D&D 5E Why Balance is Bad

[Manbearcat]

Texicles it's actually fairly simple. Throughout 3e, there was a pretty common refrain that because 3e was more balanced than earlier editions, DnD had jumped the shark and was no longer "really" DnD.

I remember that refrain. After playing it for so long, what became interesting in retrospect (to me at least) is that the effort to balance the classes

1) was primarily a "numbers on paper" veneer. Just like American Football is typically decided by swingy things like "big plays" (on 3rd down and in the 4th quarter specifically) and turnovers, rather than on the numbers on paper going in to the contest, 3.x follows the same paradigm.

2) only had a tangible effect on play through somewhere around level 4.

With respect to the various vectors of balance as GM, by the end of my tenure of playing:

A) On challenge balance or expectant encounter (GM-side) results, I felt the CR system was adequate up to about level 7 and proved relatively up to the challenge of its design scheme. However, after about level 7, it was so off-kilter that I was probably functionally better at eyeballing challenges in 1e and 2e than I was in 3.x.

B) On class balance, I felt that after around level 4, the classes were more poorly balanced than its predecessors.

- The Monk was better than in 1e but that was such a low threshold to cross as to be meaningless. See (1) above regarding numbers. The Monk looked "great" on paper because "numbers" and "lack of dead levels". In actual play? Not so much.

- The Rogue was significantly better at combat but was stretched thin with respect to skills due to the decoupling of various Athletics, Stealth, Perception, and Thievery skills (even with 8 + skill points). I think its generally safe to say that this class was an improvement over its predecessors.

- The Fighter is where things really, really went south. The 1e UA and the 2e Combat and Tactics (especially with Heroic Fray) Fighters were absolute monsters in combat. Monsters. And 2e's NWP and kits let Fighters round out archetype a bit. The Saving Throw paradigm discrepancy twixt 3.x and its predecessors crushed the Fighter...right in his Fightery face. The Fighter was worse in 3.x in every way. And this "worseness" scaled negatively; solid at low levels but you really shouldn't be taking more than 4 levels (qualifying you for weapon spec), if that. Meanwhile...

- The Cleric, Druid, and Wizard (and the introduction of the Sorcerer) became better in every way than their predecessors (except maybe the 2e Specialty Priest) and this "betterness" scaled. Saving Throw paradigm, spell proliferation, and PC-side magic item creation Candyland made spellcasting classes even more difficult to budget for encounter-wise (as GM) and for martial PCs to maintain competitive parity with.

So while there was more "hero protection" and less swingy "insta-gib" deaths than its predecessors (this refrain actually held up to scrutiny), 3.x was in no way more balanced class-wise and, shortly after introductory levels, became unintuitive encounter budget-wise (mostly due to spellcasting's effect on misrepresenting ECL). Its interesting to look at the (often wrong) reactionary responses to editions in retrospect (with a refined eye born of considerable experience with the ruleset). The grognardian impulse to castigate 3.x for its "tightening of balance" was just a reactionary instinct due to the veneer of reorganization of information (BAB, Saves, uniform XP, transparent magic item creation system). It didn't turn out that way in actual play.

 

[Dausuul]

Keep in mind that class balance was not a novelty introduced by 3E. D&D has been pursuing class balance since the beginning, as evidenced by the Gygax quote people are kicking around in the other thread. But the approaches have changed.

AD&D's approach to balance was scattershot--the designers built each class from the ground up, more or less, and then tried to eyeball it. 3E set out to tighten this up by building all the classes on a unified core: BAB with iterative attacks, good and bad saves, a single XP chart, et cetera. This worked well for some classes, not so well for others. The 4E designers decided 3E just hadn't gone far enough, and standardized everything in sight. This succeeded in achieving tight balance, but a large fraction of the player base felt too much was sacrificed to get there.

5E seems to be taking a step back toward the AD&D approach. The core mechanics are a bit less standardized than 3E; for instance, iterative attacks are gone, and feat schedules are custom by class, instead of coming on a fixed schedule with a few classes giving bonuses.

 

[Imaro]

I'm honestly a little curious about the degree of opposition to balance held by those of you who take a fairly generalized "balance is bad" stance. I'm mostly referring to class balance, and "you" is not directed any specific individual.

