D&D 5E Why Balance is Bad

[MJS]

Balance is a good thing, but IMO best handled by designers, which every player is not. We have too many rules-lawyery, player-driven design choices, based on a very narrow, class vs. class notion of balance.

take 1E experience tables. These are beautifully balanced. But if players don't understand it, and only see it as near sibling rivalry with other PCs, game design shifts to appease that. This is the kind of "balance" that's bad.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Balance is a good thing, but IMO best handled by designers, which every player is not. We have too many rules-lawyery, player-driven design choices, based on a very narrow, class vs. class notion of balance.

Perhaps what this thread should really say is not "Balance is Bad" but "Player Entitlement is Bad".

Forget the power creep of classes over an edition's lifespan, there seems to also be a slow movement towards de-DM-ifying the DM and letting the players do things that take them out of their roles.

 

[billd91]

Balance is a good thing, but IMO best handled by designers, which every player is not. We have too many rules-lawyery, player-driven design choices, based on a very narrow, class vs. class notion of balance.

I don't think that's the case. Designers give you a starting place, but if the players don't recognize when they're out-doing each other, leaving each other behind, or causing trouble at the table and aren't willing to take the steps to correct it then the table's simply dysfunctional. This applies whether the issues are mechanical or are based on player skills and ingenuity. If they're not working together or at least in a mutually satisfactory style, then the players and their play is part, possibly even most, of the problem.

take 1E experience tables. These are beautifully balanced.

Very much going to disagree with that. They're a mess, particularly when coupled with the XP earning system and training which pretty much prevents a first level thief from getting to 2nd level until he would have had the XPs to get to 3rd.

But if players don't understand it, and only see it as near sibling rivalry with other PCs, game design shifts to appease that. This is the kind of "balance" that's bad.

But I generally agree here. If the players don't get it, no matter what it is, you're not going to get good results. Chasing that problem with game design and mechanics is not the solution.

 

[MJS]

I don't think that's the case. Designers give you a starting place, but if the players don't recognize when they're out-doing each other, leaving each other behind, or causing trouble at the table and aren't willing to take the steps to correct it then the table's simply dysfunctional. This applies whether the issues are mechanical or are based on player skills and ingenuity. If they're not working together or at least in a mutually satisfactory style, then the players and their play is part, possibly even most, of the problem.



Very much going to disagree with that. They're a mess, particularly when coupled with the XP earning system and training which pretty much prevents a first level thief from getting to 2nd level until he would have had the XPs to get to 3rd.



But I generally agree here. If the players don't get it, no matter what it is, you're not going to get good results. Chasing that problem with game design and mechanics is not the solution.

The XP tables themselves go off like clockwork in a campaign, beautifully balanced. I see it especially , perhaps ironically, with 2E CRPGs. Who'd have thunk, EGG actually knew what he was doing. : )
As for training, that is probably a better question for another forum. Maybe ask Frank Mentzer how he uses it in his 1E game.
I agree, Rules Lawyering is hard to chase through rules - better handled with a mace perhaps - but edition does have a major role. What is a "character build" if not RLering, built in and assumed?

 

[Shayuri]

A "character build" is just the sum total of choices a player makes to create the mechanical aspects of the character. In 1st Edition, a 'build' was your attributes, your class, and your equipment. If you were a spellcaster it also included which spells you had prepared.

Later editions added more player choices, in the form of proficiencies, kits, feats, skills, and so on...but the exercise of those options is not automatically rules-lawyering any more than a fighter choosing his rolled '18' to go in Strength.

Granted, the additional layers of choice add levels of complexity, and with that complexity arose the specter of unintentional outcomes...often in the form of synergies between choices that weren't planned on by designers, and led to dramatically overpowerful results. On the other end, some choices that were thematically appropriate were so anti-mechanical that players making those choices would be significantly handicapped, compared to the assumptions of the core rules regarding their abilities to overcome challenges.

The continuum isn't unique to D&D. More player choice typically does equal more need for increasingly elaborate rules to ensure those choices don't lead to 'rules sanctioned' yet woefully unbalanced results. Or, conversely, a system like FATE where near-total choice is embraced, and the results all stem from player-GM dialogue rather than a fixed rules system...and so balance is emergent from that dialogue rather than from rules.

The issue of rules-lawyering is fundamentally an issue between indivduals...player and GM...and their tolerances for the precarious 'frenemy' relationship between the mechanical and narrative aspects of building a character.

 

[Neonchameleon]

D&D combat does not need to be more than a few die rolls over the course of about 5 minutes. Not every fight is fatal, when you account for the difficulty of the overall adventure -- the encounter with the two goblins who harass the party is as vital as the encounter with the Goblin King and his 12 high priests of evil, because the resource attrition in the former affects the difficulty of the latter. There is variable intensity, and encounters can be dismissed quickly if the party wants to try that (the wizard fireballs them all, or the thief finds a secret passage that bypasses the encounter, or the fighter intimidates the leader and routes the whole group).

