How do you think a game should be balanced?

[lesser_minion]

This is mostly about what balance means to you, and what kinds of balance you like most where they might conflict.

The main questions are:

How would you resolve conflicts between different kinds of game balance, or between game balance and other issues?

How far do you think these kinds of decision should be handled by the game's designer, and how far should they be handled by an individual troupe or narrator?

Do you believe that there is an ideal that covers the majority of cases, or do things change heavily depending on the goals of your game?

Are there any other interesting conflicts I've missed, and are there any major problems with my questions?


As far as I understand it, some of the possible conflicts that come up when attempting to create balance are:

Path or Concept Balance: Attempting to ensure that all character builds are equally valid, and to keep the number of tiers to a minimum. Naturalistic Balance: Attempting to ensure that the effectiveness of a particular character matches what would be expected in any given situation. In some settings, this might conflict with concept balance (e.g. where 'battle magic' exists without any sort of martial arts parallel), although the two can be reconciled without a problem in others

In a heroic game, this can be resolved pretty easily, by giving the wizards battle magic and the warriors superpowered combat arts. In less heroic game types, there can be more of an issue, especially if you are willing to accept battle magic.

Spread Balance: Attempting to keep the effectiveness of characters as close to the mean as possible over the entire design scope of the game. Spotlight Balance: Eschewing spread balance, instead forcing players to take turns in the spotlight, and trying to keep the length of these turns approximately equal.


This is possibly the single conflict that depends the least on the theme of your game - do you prefer every character to have some competence in every sphere of gameplay, or are you OK occasionally sitting back and watching another player be awesome, knowing that at some point you will have your turn to be awesome?

Variety: Not a type of balance, but it can be an issue, as a game with a wider range of possibilities will probably have more weak points in its balance, and be less resilient. Resilience: Limiting the number of choices which create outliers in terms of character power.

This one seems to have the most to do with game design - the scope of a game system is mostly up to those who write it. At the same time, a troupe is still free to ignore parts of the material provided, so this might not be an issue.

Naturalistic, Concept, and Spotlight Balance are defined further in an essay (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/balance-types.html) on the Alexandrian.

[Tyndmyr]

A blend. I think all paths should have their own niche, and allow players of a normal game roughly equivalent importance and focus.

This may or may not correspond to actual power in combat.

[Jayabalard]

You left out "no balance"

[AstralFire]

Er... all of the above?

I don't really find any of those objectionable, and I seek them all out to varying degrees. Most of the list seems a tad hair-splitting, honestly.

[Morty]

You left out "no balance"

There's no game that'd be intentionally unbalanced. Parts of it might be unbalanced, but not the entire game.
And I don't think there's much point to the original question, because a game might well contain all of the above.

[Optimystik]

They all sound desirable; actually achieving them all is another matter.

[lesser_minion]

You left out "no balance"

Not even player balance?

These aren't really pidgeonholes - some of these are meant to support others, for example.

The biggest questions with the categories presented, I guess, are whether you prefer naturalistic or concept balance. I also know of quite a few people who don't care about spread balance in the slightest.

I'm going to cut 'resilience' from the list, however - it's a different design goal, really.

[Kurald Galain]

While I agree that no game should be intentionally unbalanced, I nevertheless feel that balance in a game is really not a big deal. "Who cares as long as everybody is having fun" is a solid answer, as is "let the DM deal with it when it becomes an issue".

With respect to the latter, note also that actual balance is different from perceived balance. For whatever reason, be it playstyle, DM fiat, player experience, or lucky dice rolls, players may perceive that e.g. Core D&D is balanced, or that Fighters are overpowered, when consensus is clear that the opposite is true. As a result, any balanced system may be perceived as imbalanced, or vice versa, so regardless of how balanced the system actually is, the DM will still have to deal with it.

[Jayabalard]

There's no game that'd be intentionally unbalanced. Parts of it might be unbalanced, but not the entire game. Just out of curiosity, what are you basing this assertion on?

None of those points of balance are particularly important to me.


Not even player balance?Yup. I've had quite a bit of fun in games that were not even close to being balanced. For example I recall one game that had mundane people in non-powered armor, people in high powered mecha (with wildly different power levels even there between the various types of mecha), supernatural creatures that could literally out tank a tank, and high powered spell casters all in the same group .

[valadil]

I think it depends on the kind of game you want to run. Is the party a whole unit or is there infighting? How epic are the PCs? Is the RPG more of a model/simulation or a game? Different sets of balance will work better for different types of games.

The fantasy genre usually plays with characters of vastly different power levels. This is cut out in most D&D games. The hobbits weren't balanced with Gimli, Legolas, Boromic, and Aragorn, and Gandalf trumped those four too. The bodyguard/protector dynamic doesn't usually exist in D&D because the characters are supposed to be balanced to each other. I'm not trying to say that it should be done differently (who would want to play a hobbit if another player is Gandalf), but it should be possible to run this type of story in a game.

