Why does the party need to be balanced?

[Quertus]

"Balance to the table. If you do that, do any of these "problems" still exist?"

"What on earth does that even mean?"

I'm so used to saying this uncontested… thank you for the opportunity to evaluate and expand upon my premise.

So, balance is a range, not a point. There is no such thing as a "balanced" character - there is only "balanced to this group". It's subjective. Some tables would consider a hyper-optimized Tainted Sorcerer BFC God Wizard to be not just UP, but not even contributing, because their entire concept of "balance" hinges on how much damage you deal.

Anecdotally (and anecdotes are 100% valid proof when explaining how something being subjective works), I had a character whose net contribution to the game was exactly 0 - and I couldn't get the group to comprehend my concern, because that wasn't part of their conceptual vocabulary.

So, each group measures balance differently. But let's ignore that, and pretend that there was one universal, measurable measure of a character. So, suppose I have a character whose UBI (Universal Balance Index) is 30. Is that character balanced?

We have no way to answer that question.

What we need to know is, what is the group's balance range, and what are the UBI of the other characters.

So, if the group has a balance range of 10, and the other characters are [25,27,32,35] or [33,35,37,40] or even [20,20,20,20], then the character is balanced to that group. Same balance range - 10 - but, this time, the group's UBI are [145,147,142]. The character with UBI 30 is clearly not balanced to the table.

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Once we get on the same page on these topics, then maybe we can have a productive conversation on the broader issues.

Now, to continue that line of thought.

So, in order to have these divergent UBI, we need to have components we can select that provide different values. But suppose we didn't care about having divergent UBI - suppose we only cared about perfectly balanced characters.

Well, we could implement that trivially by making all characters identical. But that's no fun.

So, instead, how about if we make everything within a given "area" (like, say, "skills") equal, and give everyone equal access to each area? Here, again, we would produce balanced characters…but they would feel, if not samey, then formulaic. And it would invalidate numerous archetypes, like the "skillful" character, for example.

To make a "skillful" character, we want that character to have a better selection of skills. We explicitly want imbalance in this area. So now, we have two options: we can give them access to *more* skills, or we can give them access to *better* skills. That is, we had achieved balance by giving everyone an equal number of equal skills; to create imbalance, we can remove the equality of the number or types of skills.

Note that, up until that last bit, it didn't matter if skills were useless, or the only thing that mattered, because every character got equal skills. Now, instead of just balancing options within a given set, we need to actually universally balance options against one another. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Let's say that we do both. So, different characters get different access to different levels of unequally useful stats, skills, combat maneuvers, gear, spells, etc. But they all end up at exactly the same UBI.

Except… we don't even all agree what the "correct" point buy for stats is. In fact, I'd argue that many of us believe that the answer varies with the intended tenor of the campaign. So, even if we want the characters in a party to be perfectly balanced, and even if we agreed how to measure balance, we wouldn't all agree on the correct balance point. So, even with the goal of making parties of perfectly balanced characters, we would want the ability to make characters stronger or weaker, to match the table's / campaign's intended balance point.

But some people explicitly want imbalance. Once we have all these tools, it is trivially easy to satisfy them (and those who inconceivably have a different concept of "balance" than our perfect UBI) simply by not enforcing balance, and letting that be handled at the table level.

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Food for thought: could we satisfy people who desire different point buys by making them higher or lower level? Why / why not?

Could we satisfy people who want to run high/low magic campaigns simply by making them higher or lower level? Why / why not?

[Morty]

At the end of the day wizard and warrior are unequal concepts. 'Trained combatant' simply does not have the same capability to manipulate the fictional world as 'master of the arcane arts.' Lots of fantasy fiction acknowledges this openly, and does not even pretend to one to one balance between the best warriors and the best wizards. Wizards tend to be rare, massively outnumbered, or simply shunted into the villain or adviser role rather than the center of the action. Even D&D initially accounted for this, as a becoming a high-level wizard required considerably more XP than becoming a high-level fighter and in the initial iterations of D&D fiction wizards (and magical abilities of any kind) were quite rare indeed. In the Dragonlance Chronicles - the cornerstone of early D&D fiction - magic is sufficiently rare that in many towns the party travels through Raistlin is the only wizard the populace has ever encountered. However, things changed gradually during the 1990s, due in large part to the growing popularity of FR, and D&D moved more and more towards a high-magic world in which wizards were all over the place and regular fights with wizards became common gameplay events. BGII included at least one high-level spellcaster antagonist in pretty much every dungeon.

The end result, by the time 3e came out, was an circle that could not be squared. High level spellcasters were everywhere, but at the same time so were almost entirely mundane characters. The FR example is again relevant: the most famous characters being Drizzt and Elminster, who despite both being very high level are nowhere near each other on the power scale. There was no real way to make both types play nice with each other. Any real solution required either A. turning the martials into superhero types or B. massively nerfing the spellcasters. However, either of those options was guaranteed to anger a massive portion of the playerbase, as experiments like Tome of Battle and later 4e proved, leaving WotC with no good options. 5e used a set of kludgy design compromises like bounded accuracy to try and maintain the illusion of balance, which is honestly probably the best option available.

This is broadly correct, I think. D&D won't have a better solution than 5E's to this, whether one likes its solution or not.

Though I do think 5E is better balanced, especially if, once again, we put spellcasters aside for a moment and consider balance between, say, a warrior with a two-handed weapon and a shield, two weapons or a single weapon. Or other concepts 3E hamstrings for no good reason. To come back to the Drizzt example for a moment, he's a complete joke when you put him next to a fighter or barbarian with a two-handed weapon of even lower level, because dual-wielding and finesse fighting are both so weak in 3E. And it can't be fixed without splatbooks that wouldn't come out for years after his 3E stats were published. In 5E you can dual-wield scimitars right off the gate, and while it's still reportedly somewhat sub-par, at least you won't suck at your one and only job.

[AdAstra]

The idea that wizards and warriors in dnd are inherently unequal, both in power and breadth of capability, is true. The idea that wizards are inherently considered superior to warriors in overall human culture is pretty demonstrably bogus.

One can look at figures like Hercules, who despite being a demigod, still had no powers other than prodigious physical strength, skill, and cunning. He made rivers with his fists, strangled he nemean lion to death, held up the sky, and ascended to godhood. Diomedes wasn’t even a demigod, and he still managed to defeat gods in single combat and cut through armies (though that was with athena’s favor, iirc). That’s not even counting the warriors who were statesmen, politicians, hunters, spiritual leaders. The most powerful wizard-equivalents in greek myth were merely very good diviners and seers, like Tyresias. Very useful, but far from solo world-shapers. Other uses of magic usually amounted to using magic items, or getting the aid of gods, neither of which are very wizardly, and usually very limited in the actual things they personally could do.

