3.X Class Balance

[Lastgrasp]

I know that class balance plays a vital role in many campaigns, but when you are structuring your campaign how do you handle it? With the 3.X system some classes are simply going to shine while other might not. Then again certain type of players like playing the Fighter even if it's role might diminish in later level. So, what emphasis do you put on class balance? Do you try to say within the tier system when designing a campaign?

I used to play a lot of Palladium games back in the day. Namely RIFTS and the idea of class balance was almost zero. Players would draw up a concept and then grab an OCC to fit it. As long as they enjoyed their character it didn't matter if their Juicer OCC was on par the Dragon Hatchling RCC. Then again it's RIFTS and it simply never had balance at any point of it's creation. (you could have weird group with a Demigod, Mecha dudes, and then the a Vagabond lol)Plus the rule system lacks......

[Dienekes]

This is the difference between real play and on message boards. My players would all probably be considered rather idiotic when it comes to this stuff. Most of them don't want to be magic users at all, and the one that does wants to be so to "blow stuff up with my mind!" so has been playing an evocation sorcerer.

So really I don't have to worry.

However if your group is experiencing some balance issues I would suggest:
1) Buying ToB for your melee loving folk
2) Bringing your magic users to the side and telling them they're not playing fun for the rest of the group, and ask them politely to tone it down some.

[Ceaon]

Tier 1s and 2s can do anything - that includes being powerful but not making others feel obsolete. Buffing, divination, tanking and debuffing are good examples of ways for high tiers to contribute greatly without ending challenges outright. If the higher tier characters play a more supportive role, the lower tiers feels important as well.

And of course, in our group, creating an interesting history and personality makes sure your character remains an asset during the campaign as well. Since history and personality have nothing to do with the class you play, every character can be given its moment in the spotlight.

[Lastgrasp]

Well, for the most part I think the board are the extreme. Most players don't make the most min/maxed character out there. In my experience they pick a theme or a concept of what they like to play. Then create a character based on that. It's probably not the best build in the world, but if they enjoy playing I'm fine with it.

[Ceaon]

Well, for the most part I think the board are the extreme. Most players don't make the most min/maxed character out there. In my experience they pick a theme or a concept of what they like to play. Then create a character based on that. It's probably not the best build in the world, but if they enjoy playing I'm fine with it.

Well, yeah, our group was like that too. Until several players began playing to themes like druidic warrior, enchanter, necromancer, while others were playing noble warrior, bushido fighter and intelligent archer. Then that philosophy began falling apart. So now we ask those whose class is powerful to change their theme a bit - to fit a more supportive role. So, instead of druidic warrior, a shaman who brings out nature's power in himself and others.

[Gnaeus]

I know that class balance plays a vital role in many campaigns, but when you are structuring your campaign how do you handle it? With the 3.X system some classes are simply going to shine while other might not. Then again certain type of players like playing the Fighter even if it's role might diminish in later level. So, what emphasis do you put on class balance? Do you try to say within the tier system when designing a campaign?

There are so many ways that I change my mind regularly. Some that I have used with varying degrees of success are:

Partial gestalt (Tier 1 unchanged, 2 with 6, 3 with 5 or 6, 4 with 4, 5 or 6). (Probably my favorite)
Banning tier 5s, except for dips with DM approval.
Banning Tier 1s, while dropping a few crumbs to tier 2s to allow them to enter PRCS (Like giving Favored Souls a choice between turning and a domain).
Allowing T1s, but banning or nerfing the strongest PRCs and spells.
Rewriting, or using Pathfinder versions of the weakest classes.

My goal is not to make everyone equal, my goal is to make everyone relevant, or give a friendly warning to players with unbalanced (weak or strong) characters.

[Kurald Galain]

I know that class balance plays a vital role in many campaigns,
Really? It never has in any campaign I've played in or DM'ed for.

As I've said earlier, forum discussions tend to gravely overstate how much class balance makes a difference in actual gameplay.

[Jude_H]

Never been an issue.

I do bar most of the classes that fall under the 'tier 1' umbrella. But I don't do it because they're overpowering; I do it because classes that rewrite their ability lists every day bog gameplay down. Binders and Incarnum would also get the boot, but I don't think anyone's ever brought those up.

My games run Fighters alongside Spontaneous Clerics and Artificers, and nothing goes wrong. In other people's games I've played Experts alongside Archivists and Wizards and never had a problem.

Edit: Actually, my group talks about Tome of Battle making problems for them. I wasn't there for that game, but I've mostly avoided ToB accordingly, except for close-combat boss-types that I really want to seem scary.

[Doc Roc]

It's blown up on me a good few times, particularly in trying to design encounters.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Division of labor has helped my groups cope with imbalance pretty well. The fighter and rogue do damage, while the cleric and wizard optimize the damage-dealing conditions through non-damage effects. Sure, Glitterdust might have been the most useful standard action in the fight, but the Fighter and Rogue were still the ones doing the killing.

In the last 3.5 campaign I did, the GM threw encounters at us such that my optimized wizard needed to pull out the 'big guns' every other encounter. Yet his 'most powerful' ability according to the group was the 3d6 Fiery Burst he used during cleanup. At will damage effects have a way of grabbing one's attention.

The problem for me comes in when either (1) the casters use some utterly broken spell or combination, like Gate or Shapechange, or (2) one character is completely and utterly useless in an encounter, like a core rogue against the litany of opponents who generally ignore sneak attack. In my experience, this type of imbalance is more readily noticed and, thus, more important to fix.

A tangential problem for me is that the 3.5 standard fighting-type (outside of ToB) is pretty boring, and optimization just makes him even more boring. Charge, pounce, full attack. Trip, trip, trip. Blah, blah, blah. But that's just personal taste; there are an abundance of ways to avoid this problem, assuming the DM isn't "balancing" the game by banning psionics and ToB.

