Game Balance theory - Why I feel Tier 1 is not the problem

[Nifft]

Again, maybe I've misunderstood the tier system, but, if you take away all the "broken" abilities, is not a Wizard still Tier 1 by virtue of the combination of power and flexibility? Therefore, isn't it fair to say that "broken" should be fixed before tier is calculated, and talk of broken should be separate from tier discussions?

If you take away all the "broken" abilities, then spellcasting is gone, replaced with something different and possibly unrecognizable.

So, what you're saying is really: "If we change the game totally into a different game, then the currently imbalanced parts of this game won't be problems."

And that might be true.

But... to put it in math terms, that result is kinda trivial.

[Lord Raziere]

If you take away all the "broken" abilities, then spellcasting is gone, replaced with something different and possibly unrecognizable.

So, what you're saying is really: "If we change the game totally into a different game, then the currently imbalanced parts of this game won't be problems."

And that might be true.

Yeah that already came and went. It was called DnD 4e. Wizards still even had more flexibility than other classes, because you could select two daily and utility powers per level up rather than one and choose to prepare one or other on any given day and thus keep their signature flexible preparation style to a degree, right out of the corebook.

Its only real problem was that it was called DnD in the first place really.

[Quertus]

In the JaronK tier system that people tend to use, tier 1 is broken by definition. If you take away the things a Wizard could do to break the game, that class ceases to become Tier 1.

edit:

Since you are against things that are broken, what you really mean in the thread's title is to say is something like,

"Game balance theory: Why I feel Tier 3 is not the problem"

If you take away all the "broken" abilities, then spellcasting is gone, replaced with something different and possibly unrecognizable.

So, what you're saying is really: "If we change the game totally into a different game, then the currently imbalanced parts of this game won't be problems."

And that might be true.

But... to put it in math terms, that result is kinda trivial.

Tier 1: Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing. Often capable of solving encounters with a single mechanical ability and little thought from the player. Has world changing powers at high levels. These guys, if played well, can break a campaign and can be very hard to challenge without extreme DM fiat, especially if Tier 3s and below are in the party.

The most neural reading I can divine is that Tier 1 is supposed to excel at everything. Power, and versatility. And spellcasting can certainly conceptually achieve that, even without game-breaking abilities. (And skill should also be able to achieve what I'm reading tier 1 to represent. That the current implementation in most editions of D&D fail both in the existence of the broken, and the uneven distribution of classes among tiers, is, IMO, independent of whether Tier 1 combination of power and flexibility is a reasonable design goal.)

My understanding was that Tier 3 represented power or versatility: the ability to do one thing well, or many / all things poorly.

And lower tiers included such capacities as the ability to do one thing poorly.

The results being trivial is the entire point! There's too much going on in existing editions and games to discuss the merits of the tier system without everyone's baggage cluttering up the discussion. Thus, I'm attempting to get to the most basic core of tiering, and evaluate that.

But, even I find it hard to check my bags at the door. So the thread continues to be cluttered with preconceived notions grounded in existing games, rather than the purely academic view of tiering and gameplay I'm attempting to facilitate.

Yeah that already came and went. It was called DnD 4e. Wizards still even had more flexibility than other classes, because you could select two daily and utility powers per level up rather than one and choose to prepare one or other on any given day and thus keep their signature flexible preparation style to a degree, right out of the corebook.

Its only real problem was that it was called DnD in the first place really.

Well, I suppose my example system was most similar to 4e...

[Nifft]

The most neural reading I can divine is that Tier 1 is supposed to excel at everything. Power, and versatility. And spellcasting can certainly conceptually achieve that, even without game-breaking abilities. (And skill should also be able to achieve what I'm reading tier 1 to represent. That the current implementation in most editions of D&D fail both in the existence of the broken, and the uneven distribution of classes among tiers, is, IMO, independent of whether Tier 1 combination of power and flexibility is a reasonable design goal.)

Ah, I think this is the kernel of miscommunication.

You seem to think Tier 1 classes were intended to be Tier 1, as distinct from the classes in the other tiers.

They were not.

The original designers intended that all classes were roughly equal in power. They failed. Classes were not equal in power, nor in versatility.

The tier system is not a design guide. It's an illustration and codification of design failures.

The results being trivial is the entire point! There's too much going on in existing editions and games to discuss the merits of the tier system without everyone's baggage cluttering up the discussion. Thus, I'm attempting to get to the most basic core of tiering, and evaluate that.

But, even I find it hard to check my bags at the door. So the thread continues to be cluttered with preconceived notions grounded in existing games, rather than the purely academic view of tiering and gameplay I'm attempting to facilitate.

The tier system isn't anyone's baggage -- nobody thinks classes should be tiered. The advice we give using the tier system is: make sure all the PCs are in roughly similar tiers, so you can build a game that challenges everyone in a roughly similar way, and so you don't have one person feeling useless & unable to contribute.

The tier system is an illustration of one particular design failure, and a guideline for how to work around that failure.

Not sure what "baggage" you mean.

[Mechalich]

The original designers intended that all classes were roughly equal in power. They failed. Classes were not equal in power, nor in versatility.

The tier system is not a design guide. It's an illustration and codification of design failures.

Exactly.

Having power tiers in play is not a problem, but in a game that has levels, that's supposed to be represented by the levels (and for monsters, CR). The class tiers are illustrative of the problem that at equivalent levels, the classes do not produce characters, on average, that are anything close to equivalent in power.

