3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

[Crake]

The Smallville RPG has wildly varying levels of power (Lois Lane and Clark Kent are not even CLOSE to the same power level) but everyone has a similar amount of NARRATIVE power, so the game works and is fun.

An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?

[JNAProductions]

An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?

Think of it the other way-what's GRANTING them narrative power?

I've not played Smallville, so I can't speak to it too much, but the way I see it, your character has to do more than exist to have narrative power. And in the scope of 3.5, narrative power is frequently correlated with power power.

[Crake]

Think of it the other way-what's GRANTING them narrative power?

I've not played Smallville, so I can't speak to it too much, but the way I see it, your character has to do more than exist to have narrative power. And in the scope of 3.5, narrative power is frequently correlated with power power.

Well, generally speaking, you build narrative power through playing the game, and I would posit that unless someone is intentionally trying to exclude the others, you build narrative power as a group for the most part, but can each weild it individually, right?

As an aside, narrative power can also come from campaign factors, for example, an elven fighter would hold far more sway amongst the elves when trying to convince them to cease hostilities with the neighbouring human nations than a human wizard would.

[JNAProductions]

Well, generally speaking, you build narrative power through playing the game, and I would posit that unless someone is intentionally trying to exclude the others, you build narrative power as a group for the most part, but can each weild it individually, right?

As an aside, narrative power can also come from campaign factors, for example, an elven fighter would hold far more sway amongst the elves when trying to convince them to cease hostilities with the neighbouring human nations than a human wizard would.

What of that is inherent to the system?

It's fully possible, of course, for a DM to balance disparate power levels, but why is that the DM's job?

And what happens when the elves need someone to negotiate with the dwarves, and place that task in the party's care? Or the party is sent to deal with an orcish horde? Or literally anything where being an elf doesn't really matter?

[ezekielraiden]

Well, generally speaking, you build narrative power through playing the game, and I would posit that unless someone is intentionally trying to exclude the others, you build narrative power as a group for the most part, but can each weild it individually, right?

As an aside, narrative power can also come from campaign factors, for example, an elven fighter would hold far more sway amongst the elves when trying to convince them to cease hostilities with the neighbouring human nations than a human wizard would.

Sure, those are things that the party can build into, with DM consent and support.

What tools does the Fighter class offer that provide comparable things? Now, what tools does the Wizard class offer that provide comparable things?

I hope you will agree that one of those sets is dramatically larger than the other.

[Quertus]

I'm asking for two things which both cost exactly the same resource--Toughness and Natural Spell, or Toughness and Craft Wondrous Item if you want something not class-specific, each "one feat"--to provide roughly the same value.

That is impossible. Toughness adds 3 HP, whereas Craft Wondrous Item (or any of the Craft feats) reduces XP/level.

[Snowbluff]

No. (see sig)

[radthemad4]

If you've had a steady group for a while, you've probably already worked out whatever balance level you like to play at. The imbalance makes it hard any time you play with people you haven't played with before.

"DMM Persist with nightsticks is totes cool with us"
"Spirit Lion Totem is cheese and you are a terrible person!"
"Spirit Lion Totem is fine, but don't combine it with damage multipliers"
"Damage multipliers are fine, but don't combine them with Spirit Lion Totem"
"Planar binding efreetis for wishes is fine, go nuts"
"Multiclassing is cheese!"
"ToB is cheese!"
"A druid? Yeah sure go ahead. Consider going for Planar Shepherd so you can get 10 rounds per round."
"3.5 Monk is OP!"

It's tiring to try to find out what's okay and what's not, every single time you find a new group.

[Lans]

Given Monte Cook's "Ivory Tower Game Design" essay would seem to disagree with that claim being "outrageous." It was perfectly intentional--they just achieved a much, much worse version of it than they really intended. I believe the pithy phrase for this sort of thing is gone horribly right.

I think some of the balance was intentional, but some of it less so. I think Cook had an article about a varient with feats costing points and TWF was the one that costed the most.

[Hackulator]

I think there is one point in the "Ivory Tower Game Design" article from Monte Cook that is very important and people overlook: There are feats that are only good for very low levels and that is intentional. The thing is, contrary to what a lot of people here seem to think, many games do not progress to particularly high levels. In fact, many games are one shots. Toughness may seem like a terrible feat but if, as described in the aforementioned article, it gives you 100% additional HP for the life of your character it might be a functional choice. This is also one of the things that balances out the complaint people have about wizards vs fighters. If many or even most games never get past the first few levels (and I have read various articles and studies that suggest this is often the case) fighters are not particularly underpowered and in fact at most levels of optimization may be one of the better classes, at least in combat.

[Efrate]

As a dm for a lot of new players, it is an issue by accident frequently if you get past about level 3 or 4. There is nothing telling a new player that you need a way to deal with x by level y. If running prepublished content, thats an implicit assumption that is not communicated. Your party may learn the hard way but that can be too late. Incorporol creatures, flying enemies, dr, and invisibility are the four biggest. When those come up, if you are not prepared already, someone, or multiple someones, get left out.

You didnt buy a magic weapon because they are very pricey and dropping 75% of your loot money on one item seems insane? Well you cant pass DR 10/magic most of the time, cant interact or hit incorporeal targets, and you just do not contribute in those fights. No flight? Get that bow out if you bought one, hope the foe doesnt have dr/magic because you didnt invest in magic weaponry for your backup weapon.

This happens a lot, and it hurts your mundanes a lot more than casters. WBL can overcome these, but nowhere for a player are these things spelled out. We all know but when someone has no options to interact it makes it unfun. Most casters will have something they can do, but the mundanes can just be totally blanked. That is an issue because no one wants to sit and do nothing for a combat that lasts a fair bit, but its pretty common.

[Hackulator]

As a dm for a lot of new players, it is an issue by accident frequently if you get past about level 3 or 4. There is nothing telling a new player that you need a way to deal with x by level y. If running prepublished content, thats an implicit assumption that is not communicated. Your party may learn the hard way but that can be too late. Incorporol creatures, flying enemies, dr, and invisibility are the four biggest. When those come up, if you are not prepared already, someone, or multiple someones, get left out.

You didnt buy a magic weapon because they are very pricey and dropping 75% of your loot money on one item seems insane? Well you cant pass DR 10/magic most of the time, cant interact or hit incorporeal targets, and you just do not contribute in those fights. No flight? Get that bow out if you bought one, hope the foe doesnt have dr/magic because you didnt invest in magic weaponry for your backup weapon.

This happens a lot, and it hurts your mundanes a lot more than casters. WBL can overcome these, but nowhere for a player are these things spelled out. We all know but when someone has no options to interact it makes it unfun. Most casters will have something they can do, but the mundanes can just be totally blanked. That is an issue because no one wants to sit and do nothing for a combat that lasts a fair bit, but its pretty common.

I mean, I feel like this is the DMs fault in a lot of ways. Drop loot that will help your players and don't hit them with encounters they have noway to interact with. If you're going to run prepublished content, you should be reading it beforehand and be aware that these issues are going to come up and you may need to deal with them. The fact that burden on knowledge exists in in no way limited to D&D, I would say it's true in the majority of multiplayer games from TT to computer/video games.

[Efrate]

I am aware of that, but needing magic to deal with magic a problem if your party is not prepared, or all mundane. Also selling applicable loot for other stuff that seems neat doesnt help. My most recent group is my buddy's nephews, and age range is 11 to 14 so I don't expect nearly any system mastery, but magic christmas tree being an expected feature that is supposed to be used isn't like most other gaming. You turn resources to power but it is linear in most vigeo games etc, and not approaching challenges that require more lateral thinking. A million bad or neat but ineffective items is an option just not given, and who needs a plus one sword when I can get a bag of tricks by selling it!

Without pretty decent wblmancy it is just difficult to contribute meaningfully as a mundane as you go up in levels, merely because you do not have meaningful native abilities that let you.

School of hard knocks is getting them there but it is slow. The fact that the mundane magical imbalance needs a portion of limited resources to kind of close the gap is bad, and that the players arent made aware of that (though the dm is) is a design flaw imo.

Lead a horse to water as much as you want, but if it isn't thirsty its not drinking.

[Darth Ultron]

It's fully possible, of course, for a DM to balance disparate power levels, but why is that the DM's job?

It's one of the DMs functions: to run and control the game. Somehow this got lost in 3X with the idea that DMs should just sit in the corner and follow the rulebook.

As a dm for a lot of new players, it is an issue by accident frequently if you get past about level 3 or 4. There is nothing telling a new player that you need a way to deal with x by level y. If running prepublished content, thats an implicit assumption that is not communicated. Your party may learn the hard way but that can be too late. Incorporol creatures, flying enemies, dr, and invisibility are the four biggest. When those come up, if you are not prepared already, someone, or multiple someones, get left out.

Sure this happens to new players, but really only new players. Once some one has played the game for a short time they will ''get'' how it works. And it's never too late to learn.

You didnt buy a magic weapon because they are very pricey and dropping 75% of your loot money on one item seems insane? Well you cant pass DR 10/magic most of the time, cant interact or hit incorporeal targets, and you just do not contribute in those fights. No flight? Get that bow out if you bought one, hope the foe doesnt have dr/magic because you didnt invest in magic weaponry for your backup weapon.

Well, this would be all on the player here. They did not want to spend their loot money on something pratical and needed. So what did they buy? Or did they just make a money pile?

How is this any different then a player of a spellcaster picking the ''wrong" spells?

This happens a lot, and it hurts your mundanes a lot more than casters. WBL can overcome these, but nowhere for a player are these things spelled out. We all know but when someone has no options to interact it makes it unfun. Most casters will have something they can do, but the mundanes can just be totally blanked. That is an issue because no one wants to sit and do nothing for a combat that lasts a fair bit, but its pretty common.

I don't think it hurts mundanes ''more".

And a huge part of this problem is the 3X mechanical rut: if it does not say X in clear mechanical detail on the character sheet, then the player won't even try and do any game action.

I mean, I feel like this is the DMs fault in a lot of ways. Drop loot that will help your players and don't hit them with encounters they have noway to interact with. If you're going to run prepublished content, you should be reading it beforehand and be aware that these issues are going to come up and you may need to deal with them.

Very true. Again this is yet another job for the DM.

For example: the DM watches two players just sit there and do nothing because their characters have no magic ranged attacks. So....in the next loot pile are two magic ranged attack items: ta da!

Also, even more so for new players, their is a lot to be said for the slow progression of levels upward. As the characters level up, they will slowly encounter more powerful things. It won't just be ''everything has 10 DR/magic", it will be one foe has 2DR/magic. Or the goblin has a single fiendish raven or there is a single ghost wolf.

My most recent group is my buddy's nephews, and age range is 11 to 14 so I don't expect nearly any system mastery,

I run games for a lot of kids, and for a kid game I run it with ''Kid Gloves". You know, make the game easy and simple because: Kids. Is running the game on ''novice" or ''beginner", not ''ultra hard".

[Quertus]

A good game is easy to learn, but hard to master.

3.5 succeeds at the latter.

Given that I've taught multiple 7-year-olds to play with mechanical if not tactical competence, I'd say that it succeeds at the former, too.

An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?

Think of it the other way-what's GRANTING them narrative power?

I've not played Smallville, so I can't speak to it too much, but the way I see it, your character has to do more than exist to have narrative power. And in the scope of 3.5, narrative power is frequently correlated with power power.

This is an interesting question, and could well be worth its own thread. Allow me to tell an anecdotal story.

Once upon a time, there was a 7th level party, into which a first level Armus was added. They adventured a bit, and were each returned to their respective homeworlds. Later, weird plot stuff, and the survivors (plus maybe some new people) were all abducted (again!) from their various worlds. Armus immediately collected a gold coin from each, and a soil sample from each of their boots. Whenever a new character joined the party under similar circumstances, Armus always greeted then with his (completely unexplained) behavior of trading them a GP, and collecting dirt from their boots.

Much later in the campaign, Armus "hired" a Wizard to turn the various dirt & gold samples, plus other components he had collected in his journeys (sand from a moving isle, for example), into a custom 12-sided not-so-cubic Cubic Gate, keyed to the various Prime Material worlds that his companions hailed from.

Through absolutely no power of his own, Armus made himself the narrative Lord of the End Scene, allowing everyone to return home.

But that's not all.

When meeting with some important (and beautiful) NPC, the party were falling all over themselves to declare choice spots next to her when sitting down for dinner at a long table. People could see the look on my face as I watched in silence, knew that I was up to something.

Once everyone else was seated, Armus strode to the other end of the table, sat down, and declared, "good, I'm glad that everyone knows their place". He began negotiations in a "quiet, children, the adults are talking" tone.

Mind you, he let others have their conversations / suck up to the NPC, but he set the tone of the engagement, and made sure that the parts that were important him were handled to his liking. Again, through no power of his own.

One last story.

So, still following the "all new characters start at level 1" rule, two new characters joined when even Armus was level 14+ (and I had stopped playing him for a bit, because he felt "too powerful" compared to the rest of the (higher-level) party). They were a pair of Wizards. Our party Wizard had a prized possession: a Staff of the Magi. That would help the noobs be more on par with the party. But how to get her to part with it?

Armus turned to the party Gish, held out his hand, and said, "give me your staff". The Gish, who understood that Armus was both the party's leader and a tactical genius, let alone other reasons, complied.

Then Armus turned to the party Mage, held out his other hand, and requested here staff. The whole table watching, she grudgingly complied.

Armus then handed the staves to the 1st level characters.

When she began to protest, Armus pulled out his secret weapon: backstory. Armus had paid attention when others were talking about themselves. See, she was the daughter of a powerful Wizard who, while he was still a lowly apprentice, his master had gone to war, and had handed him his Staff of the Magi to allow his apprentice, her father, to contribute. Her father was likely alive today because of this. Armus reminded the party Wizard of this fact, and the "temporary" transfer of items was complete.

-----

Narrative power, without power power. That's the Armus way.

What can we take away from this?

[Crake]

Given that I've taught multiple 7-year-olds to play with mechanical if not tactical competence, I'd say that it succeeds at the former, too.





This is an interesting question, and could well be worth its own thread. Allow me to tell an anecdotal story.

Once upon a time, there was a 7th level party, into which a first level Armus was added. They adventured a bit, and were each returned to their respective homeworlds. Later, weird plot stuff, and the survivors (plus maybe some new people) were all abducted (again!) from their various worlds. Armus immediately collected a gold coin from each, and a soil sample from each of their boots. Whenever a new character joined the party under similar circumstances, Armus always greeted then with his (completely unexplained) behavior of trading them a GP, and collecting dirt from their boots.

Much later in the campaign, Armus "hired" a Wizard to turn the various dirt & gold samples, plus other components he had collected in his journeys (sand from a moving isle, for example), into a custom 12-sided not-so-cubic Cubic Gate, keyed to the various Prime Material worlds that his companions hailed from.

Through absolutely no power of his own, Armus made himself the narrative Lord of the End Scene, allowing everyone to return home.

But that's not all.

When meeting with some important (and beautiful) NPC, the party were falling all over themselves to declare choice spots next to her when sitting down for dinner at a long table. People could see the look on my face as I watched in silence, knew that I was up to something.

Once everyone else was seated, Armus strode to the other end of the table, sat down, and declared, "good, I'm glad that everyone knows their place". He began negotiations in a "quiet, children, the adults are talking" tone.

Mind you, he let others have their conversations / suck up to the NPC, but he set the tone of the engagement, and made sure that the parts that were important him were handled to his liking. Again, through no power of his own.

One last story.

So, still following the "all new characters start at level 1" rule, two new characters joined when even Armus was level 14+ (and I had stopped playing him for a bit, because he felt "too powerful" compared to the rest of the (higher-level) party). They were a pair of Wizards. Our party Wizard had a prized possession: a Staff of the Magi. That would help the noobs be more on par with the party. But how to get her to part with it?

Armus turned to the party Gish, held out his hand, and said, "give me your staff". The Gish, who understood that Armus was both the party's leader and a tactical genius, let alone other reasons, complied.

Then Armus turned to the party Mage, held out his other hand, and requested here staff. The whole table watching, she grudgingly complied.

Armus then handed the staves to the 1st level characters.

When she began to protest, Armus pulled out his secret weapon: backstory. Armus had paid attention when others were talking about themselves. See, she was the daughter of a powerful Wizard who, while he was still a lowly apprentice, his master had gone to war, and had handed him his Staff of the Magi to allow his apprentice, her father, to contribute. Her father was likely alive today because of this. Armus reminded the party Wizard of this fact, and the "temporary" transfer of items was complete.

-----

Narrative power, without power power. That's the Armus way.

What can we take away from this?

I think this anecdote and this quote from DU:

And a huge part of this problem is the 3X mechanical rut: if it does not say X in clear mechanical detail on the character sheet, then the player won't even try and do any game action.

Are actually polar related. This, combined with the recent "Roleplay vs rollplay" thread, where people insisted on letting the dice resolve things rather than good old fashioned roleplay leads me to believe that people give far too much control over the game to their dice and mechanics than should be, and people seem to blame the system for it.

I've honestly noticed it to a degree in my own games as I DM. My players will rarely even think to go beyond the bounds of their character's mechanics (except to attempt the occasional cheesy request), and it can sometimes become quite depressing when you present your players with a roleplay opportunity, a time for them to build that narrative power, and they just kinda stare blankly and then twiddle their thumbs as they look to someone else to do it, until eventually they just kinda meander about toward a resolution. Part of this I think could be my fault, I've strayed away from making notable and recurring NPCs, but that's all for a different thread I think.

Anyway, point is, nothing in any system will give players narrative power, because the narrative doesn't happen through mechanics. Diplomacy for example, people often take way too far. Diplomacy lets you influence people's attitudes, you can make people more agreeable, but, for example, if you want to get the king to agree to commit his kingdom's armies to a cause, you still need to actually convince him, and the narrative power that comes with that is entirely mechanics independant.

[Darth Ultron]

This, combined with the recent "Roleplay vs rollplay" thread, where people insisted on letting the dice resolve things rather than good old fashioned roleplay leads me to believe that people give far too much control over the game to their dice and mechanics than should be, and people seem to blame the system for it.

I've honestly noticed it to a degree in my own games as I DM. My players will rarely even think to go beyond the bounds of their character's mechanics (except to attempt the occasional cheesy request), and it can sometimes become quite depressing when you present your players with a roleplay opportunity, a time for them to build that narrative power, and they just kinda stare blankly and then twiddle their thumbs as they look to someone else to do it, until eventually they just kinda meander about toward a resolution. Part of this I think could be my fault, I've strayed away from making notable and recurring NPCs, but that's all for a different thread I think.

Anyway, point is, nothing in any system will give players narrative power, because the narrative doesn't happen through mechanics. Diplomacy for example, people often take way too far. Diplomacy lets you influence people's attitudes, you can make people more agreeable, but, for example, if you want to get the king to agree to commit his kingdom's armies to a cause, you still need to actually convince him, and the narrative power that comes with that is entirely mechanics independant.

I think the disconnect here is:

1.The rules are a structural support for the role play storytelling, and are only to be used sometimes, and almost only when a mechanical 'neutral' result is needed.

2.The Rules are the whole game and the whole game is rules: only the mechanics matter. Some players might do fluff role playing and it's ''fine'', but it's not really, ''really'' part of the game...it's just fluff.

Just take the simple 'locked door' encounter:

2.The players will each look on their sheet for a skill, power, spell or ability that can open a locked door. If the player finds something on their character sheet, they will use it. If the player has nothing useful on their character sheet, they will most often just sit back and wait to contribute to the game later...and complain the game is unbalanced.

1.The players are first and foremost role playing their characters as they encounter the locked door. They will glance at their character sheet, sure, and if they have a mechanical something they will use it. If the player has nothing useful on their character sheet, they will most often lean forward and think ''ok, how can my character in the game world open and get past this door."

And far too often players in that second type of game really, really, really get tunnel vision. Like ''well we don't have a Wand of Knock, so there is absolutely no other way to possibly open a locked door..

To take a recent combat example from my game. So the solo mundane character is attempting to get into the goblin tower, they climb up to the high balcony where three goblins are standing. They hide from the goblins, but now have to decide ''what to do".

Tony Type Two: Looking over his character sheet and the core rules he could not find anything to do...so he simply had his character jump onto the balcony and fight the three goblins. His character did not make it....

Olivia Type One: She thought about it for bit and came up with a plan (she did NOT ask ''if'' it would work as that is a huge no-no in my game). Her character secured a rope to the tower, and then swung down to the balcony and attempted to hit all three goblins. So it was a quick couple of rolls for skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, bull rushes and such. The end result was her character knocked all three goblins off the balcony and killed them.

You can see the huge difference.

[Hackulator]

Olivia Type One: She thought about it for bit and came up with a plan (she did NOT ask ''if'' it would work as that is a huge no-no in my game). Her character secured a rope to the tower, and then swung down to the balcony and attempted to hit all three goblins. So it was a quick couple of rolls for skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, bull rushes and such. The end result was her character knocked all three goblins off the balcony and killed them.