Would you say that you feel that, ceteris paribus, balance is actually less preferable than imbalance? i.e. if the game is balanced it will suffer for the mere fact that it's balanced.

or...

Would you say that you feel that balance is bad because you don't necessarily think it's good? i.e. you'd prefer not to have balance, you'd rather development focus on something else, etc.


Obviously, over the course of this (and other, recent, similar threads), no small number of individuals on this forum have stated that they value balance. We must assume, unless anyone produces statistical data, that the weight of your distaste for balance is roughly equal to the weight of balance preference, and that posters here are a rough approximation of the D&D community writ large.

In the case of the latter group, the answer is pretty simple really: balance the classes, because while it's not a priority for you, some people do want that in their game. You can ignore it and the people who want it, get it. Your fun and my fun are not mutually exclusive.

In the case of the former though, I feel like people who think balance is literally bad, in and of itself, are saying that what they want out of a game is more important than what I, or anyone else who favors balance, wants. I call shenanigans. In this case, your fun and my fun are mutually exclusive, so one of us will get what we want out of 5e and the other won't, but neither of us get to decide, so there isn't much point playing "I want this not that, and if you want that, you're wrong" and trying to pretend it's discussion and debate.

Texicles I can only speak for myself... and I won't say I am of the generalized "balance is bad" group... but I think the fact that one of 4e's main touted selling points was how tight the math was and how balanced the game was supposed to be (which I don't think it actually is but that's a discussion for another time). On top of that many people during the 3.x era had made imbalance one of, if not the number one, complaint against D&D at the time... and finally also add to that the fact that for many people this "balanced" edition of D&D was the least fun edition they had ever played... and you've got a recipe where for many, any focus on balancing the game ends up reminding us these complaints got us 4e... and that was not a good thing.

I think the problem is many of us didn't like the way 4e went about "balancing" the game and it's left a bad taste in our mouth when the cries of "balance!!" start to rising up again. For many of us, a "balanced" game has become secondary to a game we actually enjoy and have fun playing. Is it a knee jerk reaction, maybe but I would say after 4e WotC has kind of earned it (at least from those of us who didn't enjoy 4e). I'd also cite that many of the examples of balanced games (such as HeroQuest as cited numerous times by @pemerton) have so little resemblance to the D&D that I want and enjoy that I don't care how balanced using them as a model would make the game, for D&D play it won't be a fun game for me or my group and that's what matters most to us.

EDIT: Perhaps to make this post a little more useful... I don't think many are down for just proclaiming "balance needs to be fixed"... we been there, done that and when we left it in general terms for WotC to fix didn't get something we enjoyed. I think the only way "fix the balance!!" isn't going to draw this reaction from a portion of the fanbase is for there to be specifics that can be judged on their own merits. Like I said, for me I'm not looking for D&D HeroQuest edition, or D&D FATE edition or D&D Marvel Heroes rpg... I've played or read each of these games and while they may be good games in their own right for certain playstyles... they are definitely too narrow as far as their supported playstyles go, to be what I am looking for in a D&D experience.

 

[Texicles]

Texicles it's actually fairly simple. Throughout 3e, there was a pretty common refrain that because 3e was more balanced than earlier editions, DnD had jumped the shark and was no longer "really" DnD.

4e took balance even further and the whole edition warring facade simply shifted forward.

So, are you saying you (or if not you then the hypothetical anti-balance position) feel balance is bad because historically, others may (or may not) have said as much at varying points in D&D's history? If so, where does the correlation (X edition is balanced and people don't like it) become causation (people don't like X edition because it's balanced)? I'm not trying to call you out, just trying to get a handle on why people take the stances they do.

The common refrain I'm seeing from the anti-balance folks is, "I should be able to make a character who sucks at combat and is awesome in social or exploration scenarios."

Worth noting, this is not actually an "anti-balance" position. It's an argument for changing the scope of balance, to balance across all three pillars at once instead of within each pillar. 5E is doing some cross-pillar balancing already. The rogue is better at social and exploration scenarios than the fighter but strictly worse in combat (slightly lower damage, significantly weaker defense). I would argue that taking this to extremes, where you build characters that are actually useless in combat and completely dominate somewhere else, is undesirable for the standard PHB classes, because it leads to situations where half the time Sneaky McRogue is sitting around doing nothing, and the other half everyone else is sitting around watching Sneaky do everything. If provided at all, this should be an advanced option in supplemental material.