A level 5 fighter is intended to always beat a level 1 wizard, and a level 10 wizard should never beat a level 20 fighter, but these things do not hold true.

[Lord Raziere]

Well, I suppose my example system was most similar to 4e...

Yet we all know how that song and dance went, now don't we? WotC actually addressed the complaints, actually did what was needed- completely overhaul the spell system and replace with something else- and got a bunch of hate, complaints that "everyone is a wizard now" and that "this isn't DnD" and so on....

and now we have 5e, with the developers too afraid to make any actual content afraid that they will tick someone off, so they make hypothetical content in their unearthed arcana while getting the fans to make and publish content for them through DM's Guild. while also selling all the past editions in digital format. at least no one can complain about their edition not being represented.

[Cluedrew]

The problem is under the hypothetical system laid out the wizard is not the solo.

The Wizard has three attacks they may choose between every turn. They may either kill an enemy, deal 1d6 damage and prevent their target from attacking or deal 1d6 damage and fully heal someone.

Or it can be, and I don't think you have to go full TO to reach that either. Save or dies completely trash the health system, their shut downs are often complete and absolute and... they are not actually good at healing people but obsoleting a mere 2/3 of characters seems to be understating the problem.

Of course due to never having gotten to the level 7+ where this is supposed to be a problem (never had a long running D&D campaign) I can only say this through theory crafting and second hand stories. But both of those line up pretty strongly with this result.

[Frozen_Feet]

@ImNotTrevor:

I agree roleplaying games are group endeavors. However, you are using this fact to leap to conclusions.

Namely, it's implicit throughout your argument that you think players acting as a group requires their characters to be equals in a group.

This need not be so.

Furthermore, you imply that when someone knowingly chooses to play a weaker character, the GM has to change their challenge design to make that character have equal share of the spotlight.

This need not be so either.

For example, in the game where there are heroes and crippled orphans, the game can be about those heroes protecting said orphan from harm. The challenge for the heroes is to keep the orphans alive and tackle the epic threat, the challenge for the orphans is to stay alive.

Who in such scenarios has more spotlight? Who knows? Whether the heroes or the orphans have more spotlight isn't decided by how they contribute against a single challenge, the challenge isn't even the same for all characters. It's decided by player activity and GM giving out turns. Furthermore, "having spotlight" and contributing to the game aren't the same as contributing against challenges. From an in-game perspective, the orphans can be entirely useless or even detrimental to the heroes yet at the same time be dear and important to the players, because the players wanted to play a game of heroes protecting crippled orphans. The players of the orphans can be fine with this. The players of the heroes can be fine with this.

The dynamic of a dysfunctional group can be the challenge, it can be the focal point of a game, and it doesn't have to imply a dysfunctional player dynamic nor a dysfunctional game. And you don't need unbroken before-the-fact consensus about this: As I suggested earlier, you could as well tell the players that they'll create their characters individually and have to deal with what comes out after-the-fact.

Tl;dr: When designing a new game, you can blow up any pre-existing metagame about the characters being equals and leave it on each player to decide how much they want to contribute against challenges and how central they want their characters to be, through how they design their character and how they play them.

[Quertus]

Ah, I think this is the kernel of miscommunication.

You seem to think Tier 1 classes were intended to be Tier 1, as distinct from the classes in the other tiers.

They were not.

The original designers intended that all classes were roughly equal in power. They failed. Classes were not equal in power, nor in versatility.

The tier system is not a design guide. It's an illustration and codification of design failures.

No, I don't think it is intentional. Nor do I believe it correctly identified what is a bug and what is a feature. As I keep saying, I think having the range of Tiers is a feature, allowing the game to be played anywhere from easy mode to hard mode. And, personally, I think they should intentionally make / should have intentionally made a Tier 1 Fighter.

Focus too much on balance, and you get 4e. That was fun for what % of the gaming public?

Exactly.

Having power tiers in play is not a problem, but in a game that has levels, that's supposed to be represented by the levels (and for monsters, CR). The class tiers are illustrative of the problem that at equivalent levels, the classes do not produce characters, on average, that are anything close to equivalent in power.

A level 5 fighter is intended to always beat a level 1 wizard, and a level 10 wizard should never beat a level 20 fighter, but these things do not hold true.

Well, for one, their balance should be in how they fair fighting monsters, not each other.

But, yes, they have vastly different floors and ceilings. At the floor, a level 1 Wizard gets crushed by a level 1 Fighter, in contribution or even if compared fighting each other. At the ceiling, a level 20 Wizard neither needs nor notices a level 20 Fighter - he's too concerned with the level 201 commoner who just punched the planet in half.

The tier system isn't anyone's baggage -- nobody thinks classes should be tiered. The advice we give using the tier system is: make sure all the PCs are in roughly similar tiers, so you can build a game that challenges everyone in a roughly similar way, and so you don't have one person feeling useless & unable to contribute.

The tier system is an illustration of one particular design failure, and a guideline for how to work around that failure.

Not sure what "baggage" you mean.

Look at every "Fighter vs Wizard" thread ever for the tip of the iceberg to the answer to your question.

Or, Heck, look at everyone who has brought up 3e in this thread, where I made and labeled sample characters for discussion of Tiers.

