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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Worlds of Design: A Question of Balance
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<blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 7907061" data-attributes="member: 2518"><p>What sadly doesn't get addressed is "balanced for what".</p><p></p><p>The assumption is of course combat. But that is very limiting. You already had and still have this problematic with mundanes vs. casters (with all their non combat utility spells) and skilled vs unskilled classes.</p><p>Widen the scope of the RPG away from just combat/dungeon crawling and it gets even more complicated.</p><p>Is a Decker balanced to a Face in Shadowrun? How would you measure that.</p><p>Or to take up the sports example, how do you balance the socces striker with the nascar driver and an actor?</p><p></p><p>For classes to be balanced you must limit yourself to a very narrow scope (most of the time small scale combat) to even be able to measure it. And then you miss out all the other aspects that might be considered balance from a players point of view. Are two classes really balanced to each other when they do the exact same damage but one class could outside of combat also shape reality at will and control the minds of everyone he meets?</p><p></p><p>Also, I disagree with the video game comment. Symmetric design in video games happened ages ago. The current trend is asymmetric balancing. Most sides in strategy games are not symetric any more since Starcraft and this has spilled over first into MOBAS like DOTA and now FPS with Apex and Overwatch.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Derren, post: 7907061, member: 2518"] What sadly doesn't get addressed is "balanced for what". The assumption is of course combat. But that is very limiting. You already had and still have this problematic with mundanes vs. casters (with all their non combat utility spells) and skilled vs unskilled classes. Widen the scope of the RPG away from just combat/dungeon crawling and it gets even more complicated. Is a Decker balanced to a Face in Shadowrun? How would you measure that. Or to take up the sports example, how do you balance the socces striker with the nascar driver and an actor? For classes to be balanced you must limit yourself to a very narrow scope (most of the time small scale combat) to even be able to measure it. And then you miss out all the other aspects that might be considered balance from a players point of view. Are two classes really balanced to each other when they do the exact same damage but one class could outside of combat also shape reality at will and control the minds of everyone he meets? Also, I disagree with the video game comment. Symmetric design in video games happened ages ago. The current trend is asymmetric balancing. Most sides in strategy games are not symetric any more since Starcraft and this has spilled over first into MOBAS like DOTA and now FPS with Apex and Overwatch. [/QUOTE]
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