(I do hope that we get at least a few options for "support" combatants, though--characters whose combat contributions don't involve dishing out damage. Someone brought up the idea of a "white mage" who only heals and buffs, never attacking. I think this is a great idea and I want to see it. Likewise, I'm a big fan of the control wizard who would never dream of dirtying his hands with bat guano, and the trickster rogue who distracts and confounds opponents instead of stabbing them to death. Such concepts are challenging to design, but IMO worth the effort.)

My own position is broadly in the pro-balance camp, but I do think 4E sacrificed too much in pursuit of the perfect combat balance. In particular, cramming every class into the rigid AEDU structure was a huge mistake. It created unnecessary complexity (fighters getting a dozen minor variations on "I hit it with my sword") and ill-served players who weren't fond of the AEDU mechanic. In traditional D&D, if you hate Vancian magic, you have the option of playing a noncaster or (in 3E) a spontaneous caster. In 4E, if you hate AEDU, you're screwed, or at least you were until Essentials. Fortunately, 5E seems to be doing much better at maintaining solid balance while preserving the diversity of class mechanics.

I with you, though I think you're giving a little too much credit to some of the anti-balance crowd in this thread et al. When I framed my previous post, I very intentionally left out the distinct level of balance (encounter vs session or campaign) because I actually would like to see a... erm, balance... between those things, however, I've seen lots of characterization of my position - balance is good - as demanding some level of numerical parity in combat and only combat that has frankly, never existed in any edition.

I'm actually for a reasonable level of combat balance. Can't remember who said it, or in which of these threads, but I like it and will paraphrase it here. Using the maligned metric of DPR (which I'll reiterate is NOT my chief concern in playing the game, but it's useful to illustrate a ratio), I'd like to see, ceteris paribus, the most optimized damage dealer do roughly twice the damage of the skill monkey, with a 10-15% deviation for skilled play.

That is, of course, assuming that the PCs in question are designed to deal damage in combat. PCs designed to be horrific at fighting, as well as the "white mage," etc. are obvious exceptions that I believe should be perfectly doable in an ideal system. Furthermore, this is intended as an average, not some hard and fast rule that I feel must apply to every encounter ever. Sometimes, an encounter where a particular PC is rendered useless in combat is fine by me, but those instances should be meaningful and uncommon.

Outside of combat, I'm all for the "moving spotlight" paradigm, so long as that spotlight can reasonably be expected to shine on PCs with some frequency. Again, this is assuming that PCs are built to do things out of combat. The aforementioned optimized damage dealer can't be expected to contribute much outside of stabby/smashy, and that's fine by me as well.

Really, what I want to see is the above (IMO) ideals, applied to a new player rolling a new PC with little to no help from an experienced player. I believe that the game should lend itself to creating a character that doesn't suck nor dominate at any of the three pillars, individually or as a whole, without intentionally doing so. To me, that's the balance I'm looking for.

Jeez, thanks for getting me on a tangent Dausuul! I never intended to talk about what I want, just try to understand the "opposition" as 'twere.


Which brings me back to that. Something I'm still having trouble with is the concept of bringing in any edition into the value debate of balance. If people want to discuss the merits of balance as a concept, that's awesome, count me as pro-balance (as described above). But I can't get behind characterizing an entire game system comprising a specific edition of D&D as good or bad because of balance. Yes, I recognize that different editions placed different premiums on balance, and implemented balance in different ways, but to distill any edition down to its level of balance and apply one's valuation of balance to any edition, or to do the inverse and apply one's opinion of an entire edition to the valuation of balance, strikes me as either poor argumentation or dishonest discussion.

If the value of balance as a game design concept is what we want to debate, we should probably divest ourselves from the baggage of previous editions, not to mention the fact that there's much more to any edition than its level of balance (real or perceived). If on the other hand, what we want to do is have an edition war under the auspices of a discussion on balance... yuck.

