Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
Tyrants don't really care about the people who get oppressed by their regimes, but I don't think that makes a good argument for totalitarianism.
Also, the SPACE bar hired a lawyer and is suing due to criminal neglect.
D&D 5E Why Balance is Bad
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
Also, the SPACE bar hired a lawyer and is suing due to criminal neglect.
pming
Legend
Hiya.
Overall, I think the current (re: post-2nd edition) designers WotC has had working for them have mistakenly (or ignorantly?) mixed up "character balance" with "campaign balance".
IMHO, pre-3e games had a focus on campaign balance, with character balance being perhaps second or third in terms of importance. In earlier versions of the game, a "campaign" was expected to last years, not months. It was generally held, at least in my experience, that a DM had his "campaign world" (home-brewed, or bought) and when he was DM'ing, it was assumed it was in his own internally consistant campaign. One DM's Greyhawk campaign was NOT equal to another's. This was good. Anyway, over the course of years, the "balance" of the classes and races was, well, balanced. Individual DM's would often tweak the rules to suit their particular campaigns...also a GOOD thing. So, that 3rd level magic-user did "suck"...but the 9th level magic-user certainly did not suck. The 3rd level fighter didn't suck, nor did the 9th level fighter. And all the other classes found their niche in the overal multi-year campaign structure and internal consistancy.
In that context, the game was "balanced". Yes, a 1st level 1e barbarian rocked-on-toast, and at 5th level that barbarian was a *beast* in combat and in pure survival capability; meanwhile the 1st level magic-user with 1 spell sucked donkey-snacks. This was NOT balanced in terms of 1st level vs. 1st level. But, when taking the PC's through the course of, say, a 3 year campaign, it *was* balanced.
In relation to 5th edition D&D...I also don't much care for a "class balance" focus. I don't *want* that kind of balance....I want the game to aspire to greater things than simply "a game to play for a few months then shelve" (where in the majority of the game is exeperienced; re: characters get to 20th level). I want 5e to encourage s-l-o-w advenacement, as compaired to modern day fast advencement. I want someone claiming to have an 11th level cleric to be an actual achievement to be proud of...as opposed to be an achievement that is expected. In this regard, I want 5e to have much more focus on "campaign balance", and not get hung up on "class balance".
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Overall, I think the current (re: post-2nd edition) designers WotC has had working for them have mistakenly (or ignorantly?) mixed up "character balance" with "campaign balance".
IMHO, pre-3e games had a focus on campaign balance, with character balance being perhaps second or third in terms of importance. In earlier versions of the game, a "campaign" was expected to last years, not months. It was generally held, at least in my experience, that a DM had his "campaign world" (home-brewed, or bought) and when he was DM'ing, it was assumed it was in his own internally consistant campaign. One DM's Greyhawk campaign was NOT equal to another's. This was good. Anyway, over the course of years, the "balance" of the classes and races was, well, balanced. Individual DM's would often tweak the rules to suit their particular campaigns...also a GOOD thing. So, that 3rd level magic-user did "suck"...but the 9th level magic-user certainly did not suck. The 3rd level fighter didn't suck, nor did the 9th level fighter. And all the other classes found their niche in the overal multi-year campaign structure and internal consistancy.
In that context, the game was "balanced". Yes, a 1st level 1e barbarian rocked-on-toast, and at 5th level that barbarian was a *beast* in combat and in pure survival capability; meanwhile the 1st level magic-user with 1 spell sucked donkey-snacks. This was NOT balanced in terms of 1st level vs. 1st level. But, when taking the PC's through the course of, say, a 3 year campaign, it *was* balanced.
In relation to 5th edition D&D...I also don't much care for a "class balance" focus. I don't *want* that kind of balance....I want the game to aspire to greater things than simply "a game to play for a few months then shelve" (where in the majority of the game is exeperienced; re: characters get to 20th level). I want 5e to encourage s-l-o-w advenacement, as compaired to modern day fast advencement. I want someone claiming to have an 11th level cleric to be an actual achievement to be proud of...as opposed to be an achievement that is expected. In this regard, I want 5e to have much more focus on "campaign balance", and not get hung up on "class balance".
^_^
Paul L. Ming
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
That won't work. Today's campaigns don't last that long. Modern life tends to do that. The 1st-level wizard is going to be a 1st-level wizard for a long time, yearning for glory that they might never reach because the game only lasted a year.
WotC did a lot of market research in the leadup to 3.0 to uncover information like that. They didn't speed up advancement "just because".
pming
Legend
Hiya.
This is one thing where I think Paizo actually *almost* did something cool; the advancement rates could be scaled to Slow/Medium/Fast. If 5e adopted something like that to the system, I could live with that. Each class could then be given a base "adjustment" (e.g., thieves might get +5% xp, barbarians might get -15%, etc.). Then the DM could choose S/M/F for how quickly he wants his game to progress, level-wise. Each class could then still be "campaign balance" oriented and not "class balance" oriented.
That said, yeah, I totally get the "modern life" thing. I'm constantly both annoyed and flabberghasted by some of my co-workers and people I talk with who can *not* have quiet/silence in their lives for more than 3 minutes or they start to wig-out. Patience, as a virtue, has gotten beaten, starved, kicked and all but destroyed in todays "modern life". So, yeah, I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. Luckily enough for me, I am a pretty patient guy...so I can just sit there and watch the ensuing trainwreck when the power goes out and my co-workers start to (literally) loose it if the power stays off for more than 10 minutes. Quite facinating, actually...in a perverse sort of "watch them suffer" kind of way... >
PS: IIRC, ol' EGG suggested that a normally run campaign (6hrs/week) with a group of 5 or 6 players should have characters hit level 9 in a year and then gain roughly 2 levels per year after that. I found that quite accurate...with my highest level character (Magic-User) hitting 20th over 6 years of play and my friends fighter hitting 22nd over the same campaign. (although we played a lot more often...we were still in school, so weekends and summer vacation was basically a D&D-fest! ).
