D&D 5E Why Balance is Bad

[Umbran]

I want game where a player can make a character who doesn't shine in ANY combat, or in any exploration, but who contributes to the success of the adventure overall anyway, and who isn't relegated to the sidelines for significant amounts of real-world time.

Maybe I misunderstand you, but I think you may be in oxymoron territory there.

"I want to make a character that never shines in combat, but isn't on the sidelines for significant amounts of real-world time," sounds like an impossible goal for a game that traditionally has lots of combat, depending on what you think "shines" and "on the sidelines" mean.

It would seem to me that if the character isn't on the sidelines, then they're taking some notable, active participation in the combat. In some instances, that notable participation will be pretty key, and will thus, "shine". I don't think the status of, "I really can't do anything notable, but I don't want to be bored during the activity" is particularly tenable.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's fine, as long as the game doesn't _prevent_ you from making a character who can.

Totally! I've got no objection to a thief who takes some exploration skills, some sneak attack damage dice, and some interaction features and is a well-balanced, broad adventurer who is handy with a trap, can bluff her foes, and also stabs pretty well. Jack-of-all-trades!

What concerns me is when we've got someone who wants to play a thief reminiscent of older e's whose player has chosen to eschew combat in favor of being an exploration god, but the game doesn't recognize this as a valid trade-off. This might look like all rogues having sneak attack, or all exploration challenges insisting that you include interaction skills so that the foppish noble can do something.

A chance to shine in each encounter means a _chance_, and that you _won't_ shine in every encounter.

Well, everyone needs to roll dice to actually shine. Even if the game is set up so that you have a way to shine, you've still gotta roll more than a about 10 or so on a d20 to do it.

Like, say, convincing the animals in the castle to assist in creating fear and doubt within the Baron (hordes of rats join his chamber to look at him, his horses turn away from him, etc) until he confesses?

That's the kind of thing that might wreck the fun of both the druid (who doesn't want to be good at this stuff) and the noble (who does), though.

I'd like the ability to look at that and say "You can make an untrained CHA check like anyone else, Druid, and even if you make it, it's not going to be the equal of the noble's Graceful Foppery ability, because people are not your strong suit."

Some classes just were better than other classes. Sometimes drastically so. And it would vary adventure to adventure

Yeah, it wasn't necessarily consistent or well applied. And like you point out, it varied drastically depending on the DM.

These are things elements like the Three Pillars help with, because you can include them in the rules for class and adventure and encounter design. By designing a game or an adventure that fires on those three cylinders, where there are multiple correct answers to "How do you get the MacGuffin?" that different parties of different make-ups can try, you get to a point where not everyone has to be good at combat in order to be a viable D&D hero. You don't have to fight the goblins or slay the dragon to save the day -- but that is one way to do it. There's at least two others that you could try if you've got the right skills, though. You could also scare away the goblin king and develop an alliance with the dragon. Or sneak in and assassinate the goblin king and grab the MacGuffin from the dragon's hoard as it sleeps. Or do a little of one and a little of another and a little of the third.

 

[keterys]

Totally! I've got no objection to a thief who takes some exploration skills, some sneak attack damage dice, and some interaction features and is a well-balanced, broad adventurer who is handy with a trap, can bluff her foes, and also stabs pretty well. Jack-of-all-trades!

Sounds like we're in agreement

And yeah, I think the move to "sneak attack is most of your damage" has been way overdone.

I'd like the ability to look at that and say "You can make an untrained CHA check like anyone else, Druid, and even if you make it, it's not going to be the equal of the noble's Graceful Foppery ability, because people are not your strong suit."

I find it odd that you're opposed to the druid using his animals to influence the situation.

Now, if the druid didn't think up a way to use his animals to help, or if he needed to make a check quickly, cause he's in the presence of the noble right now, then obviously it's down to the (probably awful) Charisma check, but stopping him from effectively using his resources to affect a situation seems strange.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Maybe I misunderstand you, but I think you may be in oxymoron territory there.

"I want to make a character that never shines in combat, but isn't on the sidelines for significant amounts of real-world time," sounds like an impossible goal for a game that traditionally has lots of combat, depending on what you think "shines" and "on the sidelines" mean.

It would seem to me that if the character isn't on the sidelines, then they're taking some notable, active participation in the combat. In some instances, that notable participation will be pretty key, and will thus, "shine". I don't think the status of, "I really can't do anything notable, but I don't want to be bored during the activity" is particularly tenable.

