What type of balancing do you prefer?

[Wombat]

After 30 years of gaming, I have come to realize that "balance" is as much of a fantasy as, well, dragons...

Consider your categories:

Long-term balancing: Are the long-term powers of equal aplicability to all scenarios or needs? Does Fly 3/day equal Fireball 3/day? If you are out in the wilds, possibly; underground, probably not. When creatures encountered are fliers or immune to fire, only in differing amounts.

Explicit per encounter balancing: This is impossible to calculate. Just because two characters have the same number of powers (and level of powers) available for any given encounter, the chances of those powers seeing the same amount of use is very small. Again, it depends massively on your setting, the opponents encountered, and per-encounter limitations placed on the powers (anti-magic fields, resistance to power, inability to use a specific power in a specific locale/environment, non-combat factors).

Implicit per encounter balancing: See above.

Class-variable balancing: In a city, a bard is going to be tremendously useful while a barbarian is not -- if the campaign is set in a city, the barbarian is hosed; conversely, if the campaign is set in the open wilderness, the bard loses many of his powers. Setting comes massively into play here.

Multiple balancing: This is much closer to the reality of gaming. Each person's saga will be different and you want to make each potential category at least somewhat attractive, if not 100% balanced (a near impossibility).

Roleplaying balancing: In the types of games I favour, roleplaying factors are very, very important, especially as so little of our games (under pretty much any system, including D&D) is devoted to combat. Still, for most campaigns such roleplaying balances are all but ingored.

You can come up with "generic balance", but it all goes out the window when the tire hits the pavement -- each campaign is going to emphasize different aspects of the game rules, whether this be in terms of setting, opponents, magic available, usefulness of skills, or whathaveyou. In the end, balance is an interesting concept, but rarely actually works.

 

[marune]

There is only one important balance in an RPG, it's the Spot-light one. (i.e. each player got a good share of the show).

D&D attempted to do that by balancing classes in combat (aka power-druids) because combat is what happen most of the time while playing D&D. (It's already better than AD&D1E/2E that did nothing for it).

Problem is that many try to ignore that fact.

 

[Mercule]

None of the above -- or my answers may not mean what you think they mean.

Each class should be roughly balanced against the others, but we may disagree on what constitutes "balance".

Personally, I explicitly want to avoid per-encounter balancing. Why? Because it is absurd for every character to be equally effective in every circumstance. Even beyond absurd, it is flat out undesirable for its own sake.

A huge chunk of what makes the choice of class meaningful is the different approaches each class has and their different strengths and weaknesses. If the fighter is the equal of the wizard in levelling the orcish army and the equal of the cleric in fighting the demon prince and the equal of the bard in killing the dragon, what's the point? It's all just rock-scissors-paper with special effects.

No class/character should feel consistantly secondary, nor should any be allowed to dominate all events. Instead, each character should be able to show off. They just need to take turns.

 

[marune]

[...] It's all just rock-scissors-paper with special effects.

Yeah, that's what D&D is.

 

[maddman75]

I really like how Buffy does it, with metagame mechanics. It allows the mundane White Hats to hang out with the heroes and not die right away and occasionally be helpful. It makes them fun to play while still firmly being a sidekick. An analogy would be if characters playing NPC classes got twice as many Action Points as PC classes, only with Action Points being a lot more useful.

Other than that balance is in the hands of the GM. 3e balances the classes for combat, assuming this will equal spotlight time. If your game is heavy on something else 3e's balance will not work and will lead to nonsensical results.

 

[Roman]

Nobody is suggesting that the balance achieved with any of these methods would be 'perfect'. The question merely aims to find out, which balancing technique is preferred.

 

[Ry]

Balance is about sharing who gets to be cool, and how often. So balance between player characters is about where the camera is. If it stops on one PC too often, or we only care about the camera when it's on one PC, it's not balanced. If the camera moves from PC to PC and we care about each PC's actions, then it's very well balanced.

For this reason, I actually think so-called "roleplaying balance" (i.e. you get to be better but you have to follow a code) is a TERRIBLE method, because not only is the actions of one player more important, their interaction with their code makes the "camera" stay on them even more. The merits of Long Term / Encounter balance can be debated endlessly, but I think the best thing to do is actually playtest the options and see where the camera stops.

 

[Mycanid]

I voted for the "multiple balancing" option. Simply because there are many things we use at the same time!

 

[GreatLemur]

I really like the fact that, these days, we've got multiple balance paradigms available for different subsystems and broad categories of abilities. But if I had to pick a preferred type of balance, it'd definitely be per-encounter. I really hope that becomes the norm for future core magic systems.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I was initially going to vote for Explicit Per Encounter, but the more I thought about it, the more I lean toward Implicit Per Encounter, with the 'cost' of an ability primarily being measured in opportunity cost, actions, and the consequences of failure.

The key element that a d20ish system needs to pull this off is, IMO, a viable counter system.

Using a powerful spell at the first opportunity should carry with it the real risk of losing that spell to a counterspell and then having to rely on weaker effects - whereas leading with a weaker effect might have drawn out the counterspell and given you free reign to unleash a powerful spell. Even worse, at higher levels where your best spells are most devastating, other spells allow an enemy to not only counter but redirect your spell, perhaps right back at you.

Using a devastating 'finishing move' should carry with it the real risk of leaving you open should it fail (or should another enemy be around to avenge his comrade) - whereas weakening your foe and pwning passing mooks with low-level attacks might have given you a better opening for your most powerful attack.

I'd also like to see powerful effects balanced by the number of actions it takes to use them and by the need to 'refresh' them before you can use them again. Star Wars Saga seems to be doing both.

Every gameplay element should present interesting choices in play.

Finally, I wouldn't mind seeing prepared spells, provided they all used the '15 minute preparation in an open spell slot' rule rather than the 'rest 8 hours' rule. Expend a spell slot in an encounter and you have to take a not-inconsiderable amount of time to refresh it, but it's not necessarily an amount of time you can't do in the middle of an adventure. Rather than being a matter of 'catching a second wind' (ala explicit per encounter) or the 'D&D day of 1-4 minute-long encounters followed by a 23 hour rest period' (ala per day), this system encourages the character to take a measured, cautious approach, especially when in enemy territory.

Especially since encounters in published adventures would assume the PCs DID take the time to recover, and would be merciless to those who didn't.