Why does the party need to be balanced?

[Quertus]

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.


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.

Ah. I think I see your perspective better now? Let's find out.

But, first, a completely different (RPG) take on the tools I provided: flour (great for finding invisible foes, air currents, etc), scent (similar, and more uses), alternate Sense Motive (also via scent), and materials for a silver bullet. And there's several other takes on tools, too. But kudos on your take - it's definitely one of the optimal ones. So let's stick with those two.

Now, let's see if I've got a better handle on your perspective. Although, yes, it's somewhat system dependent.

Interrogating NPCs probably *should* invoice PC social skills to some extent - even if only for an "initial reaction" to know how the NPC will respond. However, this one is actually HUGE. So we'll circle back to it.

Handling the "dog" requires animal handling. Which an NPC has demonstrated that he has. So, anyone who can use the "NPC" object (through social skills, financial capability, or even the power of friendship) has surrogate control of the "dog". But it doesn't take any such skills to notice when the dog becomes agitated.

Gathering information discretely takes social skills. Yup, gotta give you that one. Doing so less discretely might not, depending on how talkative townsfolk are.

Using flour to find invisible foes takes virtually no skill (although combat capable characters will likely be more successful at longer ranges). Detecting air currents… eh, just a modicum of skill required? Easily accomplished by "taking 20", if nothing else.

Forging a silver bullet likely takes skill. But there's probably a tool (ie, a blacksmith NPC) in town who can do that, with no real social skills required to convince him (unless, of course, you're trying to get him to do it for free…).

-----

Interrogating NPCs. Remember how I said social skills should play a part, but this was huge? OK, let's circle back to that now.

Basically, if the GM / module decides that a particular NPC will only divulge certain information if the PCs can succeed at a certain skill check, then they have gated that information behind that skill. However, if, instead, they decide that the NPC will reveal the information to anyone who asks, or anyone who presents them with the McGuffin information (ie, they gate it behind something that anyone could acquire), then that information is a universally accessable tool.

And that's huge.

Looking at your content - especially the "critical path" content - in terms of who can access what, in terms of how many universal tools vs how many skill-gated tools you have makes a huge difference in how the game plays out, how important buttons on the character sheet are.

And that's why I was saying that, while most content writers are blind to this, they easily could, and arguably should, provide plenty of everyman tools, that any character can access, regardless of skill. To ensure that people who want to participate, can.

And, if they want to guarantee that their module is solvable, they need to provide tools (ie, friendly-able NPCs) with any skills (etc) that are required on the critical path (such as the NPC Baker Devin, with handle animal skill).

Sure, there can be some challenges, and some bonus content, to encourage differentiation and reward specialization. But (IMO) there is little reason for the majority of content to be significantly skill gated - and plenty of reason for it to not be.

[Satinavian]

And that's why I was saying that, while most content writers are blind to this, they easily could, and arguably should, provide plenty of everyman tools, that any character can access, regardless of skill. To ensure that people who want to participate, can.

And, if they want to guarantee that their module is solvable, they need to provide tools (ie, friendly-able NPCs) with any skills (etc) that are required on the critical path (such as the NPC Baker Devin, with handle animal skill).

Sure, there can be some challenges, and some bonus content, to encourage differentiation and reward specialization. But (IMO) there is little reason for the majority of content to be significantly skill gated - and plenty of reason for it to not be.

Honestly i think there is a system bias on your side.

D&D has always had crappy skill systems. The skills started being attached as an afterthought as some kind of open gimmick list instead of a comprehensible description of what characters can do, got expanded to a comprehensible system in 3.x but in a way that produced lots of stupid results and then got scaled back in later editions because it didn't really work and people didn't want to invest the time to make it work.
That is why D&D has so much handwaving for everything that is not combat. And people congratulate themself if they can convince a GM of complex solutions while avoiding any actual roll, just like in olden times when you basically failed if you have to roll anything.


Most of that is nonsense. If the module consists only of tools and potential solutions that everyone could use, it makes it kinda irrelevant what kind of characters are even played or how much experience they have/what level they are, doesn't it ?

That is not an ideal. And providing a friendly NPC for every useful skill or tools that every idiot can use, is not much different than providing a couple of powerful mageknights that can clobber any monster if the PCs just ask them so that PC combat ability is not required.
Letting NPCs solve an adventure and being reduced to the damsel in distress calling the brave NPC-heroes for help or at best be some henchman that moves a McGuffin from A to B in a way any untrained cohort or summon could do as well does not actually feel like contributing much. If everything a PC "contributes" is just another warm body, that is not enough.

A module should avoid that most of the times. Instead it should mostly account for solutions that do require skills and provide tools for those. It however should mostly consist of challenges that could be solved in different ways as to not require the group to have a certain special ability or fail. But there is nothing wrong with each or most of those ways actually require some competence or expertise.

Only when the modules has some linchpin where there only are one or two viable ways, all requiring certain skills or special abilities and you fail if you don't have them, only then should a friendly NPC or a tool that can do that be provided.


But let's ignore that even a moment. Even if most of a module is not explicitely skill lockes, it skill would never provide characters that can do less with more power and options than characters that can do more. So my point still stands.

[ezekielraiden]

I didn't really feel I had all that much relevant to say WRT your last post to me, and it had been some time back, which is why I didn't respond. However, since you have asked, I will do so.

But here's there thing: you're assuming that imbalance has to involve force, that people can only be forced into a state of imbalance.

I'm saying that, whether it is balance or imbalance, it is a game design choice on the creators' part. And we are embarked--we must choose SOMETHING on the spectrum between "zero balance whatsoever" and "perfect immutable symmetry"--it is not possible to simply choose not to make a choice. Since balance is (pretty much self-evidently) more difficult to create and maintain, a balanced system is better to start from, as balance is much more easily broken than forged. And, as noted previously, no one forces you to use features you don't want to use, meaning simply by choosing not to act, literally anyone can create desired imbalance *from* balance.

probably the most prevalent examples are those who do not want to be forced to participate in the "talky bits"

Who is doing this? Who "forced" these people? Is someone really able to coerce them? That would be genuinely shocking.

And, to expand on something NichG said, some players (including me) care most about things that aren't represented in game mechanics (well, or at all).

Those were never subject to balancing in the first place, so why would they be relevant to the discussion of balance? We're talking about making it where it is possible, not trying to force it literally everywhere, even where it's completely ridiculous to create. And, yes, those areas can induce imbalance in the overall experience. That cannot, even in principle, be avoided, so there's no point worrying about it either way. There would be no point. Instead, focus on what you *can* address, provide tools and advice for the rest, and trust that players and DMs will (learn to) make use of those external, unpreventable things in the ways they like best.

For some players who care about non-mechanical portions of the game, being "equal" (let alone "superior") can, at times, actively detract from their enjoyment of the game. For various reasons.

Okay. Doesn't that mean that there's literally no right answer? Imbalance creates some archetypes that are inherently superior, to the point that even active involvement of the rules-external stuff isn't always capable of addressing the gap. Doesn't that mean imbalance is also forcing players to have what they don't want, and detracting from their enjoyment of the game? If it's going to be a problem for some portion of the players *either way,* why not accept that some people will be unhappy no matter which you choose, and create the system that does satisfy the ones who do want balance, and can be broken (perhaps with advice on how to do so!) for those who don't want it?

Some players care about the stories that they tell. And the story of a group of equals is a valid story… but it's only one of oh so many possible stories. The role of "an equal" is a valid role… but it's only one of many possible roles. Some players enjoy more variety to their stories / roles.

Many people seek out inequality in a game, for various reasons. Some systems make creating such imbalance more difficult than others.

Alright, since it seems it may not be as self-evident as I said above:
Do you believe that it is easier to create balanced systems, or imbalanced systems? I am of the opinion that it is literally a law of nature that imbalanced systems are always easier to create, except in trivial cases (e.g. an empty centrifuge is always balanced). Dynamic equilibrium that preserves a pattern, rather than simply sliding to the lowest-entropy point, is difficult to achieve.

So, balance is a range, not a point.

Agreed. As noted, no one really wants "perfect" balance. Even chess and friggin' go are not perfectly balanced. Similarly, no one wants games that exhibit no balance whatsoever (e.g. where one choice trivially wins, any other choice trivially loses, and both facts are immediately obvious to every player). "Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean." (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Datalinks )

There us no such thing as a "balanced" character - there is only "balanced to this group". It's subjective.

Once you have moved beyond rules-design and into play itself, which includes both the rules and player behaviors, yes. I'm not asking for us to balance player behaviors though, as I consider that impossible (or, if possible, so terrifyingly evil as to be worth literally fighting by armed uprising, but that's an entirely different topic). The rules themselves can be balanced, or not balanced, and the play that adopts and surrounds those rules can and will adjust them--especially if clear advice and effective tools are furnished to the DMs and players alike (often different kinds of tools/advice for each).

Your anecdote does not really apply to my concerns, because (as noted) they were about the play around the rules, and not really the rules themselves--or, they were *literally identical* to my concerns, because you were being denied contribution by the rules themselves, and could not address that meaningfully because the other players were unaware, and thereby trapped by imbalance that could not be addressed by rules-external adjustment.

Your "UBI" analogy is, again, something I consider irrelevant. You are exclusively examining the actual-play aka "post-design" part. I am exclusively examining the in-design aka "pre-play" part. We can balance the system, and equip players and DMs alike to adjust from there.