I also believe that the GM is responsible for more of the balance than the game itself. The standard party includes four specialists. Whether or not rogues and fighters are balanced doesn't matter if the GM doesn't give the rogue some traps to take care of.

[lesser_minion]

Yup. I've had quite a bit of fun in games that were not even close to being balanced. For example I recall one game that had mundane people in non-powered armor, people in high powered mecha (with wildly different power levels even there between the various types of mecha), supernatural creatures that could literally out tank a tank, and high powered spell casters all in the same group .

Well, player balance is really the closest thing to being an actual end than any of the other things listed. I considered including 'Participant Balance' - i.e. trying to ensure that every participant has the same amount of potential for drawing enjoyment from any given game, but I wasn't sure how it would go down.

[Morty]

Just out of curiosity, what are you basing this assertion on?

None of those points of balance are particularly important to me.

Because if there's a game in which one type of a character is clearly meant to be stronger than the other, the options within those types are still supposed to be roughly balanced. Take a game like Ars Magica for instance, where mages are a cut above nonmagical people, but a mage who chooses X option for his spells is supposed to benefit from his choices just as a mage who chose Y. And a nonmagical Muggle who put his points or their equivalent in X is supposed to be as competent as another nonmagical person who chose something else.

[lesser_minion]

OK, I've rewritten the OP to try and make it clear what questions I'm asking.

Essentially, the question is about which kinds of balance you prioritise where one kind conflicts with another, or where a particular kind of balance conflicts with another goal (e.g. Scope vs. Resilience).

I guess another question I should also ask is how far should these decisions be made by game designers and how far should they be made by individual troupes or narrators?

[AstralFire]

You'll have to divide further, then. Prioritization of these values and types of balance is wholly dependent on the feel of game you're going for.

[Zeta Kai]

Here's my rough Balance Checklist, that I run through after every game session:

Did everyone have fun? If not, why not?
Is every PC able to contibute in every encounter? If not, why not?
Is every PC able to compete effectively with every other PC? If not, why not?
Are all the players okay with this? If not, why not?

If I can answer every question satisfactorily, then the game is reasonably balanced, & I'm doing my job.

[Jayabalard]

Because if there's a game in which one type of a character is clearly meant to be stronger than the other, the options within those types are still supposed to be roughly balanced.No, this is not necessarily the case. In the example I gave above, some players had vastly more that they could contribute (both in and out of combat).

[Morty]

No, this is not necessarily the case. In the example I gave above, some players had vastly more that they could contribute (both in and out of combat).

Without knowing what kind of system it was, I can't really comment on that.

[Lapak]

No, this is not necessarily the case. In the example I gave above, some players had vastly more that they could contribute (both in and out of combat).Sounds like you were playing Rifts? Because yes, that was a game where 'balance between character types' was pretty much explicitly not a concern.

[Jayabalard]

Sounds like you were playing Rifts? Because yes, that was a game where 'balance between character types' was pretty much explicitly not a concern.:smallbiggrin: I was wondering if anyone would be able to identify it from that description. It's generally (in my opinion) a good example of a game system that seems to have been designed total without worrying about balance; if you didn't enforce some as a GM, there really wasn't any. The powerful are often VERY powerful, and the weak are often very weak, and they'll be bumping into one another regularily.

[Solaris]

Balance shmalance. So long as everyone's having fun, who cares?

[Indon]

I don't think tabletop RPG's should be designed with balance as a major design concern.

I feel that games with diverse and interesting mechanics (such as 3.x D&D) should run with that theme, promoting mechanical diversity and innovation over balance in order to show people the variety of abstract ways you can use to model game events.

And I feel that games that aim towards diverse and interesting play, rather than mechanics (such as Mutants and Masterminds) should run fast and loose, and do its' balance ad hoc outside of its' basic functional framework (in M&M, that's the power level/power point system).

Now, obviously, if you're looking to make a moneymaking system, rather than a simple tabletop game, you have a problem, since eventually people are going to learn your system and will no longer be interested in it. To such games, I'll recommend the third option - introduce or change mechanics constantly to keep people guessing (Magic: The Gathering).

All of these things are independent of balance.

Now, you might want to balance premade modules in such a system in some way, by introducing a wide variety of challenges which can be met by differing characters. But even that is dependent on what you want out of the system - you could make a system in which players have extremely limited choice in what they can accomplish (4E D&D), so such a module would work well, but in a system which intends to give players wide diversity of capability (Exalted), it wouldn't be so useful.

Balance in a tabletop game makes the system less about a form of representation, and more about constructing an artificial game to be played.

[KitsuneKionchi]

In 3.5? Everyone is only allowed to be commoners. All weapons and armor banned except cloth and unarmed strike. All feats banned except Skill Focus and metamagic. Yes. Spellcasting is banned too.

Nah I see most of 3.5 post PHB as a constant struggle to balance casters with non-casters. I think Tomb of Battle did a pretty good job. But just the fact that most wizards can hit a warrior before a warrior even gets the caster into his or her threatened squares...