People can't discuss the concept of Tiers without bringing their experiences with 3e with them. That's baggage.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well, for one, their balance should be in how they fair fighting monsters, not each other.

Does not compute.

If you're going to have levels signify "power" or "threat", then for the same PC, an NPC level 5 fighter, an NPC level 5 mage, and an NPC level 5 creature or monster, should all represent about the same threat / challenge.

(I am very much not a fan of using highly divergent mechanics for PCs and NPCs...)

[Quertus]

The problem is under the hypothetical system laid out the wizard is not the solo.

The Wizard has three attacks they may choose between every turn. They may either kill an enemy, deal 1d6 damage and prevent their target from attacking or deal 1d6 damage and fully heal someone.

Or it can be, and I don't think you have to go full TO to reach that either. Save or dies completely trash the health system, their shut downs are often complete and absolute and... they are not actually good at healing people but obsoleting a mere 2/3 of characters seems to be understating the problem.

Of course due to never having gotten to the level 7+ where this is supposed to be a problem (never had a long running D&D campaign) I can only say this through theory crafting and second hand stories. But both of those line up pretty strongly with this result.

While you're not wrong, that kinda misses the point.

I'm not trying to have a discussion about 3e. Well, I am, in many threads, but there seems to be a number of fundamental disconnects between myself and other posters. So, in this thread, I'm attempting to address those disconnects, independent of 3e baggage - and independent of J's baggage, too, which is tough.

At its uncorrupted core, the tier system is, if I'm reading it correctly, a measure of power and versatility.

Throw away all the baggage, and I believe that creating classes at all tiers is actually a good design goal.

I believe that my Striker, Tank, Healer, Gish, and Toolkit are all good, balanced classes in my hypothetical (and completely unrelated to any board games or programs I may have made decades ago) dungeon crawl game, and the two Dedicated classes may push the balance envelope a bit, but are still payable without breaking the game.

The Solo is clearly completely unbalanced. Also unbalanced would be a Striker who dealt 1d6+99 damage, or a Bug who dealt a single point of damage while giving the enemies a bonus.

So, my point was, yes, you can break the game at any tier, but you can have playable characters at tier 1-3 without wrecking game balance - look, I just did it!

@ImNotTrevor:

I agree roleplaying games are group endeavors. However, you are using this fact to leap to conclusions.

Namely, it's implicit throughout your argument that you think players acting as a group requires their characters to be equals in a group.

This need not be so.

Furthermore, you imply that when someone knowingly chooses to play a weaker character, the GM has to change their challenge design to make that character have equal share of the spotlight.

This need not be so either.

For example, in the game where there are heroes and crippled orphans, the game can be about those heroes protecting said orphan from harm. The challenge for the heroes is to keep the orphans alive and tackle the epic threat, the challenge for the orphans is to stay alive.

Who in such scenarios has more spotlight? Who knows? Whether the heroes or the orphans have more spotlight isn't decided by how they contribute against a single challenge, the challenge isn't even the same for all characters. It's decided by player activity and GM giving out turns. Furthermore, "having spotlight" and contributing to the game aren't the same as contributing against challenges. From an in-game perspective, the orphans can be entirely useless or even detrimental to the heroes yet at the same time be dear and important to the players, because the players wanted to play a game of heroes protecting crippled orphans. The players of the orphans can be fine with this. The players of the heroes can be fine with this.

The dynamic of a dysfunctional group can be the challenge, it can be the focal point of a game, and it doesn't have to imply a dysfunctional player dynamic nor a dysfunctional game. And you don't need unbroken before-the-fact consensus about this: As I suggested earlier, you could as well tell the players that they'll create their characters individually and have to deal with what comes out after-the-fact.

Tl;dr: When designing a new game, you can blow up any pre-existing metagame about the characters being equals and leave it on each player to decide how much they want to contribute against challenges and how central they want their characters to be, through how they design their character and how they play them.

Wow. Well said. Thank you. That's it exactly.

[Quertus]

Does not compute.

If you're going to have levels signify "power" or "threat", then for the same PC, an NPC level 5 fighter, an NPC level 5 mage, and an NPC level 5 creature or monster, should all represent about the same threat / challenge.

(I am very much not a fan of using highly divergent mechanics for PCs and NPCs...)

I don't know football, so this is going to be a (hopefully) hilariously inaccurate depiction of football.

Let's say I'm a runner ball catcher guy (oops, those don't have to break through the wall of flesh) break through and tackle the leader guy.

On my team is the perfect wall of flesh guy - nobody ever gets past him.

But I've trained with him since childhood, I know all his moves, and I get past him all the time. But no-one else in the whole world ever does.

Should someone complain if he gets MVP just because I can beat him all the time in practice? Or should I focus on our relative contributions against the other team?

-----

I completely agree that pc's and NPCs should be made using the same rules. I just feel that NPCs should constitute such a low % of the opposition, that how the classes fair against each other should be irrelevant noise compared to their actual measure of contribution and spotlight time.

[Cluedrew]

So, in this thread, I'm attempting to address those disconnects, independent of 3e baggage - and independent of J's baggage, too, which is tough.

But J's baggage is the definition of the tier system. Without that it is just a series of numbers. The disconnect is now between the words and their meaning. If you don't want to use that it you don't have too, but you should probably define a new tier system then to get the point across. Because it isn't just a matter of connotation, it is baked into the system of tiers.

And sure a character at any tier can be playable, I think the point is that having characters from wildly different tiers (3 or more was the original cut off) can cause problems.

[Quertus]

But J's baggage is the definition of the tier system. Without that it is just a series of numbers. The disconnect is now between the words and their meaning. If you don't want to use that it you don't have too, but you should probably define a new tier system then to get the point across. Because it isn't just a matter of connotation, it is baked into the system of tiers.

And sure a character at any tier can be playable, I think the point is that having characters from wildly different tiers (3 or more was the original cut off) can cause problems.

The "foot" used to be measured by each individual's foot; the yard, IIRC, was measured by each individual's arm length.

Having a system of measurement is a good idea. If J's measurements are flawed, then perhaps what will come out of this thread is a fix for the tier system, if that's what out takes to get everyone on the same page. Just like they fixed and standardized the foot.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't know football, so this is going to be a (hopefully) hilariously inaccurate depiction of football.

Let's say I'm a runner ball catcher guy (oops, those don't have to break through the wall of flesh) break through and tackle the leader guy.

On my team is the perfect wall of flesh guy - nobody ever gets past him.

But I've trained with him since childhood, I know all his moves, and I get past him all the time. But no-one else in the whole world ever does.

Should someone complain if he gets MVP just because I can beat him all the time in practice? Or should I focus on our relative contributions against the other team?

-----

I completely agree that pc's and NPCs should be made using the same rules. I just feel that NPCs should constitute such a low % of the opposition, that how the classes fair against each other should be irrelevant noise compared to their actual measure of contribution and spotlight time.

Combat is not football.

[Quertus]

Combat is not football.

But football is combat?

[ImNotTrevor]

I'm going to address this for the sake of getting it out of the way.

@ImNotTrevor:

Namely, it's implicit throughout your argument that you think players acting as a group requires their characters to be equals in a group.

This need not be so.

I said, explicitly, and multiple times, that they should be roughly equal UNLESS THE GROUP HAS AGREED OTHERWISE.
The assumption is general equality. Inequality should be agreed upon by all participants. Green Arrow's player and Superman's player need to agree to being in the same game despite wild power imbalance.

Furthermore, you imply that when someone knowingly chooses to play a weaker character, the GM has to change their challenge design to make that character have equal share of the spotlight.

This need not be so either.

In the context of D&D, this portion of my assertion is valid. There are options that leave the table. Save-or-die spell effects trivialize the killing of the orphan, for instance.

For example, in the game where there are heroes and crippled orphans, the game can be about those heroes protecting said orphan from harm. The challenge for the heroes is to keep the orphans alive and tackle the epic threat, the challenge for the orphans is to stay alive.

At the level of epic conflict in most systems with such conflict, the orphan would essentially need to not be seen at all, ever. It becomes Stealth Checks: The Game.
For D&D this relegates the Orphan to being a living McGuffin.

And again, if I had to do thos gimmick for an entire campaign, I would walk. For a session or two? Ok. An entire campaign? Pffft.

Tl;dr: When designing a new game, you can blow up any pre-existing metagame about the characters being equals and leave it on each player to decide how much they want to contribute against challenges and how central they want their characters to be, through how they design their character and how they play them.

Or, here's an idea, you can accomplish all of this by talking about it before play and create characters all together at the same time, INSTEAD of making a system that continues to encourage the sort of lone-wolf character creation that leads to so many dang problems to begin with.

[Anonymouswizard]

Okay, here's something I don't think I've seen mentioned enough, almost every game will have a tier system and a tier 1, but what tier 1 means will change. Here's a system agnostic definition:

Tier 1 includes the most powerful characters the system can build.

Here I'm saying that versatility is a type of per, to an extent, in the fact that anyone with it will feel more powerful than those who can reach the same raw power level but are less versatile.

Now I'd argue that the goal of game design is to make everyone tier 1 (I'm assuming of you want a tier 2 game you should play a system wherein chargers are weaker), or have everyone at the point where you can build a significantly more powerful character. This can fail in various ways and normally does so (in Victoriana 3e it costs 2 build points for a basic attack spell. For 2 more points you can get a Save or Lose days long coma spell with the licence to cast it, it's not more difficult and it's longer ranged).

The tiers will also change depending on the exact campaign. An investigator Chad might be near useless in a dungeon crawl.

[Cosi]

Obviously you can play a game that is unbalanced and still have fun. But "make the game unbalanced" is a stupid goal, and should not be a part of the conversation when deciding how to build the game. There are people who want to crash cars into buildings, but we don't design cars to facilitate that.

Tier 1 includes the most powerful characters the system can build.

Here I'm saying that versatility is a type of per, to an extent, in the fact that anyone with it will feel more powerful than those who can reach the same raw power level but are less versatile.

Now I'd argue that the goal of game design is to make everyone tier 1

I think this is mostly true, but only for balance. The game needs variety in the versatility (really, complexity) of characters, because not everyone wants to have the same level of complexity.

For the most part, I think the contribution of versatility to imbalance is dramatically overstated. Doing one of six different fair things is still quite likely to be fair. The only thing that really warps that is if you have enough silver bullet options to hit everything, and the ability to select them on a timescale that avoids risk.

The tiers will also change depending on the exact campaign. An investigator Chad might be near useless in a dungeon crawl.

This is why you should not include character concepts that can only contribute to a subset of the minigames your game has (for example, Fighter).