[NichG]

I'm saying that, whether it is balance or imbalance, it is a game design choice on the creators' part. And we are embarked--we must choose SOMETHING on the spectrum between "zero balance whatsoever" and "perfect immutable symmetry"--it is not possible to simply choose not to make a choice. Since balance is (pretty much self-evidently) more difficult to create and maintain, a balanced system is better to start from, as balance is much more easily broken than forged. And, as noted previously, no one forces you to use features you don't want to use, meaning simply by choosing not to act, literally anyone can create desired imbalance *from* balance.

I'd argue that when it comes to design, its not a matter of picking a point on this spectrum and aiming at it, but rather it's a matter of picking very many things and weighting their importance in different ways. That is to say, a design philosophy de-emphasizing balance doesn't aim at 'zero balance whatsoever', but rather it says that if other elements (which contribute to the things which are being emphasized) would push the game in the direction of higher or lower levels of balance, the fact that those other elements impact balance wouldn't be taken as a valid reason to not include those things within the context of that design philosophy.

Or to put it more succinctly, I would argue for balance perhaps being seen as a means rather than an end, and that design approaches which take balance as an end rather than a means tend to sacrifice the elements of their franchise which are the most evocative and memorable, because those things are the ones that tend to most obviously be associated with imbalances and, if you're considering them purely from a balance perspective you may miss the reason why those things are effective at establishing the feel of the game or the joy of play.

It's sort of like Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

[ezekielraiden]

I'd argue that when it comes to design, its not a matter of picking a point on this spectrum and aiming at it, but rather it's a matter of picking very many things and weighting their importance in different ways. That is to say, a design philosophy de-emphasizing balance doesn't aim at 'zero balance whatsoever', but rather it says that if other elements (which contribute to the things which are being emphasized) would push the game in the direction of higher or lower levels of balance, the fact that those other elements impact balance wouldn't be taken as a valid reason to not include those things within the context of that design philosophy.

Or to put it more succinctly, I would argue for balance perhaps being seen as a means rather than an end, and that design approaches which take balance as an end rather than a means tend to sacrifice the elements of their franchise which are the most evocative and memorable, because those things are the ones that tend to most obviously be associated with imbalances and, if you're considering them purely from a balance perspective you may miss the reason why those things are effective at establishing the feel of the game or the joy of play.

It's sort of like Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Okay, so it's a collection of choices, rather than a "I'd like the number 7 please." That does not change the most salient parts: we have control over the result via design choices, we cannot make any choice that gets us off the spectrum, and we cannot choose not to choose at all. We are embarked, and the rules will fall *somewhere.*

As for the other key point you make, see my aforementioned distaste for the "we need to be Just Better than other players to have fun." If the flavor of D&D, a cooperative game, requires options that make some people Just Better than others, then D&D is a game with an identity crisis. Its identity is actively self-contradictory, and it will never fulfill its audience...because intentionally catering to players who require unequal treatment in order to be happy will piss off the guaranteed players who require equal treatment in order to be happy.

To use an MMO analogy: you can make a game that only caters to casual gamers, a game that only caters to hardcore gamers, a game that offers entirely separate content for both, or a game that offers a variety of distinct content pieces that cater to different points on that spectrum. But you cannot make a game that forces everyone through literally 100% of all the content and satisfy both groups. In D&D, it's as if we're requiring that hardcore raiders play alongside uber-casuals, through exactly the same content. The game actively encourages, even mandates pairing Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. And isnt it just convenient how the preferences that always get catered to are those of "I can ONLY have fun if I get to play Angel Summoner and someone else has to play BMX Bandit" and "I tune out for a bunch of stuff so I'd rather play BMX Bandit while Angel Summoner deals with it," and NEVER the "I wish I could do magic stuff without HAVING to be Angel Summoner" nor "I wish there were an option like BMX Bandit that wasn't so incredibly limited..."

[NichG]

Okay, so it's a collection of choices, rather than a "I'd like the number 7 please." That does not change the most salient parts: we have control over the result via design choices, we cannot make any choice that gets us off the spectrum, and we cannot choose not to choose at all. We are embarked, and the rules will fall *somewhere.*

The distinction is going in saying 'I am going to prioritize the balance I want first, then wherever (other thing) lands I'm going to be okay with that in exchange for having the balance I want' versus 'I am going to prioritize (other thing) first, and wherever balance lands I'm going to be okay with that in exchange for the thing I wanted more'.

To me, putting everything in terms of measuring player contributions against each-other moves the entire framing of the design into terms that I think are counter-productive in many cases, the exception being games designed explicitly as competitive endeavors. It's that framing which is responsible for the false dichotomy between 'care about balance vs cater to players who need to be Just Better than others' - even when I say 'its not about balance at all, its about not being bound by balance' that gets translated (in the balance framing) to a closest match of 'it feels good to be better than someone else', which is not at all the point.

Lets take something like the superhero genre. One way I could approach the game would be to have each type of power be one choice, and the level of the power be another choice such that I try to make every power taken at the same level to be basically balanced against every other power taken at that level, and then have synchronized progression where everyone becomes stronger in sync. Another would be to say 'powers are inherently different in their power scale - the guy with matter control is simply playing a different game than the guy whose only power is blindsight, but we'll be explicit about that fact in the rules and not actually pretend that the matter control guy started with some sort of weak version that just happens to be as potent as blindsight'.

In terms of the setting presented, the sorts of challenges faced by characters in that world, etc, it's a fundamentally different kind of place if there's this conceit that there are waves of supers each with basically synchronized power levels which are growing together, versus if someone can just win the power lottery and suddenly that beggar who everyone spat on has the power of Karmic Backlash and can kill everyone up to the 7th generation who slights him.

Or to go even further, there are some kinds of powers that are basically impossible to balance - powers that let you steal powers, powers which can be banked to grow over time, powers which let you invent powers, powers which let you grant powers, time travel, alternate reality traversal, universe creation, etc. Once you inject a power like that into a game, a character's power doesn't reflect any kind of static level anymore, it's entirely dependent on the player's will. Or even the discussion earlier about how wealth can be unbalancing - from a balanced-focused point of view it would be very easy to convince ones-self that it's a necessary thing to have something like a 'wealth by level' (people get very obsessed with this in D&D in particular), and miss that you could in fact make a bold stroke and allow a player to say, at character creation, 'I want to basically have money: yes' and just see what happens, what sort of things can remain challenges for that group and how the nature of challenge changes as a result.

The potential of actually handing players those kinds of abilities lives in the blindspot that a balanced-centered design philosophy tends to miss out on. And in the end, that kind of game can actually find its own kind of balance, but it almost by definition can't be a balance that originates from the rules - it's a balance that originates organically from the players' minds. I know a DM who, for example, when running D&D told their players 'assign your stats entirely as you like within the 8 to 18 range - put down whatever values you want. If you want all 18s, go for it.' It's interesting that what happens when you do that generally isn't an entire table of people with all 18s.

[Quertus]

Honestly i think there is a system bias on your side.

Oh, completely true… albeit probably not quite the way you think.

just like in olden times when you basically failed if you have to roll anything.

So compare

"Officer, what's up?"
"There's been a murder."

with

"Officer, what's up?"
Roll +cool
On 10+, "There's been a murder." (And you can ask 2 questions about the murder)
On 7-9, "There's been a murder." (And the officer considers you a suspect)
On 6-, "like you need to ask" (and the office wants to bring you in for questioning)

I don't actually know if either of those would be valid in Fate, but both are conceptually valid ways to run a (non-fate) game.

IMO, there's a time and a place for a Face, but I think it's best for the health of most games if you don't make the stakes so high, or the roles so common, that no-one except the Face dares open their mouth around NPCs.

Most of that is nonsense. If the module consists only of tools and potential solutions that everyone could use, it makes it kinda irrelevant what kind of characters are even played or how much experience they have/what level they are, doesn't it ?.

Not at all! (Although you've combined two things. I'll try and tease those apart)

So, I think we largely agree, but are approaching it differently.

Suppose the module *requires* the party to use the "dog". And suppose doing so is gated behind high Animal skills. And suppose that there are no NPCs with animal skills. Then, if the party doesn't have animal skills, they cannot complete the critical path, and fail the module.

Suppose the module requires the party to create a silver bullet. And suppose the module contains no silver, and no silversmith. Then, if the party didn't bring silver, and have silversmith skills, they cannot complete the critical path, and fail the module.

There are two (ok, 3) solutions to making the module less "you failed at character creation/selection". First, you could include all the necessary components (animal handling, silver, silversmith) in the module. Second, you could make there be multiple possible paths to success - or even make success conditions very open. (OK, third, you could also explicitly say "you need x Y and z to successfully complete this adventure").

I am suggesting doing both (of the first two). Or, rather, making that your starting point.

But wait, you say, doesn't that make PC ability meaningless? Not at all! If you want to use Baker Devon, you need to convince him (face, money, friendship), and you need to keep him alive. Whereas, if the PCs have the skills, they can focus on other parts of the module, and let their Animal skills be a "win button" letting them bypass the "Baker Devon" content, if they so desire.

