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

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

This is a thread I started over on the Wizards forums but unfortunately, it was hi-jacked by the usual trolls who flamed and trolled until they got the thread locked.

First of all, I'm not talking about broken mechanics. I'm talking about the myth that a lot of people somehow want all classes to be balanced when it comes to combat and damage.

Now what I am about to post is from my own experience and the experiences of those I have gamed with for many years. I have been playing RPG's for over 27 years now. I am actively engaged in Pathfinder Society and with various Cons. In all my years, I have yet to come across a player, except on internet forums, who wants this so called balance that 4th edition gave us. The people that I have gamed with do not care about DPR, nor do they measure contributing to the game with numbers. These people aren't worried about choosing that right stat line up, or that race class combo, or even that special selection of certain feats that synergize perfectly. They are also not the people who want all their abilities to equally work at optimal efficiency against everything.

These people choose classes based on a concept they have so they will choose those feats that people on these forums discourage against taking because they aren't optimal numerically. These same people don't mind when the barbarian does 56 points of damage while the rogue does 25 because they aren't in a hurry to win combat nor do they mind if the barbarian does a lot more damage.

This is how I feel about the game. Concept is what's important to me and sometimes my concept is based around combat and sometimes it's not. I have found that a heavy emphasis on balanced combat leads to option bloat. This attitude promotes the selection of feats and backgrounds that only grant a numerical combat advantage, so what we get is loads of feats and backgrounds that are considered sub-optimal and are therefore discouraged.

From my own experience, the balance issue is not an actual issue at all. I'm sure your miles may vary, and it may be an issue for you but it's not for me and the many people that I deal with.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think you're right. A player is typically not comparing his character to the others, he's typically comparing it to an ideal in his head. Nor are most players keeping score in terms of how effective their characters are or how much time they get in the spotlight.

And, of course, the actual balance between two player characters in an actual campaign is determined by so many factors other than the rules on the page that were used to create that character, that trying to micromanage those rules is pointless.

The two most important things to a player are customization (being able to make the character you want and do the things during gameplay that you want) and naturalism (feeling that there is an internal logic to the game and that abilities match genre-appropriate expectations of "realism"). Probably the third is accessibility (the amount of time and effort needed to understand the rules). And then even when you start talking about balance, the balance between the players and the things they're actually competing against or the tasks they're trying to accomplish is more practically important than any parity in the choices one player has to make.

It's an odd phenomenon, that which you discuss. There were always charop forums and theoretical discussions, they were always fun exercises, and they never reliably correlated with actual play. The charop forums on WotC catered to a group of nerds among nerds (which I participated in myself of course) who understood all that and by and large weren't arrogant enough to think that charop exercises reflected actual play, let alone that the game itself should be changed based on the products of these exercises.

The tier system, for example, is kind of like the "power rankings" ubiquitous in sports news. 100% opinion and somewhat tongue in cheek. Not completely random, to be sure, but hardly a reliable indicator of anything; the #1 team rarely wins it all and lower ranked teams beat higher ones all the time. The difference is that the power rankings change every week reflecting what happened in actual games, and since D&D is not played on national TV, that never happens with charop discussions. So the charop stuff isn't even as accurate as sports journalism.

All this criticism about balance is kind of sadly misguided. There are still plenty of people playing 3.X/PF (let alone earlier editions) fighters, rogues, monks, bards, and so on even years after they were supposedly rendered obsolete by "balance".

 

[Mistwell]

This is a thread I started over on the Wizards forums but unfortunately, it was hi-jacked by the usual trolls who flamed and trolled until they got the thread locked.

First of all, I'm not talking about broken mechanics. I'm talking about the myth that a lot of people somehow want all classes to be balanced when it comes to combat and damage.

Well, there is no statistical data on how many people desire that. So, it's a topic of subjective opinion, not objective fact.

And you end the post saying that you're sure some opinions and experiences differ. So why do you call it a myth?

Now what I am about to post is from my own experience and the experiences of those I have gamed with for many years. I have been playing RPG's for over 27 years now. I am actively engaged in Pathfinder Society and with various Cons. In all my years, I have yet to come across a player, except on internet forums, who wants this so called balance that 4th edition gave us.

Right. But in the grand scheme of statistical sampling, your personal experience is not a valid representation of the whole. Just one single person with as much experience saying they have found people who want it, cancels out your experience.

And so, here I am. I have played since the 1977, so a decade more than you. I've been a member of RPGA, I've been to conventions since the early 1980s, and I have encountered more than one person who desires this (it's not me).

The people that I have gamed with do not care about DPR, nor do they measure contributing to the game with numbers.

Some people I game with, do.

These people aren't worried about choosing that right stat line up, or that race class combo, or even that special selection of certain feats that synergize perfectly. They are also not the people who want all their abilities to equally work at optimal efficiency against everything.

Some people I game with, do care about those things.

These people choose classes based on a concept they have so they will choose those feats that people on these forums discourage against taking because they aren't optimal numerically. These same people don't mind when the barbarian does 56 points of damage while the rogue does 25 because they aren't in a hurry to win combat nor do they mind if the barbarian does a lot more damage.

Some people I game with, do care about those things.

This is how I feel about the game. Concept is what's important to me and sometimes my concept is based around combat and sometimes it's not. I have found that a heavy emphasis on balanced combat leads to option bloat. This attitude promotes the selection of feats and backgrounds that only grant a numerical combat advantage, so what we get is loads of feats and backgrounds that are considered sub-optimal and are therefore discouraged.

