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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6665587" data-attributes="member: 1465">My comment was in response to the OP question, about why to care about 'balance', with reference to point 6) above.D&amp;D is always unpredictable enough (in all editions I've seen), in the sense that sometimes it happens that an apparently 'easy' challenge is failed, or a seemingly too hard one is won, and that's thanks to the intrinsic randomness of dice rolls as resolution. Non-combat challenges have been often criticised for being 'too swingy' (less predictable) because they are resolved with few rolls (sometimes one), while combat is more predictable because a lot of dice are rolled to determine the outcome. Anyway, I don't have an issue with D&amp;D being too predictable! But in addition to this, there is an issue with one tool that is given to the DM to set expectations: CR or monster level. Because of dice rolls (and other complications such as player's mistakes, circumstances etc.) you can never know the outcome of a fight in advance for sure. But still, if the game gives you a tool to gauge difficulty, you expect the tool be usable... With respect to this issue, I do care about balance. What does it mean to be usable? Well, since randomness is involved, it can't tell you how this one fight will end, but the usability/reliability of the tool will be revealed by large numbers (i.e. after a lot of fights). In very broad terms, let's say that if the game is well-balanced (and the tool itself isn't flawed), the predicted most-likely outcome will effectively happen often.I didn't play WoW very long, but when I did, it gave me the impression of combat to be too predictable, because it seemed a given to always win against a monster of X level (relative to yours), and to always lose against a monster of X+1 level, or two monsters of X level.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6665587, member: 1465"] My comment was in response to the OP question, about why to care about 'balance', with reference to point 6) above. D&D is always unpredictable enough (in all editions I've seen), in the sense that sometimes it happens that an apparently 'easy' challenge is failed, or a seemingly too hard one is won, and that's thanks to the intrinsic randomness of dice rolls as resolution. Non-combat challenges have been often criticised for being 'too swingy' (less predictable) because they are resolved with few rolls (sometimes one), while combat is more predictable because a lot of dice are rolled to determine the outcome. Anyway, I don't have an issue with D&D being [I]too[/I] predictable! But in addition to this, there is an issue with one tool that is given to the DM to set expectations: CR or monster level. Because of dice rolls (and other complications such as player's mistakes, circumstances etc.) you can [I]never[/I] know the outcome of a fight in advance for sure. But still, if the game gives you a tool to gauge difficulty, you expect the tool be usable... With respect to this issue, I do care about balance. What does it mean to be usable? Well, since randomness is involved, it can't tell you how [I]this one[/I] fight will end, but the usability/reliability of the tool will be revealed [I]by large numbers[/I] (i.e. after a lot of fights). In very broad terms, let's say that if the game is well-balanced (and the tool itself isn't flawed), the predicted most-likely outcome will effectively happen often. I didn't play WoW very long, but when I did, it gave me the impression of combat to be [I]too [/I]predictable, because it seemed a given to always win against a monster of X level (relative to yours), and to always lose against a monster of X+1 level, or two monsters of X level. [/QUOTE]

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