[Anonymouswizard]

I think this is mostly true, but only for balance. The game needs variety in the versatility (really, complexity) of characters, because not everyone wants to have the same level of complexity.

For the most part, I think the contribution of versatility to imbalance is dramatically overstated. Doing one of six different fair things is still quite likely to be fair. The only thing that really warps that is if you have enough silver bullet options to hit everything, and the ability to select them on a timescale that avoids risk.

Well if you look at the original JaronK system the it seems to mainly split into three power levels (awesome/good/bad) with versatility placing a charger at a certain point within a pet level

The way I see it is raw power is worth more than versatility, but relative versatility within ranges of per should also be taken into account.

This is why you should not include character concepts that can only contribute to a subset of the minigames your game has (for example, Fighter).

I mean, unless the player intentionally builds for that in a point build system. But in the realm of classes I agree 100%.

[Elderand]

No, I don't think it is intentional. Nor do I believe it correctly identified what is a bug and what is a feature. As I keep saying, I think having the range of Tiers is a feature, allowing the game to be played anywhere from easy mode to hard mode. And, personally, I think they should intentionally make / should have intentionally made a Tier 1 Fighter.

No

Just no

Your solution is simply a waste of time and words and ink.

It's not a good idea to have classes in wildly different tiers to represent easy or hard mode or power progression.

If you want a game were the system can represent weak characters that struggle and powerful characters you don't do it with different classes, you do it via levels.

You want a fighter that's mostly a regular guy that struggling and a fighter that's superman with the serial number filled off? That's not two different classes, that's the same class. One of them is low level, the other is high level.

[Anonymouswizard]

If you want a game were the system can represent weak characters that struggle and powerful characters you don't do it with different classes, you do it via levels.

Or by point totals. But the general idea is right, inherent power should be measured on ONE scale, whether that's levels, point totals, skill ratings (for systems like BRP), or squid owned. In pinch I'd except gear as being a separate measure of per, but that's power that can be taken away.

Now you can break this rule (Fate measures character power both by Refresh and Skill Points), but it can lead to all sorts of mess. Generally try to stick to one scale per type of power (e.g. inherent power, gear, narrative importance*), don't do something like 'inherent power is measured in levels and what class you chose'.

* I've always wanted to run a have where the PCs begin with one Fate Point of equivalent under the assumption they're playing side characters in someone else's sorry, then after a session or two have them come across the corpse of the hero (in red clothing), have a dramatic encounter with the villain, and gain the standard number for the system. I'm just not certain I'll ever get a group that would be up for the first but.

You want a fighter that's mostly a regular guy that struggling and a fighter that's superman with the serial number filled off? That's not two different classes, that's the same class. One of them is low level, the other is high level.

Oh boy, doesn't this exact point have at least two threads in this forum already? Although I do agree with the point here.

[Lord Raziere]

That and all this talk of different Tiers can't be a problem for the players is ignoring the the strain it has on GMs. How do you design encounters so that different people have the same challenge without either one stealing the spotlight over the other or ending up the same?

Say that are a GM who expects the campaign to focus around a bunch of knight-errants and their adventures, but a being flexible and kind GM, allows someone to play a mage, reasoning there is no reason a mage can't be a knight-errant as well. Lets say he intends combat to be an exciting clash of blade blade or something, dramatic, drawn out, full of parrying, blocking, shield bashes, and stabbing things through the opponents guard and whatnot.

Then the mage destroys the encounter in a single fireball. Ruining all his plans and ideals. Now he must include something to forever mute the mage every time to make sure what he wants happens. This of course, is unfair to the mage. But allowing the mage to use his fireballs and instantly solve the encounter is unfair to the knights as their entire purpose is combat. So you eventually get better and provide two groups: the one that the mage fireballs and destroys, the a second that springs out in ambush for the rest of the knights in a spread out manner that can't be taken out in a fireball because they're not grouped together. However now you must always come up with a way around that fireball for the knights to get a good fight. You must include a ice elemental that suddenly comes out of nowhere to distract him, or a group of zombies or a wall of wood too thick for anything else, all so that the knights can participate.

and then the mage learns two new spells: scry and teleport. They then proceed to scry where your BBEG is, teleport to him and fireball him. scry and die tactics. Now you must say its just a doombot every time he does that to keep the campaign on track so that your plot doesn't fall to pieces. Of course if your feeling spiteful, you can include a trap there as well to try and kill the mage but wouldn't be fair because the mage is supposedly just playing their character and supposedly just wanting to be smart about it. But thats not the end of it. these two spells also make it so that when you have a quest to find a cool artifact, the mage can say: scry where it is, teleport to artifact, take, teleport back, done. Now you must say that the artifact is a fake so that you have an actual quest for your knights, because this thematic idea for tests and traps won't work anywhere else!

With these three spells alone, you can already see the massive problems here. The campaign is already being bent to be less dramatic and full of contrived situations to make sure the knights stay useful. while the mage player probably is not an idiot and will start whining about how he keeps being twisted away from being able to just solve things instantly.

now imagine that, but with A LOT MORE SPELLS, and the mage constantly preparing contingency plans! That would be a nightmare to GM to make sure everything is dramatic and actually dangerous rather just a session of the wizard's plans going off and everyone standing around going "oh how cool that he prepared that." without any actual danger, action or adventure thats vital to the genre. that is what DnD sounds like to me when people talk about the tiers being "good".