You can see the huge difference.

That's fine but you have to make it SUPER clear to players that stuff like that is permitted, as by the rules it's not, and blaming people for not trying to do things outside the rules if they didn't know breaking the rules was an option is unfair.

Please note, I'm not saying you haven't made it clear to your players as I have no idea, just than in general it should be made explicitly clear to people if actions outside the rules/mechanics can work.

[Cosi]

An interesting point, but I have to wonder, what exactly is taking away narrative power from anyone in 3.5?

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.

It's fully possible, of course, for a DM to balance disparate power levels, but why is that the DM's job?

It shouldn't be. In practice it is, for a variety of reasons some of which are good and some of which are not, but there's no reason to allow characters who are notionally balanced (because they are the same level) to be practically imbalanced. There are good reasons to support a variety of power levels, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument for doing that via any mechanism other than character level. That's what character level is for, and doing it with character level allows all kinds of incredibly useful abstractions like CR. It's like the people defending different classes having different XP tables or THAC0. Yes, you can do that, and yes you can have fun with a game that does that, but it's still stupid.

If you've had a steady group for a while, you've probably already worked out whatever balance level you like to play at. The imbalance makes it hard any time you play with people you haven't played with before.

This is an important point. One major advantage of having a unified ruleset is portability. If we're just using D&D 3e rules (or D&D 4e rules, or Exalted 2e rules, or Shadowrun 5e rules), I can come up with a character concept and be confident I can play that in whatever game I happen to join. If there are a bunch of conversations about balance, and allowable content, and expected party dynamics, and campaign style and so on that we're expected to have, it becomes harder and harder to get a game up and running. Even if you're satisfied with the results of DMs fudging the rules til you don't notice design problems, asking them to do that in the first place creates high barriers to entry.

[Hackulator]

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.



It shouldn't be. In practice it is, for a variety of reasons some of which are good and some of which are not, but there's no reason to allow characters who are notionally balanced (because they are the same level) to be practically imbalanced. There are good reasons to support a variety of power levels, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument for doing that via any mechanism other than character level. That's what character level is for, and doing it with character level allows all kinds of incredibly useful abstractions like CR. It's like the people defending different classes having different XP tables or THAC0. Yes, you can do that, and yes you can have fun with a game that does that, but it's still stupid.



This is an important point. One major advantage of having a unified ruleset is portability. If we're just using D&D 3e rules (or D&D 4e rules, or Exalted 2e rules, or Shadowrun 5e rules), I can come up with a character concept and be confident I can play that in whatever game I happen to join. If there are a bunch of conversations about balance, and allowable content, and expected party dynamics, and campaign style and so on that we're expected to have, it becomes harder and harder to get a game up and running. Even if you're satisfied with the results of DMs fudging the rules til you don't notice design problems, asking them to do that in the first place creates high barriers to entry.

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.

I would also like to know what game you have played where you can make up a RAW character and never be worried that the DM might say for one reason or another you can't play it. In general, could you give me an example of a game you enjoy as much as D&D and which you think is well balanced?

[Cosi]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.

If that were true, there would be exactly zero people who complain that teleport "breaks the game". Since there are more than zero people who do that, it is quite obvious that teleport provides narrative power. I happen to think the people who claim teleport breaks the game are wrong, but they're certainly identifying a real phenomenon. Also "the DM could just arbitrarily decide things" is a fully general argument against any player agency in the narrative at all, and therefore irrelevant to the relative narrative power of any two abilities.

In general, could you give me an example of a game you enjoy as much as D&D and which you think is well balanced?

And I would like you to stop strawmanning people's arguments.

In any case, I can give numerous examples of games I have enjoyed less than D&D that were worse balanced, or changes to D&D that make it more balanced and improve the overall experience. The idea that because most TTRPGs have flaws, people don't want good game design is the kind of Insane Troll Logic that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. Would it have been correct to claim that printing Tome of Magic was pointless because the game had gotten on fine thus far without a Binder? Does the fact that you can have a perfectly functional game where no one takes Mindsight or fights a Tsochar invalidate the existence of Lords of Madness? Of course not. We use the tools we have. But that doesn't mean we can't imagine, desire, or advocate for better tools.

Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered". There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC. The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

[Mechalich]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere. The time it takes and whether that matters is a function of the DMs choices about controlling said narrative.

This is only true if the verisimilitude value of the narrative, and of the setting, asymptotically approaches zero. The simple reality is that in storytelling, as in life, good-old-fashioned raw power is capable of trumping 'narrative power' and seizing control of the narrative unless arbitrary limits are placed upon it. In the simplest case - if character A's action is 'I kill character B' and character A has the mechanical capacity to do this with 100% certainty, then character B's narrative power provides absolutely zero protection should character A be sufficiently determined.

Games built around 'narrative power' of any kind require an agreed-upon series of entirely arbitrary constraints in order to keep going. In comics - where these constraints are very much in place - this is called 'comic book logic.' Unfortunately, it can be difficult to manifest in a collaborative game, since not everyone wants to play by the same rules. There are games that even have a specific break point on this. Exalted had an elaborate 'social combat' system, one that was completely rendered irrelevant by anyone deciding 'f-it, I just stab him.'

Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered". There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC. The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

Well, MtG does operate on much tighter constraints than D&D does. At any given time there are only so many cards available for Standard play, they operate only in a small number of well-defined play formats, and their effects can be fairly tightly controlled. Compared to MtG, 3.PF D&D is more like the insanity that is the format where all cards ever printed are playable, which is indeed unbalanced as it gets and has infinite loops and all sorts of other madness all over the place. In the same vein 5e, for all its many faults, is if not better balanced than 3.5, at least easier to balance at a given table simply because it's so much smaller as a game. 'Core Only' and other approaches work similarly, by restricting the amount of material available the game becomes much easier to manage. This is, in some, ways, a paradox of RPG production: the economic imperative to sell more books that provide more options means that rules accrete over time and the game gradually destabilizes.

And D&D, unlike many other games, has a problem of sacred cows. There's so much accretion of material over time, over forty years now, that a portion of the hardcore book-buying customer base demands certain options that simply can't be removed. Many of 4e's problems had nothing to do with the system and everything to do with a poorly managed marketing campaign that relentlessly slaughtered sacred cows without providing any solid justification for why they were doing that. People hated the system before having any idea how it worked.

[Hackulator]

And I would like you to stop strawmanning people's arguments.

In any case, I can give numerous examples of games I have enjoyed less than D&D that were worse balanced, or changes to D&D that make it more balanced and improve the overall experience. The idea that because most TTRPGs have flaws, people don't want good game design is the kind of Insane Troll Logic that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. Would it have been correct to claim that printing Tome of Magic was pointless because the game had gotten on fine thus far without a Binder? Does the fact that you can have a perfectly functional game where no one takes Mindsight or fights a Tsochar invalidate the existence of Lords of Madness? Of course not. We use the tools we have. But that doesn't mean we can't imagine, desire, or advocate for better tools.

Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered". There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC. The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

So the answer is no, you can't. Ok cool.

[Cosi]

Compared to MtG, 3.PF D&D is more like the insanity that is the format where all cards ever printed are playable, which is indeed unbalanced as it gets and has infinite loops and all sorts of other madness all over the place.

Those statements aren't really the same thing. An infinite loop in MTG isn't really a problem, at least not inherently. If you manage to do infinite damage, or draw infinite cards, or make infinite creatures, that just makes you win the game. It's not really any different from simply dealing twenty damage, or jumping through the hoops for a card like Coalition Victory, or even activating the ultimate ability of most planeswalkers.

And while Vintage is pretty unbalanced, something like Modern isn't, and it has a very wide range of available cards, many of which produce competitive-viable infinite combos. Modern often has a larger list of viable decks than standard, and has roughly as many viable decks as 3e has classes. Maybe more if you were to constrain class power level to what produces a remotely balanced game. Hell, EDH (even Competitive EDH) gets official releases from WotC every year and you can use, as a rough approximating, 99.99% of printed cards in that format.

'Core Only' and other approaches work similarly, by restricting the amount of material available the game becomes much easier to manage.

Having a balanced game works similarly, by reducing the amount of thought you have to give to each element. Consider something like spells. With a few well-known exceptions, most spells at a given level are of roughly the same power. You don't need to shrink the game to have 3rd level spells be balanced, you just need to make the commitment as a designer to having "is a 3rd level spell" mean something.

There is almost nothing in D&D that is broken in a way that even a minimal destructive QA process focused on individual elements wouldn't detect. The things that are broken are not subtle cases where an option that was fine initially broken when introduced to something released years later. They're incredibly obvious cases like "the set of things you can summon with planar binding overlaps with the set of things that can use planar binding". We know where the holes are. None of them are in places that are especially hard to find.

Many of 4e's problems had nothing to do with the system and everything to do with a poorly managed marketing campaign that relentlessly slaughtered sacred cows without providing any solid justification for why they were doing that.

The problem with recklessly slaughtering sacred cows wasn't the marketing campaign (though that was bad), it was that they slaughtered a bunch of sacred cows for no good reason and without any coherent plan for how that would produce a better game. I don't think people were unwilling to consider a game where their were Tieflings instead of Gnomes, but I do think that 4e never made the case on any level for why removing Gnomes was a good idea. They didn't make it in their marketing campaign, but they also didn't make it mechanically, or in their setting material, or anywhere else you might convince people that Tieflings were more deserving of PHB race status than Gnomes. People were willing to live with the removal of AD&D sacred cows like variable XP tables or THAC0. People will forgive an enormous amount of cow-butchery if you produce a product that is good on its merits.

So the answer is no, you can't. Ok cool.

That's not remotely what I said. Most obviously, I said (I thought quite explicitly) that your framing is a strawman. You seem to have this notion that because I think something is better than the alternatives, any complaints about it are unreasonable, but that's absurd. That's not the standard we hold for anything. I don't think my computer is a perfect computer, but I still use it. I don't think my car is a perfect car, but I still use it. Your position isn't one that we take seriously anywhere else, and you have yet to explain why we should take it seriously for RPGs. You just go "but you use it at all" as if that proved anything anyone cared about.

But even beyond the fact that your demand is absurd, I gave pretty concrete examples that would have satisfied it if it was made in good faith. I pointed out that there are games I like less than D&D which are less balanced (as a concrete example: Exalted). That should be perfectly sufficient to rebut the notion that you can't make a game better while also improving its balance. I even noted that there are changes that I've personally made to D&D when I use it that I would consider better if introduced as a core part of the product (concrete example: replace Fighter with Warblade). Again, that's entirely sufficient to answer a good-faith version of your question.

So what exactly is the problem you have with those arguments? You clearly have one, because you read my post and aren't persuaded, but you haven't put in the effort to explain it to the rest of us. I'd like to hear what it is, but thus far you've done little to convince me you're making a valuable contribution to the discussion.

[Quertus]

I mean teleport is exactly as much narrative power as walking somewhere.

If that were true, there would be exactly zero people who complain that teleport "breaks the game". Since there are more than zero people who do that, it is quite obvious that teleport provides narrative power. I happen to think the people who claim teleport breaks the game are wrong, but they're certainly identifying a real phenomenon.

So, I also disagree that Teleport "breaks the game". What it does is invalidate certain railroads, much the same way that "killing plot-central NPC" or "selling the McGuffin" invalidates those railroads and "breaks the (already broken) game".

So, afaict, all that GMs complaining about Teleport "breaking the game" are doing is pointing out their own inadequacies.

Teleport has the same amount of narrative power as walking somewhere, but they are - at times - suited for different stories. When the GM has hung "the plot" on one story / one set of actions, but not the other, that's their failure.

In any case, I can give numerous examples of... changes to D&D that make it more balanced and improve the overall experience.

Define "improve the overall experience".

Balancing the game does not have to make it worse, and indeed the games people point to as justifications for that position (principally 4e, a game that is apparently so bad it has made all discussions of game design as they relate to D&D worse), are bad not because of an attempt to make the game balanced but because of concessions they make to ideas like "having teleport doesn't matter" or "Wizards are overpowered".

So glad you went there. But let me go there anyway. 4e is what happens when you prioritize "balance" over "cool" and "fun".

Some day, senility willing, I've really got to understand what its proponents like about it.

There is no credible reason to believe that attempting to make games balanced will make them worse, and for evidence of this one need not even look further than WotC.

That depends. If what people like about the game includes the imbalance / the range of power levels? Then, yes, it'll be worse.

If what people like includes the ability to balance for different table dynamics, or balance for different levels of player skill, then, yes, it'll be worse.

If what people like includes inherently unbalanced abilities (since you mentioned MtG, cards like Wheel of Fortune and the ironically-named Balance), then yes, it'll be worse.

The same company that has struggled to make a version of D&D that is well balanced, well designed, and able to support a variety of playstyles makes MTG, which does all of those things. And they do it by doing basically the opposite of what D&D does. They test their products both rigorously and destructively. They're open about their process, engage with criticism, and reflect on their mistakes. They make an effort to understand what people want out of the game rather than defining certain playstyles as "doing it wrong".

The D&D team could choose to do all of those things. That they instead produce products that are consistently lacking in a variety of obviously and easily correctable ways reflects an inadequacy on their part, not an difficulty in producing a game that is balanced while also being dynamic.

This, however, I will tentatively agree with.

[Crake]

Look at teleport. Look at the Fighter. Tell me with a straight face those are equal amounts of narrative power.

The wizard getting teleport doesn't take any narrative power away from the fighter. And since the fighter and the wizard are presumably working together (they're a party right?), the wizard gaining teleport helps the party as a whole, not just the wizard, unless the wizard is intentionally trying to steal the spotlight and going off without the party to do everything himself.

[thelastorphan]

When it comes to spreading narrative power: that is the biggest reason for something like ritual casting and converting some iconic non combat spells into rituals. One of the few things I actually think 4e had a good idea about.

[Ignimortis]

3.5e is imbalanced, but that's only an issue if all the players and the DM are completely new to the system. As long as the group has someone who knows how 3.5 works, they can steer the group towards what the players need. The DM can also make an impact with a few choice houserules - banning Natural Spell and removing Druid companions does a lot to curb their power in low-to-mid-op campaigns, as does limiting Wizard spell access and making all clerics cloistered without access to DMM and Divine Power.

Imbalance is actually good for 3.5, though - it supports a lot of playstyles. You can go off the deep end into full-caster all-magical party stuff, or you can do a grim-n-gritty low-level campaign where the best full caster the PCs ever get is a Healer, and everyone else is Fighters and Rogues. It all works to some extent, as long as the DM knows how to build the game towards that. Sure, you could use a different system that also has support for different power levels, but those are quite rare and usually don't come with default style assumptions, while D&D has a lot of fantasy baggage to make use of. Other D&D editions don't do that, they are usually rather narrow in their scope of possible power levels.

[upho]

So in the megathread that's been going on, the discussion has turned to the balance of the game, the woefully abyssal gap between the highest and lowest levels of optimization, but... is that really as much of an issue that it's made out to be?

Hyperbole aside, yes. But IME not necessarily because of players putting in different amounts optimization effort, and not in the way it typically seems to be imagined by most people who haven't experienced imbalance become a serious issue, especially if they therefore also can't see how it could be a very real problem (see more below). And by "serious issue", I mean when the 3X/PF rules system specifically makes a group's game clearly and decidedly less fun for one or more of the persons involved, despite none of them having had the slightest intention of making the game anything but more fun.

Is imbalance being an inherent part of the system really an issue when you think about it? We've all heard of games that have ban lists miles long, but were those ban lists detrimental to the game? Is there something wrong with playing the game at the lowest tier of play, the level of play that new players play at when running their first games, while decade long veterans play 3D chess against enemy wizards?

