D&D 5E Why Balance is Bad

[Mistwell]

LoL.

Seriously?

He's new, and only here because he had a bad experience on the WOTC boards because the mods came down on him over something.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

So sad.

Yes, this thread is sad. No wonder the first one got locked on WotC.

Also sad that I'm starting the new year by adding another edition warrior to my ignore list.

 

[Sadrik]

I've seen many people complain about too many options (option bloat), because too much variance can upset balance, and it usually does (but it doesn't have to). However it is actually the same issue, most editions of D&D have little tolerance for variance on their balance, they just choose to privilege one or the other, or just take the ball and run with it:

This is really the crux of it. Option bloat. If a player has 12 ways to build the same character concept some of those options inherently look worse than others. If a player has 2 ways to build a character concept one will still look worse but it is at least clear to the player what they are buying. If you want to build an archer character. There are at least 12 ways to do it in 3e, different character classes multi-classing, prestige classes, feats, (zen archery), spells, etc. it is daunting even if using just core. I think fewer solid choices creates less buyers remorse. Also less hard coding of options creates less remorse.
Example: class features that are set up as at level x you get x ability vs at level x select from a list of abilities.
I think 3e multi-classing also sets up option bloat. Especially if you have 30 classes and 200 prestige classes. Limiting in this area is where I think 5e should improve. Optional feat system and selectable class features.
So limit options and balance (less optimal choices) becomes less an issue.

 

[pemerton]

Earlier editions used "balance over the campaign" for some of it's balance. Fighters were better at low levels and became stronger in a steady fashion. Magic users were weak at lower levels but gain their strength at later levels. This is fine if your fans all run long multilevel campaigns from level 1 to level X but does not appeal to anyyone else.

I liked your post and mostly agreed with it - but I wanted to pick up on this bit and add something to it.

In a Legends and Lore column a year or two ago, Mearls characterised a classic D&D magic-user as playing in "hard" mode: no hp, no AC, no meaningful melee attack, and only a handful of spells (at least until mid levels). I think this is right. So when the game is played in the Gygaxian style (of skilled play in overcoming or circumventing challenges so as to collect treasure and thereby earn XP), keeping a MU alive, and earning levels, is a sign of being a skillful player. I think this option can have appeal even if the campaign is not going to be a long, multi-level one: you still get to show off that you can prosper playing an MU even if it's only at low levels.

But I don't see many of the contemporary critics of balance grounding their criticism in this sort of play - ie that having unbalanced options creates an opportunity for skilled players to strut their stuff. It seems to be more in terms of "playing a character concept", which to me is more of a 2nd ed AD&D thing. (And personally I'm with those who don't understand how comparable mechanical effectiveness preclues the playing of a character concept.)

 

[Mistwell]

What Gygax said about Wizards and balance:

Magic-use was thereby to be powerful enough to enable its followers to compete with any other type of player-character, and yet the use of magic would not be so great as to make those using it overshadow all others. This was the conception, but in practice it did not work out as planned. Primarily at fault is the game itself which does not carefully explain the reasoning behind the magic system. Also, the various magic items for employment by magic-users tend to make them too powerful in relation to other classes (although the GREYHAWK supplement took steps to correct this somewhat).

...

The logic behind it all was drawn from game balance as much as from anything else. Fighters have their strength, weapons, and armor to aid them in their competition. Magic-users must rely upon their spells, as they have virtually no weaponry or armor to protect them. Clerics combine some of the advantages of the other two classes. The new class, thieves, have the basic advantage of stealthful actions with some additions in order for them to successfully operate on a plane with other character types. If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D & D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters. It is the opinion of this writer that the most desirable game is one in which the various character types are able to compete with each other as relative equals, for that will maintain freshness in the campaign" (from the Strategic Review #7, in 1976).