[Quertus]

I'm going to address this for the sake of getting it out of the way.


I said, explicitly, and multiple times, that they should be roughly equal UNLESS THE GROUP HAS AGREED OTHERWISE.
The assumption is general equality. Inequality should be agreed upon by all participants. Green Arrow's player and Superman's player need to agree to being in the same game despite wild power imbalance.

Or, here's an idea, you can accomplish all of this by talking about it before play and create characters all together at the same time, INSTEAD of making a system that continues to encourage the sort of lone-wolf character creation that leads to so many dang problems to begin with.

I created Quertus, what, 30 years ago? You weren't there. So, if I want to play Quertus in a game with you, your solution doesn't work, at least not as written.

While I agree that having the group discuss things is one solution to many problems - perhaps even the best solution to most of these problems - I may point out that, despite how often I advise people to talk to each other, it isn't the only solution. Good thing, too, given that most of my groups don't care to talk about the metagame.

Further, the game design can limit what solutions are viable. I aim for maximum viable options.

I'm of the mindset that, unless the group has agreed otherwise, everything is fair game. Otherwise, in groups like mine, no-one could build anything, because no-one has agreed to anything. Now, usually, spoken or unspoken gentleman's agreement removes a lot of TO content, but that's still a lot of everything to work with.

Okay, here's something I don't think I've seen mentioned enough, almost every game will have a tier system and a tier 1, but what tier 1 means will change. Here's a system agnostic definition:

Tier 1 includes the most powerful characters the system can build.

Here I'm saying that versatility is a type of per, to an extent, in the fact that anyone with it will feel more powerful than those who can reach the same raw power level but are less versatile.

Now I'd argue that the goal of game design is to make everyone tier 1 (I'm assuming of you want a tier 2 game you should play a system wherein chargers are weaker), or have everyone at the point where you can build a significantly more powerful character. This can fail in various ways and normally does so (in Victoriana 3e it costs 2 build points for a basic attack spell. For 2 more points you can get a Save or Lose days long coma spell with the licence to cast it, it's not more difficult and it's longer ranged).

The tiers will also change depending on the exact campaign. An investigator Chad might be near useless in a dungeon crawl.

I think Chad could leverage his skills to find traps, locate secret doors, search for clues, and interrogate prisoners. Sounds pretty useful to me, even before we discuss his combat potential.

I come from the school of thought where power gaming - building for your definition of tier 1 - was kinda the goal of the game. It was doing something right. Whiners trying to give it a bad name ate baffling to me - it's like complaining that the people who win MTG tournaments have decks that are too good, or people who win at the Olympics practiced too much. Um, that's kinda the point?

Of course, I also built characters like Quertus, based off the idea of the guy who's been playing the game for decades but still hasn't seen the elephant, and Armus, who was pretty much designed to be as weak as possible, so that I could play on hard mode. Oh, and he started out at level 1 in a level 7 party. Good times!

Obviously you can play a game that is unbalanced and still have fun. But "make the game unbalanced" is a stupid goal, and should not be a part of the conversation when deciding how to build the game. There are people who want to crash cars into buildings, but we don't design cars to facilitate that.



I think this is mostly true, but only for balance. The game needs variety in the versatility (really, complexity) of characters, because not everyone wants to have the same level of complexity.

For the most part, I think the contribution of versatility to imbalance is dramatically overstated. Doing one of six different fair things is still quite likely to be fair. The only thing that really warps that is if you have enough silver bullet options to hit everything, and the ability to select them on a timescale that avoids risk.

This is why you should not include character concepts that can only contribute to a subset of the minigames your game has (for example, Fighter).

Actually, I think 4e demonstrated that "make the game balanced" is bad, and that "make the game unbalanced isn't just a good plan, it's an imperative

Ok, on a more serious note, this thread is, if nothing else, helping me understand my own beliefs. I believe that the game - whatever it is - should be balanced sounds it's own "Tier 1", with plenty of tier 1 options spanning the gamut of play styles. Then, lower tier options should exist, and be clearly labeled as such, to allow for hard mode.

A lot of RPGs get it wrong. They balance the game somewhere in the middle, put little warning signs sounds the strongest options, and do nothing to prevent people from taking trap options.

Instead, it should be more like video games. The default is easy mode, and there's warning signs around hard mode.

Now, in 3e, I feel that there should be a BDH class, which is the best of the Tier 1's, so that people who want to play BDHs can do so with the class obviously designed to provide the BDH experience.

And I can play both wizards and hard mode.

The way I see it is raw power is worth more than versatility, but relative versatility within ranges of per should also be taken into account.

Probably. Which is why tier 1-3 play well together

It's not a good idea to have classes in wildly different tiers to represent easy or hard mode or power progression.

If you want a game were the system can represent weak characters that struggle and powerful characters you don't do it with different classes, you do it via levels.

You know, I suggested that, and people told me I was crazy. You can't have level disparity in 3e, they said. It won't work, they said. And disparate levels even out over time.

So I'm working with what I've got.

But, once this conversation is concluded, asking which of the two techniques - different Tiers or different levels - is preferable to play power disparity, would also be interesting.

[Max_Killjoy]

Okay, here's something I don't think I've seen mentioned enough, almost every game will have a tier system and a tier 1, but what tier 1 means will change. Here's a system agnostic definition:

Tier 1 includes the most powerful characters the system can build.