Wizards and warriors may be inherently different concepts, just like firefighters and accountants, but to claim that this means that wizards are or should be better/broader than fighters is both inaccurate, and a bad idea in general. In a world where a character had the Prestidigitation cantrip and no other noteworthy skills, that person would most likely be described as a wizard or mage of some sort. They would also be pretty demonstrably inferior to a seasoned warrior at almost everything, and wouldn’t be able to do nearly as many things as the warrior could. They might be able to start a fire in seconds, or entertain people with short-lived trinkets, but that’s about it. An especially competent and well-rounded warrior, which in many cultures is exactly what a warrior should be, could do far more things more effectively than our hypothetical wimp wizard.

Basically, the premise that fighters “need” to be weaker or more specialized than wizards due to some cultural imperative is just, wrong, on every level. Wizards are way better than fighters in 3e dnd because the designers of that game had a conception of wizards that was inherently better (in the sense of being stronger and more versatile) than their conception of fighters. They chose that. Other people could, and I believe should, chose differently.

[Satinavian]

Now, to continue that line of thought.

So, in order to have these divergent UBI, we need to have components we can select that provide different values. But suppose we didn't care about having divergent UBI - suppose we only cared about perfectly balanced characters.

Just use point buy. And let everyone use the same points.

Now you would probably say that even in point buy systems the same point values are not always equal. And that is true. But assigning the right point values to powers and character options is just difficult task and is basically exactly the same task you have to do to arrive at fair UBI values. So UBI won't be more accurate then point values of point buy systems.

Food for thought: could we satisfy people who desire different point buys by making them higher or lower level? Why / why not?

Hust use a point buy system with different points. If you absolutely have to use a level system, using different levels would be the best you could do but it is inferior in many ways because levels are often linked to a lot of other rules and you might not want those consequences.

Could we satisfy people who want to run high/low magic campaigns simply by making them higher or lower level? Why / why not?

No. Magic prevalence is only weakly linked to experience or level and running higher/lower level has far more other unintended consequences.

Better to use variant rules. E.g. Splittermond has a high magic rule variant option that consist of :
-double mana points for everyone
-double mana regeneration
-earler access to spells from casting skill (bot not lowered DCs to actually cast the spells)
-reduced cost to learn magic
-additional maxed out free casting skill for every character
-severely reduced potential negative side effects of magic

That rule variant will make magic more common. And stronger. And it will effect every character. But by ensuring that everyone has magic and several of those rules benefitting hybrid characters more than ones relying mostly on magic it ensures that the balance beween archetypes still is not shifted too far, even if the game will feel quite different. Only someone refusing any magic out of principle would be hurt when you can get significant free self-buffing without investing a single build point in this high magic game.

Splittermond also provides similar variants for things like "deadly game" where healing is severely restricted or "only mortals" where benefits adventurers get over random not plot relevant NPCs are cut.


Just using different levels in D&D does not work similarly. You would have to seriously rework the whole system because it is all way too rigidly interconnected. But if you did you could play high/low magic on every level. There are quite a lot of overhauls that try to do so.

[Cluedrew]

To Quertus: I've said it before, but really all you need is the power to make meaningful contributions. Characters don't have to be balanced in any area. In fact for all your worries of samey I found one of the best balancing tools is to be so difference no meaningful power comparison can be made. Admittedly that level of difference is hard, but you can do a lot by having very different options. One of my favourite examples comes from Android: Netrunner. What is stronger, starting with +1 Link or if you preform the same action 3 times on one turn you may preform the same action a fourth time without spending any action points?

To AdAstra: I've read a lot of mythology and a lot of... everything I can get my hands on really. And pretty much the only tradition I can think of where wizards consistently beat warriors is modern western fantasy. Even eastern fantasy has pretty good odds of warriors being super-human enough to beat up the casters. So yeah, we might be in the one place where it the convention. And so its not wrong (I might of been harsh my last post) but to act like it is the only way that's wrong most definitely.

[Quertus]

To Quertus: I've said it before, but really all you need is the power to make meaningful contributions. Characters don't have to be balanced in any area. In fact for all your worries of samey I found one of the best balancing tools is to be so difference no meaningful power comparison can be made.

So, I strongly agree about "meaningful contributions". Although this gets a bit interesting when different players have different ideas about what "contribution" means. It works great for a Playgrounder playing an optimized Tainted Sorcerer BFC God Wizard in a party that consider him UP, but not so well when the group thinks that a character is contributing, but their player does not.

Fully agree that characters don't have to be balanced, let alone in any area.

Although I word (and think about) it differently, I suspect one could argue that "no meaningful power comparison" is at the heart of "they're playing tactical basketball simulator, I'm playing highschool romance drama".

So… in broad strokes, I agree?

[Mechalich]

To AdAstra: I've read a lot of mythology and a lot of... everything I can get my hands on really. And pretty much the only tradition I can think of where wizards consistently beat warriors is modern western fantasy. Even eastern fantasy has pretty good odds of warriors being super-human enough to beat up the casters. So yeah, we might be in the one place where it the convention. And so its not wrong (I might of been harsh my last post) but to act like it is the only way that's wrong most definitely.

I should note that I said 'trained combatant' versus 'master of the mystic arts' not 'warrior' vs. 'wizard' which is important.

The thing is, in quasi-medieval fantasy worlds, 'warrior' tends to be defined as a 'trained combatant.' Meaning a guy (or occasionally girl) who is at best a really good fighter based on authorial understanding of medieval combat capabilities and fighting styles with perhaps some very small level of augmentation. This is very much not the same as the way warriors are presented in myth. This should not surprise us, because quasi-medieval worlds are deliberately not mythic in design, in part because mythic worlds present verisimilitude problems in world-building terms and because mythic settings are essentially superhero settings and there's a considerable aversion to that approach for a variety of reasons.

If you are doing a mythic setting - say Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive - then this particular balance issue disappears, but it simply becomes a superhero balance issue where you have to make sure the powers are equivalent in efficacy.

Different kinds of settings place different demands on party balance. D&D, unfortunately, is something of a worst of all possible worlds case because it's zero to hero kitchen-sink setup means that a D&D world is several different kinds of setting at once.