But that's just in 1 v 1 fights, which is the biggest fallacy of balance. People should always look at dungeon delving scenarios before 1 on 1 fights when looking at balance. This board is pretty good at that ^_~

[AstralFire]

It is worth noting that there are games which have managed to be balanced, primarily about presentation, and use unique mechanics.

See: Spirit of the Century.

However, balance wasn't a design concern. Essentially, balance doesn't become something that has to be strived for until a game becomes complex beyond a certain point.

Whether or not it is balanced is a subset of trying to make the game fun for those playing. Some games use balance successfully as a central point of fun - those were definitely major sections of concern in the construction of both 4E D&D and Star Wars Saga, which have loyal followings. 4E elected to focus on balance to bring a tactical wargaming feel to the game; Saga uses it to emphasize the cinematic 'everyone can contribute' feel of its source material. Other systems can discard it entirely as the primary point (3.5E) or discard it entirely (RIFTS, apparently).

[Comet]

As has already been said, balance is not a huge deal.
The important thing, to me, is that everyone gets to do things they enjoy doing.

So, if one player wants to play a Messiah who can move mountains with his sheer manliness and another one wants to play Joe Average, that's entirely fine.
The only thing we, as a group, should be concerned about is how we can build a game around these vastly different characters and make meaningful interaction between them.

While the Messiah can pretty much wink everything he sees out of existence, he might have deep personal/emotional problems and requires the support of Average Joe in order to no fall into a million tiny pieces.
Actually, now I want to play a game like that.

[AstralFire]

I would suggest that you are less apt to be playing a game so much as engaging in purely cooperative storytelling if you have a literal omnipotent paired with Joe Average.

[Mando Knight]

Balance shmalance. So long as everyone's having fun, who cares?

The problem is trying to make a system that's the most fun for the most number of people in the most variant groups. For that, you'll need some kind of balance as a starting point for stability, especially in systems where characters have "levels" increasing at the same rate of "experience" as each other. If a Level 9 sword-'n-board fighter can be blown out of the water by a level 9 wizard when the wizard's "experience meter" is the same, somebody somewhere is going to be upset, and it's probably the guy with the fighter.

To throw balance out of the immediate equation and use "levels" like that successfully requires amounts of awesome that very few (http://www.nintendo.com/) developers have.

[Jayabalard]

The problem is trying to make a system that's the most fun for the most number of people in the most variant groups.People do invent their own game systems aimed specifically at their own group and noone else.


If a Level 9 sword-'n-board fighter can be blown out of the water by a level 9 wizard when the wizard's "experience meter" is the same, somebody somewhere is going to be upset, and it's probably the guy with the fighter.Not necessarily; I've been in that situation and not had a problem with it.


I would suggest that you are less apt to be playing a game so much as engaging in purely cooperative storytelling if you have a literal omnipotent paired with Joe Average.Cooperative storytelling is just a different sort of game.

[Comet]

I would suggest that you are less apt to be playing a game so much as engaging in purely cooperative storytelling if you have a literal omnipotent paired with Joe Average.
Not quite omnipotent. Just really powerful.

As long as each character is supported by logical rules with a element of chance, we're still in game territory.
So, the Messiah character rolls dice/draws cards/plays rock,paper,scissors to determine how he levels mountains, attracts nations under his banner and combats cosmic horrors hellbent on destroying the multiverse.

Meanwhile, Joe Average does the same to determine how he can hide from the Messiah's enemies, grab onto him while he is flying over an ocean or convince a local maiden to marry the Messiah so that he can feel like a human for the first time in centuries.

Could be hard to make it actually work, but not in any way impossible.
Anyway, my point (in a bit of a roundabout way) is that the only balance needed is the balance where everyone gets to do things within the game that feel meaningful to them.

[AstralFire]

Cooperative storytelling is just a different sort of game.

Perhaps, but it dilutes the word so far as to become unhelpful in this regard. That's like me saying I'm playing a game when I'm solo-writing; it's true to a certain extent, but...

There is nothing wrong with cooperative story-telling, it is a fine endeavor and a central element of roleplaying games. However, when you remove the system entirely, I would no longer call it a roleplaying game.

[Jayabalard]

Perhaps, but it dilutes the word so far as to become unhelpful in this regard. Personally, I find your use of the word "dilute" here to be pretty condescending....

perhaps it's not a game that you're interested in playing, but that doesn't make it any less of a game.

[AstralFire]

Personally, I find your use of the word "dilute" here to be pretty condescending....

perhaps it's not a game that you're interested in playing, but that doesn't make it any less of a game.

I enjoy cooperative storytelling and pure roleplay very much (so much so I've been engaging in them almost exclusively for my source of roleplay for the last several months, in fact). It is obsfuscating to refer to it as a game, however, in the context of a community discussing a hobby which can cost someone 'on the pulse' half a grand annual in rulebooks. I am discussing clarity of language, not quality of the subject matter.