Which misses the point. The point is that fights with dragons should never be both short and victorious. In order to allow the thief to be poor at combat if they need to sit out of combats you need to take the dragons out of Dungeons & Dragons. It doesn't matter if the rogue misses the fight with the two goblins - or the wizard leaves it to the fighter. But unless you are going to make the encounter with the Goblin King and 12 high priests of evil as quick as the one with two goblin minions, it does matter that the thief won't be contributing to that.

Which means that the thief needs to sit out all the capstone combats. Precisely the worst things to be sitting out. Not only is the thief's player getting bored. But they are getting bored precisely at the moment everyone is supposed to be getting excited for the payoff.

I don't want to spend a lot of time on most combats in D&D. So if someone sucks at them for a minute or two, it's not a big deal. Because combat need not be the point, it can just be a few quick die rolls and we can all move on. It's one moment in a broader adventure.

Indeed. But if someone sucks at combat like the thief you can only have fights that last a minute or two. You can't fight a dragon. You can not fight the goblin king. All your fights must be short and simple. And, as I say, I consider removing the dragons from a game of Dungeons and Dragons to be kinda limiting.

Bench time and backstage time is fine, but if all I have is one line and all I do is touch the ball once a season, you might forgive me if I don't exactly make time every week, putting aside other activities and responsibilities, for about a year, to volunteer to mostly watch other people play D&D. No one is paid to play, there's nothing at stake, why would I sign up for that?

Possibly so. But what your proposal amounts to is telling the thief "Sure you can play. But we are simply going to bench you for the big games." Which is almost worse than being benched for the whole season so you can wander off with a clear conscience.

Of course the solution to this is to give the thief resource management on a par with the wizard. Somehow I doubt that will go down well.

That doesn't really make 'em crap, though.

It might help to think of it this way: the way that you show that you are good or bad at the Interaction pillar of 4e is via Skill Challenges. If there's a dragon you need to talk with, or a king you need to persuade, Skill Challenges are how 4e wants you to handle that.

In that format, say our Level 1 Fighter has an 8 CHA and no training in Diplomacy and they're up against a Moderate DC 12.

But then, this is a 4e Skill Challenge, so why do they need to use Diplomacy? Or Intimidate? Or any Cha-based skill? That player can use any skill she or he can convince the DM to let them use. Why can't they use, say, Endurance to show that they're not sweating the dragon's heat, or Athletics to impress the king by bench pressing his throne with him in it?

Because they are just going to get laughed at.

It has taken me a long time to understand why so many people have problems with 4e skill challenges. But I think I have it.

There are two fundamental approaches to game rules for RPGs. Prescriptive rules and descriptive rules.

Prescriptive Rules (like 3e and GURPS) say "You must do things this way. This is exactly how the game world works. If the rules let you do something you can do it. If the rules don't, you can't. Or you have to ignore the rules."

Descriptive rules (like Fate and most of 4e) say "We are all adults here. You, the players, know what is plausible in the specific situation you are in better than we, the writers, do most of the time. And especially in any way that will involve motivations and reactions. There is no such thing as a Standard Tree (DC15). Instead we're going to create an open rules system that provides interest, challenge, and balance. And we're going to expect you to do the basic work of keeping your fiction consistent and of applying the rules. We may nail down a few things, and those are generally things that you have no direct experience of, like magic (or like combat - no the SCA doesn't count) in order to help you make your fiction more consistent."

What matters in 4e that means you can't pick up the king on his throne? Why would that seriously help win the king over? The fiction, rather than the rules, is the focus of the game. The rules are just broad enough to enable and empower you to run the game easily when the PCs try exotic tricks of the sort that PCs come up with.

So to use an example from one of my games, a headbutt, resolved by an athletics check, has been the equivalent of a diplomacy check in a skill challenge. Doesn't match the fiction you think? The person being headbutted was a priest of Kord. And I'm sure my fellow Mass Effect players know about headbutting Krogan...

So to sum up, skill checks count towards the skill challenge if and only if they make sense as helping the skill challenge within the context of the fiction. If they don't? The DM is outright expected to ignore them for the skill challenge - or even count them as failures (see the intimidation check auto-failure in the first example).

Or, to put things another way, skill challenges work by assuming good faith. And giving the DM tools to handle things if the PCs act in bad faith. Arguments about "You could weightlift the king on his throne" are starting by giving a player acting in bad faith, and the DM not using the tools they are given and encouraged to use to deal with this.

But if PCs act in good faith, there is far more you can do with skills at the right time than the game rules would indicate. See, for example, headbutting Krogan or Kordites. A system that enables you to do things that are appropriate at the right times IMO is far more valuable than one that restricts you.