[AdAstra]

To Mechalich

Well that’s kinda the problem isn’t it? Only accepting one conception of warrior while allowing wizards/casters to embody the full range of cultural archetypes? First-level wizards in pretty much all editions of dnd are are far from impressive. Weak, minimal magical capacity, and in 3e can be killed by a housecat if they’re not careful. They pretty accurately embody the “weak” wizard. Not perfectly, since usually weaker wizards in culture have very “indirect” powers, not just weak ones, but close in terms of overall effectiveness. But unlike warriors, especially in 3e/derivatives, they grow out of that box entirely. They get world-changing power, have a tool available for every situation, and if adequately prepared are nearly impossible to challenge without equally-capable opponents. Warriors get to be better at the thing they could already do, and usually, they don’t even do that as well as magic users. Neither of these ways is wrong, but I think it’s a bad idea to mix these power-scales together.

Warriors or trained combatants COULD be able to turn into superheroes as they level up. Jump mountains, command armies, cleave time or the space between spaces, these are things that while fantastical, do not fundamentally break the idea of a mythical trained combatant. Wizards COULD gain minimal powers as they level up, or only gain improvements to things they could already do. Go from teleporting 5 ft. to avoid an attack to teleporting 30 ft. through a wall, or your firebolt can now blast areas. One could do either, and I think 5e comes closer than some others, but not quite enough to close the gap. But the gap can be closed, and if you do it by ramping up warrior progression, you get Quertus’s variable balance in the bargain, since you can have people start at different levels, and thus have different scopes of capability.

[Cluedrew]

So, I strongly agree about "meaningful contributions". [...] Fully agree that characters don't have to be balanced, let alone in any area.

This may or may not be important but I feel I should clarify that "everyone can still make meaningful contributions" is my guide-line for figuring out if people are balanced. So I actually feel balance is very important, I'm just using a more general metric for it.

I should note that I said 'trained combatant' versus 'master of the mystic arts' not 'warrior' vs. 'wizard' which is important.

[...] This should not surprise us, because quasi-medieval worlds are deliberately not mythic in design, in part because mythic worlds present verisimilitude problems in world-building terms and because mythic settings are essentially superhero settings and there's a considerable aversion to that approach for a variety of reasons. [...]

No disagreement about the types of characters D&D currently displays. I feel the need to point out that most casters are stronger than their mythic counterparts (or the actual gods). So if we can but that in a quasi-medieval setting, I think we have room to crank the fighters up another notch or dozen. Also its not like this would be the first "verisimilitude problems in world-building" seen in Dungeons & Dragons, and I find myself either in the mood to just run with it or not.

I also think there are significant differences between a mythic setting and a superhero setting, even if you put them on the same power level. There are many other ideas that set them apart on a setting level and the form of character powers. Mind you people could just not like the "mythic" setting as well so in general it doesn't actually matter.

I do agree D&D often finds itself in weird middle grounds a lot though... maybe it should go even more kitchen sink and include the mythic fighter beside the quasi-medieval one.

[banice]

How does party balance work out for non-DnD games?

[Morty]

How does party balance work out for non-DnD games?

This really depends on the game. But in my experience, many if not most games aim for some kind of balance. The question is where the line is drawn. Even if there's a kind of character that's just better than others (usually some kind of supernatural character), they'll still be balanced among each other and there's no expectation of playing them alongside the weaker kind.

Though personally I still feel like "doing what it says on the tin" is a better measure than balance. Does an option let me do what it advertises it does? Playing a Complete Warrior Swashbuckler doesn't, because it promises a daring fencer and gives me someone who might as well slap an enemy with a wet noodle. Playing a physical-focused vampire in Requiem 1E doesn't, because physical Disciplines are anemic. And so on.

[Mechalich]

How does party balance work out for non-DnD games?

The big divide, outside of D&D is between class-based and class-less systems. Many class-based systems have issues similar to D&D, in that one class or group of classes will be overpowered to certain other classes. However, outside of D&D and systems derived from D&D classes are relatively uncommon.

In a class based system you have some broad character concept, the class, that comes with a whole package of abilities that broadly determines how the character will function. If the mechanical package doesn't hold up compared to others, or if it can't fulfill the archetype needs of the class concept, then you have balance issues.

In class-less systems you don't have that, because players take their character concept and build it using a set of abilities bought with points of some kind. In systems like this balance is mostly an issue of the powers themselves. For example, in Vampire: the Masquerade the principle powers are the Disciplines, and every character gets a certain number of points into disciplines. However, the Disciplines themselves are wildly unbalanced with some of them (Dominate, Thaumaturgy) being incredibly powerful, and others (Potence, Protean) being rather lousy. D&D, of course, also has this problem, as various powers (spells, and various class and race abilities mostly) are wildly unbalanced, especially at higher levels.

However, while class-less systems can very easily produce builds that are wildly unequal in power, there's more precedent for the GM to step in during chargen and steer players this way and that in order to avoid building characters who are massively underpowered or overpowered. GM assistance doesn't always work though, especially in the more complex class-less systems like Eclipse Phase or GURPS where it is difficult to know what's actually good (D&D, due to its general popularity, is one of relatively few rules heavy systems where five minutes on the internet can give a complex novice access to a massively cheesy high-optimization build). Of course, there still tend to be problems no matter what, especially at the higher ends of the power scale among games. Superhero systems tend to have a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock problem where characters in a party will have wild variance in their ability to survive different types of attack, such that a villain who attacks the entire party with the same move will kill one, injure modestly a second, and be totally ignored by a third.

Though personally I still feel like "doing what it says on the tin" is a better measure than balance. Does an option let me do what it advertises it does? Playing a Complete Warrior Swashbuckler doesn't, because it promises a daring fencer and gives me someone who might as well slap an enemy with a wet noodle. Playing a physical-focused vampire in Requiem 1E doesn't, because physical Disciplines are anemic. And so on.

I agree, this is very important, and I think it's a big part of the issue why such discussions predominate D&D. Martials, warriors, or whatever you wish to call them are an exceedingly common fantasy archetype. The 'warrior' may outnumber all other fantasy concepts combined when considered in terms of protagonists across the genre, with the rogue slightly behind and all spellcasters considerably further back. The failure of 3.X D&D to offer viable martials (outside of very late production supplements like Tome of Battle of 3rd party material like Path of War) creates a problem because people want to play those characters, especially newer players, and the inability to set such concepts up for viability alongside the casters is a huge problem.

Compare this to either version of Vampire. Physical-based characters aren't a good build option in either one, but since far fewer players, and especially far fewer new players, are committed to playing a Vampire street fighter that design flaw is much less impacting.

[NichG]

How does party balance work out for non-DnD games?

There's plenty of imbalances in almost every game I've ever played. The thing that tends to matter more is whether the game is more focused on the individual characters or on the team. If the game is about the narrative of each character and how they wind together, then that tends to tolerate a greater level of imbalance by default than a team 'everyone on deck or we die' type of premise.

For example, L5R has Courtiers, Samurai, and Shugenja. Courtiers may end up being totally useless during a fight (possibly with the exception of some odd builds), and their effectiveness in social situations can vary wildly based on the GM and the campaign. If someone is playing a courtier being dragged by their team into the shadowlands to kill tainted monsters, that's not going to work. If there's a courtier who is doing things and has some friendships/rivalries with some samurai and shugenja, then even if the samurai aren't going to ask that courtier to help them beat up bandits, the courtier can proactively pursue their own kinds of thing.

From what I've seen of World of Darkness, options are generally underwhelming except that there will be one or two utterly broken or potentially broken things, and often hidden in some unobvious way. Such as in (new) Changeling where your powers generally kind of suck, except that every changeling is empowered to make contracts with mortals (no XP investments needed), and those powers can grant ridiculous benefits such as converting your average middle-class person into a multi-millionaire. So if you push the right things, you're basically playing a totally different game than everyone else. I think Mage has some similar characteristics at least if you look at the rotes - there are a couple of things that are sort of like 'oh, by the way, game changer buried here'.

7th Sea has a bunch of martial styles, of which maybe 2 or 3 are worth considering. The sorceries are also all over the place, and they're fairly expensive, so a player picking Sorte thinking they're going to tie the fates of everyone together like a ball of yarn will find that they have good information gathering powers, but their actual gameplay mechanics is adding a handful of dice to people's rolls or penalizing rolls a bit (and they get to risk wounding themselves with the backlash). The fire magic looks like it will be awesome and flashy, but its so high investment that you won't really see that very much in practice. But the Ussuran shapechanging has a lot of potential right off the bat, and Porte can in principle be totally transformative if you're clever with it. Stat-wise, Panache is actions, so there are some obvious 'if you plan to be hitting things in combat, figuring out how you're going to get 6 Panache is more important than almost anything else you could do' (with the exception of counter-attack builds where you use other peoples' actions to attack them). But in practice, a 7th Sea character's story isn't really determined by their raw combat output, and there are even metagame reasons to want to lose or be threatened by things (undergo some drama, justify gaining a free Background, and increase your XP gain...)

Numenera is basically the same kind of fiction as D&D - the wizard-equivalent is just better than the fighter-equivalent and rogue-equivalent in terms of actually being able to engage with what the game is about. But every character also gets something like a template that gives them a second track of abilities, and those templates are generally speaking more significant than the 'class' choice. So you could get fighty toughness from being a Glaive (fighter), but then get all your versatility from a focus that lets you craft your imagination into physically real objects, or speak the language of machines, or other crazy stuff. The Strange made the rogue-equivalent also pretty epic, with fairly absolute abilities to warp NPC perceptions of a scene in various ways. The fighter still sucks.

[Mechalich]

From what I've seen of World of Darkness, options are generally underwhelming except that there will be one or two utterly broken or potentially broken things, and often hidden in some unobvious way. Such as in (new) Changeling where your powers generally kind of suck, except that every changeling is empowered to make contracts with mortals (no XP investments needed), and those powers can grant ridiculous benefits such as converting your average middle-class person into a multi-millionaire. So if you push the right things, you're basically playing a totally different game than everyone else. I think Mage has some similar characteristics at least if you look at the rotes - there are a couple of things that are sort of like 'oh, by the way, game changer buried here'.

Extreme wealth is broken in pretty much any game that allows you to leverage it in any sort of significant way, simply because games generally aren't constructed to operate on the societal level where the extremely wealthy stand. You play the party of adventurers, not the guy who hires the party of adventurers. A game that allows you to play as the latter while all the other characters are the former isn't going to work, and any power that allows you to generate extreme wealth in game without some sort of massive attendant cost is almost always going to be OP.

[Quertus]

How does party balance work out for non-DnD games?

Short answer: not well.

No matter the system, balance is generally this mythic pipe dream. And this should be pretty obvious because, as I've stated before, everyone measures balance differently. So, even if the game designers rigorously tested their game, and "succeeded" in creating a perfectly balanced game according to their measure of balance, in accordance with the preconceptions and playstyle of their testers, well, a different group, with a different playstyle and different notion of balance? They will consider it a failure.

So looking for "balance" in a game is a pipe dream. But some systems have some rather innovative attempts to produce balance.

For example, ShadowRun fairly successfully achieved a type of "balance": starting characters are generally limited to a single silo (astral space, driving, decking). When that character is doing their thing, everyone else sits around and twiddles their thumbs. Although everyone can technically participate in combat in meat space, in early (good) editions of the game, the Street Samurai claimed their spotlight time by going first… and second… and sometimes third, every combat round (and maybe got a 4th action, while everyone else got 1 or maybe 2). For a balanced mission, with x characters, everyone gets to actually play the game 1/x of the time. Perfect balance.

Thus why I brought up introducing chess clocks to RPGs, enforcing balance by ensuring that everyone consumes their share of game time. Isn't spotlight time what should be balanced? Don't you want to implement this revolutionary advancement to role-playing in your RPG?

In short, what does your group want to balance? Decide what that is, then make choices as a group to make that happen. Because game designers cannot be counted on to balance that particular attribute to your satisfaction.

I'll be waiting with my revolutionary chess clocks when you realize that "spotlight time" is the "correct" answer.

This may or may not be important but I feel I should clarify that "everyone can still make meaningful contributions" is my guide-line for figuring out if people are balanced. So I actually feel balance is very important, I'm just using a more general metric for it.

But… do those meaningful contributions need to be balanced? In effect or frequency or any other way? If not, then, well, I find it odd to discuss them as "balance".

For me, I *still* prefer groups with a huge balance range: I put together one (well, technically, two) pieces of this huge jigsaw puzzle. I contributed. I'm happy.

EDIT: in short, I find contribution (note that that's "positive contribution", not the negative contribution of "getting the party in trouble", or burning jigsaw puzzle pieces or whatever) mandatory, but I have little concern for the balance of that contribution beyond "it exists". (Which is part of why I harp about the character with exactly 0 contribution, and the group that couldn't comprehend the nature of my complaint)

[Morty]

I agree, this is very important, and I think it's a big part of the issue why such discussions predominate D&D. Martials, warriors, or whatever you wish to call them are an exceedingly common fantasy archetype. The 'warrior' may outnumber all other fantasy concepts combined when considered in terms of protagonists across the genre, with the rogue slightly behind and all spellcasters considerably further back. The failure of 3.X D&D to offer viable martials (outside of very late production supplements like Tome of Battle of 3rd party material like Path of War) creates a problem because people want to play those characters, especially newer players, and the inability to set such concepts up for viability alongside the casters is a huge problem.

D&D 3E non-casters are pretty wimpy even without comparing them to casters, really, which is what I keep harping on. If you run a swashbuckler without any caster ever appearing, they're still going to be as effective as the aforementioned wet celery. And there's really nothing that can be done about it. That's why 5E is on the whole more balanced, even if the caster/non-caster dynamic is largely the same. Because there's a few logs thrown under the latter's feet.

Compare this to either version of Vampire. Physical-based characters aren't a good build option in either one, but since far fewer players, and especially far fewer new players, are committed to playing a Vampire street fighter that design flaw is much less impacting.

I am specifically speaking about Requiem 1E and 2E, not Masquerade. In the first edition, the physical disciplines were weak; in the second this was acknowledged and fixed, precisely because if the player's desired fantasy is a scary physical undead monster, those disciplines being weak gets in the way. Thus the expectation of balance is there, if not the execution.

Though yes, the fact that playing someone who can only hit things is purely optional and in no way suggested helps.

[Talakeal]

How does party balance work out for non-DnD games?

Typically much better.

[Satinavian]

How does party balance work out for non-DnD games?

Often, non-D&D games tend to pay not that much attention to formulation of rules. It is more common to end up with vague rules or ones that could be understood in different ways. Instead the games often assume that the players will recognize the non-broken interpretations as the intended ones.

Then there are a lot of games that simply are unbalanced and don't really care about balance. But honestly, that is far less common than it once was. Most modern games that are not narrative in nature, care about balance.

Then many non-D&D games have old editions as well. And as in D&D they often have their own holy cows. Which often lead to balance problems. In general, a new game without older edition has an easier time to build a balanced framework from the ground up, but might make more mistakes with the estimation of the potential of specific powers, where games that have older editions can build up on experience with the powers that exist in the system/setting, but might be compelled to keep more baggage.


But if you really care about balance, moving away from D&D might be a good idea. There are many options that do this particular thing way better.

[Cluedrew]

Extreme wealth is broken in pretty much any game that allows you to leverage it in any sort of significant way, simply because games generally aren't constructed to operate on the societal level where the extremely wealthy stand. You play the party of adventurers, not the guy who hires the party of adventurers. A game that allows you to play as the latter while all the other characters are the former isn't going to work, and any power that allows you to generate extreme wealth in game without some sort of massive attendant cost is almost always going to be OP.

I played that campaign, twice actually once on either side of the equation. Through a combination of amount of wealth you can get, the mechanics of how you spend it and the setting which has few stable markets it is in fact balanced.

But generally money is as unbalanced as it is in real life and is more valuable than the skills you could use to earn it.

On Non-D&D: Umm... you realize that's not like a couple of systems right? We can talk about particular systems but trying to generalize everything from GURPS to Roll for Shoes to the Powered by the Apocalypse games is ridiculous. So really it varies a lot.

[NichG]

Extreme wealth is broken in pretty much any game that allows you to leverage it in any sort of significant way, simply because games generally aren't constructed to operate on the societal level where the extremely wealthy stand. You play the party of adventurers, not the guy who hires the party of adventurers. A game that allows you to play as the latter while all the other characters are the former isn't going to work, and any power that allows you to generate extreme wealth in game without some sort of massive attendant cost is almost always going to be OP.

Its less about wealth in particular and more that you've got an ability that costs XP and adds +1 to things and is front and center in the things a player usually reads the rules for, versus a sidebar buried in a fluff section that says 'oh, by the way, all characters are basically genies and can freeform grant wishes as long as it's for a mortal'. It's not completely freeform, but it basically allows you to, among other things, increase any merit a human has by 2 points (merits are on a 5 point scale, and include things like generic social status, wealth, contacts, henchmen, etc). So you can e.g. say 'okay, you're now a confidant of a high-ranking general' or 'you just inherited a mansion in Florida' or 'you just got promoted to be the CEO of your company'. This is not only effectively free for you, but it actually gives you resources in most cases (and the more resources you gain and constraints you place on the mortal, the more powerful the set of boons you can grant).

The high op strategy is, ignore the character building mechanics and do all of the stuff that genies would do to benefit from the wishes they grant. But you wouldn't necessarily realize it's even an option.

Just to be clear though, to me this is actually a plus. If the system didn't have that (and oneiromancy, and goblin market trading shenanigans, and...) I wouldn't be very inspired to play it, because the actual 'buy stuff with XP' parts are, while balanced, boring. It would be nice if they just out and said 'hey, this stuff is the actual meat of the supernatural aspect of your character, not the fact you can spend glamour to buff a persuasion attempt by a few dice'

[Morty]

On Non-D&D: Umm... you realize that's not like a couple of systems right? We can talk about particular systems but trying to generalize everything from GURPS to Roll for Shoes to the Powered by the Apocalypse games is ridiculous. So really it varies a lot.

This is another reason why I prefer to call it "working as advertised" or similar. D&D's wonky class balance is obviously a case of the system not working as advertised, but it's just one possible form of it.

[Satinavian]

This may or may not be important but I feel I should clarify that "everyone can still make meaningful contributions" is my guide-line for figuring out if people are balanced. So I actually feel balance is very important, I'm just using a more general metric for it.

Sounds reasonable.

To meaningfully contribute, you need the power to impact the situation. Which in traditional (non-narrative etc.) games means that your character has enough power to impact the situation in ways that are actually relevant next to the actions of other characters. Balance guarantees that everyone has such power.

Sure, theoretically you could impact the game through other peoples characters, being the advisor. But that is difficult to pull off with everyone being happy and not something the rules help you with. You could also play comic relief or drama font, but that is not for every group or every player and rarely longterm viable.


I have seen a couple of systems that can handle "rich" people well. But someone has to actually put some effort to write proper rules for that instead of just extrapolating the barebones economic rules for starndard adventurer shopping tours. Rules often break down when you leave the scope of what they are meant to handle. And economy is complicated and boring and most rule authors don't want to invest time and space for that.

[Quertus]

This may or may not be important but I feel I should clarify that "everyone can still make meaningful contributions" is my guide-line for figuring out if people are balanced. So I actually feel balance is very important, I'm just using a more general metric for it.

Sounds reasonable.

To meaningfully contribute, you need the power to impact the situation. Which in traditional (non-narrative etc.) games means that your character has enough power to impact the situation in ways that are actually relevant next to the actions of other characters. Balance guarantees that everyone has such power.

There's a lot of argument over power from martial vs psionic vs magical vs technological vs ki vs… sources, but I think that, for this discussion, a completely different division of sources is in order. Several people have already hinted at it.

There's the power that the character gives you. Then there's player skill. But tools can also come from the module, the system, or even directly from the GM.

When we're taking about "contribution", the tools with which to contribute can come from any of these. And, arguably, from other PCs - often in the forms of buff spells, but any sort of "creating an aspect" / setting people up also provides the opportunity for contribution. "You left the door open; now I can run away with the McGuffin".

It's only when every other aspect - groups, systems, and content writers - are all blind to creating opportunities (and for whatever reason the player cannot utilize player skills) that "contribution" is strictly limited to character ability.

I consider the optimal setup to be one in which every power source is utilized - where, if the player wants to contribute, at any given time, they can expect to utilize aspects from their character, the system, the module, or ones created by their fellow gamers.

More importantly, it is very difficult for a player with access to so many contribution pools to find themselves unable to contribute, if they so desire. On a related note, players who don't like to feel forced to contribute to certain parts of the game (most notably "talky bits", but it could be anything) can simply not give their characters any character-specific buttons to push, and can just sit back and let everyone else push the system / module level buttons… or jump in with those, if they get the urge. Wins all around.

So, getting to "able to contribute" - which is all I care about - should be trivially easy. But if you're interested in making contribution balanced? You've got to make the contribution of the guy who ran out the door with the McGuffin equal to that of the guy who just ran away, the guy who chose to sneak attack an undead, and the guy who chose to hold an action to pown the evil Wizard when he attempts to cast a spell? That sounds like quite the challenge. Hopefully, you're not trying to do that.

[ezekielraiden]

There's a lot of argument over power from martial vs psionic vs magical vs technological vs ki vs… sources, but I think that, for this discussion, a completely different division of sources is in order. Several people have already hinted at it.
<snip>
So, getting to "able to contribute" - which is all I care about - should be trivially easy. But if you're interested in making contribution balanced? You've got to make the contribution of the guy who ran out the door with the McGuffin equal to that of the guy who just ran away, the guy who chose to sneak attack an undead, and the guy who chose to hold an action to pown the evil Wizard when he attempts to cast a spell? That sounds like quite the challenge. Hopefully, you're not trying to do that.

Nobody wants that latter thing. This sounds an awful lot like a more thoroughly-articulated recap of the common conversation-ending pro-imbalance argument: "Perfect balance is either impossible or trivially awful, so it's never worthwhile." Except that no one who asks for balance wants perfect balance. Or if you prefer, as close to "no one" as you can get on any issue, since humans are notoriously difficult to hem into boxes--no one arguing in good faith is asking for perfect balance, so saying or implying that that's what pro-balance people want is at best ignoring what people directly say. I know I personally have explicitly said at least once (and, IIRC, multiple times) in this very thread that perfect balance is not what anyone is asking for. But, sure, let's take this taxonomy, it's got some worthwhile stuff in it and I think it does a pretty good job of focusing on my complaint.

However, I have one serious disagreement, before we get to that. I don't think it's even slightly fair to count "buffs received from other players" as a form of contribution. "Buffs given to other players" is, no question, but receiving a buff? Not a form of contribution. Even if you're only able to do Thing X because you received a buff, that ability is itself the manifestation of the buff-er contributing, not the buff-ee contributing. And guess who gets the vast majority of buffs in D&D-alikes? All that would do is create a separate category where, again, spellcaster-like classes are Simply Superior to non-spellcaster-type classes.

From there? There's a very key bit that your explanation elides over. You said (in part of what I snipped), "On a related note, players who don't like to feel forced to contribute to certain parts of the game...can simply not give their characters any character-specific buttons to push." This assumes that you HAVE those options to start with, and choose to give them away. In other words, you are in fact assuming everyone starts from a position of balance, and gives up the parts of that balance that never ever mattered to them, aka trading worthless junk for some other benefit. But that's not how it works in a heavily class-based game like D&D; right from the moment you create your character, you may be inherently denied entry to those areas regardless of whether you wanted them or not.

Now, several of the things you mentioned--player skill, DM favor, module/environmental resources--really do (in principle and in positive instances*) present equality-of-access to the players, where everyone gets roughly similar opportunities and may grab or ignore them as they like. But declarative abilities, which covers all of spellcasting and psionics and all the rest of what I called "spellcasting+" before? You are not "simply not giving their character any character-specific buttons" in that regard if you don't play the select set of classes with access to those things. You are denied access to them, by the rules themselves, solely because of the things you think sound fun to play.

If all you want is "somewhere, somehow, under literally any rubric of player choice, you can contribute" then you don't even need a system at all. Your criterion has been met by any game that is capable of being played. It is, quite literally, identical to saying "I would like for this game to be a game, and not a not-game." That's not enough for me, particularly if I'm paying someone a nontrivial amount of money to make the game for me. Hence why I use words like "meaningful" when I talk about contribution. Having literally any contribution whatsoeverr is a trivial goal. Making sure everyone is equipped to meaningfully contribute whenever, even if they choose not to, is what I'm seeking. Because those people you want to not "force" to contribute can choose not to use these abilities.

Why should the "I don't want to contribute" people, who can get literally every single thing they're asking for just by choosing to ignore the resources provided to them, get preferential treatment over the "I desperately do want to contribute" people, who cannot choose to contribute in areas, or by means, they are denied access to? Why is it better to take things away from people who really really really want them but don't fit into the pre-defined boxes, than it is to give things to people who won't use them? The latter group isn't forced to be social by having social abilities, nor forced to fight if they have combat abilities. They always get what they want; as it is, they feel no loss for abilities they never have. How do people who don't want to be "forced" to contribute lose by simply...ignoring the things they could contribute but don't care about? And even by your own metric here, doesn't this mean that people who don't want to contribute to talky-bits, but who like a mystical/magical archetype (say, Benders from A:tLA), are "forced" to endure a crapton of abilities they don't want and hate having? Under those lights, the criterion seems rather biased; the only mystical-archetype fans who get what they want are the ones who want declarative abilities, and likewise for non-mystical-archetype fans who don't want declarative abilities.