[kyoryu]

So compare

"Officer, what's up?"
"There's been a murder."

with

"Officer, what's up?"
Roll +cool
On 10+, "There's been a murder." (And you can ask 2 questions about the murder)
On 7-9, "There's been a murder." (And the officer considers you a suspect)
On 6-, "like you need to ask" (and the office wants to bring you in for questioning)

I don't actually know if either of those would be valid in Fate, but both are conceptually valid ways to run a (non-fate) game.

In terms of Fate, the first one is what you'd do if the officer was free to give that information and had no reason not to.

The second one would only be a thing if the officer had reason to suspect you in the first place.

The general adjudication method for Fate is:

1) Player says what they do
2) GM considers if the result is obvious; if it is, that's what happens, stop.
3) GM considers how this could go well or poorly.
4) Consult the system to figure out which of those happens
5) That's what happens

IMO, there's a time and a place for a Face, but I think it's best for the health of most games if you don't make the stakes so high, or the roles so common, that no-one except the Face dares open their mouth around NPCs.

Again, the Fate-ish way to handle this is that the system only comes into play if the results are not obvious, and then chooses between GM-provided options of what could happen.

Player tells the guard: "How are you doing sir, I'm just going on my way." No roll required.
Player tells the guard: "If I give you $100, will you look the other way for a minute?" Depending on the guard, they may or may not. Roll.
Player tells the guard: "I'm walking in to rob the place, is that okay?" No roll required, that is not okay.

IOW, the system only comes into play when the outcome is uncertain. So "don't talk to people without skill" shouldn't happen. If it does happen, that's GM failure. What would happen is "if you're trying to convince someone of something, maybe the guy good at it should do it." The harder it is to convince someone, the more you should let the specialist handle it.

But wait, you say, doesn't that make PC ability meaningless? Not at all! If you want to use Baker Devon, you need to convince him (face, money, friendship), and you need to keep him alive. Whereas, if the PCs have the skills, they can focus on other parts of the module, and let their Animal skills be a "win button" letting them bypass the "Baker Devon" content, if they so desire.

In any system I've used and would run, just having the skill isn't a "button" you can "use". It starts with an action in the imaginary world, and you roll if the outcome is uncertain. In other words, you don't get to "I Rapoprt the baker!". You have to figure out what makes him tick, and what he wants, then make him an offer... and then, if it's still uncertain (maybe he wants what you're offering, but he also has a reason to not do what you're asking) you make a roll.

[Quertus]

I didn't really feel I had all that much relevant to say WRT your last post to me, and it had been some time back, which is why I didn't respond. However, since you have asked, I will do so.

And I'm glad you did - your reply gives me a much better idea how much material there is for us to discuss.

I'm saying that, whether it is balance or imbalance, it is a game design choice on the creators' part. And we are embarked--we must choose SOMETHING on the spectrum between "zero balance whatsoever" and "perfect immutable symmetry"--it is not possible to simply choose not to make a choice. Since balance is (pretty much self-evidently) more difficult to create and maintain, a balanced system is better to start from, as balance is much more easily broken than forged.

If the players want to play Galactus and Ant Man, should the system force their characters to be balanced? If the players want to play Conan and… not Conan… a Thief, should the system force them to be balanced? If players want to play Bill Gates, Einstein, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and Neil Armstrong, should the system force them to be balanced?

If the system is built with "balance" as its prime directive, it unlikely to correctly capture the flavor of these matchups.

A game should choose what it is, and be that. And if that's something (roughly) balanced, great. And if it's Ars Magica, great!

As I keep saying, the good thing about 3e is, you can build characters to whatever balance or whatever imbalance you want.

And, as noted previously, no one forces you to use features you don't want to use, meaning simply by choosing not to act, literally anyone can create desired imbalance *from* balance.

If you want to play as yourself in a game, and I hand you Thor's character sheet, and I say, "just don't use the bits that don't fit" are you going to feel that the system has succeeded in modeling you? Is it going to feel like you?

Who is doing this? Who "forced" these people? Is someone really able to coerce them? That would be genuinely shocking.

If you don't get it, I probably can't explain it. For now, just take it on faith that it's a problem, and ask me about it again if we ever get on similar pages on the rest of this.

Okay. Doesn't that mean that there's literally no right answer?

Bingo!

It's why ice cream shops serve more than one flavor: because there's no right answer.

3e has amazing accidental success at serving many, many flavors. It provides the tools to create balanced parties, or unbalanced parties, at the group's whim.

If it's going to be a problem for some portion of the players *either way,* why not accept that some people will be unhappy no matter which you choose, and create the system that does satisfy the ones who do want balance, and can be broken (perhaps with advice on how to do so!) for those who don't want it?

3e did so much better: it made a system where either group could be happy.

So, to parrot your question back to you, if you could make a system where some group of people will be unhappy, or one that can serve them all, why not make the latter?

Some players care about the stories that they tell. And the story of a group of equals is a valid story… but it's only one of oh so many possible stories. The role of "an equal" is a valid role… but it's only one of many possible roles. Some players enjoy more variety to their stories / roles.

I think I said that already

Alright, since it seems it may not be as self-evident as I said above:
Do you believe that it is easier to create balanced systems, or imbalanced systems?

Everyone plays as Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named). Perfect balance. Done. So, I guess I'd say that, technically, balance is easiest, because it requires producing the fewest options - 1 - while imbalance requires at least 2 options.

Still not what you're asking, but more Germaine to your point, I think that the system should focus on what it wants to do, and on making that fun. "Balance" (or lack thereof) should be a side effect of the decisions to make a fun game.

Once you have moved beyond rules-design and into play itself, which includes both the rules and player behaviors, yes. I'm not asking for us to balance player behaviors though, as I consider that impossible (or, if possible, so terrifyingly evil as to be worth literally fighting by armed uprising, but that's an entirely different topic). The rules themselves can be balanced, or not balanced, and the play that adopts and surrounds those rules can and will adjust them--especially if clear advice and effective tools are furnished to the DMs and players alike (often different kinds of tools/advice for each).

Player behaviors? Move into play itself? No, I'm talking about player perception and biases, not that stuff. As I had hoped would be evident from my example of a group that would consider an optimized Tainted Sorcerer BFC God Wizard to not be contributing, because their concept of "balance" amounted to "how much damage you dealt", and that (likely OP to our PoV) character has virtually no damage output capabilities.

I'm explaining why UBI is a pipe dream. And then saying, "but, pretending that it wasn't…”.

Your anecdote does not really apply to my concerns, because (as noted) they were about the play around the rules, and not really the rules themselves--or, they were *literally identical* to my concerns, because you were being denied contribution by the rules themselves, and could not address that meaningfully because the other players were unaware, and thereby trapped by imbalance that could not be addressed by rules-external adjustment.

The other players weren't unaware, they were incapable of comprehending measuring "balance" by the metric of "contribution". Imagine if I responded to your balance concerns by saying, "but you're the same level as everyone else, so you're balanced", and was unable to comprehend anything but "level" as an indicator of balance.

Your "UBI" analogy is, again, something I consider irrelevant. You are exclusively examining the actual-play aka "post-design" part. I am exclusively examining the in-design aka "pre-play" part. We can balance the system, and equip players and DMs alike to adjust from there.

If you hold my UBI to be irrelevant, then you hold your desire for balance as irrelevant. Because UBI is simply a metric for balance. That doesn't sound like a particularly coherent stance. (Probably because you're wrong about this whole "post" and "pre" stuff. (Yes, historically, I'm often discussing "post" stuff. But I'm not here.) So drop that, and try again.)

[Quertus]

In any system I've used and would run, just having the skill isn't a "button" you can "use". It starts with an action in the imaginary world, and you roll if the outcome is uncertain. In other words, you don't get to "I Rapoprt the baker!". You have to figure out what makes him tick, and what he wants, then make him an offer... and then, if it's still uncertain (maybe he wants what you're offering, but he also has a reason to not do what you're asking) you make a roll.

Um… you seemed point on with the rest of the post, but this bit? We lost signal somewhere.

So, I certainly agree with what you're saying about how to befriend the Baker. Which is why I made "Face" (ie, "convince") and "friend" (ie, befriend) as two separate options for getting Baker Devin to use his skills on your behalf. Each with their own pros and cons.

However, the "win button" in this example / in this context was having "Animal" skills, such that you didn't need Baker Devin's help.

[Morty]

This entire discussion seems to be predicated on the fact that 3E is easy to balance... a fact which is not in evidence in practical play, rather than forum theory-crafting. Not even in forum theory-crafting, really. Aside from the effort and system mastery required, books don't grow on trees. Quertus' line of argumentation seems to be trying to obfuscate this, as far as I can tell.

[Quertus]

This entire discussion seems to be predicated on the fact that 3E is easy to balance... a fact which is not in evidence in practical play, rather than forum theory-crafting. Not even in forum theory-crafting, really. Aside from the effort and system mastery required, books don't grow on trees. Quertus' line of argumentation seems to be trying to obfuscate this, as far as I can tell.

Ooh, "obfuscate" is one of my favorite words. But, no, I am not discussing how *easy* anything is, only that it is *possible*. And stating that I've seen it (balance in 3e) from many parties at many tables.

My line of argumentation? Eh, my series of explanations are intended to clarify what I mean by the things that I say, and… hmmm… I suppose both broaden and narrow the conceptual space under discussion.

Once all active participants get on the same page, then I can start in on my line of argumentation.

