Why do all classes have to be balanced?

[Ridley's Cohort]

To be fair, from reading his previous posts, it appears that he is a proponent of balancing low combat strength with out of combat benefits. So, if this was a 1e game where there were no social skills and the player in question was really charismatic(player, not character), then I could see a 1st level character contributing to freeform roleplaying a lot.

And that seems to be his point. He believes the game doesn't need to encourage balance because that 1st level character will hold his own in "other" portions of the game.

However, given that the average game I've played in has had about 10 minutes of freeform roleplaying for every hour of combat, it's not a balanced tradeoff by any means.

Very early RPG designers could play the "if only you played the game correctly (the way I do after 900 hours of practice), then you wouldn't have these problems" card. It is not 1985 any more.

Now I would say that certain assumptions on the part of the designers are simply not what I should bother to pay good money for. In a game of D&D, guessing that out of combat prowess can compensate for in combat weakness does not make much sense. There are games in which that completely does make sense (e.g. Mouse Guard) but those birds are very unlike D&D from top to bottom.

 

[pemerton]

I had a player playing a halfling monk/paladin/Pious Templar in my World's Largest Dungeon campaign. Now, he could barely ever fail a saving throw and any save he made meant that he ignored the effects. That's true. However, the cost for this was he couldn't hit anything, and, when the stars aligned and he actually did hit, he did about as much damage as a commoner with a stick. He was so far outclassed by everything else at the table, INCLUDING the kobold bard (!), that he was essentially dead weight in combat.

This reminds me of a character in one of our games, he was a halfling Rogue/Cleric/Scout/something else if I remember correctly. He ended up trying to "powergame" a character with really high AC and saves. He was nearly impossible to hit, but had about 8 less bonuses to hit than everyone else in the group. He'd spend most combats "roleplaying" his character as afraid of enemies and running away from them and trying not to be hit. When he did attack because someone in the group told him when we were fighting for our lives we had no desire to have someone along for the ride who didn't even TRY to beat the enemies....he'd make an attack roll and miss. When he did hit, we found out he was doing something like 1d6+1 points of damage while other people in the group were hitting for 40 and 50.

I've never encountered quite this phenomenon.

I have a player who is a little notorious for building underpowered PCs. His wizard uses a Tome of Readiness, is an Invoker multi-class/paragon path despite starting with a 20/14 INT/WIS split, and has among his feats Skill Training (Dungeoneering) and Deep Sage. On the other hand, this PC also has Wall of Fire, Arcane Gate and use to have Flaming Sphere until he recently levelled up to a 15th level daily Domination attack from Heroes of the Feywild. And he also has Action Surge and Superior Will as feats.

In our previous (Rolemaster) campaign the same player had a samurai artisan - he spent quite a bit of PC building resources on weapon and armour smithing skills that rarely came into play. But he also had very strong melee combat capabilities that definitely did not go unnoticed in a fight, even though there were 2 or 3 other PCs who were overall stronger in melee.

That is definitely how I prefer my quirky PCs - still able to pull their weight sufficiently that they are not just irrelevant anytime the mechanics are turned to for resolution purposes.

In the same RM campaign there was a PC shaman/druid type who was on the cusp of uselessness, but not quite over it. Rolemaster puts enough weight on non-combat sites of conflict that his abilities as a diviner, spirit summoner/speaker and nature guru came into play, and at higher levels he could create walls of stone and summon elephants or rhinoceroses into combat, which from time to time made a real difference. Rolemaster also has much less steep scaling that 3E or 4e: I've never GMed a game with the sorts of functional disparities between attack and defence that you two describe in these posts (I've GMed RM wizards who will be dropped by any hit, but they've always had strong active/aggressive abilities, as well as a range of defences to prevent that hit being taken).

I guess in the end I want to GM players who are interested in engaging the game via the mechanics, rather than building a PC whom the mechanics can't touch, but who can't actually do anything him-/herself. What does it even mean to talk about "playing" that PC (except perhaps in a purely freeform context)?

 

[Sadras]

[MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION]
Well I dont disagree with anything you've stated or elaborated upon. So I think we are pretty much in agreement here.

