What do you do without balance?

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I'm very curious: in various discussions about editions of D&D and discrepancies between spellcasters and non-spellcasters there are people who wish there wasn't so much focus on balancing things. So that leads me to the following question:

How much balance would you be willing to forgo before you'd no longer be satisfied with the game?

(For the purpose that I using it here I define balance as "when presented with two or more similar mechanical options there are no clear better or worse choices".)

 

[Jack99]

Define satisfied?

Either way, I played 2e and was happy about it, despite the imbalance. Then again, I only ever played wizards iirc

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm very curious: in various discussions about editions of D&D and discrepancies between spellcasters and non-spellcasters there are people who wish there wasn't so much focus on balancing things. So that leads me to the following question:

How much balance would you be willing to forgo before you'd no longer be satisfied with the game?

(For the purpose that I using it here I define balance as "when presented with two or more similar mechanical options there are no clear better or worse choices".)

The level of balance for a given game is something that the individual group needs to decide on. Systems with too much balance built in might be a great fit for some, and seem too heavy handed and limited for others. There have been a number of threads about the balance of various game mechanics and after hundreds of pages of debate the overall concensus seems to be that nothing is universal. For every claim that element X is "broken" there will be an argument that element X worked just fine for another group. I prefer games that give the participants the freedom to decide how much balance is built in and provide guidelines that aid in that determination rather than dictate it.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Define satisfied?

It works better if the individual poster decides.

I prefer games that give the participants the freedom to decide how much balance is built in and provide guidelines that aid in that determination rather than dictate it.

Can you give any examples?

 

[Runestar]

It really depends.

In 3e, I was fine with wizards being overpowered as the player using them in our games was really in the controller role (something which few other classes could fill in competently). He played a fairly viable enabler/disabler ho was perfectly content to debuff foes, then sit back while everyone else whacked gleefully away while boosted with spells such as haste. Despite never doing a single point of damage, it was clear who the most effective player was. But the rest were okay with it, since he had his own niche, and never cannibalized any of the other players' roles/specialities.

Conversely, even though direct damage was suboptimal, the fighter would likely hate the sorcerer who specialized in single-target, high damage spells and constantly competed with him on who could take down the target first.

So my response would be that I don't mind imbalance so long as they don't cross into other classes' roles.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

For me, the issue isn't so much objective balance as it is the ease with with I can perceive imbalance.

If I can tell that a certain class/race/feat/spell combination is imbalanced, I can disallow it or deal with it via in-game circumstances. If I can't until it's "too late" (however you choose to define that), it becomes a problem.

This is why I have a warforged artificer in my current game. Never -- never -- again, but by the time I realized the issues, it was pretty much unreasonable to try and rein it in.

Now, when people propose various combinations of race/class/feat/spell, I ask them, "Why? What exactly are you going to do by being a warlock/mind bender? How will you attack, defend yourself, interact with NPCs? What spells will you use?"

 

[radja]

balance is very important for my games. this may have something to do with the fact that I was a balance archwizard on 2 MUDs though. balancing various classes and roles in an RPG like environment turns out to be pretty difficult. still, I prefer a flawed balance over no balance.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It works better if the individual poster decides.

Can you give any examples?

Original D&D/Basic D&D: A collection of guidelines that can be houseruled into a very balanced or unbalanced game depending on what the group wants.

GURPS: A point based game that be tweaked for extreme balance or run as unbalanced as the participants desire. Its easy to skew the balance to either direction by adjusting the point costs for everything.

 

[Jack99]

It works better if the individual poster decides.

Okay. Then satisfied to me means that enough to keep me playing. In which case, I think it has changed quite a bit over the years. Back in the 80'ies, I think balance was the last thing on our mind. It was about playing and having fun. Nowadays, well it's still definitely about having fun, but I guess due to having less time on our hands, we are more focused on what we do with said time. Meaning that balance becomes more important, because we want to contribute and do something worthwhile all the time.

Also, 7 years of hardcore MMORPG-playing has caused me to see balance as much more important than it really should be. Messageboards such as ENworld too. Actually, we talked about this last week (in my group), and the main concensus was that the internet (and especially boards like these) were probably the best and the worst thing that happened to our D&D.

 

[Katemare]

I would replace "balance" with "meeting the expectations".

You know, I had one game ruined because of gross mistake in rules text: the rules stated that each combatant can make an action in each phase after their init order (they really should've had one action each turn at their init phase). Of course, the PCs piled on the boss Lich who had low init and hacked him before he could act. It was on local con while presenting a new system, too :\ well, it's good that the con was more like just a bigger group.
Anyway, Lich's easy fall was nothing like any of us expected. In other words, failure to meet our expectations.

The other group has nothing against a wizard being weak at first, overpowering at high levels. They expect it from a fantasy setting after reading books like "The Witcher".

When things don't concern combat-oriented play, you may even fail to define and measure "balance". Is Xenobiology "more powerful" than Zero-G Maneuvering? Yes, if you have to cure the plague in alien slums. No, if you have to fight mad cyborgs in abandoned ship. Equal, if you have to fight plague-mad alien ecosystem in abandoned ship.

I prefer systems that allow me to fine tune the rules and stuff so that I can meet player's (and my) expectations.