[AdAstra]

Quertus I think a crucial thing to ask, since I'm not sure it's been said anywhere, what exactly does your party do to maintain balance in your eyes.

How much of it is how the players choose to see themselves and their party (aka do they actually care)?

How much is voluntary character decisions (aka does the cleric just choose not to buff themselves into a combat monster)?

How much is decided in the build stage (i.e. no Pun Pun)?

How much is created by the needs/events of the story (i.e. only the fighter can wield the legendary Sword of Ultra-Killy-Death)?

In addition, how much of this is action from the players and how much is on your part?

Specifics on how your party (including you) implements balance would be helpful, preferably in the form of real examples.

[Cluedrew]

I have lost the thread of the conversation at this point. I'm going to try to reset some things:

Why does the party need to be balanced?

My answer is it doesn't have to but that is the design intent of most systems I have seen. So playing balanced PCs generally fits into that mold. Further more I believe that games thrive on meaningful choices (Choices that you understand that have impacts.) and imbalance can reduce the amount of meaningful choices.

Imbalance mostly takes away from the impacts of a choice, it can also reduce knowledge needed to make the meaningful choices in the first place but I will focus on the simpler impact section. I spoke of "meaningful contributions" before and that is the impact of the decision, here how it effects the campaign progress. There isn't a hard line about when an impact becomes meaningful - and we have things like occasional large impacts with larger impacts as a mix - but something that effects a scene is less impactful than something that effects future scenes which is less impactful than something that completely changes what scenes happen later.

A small different in power can lead to a small difference in impact. And a large difference in power can lead to the smaller impact getting completely lost. At that point there isn't a meaningful choice being made any more for the player of the weaker character, because no matter what they do the stronger characters actions will dictate the flow of the game. And that's not fun.

And I say that entirely aware that Quertus is in the thread. Every positive anecdote about character imbalance I have heard has boiled down to 2 options: A) the characters were actually balanced* or B) a player uses something non-mechanical to make a meaningful choice. The former doesn't count and the second is... fine but it is not something you can design for because you can do the same thing with a character more mechanical options.

As for what to do when imbalance is wanted, well by my broader definition I actually wonder if it is. But if it is you can simply not use the tools all your character provides you.

* Close enough to perfect balance that they all could still make meaningful choices.

[ezekielraiden]

If the players want to play Galactus and Ant Man, should the system force their characters to be balanced?

The trouble with asking Socratic questions is when you get an answer you don't expect: Yes, I think they should be balanced! Of course, your example is rather flawed since the two don't play together. But to use a practical example of the same bent, systems that allow Superman-like and Batman-like characters to play together do, almost without exception, seek to balance those options somehow. In the rare cases they don't (such as certain editions of Exalted), they admit this and go out of their way to note that (frex) Dragon-Blooded probably will struggle to adventure alongside Solars due to the power differential and players should only engage in this if they're okay with that.

Literally zero versions of D&D have tried for this, and nearly all have spent both actual design effort and published-book/dev-advice text specifically in the opposite direction. I feel confident in saying that while this is an option, the developers are both aware of it and intentionally avoiding it, thus removing it as a consideration. D&D, and PF, want to be balanced, actively elicit feedback on how to become more balanced, and intentionally present their options as balanced...and yet they are not.

If the players want to play Conan and… not Conan… a Thief, should the system force them to be balanced?

Sure. Why not?

If players want to play Bill Gates, Einstein, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and Neil Armstrong, should the system force them to be balanced?

Sure. Why not?

If the system is built with "balance" as its prime directive, it unlikely to correctly capture the flavor of these matchups.

Why not? I don't accept that as a fiat declaration--again, see "our game permits both Batman and Superman, with reasonable efforts at balance."

As I keep saying, the good thing about 3e is, you can build characters to whatever balance or whatever imbalance you want.

Except literally everything I've ever seen about 3rd edition indicates this is categorically false.

If you want to play as yourself in a game, and I hand you Thor's character sheet, and I say, "just don't use the bits that don't fit" are you going to feel that the system has succeeded in modeling you? Is it going to feel like you?

What, exactly, is this supposed to demonstrate? There is no game (and I'd argue there would never be a game) where that is the actual effect of what I said. All you've done is show that, if a person's only choices are "premade character based on something entirely orthogonal to their interests" and "lump it," they may have real reasons to choose "lump it." It'd be nice if the hypotheticals weren't so ludicrously biased.

If you don't get it, I probably can't explain it. For now, just take it on faith that it's a problem, and ask me about it again if we ever get on similar pages on the rest of this.

Alright, if I'm not getting your explanation, maybe you'll get mine.

Unbalanced systems are difficult, sometimes extremely difficult, to make balanced. It can sometimes require constant, active re-design during use. By analogy, consider the F-117 Nighthawk: an inherently unstable plane that, technically speaking, should not be able to fly any meaningful distance. It can only do so because active, continuous computer adjustment of the aerofoil overcomes just enough of the inherent stability to keep it flying where the pilot wants, and it must be done by computer, a human isn't fast or observant enough. My experience of 3rd edition--3e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, etc.--has conformed without exception to this. A human DM can make dynamic adjustments to patch the ever-growing number of holes, but eventually they will just wear out.

By comparison, balanced systems are usually quite easy to make unbalanced. Analogically: How many ways are there to take a perfectly stable aircraft and make it crash? Since you don't seem to care much for the "you aren't forced to use it" argument, here's another: 4e, though (in)famous for its balance, has no less than four mechanics that can be trivially altered (in multiple ways each, some even actually done by real DMs!) to break the balance wide open (Daily powers, XP budget, healing surges, . Of course, if you're shooting for very specific kinds of imbalance, that's different--but you have thus far only argued imbalance in the generic, and have (to the best of my knowledge) explicitly either agreed with my opposition to, or have not agreed but argued your position meaningfully differs from, "I want *my* preferences to be Just Better than the alternatives."

Producing instability out of stability is quite easy; producing stability out of instability is fiendishly difficult. Producing imbalance out of balance is trivial; producing balance out of imbalance is incredibly hard. (See below for the one exception that I already called out and am mildly annoyed that you seem to have ignored me doing so.)

Bingo! It's why ice cream shops serve more than one flavor: because there's no right answer.

That's...not what I'm saying. I'm saying if my answer is wrong, so is yours, for identical reasons. You can't use that argument against my position, because it is just as deadly to your own. If "it's bad to make chocolate fans eat vanilla, and some fans MUST have real imported gelato" is the reason to not even serve vanilla, it can be just as easily turned around to "it's bad to make vanilla fans eat chocolate, and some fans MUST have real imported french vanilla" being a reason to not even serve chocolate. Except--and here's where the real point I was making lies--you can make chocolate ice cream by adding chocolate syrup and mixing (since that is in fact how most chocolate is made, adding cocoa and a little vanilla to sweetened cream and then chilling it). You cannot make vanilla ice cream by extracting chocolate flavor from pre-mixed ice cream...or at least not without incredibly difficult and wasteful filtration. Of course, this analogy is imperfect and all arguments by analogy are only as good as the fit of the analogy to the situation and I'm eight million percent certain you can come up with a counter-example of ice cream flavors but that's not the point. The point is that you can always add imbalance to literally any game, balanced or not. It is usually (in fact, very nearly always) VERY difficult to add real, durable balance to a game that starts imbalanced; see, for example, the issues with 3.5e's CR system, and how any effort to make it work as advertised essentially means either reviewing every single monster OR starting from scratch and building a new CR system that works.

3e has amazing accidental success at serving many, many flavors. It provides the tools to create balanced parties, or unbalanced parties, at the group's whim. <snip> 3e did so much better: it made a system where either group could be happy.

To reiterate: I completely, totally, thoroughly, and every other "all of it" adjective I can muster, disagree with this statement. And the literal years of interminable arguments, garbage house rules, entire editions, etc. all seem to back me up on this. 3e has serious, debilitating flaws that actively prevent playing balanced parties, confuse efforts to address them (allegedly by intent, see Cook's "Ivory Tower Game Design," but even by accident it's bad), and encourage dismissive and elitist opinions to linger within the community.

So, to parrot your question back to you, if you could make a system where some group of people will be unhappy, or one that can serve them all, why not make the latter?

Because it doesn't exist, never did, and never will.

Everyone plays as Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named). Perfect balance. Done. So, I guess I'd say that, technically, balance is easiest, because it requires producing the fewest options - 1 - while imbalance requires at least 2 options.

Okay, I have to assume this was just being playful, but seriously, I really did already address this. You're speaking of trivial balance, which I already explicitly called out as an exception. In all but trivial cases, balance is more difficult. Do you agree, yes/no?

Still not what you're asking, but more Germaine to your point, I think that the system should focus on what it wants to do, and on making that fun. "Balance" (or lack thereof) should be a side effect of the decisions to make a fun game.

Absolutely! Which is why your UBI stuff was irrelevant to me--but I'll get to that in a sec.

Player behaviors? Move into play itself? No, I'm talking about player perception and biases, not that stuff.

...how do you have player perceptions and biases before you have players? Game design happens before there are players. The players cannot have perceptions of rules that aren't available for play.

The other players weren't unaware, they were incapable of comprehending measuring "balance" by the metric of "contribution". Imagine if I responded to your balance concerns by saying, "but you're the same level as everyone else, so you're balanced", and was unable to comprehend anything but "level" as an indicator of balance.

I refuse to believe, unless you have evidence to the contrary, that there are human beings physically incapable of such comprehension, while still being physically capable of playing the game. Therefore, unless you are able and willing to provide such evidence, they are merely unaware that that is a metric, not incapable of using that metric. (I do, of course, allow for individuals with physical and mental disabilities that can present severe barriers to play...but I'd argue anyone genuinely incapable of understanding "contribution to the game" is incapable of playing the game, and thus the discussion would never happen in the first place.)

If you hold my UBI to be irrelevant, then you hold your desire for balance as irrelevant.

Not at all. Your UBI has abstracted itself into irrelevance. There is, in fact, a completely valid way to go about this: statistical testing of one's objectives. As you said above, a game needs to decide what it's about. If it uses a statistical model for generating outcomes (read: dice, cards, any other source of randomness to drive events), then one can define goals and then set mathematical targets for those goals. One can then run many, many trials of the system (playtesting), collect results as a data set, and check to see if, under both controlled and diverse circumstances, the spread of statistical results matches the desired spread of results. E.g. a null hypothesis of "the mean and SD are indistinguishable from the desired mean and SD" (probably GOF tests, though more advanced tools might be needed). If we reject the null, we must go back and revise the rules and test again; if we do not reject it, then while we don't know for certain it's balanced, we have done reasonable due diligence in that direction.

Your UBI is flawed not because it is a balance metric, but because it is merely a ranking, when it needs to be a statistical range. You wanted to disprove balance metrics in the abstract, but literally none of what you said applies to statistical modelling of a numerical-valued system.

Of course, you can rebut that some mechanics have no definable numeric impact whatsoever. That's going to be a hard sell, since even things like fly and clairvoyance admit at least SOME attachment of numeric values, such as "expected attacks avoided" and "expected auto-success knowledge checks" or what-have-you, just to give emphatically non-exhaustive examples. But let's say you do come up with actual, meaningful mechanics that really affect results, but in an entirely un-numeric way--you will have identified a part of the ruleset that needs special handling, and thus either (a) something that should be commonly accessible, so everyone benefits; or (b) something that should be used very sparingly and with clear warning to DMs and players that it can be game-altering.

Because UBI is simply a metric for balance. That doesn't sound like a particularly coherent stance. (Probably because you're wrong about this whole "post" and "pre" stuff. (Yes, historically, I'm often discussing "post" stuff. But I'm not here.) So drop that, and try again.)

See above--your uber-abstracted "ANY balance metric fits here!" doesn't actually cover the most useful and common metric of balance (statistics).

[lperkins2]

This is the Dekker problem in Shadowrun. If 1/2 the party is good at A, and the other half is good at B, and this specialization is so extreme that the half that is not good at the task at hand may as well do nothing, then only half the group is playing at a time. This defeats the purpose of a social game.

[kyoryu]

So is there a player, EVER, that has said "yes, I want to play a fighter in a game with wizards, and for me to have fun, I really want the wizard to outclass me in pretty much everything"?

[Mechalich]

As for what to do when imbalance is wanted, well by my broader definition I actually wonder if it is. But if it is you can simply not use the tools all your character provides you.

I find that 'imbalance is wanted' is usually a reference to how different sorts of players want different amounts of spotlight. There are people who want to go through a game doing very little at the table, whether due to introversion, shyness, or just an intent to relax and put little energy into the overall activity, and they may speak rarely, offer plans never, and mostly contribute to the group by fulfilling some rote mechanical need while contributing little to the story. By contrast, there are also players who want to be involved in everything, feel a need to comment on all decisions, and genuinely feel underserved if they aren't doing something all the time due to some combination of extroversion, dominant personalities, and a general tendency to chatter.

However, the solution to this different types of players is very much not to give them characters of different power levels mechanically, whether to play for or against these types. Mechanical balance is, in fact, a critical tool in the TTRPG box of table management tools as a way to keep domineering players from running roughshod over everything and in giving more reserved players a chance to shine when they desire it.

Some groups don't need mechanics to have a great collaborative storytelling experience at the table. They can have a great time freeform roleplaying. That's fine for them, but many groups are not capable of this and it is the latter component that matters when considering design needs. What you and a group of really close friends can make work through informal rulings, ad hoc GM decisions, and unspoken agreements tells us almost nothing about the needs of a group of strangers joining up online or at a convention.

I agree that balance can be related to meaningful contributions and meaningful choices, and would extend that to the idea that balance is intended to provide a framework such that each player - in the core of ordinary gameplay for the system - ends of having the opportunity to make roughly the same amount of choices and contributions as everyone else. Balance is not intended to produce equal outcomes. A quiet player may habitually neglect the majority of opportunities and delegate the majority of their choices to other party members, and a highly invested player may make a point of seizing every possible choice with both hands and feet, but that should be the player's (and to some extent the GM's) choice, not something that is dictated by the system itself.

This, by the way, is one of the many areas in collaborative role-playing where the needs of the game must override the desire for both verisimilitude and good storytelling, similar to the 'don't split the party' principle. In an sort of real scenario of a group of people working together to solve a complex problem you would inevitably encounter components that only one person has the skills to do anything about and they would go off and work on it by themselves for a while, but if you let that happen in game everything comes to a screeching halt.

So is there a player, EVER, that has said "yes, I want to play a fighter in a game with wizards, and for me to have fun, I really want the wizard to outclass me in pretty much everything"?

There are players who have said 'I recognize that in this system wizards outclass fighters in just about everything, but I really, really don't want to play a wizard and would rather play a fighter and I'm okay with being super weak as a result.' People who play as Dragon-blooded in Solar Exalted parties (which is a thing that exists) represent an example of this phenomenon. Sometimes this sort of thing is okay, because the player really wants to make a character who is defined by their poor life choices - such as playing a melee specialist in Eclipse Phase - or their powerlessness - such as playing a ghoul in a vampire game - and if the rest of the group is okay with that it can be an interesting experience. However, more often it is a reflection that the concepts available at the game's primarily power level/scale are less interesting than concepts that are available in the game world at some other power level/scale and that a mismatch exists as a result.

In fairness, this can happen accidentally or simply reflect out-of-game preferences. For example, there are Werewolf players who would do almost anything to play as Bastet rather than Garou and never mind and mechanical imbalances simply because they like cats better than dogs. D&D 3.X includes elements of this. While wizards were always more powerful than fighters, the gulf widened massively due to a series of changes between 2e and 3e that happened to synergize in particular ways the authors clearly did not fully anticipate - the combination of HP inflation and changing the Saving Throw system is one piece of it - such that wizards became monumentally more powerful than fighters at a surprisingly early level point.

[ezekielraiden]

So is there a player, EVER, that has said "yes, I want to play a fighter in a game with wizards, and for me to have fun, I really want the wizard to outclass me in pretty much everything"?

As noted by others above, no. Hence why I haven't really addressed that desire, and instead its reversed-perspective counterpart ("yes, I want to play a wizard in a game with fighters, and for me to have fun, I really want to outclass the fighter in pretty much everything") because that seems to be what people call on when they say that people are "used to" certain powerful abilities being available. That is, doing anything which might upset the "I [a wizard] really want to outclass the fighter in pretty much everything" status is often held to automatically make a game unpopular, and I disagree with that notion. Particularly since so many designers openly say that they want to avoid that sort of thing, and in so many games, the descriptive text implicitly denies that that is true.

However, also as noted by others above, there really are people who want to "play D&D" and yet ignore half or more of the actual process of playing D&D...and, if Quertus' arguments are to be taken seriously, some of them get actively upset when you simply furnish them with some ways to do that, even if they can totally choose not to use them. 5e did a Good Thing, IMO, by explicitly stating that D&D has at least three "pillars" in it: combat, socialization, and exploration. They stumbled, again IMO, by failing to follow through with what that means: if those three things are fundamental to the experience, every class should contribute to them. Having one class that contributes lots and lots to just one pillar and almost not at all to the others is maybe workable if players are properly warned about the extremely slanted focus of that class, but 5e doesn't do that. Worse, instead of actually making that class (Fighter, naturally) be genuinely stand-out in that field, it's merely fairly well-balanced in that field (certain exceptions aside) and thus is less "lots and lots to one pillar and almost not at all to the others" and more "normal in one pillar and almost not at all in the others."

[kyoryu]

There are players who have said 'I recognize that in this system wizards outclass fighters in just about everything, but I really, really don't want to play a wizard and would rather play a fighter and I'm okay with being super weak as a result.' People who play as Dragon-blooded in Solar Exalted parties (which is a thing that exists) represent an example of this phenomenon. Sometimes this sort of thing is okay, because the player really wants to make a character who is defined by their poor life choices - such as playing a melee specialist in Eclipse Phase - or their powerlessness - such as playing a ghoul in a vampire game - and if the rest of the group is okay with that it can be an interesting experience. However, more often it is a reflection that the concepts available at the game's primarily power level/scale are less interesting than concepts that are available in the game world at some other power level/scale and that a mismatch exists as a result.

In fairness, this can happen accidentally or simply reflect out-of-game preferences. For example, there are Werewolf players who would do almost anything to play as Bastet rather than Garou and never mind and mechanical imbalances simply because they like cats better than dogs. D&D 3.X includes elements of this. While wizards were always more powerful than fighters, the gulf widened massively due to a series of changes between 2e and 3e that happened to synergize in particular ways the authors clearly did not fully anticipate - the combination of HP inflation and changing the Saving Throw system is one piece of it - such that wizards became monumentally more powerful than fighters at a surprisingly early level point.

"I want to play a fighter so much that I'll do so even though they're weak" is not the same thing as "I want to play a fighter, and for enjoyment, i want them to be weaker than wizards".

Actively seeking is what I'm asking about - not tolerating.

[Quertus]

@ezekielraiden - the more we talk, the less we seem to understand each other. An alternate approach may be in order. Because I can't even figure out… hmmm… I guess not "where the disconnet is" but "where common ground to start on is".

Quertus I think a crucial thing to ask, since I'm not sure it's been said anywhere, what exactly does your party do to maintain balance in your eyes.

How much of it is how the players choose to see themselves and their party (aka do they actually care)?

How much is voluntary character decisions (aka does the cleric just choose not to buff themselves into a combat monster)?

How much is decided in the build stage (i.e. no Pun Pun)?

How much is created by the needs/events of the story (i.e. only the fighter can wield the legendary Sword of Ultra-Killy-Death)?

In addition, how much of this is action from the players and how much is on your part?

Specifics on how your party (including you) implements balance would be helpful, preferably in the form of real examples.

Hmmm… I'm probably not completely understanding your request, but let's start here: I've detailed a perfectly functional method in other threads. Well, except I left out step 0: the group shares a common definition of "balance". Without that, this fails.

So, the group establishes a balance range. The GM creates the module. The GM creates some sample characters who can go through the module at the "median" level. The group creates the party within the group's balance range. Done.

This does not involve "playing dumb" (that's something mostly seen in the party where Quertus (my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named) exhibits decidedly inferior performance to the party muggles - there is no balance there) - this is handled at the build stage, by players who care, about both the game and the group. If a player realizes that they have failed to build correctly, they (usually ask, and) rebuild their character to be balanced.

I struggle to see how this is hard enough that people have to ask questions.

You want to build a city with "balanced" buildings, which you define as "reasonably similar height". OK. You pick a height range, and people build buildings. If someone's building clearly isn't the right height, they fix it - tearing it down and starting over if they have to, with help from others as needed.

How is this a conversation?

So, what do you actually want to know?

A small different in power can lead to a small difference in impact. And a large difference in power can lead to the smaller impact getting completely lost. At that point there isn't a meaningful choice being made any more for the player of the weaker character, because no matter what they do the stronger characters actions will dictate the flow of the game. And that's not fun.

Some people play the harmony, others play the melody. Some people - who often think one is "no fun" or "pointless" - can only hear or appreciate one. But others can hear and appreciate the entire composition.

That's my best guess as to why I look at what you wrote, and say "no".

Yes, if you're playing Aunt May, and you're expecting to punch out violence alongside Superman, you're not going to have a good time. However, if you signed up for Aunt May because you liked the (small) role that she brings to the table, then you can have fun.

Not everyone signs up for the lead in a play. But a lesser impact shouldn't be equated with no impact. Do note that I've played the latter. And that few people *actually* have 0 impact.

And I say that entirely aware that Quertus is in the thread. Every positive anecdote about character imbalance I have heard has boiled down to 2 options: A) the characters were actually balanced* or B) a player uses something non-mechanical to make a meaningful choice. The former doesn't count and the second is... fine but it is not something you can design for because you can do the same thing with a character more mechanical options.

Playing the melody and playing the harmony is, I suppose, playing two different games, and I suppose you could call them balanced by being unbalanced, but I suspect we'd be talking in circles at that point.

And, while my Sentient Potted Plant by definition could only contribute through "something non-mechanical to make a meaningful choice", well, surely if one accepts "0" as a valid, fun mechanical contribution, one must also accept some number greater than zero yet still much, much less than the rest of the party for mechanical contribution as being valid and fun, no?

Also, we've got to be careful of word games here, since you're defining "balanced" in terms of contribution, whereas most (including myself in recent posts, iirc) are speaking of mechanical balance.

So is there a player, EVER, that has said "yes, I want to play a fighter in a game with wizards, and for me to have fun, I really want the wizard to outclass me in pretty much everything"?

Switch those two, ever asked to play a useless Wizards in a game of awesome Fighters, and I'll say, "yes, me!".

I don't much like playing Fighters.

But I have played a Sentient Potted Plant. That's (from y'all's PoV) worse than a Fighter, no?

Look, the point of the game is to get together with friends, have fun, maybe make a good story? You could play a Wizard, I can play a puppy dog, and we could have a good time. Or I could play the Wizard, you the puppy dog, if you prefer.

But start spending too much time caring about balance, and the odds of a good time steadily diminish.

Mind you, I consider "rules lawyering" a good time. But balance? It's toxic. It's bean counters constantly looking over their shoulders at other bean counters. Rules lawyering, by contrast, is a "one and done, made the game better" thing.

Sign me up for the puppy any day.

EDIT:

"I want to play a fighter so much that I'll do so even though they're weak" is not the same thing as "I want to play a fighter, and for enjoyment, i want them to be weaker than wizards".

Actively seeking is what I'm asking about - not tolerating.

Oh, then definitely me with wanting my Wizards to be weaker than Fighters.

[Mechalich]

As noted by others above, no. Hence why I haven't really addressed that desire, and instead its reversed-perspective counterpart ("yes, I want to play a wizard in a game with fighters, and for me to have fun, I really want to outclass the fighter in pretty much everything") because that seems to be what people call on when they say that people are "used to" certain powerful abilities being available. That is, doing anything which might upset the "I [a wizard] really want to outclass the fighter in pretty much everything" status is often held to automatically make a game unpopular, and I disagree with that notion. Particularly since so many designers openly say that they want to avoid that sort of thing, and in so many games, the descriptive text implicitly denies that that is true.

With regard to people being 'used to' the availability of certain powers, there's multiple issues. First of all, there's the literal case - some gamers have played the same system (and occasionally the same characters) for decades of real time and they get used to certain character types having access to certain abilities as part of how that character type works and they view the loss of any such abilities as unfair nerfs. A druid's wild shape ability is a good example here: Wild Shape is a staggeringly powerful ability that is often severely unbalancing, but druid's have had it for so long that taking it away from the class would be met with protests. In the case of wizards this sort of conservation of in-game abilities mostly takes the form of a variety of overpowered spells that have existed since 1e that no one has the guts to remove or significantly change. Note that you can see evidence of this kind of pressure when you compare D&D to games that also use the D20 system and have a similar focus - the best most recent example being Starfinder. That game just outright eliminated spell above 6th level, a huge boost to upper level class balance, but something you could never get away with in D&D.

Secondly, there's the issue of powers that are naturally associated with various archetypes in the grounding fiction that players expect characters with a certain label to have. This is more nebulous, but in generic high fantasy there are certain that 'wizards' are presumed to be able to do, like fly, and taking those abilities away creates a dissonance between the players and the game. D&D, with it's kitchen sink design scheme, is particularly vulnerable to this since if a power exists in fantasy the feel obligated to provide it and clever players find ways to acquire any ability present in the game (even if it's supposed to belong only to rare antagonists) and turn it to their advantage.

However, also as noted by others above, there really are people who want to "play D&D" and yet ignore half or more of the actual process of playing D&D...and, if Quertus' arguments are to be taken seriously, some of them get actively upset when you simply furnish them with some ways to do that, even if they can totally choose not to use them. 5e did a Good Thing, IMO, by explicitly stating that D&D has at least three "pillars" in it: combat, socialization, and exploration. They stumbled, again IMO, by failing to follow through with what that means: if those three things are fundamental to the experience, every class should contribute to them. Having one class that contributes lots and lots to just one pillar and almost not at all to the others is maybe workable if players are properly warned about the extremely slanted focus of that class, but 5e doesn't do that. Worse, instead of actually making that class (Fighter, naturally) be genuinely stand-out in that field, it's merely fairly well-balanced in that field (certain exceptions aside) and thus is less "lots and lots to one pillar and almost not at all to the others" and more "normal in one pillar and almost not at all in the others."

D&D occupies a weird place between wholly generic systems designed to be used as toolkits to build your game and systems designed to model a specific setting produced by a team of writers, owing in large part to its genesis in the very early era of RPGs. In fact, D&D models a very specific form of high fantasy, one best conceptualized not in any version of the game but in the fiction attached to various D&D settings. In D&D fiction high-level wizards are indeed much stronger than warriors and there's really no way around it without ruthlessly railroading large numbers of encounters into place to bleed off spell slots from the wizards in a fashion that truly isn't practical at tabletop (somewhat paradoxically this actually works better in D&D video games, which can throw out large numbers of trash encounters to up the value of martial characters).

As it stands D&D has certain balance problems that are almost fundamentally baked in to the game. When WotC actually imposed changes extensive enough to solve them - through 4e - everyone claimed that it 'was not D&D' and they weren't wrong. The balance issues of D&D can be mitigated, particularly by certain worldbuilding choices (making high-level wizards really rare, removing certain monsters from the setting, etc.), but never eliminated.

"I want to play a fighter so much that I'll do so even though they're weak" is not the same thing as "I want to play a fighter, and for enjoyment, i want them to be weaker than wizards".