Here I'm saying that versatility is a type of per, to an extent, in the fact that anyone with it will feel more powerful than those who can reach the same raw power level but are less versatile.

Now I'd argue that the goal of game design is to make everyone tier 1 (I'm assuming of you want a tier 2 game you should play a system wherein chargers are weaker), or have everyone at the point where you can build a significantly more powerful character. This can fail in various ways and normally does so (in Victoriana 3e it costs 2 build points for a basic attack spell. For 2 more points you can get a Save or Lose days long coma spell with the licence to cast it, it's not more difficult and it's longer ranged).

I'd say that for a game to have tiers, it needs character classes or some other pigeonhole mechanism.

For a well-designed points-based or similar system, you just adjust the character creation points up or down for the type of game you want, and all the PCs should be pretty close in "power". The only time that's not true is when someone goes well out of their way to really twist the system in knots, or someone just deliberately and with forethought makes their character useless to what's going on in the campaign.

The tiers will also change depending on the exact campaign. An investigator Chad might be near useless in a dungeon crawl.

Depends on how you build the investigator. If he's good at noticing things, finding clues and traps, etc, then he's probably got something to contribute. This is assuming a system that doesn't pigeonhole characters such that only "explorer" or "rogue" or some other class has exclusive access to such skills, and "investigator" class characters can only "investigate", whatever that means.

[Cosi]

Well if you look at the original JaronK system the it seems to mainly split into three power levels (awesome/good/bad) with versatility placing a charger at a certain point within a pet level

JaronK's system has problems, and those problems are exacerbated when trying to use it as a model for new design. It's trying to describe 3e (a flawed game) as it exists, and as such it uses standards (like "breaks the game") that are not helpful design targets.

No

Just no

Your solution is simply a waste of time and words and ink.

It's not a good idea to have classes in wildly different tiers to represent easy or hard mode or power progression.

If you want a game were the system can represent weak characters that struggle and powerful characters you don't do it with different classes, you do it via levels.

You want a fighter that's mostly a regular guy that struggling and a fighter that's superman with the serial number filled off? That's not two different classes, that's the same class. One of them is low level, the other is high level.

This. We have a mechanism for characters of different power levels. It's called level. The idea that we should instead (or "in addition") have tiers represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of levels as a game design tool. It's not so much "reinventing the wheel" as "trying to replace the wheel with a stone block".

That and all this talk of different Tiers can't be a problem for the players is ignoring the the strain it has on GMs. How do you design encounters so that different people have the same challenge without either one stealing the spotlight over the other or ending up the same?

*snip*

now imagine that, but with A LOT MORE SPELLS, and the mage constantly preparing contingency plans! That would be a nightmare to GM to make sure everything is dramatic and actually dangerous rather just a session of the wizard's plans going off and everyone standing around going "oh how cool that he prepared that." without any actual danger, action or adventure thats vital to the genre. that is what DnD sounds like to me when people talk about the tiers being "good".

So I agree with the broad notion (large tier discrepancies are hard to DM for) but it's being used to support a "Wizards bad" point that it doesn't really match. Of course one (high level) Wizard in a party of (low level) Fighters is going to overperform, and make it hard to challenge him without killing the Fighters. But a (low level) Fighter in a party of (high level) Wizards will underperform in much the same way the Wizard in the first example overperforms.

Actually, I think 4e demonstrated that "make the game balanced" is bad, and that "make the game unbalanced isn't just a good plan, it's an imperative

I don't think that's reasonable. 4e did a lot of things, and you can draw arrows from many of those things to 4e's failure. Reducing the number of classes, having a terrible skill challenge system, shoddy overall design. 4e is somewhat more balanced than 3e (though far from completely balanced), but even looking just at that axis, it seems to me you could equally conclude that 4e teaches us that characters need to be powerful. 4e's paradigm was to make every class like the Fighter -- narrowly focused and unable to contribute much outside combat. Maybe the issue wasn't that it was too balanced, but that characters couldn't do enough.

Ok, on a more serious note, this thread is, if nothing else, helping me understand my own beliefs. I believe that the game - whatever it is - should be balanced sounds it's own "Tier 1", with plenty of tier 1 options spanning the gamut of play styles. Then, lower tier options should exist, and be clearly labeled as such, to allow for hard mode.

It seems to me very easy to play hard mode if you want to regardless of what the game does. Ignore abilities you have, face monsters above recommended CR, things like that. I think it's probably easier to do hard mode effectively if the game has a functional, robust, and well understood balance point, because that makes it much easier to deviate without deviating too much (and ending up with something that just kills the party every encounter) or too little (and ending up with something that is not any more difficult than normal).

[Quertus]

That and all this talk of different Tiers can't be a problem for the players is ignoring the the strain it has on GMs. How do you design encounters so that different people have the same challenge without either one stealing the spotlight over the other or ending up the same?

That's one of the selling points of the system!

The GM never has to care about the party composition! The GM just builds for tier 1. If the players want to play the game "as intended", they all being tier 1. If they want a challenge, they bring lower tiers. If they want to be BDHs, they bring BDHs. No challenge whatever for the GM. Easiest thing in the world.

I'd say that for a game to have tiers, it needs character classes or some other pigeonhole mechanism.

For a well-designed points-based or similar system, you just adjust the character creation points up or down for the type of game you want, and all the PCs should be pretty close in "power".