 

[haakon1]

Oh nevermind

 

[CroBob]

To be fair, from reading his previous posts, it appears that he is a proponent of balancing low combat strength with out of combat benefits. So, if this was a 1e game where there were no social skills and the player in question was really charismatic(player, not character), then I could see a 1st level character contributing to freeform roleplaying a lot.

And that seems to be his point. He believes the game doesn't need to encourage balance because that 1st level character will hold his own in "other" portions of the game.

However, given that the average game I've played in has had about 10 minutes of freeform roleplaying for every hour of combat, it's not a balanced tradeoff by any means.

Even if the game was entirely free form role playing, the point is utterly moot. Yes, in the parts where the rules don't cover, then what the player decides and acts like and all that determine the character's utility. The problem is that this solves the problems in areas not covered by the rules, which means it's totally independent of the game mechanics and therefore totally irrelevant in determining fair game mechanics!

 

[Hussar]

I guess in the end I want to GM players who are interested in engaging the game via the mechanics, rather than building a PC whom the mechanics can't touch, but who can't actually do anything him-/herself. What does it even mean to talk about "playing" that PC (except perhaps in a purely freeform context)?

I think we're on the same page here. I can build two characters. Give both identical personalities and archetypes. Make one really good at one thing and terrible at another, and make the other good at one thing and comparable to everyone else at the table at other things. For me, I prefer the latter and I do expect the players to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of that.

I loathe any mechanic that tells the player, sorry, you are not tall enough for this ride, not because you did anything wrong, but because your character will NEVER be tall enough for this ride.

 

[JamesonCourage]

This is something that should not be implemented in rules because it is highly highly subjective. Nobody is ever dead weight in 3rd edition.

Ballocks. This is outright untrue.

He said "nobody is ever dead weight", not "everyone always contributes meaningfully to combat". Though in my experience, people usually contribute to both.

Balance has nothing to do with party contributions and having characters "shine". This concept is different for everyone so rules for it are not a good idea.

This is outright wrong. And easily proven. Create a party of 15th level characters. Now, add a 1st level character to the party. How much is that 1st level character contributing to the game? Some freeform roleplay and that's about it. Certainly a HELL of a lot less than the other 15th level characters.

Well, I'll disagree here. It depends on the 1st level character. He probably won't contribute much to combat (though he'll contribute a tiny amount, via flanking, another guy the bad guys have to account for, etc.), but he can certainly contribute to other things. Gathering food quickly, navigating, or dealing with animals/plants (like gathering herbs) if nobody has any survival skills. Knowledges about any number of topics (cities, nations, religion, undead, other planes, weather, and on and on). Social aspects (including leadership, negotiation, intimidation, lying, detecting the truth, etc.). Patching wounds, treating diseases, poisons, or infections, discovering what was used to kill a creature, removing status effects, lessening penalties (from fatigue, etc.), etc. Scouting ahead, keeping an eye out for things, or an extra guy on shift during the night. Crafting goods for the PCs, or making money for them on the side by selling it. And that's not talking about one more guy to lug around heavy stuff.

I could easily add a hit die 1 NPC that would help my players out, and the game assumes that hit die 4 is "the average settled adult". They might find him in danger in some of the combats they jump into, but against local bandits and the like (hit die 3-5), the NPC could definitely contribute (if he's a warrior or magician).

Now, can the NPC beat a PC in any area the PC has covered? Nope, not really at all. He'll get trounced. But, he can definitely make a difference, and he can definitely still get his time to "shine". So, yeah, I can pretty much say your "outright wrong" and "easily proven" statements are way, way too broad for me to accept at face value. I have absolutely no problem envisioning PCs of wildly variable levels getting a lot of screen time, as I've seen it (in 3.5, a level 8 PC getting a ton of screen time when the rest of the party was level 23).

Yeah, you're more or less correct when it comes to combat. I just feel that there's a lot more to the game than combat. But, when it comes to D&D, I remember your view (unless it's changed since the "Is D&D About Combat" thread), so I expect our disagreement is somewhat fundamental, rather than superficial. As always, play what you like

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Ballocks. This is outright untrue. I had a player playing a halfling monk/paladin/Pious Templar in my World's Largest Dungeon campaign.