Actively seeking is what I'm asking about - not tolerating.

There are players who occasionally desire to play a character who is unreasonably weak. I mentioned above the idea of playing a Ghoul in a VtM game. Such character will inherently be weaker than a vampire character and that's the point, the setting wouldn't work otherwise. There are particular dramatic possibilities that is opens up that aren't available in a more balanced scenario. However, this sort of thing is very rare, and in the case of D&D almost unheard of. D&D is a game about gathering a group of adventurers together and going out to places full of hostile entities and slaughtering your way to fame and fortune (or possibly infamy). Deliberately self-imposing a weakness of that sort is antithetical to the game model.

[Satinavian]

As I keep saying, the good thing about 3e is, you can build characters to whatever balance or whatever imbalance you want.

You can't have a balanced game without cutting most of the character variety concept in D&D 3E. This variety is the main draw of 3E, so if you were to do that, why play 3E in the first place ? It sucks for balanced gamed.
If you want balance, you are better off using a different system.

Everyone plays as Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named). Perfect balance. Done. So, I guess I'd say that, technically, balance is easiest, because it requires producing the fewest options - 1 - while imbalance requires at least 2 options.

Or we could use a system that actually has balanced options. So that we don't have to restrict character choice ad absurdum just to get balance.

This is why a system that provides both balance and options is just better. Yes, it is also significantly harder to write. But that only means that it is also difficult to introduce balance by houserules so it t really important the system already has it by the book.

So is there a player, EVER, that has said "yes, I want to play a fighter in a game with wizards, and for me to have fun, I really want the wizard to outclass me in pretty much everything"?

I occassionally do enjoy playing sidekick or comic relief characters. I haven't done so in a D&D game of any kind and i don't need the strange fighter - wizard thing D&D has going on to do so, but i reasonable could imagine some D&D players having such a wish occasionally.
But it is generally easy to make intentionally a bad character or to play to the weaknesses instead of the strenghts of a character, so we really don't need the system to enforce such stuff.

[AdAstra]

Quertus I’m asking for an actual example of what happens, not a generalized formula

Gimping an otherwise strong character class/race/build is easy, making a normally weak class/race/build stronger is usually not, especially without significant homebrew. Do your characters that have “strong” choices always need to reign themselves in, or do you have an actual way of making the characters with “weaker” choices stronger.

So part of the point I’m making (though not the whole of it), is that it’s easy to make a weak wizard, the problem is making a strong fighter.

I will point out that “strong” as used in this text is not only combat strength, but in terms of overall ability to contribute to the success of the party. Even a combat god would be a fairly weak character compared to someone who can be a combat god and also good at exploring and socializing.

[ezekielraiden]

With regard to people being 'used to' the availability of certain powers, there's multiple issues. First of all, there's the literal case <snip>. Secondly, there's the issue of powers that are naturally associated<snip>.

Agreed, but vital caveat: those things are not "naturally" associated, they are historically associated. Maybe semantics, but "naturally associated" implies inherentness, implicitly validating the never-take-my-toys-away position. I think you don't strictly mean that, just that it's an assumption people have picked up over time, which is fine. 13th Age AMAZINGLY fixed the Druid Problem: Druids pick from six different talent groups, at Initiate (1 point) or Adept (2 points). You have 3 talents to spend between Animal Companion, Elemental Caster, Shifter, Terrain Caster, Warrior Druid, and Wild Healer. (The two caster options do slightly different things.) It manages to recognize that Druid IS a grab-bag, without going all the way to "and therefore you should get 3 classes' worth of abilities."

D&D occupies a weird place between wholly generic systems designed to be used as toolkits to build your game and systems designed to model a specific setting produced by a team of writers, owing in large part to its genesis in the very early era of RPGs.

Also agreed. D&D labors under being the first, for good and for ill. (It also labors under Gary Gygax's poetic but unfortunately-obscurantist prose and organizational style.) It's sort of like, say, being a programmer in the modern day who needs to debug an ATM computer or detector hardware for extremely old detectors at universities (which retain equipment that can be older than the professors teaching the class!) Many ATMs and other business *and government* computers/devices still use COBOL, and physics departments everywhere must still wrangle with FORTRAN, despite these languages now being more than 60 years old with all the limitations that entails.

As it stands D&D has certain balance problems that are almost fundamentally baked in to the game. When WotC actually imposed changes extensive enough to solve them - through 4e - everyone claimed that it 'was not D&D' and they weren't wrong.

Can we not support literal edition-war rhetoric? I'd really appreciate that. 4e is just as much "D&D" as any other game published by whoever-currently-owns-it. It's different, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything that's genuinely in common between all-but-4e. (That is, anything genuinely common between pre- and post-4e editions will also include it, and anything that carefully excludes 4e will invariably exclude something you want to keep.)

The balance issues of D&D can be mitigated, particularly by certain worldbuilding choices (making high-level wizards really rare, removing certain monsters from the setting, etc.), but never eliminated.

I disagree--I think we can eliminate them, or at least mitigate them to the point that they only become an issue in clearly off-label uses. To borrow from Quertus (quoted below), there's nothing morally or logically wrong with wanting to play Aunt May, but if the game is about playing a superhero, Aunt May isn't an intended option. Or to turn an earlier Quertus example against him, a player who desperately wants to play Aunt May but gets handed the character sheet for Thor is probably going to be frustrated and confused, and should probably look for a different game (or at least a different group).

Deliberately self-imposing a weakness of that sort is antithetical to the game model.

And, perhaps more importantly, is best addressed by targeted rules anyway. As in, with your own examples, the system was explicitly catering to a particular subgroup with an option that isn't meant for general consumption. D&D fails to perform even remotely similar segregation, blending every possible layer together immediately, with predictably mixed (hah) results.

@ezekielraiden - the more we talk, the less we seem to understand each other. An alternate approach may be in order. Because I can't even figure out… hmmm… I guess not "where the disconnet is" but "where common ground to start on is".

Okay, though I feel like I'm being yanked around here. I've done as asked, but the criteria keep changing (or so it seems).

So, the group establishes a balance range. The GM creates the module. The GM creates some sample characters who can go through the module at the "median" level. The group creates the party within the group's balance range. Done.

Hold your horses: there's a strong, and very arguable, assumption hidden in here. That is, the assumption that the system provides characters within that range that are compatible with the group's tastes. Which is one of the core assumptions I'm attacking. D&D does not do this. D&D does not provide Fighters that are in the same balance range as casters for most party-interest-sets.

If a player realizes that they have failed to build correctly, they (usually ask, and) rebuild their character to be balanced.

Another highly arguable assumption. I have known many DMs, even played in their games, who were extremely reluctant to let any character rebuild whatsoever, regardless of the reason for doing so. They have, in fact, been especially suspicious of "my character is too weak for this group" reasons!

How is this a conversation?

Because you've assumed that the game allows museums and skyscrapers to have similar heights, and that the person running the game allows demolish-and-replace if a building isn't going to reach the expected height range, and both of those assumptions are, at very least, not always right. Anecdotally--you're still accepting anecdotes, right?--they are both wrong frequently.

Not everyone signs up for the lead in a play. But a lesser impact shouldn't be equated with no impact. Do note that I've played the latter. And that few people *actually* have 0 impact.

So. With the noted exception of certain White Wolf games (e.g. Vampire and playing ghouls, Exalted and mixing Solars with Dragon-blooded), the significant majority of games--and definitely all modern editions of D&D, including PF--go out of their way to present the game as having no "lead" classes and no "bit-part" classes. The designers of these games explicitly call for player feedback on balance between these classes (among a variety of things, to be sure). Yet they repeatedly end up providing Aunt-May classes and Superman classes, and you are telling us this is not a problem. I'm asserting that the game should start from making every class in the same option-band (e.g. "from Spiderman to Superman" OR "from Aunt May to Jimmy Olsen"), and then provide tools, advice, and examples for how to break out of that band if that's your speed. All in the same book, mind--this isn't "no, you have to wait your turn while WE get our game."

Also, we've got to be careful of word games here, since you're defining "balanced" in terms of contribution, whereas most (including myself in recent posts, iirc) are speaking of mechanical balance.

Meaningful contribution has mechanical impact. If your contribution cannot even in principle touch the mechanics, I don't see how it is contributing anything. I would, however, be very interested to see any examples you have of a character doing something I'd call "meaningfully contributing" that does not, in fact, touch any mechanic. I understand that that's kind of a hard request, since I can't just beam into your head my definition of "meaningfully contributing," so it might end up feeling (or even just being) arbitrary and unfair, but...I don't know any other way to address it. I'm asserting meaningful contribution always has, somewhere along the line, mechanical impact (preventing/causing battles, avoiding/adding expenditures, consuming time when time is tracked, etc.) If you can demonstrate something that clearly matters for the party's goals, but cannot and will not ever affect the party's mechanical representation, then I will concede this point gladly.

Switch those two, ever asked to play a useless Wizards in a game of awesome Fighters, and I'll say, "yes, me!".

I don't much like playing Fighters.

But I have played a Sentient Potted Plant. That's (from y'all's PoV) worse than a Fighter, no?

I guess? The point isn't really that nobody can have fun in non-balanced situations. It's that non-balanced situations near-axiomatically exclude certain kinds of fun, while balanced situations can be made to include the kinds of fun found in non-balanced situations.

