

If you have a rogue with good lockpicking abilities, don't grant the wizard a 'knock' spell in random loot, for example. If he really insists on buying one, ask why. Point out that if he's using it he may be taking away a major role from the rogue.

So, what, all wizards in this world voluntarily eschew the "Knock" spell so that those poor little rogue fellows don't feel useless (even though they are)? Surely, that will last exactly as long as the rogues offer wizards their services for free...

This is an example of the "rules" and the description of the game world between them lying or worse. They paint a picture of a world that literally cannot work. The communication that the players have received about how the game world works is valueless - untrustworthy in the extreme.

Think for a moment about the "real" world. When I was young, facility in doing repetitive arithmetic was something you could get a job with. There were many skills like it that you might live on - like being a computer operator (basically keeping the computer running by changing storage tapes, running housekeeping software and so on) - that are no longer a meal ticket as they used to be. What has happened? No-one learns those skills any more, that's what's happened. So why, in our imagined roleplaying world, do obsolete rogues persist in learinign lockpicking skills that simply won't earn a crust in the "modern" world?

If one person is insisting on doing things that make the others obsolete the problem isn't with the game system it's with him powergaming at the expense of friends.

I agree - which is exactly what happens when the GM takes control of the physics of the game world without communicating those physics to the players. The real rules that are being played by become distinct from what is written in the rulebook when the GM declares fiat to be the only valid "rule" - and then the players are left with nothing to base their actions upon but a tissue of useless lies and social pressure on the GM - the old, hackneyed "playing the GM rather than the game".

If a player insists on making an ineffective character for roleplay reasons, people should explain to him that he'll... be ineffective. If a player is inexperienced, others should take him in hand and show him how to avoid pitfalls of character creation, and the DM should be generous in allowing reversion of choices for the inexperienced.

If a player chooses an ineffective character, the main question is how the character has survived so long despite being congenitally unsuited to the world, surely?

Balance is about balance in your group. Sure, some rules are ill-considered, but mostly the problem isn't the systems; it's the people that want the system to compensate for their poor social skills.

Worlds are not run by social skills. I'm not able to walk or do my job because the world is being polite to me and letting me be effective today. If that were true, I would be perpetually filled with anxiety that the world might change its attitude tomorrow... I know that I can do these things because I know how the world works (in very general terms).

Likewise, I couldn't win an Olympic sprint next week if I could just convince the world that it could really happen and it would be cool if it did - I would have to train and have a degree of natural aptitude as a sprinter (don't hold your breaths, folks!)

In short, social skills are all very well, but creatures living in a world have some actual, experiential knowledge about how those worlds work. By saying that the only real "rules" are the picture in the GM's head of how things should be, you are robbing every player of any analogue to the model that their character must, if they are sane, have of the world they have (presumably) grown up in.

If they are not to be implicitly a lie, those rules must fit at least tolerably with the game world as described by the situations and events that happen in the game. They must not, in other words, imply things that the game suggests are untrue. Put another way, they must be "balanced" as the game world represents them to be.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To expand on the rebuttals above (and to reinforce Balesir): Every single actual use of Rule 0 undermines the immersion of the players at the table.

The players are supposedly playing characters who live in the world they are playing in - and normally have lived there for at least 16 years. Often hundreds of years. They have this experience - and are able to rely on the way the world works to do things.

When the DM actually invokes Rule 0 in play then it is quite literally changing the laws of physics on them. It is saying "You know you thought you understood something about the way the world works. You don't. The world is actively inconsistent and any idea you had that you were playing a veteran character is simply wrong." This can work for certain campaigns - but for at least 95% of campaigns, any active invocation of rule 0 leads to the DM harming the immersion of the PCs. (There are things that harm immersion worse than invoking Rule 0. Like bad rules that lead to bad consequences. But those are problems with the rules and the game design).

And when you talk about social problems, some games lead to social problems. I will not play Monopoly with my family or any other because it leads to high tempers and frequently fights. Unbalanced games are games that encourage social problems that well designed games don't.

As Luke Crane points out, Game Design is Mind Control and "The art of game design is to induce your players to behave in bizarre, irrational ways that they otherwise would not." If the rules are encouraging anti-social behaviour at the table then either this is because the designers intended it or because the designers screwed up. Unbalanced rules encourage three types of anti-social behaviour. First they encourage the DM to disempower the players by invoking Rule 0 and taking direct control of the gameworld. Second they encourage players to power-game because such power differentials are a challenge - and a challenge to the survival of the party. Third they encourage people to fall into traps and accidentally create characters that are not fit for purpose - which undermines their fun and frequently the fun of everyone else at the table.