*"Player skill" can also be "rules lawyering." "DM favor" can be "DM playing favorites." It's worth noting that many of these things are just as easily bad as they are good, and just like with balance, we don't really like the extreme ends. And right now, there is an extreme end--in declarative abilities. Some archetypes get loads of powerful ones, other archetypes get nothing in that sphere, and the player gets zero choice about this. The only way to get those abilities is to stop enjoying the archetypes that never get such abilities, and start enjoying the ones that do.

[kyoryu]

Nobody is asking for a perfectly balanced game. What most people don't want is "Angel Summoner vs. BMX Bandit". And, frankly, if you do, that's kind of a weird desire, to have the rest of the social group basically be observers while you do All The Things. Talking about "perfect balance" or putting out deliberately poor choices as "imbalance" is at best an unintentional strawman.

Here's a simple way to get your beloved imbalance - even within a balanced game!

Have a relatively balanced game. We'll assume class/level to start with - feel free to modify this idea as appropriate. Now the people that want a balanced game have it. But let's say that you want wizards to be Better because Wizards Should Be Better.

Institute the following house rules:

1) A wizard's effective level is always five higher than their actual level. So a level 1 wizard gets abilities/etc. as a level 6 wizard, but advances as per a level 1 wizard.

2) A non-caster is terrible and awful, and as such, their effective level is half of their actual level, rounded up. So at level 1 you are level 1, but at level 2 you gain no abilities. You gain your level 2 advancement when you hit level 3, etc.

2a) Alternately, cap advancement for non-magic classes at a fairly low level, like 6, or 8. Maybe give them a minimal bonus for leveling like that, but really, that's where they cap out.

There you have it! Lovely imbalance with minimal work in a "balanced" game!

[Satinavian]

There's the power that the character gives you. Then there's player skill. But tools can also come from the module, the system, or even directly from the GM.

Sure, there are othr sources of power.

- player skill : You can't really influence player skill. Which means you can't modify player skill until everyone is powerful enough to contribute. Sure, people could play intentionally dumb but that is not what most players like to do and is impractible if most of the table needs to. Player skill difference is a problem you might have to compensate, not a solution to fix outher power imbalances.

- GM : GMs giving out what is needed to solve their own scenario in a way they imagine feels patronizing, boring and stupid. That is not helpful. A player who only can contribute because of special GM patronage likely won't be happy at all. So that is not helpful either.

- the system : what kind of power does a player get from the system that is not part of his character ? If you don't play one of those narrative games with heavy metagaming rules that is none. So that is not helpful.

- the module : the module is never written for a particular group of characters. Even if it ever gives out more power to some characters than to others, that is more likely to make the strong characters even stronger because those have more chances to interact with different parts of a module and get power this way because they are more versatile. So module does more harm to power balance than good.


There really basically is only character power that can be balanced to let everyone contribute, That is why people care for it.

[Quertus]

@ezekielraiden - wow. Almost nothing you said has anything to do with any position I hold. Seems we have a lot more work to do getting on the same page before we can have a productive conversation than I thought.

I already lost one long post where I tried to step through how my position differs from your post. Maybe I'll try again later… but, for now, any comments on the posts I made specifically to try to get us on the same page?

EDIT: "However, I have one serious disagreement, before we get to that. I don't think it's even slightly fair to count "buffs received from other players" as a form of contribution. "Buffs given to other players" is, no question, but receiving a buff? Not a form of contribution. Even if you're only able to do Thing X because you received a buff, that ability is itself the manifestation of the buff-er contributing, not the buff-ee contributing."

I completely agree on your stance on buffs, in general. "Buffs" was poor word choice on my part. Let me try again (and I'll show what I was thinking with "buffs"):

We're fighting a vampire. You have a can of gasoline. That does you no good - it isn't blessed, it will only make the vampire wet and irritated before it rips your throat out.

However, during my turn, I lit a campfire, creating a "good lighting" buff for the party. You realize that you can use my buff to turn a mild annoyance into a major contribution on your part. My fire enables your gasoline to be a major contribution to dealing with the vampire.

Do you agree that soaking a vampire in gas and… trailing the gas to the fire, luring the vampire to the fire, pushing the vampire into the fire, whatever… would be a significant contribution?

Or that running out the door (that someone else left open) with the McGuffin could represent a major contribution?

Do you see why I say that, sometimes, someone else's actions can open windows of opportunity for contribution?

Nobody is asking for a perfectly balanced game. What most people don't want is "Angel Summoner vs. BMX Bandit". And, frankly, if you do, that's kind of a weird desire, to have the rest of the social group basically be observers while you do All The Things. Talking about "perfect balance" or putting out deliberately poor choices as "imbalance" is at best an unintentional strawman.

Here's a simple way to get your beloved imbalance - even within a balanced game!

Have a relatively balanced game. We'll assume class/level to start with - feel free to modify this idea as appropriate. Now the people that want a balanced game have it. But let's say that you want wizards to be Better because Wizards Should Be Better.

Institute the following house rules:

1) A wizard's effective level is always five higher than their actual level. So a level 1 wizard gets abilities/etc. as a level 6 wizard, but advances as per a level 1 wizard.

2) A non-caster is terrible and awful, and as such, their effective level is half of their actual level, rounded up. So at level 1 you are level 1, but at level 2 you gain no abilities. You gain your level 2 advancement when you hit level 3, etc.

2a) Alternately, cap advancement for non-magic classes at a fairly low level, like 6, or 8. Maybe give them a minimal bonus for leveling like that, but really, that's where they cap out.

There you have it! Lovely imbalance with minimal work in a "balanced" game!

Say I'm trying to represent Hawkeye, Thor, Batman, Superman, and myself*, as Fighters. All perfectly balanced by default. But that's not the feel that these characters should have (IMO).

So, do you think it would correctly capture the feel of these characters to have them all start at 1st level, but some get half features (no feats), while others get double features (two feats)?

This conversation ties back to that "food for thought" section that I wrote.

* Or, well, an alternate reality "soldier" me.

Sure, there are othr sources of power.

- player skill : You can't really influence player skill. Which means you can't modify player skill until everyone is powerful enough to contribute. Sure, people could play intentionally dumb but that is not what most players like to do and is impractible if most of the table needs to. Player skill difference is a problem you might have to compensate, not a solution to fix outher power imbalances.