 

[GreyLord]

Keep in mind that class balance was not a novelty introduced by 3E. D&D has been pursuing class balance since the beginning, as evidenced by the Gygax quote people are kicking around in the other thread. But the approaches have changed.

AD&D's approach to balance was scattershot--the designers built each class from the ground up, more or less, and then tried to eyeball it. 3E set out to tighten this up by building all the classes on a unified core: BAB with iterative attacks, good and bad saves, a single XP chart, et cetera. This worked well for some classes, not so well for others. The 4E designers decided 3E just hadn't gone far enough, and standardized everything in sight. This succeeded in achieving tight balance, but a large fraction of the player base felt too much was sacrificed to get there.

5E seems to be taking a step back toward the AD&D approach. The core mechanics are a bit less standardized than 3E; for instance, iterative attacks are gone, and feat schedules are custom by class, instead of coming on a fixed schedule with a few classes giving bonuses.

I've actually stated this before...the "balance" for AD&D and the new WotC versions were different types of balances. The AD&D balance is the older, more usual balance understood by a majority of the world at the time...and crossed over into the gaming habitat of wargamers.

The NEW WotC and RPG balance are new things created by RPG players who normally have no understanding of the older type of balance. Not that it is WRONG, it is simply DIFFERENT and hence a completely different mindset.

The former, level limits, different advancement rates, and other items make a LOT of sense.

In the latter...most can't even understand why such archaic notions would be put into a game. They have a different notion of balance.

As I had put into another thread

The balance of AD&D had everything to do with wargaming roots (inclusive of differeing power levels, balance through XP, limited levels for races, to hit tables (a wargaming tenet) etc.) but that didn't mean thieves fought halfway as well as fighters once you went up in XP. It meant that thieves were skilled in other things and their balance was in bringing forth the ability to sneak up on someone and pick their pocket, or read a foreign language, or climb a wall, etc.

This entire balance thing is NOT of the wargaming clan, but of the new RPG gamers that came after and never knew the balance of wargaming, nor understood it, so they created their own NEW type of balance where the Rogue and the Fighter all had the same ability to hit.

Clarification: Just to add, NOT ALL of the new RP Clan felt this way, just enough that it has made an impact on what SOME view as "balance" these days. There are others who feel differently.

Basically, for an analogy....

AD&D and balance would be more akin to the creation of a racecar team. With the racecar team there is no way you want everyone to be the driver. You wouldn't have the strategist nor would you have the mechanics. You'd drop into a pit stop...and there'd be no one to fix the car. Everyone needs to have different abilities and different skills because they do different things. That doesn't mean one is far more important than the other...it means they have different purposes. Because they are different, they advance in different ways and learn in different ways. They do things differently, yet all are vitally important to the success of the race. In this you want a good balance of different folks to balance out the group.

A Fighter will excel in combat and tackle those obstacles. A Thief isn't expected to fight...and instead deals with obstacles like traps, or finding things ahead and avoiding them. The Cleric is to heal, pray, and sustain the others...almost a support in many instances. They also aren't supposed to be seeking out battle, and some of them may even want to actively avoid any battle (clerics of peace for example). Wizards can be that tackle all, to fill in gaps or utilize their various toolbox (spells memorized) to overcome the unexpected. They are definitely not fighters. Everyone has roles which are important and NOT necessarily centered on one aspect of the game.

WotC versions are more like balancing the wheels of the car. This is also pretty important to have the right balance in a car. If the wheels aren't balanced, you will wear one side far more than the other or go through your tires more quickly. In the worst case scenarios it can cause bad vibrations the faster you go and possibly cause a wreck.

Here you want Rogues able to do something just as much as Fighters or spellcasters in combat.

Wait!? You say, these are two totally and completely different concepts. They may both be called balance...but these are two separate things entirely. They aren't even the same definition.

Of which I say...exactly.

 

[Fanaelialae]

WotC versions are more like balancing the wheels of the car. This is also pretty important to have the right balance in a car. If the wheels aren't balanced, you will wear one side far more than the other or go through your tires more quickly. In the worst case scenarios it can cause bad vibrations the faster you go and possibly cause a wreck.