Mind you, I consider "rules lawyering" a good time. But balance? It's toxic. It's bean counters constantly looking over their shoulders at other bean counters. Rules lawyering, by contrast, is a "one and done, made the game better" thing.

Woah now, this is...what? I would never in a million years mean "bean-counter" behavior and the like. You characterize a desire for balance as though it can literally only be manifested in government bureaucrats aggressively pushing their agenda so they can keep up with their "sibling" departments. That's...never ever ever ever what I have been talking about, perhaps even the opposite of what I'm talking about.

That is, in an unbalanced game, I have to always be on the lookout for whether I'm being impeded by the system from doing what I want to do with the options I find cool, or worse, that I'm going to piss in my friends' cheerios by invalidating what they like to do. I am always afraid that I'll mess it up. If I'm a Fighter-type, I'm afraid I'll be dead weight, or worse, the very petulant ass-hats you speak of. If I'm a powerful uber-caster (and yes, I have played one as well, and enjoyed it!), I fear I'm going to crowd out my friends, make them feel like it's my game and they're just witnesses.

Oh, then definitely me with wanting my Wizards to be weaker than Fighters.

Alright. Can you name even one class like this, in all of 3e and PF? To be clear, I'm excluding Truenamer from the running simply because it doesn't work, and expecting an equal amount of charop behind the two (so no comparing a triple-cheese TO Fighter build with an actively un- or even anti-optimized caster-like character). I mentioned this before, though trying for broad terms. So I'll say it simply, even though that will leave it open for quibbling: People who like Wizard-ish characters can always choose to be more powerful than Fighter-ish characters, but never choose not to be more powerful (except by ignoring their options, which you've already said is Not Acceptable). People who like Fighter-ish characters can always choose to be less powerful than Wizard-ish characters, but can never choose to be more powerful (unless someone else intervenes, which for *me* is not acceptable). How come we only cater to people who want more-powerful Wizards and less-powerful Fighters, but never to the people who want less-powerful Wizards and more-powerful Fighters? Why does imbalance always favor a specific, repeated pattern that denigrates one set of preferences over another?

(Incidentally, I'm using "powerful" in the same way AdAstra is using "strong"--holistically, referring to a variety of different kinds of power, rather than strictly one singular axis or enumeration. Which, yes, means I'm counting "versatility" as a form of "power"...but if you've ever read any Wizard guides, as I'm sure you have, you know that that was already an accepted truism among Wizard players.)

[Ignimortis]

Alright. Can you name even one class like this, in all of 3e and PF?

I'd say that Warmage or Healer compared to a martial adept, especially PoW ones, might seem underwhelming. And when I played as a Harbinger with a Magus, he said that he also felt somewhat overshadowed by my character.

[NichG]

That is, in an unbalanced game, I have to always be on the lookout for whether I'm being impeded by the system from doing what I want to do with the options I find cool, or worse, that I'm going to piss in my friends' cheerios by invalidating what they like to do. I am always afraid that I'll mess it up. If I'm a Fighter-type, I'm afraid I'll be dead weight, or worse, the very petulant ass-hats you speak of. If I'm a powerful uber-caster (and yes, I have played one as well, and enjoyed it!), I fear I'm going to crowd out my friends, make them feel like it's my game and they're just witnesses.

I think those particular worries are in fact what Quertus is referring to as 'bean-counting'. The idea that, e.g., if someone else is able to do something that you think is cool, it would invalidate the meaningfulness of your ability to do it too, or that you need to be concerned at all about whether you're 'dead weight' are associated with a particular mindset that need not be universal.

Lets say, for example, I'm really interested in transhumanist ideas and want to explore that broad kind of thing in a game. I might hold, for example, that my goal is to transcend the limits of flesh and become immortal (for concreteness, lets say I want to beat old age). If someone else in the party starts the game already being immune to aging, I'm not going to say 'oh, you're already filling the party role of an immortal, I guess it doesn't matter if I become immortal too anymore'.

[Lord Raziere]

Lets say, for example, I'm really interested in transhumanist ideas and want to explore that broad kind of thing in a game. I might hold, for example, that my goal is to transcend the limits of flesh and become immortal (for concreteness, lets say I want to beat old age). If someone else in the party starts the game already being immune to aging, I'm not going to say 'oh, you're already filling the party role of an immortal, I guess it doesn't matter if I become immortal too anymore'.

No it matters a lot.

because then its like "well you already achieved that, you made my goal irrelevant by starting out with it, how could you?" their goal becomes nothing but figuring out how replicate the other character rather than it being their own journey. it becomes easy because they can just ask this guy next to them how to do it or contribute this sample of them to study to replicate this and that, speeding up everything and boom you've done it quickly rather than it being an actual journey with an actual struggle. thus making the goal irrelevant by giving it too much easy access. easy goals are irrelevant goals. if a character has a goal, they should have to fight for it with all they got.

you'd have to give me a lot of reasons why this doesn't impact the length or hardness of the journey so that its too convenient.

[NichG]

No it matters a lot.

because then its like "well you already achieved that, you made my goal irrelevant by starting out with it, how could you?" their goal becomes nothing but figuring out how replicate the other character rather than it being their own journey. it becomes easy because they can just ask this guy next to them how to do it or contribute this sample of them to study to replicate this and that, speeding up everything and boom you've done it quickly rather than it being an actual journey with an actual struggle. thus making the goal irrelevant by giving it too much easy access. easy goals are irrelevant goals. if a character has a goal, they should have to fight for it with all they got.

you'd have to give me a lot of reasons why this doesn't impact the length or hardness of the journey so that its too convenient.

From the character point of view: well, not to put too fine a point on it, but if they're immortal and I'm not, and 100 years pass, it's not me that's going to still be alive. Their immortality is, if anything, a major boon to me - because it means that I could actually use their success as a plot hook to start my own journey.

From my point of view: It's not the hardness or length of the journey that is compelling to me, it's the exploration of the idea of 'immortality being possible changes things and how characters would relate to the world and themselves - I want to immerse myself in that whole thing'. Having demonstrated successes sets the stage and creates immortality-themed elements for me to interact with before actually achieving it myself. The fun of it isn't 'I got there first' or 'I have it and you don't' or 'look, I'm being useful' - it's just a different thing.

[Mechalich]

I think those particular worries are in fact what Quertus is referring to as 'bean-counting'. The idea that, e.g., if someone else is able to do something that you think is cool, it would invalidate the meaningfulness of your ability to do it too, or that you need to be concerned at all about whether you're 'dead weight' are associated with a particular mindset that need not be universal.

In cases of RPG balance 'dead weight' is usually something with a fairly literal interpretation. Specifically, a character who is sufficiently weak that other characters must actively protect them in order to prevent their death. People worry about this quite commonly, even in highly balanced games like MMOs, where players regularly fear having to be 'carried' through group content or complain about having to carry others. And, in MMOs and other video games this can even be mathematically modeled - such as characters not hitting necessary DPS benchmarks in order to successfully complete encounters. While tabletop scenarios are nowhere near as strict it remains a fairly obvious balance issue is one character is completely unable to force any sort of meaningful resource expenditure from an enemy, or conversely if another is able to easily solo a group encounter.

In tabletop the GM can, and should, adjust encounter difficulties to properly match the abilities of the party as a whole, but this only works if the party members have abilities that are within a certain level of variance. If an attack that will outright character A won't even muss the paint on the armor of character B, then you have a problem, and during chargen and XP distribution players will often be plagued by whether or not they are creating a situation that renders another member of the party irrelevant or whether or not their build makes them too weak. To use a personal example, in an early 3e D&D campaign I played a character obsessed with fighting the undead. I wanted to advance in the Hunter of the Dead PrC, because that seemed like an appropriately flavorful thing to do. However, it quickly became clear that simply advancing as a cleric was vastly more efficient in achieving that goal, and in fact the entire PrC is pretty much a trap option because advancing as a cleric will almost always be better at anti-undead functions. So the game's production of options that weren't balanced interfered with my chosen character concept even though it was one the game specifically claimed was supported.

Lets say, for example, I'm really interested in transhumanist ideas and want to explore that broad kind of thing in a game. I might hold, for example, that my goal is to transcend the limits of flesh and become immortal (for concreteness, lets say I want to beat old age). If someone else in the party starts the game already being immune to aging, I'm not going to say 'oh, you're already filling the party role of an immortal, I guess it doesn't matter if I become immortal too anymore'.

What someone else starts the game not simply immortal, but able to give you immortality right off the bat? This is quite possible in D&D if you start in the mid-levels, congrats you're now a necropolitan and is certainly the case in other games. For example, in the oWoD one of the possibly long term goals of a vampire could be to stop being a vampire and regain your humanity - well as it turns out, the only people who could do that in the oWoD were Mages, meaning that this titular goal of one splat was utterly dependent upon another, considerably more powerful, splat.

For a more banal example, it's a common fantasy trope to play a commoner who wishes to, through heroic deeds and the like, to attain noble rank. However, if another member of your party is the Prince, they can just declare you a noble and have done from the first session. A character who has the power to, through minimal effort, fulfill the goals of another character represents a major source of power imbalance.

This is one of the reasons why extreme wealth is so often a massive balance problem, because money, when leveraged properly, can solve almost any problem (for a master class in how this works, read The Count of Monte Cristo).