The way to cut the gordian knot is to recall that what I'm calling for has three distinct elements that make it work:

1. All characters have some minimum way to contribute to any challenge (a thief who sucks at combat can still try to make basic bow-and-arrow attacks; a fighter who sucks at interaction can still try and make a CHA check; a bard who sucks at exploration can still roll WIS to navigate). This makes the experience non-binary: Sam can still toss a rock (ie, do something), even if overall he sucks at combat. It's clearly not where he excels, but he can participate. In a tortured analogy to a play, he doesn't get this monologue, but he can be in the background as a member of the crowd and maybe even gets a line or two. So by "sidelined," I don't mean "can't do anything," I mean, "can't do much in comparison to someone who didn't choose to suck here."
2. Most challenges are brief, on the order of 5-15 minutes or so. Think, for context, about how long it takes a party to wail on one or two standard monsters in 4e: that's about the length of most challenges I'm looking for. That's enough for a few rounds of combat, but it is significantly faster on average than 4e (but also probably a bit longer on average than 3e's "rocket tag"). So by "for significant amounts of real-world time," I mean 15 minutes or more (ish -- this is not hard data, but a soft approximation).
3. For exceptional challenges that are meant to be a significant chunk of time for whatever reason, these challenges should be multifaceted, including all three pillars. Thus, a run through a burning forest (an exploration challenge, primarily) that is meant to be an epic, party-involving challenge should also involve combat (fire elementals!) and interaction (maybe, again, fire elementals! Or maybe NPC's fleeing the fire!). In groups where people are interested in more than one pillar, by choosing characters who focused in more than one pillar big party-level challenges must be balanced, else it is ignoring 1/3 or 2/3 of the party's abilities, and is sidelining a character for a significant amount of real-world time. I believe the game, given its stated genre expectations and self-description, can presume that people are going to want characters who are good at all three pillars to different degrees, so the game can likely assume that longer challenges should typically fire on all three elements, while noting and supporting those that want to only fire on one.

I find it odd that you're opposed to the druid using his animals to influence the situation.

Now, if the druid didn't think up a way to use his animals to help, or if he needed to make a check quickly, cause he's in the presence of the noble right now, then obviously it's down to the (probably awful) Charisma check, but stopping him from effectively using his resources to affect a situation seems strange.

It's more along the lines of, "If you've decided you want a character with a deficiency in this area, I'm not going to just let you ignore that deficiency because you're getting a little creative with your fiction. Play the role you've chosen to play."

Compare it to an attack roll. Just because I describe how my fighter uses his shield to deflect an incoming blade and jabs multiple times in quick succession doesn't mean I get to roll multiple attacks, yeah? So you describe it awesomely. Great! Make an attack roll. So the druid describes making animals hostile to the baron as an attempt to intimidate him into revealing his deceit -- make a CHA check (if only to represent how influential that horse you're talking to can actually be to the guy who can deny it food and execute it at will).

That's the kind of creative thinking bonus that seems awesome in a vacuum, but can really skew someone's experience if it dominates. Admittedly, depending on the table, it's not always a problem, so I just want the rules to empower me to say my piece, without prohibiting other groups from saying, "all right, sounds good."

 

[Marshall]

The way to cut the gordian knot is to recall that what I'm calling for has three distinct elements that make it work:

All characters have some minimum way to contribute to any challenge (a thief who sucks at combat can still try to make basic bow-and-arrow attacks; a fighter who sucks at interaction can still try and make a CHA check; a bard who sucks at exploration can still roll WIS to navigate). This makes the experience non-binary: Sam can still toss a rock (ie, do something), even if overall he sucks at combat. It's clearly not where he excels, but he can participate. In a tortured analogy to a play, he doesn't get this monologue, but he can be in the background as a member of the crowd and maybe even gets a line or two. So by "sidelined," I don't mean "can't do anything," I mean, "can't do much in comparison to someone who didn't choose to suck here."

So you want a base level of competency in all pillars and your only objection here is you dont like the thief being a striker. You're stuck on the name and cant see past the concept to the idea that a skilled non-combatant is NOT a rogue. You're trying to play some form of what 4e calls a leader with a criminal background and cramming the Rogue class into it. This is the POINT of having well defined roles. So you can pick a class thats designed to do what you want.

Most challenges are brief, on the order of 5-15 minutes or so. Think, for context, about how long it takes a party to wail on one or two standard monsters in 4e: that's about the length of most challenges I'm looking for. That's enough for a few rounds of combat, but it is significantly faster on average than 4e (but also probably a bit longer on average than 3e's "rocket tag"). So by "for significant amounts of real-world time," I mean 15 minutes or more (ish -- this is not hard data, but a soft approximation).