Here you want Rogues able to do something just as much as Fighters or spellcasters in combat.

Wait!? You say, these are two totally and completely different concepts. They may both be called balance...but these are two separate things entirely. They aren't even the same definition.

Of which I say...exactly.

I don't think that's a good analogy. Classes in the WoTC versions aren't the same, and you wouldn't want a racecar with a snow tire, an all-weather tire, and two other miscellaneous types of tires.

A better analogy might be a bridge crew. You've got your weapons station for dishing it out, shields station for redirecting damage from critical systems, jamming station for interfering with the enemy's capabilities, and an engineer to fix damage and boost systems that need it.

I do think I see what you're getting at though.

While driving it's the driver who shines, while in the pit stop he sits back while the mechanic shines. The focus is the adventure (or campaign), pit stops and all.

In the case of the bridge crew, they all shine in different ways, but largely within the scope of battle. The focus is the battle, and outside of that the definition might change altogether.

I can see the value in both kinds of balance, and I do believe that a good RPG should have elements of both, to varying degrees. Personally, I prioritize the combat balance (IMO, if you get combat right the rest is fairly easy to sort out). In all fairness though, while we love to role play, my gaming group also loves a good battle.

 

[pemerton]

I'd also cite that many of the examples of balanced games (such as HeroQuest as cited numerous times by pemerton) have so little resemblance to the D&D that I want and enjoy that I don't care how balanced using them as a model would make the game, for D&D play it won't be a fun game for me or my group and that's what matters most to us.

<snip>

I'm not looking for D&D HeroQuest edition, or D&D FATE edition or D&D Marvel Heroes rpg... I've played or read each of these games and while they may be good games in their own right for certain playstyles... they are definitely too narrow as far as their supported playstyles go, to be what I am looking for in a D&D experience.

I think looking at those other systems is helpful - important, even - to avoid getting stuck in too narrow a conception fo what an RPG can look like in mechanical terms. I think it's obvious that D&Dnext won't look like any of them (4e doesn't look like any of them either - the closest it comes is in its skill system, but that is only part, and perhaps a lesser part, of the 4e build and resolution mechanics); but looking at those games can help us appreciate the consequences and implications of various design choices.

A couple of examples to help explain what I mean:

In discussions of class balance it is very common to focus on the PC build rules, and ignore the encounter building and action resolution rules - whereas the encounter building and action resolution rules, and the way they integrate with the PC build rules, are pretty crucial to balance (and I think this is part of what explains the disparity between "reading" and "playing" that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] mentions in his post upthread). HeroQuest revised has some of the tightest integration of these various elements of an RPG ruleset that I know of, and that integration is crucial to its paticular solution to the balance problem.

13th Age keeps character build rules that are much closer to traditional D&D than to HeroQuest, but therefore - in order to solve the balance problem - takes a very drastic approach in encounter building: the daily cycle is defined by the game not in terms of ingame passage of time, but in terms of number of on-level encounters faced by the PCs.

Both Essentials 4e and D&Dnext (as per the playtest) have traditional D&D PC build rules (ie different resource suites, like 13th Age and unlike the 4e PHB), but no hard constraints around encounter building. This then puts a lot of pressure on the action resolution rules to produce "balance" as an emergent quality (eg in D&Dnext the Concentration mechanic has to put a brake on caster nova-ing, in order to avoid a 5-minute day approach making casters overpowered relative to those classes with "at-will" suits of resources). Assuming that D&Dnext in its final version contains class design and a Concentration mechanic somewhat comparable to the current playtest version, I think we can anticipate over the life of the edition ongoing debates about whether various spells have been mis-designed, and should have Concentration as a limitation but don't, and thereby give rise to an imbalance of mechanical effectiveness across different PC classes.

D&Dnext's design also puts a lot of pressure on NPC/monster design, I think: if these opponents have too great a capacity to focus-fire the PC fighters and thereby drain them of hit points, thus causing the clerics to run through their healing spells too quickly, thus creating 5-minute day pressures which also then encourage the wizards to nova, there is the danger of a positive feedback loop pushing towards imbalance of effectiveness across the various classes. (Arguably 3E above mid-levels suffers from a vesion of this feedback loop - I say this not on the basis of my own play experience, which is very limited, but on the basis of the large amount of commentary that I have read.)

