D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[GMforPowergamers]

But the problem with this is that it creates the "Wizard/Jedi/Timelord and his entourage" syndrome. Nobody likes to be useless. In a game where all PLAYERS are equal (aka no one player drives the plot like Harry Potter/Frodo/Luke) it becomes important that all characters can share the spotlight at least some of the time. D&D (and any RPG) goes off the rails when one character type is strictly better than all others.

While I don't think the balance bat needs to swing as hard as it did in 4e, I think the idea that "wizards are better than rogues, deal with it" is equally as unhelpful.

Thank you... all this talk of movies and books made me figure out what I want to say...

I want JLA/Avengers balance. See people like to make jokes about aquaman being a joke too weak. People also like to look at Batman and ask why have him on a team with superman and green lantern.

the movie avengers are not that much better, I mean Iron Man and Thor are big hitters, but hawk eye and coleson?

SO jokes aside how do the writers handle it?

They writer deal with it... they cheat. Batman isn't the same character in Detective comics and JLA... I mean on his surface he is, but he is much larger then life in the team.

Is Hawkeye an awesome character, yea... one of the best snipers in that world, but a sniper with some trick arrows isn't what we get in that last fight... he have more arrows then he has fired and a perception that beats the computer tracking system on Iron mans armor, and can see BLOCKS away targets moveing... with the naked eye.

See they do work with the idea of you need even 'normals' to be larger then life... That's what I want... the ability to play larger then life characters...

 

[Remathilis]

That is the trick though; how do you make the mundanes and the magicals "equal" without making them "the same".

4e did it wrong, IMHO. They made magic and martial ability the same. They worked on the same mechanic, used the same rules for effect resolution, and shared the same resource depletion rules. They made swinging a sword the same as casting a spell in all but a few key-words and die-codes.

However, previous editions did the opposite and worse; a wizard with the right spells and wands out-rogued a rogue using "I win" magic like invisibility, Knock, Spider Climb, and Charm Person to eat the rogue's dinner. Nothing was worse than being a rogue and then being told by the party wizard he "didn't make a wand of knock because he wanted to let me do something this adventure". Jeez, thanks. :/

Somewhere between the strict enforced balance of 4e and the laissez faire magica of AD&D/d20 is a happy medium.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But the problem with this is that it creates the "Wizard/Jedi/Timelord and his entourage" syndrome. Nobody likes to be useless.

First off, that's not true. Of the classical player types, I can think of at least two (wallflower and method actor) that actively enjoy being relatively useless. Those aren't the people that post on forums, so they get no voice, but there are a lot of personality types among people playing D&D that are not all that interested in being dominant or even useful. Some people are modest and want to play modest characters, some are just along for the ride. Some are team players and like supporting their friends. These are not radical ideas.

In a game where all PLAYERS are equal (aka no one player drives the plot like Harry Potter/Frodo/Luke) it becomes important that all characters can share the spotlight at least some of the time. D&D (and any RPG) goes off the rails when one character type is strictly better than all others.

As far as I know, in D&D the players are not equal and there is no requirement that their characters have equal status in the game.

If anything, I think D&D works best when it does focus on some players more than others transiently at least. Things tend to naturally balance out in the long term, but I think it's a good thing when one character emerges as the star of a session or even of an extended adventure.

While I don't think the balance bat needs to swing as hard as it did in 4e, I think the idea that "wizards are better than rogues, deal with it" is equally as unhelpful.

I also find it unhelpful since it really isn't true. Maybe they're better in some times and in some ways, being the high variance characters that they are, but a blanket statement that they are better is ludicrous and is not something I ever said.

 

[Jacob Marley]

That is the trick though; how do you make the mundanes and the magicals "equal" without making them "the same".

One interesting idea I saw with regards to 3.x proposed on another site was to limit the number of levels a mundane class can advance before requiring a Prestige Class. So, for example, a Fighter might be only a five-level class; then, for level six, you go into Cavalier, or Knight of the Chalice, or Order of the Bow Initiate (or whatever). Characters can start the game mundane but, at some point, must transition to exceptional or magical. With regards to 3.x, low level are where the classes are closest in power levels.

 

[mlund]

Yea, I can see it now.

Player 1 "I want to play Robin Hood, someone who can shoot arrows true and be smart in the aristocrat circle and as a survivalist"
Player 2 "I want to play a Dashing Swordsman someone that can fight and be dashing and charismatic"
Player 3 "I want to play a type of cleric who not only has spells but also as good at nature or better then player one and have a free follower that can fight as well as player 2"
Player 4 "I want to play a spellcaster that can in theory learn huge amounts of reality WMDs and spells that will one day make me better then player 1 and 2 togather."