 

[Diamondeye]

I was burned by bad balance long before I ever touched an MMO. Radically unequal classes are a bug and not a feature. This whole casters-start-off-really-crappy-but-become-gods-in-the-end-as-a-reward-for-putting-up-with-the-crap-low-levels, not only seems like a massive D&Dism that doesn't really jibe with a lot of other fantasy works but it also reeks of being some kind of bitter nerd power fantasy used to justify the eerie IRL parallel myth of the anti-social, studious, intelligent weakling who suffered immensely in the early part of their life suddenly being entitled to success and a happy ending. This is 2015. Developers generally have a much more advanced and nuanced understanding of game design than they did 30-40 years ago. I'm pretty sure entire thesis papers have been written on why LFQW is an absolutely horrible idea for a good game.

While this is perfectly fine as a personal feeling, you are not describing a problem with the system except insofar as that system does not meet your personal preferences. You rather clearly admit this by pointing out that the growth in power of casters "seems" a certain way, and then you go on to describe how it "reeks" of "nerd power fantasy". It's fairly clear that you don't like this effect, so you've decided to imply - completely without evidence - that it's tied to a negative social stereotype.

As for advanced, nuanced, and thesis papers on "good" games, a "good" game is a rather subjective idea and I don't know in exactly what serious academic program one might write a thesis on what makes a "good" game. Possibly this exists and if it does perhaps you could furnish us with an idea of where to find it - it might make interesting reading. However, it also is pretty likely it would turn out to be the same pompous blathering that much of what passes as "academics" these days is, and at the risk of injecting irrelevant social commentary, results in the cheapening of education and dragging talent off into fluff subjects that would be better utilized designing missiles at Raytheon or something like that.

Finally, there is nothing lacking in "advancement" or "nuance" in Vancian systems; the system has repeatedly adapted and evolved and gained new features. That's like claiming a 2016 Ford Mustang is not advanced because the original Mustang came out 40 years ago.

Simply assigning positive terms to things you like and negative terms to ones you don't isn't very convincing.

Human DMs are human. They are very fallible and thrusting responsibility for fixing broken stuff onto a job that already has a lot to do is unfair. It's extreme laziness to make a game and then expect a large amount of house ruling for it to run reasonably well.

Unfortunately, it's also not "broken" and the system runs "reasonably well" - better than reasonably well - without so much house ruling. Furthermore, once again, the system is designed to be run with house ruling. ALL TTRPGs are inherently designed with the knowledge people will do that. It has nothing to do with whether it's fair the the DM; it is a known quantity of DMs that they almost always WILL make revisions to the rules - especially since so many rules are simply guidelines, assumptions, or simply cannot anticipate certain situations. The CR system is a perfect example; it's a guideline based on a certain party composition and MUST be "houseruled" if the party composition is different. WBL is another example - it's a guideline that the DM adjusts based on his wants for the campaign.

The fundamental underlying truth though is that non-4E systems were never "broken". It may be a common problem that casters become dominant, but it's also a common problem that DMs do not know how to design encounters regardless of how good the rules are. It's a common problem that the caster is the DM's girlfriend/boyfriend that he/she wants to feel powerful. It's a common problem that someone at the table is socially aggressive or a bully. It's a common problem that people try to balance party members against each other rather than against the world. And it's a very common problem that people think all classes should ahve equal utility in all parts of combat, which inevitably pares casters back until they're nothing more than a robe-wearing artillery cannon.

 

[Diamondeye]

To expand on the rebuttals above (and to reinforce Balesir): Every single actual use of Rule 0 undermines the immersion of the players at the table.

The players are supposedly playing characters who live in the world they are playing in - and normally have lived there for at least 16 years. Often hundreds of years. They have this experience - and are able to rely on the way the world works to do things.

When the DM actually invokes Rule 0 in play then it is quite literally changing the laws of physics on them. It is saying "You know you thought you understood something about the way the world works. You don't. The world is actively inconsistent and any idea you had that you were playing a veteran character is simply wrong." This can work for certain campaigns - but for at least 95% of campaigns, any active invocation of rule 0 leads to the DM harming the immersion of the PCs. (There are things that harm immersion worse than invoking Rule 0. Like bad rules that lead to bad consequences. But those are problems with the rules and the game design).

Rule 0 is not changing anything - it is the most basic, fundamental assumption of any system. When the DM alters some aspect of the system, he is creating the system as it exists in the world the characters understand. He isn't altering their system and they haven't understood it as it's written in the books for hundreds of years. They understand the world as the DM says they do. In the ultimate theoretical extreme, the DM has written the whole system himself from scratch and everything is a houserule.

The problem with Rule 0, like any rule, arises when it's applied improperly - when a DM overturns a previous determination, or when he makes a ruling that is overly complex, cumbersome, or serves no purpose. Ideally, DMs should present houserules prior to starting the campaign, and should talk over any major mid-campaign changes with the players if a particular rule - system or house - is not working right. Again, this is an interpersonal issue. The DM should not use rule 0 arbitrarily; that is not what it is for.

As to "Harming immersion", that's a highly subjective problem. To many people, TTRPGs are not "immersive" at all becuase of the simple fact that you're sitting around a table eating chips and salsa while you play it. DM rulings no more jar people out of their immersion than the guy next to them farting does.