^_^
Paul L. Ming
This is one thing where I think Paizo actually *almost* did something cool; the advancement rates could be scaled to Slow/Medium/Fast. If 5e adopted something like that to the system, I could live with that. Each class could then be given a base "adjustment" (e.g., thieves might get +5% xp, barbarians might get -15%, etc.). Then the DM could choose S/M/F for how quickly he wants his game to progress, level-wise. Each class could then still be "campaign balance" oriented and not "class balance" oriented.
That said, yeah, I totally get the "modern life" thing. I'm constantly both annoyed and flabberghasted by some of my co-workers and people I talk with who can *not* have quiet/silence in their lives for more than 3 minutes or they start to wig-out. Patience, as a virtue, has gotten beaten, starved, kicked and all but destroyed in todays "modern life". So, yeah, I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. Luckily enough for me, I am a pretty patient guy...so I can just sit there and watch the ensuing trainwreck when the power goes out and my co-workers start to (literally) loose it if the power stays off for more than 10 minutes. Quite facinating, actually...in a perverse sort of "watch them suffer" kind of way... >
PS: IIRC, ol' EGG suggested that a normally run campaign (6hrs/week) with a group of 5 or 6 players should have characters hit level 9 in a year and then gain roughly 2 levels per year after that. I found that quite accurate...with my highest level character (Magic-User) hitting 20th over 6 years of play and my friends fighter hitting 22nd over the same campaign. (although we played a lot more often...we were still in school, so weekends and summer vacation was basically a D&D-fest! ).
^_^
Paul L. Ming
MichaelSomething
Legend
Balance is like money.
Having it isn't everything; not having it is.
Having it isn't everything; not having it is.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
I don't get the point of +5% or -15% or whatever for individual classes. My last campaign lasted almost three years, but there were a few PC deaths, players leaving the campaign, new players joining, at least one left for over a year and came back for a couple of sessions, etc. Different XP values is just adding complexity for no reason.
That said, yeah, I totally get the "modern life" thing. I'm constantly both annoyed and flabberghasted by some of my co-workers and people I talk with who can *not* have quiet/silence in their lives for more than 3 minutes or they start to wig-out. Patience, as a virtue, has gotten beaten, starved, kicked and all but destroyed in todays "modern life". So, yeah, I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. Luckily enough for me, I am a pretty patient guy...so I can just sit there and watch the ensuing trainwreck when the power goes out and my co-workers start to (literally) loose it if the power stays off for more than 10 minutes. Quite facinating, actually...in a perverse sort of "watch them suffer" kind of way... >
That's not what I mean. My games run 5-6 hours on a weekend night. It is not easy to get someone to commit to that time, as we're all adults, in the 25-40 range. Some of us have to commute for more than an hour from out of town, not me though. (There is literally one married player in the group, and we play at his place. Not surprisingly, he's not DMing.)
The issue isn't today's shorter attention spans at all. I know the internet is shortening my attention span, I can still play a 6 hour game of D&D. I don't bring electronic devices to the table unless I'm DMing, and I don't even have internet on my laptop.
The only reason my campaign lasted that long is because I'm a glutton for between-sessions work. In my current group we've only had one other campaign last that long. Even then, neither long-running DM normally runs every week, and four weeks between sessions of an individual campaign is typical. If we used the 1e-style advancement rates, we'd still be level 7.
I don't think it's a good idea to have a class that is weak at level 1, then expect the player to hang around for months until they're no longer weak.
I don't want to say anything "bad" about EGG, but he wrote that game decades ago. I played it in high school as well and could level up quite quickly. I'm not back at high school anymore.
TerraDave
5ever, or until 2024
Oh, dear sweet Demogorgon. Not another one.
Nothing you say suggests that balance is actually bad. You just don't care about it (much), and you don't seem to want anything about the game to change. At all. I mean, seriously, the exact number of damage dice of fireball? That's your deal-breaker? Frankly, I don't understand why you're even looking at new editions. If you're going to get hung up on something as trivial as that, I can guarantee that no new edition will ever be satisfactory.
Which is cool. AD&D is a fine edition and you can play it forever. Nothing wrong with that. But a lot of us do care about balance and want to see 5E more tightly balanced than some of the previous editions. And that does mean the quadratic wizard needs a few whacks with the nerf bat. (I say this as somebody who's been playing wizards and other arcane casters for decades.)
Nothing you say suggests that balance is actually bad. You just don't care about it (much), and you don't seem to want anything about the game to change. At all. I mean, seriously, the exact number of damage dice of fireball? That's your deal-breaker? Frankly, I don't understand why you're even looking at new editions. If you're going to get hung up on something as trivial as that, I can guarantee that no new edition will ever be satisfactory.
Which is cool. AD&D is a fine edition and you can play it forever. Nothing wrong with that. But a lot of us do care about balance and want to see 5E more tightly balanced than some of the previous editions. And that does mean the quadratic wizard needs a few whacks with the nerf bat. (I say this as somebody who's been playing wizards and other arcane casters for decades.)