These comments aren't intended as objections to D&Dnext: just observations about some of the design pressures it is under given some of the (other) design choices that have been made. And looking at other examples of RPG design, which deal with these issues in other ways, I think can help make these pressures easier to identify and analyse.

I've actually stated this before...the "balance" for AD&D and the new WotC versions were different types of balances.

<snip>

AD&D and balance would be more akin to the creation of a racecar team.

<snip>

A Fighter will excel in combat and tackle those obstacles. A Thief isn't expected to fight...and instead deals with obstacles like traps, or finding things ahead and avoiding them. The Cleric is to heal, pray, and sustain the others...almost a support in many instances. They also aren't supposed to be seeking out battle, and some of them may even want to actively avoid any battle (clerics of peace for example). Wizards can be that tackle all, to fill in gaps or utilize their various toolbox (spells memorized) to overcome the unexpected. They are definitely not fighters. Everyone has roles which are important and NOT necessarily centered on one aspect of the game.

WotC versions are more like balancing the wheels of the car.

<snip>

Here you want Rogues able to do something just as much as Fighters or spellcasters in combat.

Wait!? You say, these are two totally and completely different concepts. They may both be called balance...but these are two separate things entirely. They aren't even the same definition.

Of which I say...exactly.

I completely agree that "balance" can have different, perhaps mutually exclusive, meanings. In the other thread I posted a passage from Ron Edwards running through a dozen or so different notions of "balance" and making exactly that point.

As to the comparison between classic and contemporary D&D, I think there is a logic to the change in focus - it is not simply changing tastes (although these are part of it).

The innovation of RPGing compared to wargaming is the one-to-one ratio of players to figures. This fairly naturally promotes a focus by the player upon the PC, who therefore evolves in play from a mere "figure" to a full-fledged "character", who has a backstory, a personality, and a potential story-arc. There are aspects of taste in this change of orientation towards the PC, but I think it is not merely taste: the basic logic of RPGing - that one-to-one ratio - encourages this sort of dramatic identification of player with character.

Once the dramatic identification has taken place, it then creates a degree of pressure on play itself, and the design of the fictional situation in which the PC finds him-/herself, to express and develop that potential story-arc. The end-point of this pressure is the "encounter as the locus of play" found in 4e, but the pressure can express itself in many ways falling short of that end-point. It's most basic expression is found in the PC, as played by the player, not seeking to avoid conflict but rather to take part in it: because it is conflict, and the resolution of conflict, that expresses the personality of the PC and (over time) yields the PC's story arc.

There is no essential connection between conflicts and story arcs, on the one hand, and combat on the other: but here two other factors come into play. First, with its mechanical origins in wargaming, D&D has always had reasonably robust conflict resolution mechanics for combat, while being much more rough-and-ready for other dimensins of conflict resolution. Second, a lot of fantasy fiction and heroic fiction emphasises conflict as the ultimate site of coflict resolution. These two factors have tended to mean that the seeking out of conflict and resolution for the PC becomes the seeking out of combat.

There is a fairly well-known division in D&D gaming, dating back at least to the late 80s, between those who emphasise "story" and "roleplaying" and downplay combat, and those who emphasise player empowerment via the mechanics, and (as something of a side effect, given D&D's mechanical emphasis on combat) thereby do not downplay combat to the same extent. (This division doesn't cover all D&D players, obviously - eg it doesn't cover those who are still playing in a classic Gygaxian/wargaming style.)

Speaking at a high level of generality, those in the first camp don't particularly care about mechanical balance, because they are not generally relying heavily upon action resolution mechanics for resolving the conflicts in their games: that is mostly the role of the GM/storyteller. (A side effect of this is that those who don't like this approach are likely to characterise it as railroading and/or GM-force illusionism.) Those in the second camp, who rely heavily on the action resolution mechanics, are likely to care quite a bit about some form of balance of effectiveness. And because D&D has traditionally emphasised combat in its action resolution mechanics, they are likely to care about this not just across all "pillars" but within the combat pillar in particular.

I personally think these differences of approach can be seen pretty easily in the current balance threads. Though I also accept that I may be projecting my own analytical framework onto what I read in them.