- GM : GMs giving out what is needed to solve their own scenario in a way they imagine feels patronizing, boring and stupid. That is not helpful. A player who only can contribute because of special GM patronage likely won't be happy at all. So that is not helpful either.

- the system : what kind of power does a player get from the system that is not part of his character ? If you don't play one of those narrative games with heavy metagaming rules that is none. So that is not helpful.

- the module : the module is never written for a particular group of characters. Even if it ever gives out more power to some characters than to others, that is more likely to make the strong characters even stronger because those have more chances to interact with different parts of a module and get power this way because they are more versatile. So module does more harm to power balance than good.


There really basically is only character power that can be balanced to let everyone contribute, That is why people care for it.

Where to start? If you think that the party has to exist for the module to include tools, then you've completely missed what I'm trying to communicate.

Let me try again.

”Don't mind him," Baker Devin says, placing his muscular arm firmly on the beast's back to silence it. Peace returns to the canine's features, the white handprint on its black coat the only evidence of its previous outburst. "He can tell everyone's on edge, what with the recent murders and all." Dave spins a silver band on left ring finger absently. "But you're not here to talk beasts, you're here for some fresh bread, am I right?"

What tools did I give you in that paragraph?

[Satinavian]

Where to start? If you think that the party has to exist for the module to include tools, then you've completely missed what I'm trying to communicate.

No, i mean that the more powerful characters would more likely have the power to wield any specific tool the module provides. Which is why tools in modules only exceberate the problem.

Let me try again.

”Don't mind him," Baker Devin says, placing his muscular arm firmly on the beast's back to silence it. Peace returns to the canine's features, the white handprint on its black coat the only evidence of its previous outburst. "He can tell everyone's on edge, what with the recent murders and all." Dave spins a silver band on left ring finger absently. "But you're not here to talk beasts, you're here for some fresh bread, am I right?"

What tools did I give you in that paragraph?

So there seems to be a murder, an animal, two NPCs and a jewelry item. What is this suppossed to be ? A murder mystery ? If so and we disregard any supernatural powers to extract evidence for a moment to keep it somewhat system agnostic, interrogating the NPCs would require social skills. Asking descreetly around about the silver band would also use social skills. Trying to get the dog to either show you something he has seen or to use his nose would require animal handling. Which measns characters that have those abilities can do something useful with this situation, others can't.

[Yakk]

First, mechanics should line up with game fiction. And the players should be on board with the general rules of game fiction.

If your game fiction is "anyone who doesn't cast a spell is incompetent at what they do compared to people who do cast spells", that is one set of assumptions you can make in making a shared game fiction. On the other hand, if the players who want to play an awesome non-spell casting fighter joins that game, and isn't told that there are no awesome non-spell casting fighters in this game, that player is probably going to be disappointed.

Balance, in that sense, is about the idea that by default unless explicit, the various ways of participating in the game fiction should be apparent.

Given a game like D&D, you can play it with "anyone who isn't a wizard is relatively incompetent". But this does mean that players who want to play relatively competent fighters shouldn't play this game.

If the game has levels, or a point-buy system, there is already a "competence" metric in the game. Having "oh, competence-metric for non-casters is on a different scale" is, in a sense, a waste of design space.

Now, you could take this into account, and then simply state "non-spell casters gain the square of the competence points of spell casters, minus 1". So in this tweaking of D&D, you'd have an option of:

Mundane   Spellcaster
   1          2
   8          3
  15          4
  24          5

if that is what is required to produce "even power levels". In this theoretical system, playing an "awesome fighter" who is relatively as competent as the wizard occurs.

But even with the above, it reveals another problem. Even if a level 24 fighter and level 5 wizard are "balanced", they are balanced in ways that might not let you play the game fiction you want to play. There will be a lot of "well, the fighter sits this one out, she cannot fly" or "the wizard dare not go over there, she'll die from the environmental damage, so he's sitting this one out".

Now, the other use of levels/character points could be to pace advancement. In that case, the idea that spellcasters "advance faster" than mundanes should again be part of the game fiction.

This can also work; you can see this in some older versions of D&D, where the XP table differed between classes. It was removed as a complication.

---

There is no wrong way to play RPGs. But there are RPGs that prevent certain kinds of play, and often the kinds of play they prevent isn't made clear.

When the game presents a bunch of character types as being options, and half of them have implicit game fiction of "you are relatively incompetent if you choose this" that comes from the mechanics, while the description of the options doesn't cover that, this is an issue.

There are RPGs where this kind of incompetence is made clear. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Magica the "wizard" character is far more powerful, and the companions are far weaker, and this is made clear in the game fiction. In this game's default setup, the primary "wizard" character for each player sometimes takes time off, and you play a "secondary" less competent mundane when this happens.

---

Finally, the lane idea. Many games have tried this, and what often happens is that players get bored, because they have little to nothing to contribute when their lane isn't active; they "may as well not be at the table".

It has worked, and does work at some tables.

In the lane example, "balance failures" can follow when the lanes overlap, or one lane makes other obsolete. Take Angel Summoner (who can summon an army of angels to solve problems) and BMX Bandit (who is really good on a bike); when BMX tricks are needed, the Bandit rules. But there really aren't many cases where that happens.

[kyoryu]

Say I'm trying to represent Hawkeye, Thor, Batman, Superman, and myself*, as Fighters. All perfectly balanced by default. But that's not the feel that these characters should have (IMO).

So, do you think it would correctly capture the feel of these characters to have them all start at 1st level, but some get half features (no feats), while others get double features (two feats)?

This conversation ties back to that "food for thought" section that I wrote.

* Or, well, an alternate reality "soldier" me.

I don't really know many games where you actually want Hawkeye and Superman in the same game. It can work in a comic book or movie, because the authors are in control, and there's no real people to actually get their feelers hurt.

That aside. Let's say you want to do this, and you actually find someone that wants to play Hawkeye. And really really wants to be Just Regular Hawkeye, a guy with a bow, without any compensation, in a game with Superman.

You could do like the DFRPG thing and give him a bunch of meta bonuses or whatever to compensate, but let's say you don't do that, and you Actually Do want Hawkeye to be totally outshined.

Why not just start Superman at level <lots> with the "progress as if you were level 1" mod described earlier? And if you really want, limit Hawkeye to level 2.

Again, a class/level has a measure to indicate "overall ability". It's "level". Why not just use it?