I come back to the LotR comparison. Samwise might have not done much in many of the fights, but his ability to be the team cheerleader was critical for the success of the overall adventure. If I want to play my character like Samwise, I don't want to bugger around with mighty fightin' time too much, but I really want to have a lot of options for dealing with keeping the party's courage and morale up over the long haul. And Gimli's going to be pretty useless there (though he'll be exactly who I want to kill goblins).

This is remarkably easy - if you accept the classic D&D contention that hit points are not substantially physical. But that's for another thread.

 

[Shayuri]

Hmm...at the risk of butting in, my reading of Kamikaze wasn't that he was complaining that the more open-ended skill challenge system of 4e was bad because it gave too much choice or somehow allowed too much flexibility of interpretation.

It was more an observation that the system allowed for a lot of blurring of concept and stepping-on of toes. If the barbarian can smite a dragon with one blow of his axe, and bring peace to warring nations by intimidating the two leaders into submission...why bother with a bard who cannot make war, but instead focuses on peace? In fact, his example seemed to complain that it was by and large not overly difficult for a person who had invested no resources at all into a skill to achieve the same results as someone who had invested everything into it.

The reasoning being that a doofus who rolls a 20 can, as a result of the binary 'pass/fail' system rolled into the skill challenge system, equal the the knowledge of a knowledgeable sage.

I don't necessarily see this as a problem myself, for the most part, since it can lead to moments of emergent comedy and allow a party otherwise unsuited to a challenge at least a chance for some success...but I can see where he's coming from. It can be frustrating to be outshined in one's specialty by a pair of dice rolls, especially if it happens with some frequency.

It might be nice if there were some tiered rewards for exceeding the minimum DC though. Like if you roll 5 higher than the DC you get 2 successes...or something. The details would need hammering, so as not to warp the system completely out of functionality. But it would give someone who'd invested in that ability the potential for superior results that cannot be replicated by mere happenstance.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't know about five minutes, but in editions before 3E i did find (and continue to find) combat is a lot shorter (especially if you don't use miniatures). Of course a combat with a dragon will take longer than a goblin (because they have more hp and are harder to hit), but even challenging combats don't need to take thirty minutes to an hour. I much prefer fast combat.

in terms of what i expect to be able to do, i am fine if my thief isn't great in combat and honestlyroft mind allowing the fighter or mu to shine in that moment while I assist in what ways i can (i would point out though in a dragon encounter, that is ideal for a thief to shine by sneaking in and stealing treasure).
By the same token, i don't expect all my characters to be able to contribute equally to political situations and other areas outside combat. I loved the pre 3E theives which were not well suited to combat at all. They were much more focused on things like sneaking, stealing, climbing, detecting and removing traps, etc.

 

[billd91]

There are two fundamental approaches to game rules for RPGs. Prescriptive rules and descriptive rules.

Prescriptive Rules (like 3e and GURPS) say "You must do things this way. This is exactly how the game world works. If the rules let you do something you can do it. If the rules don't, you can't. Or you have to ignore the rules."

Descriptive rules (like Fate and most of 4e) say "We are all adults here. You, the players, know what is plausible in the specific situation you are in better than we, the writers, do most of the time. And especially in any way that will involve motivations and reactions. There is no such thing as a Standard Tree (DC15). Instead we're going to create an open rules system that provides interest, challenge, and balance. And we're going to expect you to do the basic work of keeping your fiction consistent and of applying the rules. We may nail down a few things, and those are generally things that you have no direct experience of, like magic (or like combat - no the SCA doesn't count) in order to help you make your fiction more consistent."

This is a bogus spin as far as I'm concerned. 3e is no more or less prescriptive than 4e. The prescriptive/descriptive approach is what the players and DMs bring to the table. Are the rules a framework for the DM and players to use or are they the laws of the game? Does the table play RAI, RAW, or with liberal use of Rule 0? That's fundamentally an aspect of play style.

 

[keterys]

3e is no more or less prescriptive than 4e.

3e definitely is - which is both a strength and weakness, depending what you're looking for.

But if you're looking to know that a ledge of X-inches width has a certain DC or how many silver you earn from a week of blacksmithing, 3e is your system.

In 4e the fighter might say his background is as a master blacksmith and he might do an off-the-cuff Athletics or Endurance check to create something as a gift, making a skill check in a skill challenge.

For some, the first is way more detail than desired, for others it's an assist to verisimilitude and simulation accuracy.
For some, the latter is way too fiddly and meaningless, for others it's essential freedom to play the character their way.

We wouldn't have so many arguments about the systems if they didn't have some notable differences; it is okay to acknowledge them.

The prescriptive/descriptive approach is what the players and DMs bring to the table. Are the rules a framework for the DM and players to use or are they the laws of the game? Does the table play RAI, RAW, or with liberal use of Rule 0? That's fundamentally an aspect of play style.

This is all very true, as well, of course, and well put.