So....irrelevant encounters that do nothing to advance the story and probably dont even cost the party resources... How is this an improvement? Heck, how is this playable?

For exceptional challenges that are meant to be a significant chunk of time for whatever reason, these challenges should be multifaceted, including all three pillars. Thus, a run through a burning forest (an exploration challenge, primarily) that is meant to be an epic, party-involving challenge should also involve combat (fire elementals!) and interaction (maybe, again, fire elementals! Or maybe NPC's fleeing the fire!). In groups where people are interested in more than one pillar, by choosing characters who focused in more than one pillar big party-level challenges must be balanced, else it is ignoring 1/3 or 2/3 of the party's abilities, and is sidelining a character for a significant amount of real-world time. I believe the game, given its stated genre expectations and self-description, can presume that people are going to want characters who are good at all three pillars to different degrees, so the game can likely assume that longer challenges should typically fire on all three elements, while noting and supporting those that want to only fire on one.

Nope, hyper-specialization into only one pillar is bad design. You're either going to be radically overpowered in the one pillar or its not going to be worth the trade off of being useless in the other two pillars.

It's more along the lines of, "If you've decided you want a character with a deficiency in this area, I'm not going to just let you ignore that deficiency because you're getting a little creative with your fiction. Play the role you've chosen to play."

Compare it to an attack roll. Just because I describe how my fighter uses his shield to deflect an incoming blade and jabs multiple times in quick succession doesn't mean I get to roll multiple attacks, yeah? So you describe it awesomely. Great! Make an attack roll. So the druid describes making animals hostile to the baron as an attempt to intimidate him into revealing his deceit -- make a CHA check (if only to represent how influential that horse you're talking to can actually be to the guy who can deny it food and execute it at will).

That's the kind of creative thinking bonus that seems awesome in a vacuum, but can really skew someone's experience if it dominates. Admittedly, depending on the table, it's not always a problem, so I just want the rules to empower me to say my piece, without prohibiting other groups from saying, "all right, sounds good."

...or this in an example of one of those encounters that takes more than 5-10 minutes and the Druid is taking 20 on his CHA check to play on the Barons superstitions and fears, maybe using other party members ideas to make the Baron nervous....

Really, this is an ideal skill challenge that should end up with the party Face laying the evidence at the Barons feet and daring him to deny it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So you want a base level of competency in all pillars and your only objection here is you dont like the thief being a striker.

Nope! My objection doesn't have much to do with specific terms. My contention is that I want to play characters who aren't very good at certain pillars (such as combat), that this is a distinction worth supporting in D&D, and that 4e doesn't do that distinction very well because of its emphasis on everyone contributing in every encounter (which is a good idea to solve some of the problems of 3e, and not necessarily a problem in and of itself).

So....irrelevant encounters that do nothing to advance the story and probably dont even cost the party resources... How is this an improvement? Heck, how is this playable?

Nope! Brief encounters that are relevant to the overall adventure and may cost the party resources, that become more dangerous in aggregate than individually, and that build gradually. Encounters, in other words, that serve the goals of the overall adventure being a potentially deadly undertaking.

Nope, hyper-specialization into only one pillar is bad design. You're either going to be radically overpowered in the one pillar or its not going to be worth the trade off of being useless in the other two pillars

Not necessarily! Lots of ways to make the game so that the distance is not vast, but is notable and important. But I don't think that kind of specialization would be particularly common -- just supportable if the entire party only cares about one pillar and wants to have a really long encounter.

...or this in an example of one of those encounters that takes more than 5-10 minutes and the Druid is taking 20 on his CHA check to play on the Barons superstitions and fears, maybe using other party members ideas to make the Baron nervous....

Really, this is an ideal skill challenge that should end up with the party Face laying the evidence at the Barons feet and daring him to deny it.

OR, its part of the overall adventure to solve the mysteries of the murdered people and the Baron is just one possible person to interrogate and so shouldn't probably eat up 1/4 of the session just in talking to him.

OR, it is a big epic scene and you need to find the baron, run him to ground, get him to confess, and then he attacks everyone and tries to kill them.