From my own experience, the balance issue is not an actual issue at all. I'm sure your miles may vary, and it may be an issue for you but it's not for me and the many people that I deal with.

Right, my experience does vary from yours. But you started out by calling different experiences a myth. So, do you agree that both views are real and exist, and should be supported by the rules?

 

[n00bdragon]

So the TC has anecdotal evidence that supports A and a large contingent of people using the internet to discuss D&D claim anecdotal evidence supporting B. Therefore B must be wrong because it's only a "forum issue"?

You do realize that the primary users of the internet are human beings just like yourself right, and your anecdotes do not define the end all be all of experiences with D&D. Just because you personally haven't hit a certain problem doesn't mean that others haven't and doesn't mean that the problem isn't worth addressing or at least acknowledging.

 

[Li Shenron]

The two most important things to a player are customization (being able to make the character you want and do the things during gameplay that you want) and naturalism (feeling that there is an internal logic to the game and that abilities match genre-appropriate expectations of "realism"). Probably the third is accessibility (the amount of time and effort needed to understand the rules).

This is very much how I feel and what I want from the game when I am a player, but I can't say it's the same for everyone.

I am not at all worried about every character being equally good at combat, or any other thing for what matters. In fact, I rather hate rulesets based on the concept that "everybody should be equally good all the time". To me that's the end of fun in a roleplay game, which for my expectations is about roles, and roles are defined by differences.

There is however one instance of unbalance I definitely care for: I do not want to have single alternative elements of character creation such that one of them is better than the other. A trivial example is having 2 spells or feats exactly identical except the second has a straight advantage on the first (e.g. feat #1 gives you a certain bonus against vampires, feat #2 gives you the same against all undead). It rarely happens, but when it does I really hate it.

But that said, a lot of people see RPG as mainly games of tactical combat, and as such they do need every PC to be equal, because everything else (exploration, character interaction, story...) is marginal and usually treated as relief footage between moments of the real game. That's not what I would call a roleplay game myself, but still...

 

[the Jester]

There is however one instance of unbalance I definitely care for: I do not want to have single alternative elements of character creation such that one of them is better than the other. A trivial example is having 2 spells or feats exactly identical except the second has a straight advantage on the first (e.g. feat #1 gives you a certain bonus against vampires, feat #2 gives you the same against all undead). It rarely happens, but when it does I really hate it.

Let's add to that elements that are introduced to the game after launch that give new pcs an edge over older ones.

In 4e terms, you can think of this as "backgrounds and themes"- options that make 1st level pcs better, but were not inserted into the game until well after launch. Yeah, that kind of stuff? Useless. I ban it- because those older pcs are still around (well, the survivors) and I strongly dislike putting them at a disadvantage because "Ooh, new and shiny!"

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think it is partially a forum issue, but partially it is reality.

In 3.5 I encountered the problem of some players picking broken combos dominating any combat, so that other people felt useless.

I don´t believe mathematical balance is the highest goal in an RPG, but every class that claims to be a combatant needs to be able to stand its ground. And none of those classes may be better in every scenario.

A fighter should be the best combatant on the battlefield. A ranger should be better in the forest, a rogue should be better with surprise and darkness on his side. A bard however should be able to talk his way out of a fight... (no, not with powers that force enemies to surrender, no matter what, but with abilities that make such escapes more likely)

And last but not least: not every class needs to be able to do everything, or be flexible enough to fullfill any role and does not need to be the right class for every player. A bard e.g. may at least be a class for a player that likes to talk his way out of fights. His charisma and class abilities should support his play. The RP in RPG stands for "roleplaying" i.e.: you should be able to play your role. Some people forget that.

 

[GMMichael]

2 answers from WotC's perspective:

1) We want the people currently playing World of Warcraft to play our product instead, so yes, we'll cater to forum-users.

2) Combat abilities are much easier to balance than non-combat abilities, since there's always a structure for combat: attack, damage, defense, rounds. So we might as well do most of our balancing there.

 

[Zardnaar]

Excessive focus on balance will doom D&DN just like 4E IMHO. The 2 bigest selling D&Ds were also the most unbalanced - 1st and 3rd ed.

 

[Ahnehnois]

There is however one instance of unbalance I definitely care for: I do not want to have single alternative elements of character creation such that one of them is better than the other. A trivial example is having 2 spells or feats exactly identical except the second has a straight advantage on the first (e.g. feat #1 gives you a certain bonus against vampires, feat #2 gives you the same against all undead). It rarely happens, but when it does I really hate it.

Those things are an issue. As you note, they're pretty rare.

I'm not sure that's even a balance issue so much as an editing mistake. If you have one ability that represents being good at something, it is pretty inherent that you shouldn't have another one that makes it redundant or pointless.

But that said, a lot of people see RPG as mainly games of tactical combat, and as such they do need every PC to be equal, because everything else (exploration, character interaction, story...) is marginal and usually treated as relief footage between moments of the real game. That's not what I would call a roleplay game myself, but still...

Maybe. But even then, the complexity of D&D makes it very difficult to really balance things, because the characters are opposed to a dynamic set of circumstances. Since the DM chooses what the players can or do fight, and under what circumstances, it is hard to write balance into the rules because of the unknown variables that introduces. Moreover, the DM also controls the flow of information to the players and determines what options are available to them.

That's why keeping the players happy, including making sure that they have equal utility in combat if that is indeed something they care about, falls under the DM's responsibility.