DM: "WHoa, I didn't know I had two such powergamers... how dare Player 1 and 2 make such broken characters..."

I think it usually boils down more to.

"Player 4: 'Hey, Player 1 shouldn't be able to do that! He's a muggle! If I wanted to put up with that I'd play a Supers game! It's ruining my simulation (of being more special and powerful than everyone else).'"

Of course you can play those characters, and they can be good. But is Han Solo "balanced" with a Jedi master? No. And most of those characters are from setting that don't much resemble D&D, so it's hard to say how they would compare with a D&D spellcaster if they met one.

AFAICT, as long as one isn't overly concerned about equivalence with an unreasonable standard, D&D does those types of characters fine.

I think it also runs afoul of trying to build NPC super-men on the backs of a Player Character class system. Gandalf and Elminster aren't PCs. They aren't Wizards in the D&D sense. They are fantasy novel demi-gods and plot-devices, not team-members. It's almost as goofy as the Deities and Demigods book putting class levels on everything from Heracles to Odin. It sets a silly expectation as to what 20 levels of [Insert Caster Here] should get you as opposed to 20 levels of [Insert Martial Class Here].

- Marty Lund

 

[pemerton]

If the DM (or the game writers) wants you to play a ridiculously exaggerated nonmagical character, the tools are all there. Just give someone better ability scores or a better starting level, really. That's what levels are for.

Of course you can play those characters, and they can be good. But is Han Solo "balanced" with a Jedi master? No.

I don't understand - why are levels the device for expressing effective non-magical PCs, but not for expressing magical PCs like Jedi Knights, druids and wizards?

It's not as if there is some Platonic ideal of "the 1st level rogue" or "the 1st level druid" such that a 1st level druid must be mechanically more effective than a 1st level rogue. For instance, if we hold rogues constant then we could power down druids so that their 1st level animal companions are mice or sparrows. Conversely, if we hold druids constant then we could power up rogues so that a 1st level rogue is more than a match in combat for the druid's pet wolf.

As to Han Solo being balanced (or not) against a Jedi Master, he certainly has more impact on the story in Star Wars than does Obi Wan, and in Empire has more impact on the story than Yoda and (arguably) Luke. In an RPG the most straightforward mechanical way to achieve this is by giving Han's player meta resources to compensate for the PC's comparative lack of ingame capabilities.

That is the trick though; how do you make the mundanes and the magicals "equal" without making them "the same".

4e did it wrong, IMHO. They made magic and martial ability the same. They worked on the same mechanic, used the same rules for effect resolution, and shared the same resource depletion rules. They made swinging a sword the same as casting a spell in all but a few key-words and die-codes.

There are plenty of other RPGs that resemble 4e in this respect: HeroWars/Quest, Marvel Heroic RP, and other free-descriptor-style games with uniform action resolution systems.

In these systems the difference between magic and martial ability isn't in the mechanics of resource depletion or what sort of dice you roll (or whether or not you need to roll dice at all). It is in the fiction. The 4e rulebooks never elaborated adequately on the importance of keywords for achieving this link between fiction and mechanics (it is clearest in the DMG rules for attacking objects). What makes the difference between (say) a fighter and a sorcerer is that the fighter's ability consists in swinging a sword, while the sorcerer's ability consists in summoning and hurling gouts of fire.

If the difference between these two things never matters at the level of the fiction, and therefore - if the mechanics are uniform - never makes itself manifest in play, then I can see that the two classes might feel the same. Personally, I'm a bit dubious about purely mechanical differences that don't correlate to noticeable differences in the fiction, but for those who have the experience I've just described I can see that they might be important. Both 13th Age and Next have opted for them (though I think 13th Age is doing a better job, to date at least, of confronting the balance issues that come with classes having different rates of resource depletion).

I want JLA/Avengers balance.

<snip>

They writer deal with it... they cheat. Batman isn't the same character in Detective comics and JLA... I mean on his surface he is, but he is much larger then life in the team.

Is Hawkeye an awesome character, yea... one of the best snipers in that world, but a sniper with some trick arrows isn't what we get in that last fight... he have more arrows then he has fired and a perception that beats the computer tracking system on Iron mans armor, and can see BLOCKS away targets moveing... with the naked eye.

See they do work with the idea of you need even 'normals' to be larger then life... That's what I want... the ability to play larger then life characters...

Here are some comments from a thoughtful designer on ways to handle balance, including in an Avengers situation:

Balance" is one of those words which is applied to a wide variety of activities or practices that may be independent or even contradictory. . . The word is thrown about like a shuttlecock with little reference to any definition at all. . .