 

[Manbearcat]

In discussions of class balance it is very common to focus on the PC build rules, and ignore the encounter building and action resolution rules - whereas the encounter building and action resolution rules, and the way they integrate with the PC build rules, are pretty crucial to balance (and I think this is part of what explains the disparity between "reading" and "playing" that @Manbearcat mentions in his post upthread). HeroQuest revised has some of the tightest integration of these various elements of an RPG ruleset that I know of, and that integration is crucial to its paticular solution to the balance problem.

As a GM, this is the aspect of balance that is most important to me. To wit, an analogy that likely won't work for some folks (while I find instructive):

A forensic engineer investigates a site to discern the cause and origin of a currently unknown event. Going in, he will (i) have a considerable breadth of knowledge of physical phenomenon (a forensic knowledge base) to call upon, (ii) robust experience and training in the component parts of the applied sciences that are relevant to what he is investigating, and (iii) enough detailed information on the present event to propose a few initial surmises (hypotheses) as to what the cause and origin of the event was. He will then look for (iv) independent lines of evidence to support or render null his various surmises. Finally, through this process and these resources (v) he will reach a conclusion and submit his report/findings for peer review (formal playing of the encounter challenge).

A GM has a key role as a forensic engineer at the table. He is deconstructing challenges from a thematic idea into their component mechanical parts. He is then reconstructing those component mechanical parts into a machine (the encounter challenge) such that he should have a robust understanding of precisely what it is that he has created and precisely how it will work. The more functional and transparent the process is, the more precise his understanding will be (much like the forensic engineer investigating for cause and origin). The more precise his understanding will be, the more likely his forensic undertaking will be robust. Obviously the opposite also stands. The more dysfunctional and opaque the process, the less precise his understanding will be, and the more sensitive the final product will be to any unforeseen/un(mis)qualified variable of input...leading to variance/aberration in the final product more often than he would like.

Any deep variance (imbalance), especially of the unquantified or inappropriately quantified variety, will lead to "GM as poor forensic engineer" which will lead to a proportionate number of anticlimactic challenges for the PCs. BBEGs may turn into walkovers and sentry ganking may turn deadly. As a 25 + year GM, I've dealt with both of those scenarios and I think I can speak for most GMs in saying we aren't a fan of either of those outcomes.

Players won't have a forensic level of understanding of what they are undertaking. It will be well-informed by the fiction and by their own understanding of the mechanical processes at work coupled with their PC resources (and their allies'). However, GMs most certainly should have a forensic-level understanding of their encounters and the encounter building process and component parts (of which accurate PCC and MonsterC quantification is imperative) should support that forensic-level understanding.

 

[Ahnehnois]

A) On challenge balance or expectant encounter (GM-side) results, I felt the CR system was adequate up to about level 7 and proved relatively up to the challenge of its design scheme. However, after about level 7, it was so off-kilter that I was probably functionally better at eyeballing challenges in 1e and 2e than I was in 3.x.

CRs were, and they remain, a bad idea. Fortunately an easily ignored one.

- The Monk was better than in 1e but that was such a low threshold to cross as to be meaningless. See (1) above regarding numbers. The Monk looked "great" on paper because "numbers" and "lack of dead levels". In actual play? Not so much.

I agree with you. It looks better on paper than it is because of its limitations. It really needs the full BAB, and maybe some other rethinking. They loaded it down with powers to the point where it feels like a really good class, but in actual play it isn't, mostly because of stuff that isn't readily apparent on a class table (MAD, items, etc.).

- The Rogue was significantly better at combat but was stretched thin with respect to skills due to the decoupling of various Athletics, Stealth, Perception, and Thievery skills (even with 8 + skill points). I think its generally safe to say that this class was an improvement over its predecessors.

I never liked SA, but yes the rogue is a bit stretched on skills (as are all the classes, with rogues it matters more).

- The Fighter is where things really, really went south. The 1e UA and the 2e Combat and Tactics (especially with Heroic Fray) Fighters were absolute monsters in combat. Monsters. And 2e's NWP and kits let Fighters round out archetype a bit. The Saving Throw paradigm discrepancy twixt 3.x and its predecessors crushed the Fighter...right in his Fightery face. The Fighter was worse in 3.x in every way. And this "worseness" scaled negatively; solid at low levels but you really shouldn't be taking more than 4 levels (qualifying you for weapon spec), if that.