That's... not even close to my experience with point buy - and that's even before considering how appropriate / applicable the character's skills are to the adventure at hand. One of the few times I was dumb enough to let people talking me into playing GURPS, I spent I over 90% of my points on things that sounded important from the game description, that the GM made useless 5 minutes in.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's one of the selling points of the system!

The GM never has to care about the party composition! The GM just builds for tier 1. If the players want to play the game "as intended", they all being tier 1. If they want a challenge, they bring lower tiers. If they want to be BDHs, they bring BDHs. No challenge whatever for the GM. Easiest thing in the world.

Or maybe the game system be built so that it avoids this issue entirely.

Make all classes fairly equivalent in "power" when compared at the same level, from level 1 to level X. If a level X (insert class here) is "power rating A", then make every other class "power rating A".

That is not to say that you cannot have "power rating B" or "C" or "purple" in another iteration of the game system. It's to say that you don't mix A, B, C, and purple in a single iteration of a single game system, and pretend everything is balanced and fine (ie, several iterations of D&D pretending classes are balanced when they're not).

The ONLY time classes at different "ratings" should be mixed, is when it's deliberate and all the players and GM agree they're going to take on that extra challenge and not get crappy about it later.

That's... not even close to my experience with point buy - and that's even before considering how appropriate / applicable the character's skills are to the adventure at hand. One of the few times I was dumb enough to let people talking me into playing GURPS, I spent I over 90% of my points on things that sounded important from the game description, that the GM made useless 5 minutes in.

You hit the actual problem there in your own post.

There was poor / insufficient communication as to the nature of the game and as to how characters would fit into it.

The same thing could happen if the GM was going to have magic fail in a fantasy setting in the first session, but quietly sat by and said nothing as one or more players made spellcasting-dependent-class characters.

[Lord Raziere]

That's one of the selling points of the system!

The GM never has to care about the party composition! The GM just builds for tier 1. If the players want to play the game "as intended", they all being tier 1. If they want a challenge, they bring lower tiers. If they want to be BDHs, they bring BDHs. No challenge whatever for the GM. Easiest thing in the world.

Thats a funny joke

Your speaking from years of bias. Your so deep into it, you've forgotten that a normal player, a starting player, as well as starting GM has no idea what a Tier even is. Your out of touch. If you were to go up to the normal player and talk about Pun-Pun or batman Wizard, they'd say its ridiculous either not believe you or reject it. "Its no problem! just throw encounters meant for gods at them!"

Guarantee you, will result in nothing but TPKs for a vast majority of groups. There are players who take unoptimized decisions all the time and GMs who don't follow your model of encounters at all. There are people who will do so for the sake of roleplaying or the story no matter how bad of a system it is to it in or how much you say for them to do something different. Most players don't have time to go through all the mechanics and don't really care for the mechanics, they're mechanics they're about as important as dirt: there but not all that noticeable compared to what is actually going on. People who don't care about optimization at all, and no matter what "fallacy" they're committing, they exist, and do not want to face what you think is appropriate. They want to face what is ACTUALLY appropriate for them. So that their story may be told, so that they DO NOT have to worry about you find fun, because they don't find it fun and can do OTHER THINGS that do not involve it!

Sure you can have both a strong character and roleplay them well, but not every character that CAN be roleplayed can fall into the singular archetype of a Wizard and still be strong. "Its no problem just throw a Superman enemy at The Question! Throw a Green Lantern enemy at the Punisher!" This is not a challenge this is going "screw you for not choosing what I like, here have the monsters of what your supposed to fight so that you'll die quicker and choose what I want for you to play and not respect your character at all." its pretty much railroading.

Easiest thing in the world, if you want to be a bad GM.

[Anonymouswizard]

That's one of the selling points of the system!

The GM never has to care about the party composition! The GM just builds for tier 1. If the players want to play the game "as intended", they all being tier 1. If they want a challenge, they bring lower tiers. If they want to be BDHs, they bring BDHs. No challenge whatever for the GM. Easiest thing in the world.

What if I want to play hard mode, so I bring a tier 5 character, but my friend Geoff doesn't, and so brings a tier 1 character. Our conflicting interests have made the game what neither of us wanted to play, it's easier than I wanted but harder than what Geoff wanted.

That's... not even close to my experience with point buy - and that's even before considering how appropriate / applicable the character's skills are to the adventure at hand. One of the few times I was dumb enough to let people talking me into playing GURPS, I spent I over 90% of my points on things that sounded important from the game description, that the GM made useless 5 minutes in.

Alright, for a point buy game a GM had to be honest with the kind of game they're running and what abilities will be useful. I played in one game where we were told it would be investigative, and so the party made certain we had a lot of social skills. In another I ended up as a warrior with a skill below basic mooks because I hadn't been told how hard to optimise (I had spent points primarily on skills for a merchant as that was my character concept). In a have of Unknown Armies nobody listened to the GM declaring it a combat heavy game, which led to us according it as much as possible and a lot of combats having dies that didn't want to kill us (also riding bikes in the tube). I once also ended up with points I couldn't spend without ruining my concept in a unisystem game because the GM wasn't honest about the kind of characters we should build (and actually rejected one that would have worked really well for what he had planned, just because it was an Anglican priest who gained power* from his faith [no magic the GM says before giving half the enemies magic]).

* Visions and great strength, specifically not healing as it would have changed the game.