• Compare "balance" with the notion of parity, or equality of performance or resources. If a game includes enforced parity, is it is balanced? Is it that simple? And if not, then what?
  
  
• Bear in mind that Fairness and Parity are not synonymous. One or the other might be the real priority regardless of which word is being used. . .
  
  
• Are we discussing the totality of a character (Effectiveness, Resource, Metagame), or are we discussing Effectiveness only, or Effectiveness + Resource only?
  
  
• Are we discussing "screen time" for characters at all, which has nothing to do with their abilities/oomph?
  
  
• Are we discussing anything to do at all with players, or rather, with the people at the table? Can we talk about balance in regard to attention, respect, and input among them? Does it have anything to do with Balance of Power, referring to how "the buck" (where it stops) is distributed among the members of the group?

They can't all be balance at once. . .

• Parity of starting point, with free rein given to differing degrees of improvement after that. Basically, this means that "we all start equal" but after that, anything goes, and if A gets better than B, then that's fine.
  
  
• The relative Effectiveness of different categories of strategy: magic vs. physical combat, for instance, or pumping more investment into quickness rather than endurance. In this sense, "balance" means that any strategy is at least potentially effective, and "unbalanced" means numerically broken.
  
  
• Related to [the above], a team that is not equipped for the expected range of potential dangers is sometimes called unbalanced.
  
  
• . . . "balance" can also mean that everyone is subject to the same vagaries of fate (Fortune). That is, play is "balanced" if everyone has a chance to save against the Killer Death Trap. Or it's balanced because we all rolled 3d6 for Strength, regardless of what everyone individually ended up with. (Tunnels & Trolls is all about this kind of play.)
  
  
• The resistance of a game to deliberate Breaking. . .
  
  
• One fascinating way that the term is applied is to the Currency-based relationship among the components of a character: Effectiveness, Resource, Metagame. That's right - we're not talking about balance among characters at all, but rather balance within the interacting components of a single character. . .
  
  
• And, completely differently, "balance" is often invoked as an anti-Gamist play defense, specifically in terms of not permitting characters to change very much relative to one another, as all of them improve. This is, I think, the origin of "everyone gets a couple E[xperience] P[oint]s at the end of each session" approach, as opposed to "everyone gets different EPs on the basis of individual performance."
  
  
• Rules-enforcement in terms of Effectiveness, which is why GURPS has point-total limits per setting. Note that heavy layering renders this very vulnerable to Gamist Drift.
  
  
• "Balance" might be relevant as a measure of character screen time, or perhaps weight of screen time rather than absolute length. This is not solely the effectiveness-issue which confuses everyone. Comics fans will recognize that Hawkeye is just as significant as Thor, as a member of the Avengers, or even more so. In game terms, this is a Character Components issue: Hawkeye would have a high Metagame component whereas Thor would have a higher Effectiveness component.

 

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

The main failure I see with some of the arguments is the assumption that everyone at the table wants the spotlight. I can tell you as a 100% fact that not all do. Some people come in with a character concept and let the game take ot from there. Their current and future actions and sometimes even dice rolls will determine where their character goes and what he ends up doing. He could possibly, through his actions, become a figure in the spotlight or, he may not. Some players don't to the table with a preconceived notion of how much "attention" they want and the game should not try and force equal spotlight time on a group.

Using comics, books, and movies is a really bad example when trying to compare it to D&D because all of those are written with certain circumstances envolved. You would never see an outright fight with Crossbones and the Hulk without any outside help or crazy lucky circumstances.

 

[pemerton]

I think it also runs afoul of trying to build NPC super-men on the backs of a Player Character class system. Gandalf and Elminster aren't PCs. They are Wizards in the D&D sense. They are fantasy novel demi-gods and plot-devices, not team-members. It's almost as goofy as the Deities and Demigods book putting class levels on everything from Heracles to Odin. It sets a silly expectation as to what 20 levels of [Insert Caster Here] should get you as opposed to 20 levels of [Insert Martial Class Here].

Interesting observation. (Can't XP, sorry.)

 

[Bluenose]

Using comics, books, and movies is a really bad example when trying to compare it to D&D because all of those are written with certain circumstances envolved. You would never see an outright fight with Crossbones and the Hulk without any outside help or crazy lucky circumstances.

Is that because they're different classes or because they're different levels?

 

[Derren]

I never said that.

ROFL

So D&D is about combat but somehow people are perfectly able to play it without combat...
Now you are just silly.
Either D&D is a combat game and people playing it differently are doing it wrong, or people can play D&D in different ways, meaning it is not a game about combat.

So welcome to my ignore list.

Same to you.