Why do all classes have to be balanced?

[Doug McCrae]

Is it not true that "balance advocates"want to be able to do the 3 pillars equally well?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd be happy with unbalanced pillars. Like the "fighter combat 10; bard social 5, information gathering 5; rogue stealth 5, combat 5" example I gave upthread.

The problem with that approach however is that it's harder to balance than the 4e method, where all pillars are equal for all classes. If a particular campaign has a lot more, or a lot less, of one pillar than the game designers expect, then classes become unbalanced and that wouldn't be the case with 4e. 4e has a more robust, more bulletproof, approach though I can totally understand people finding 4e classes to be too same-y.

 

[Hussar]

Is it not true that "balance advocates"want to be able to do the 3 pillars equally well? Is it not true that they want a fixed effectiveness, inside each pillar (e.g. 50% effective at combat, 25% effective at exploration, and 25% effective at social) and for this "ratio" of effectiveness to be equal for every class?

Well, not to speak for anyone else, but, I've never once, not once, seen anyone who favours game balance try to claim this. Now, it's quite possible that someone has claimed to want this, but, that's an outlier.

It's the complete misreading of what balance actually means that completely derails these types of conversations and makes them so frustrating.

While the quote "why do all classes in a RPG be able to do everything as well as all the others?" may be in simple terms, I would argue that if effectiveness within each of the main aspects of the game (3 pillars) is set like I have heard some advocate, then all classes are doing "everything as well as all the others"

Can you give some specific examples from this or other threads? Because, again, I've completely missed anyone actually arguing in favour of this and I'd like to get the opportunity to set them straight about why this is such a bad idea.

Sure maybe 1 class can push 2 squares and cause condition x, while another class can pull 2 squares and cause condition y, and maybe one has 5 of these skills, and the other has 5 of those skills, but they are much closer to being identical, we will hear complaints that classes are identical and the problem will be rightly simplified that its due to classes being able to do "everything as well as all the others".

Again, where do we actually see this? Even 4e isn't anywhere NEAR that homogenous between the classes, even between classes of the same role.

Look, balance means that no single option is clearly superior to other options. That's all it means. That's all it ever means when people advocate balanced classes. The problem with the casters is that they are, at certian levels, clearly better in all measurable ways than non-casters.

Now, there are numerous ways of resolving this. AD&D did so by making high level play darn near unreachable because of the XP requirements. Some tables resolve this with a social contract. And, yes, some tables resolve this by delving into the problematic mechanics and fixing them. Each solution has its good and bad points.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Is it not true that "balance advocates"want to be able to do the 3 pillars equally well?

[Citation Needed]

Is it not true that they want a fixed effectiveness, inside each pillar (e.g. 50% effective at combat, 25% effective at exploration, and 25% effective at social) and for this "ratio" of effectiveness to be equal for every class?

[Citation Needed]

In other words, no I don't think it is. And I'm a balance advocate. What's needed is for everyone to have abilities to contribute to each pillar, and no one class to be able to overshadow other classes.

If for example the fighter is 80 combat/10 exploration/10 social, I don't think anyone is saying that it's wrong for the rogue to be 40 combat/30 exploration/30 social. What's wrong is for the cleric to be 75 combat/45 exploration/25 social - or for mister -Dzilla when combined with "Mr Huggy", his pet brown bear, to be 110 Combat/50 exploration/10 social.

And the other problem is the wizard. If on day 1 he's 75 combat/5 exploration/5 social, and on day 2 he's 5 combat/75 exploration/5 social, and on day 3 he's 5 combat/5 exploration/75 social then, unless you have a continually ticking clock on a short fuse, he's an absolute monster.

 

[hanez]

3 people corrected me, so I'll happily take the correction. In truth I've read it a couple times on this forum, but I am glad that its not regarded as the standard desired when speakin of balance. (honestly thought it was). I could look for them but honestly don't need to, if its not a majority view then don't need the distraction.

I agree that classes should be (as much as possible) balanced within the game.

If for example the fighter is 80 combat/10 exploration/10 social, I don't think anyone is saying that it's wrong for the rogue to be 40 combat/30 exploration/30 social. What's wrong is for the cleric to be 75 combat/45 exploration/25 social - or for mister -Dzilla when combined with "Mr Huggy", his pet brown bear, to be 110 Combat/50 exploration/10 social.

I see this as a problem too, and agree that it was sometimes the case.

And the other problem is the wizard. If on day 1 he's 75 combat/5 exploration/5 social, and on day 2 he's 5 combat/75 exploration/5 social, and on day 3 he's 5 combat/5 exploration/75 social then, unless you have a continually ticking clock on a short fuse, he's an absolute monster.

This I see as less of a problem because I believe the challenge of "predicting" what is going to be the challenge of the day, and succeeding or failing in that prediction as central to D&D (especially with the wizard class). I know I personally had a lot of failures in picking the right spells but perhaps my DMs/campaigns were harder to read than typical ones.

 

[Neonchameleon]

3 people corrected me, so I'll happily take the correction. In truth I've read it a couple times on this forum, but I am glad that its not regarded as the standard desired when speakin of balance. (honestly thought it was). I could look for them but honestly don't need to, if its not a majority view then don't need the distraction.

Thank you

This I see as less of a problem because I believe the challenge of "predicting" what is going to be the challenge of the day, and succeeding or failing in that prediction as central to D&D (especially with the wizard class). I know I personally had a lot of failures in picking the right spells but perhaps my DMs/campaigns were harder to read than typical ones.