Is that not in fact what makes 3.5 so appealing? The ability to play such a wide variety of characters on such a spectrum of power, allowing for games to be played that are barely recognizable to one another? If the game were "balanced", it would need to be balanced around a certain level of play, essentially narrowing the spectrum of possibilities, which, while it would be wonderful for people who playin that bracket, would be detrimental for people who want to play outside of that bracket. This is essentially what 5e and pf2 are doing, narrowing the spectrum of play to within a predictable band, and of course, 5e at the very least is widely successful, because they managed to target a spectrum that many people are comfortable and happy to play in.

However, then there's us. The people playing 3.5 and pf1, who want more control, who want to be able to play from 0 to 100, and yet at the same time people complain that the system is unbalanced, while it's that imbalance that gives them the very variety that they so enjoy.

This is all great. But why do you assume anyone who plays 3.5/PF1 would think otherwise, and apparently also believe that people have actually claimed otherwise?

It never ceases to baffle me that some people apparently still believe the fact that 3.5/PF1 allows for wildly different levels of power is the root cause of the system's balance issues. Despite the likely hundreds if not thousands of very well-written and fact-based posts clearly saying why this isn't true in this forum alone. But fine, I'll sound like an old broken record yet one more time:

The problem is NOT wildly different levels of (mechanical) power. It has never been the problem, and nobody who has given this a modicum of thought has ever claimed otherwise.

Now can we please agree to just stop assuming/claiming/pretending/straw-manning that wildly different levels of (mechanical) power is an issue? It's frankly getting really tiresome and does nothing but add confusion to these discussions and slow their constructive progression down to crawl. And if anyone reading this still doesn't get it, I recommend they simply ask themselves whether they think the power level of say a mid-op 1st level wizard is wildly different from that of a mid-op 20th level wizard. And if they do think so, they should also ask themselves whether they believe that power difference is part of the primary reason why "people complain that the system is unbalanced".

I dunno, I guess this turned into a bit of a rant, but I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions. Is 3.5's imbalance really an issue? Or is it just the vocal minority who are making a mountain out of a molehill? Is tableside balance a fallacy like some people believe, or is it the natural state of a game that allows such a huge spectrum of play, to prevent things from creeping too far into an outlier position in their games?

I certainly don't mind if the system allows for optimization skill to cause a bit of power disparity between different PCs of the same class and level, or if there's typically a bit of power disparity between different classes/character types during certain or even most levels. And I agree that it's the group's and especially the GM's responsibility to adjust accordingly.

Unfortunately, "a bit of power disparity" hardly describes what 3.5/PF1 allows for and even encourages, intentionally or not. You wouldn't need to be much of a conspiracy theorist or cynic to claim 3.5/PF1 does nearly everything it can to make optimization skill and choice of class/character type have as much impact as possible, while it also does nearly everything it can to conceal this fact. And that is the root cause of 3.5/PF1's balance issues, as it runs directly counter to a goal of minimizing the risks of the system itself making a game less fun, and of giving the group/GM useful tools to identify and correct such issues should they occur.

Again, note that this has nothing to do with the game allowing for wildly different levels of power. And I certainly wouldn't want a 3.5/PF1 game which didn't allow for a similarly huge variety of character concepts to be reflected in its mechanics, or one which didn't grant PCs a similarly dramatic "zero to superhero" mechanical power progression.

No.

As succinct and consistent as ever, I see. Nice to see you popping by!

[Hackulator]

That's not remotely what I said. Most obviously, I said (I thought quite explicitly) that your framing is a strawman. You seem to have this notion that because I think something is better than the alternatives, any complaints about it are unreasonable, but that's absurd. That's not the standard we hold for anything. I don't think my computer is a perfect computer, but I still use it. I don't think my car is a perfect car, but I still use it. Your position isn't one that we take seriously anywhere else, and you have yet to explain why we should take it seriously for RPGs. You just go "but you use it at all" as if that proved anything anyone cared about.

But even beyond the fact that your demand is absurd, I gave pretty concrete examples that would have satisfied it if it was made in good faith. I pointed out that there are games I like less than D&D which are less balanced (as a concrete example: Exalted). That should be perfectly sufficient to rebut the notion that you can't make a game better while also improving its balance. I even noted that there are changes that I've personally made to D&D when I use it that I would consider better if introduced as a core part of the product (concrete example: replace Fighter with Warblade). Again, that's entirely sufficient to answer a good-faith version of your question.

So what exactly is the problem you have with those arguments? You clearly have one, because you read my post and aren't persuaded, but you haven't put in the effort to explain it to the rest of us. I'd like to hear what it is, but thus far you've done little to convince me you're making a valuable contribution to the discussion.

The point is that you complain about D&D to the extent that I have seen you in other posts claim that buying D&D books is tantamount to burning money and yet you cannot give a single example of a product of the same type you consider superior. If you complained about your computer not being perfect but it was by your own admission the best damn computer in the entire world then your complaints about it would seem ridiculous. If you cannot point to a single product of the same type as D&D which you consider superior out of the hundreds or thousands of roleplaying systems out there your complaints about D&D seem similarly ridiculous. I am not denying the system is imperfect, but since literally nothing in the entire universe is perfect a lack of perfection on its own is not really grounds for complaint.