 

[Ahnehnois]

Earlier editions used "balance over the campaign" for some of it's balance. Fighters were better at low levels and became stronger in a steady fashion. Magic users were weak at lower levels but gain their strength at later levels. This is fine if your fans all run long multilevel campaigns from level 1 to level X but does not appeal to anyyone else.

I think it appeals to someone else. It appeals to someone who's running a campaign of indeterminate length. If you don't know where your campaign is going or how long it will last, if you don't know how long your character will be played, or that he will survive to high levels, then playing a primary caster creates an interesting risk assessment in this context.

There's a basic psychological paradigm wherein a research subject is paid money, and asked whether they want $10, or whether they want to flip a coin and get $20 on heads and nothing on tails. Numerous variations change the probabilities, the transparency of probabilities, the amount of money, and so on. The interesting thing is that on some level these experiments are very precisely delineating a certain personality style: how much risk the person is willing to take.

If you're playing a D&D character, you may have kind of a similar choice. The fighter is like the guaranteed money. You all but know that by playing a fighter, you have a character that will regularly attack and deal damage, and that will be pretty tough defensively. There's some variance in how well the character will play, but not all that much. Conversely, if you play the wizard, you may end up with a wide spread of outcomes over the long term. You may or may not get the rewards of playing at high level, and even if you do, they may not play out all that well. But you can read the descriptions of high-level spells and imagine some pretty crazy scenarios that the fighter will never have.

Playing a wizard has a fascinating aspirational quality to it.

***

FWIW I tend to agree that short-run games disincentivize people from playing spellcasters.

 

[MoonSong]

This is really the crux of it. Option bloat. If a player has 12 ways to build the same character concept some of those options inherently look worse than others. If a player has 2 ways to build a character concept one will still look worse but it is at least clear to the player what they are buying. If you want to build an archer character. There are at least 12 ways to do it in 3e, different character classes multi-classing, prestige classes, feats, (zen archery), spells, etc. it is daunting even if using just core. I think fewer solid choices creates less buyers remorse. Also less hard coding of options creates less remorse.
Example: class features that are set up as at level x you get x ability vs at level x select from a list of abilities.
I think 3e multi-classing also sets up option bloat. Especially if you have 30 classes and 200 prestige classes. Limiting in this area is where I think 5e should improve. Optional feat system and selectable class features.
So limit options and balance (less optimal choices) becomes less an issue.

I guess bloat is relative, I don't mind twelve basic ways to make an archer, maybe because I'm not interested on building a generic archer, but speciffic flavors of character from different archtypes that also happen to be good archers. In this point I guess taste and playstyle make a big difference. (And I consider 3.x MCing an invaluable tool that allows organic growth and development of characters that is impossible to replicate otherwise)

Option Bloat is indeed bad, just notice that it is a very different thing from Option Variety, a game can be extremely option bloated while still having very little Option Variety. It doesn't matter if you have ten thousand ways to fry a kobold if you have no way to distract the kobold, evade, the kobold, ignore the kobold, spare the kobold, befriend the kobold, convince the kobold not to kill you, have it wourk for you or have it hire you, then all you have is option bloat with little option variety to speak for. (For example many here agree that 4e is option bloated, yet it still incomplete and has only a narrow range of option variety that could still be expanded upon, and that is without taking into account undersupported classes that could have used more love -seeker anyone?-. And the examples can go far back still, for example, late 2e was option bloated, yet 3e had no problems coming up with new character types that weren't present at all in 2e or couldn't be propperly expressed as 2e characters, and even once 3.x got it's own share of bloat, 4e came and gave us the warlord and it's offshot, the lazy warlord)

(And personally I'm with those who don't understand how comparable mechanical effectiveness preclues the playing of a character concept.)

Long story short, every single character concept that involves being bad at fighting or completely defenseless in combat while still extremely useful out of it cannot be properly played if everybody has to have the same mechanical effect in combat for balance sake. Under those circumstances balance cannot allow the character to be that good out of combat, because it isn't allowing to have a reduced combat capability to compensate for it. Let's place an example:

I want to play a very classic white mage, someone who hasn't invested a single resource into becoming good at fighting and instead invested it all on becoming a superb healer and whose basic offensive capabilites are below average. But if all characters have to conform to a limited range for combat capability, my character's combat abilites will be far better than they should be, and cannot be a lot better at healing than other clerics that didn't focuss on healing, at this point the obvious answer would be "But hey just pretend to be worse than you actually are, just because 99% of your sheet is about combat doesn't mean you have to use it!" but then if my character is actually capable of more things than what the original concept needed, and the system is actually expecting me to use those abilitees to the fullest, then my character is actually hindering the party by not fully contributing to combat, and no matter how much I want to pretend to be a super healer I'm still no better than a run of the mill cleric that actually goes and kills things (And of course this also brings out even more disruption, like longer and more dangerous fights). In this situation I'm not playing a very weak and defenseless character that still manages to be an active contributor to the party's success, I'm playing a delusional bastard full of it that is feigning weakness in order to lazily be carried along by the others and leech off their success while actively hindering them, placing them in bigger danger and maybe even outright sabotagigng them, because he/she is better at combat than he/she fights and isn't significantly better at other things than the rest to compensate for it.

 

[Sadrik]

KaiiLurker:
I agree with your points about the quality of options. I think that excellently explains something I think is important. If there are 12 ways to make an archer or 4 ways to make a necromancer those are lost opportunities to make breadth in the core rules. I should point out some character concepts should be more than guy who uses a specific weapon (archer). But necromancer is broader and elemental Mage and knight these have concepts that can fit into a number of character builds. Make fewer of those builds and make more breadth on other possible builds. For me I would like to see breadth an not twelve spells that shoot a damaging ray, or eight spells that buff by speeding up a characters actions etc. concept breadth at the expense of more subtle slight variation. By and large balance will shore up much more with fewer classes (no alt fighters or wizards) if those are handled within another class. Kind of goes back to the old Mage including other arcane casters and fight including barbarian and monk. Alas, it will not be that tightly designed and we will have concept overlap, and regardless of what happens I can guarantee we will argue over balance still.

 

[billd91]

But I don't see many of the contemporary critics of balance grounding their criticism in this sort of play - ie that having unbalanced options creates an opportunity for skilled players to strut their stuff. It seems to be more in terms of "playing a character concept", which to me is more of a 2nd ed AD&D thing. (And personally I'm with those who don't understand how comparable mechanical effectiveness preclues the playing of a character concept.)

I don't really see how the character concept issue is more of a 2nd edition thing when discussions of playing a concept and using the build flexibilities of 3e to do so were so common. What I tended to see was a lot more players wanting to play a concept but not wanting to be burdened with the challenges that concept might require with the rules structure - in other words, it strikes me they wanted to play a difficult or limiting concept on 'easy' mode by not giving up anything that another concept might achieve.

 

[billd91]

For me, the problem with balance is that too much pursuit of it leads to an unbalanced role playing game. A role playing game should, in my opinion, balance the focus on both gamism and simulationism - not focusing not the gamist aspects at the expense of the game's ability to simulate its genre. Gamist structures are there primarily to make the simulation playable, but not necessarily strictly equitable. This is why it's not only common to see wizards and priests with reality warping powers in fantasy games while martial characters lack them, I think it's appropriate. Giving such powers, in considerable numbers without some kind of equipment (which is certainly possible to do), to martial focused characters places the gamism above the simulationism and, I think, throws the balance between the two issues out the window.

For some genres, a more strictly similar result between "magical" and "martial" characters can be appropriate. Take any of your typical superhero RPGs for example. There's no real prejudice between what a swordsman and wizard can achieve in terms of mechanics. But then, that's the superhero genre. It's not really the fantasy genre, though, either with pulp swords and sorcery or with a higher Tolkienesque fantasy or even with D&D-influenced Steven Brustian fantasy.