Ultimately it boils down to a playstyle issue, and the question of who is deciding the rate at which things progress. If the BBEG is on the offensive, and the PCs are running around trying to stop plots at the pace of the BBEG then things work close to the way you indicate. On the other hand in a sandbox setting or with a commando team style game where the PCs are forcing the bad guys to react then you can plan out "Today we travel to an hour's walk from the keep. Tomorrow we assault it at dawn, out of the sun. Exploration today, combat tomorrow."

 

[Neonchameleon]

Just to clarify on balance, what balance is is information. It's about the game telling the truth rather than lying. When the game says PCs are of equal level and measures the difficulty of monsters and of adventures in terms of level PCs of equal level should be of approximately equal power. It shouldn't be the case that CoDzilla can run over the fighter by doing what the fighter is supposed to be good at.

As far as I know, no one who cares about balance worries that in Ars Magica wizards are more powerful than the rest. That's because Ars Magica tells you that they are meant to be. What matters is that the game doesn't lie and you get to play what you signed up to. People who care about balance care you haven't accidently crippled your character by writing "Monk" at the top of your character sheet. (If you want to cripple it by writing "commoner", go ahead - that's what you are signing up to do deliberately). And that no one is going to accidently be playing Angel Summoner or have to find in character reasons to restrict their decisions whenever they play a wizard unless they want to make other people feel bad.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Oh, you mean by DM Fiat. Heal has specific uses. Now using heal for forensic pathology is something I'd allow as DM. And allowing it was a good thing. But it's not the skills themselves driving the game forward.

No, I have quite specific rules for it in my RPG. No GM fiat involved. The skill itself was definitely driving the game forward.

When you answered Hussar's challenge in this post. Hussar's challenge was:

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?"
​

It was therefore very specifically a 15th level party that you were saying could be helped by:

Gathering food quickly, navigating, or dealing with animals/plants (like gathering herbs) if nobody has any survival skills.
​

And so on.

Where was 3.X mentioned in that? I created a hit die 1 character in my game, meant for a hit die 15 party. That character definitely contributed to that party. I'm saying that a system can most certainly be built to make this possible, as I (and all of my players when I polled them) think my RPG accomplishes. Which, again, is why I said this in my last post:

I do know that -as I told pemerton- from a game theory perspective, level 1's consistently meaningfully contributing can be true for a level-based system, even with escalating level-dependent skills. Was it historically true in D&D? Probably not as much. Does that need to hold true for 5e? Definitely not. And thus my point.

As always, play what you like

I'm not meaning to imply that don't.

What I'm trying to say is that in a game with E6/Runequest-style play - skills are more important than spells, travel is by foot or horseback rather than teleport even for powerful PCs, etc - we are not talking about a D&D-ish game at all. We are not talking about a game in which the playes, by using their PCs' magical abilities (teleport, rope trick, healing etc), can exercise a very high degree of control over scene-framing, the passage of time, the mitigation of consequences from past encounters, etc. And, therefore (in my view) are not really answering the question posed by Hussar, which was (I think) fairly obviously talking about a 15th level D&D-style party.

In my RPG, at 15th hit die, you can teleport long distances, albeit at a cost. You can divine answers about things, though it's either difficult to do or it's hazy. You can heal damage and give bonuses against poisons. And that's not addressing everything else you can do with magic in my system, which is not built on specific spells, but rather on individual "threads" that you can combine for new effects each and every time you cast a spell.

Do PCs walk everywhere at this hit die? Probably, yes. The cost to teleport is high. Do they divine everything? No, because it takes weeks before they can do so again, and it's not guaranteed to work. Do they heal everything? Well, probably, actually (though the Heal skill does help with things other than damage).

And, yes, while Hussar and you may be addressing how D&D has been historically, I've explicitly stated that it doesn't need to stay that way. It can change, and you can most certainly have a system where a level 1 can consistently meaningfully contribute to a 15th level party, and even shine while in it. And that's what I was responding to. As always, play what you like

 

[Eric Tolle]

As far as I know, no one who cares about balance worries that in Ars Magica wizards are more powerful than the rest. That's because Ars Magica tells you that they are meant to be. What matters is that the game doesn't lie and you get to play what you signed up to.

Another factor in Ars Magica is that every player makes up a wizard, companions and grogs, so even though there may be a mix of power in a given session, with some players playing magi, and others companions, every player gets a chance to play their wizard. So there isn't even close to a balance issue.

If something like that were to be enacted in D&D, where each player makes three characters, say a Tier 1-2, a 3, and a 4-5, and rotates who plays what, that would solve the balance problem. It would be weird, but it might work.

 

[Hussar]

JamesonCourage - first off, it should have been very obvious in context that I was discussing D&D. Sorry for not being perfectly crystal clear. So, in D&D a 1st level character cannot contribute much of anything to a 15th level party. Which, of course, was in response to the comment that power level is unimportant in D&D for determining whether or not a character can meaningfully contribute.

Now, that aside, I have a question. What's the point of having levels in your game? If the 15th level party (presuming a 20 level spread such as in 3e and earlier games) is essentially the same as a 3rd level party, why bother with levels in the first place? What purpose do they serve?

In D&D, levels denote changes in the campaign. A low level party is dealing with very different things than a high level party. It's always been thus. The 1st level party is roaming through the upper levels of the dungeon while the 12th level party is capable of plumbing the depths. The low level party is dealing with the Caves of Chaos while the high level party is invading the Abyss to slay Llolth.

In a game where there are no really signficant differences between levels, why bother having levels at all? If my high level character still dies from the same threats as my low level character and my low level character has enough skills to deal with any issues that my high level character could face, what is the difference between a low and high level character?

 

[Steely_Dan]

What's the point of having levels in your game? If the 15th level party (presuming a 20 level spread such as in 3e and earlier games) is essentially the same as a 3rd level party, why bother with levels in the first place?

I thinking more stuff (HP, ability score increases, damage output, feats etc).