And, in essence I agree with that. The lack of medium saving throws and assigning only one good save to most martial classes was a bad decision. I also agree that the dead levels start to add up and that there isn't nearly enough incentive to play the class to high levels (even though I've seen it done successfully). In practice, this is papered over by multiclassing; yes there isn't much reason to take beyond 4 levels of fighter, but since you don't have to, people just take a prestige class soon after.

No, this is not ideal, and yes, the fighter needs both better defensive numbers and abilities to fill in the dead levels that are good enough to keep the class viable for all twenty levels.

- The Cleric, Druid, and Wizard (and the introduction of the Sorcerer) became better in every way than their predecessors (except maybe the 2e Specialty Priest) and this "betterness" scaled. Saving Throw paradigm, spell proliferation, and PC-side magic item creation Candyland made spellcasting classes even more difficult to budget for encounter-wise (as GM) and for martial PCs to maintain competitive parity with.

Even this I only kind of disagree with. The saving throws for divine characters are undeservedly good, it is too easy to acquire too many different spells. Magic item creation is a theoretical problem that requires the PCs to have a lot of time, but I could imagine it going wrong. And there is definitely more there in the rarified air of high levels for the magical characters, perhaps too much.

So while there was more "hero protection" and less swingy "insta-gib" deaths than its predecessors (this refrain actually held up to scrutiny), 3.x was in no way more balanced class-wise and, shortly after introductory levels, became unintuitive encounter budget-wise (mostly due to spellcasting's effect on misrepresenting ECL). Its interesting to look at the (often wrong) reactionary responses to editions in retrospect (with a refined eye born of considerable experience with the ruleset). The grognardian impulse to castigate 3.x for its "tightening of balance" was just a reactionary instinct due to the veneer of reorganization of information (BAB, Saves, uniform XP, transparent magic item creation system). It didn't turn out that way in actual play.

And you know what, the funny thing is I even kind of agree with this.

However, I draw different conclusions. One, is that the effort to create balance is self-defeating. The problem with 3e (or 4e) isn't that it's too balanced, it's that someone tried to balance it unnecessarily, and the law of unintended consequences came into play.

Two, is that a lot of the problems I read aren't really balance issues between classes, it's simply a question of one class not being right within itself. For example, saves. It's not right that a hardened warrior has poor will saves. They should be fearless and tough (and perhaps fast as well, the poor ref seems to assume some lumbering hulk that can't get out of the way of danger). It's also not right that a cleric has good fort and will saves. Why are they so special? Does being devoted make you more resilient? I would think the opposite. The comparison between those classes looks unfavorable as a result, but the reason it's wrong is not because cleric>fighter, it's because neither class's save mechanics appropriately represent the concept. Saves, as implemented, aren't nuanced enough or flexible enough, and often give the wrong bonuses to the wrong people.

Similarly, the issues with magic are internal. You're channeling mysterious power that you have no control over. Why does it work without a die roll? Why do you have such a free range of choices? Shouldn't your god pick your spells for you? Or at least you have to do some work and meet some prerequisites in order to cast a spell.

The thing is, one could completely and thoroughly fix all of the issues you described above, which by and large I agree with and even sometimes felt the need to revise for, but you'd still have fundamentally different characters that aren't equal with each other on a one-on-one basis. A fighter with a tough mind, a new parrying mechanic, and some cool attack effects or something, and a sorcerer whose spells blow up in his face now and then and who gets tired after the first few, are still very different. They're just different and better designed.

 

[pemerton]

The thing is, one could completely and thoroughly fix all of the issues you described above, which by and large I agree with and even sometimes felt the need to revise for, but you'd still have fundamentally different characters that aren't equal with each other on a one-on-one basis. A fighter with a tough mind, a new parrying mechanic, and some cool attack effects or something, and a sorcerer whose spells blow up in his face now and then and who gets tired after the first few, are still very different.

Hmm. That reminds me og a game I play!