Just so we are clear, this is not bullocks and you saying it's untrue is a load of to be honest. Your priorities are on combat, which does not make up 100% of the game. Let's use your Monk there as an example. If he is hard as hell to hit with great saves why isn't he running around taking blows for everyone else? Why isn't he drawing OA's from creatures or anything else of that nature?



This is wrong.

You know what makes it not wrong? The fact that there is no contribution chart anywhere in the books. Again this is purely subjective. Each table has their own opinion on the fine art of contribution, yours is no more right or wrong than anyone else. In our group, if your PC does more than 0 when it comes to combat damage then you contribute.



This is outright wrong. And easily proven. Create a party of 15th level characters. Now, add a 1st level character to the party. How much is that 1st level character contributing to the game? Some freeform roleplay and that's about it. Certainly a HELL of a lot less than the other 15th level characters. If balance had nothing to do with characters shining, then my 1st level character should be able to contribute equally with in the 15th level party.

First of all, why is a 1st level PC going to be with a 15th level group? Your example makes about as much sense as a bottomless bucket.

Read the above

 

[pemerton]

It depends on the 1st level character. He probably won't contribute much to combat (though he'll contribute a tiny amount, via flanking, another guy the bad guys have to account for, etc.), but he can certainly contribute to other things. Gathering food quickly, navigating, or dealing with animals/plants (like gathering herbs) if nobody has any survival skills. Knowledges about any number of topics (cities, nations, religion, undead, other planes, weather, and on and on). Social aspects (including leadership, negotiation, intimidation, lying, detecting the truth, etc.). Patching wounds, treating diseases, poisons, or infections, discovering what was used to kill a creature, removing status effects, lessening penalties (from fatigue, etc.), etc. Scouting ahead, keeping an eye out for things, or an extra guy on shift during the night. Crafting goods for the PCs, or making money for them on the side by selling it.

This seems to assume not only (i) that the 1st level character contributes in a niche that the PCs don't already cover, but also (ii) that non-combat skills are in some significant way not level-dependent.

Rolemaster is a game in which (ii) is false - ie all skills are level dependent. And I've never played a Rolemaster game in which 15th level PCs have a "niche gap" that might noticeably be filled by a 1st level character - by 15th level, they have worked out to adequately fill whatever niches they care about. I mean, there might be a bit of extra colour in saying "Hey, my PC gets an extra hour of sleep because newbie here can fill a shift on watch", but if missing out on that extra hour for the previous 14 levels caused any mechanical penalty (eg fatigue), I'm fairly confident the 15th level PCs will have found a way to cope.

I can't really envisage 3E being that much different in this respect, and 4e certainly is not given the level-dependent nature of non-combat abilities.

But in a game in which (ii) is true, what does it even mean to talk about 1st vs 15th level characters?

 

[billd91]

This seems to assume not only (i) that the 1st level character contributes in a niche that the PCs don't already cover, but also (ii) that non-combat skills are in some significant way not level-dependent.

Rolemaster is a game in which (ii) is false - ie all skills are level dependent. And I've never played a Rolemaster game in which 15th level PCs have a "niche gap" that might noticeably be filled by a 1st level character - by 15th level, they have worked out to adequately fill whatever niches they care about. I mean, there might be a bit of extra colour in saying "Hey, my PC gets an extra hour of sleep because newbie here can fill a shift on watch", but if missing out on that extra hour for the previous 14 levels caused any mechanical penalty (eg fatigue), I'm fairly confident the 15th level PCs will have found a way to cope.

I can't really envisage 3E being that much different in this respect, and 4e certainly is not given the level-dependent nature of non-combat abilities.

But in a game in which (ii) is true, what does it even mean to talk about 1st vs 15th level characters?

In 1e and 2e, non-combat skills were largely level independent. Characters taking a non-weapon proficiency had a success chance based on the stat that the skill was based on. Characters could invest further as they went up in levels, but the main improvement was by taking the skill in the first place.

But even with a level-based skill system, as long as the DCs aren't based on the average party level (which they shouldn't be - they should be based on the task at hand) the low level character may still be a contributor. Sure, he's less likely to have a unique contribution simply because he hasn't got the accumulation of level-raising benefits to invest, but I don't see that as a flaw or as meaning the low level character can't find ways to contribute. Nor do I think it matters that the high level PCs would find ways to cope if the low level character is gone. He doesn't have to be necessary to contribute.