[Gnaeus]

As I've said earlier, forum discussions tend to gravely overstate how much class balance makes a difference in actual gameplay.

Off the top of my head, I can think of several instances that have come up in games I played or ran. (Mostly before I was on any boards).

1. Player who liked melee decided on monk for cool factor. As he was the front line fighter, he died...regularly. As a result of deaths, he was lower level, creating an effectiveness spiral in which he was increasingly powerless to fight monsters that would threaten his higher level, higher tier comrades. Player never complained. He just got weaker every week until campaign ended. At the time, I didn't realize that he needed a fix.

2. Player (unfortunately me. I feel bad. I shouldn't have done it and wouldn't today) played a normal, 3.5 WS druid with combat pet, wildling clasps and high op spell selection in a tier 4-5 party. The dm started using 2 monsters in most encounters. The party would fight one, I would fight the other.

3. 2 players who left a group because they perceived another PC as overpowered (he wasn't, but ...). Same group another player went through a series of PCs because of their poor balance fit (He thought his duskblade was overpowered, rerolled a samurai, killed it off and finally made a glaivelock that matched party balance pretty well.

4. Player entered an existing 8th level group with a Cleric (healbot)3/Warmage 4, and wouldn't take mystic theurge. "Balance" was restored by giving the new guy a huge chunk of valuable magical items so that he wouldn't suck utterly, balance thereby taking IC realism with it when it left the building.

Those are just the ones that stand out in my mind as things that were particularly glaring or that I wish I had fixed at the time as PC or DM.

[Zaq]

I've had lack of class balance definitely strain fun in my games before. Only once has a party basically openly turned on someone who was just trivializing the rest of the party (rather nicely optimized Wilder in a group of an unoptimized Paladin, a Healer, a Knight, and a Spellthief. Well, the Spellthief might have been replaced by the Truenamer at that point. Not sure if that's better or worse), but I've definitely seen some tension now and again.

[Divide by Zero]

Tier 1s and 2s can do anything - that includes being powerful but not making others feel obsolete. Buffing, divination, tanking and debuffing are good examples of ways for high tiers to contribute greatly without ending challenges outright. If the higher tier characters play a more supportive role, the lower tiers feels important as well.

Seconding this, particularly buffing. Makes the low tiers more useful and keeps the top tiers from singlehandedly winning encounters.

[Incanur]

Power differences between characters and classes did matter with my last gaming group. After getting to know 3.5 D&D, many felt uncomfortable with earlier choices and tried to optimize. For example, the sorcerer player asked for a rebuild after losing a caster level or two through a prestige class. The result included arcane fusion and arcane spellsurge. (Sorcerers can do blasting well.) The paladin, rogue, and barbarian/fighter coped with templates: saint, shadow-walker, and mineral warrior respectively. The rogue employed a prestige class or two and the always awesome swordsage dip; the barbarian fighter took battlerager and pious templar. The cleric - who cast spontaneously from the full list because the player simply wouldn't/couldn't prepare spells - continued to alternate between dealing moderate damage and utterly dominating encounters. In the opposite direction, the player with the low-Wis mystic theurge declined to remake his character but kept up fine thanks to how much spells rock.

In a evil-aligned mirror campaign with the same players, everyone ended up with a caster PC. They experimented with melee characters but found them too weak and/or boring under the circumstances.

[LordBlades]

I've always had problems with class balance, come to think about it I've actually had more problems with that before I started getting into optimization. At least now I know what a given build can do and whether I need to moderate myself or step up the pace in order to keep up.
Couple of examples where 3.5 system imbalances have come up the hard way:

-my first D&D game ever. 3 man party, all new. DM was also new-ish. First two players had already picked a scythe fighter and wizard, so I was asked to play a healer. Ended up with a cleric of Kord (even took Greatsword prof as a feat) and soon enough I realized that between Enlarge Person, Bull's Str and later Divine Power I could completely outdo the fighter in every respect(attack, damage and AC).

-in another D&D group, I decided to give Druid a try because it was looking interesting. Due to a terrible, terrible DM (I stopped the 2 evil party members from robbing a harmless blind ogre, and he told me I was now evil because in that land non-humanoids had no rights of property so they were doing nothing wrong) I had to fight the rest of the party (ranger, rogue, paladin and monk) and practically obliterated them all at once (not much they could do vs. a buffed Dire Bear). After this I started wondering and reading up on system balance.

-In my current group, we're all at least decent optimizers, so we usually make chars that are pretty close in terms of power level. We do have a 'special snowflake', awesome guy to hang out with, but sucks at D&D optimization and is too stubborn to take any advice. Sometimes he makes decent chars (wizards, druids etc) that can hold their own, but not always. Once he brought a ninja to a full tier 1 game (the skill monkey he was competing with was a spellthief/wizard/unseen seer/incantatrix with a load of persistent Buffs, which probably had an edge of at least 10-15 on every relevant skills). He was completely useless outside comic relief and in combat it was usually more effort to keep him from dying than it was to defeat the enemy.

[letters]

-in another D&D group, I decided to give Druid a try because it was looking interesting. Due to a terrible, terrible DM (I stopped the 2 evil party members from robbing a harmless blind ogre, and he told me I was now evil because in that land non-humanoids had no rights of property so they were doing nothing wrong) I had to fight the rest of the party (ranger, rogue, paladin and monk) and practically obliterated them all at once (not much they could do vs. a buffed Dire Bear). After this I started wondering and reading up on system balance.


this put a big smile on my face, well done :smallbiggrin: