Quote from: soviet;655968OK, cool. Well for me the purpose of game balance is to make these decisions obvious. If you want the players to have more or less equally powerful characters, you can run the system as written. If you want one character to be more powerful, you can do that too by giving him extra levels or stat boosts or whatever.

But the key is, you know that you're allowing player A to have a more powerful character than everyone else, because it fits his background or your campaign idea or you're going to throw appropriately higher level enemies against him later. It's a deliberate choice. The system is transparent.

But when you have a game where balance is fucked, this is more of a crapshoot. Player A's character might be way more powerful than player B's simply because tech ninjas happen to be mechanically superior to gunslingers in that edition of the game, and maybe not in an obvious way. The GM then has to try to rebalance things on an ad hoc basis as the game's problems reveal themselves in play, rather than being able to plan for these issues upfront.

Also there's a risk that some players are effectively penalised because they prefer the flavour of the (it turns out) much weaker classes. Their decision then is to play what they want (fluff) or to play what's effective (mechanics). I'd rather have a balanced game that lets people play what they want and be effective.

This is why I leave issues of balance to the Players and GM, not to the rules.

Really people worry too much about balance.

In general niche works better than attempts at pure balance. That said a niche is only as good as its chance of being used in the campaign. In the end however it matters little, for it's classic free market influences that will rule the day. The Players will move towards what works, and away from what doesn't.

The only conflict comes when they insist that something that doesn't work should- and really I have little interest in responding to such a desire. Who told them life was fair?

I like a rough balance between characters.

The fact of the matter is that "balance" in RPGs is almost wholly context dependent (the old a hundred ranks in swim is worthless if the GM sets the game in the desert) so attempts to mechanically dictate balance is either mostly futile and just add cruft (as context is out of the hands of the designers) OR leads to a game with homogenized context (like 4e being so focused on set piece combats).

Both of those options are pretty shitty to me.

The games I've had the most fun with over the years have mostly been bemoaned as horribly unbalanced and unfun so I'm fairly dismissive of the whole concern.

In detail, there are different kinds of balance important to different forms of game.

More broadly, people tend to want at least a nearly equal opportunity to participate in and significantly contribute to the affair.

Quote from: soviet;655945So if someone in your D&D group asked to start 10 levels above everyone else, you'd let them?

Are the other players OK with it? Then OK, then. Does that person always want to be 10 levels above everyone else, and seem to have an agenda other than "pretend to be somebody in a fantasy world"? Maybe we'll have an intervention instead. Either way, that's a social issue, not a rules issue.

Quote from: soviet;655945Or asked to roll 5d6 for all their stats?

No, I'd just let 'em pick.

"I want all 18s for my stats!" Alrighty, then, Special Snowflake. But there will be a downside. There is *always* a downside.

"balance" is for children and immature players who don't trust the people they game with. So nyah!

Quote from: soviet;655968OK, cool. Well for me the purpose of game balance is to make these decisions obvious. If you want the players to have more or less equally powerful characters, you can run the system as written. If you want one character to be more powerful, you can do that too by giving him extra levels or stat boosts or whatever.

But the key is, you know that you're allowing player A to have a more powerful character than everyone else, because it fits his background or your campaign idea or you're going to throw appropriately higher level enemies against him later. It's a deliberate choice. The system is transparent.

But when you have a game where balance is fucked, this is more of a crapshoot. Player A's character might be way more powerful than player B's simply because tech ninjas happen to be mechanically superior to gunslingers in that edition of the game, and maybe not in an obvious way. The GM then has to try to rebalance things on an ad hoc basis as the game's problems reveal themselves in play, rather than being able to plan for these issues upfront.

Also there's a risk that some players are effectively penalised because they prefer the flavour of the (it turns out) much weaker classes. Their decision then is to play what they want (fluff) or to play what's effective (mechanics). I'd rather have a balanced game that lets people play what they want and be effective.

All very sensible indeed.

I can not for the life of me see why a designer would build a game that had no regard for balance. Even in games like Dr Who they try to mitigate the mechanical superiority of the Doctor with other mechanics for everyone else.

Now in a game like traveller where characters are generated randomly there is "balance through luck" where all characters start equal before the dice are rolled. In AD&D the class was much more important that individual rolls in the vast number of cases. As I have noted before (on the thread that Led Bill to create this one amongst others) there are AD&D classes that are simply more powerful. A Ranger and a Paladin are both more powerful than a vanilla fighter for example. To me this is made worse by the fact that these classes have high state rerquirements becuase you get the feedback loop of High Stats opening access to more powerful classes so now you have better stats and a more powerful class.
In D&D terms I would have liked to have seen the Fighter class get some more advantages (like juding the skill of enemies in advance of combat, or hiding ones own skill, or some real leadership benefits etc) to even out that disparity whcih is I think one of poor design.
As an aside I think Next is trying to tackle this by taking the class powers that were the domain of the AD&D 'prestige' classes, like ranger, Monk, Paladin etc and applying the same logic and mechanical template to all classes.
Now some are going to say but the fighter was a great class because it was so simple and had no mechanical side to worry about and for those folks Next has proposed +1 to a stat as opposed to a class power. No doubt that will be equally unpopular as the innovation most of these players would see is reprinting 1e and stopping the production of everything else

Quote from: jibbajibba;656032I can not for the life of me see why a designer would build a game that had no regard for balance.

It shouldn't be difficult, balance isn't genre with rare exception and any design seeking to simulate specific source material will match that reality. Why is this hard to understand?

This doesn't mean however that there's no place for weaker characters, there's niche, and there's the fact that a single character is still but a single character. A good design will take advantage of those two facts- and the lack of balance really isn't noticed in play as a result.

Quote from: gleichman;656034It shouldn't be difficult, balance isn't genre with rare exception and any design seeking to simulate specific source material will match that reality. Why is this hard to understand?

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I think that depends on interpretation.
I don't think Conan is way more powerful than Malak becuase Malak is a thief and Conan is a barbarian. I think it's becase Malak is 6th level and Conan is 10th.
Likewise Frodo is a 1st level Hobbit Fighter and Aragorn is an 8th level Ranger and Gandalf is a 12th level Maiar Prestige class

The level mechanic allows you to run a game wherer everyone has rough parity or a game where they don't but makes that disparity apparent. Surely that level of transparency and flexibility is the most desirable end state?

In a Point buy game a 100 point character should be close to another 100 point character just as a 500 point character shoudl be substantially more powerful (or flexible). In short what you can get for 10 points should work out roughly equivalent.

Quote from: gleichman;656034It shouldn't be difficult, balance isn't genre with rare exception and any design seeking to simulate specific source material will match that reality. Why is this hard to understand?

This doesn't mean however that there's no place for weaker characters, there's niche, and there's the fact that a single character is still but a single character. A good design will take advantage of those two facts- and the lack of balance really isn't noticed in play as a result.

I would take exception in regards to a game that wouldn't simulate any specific inspiration or source material, but a reality of its own, a mash up of these influences, instead, but otherwise I agree with your point entirely, particularly when you bring up the fact that (1) there's a niche for weak characters to be exploited, especially if the structure of the game and world it depicts takes advantage of that fact, and (2) that a character is still a single character, no matter how you cut it. I would add that some circumstances might more, or less, bypass whatever scale of power or abilities you set for usual characters in usual circumstances, and that too will mitigate the issues theoretical rules balance keeps having with well, everything.

Also, and most importantly, from my point of view, the "game balance" people keep harping about is really just rules balance, when these rules are taken in a complete vacuum divorced from the social interactions going on around a game table and the act of play itself, which on its face is nonsense to me when we are talking about games people play face to face rolling dice sharing their imaginary worlds with each other.

I read a friend of mine talking about how a guy he knew chose for his human character to wield a short sword in an AD&D game they played once. This and that player started to tell him how much "smarter" and "more efficient" it would be to choose a long sword instead. The guy got up, and mimicking the act of weighing the imaginary weapon in his hand just said "hmmm. No. This just seems to be the right length to me."

This is role playing at its core, to me.

Quote from: Benoist;656051I would take exception in regards to a game that wouldn't simulate any specific inspiration or source material, but a reality of its own, a mash up of these influences, instead, but otherwise I agree with your point entirely, particularly when you bring up the fact that (1) there's a niche for weak characters to be exploited, especially if the structure of the game and world it depicts takes advantage of that fact, and (2) that a character is still a single character, no matter how you cut it. I would add that some circumstances might more, or less, bypass whatever scale of power or abilities you set for usual characters in usual circumstances, and that too will mitigate the issues theoretical rules balance keeps having with well, everything.

Also, and most importantly, from my point of view, the "game balance" people keep harping about is really just rules balance, when these rules are taken in a complete vacuum divorced from the social interactions going on around a game table and the act of play itself, which on its face is nonsense when we are talking about games people play face to face rolling dice sharing their imaginary worlds with each other.

I read a friend of mine talking about how a guy he knew chose for his human character to wield a short sword in an AD&D game they played once. This and that player started to tell him how much "smarter" and "more efficient" it would be to choose a long sword instead. The guy got up, and mimicking the act of weighing the imaginary weapon in his hand just said "hmmm. No. This just seems to be the right length to me."

This is role playing at its core, to me.

And yet a system where the rules are balanced enables you to play any variation as you can make explicit choices. You can choose to make one PC higher level, you can choose to give some PCs access to information etc.

If the rules are not balanced then you may find things imposed upon you that you don't want.
Say in a superhero game the Speedster power is much more powerful than all the other powers but all powers have the same piont cost. The effect may be that against the will of the players the speedsters dominate play.
If the rules had either made this explicit or preferably had costed the speedster power appropriately or curtailed it's power somehow then the decision about relative balance between PCs would have been for the players to make as opposed to being imposed upon them by the rules.

I want the roleplay to be at the forefront of the game I want the rules to mostly get out of the way. To achieve that I want the rules to be balanced so that any imbalance is a conscious choice of the players and not something imposed by a poor design choice by the author.

Your sword example by the way is nothing to do with balance (unless the sword itself was babdly balnced ) of the rules. Players making sub-optimal choices for roleplay reasons is key to roleplay but its a player choice to do that its not imposed by the rules.

Quote from: jibbajibba;656049I don't think Conan is way more powerful than Malak becuase Malak is a thief and Conan is a barbarian.

I think Howard would say you missed the point of his stories if you told him that. Much like you missed the point of Gandalf when you attempt to compare him to dwarves, elves or men.

In many worlds, there are professions that are simply better than others.

Quote from: jibbajibba;656049The level mechanic allows you to run a game wherer everyone has rough parity or a game where they don't but makes that disparity apparent. Surely that level of transparency and flexibility is the most desirable end state?

In a ideal world? No, not really even then I think. In that direction lays the over design failures of 4th edition for the only real balance is the balance of an identical world where the names change- but the abilities really don't. The game version of Harrison Bergeron.

I chased this mechanical rabbit back in the late 70s, and put a fair amount of math to it. Niches, those are possible. Balance where there is a true difference, no. It's impossible.

In HERO, Combat Driving costs 3 points. In a Fast and Furious campaign it would be worth more than what you paid. In a Pride and Prejudice campaign it would be a waste of points. In between those two extremes are a infinite number of different campaigns, and somewhere in that infinite number there is at best a very small subset where perhaps it's actually worth 3 points- and it would be all but impossible for a single GM let alone all GMs who use to the system to find it.

In the end I realized that it wasn't even necessary. People will find their role, and they will make do with what they have. And in doing so they will find joy.

As a designer, I will provide niches. And I will provide simulation. The rest, I leave to the GM and the players. I only make tools, and I don't lie about what my tools will and will not do.

I will say that the constant beating of the "balance" drum by some 4th ed proponents has made me cranky about the concept.

Yeah, balance is good, but there can always be too much of a good thing, and so while I keep balance in mind, I don't let it get in the way of fun.

Quote from: Bill;655490Is the disparity in fighting power a problem when the two fight side by side?

No, it's a virtue. Roleplaying games are a social creative hobby. The player with the awesome character stats doesn't have to think much, they can just wade the guy in and have him bash. The player with the crappier character will be forced to be creative. Necessity is the mother of invention, and invention is a good thing.

Likewise, the foes should be sometimes easy to defeat, and sometimes hard - or impossible - to defeat.

An unbalanced roleplaying game is a good game.

Quote from: Benoist;656051Also, and most importantly, from my point of view, the "game balance" people keep harping about is really just rules balance, when these rules are taken in a complete vacuum divorced from the social interactions going on around a game table and the act of play itself, which on its face is nonsense when we are talking about games people play face to face rolling dice sharing their imaginary worlds with each other.

This is where questions of balance fall apart, in the 'wild' as it were.

What use is a character specialized in Court interaction and politics? The rules can give him all sorts of advantages when in his element- far beyond those of normal characters. In a campaign where court approve determines what the characters may or may not, such a PC would be key.

But they of are no use of the campaign spends 100% of its time in Dungeons dealing with traps and unintelligent monsters who can't be negotiated with.

IMO a set of rule is best when it provides niches and options, and those can be used in whatever mix the players think is best for their campaign. They will determine the actual balance 'in the wild' no matter how much effort the designer puts into whatever it is he considers balance.

Indeed, the designer who goes too far will end up producing bland look-alikes that bleed the campaign of favor and interest.

To give an example, Conan is of a interest to many specifically because of Howard's theme that the barbarian is better than the corruption of civilization. It's a thought I have little interest in, but it's one that belongs in a Conan game. And it should be there for otherwise it would be easily to run a Conan campaign without a single barbarian- and thus undermine the whole setting.