 

[Hussar]

I agree it isn't too big of a cap, but just wanted to clarify the point about them. The racial level limits were more about balancing the races than the multi-classed characters. Personally i never had much of a problem with multiclass characters because they had other restrictions and difficulties that I felt balanced them but i did have a player or two who disagreed on that point. That said, i still saw plenty of high level thieves who were not multiclassed. Part of that may also have been a group thing. People didn't set out to make gimped characters, but min-maxing for its own sake was frowned upin by most of the players i knew. So if you did take the elven wizard/thief, it was supposed to be to realize the character, not because you had crunched all the numbers and found that was your best mechanical option.

But overall, i found 2E a pretty balanced system for what I needed. I had more balance issues in 3E than 2E (mainly due to the new multiclassing rules---which i actually liked, but they did open up unexpected combos). With 2E your optimization choices were a bit limited, and everyone knew what they were. I still really enjoyed 3E, but i found i needed to be much more aware of the player styles in my group. I was fine running games with optimized characters, but encountered more of a spit among players on that point, and found expectations really baried. Sl if it was an issue, i might have to do more as a gm in 3E (at least in my experience) to balance things out. The more familiar i became with the system, the easier that was to do.

PS EXCUSE THE TYPOS. SPOON FINGERS AND IPAD NOT MIXING WELL TODAY.

This has been a day of firsts. I'm pretty sure you're the first person I've ever seen claim that they had more balance issues in 3e than in 2e. Good grief, your 3e games must have been weird.

I mean, you can trivially easily make a 1st level 2e fighter that can kill trolls in one round. And that's not really even min-maxing. 18 percentile strength and weapon specs and you're dropping 4 HD creatures in a single round. Add in two weapon fighting and you get up to about 7 HD in a single round.

That's not even counting things like Complete Elf or Complete Wizard (yes, give me a witch kit that gets an instant death effect 1/day, no cost, no saving throw.) or Faith's and Avatars (You mean my priest of God X allows me to cast all magic user spells as cleric spells of the same level? Really? Tell me more. )

 

[Hussar]

I don't know about "traditionally", but as I put it, the evolution of D&D as I see it has been away from player-centric metagaming and more towards world simulation, immersion, and strict in-character roleplaying. I find it unlikely that "many" strong dissenters from this paradigm exist, but if there are I would suggest that they try another game.

.

Nice, so, anyone who plays differently than you do should just GTFO? Never mind that we were here first and it's you who are forcing change on the game system that traditionally catered to us?

So much for big tent gaming.

My question would be to reverse this for you. Why are you not playing HARP or GURPS Fantasy? Both are exactly what you claim you want. Why do you feel the need to force D&D to be something different just to cater to your tastes? AD&D catered to me. 2e catered to me. 3e to a large extent (although it drifted) catered to me. 4e catered to me again. Why do you feel the need to force your play style on other people?

 

[Sadras]

This has been a day of firsts. I'm pretty sure you're the first person I've ever seen claim that they had more balance issues in 3e than in 2e. Good grief, your 3e games must have been weird.

3e with all its structure, was much more open to abuse due to the numerous combinations/permutations of class, prestige class & feat mix that were available and along with the heavy rule-set it was overwhelming for the DM to keep track of everything, plan story and design encounters/monsters. So as players specialised in character design, DM could have a difficult time designing encounters that did not swing one way (usually in the way of the PCs) due to not catering for the all the unknown PC options and abilities.

With 2e, choices were rather simple, everyone usually new the rules, everyone usually new the spells, sure there were racial and class handbooks but it is much easier to plan as a DM when the rules and all character options/limits were known. The classes and kits were not complex, not like 3e classes with prestige classes and feat trees. So gaming-balance for a DM was easier, simpler.

I could be mistaken, but I believe that is what @Bedrockgames was describing when he was using the word 'balance'

PS: The above explanation does not include Skills and Powers/Options books (I forget its name), I personally classify that book as very nichè and not the core 2e system.

EDIT: I might not have been as clear as I should have - the point I'm trying to make is in 2e everyone (player & DM) knew the system and the few build options, we knew where the balancing errors were - they were easy to fix. In 3e the DM couldn't possibly know all the imbalances that could occur and when he thought he fixed one, another would crop up - it was a nightmare (for me at least).

 

[keterys]

3e with all its structure, was much more open to abuse due to the numerous combinations/permutations

I'd agree, to be honest.

Not that we should overlook its flaws like the Book of Elves (mmm, kits), but at the end of the day 2e never claimed to nearly as much balance as 3e did. It didn't have bite-sized chunks in feats and a level of a class here and there that highlighted abuses in the system with much greater focus, or the ability to customize magic items to nearly the same degree.